One rainy afternoon, about 9 years ago, I went to the local library. I had a toddler and an infant, and the library was right next door to our apartment, so we used to drop by a lot. And I would wander around and pick up random books that looked interesting for me to read while I was up with a cranky baby all night. One of the books I got on that rainy day was a dog-eared paperback called A is for Alibi. And […]
Whacks and Whacks and Whacks
…only a fool would reject the comfort of routine for weeks of murder and monsters. Kindle location 2065 This sequel to Maplewood meets and, in some ways, exceeds its predecessor.
All Aboard the Noah!…and then Someone Dies
Holy babjeebus of holy smokes this book was wild. Intense, mysterious, sci-fi-y and inventive. Welcome to the sci-fi murder-mystery. We dive right in as Hana Dempsey is getting released from breeding duty. She lives on a ship, the Noah, that’s on its way from Earth to a new planet thousands of years away. Breeding duty is exactly what it sounds like; it involves sleeping for 9-ish months while you gestate and birth a child, then get administered a bunch of drugs and back to work. […]
An Unexpected View of WWII Berlin
Underground in Berlin is an unusual memoir of a Jewish woman in WWII Germany. Marie Jalowicz Simon avoided the concentration camps by going into hiding in Berlin. With the help of both Jews and Germans, Communists and even Nazis she managed to find shelter and meager food from 1941, when she became “illegal”, until the end of the war. Given that many memoirs by Jews from this period deal with the Resistance and/or survival of the camps, Jalowicz Simon’s memoir is quite remarkable — a […]