The Yellow Wall-Paper

Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: New England Magazine, 1892
Pages: 24
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: The Yellow Wallpaper is a valuable piece of American feminist literature that reveals attitudes toward the psychological health of women in the nineteenth century. Diagnosed with "temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency" by her physician husband, a woman is confined to an upstairs bedroom. Descending into psychosis at the complete lack of stimulation, she starts obsessing over the room's yellow wallpaper: "It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw - not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper - the smell! . . .The only thing I can think of that is like the color of the paper! A yellow smell."

Review: I was looking for a short story to catch up on my reading challenge, but what an interesting find. I tend to avoid short stories as a general rule because I like to dive into characters and plots, but this story kept my attention and had me digging for more information
about it. 

This novel was first printed in a magazine in 1892, and was immediately denounced in the press. There is far more information available on Wikipedia, and I went down the rabbit hole. Wow.

Why wasn't this assigned reading in high school. The discussion and conversations would have been so interesting.

Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure

Author: Rhys Bowen
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Amazon Publishing, 2025
Pages: 399
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Surrey, England, 1938. After thirty devoted years of marriage, Ellie Endicott is blindsided by her husband's appeal for divorce. It's Ellie's opportunity for change too. The unfaithful cad can have the house. She's taking the Bentley. Ellie, her housekeeper Mavis, and her elderly friend Dora - each needing escape - impulsively head for parts unknown in the South of France.

With the Rhone surging beside them, they have nowhere to be and everywhere to go. Until the Bentley breaks down in the inviting hamlet of Saint Benet. Here, Ellie rents an abandoned villa in the hills, makes wonderful friend among the villagers, and finds herself drawn to Nico, a handsome and enigmatic fisherman. As for unexpected destinations, the simple paradis of Saint Benet is perfect. But fates soon change when the threat of war encroaches.

Review. I love Rhys Bowen's historical fiction novels, and while this was more fiction that historical fiction, it did veer into that realm toward the end. I wish she would have kept this novel light and fun. Bringing the Nazis into it in the way that she did, brought a darkness to the novel that was jarring to me. 

Other Rhys Bowen Novels
Above the Bay of Angels
In Farleigh Field
The Rose Arbor
The Tuscan Child
The Venice Sketchbook
Where the Sky Begins

Gwendy's Button Box

Author: Stephen King / Richard Chizmar
Genre: Thriller / Horror
Publisher: Gallery Books, 2025
Pages: 3 discs
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Twelve-year-old Gwendy Peterson's life is forever changed when she is given a mysterious wooden box by a stranger for safekeeping. It offers enticing treats and vintage coins, but he warns her that if she presses any of the box's beautifully colored buttons, death and destruction will follow.

Review: This is the first book in The Button Box trilogy, and while it's classified as a thriller/horror, I hesitate to put it in the horror genre. It was definitely a thriller. I'm curious to read the other novels in this trilogy.

In Mozart's Shadow: His Sister's Story

Author: Carolyn Meyer
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008
Pages: 350
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Nannerl Mozart was a musical prodigy who seemed to have a brilliant future. But once her younger brother, Wolfgang, began composing symphonies at the age of five, her  career and talents were utterly eclipsed. Here, at last, is Nannerl's heart-wrenching tale. It's the story of her undying passion for music; her relationship with her "miracle boy" brother, and her life as the "other Mozart," the one forgotten by history.

Review: I recently read The Diary of a Waitress: The Not-So-Glamorous Life of a Harvey Girl, and while it is written for the middle to high school-aged children, I enjoyed it. Interested in other books this author has written, I found her on Goodreads. In Mozart's Shadow jumped out at me because my 10 year old just finished a book report and project on Mozart for school. We read Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart together so this was a chance for me to learn more about his sister.

The middle of this book was repetitive while Mozart traveled around Europe performing and composing, but Nannerl herself was given the short end of the stick. She was also considered a child prodigy, but life in the 1700s did not give girls the same opportunities as boys. My heart broke for her.

Carolyn Meyer Novels
Diary of a Waitress: The Not-So-Glamorous Life of a Harvey Girl

The Vineyard at Painted Moon

Author: Susan Mallery
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Harlequin, 2022
Pages: 448
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Mackenzie Dienes seems to have it all - a beautiful home, close friends and a successful career as an elite winemaker with the family winery. There's just one problem - it's not her family, it's her husband's. In fact, everything in her life is tied to him - his mother is the closest thing to a mom that she's ever had, their home is on the family compound, his sister is her best friend. So when she and her husband admit their marriage is over, her pain goes beyond heartbreak. She's on the brink of losing everything. Her job, her home, her friends, and, worst of all, her family.

Staying is an option. She can continue to work at the winery, be friends with her mother-in-law, hug her nieces and nephews - but as an employee, nothing more. Or she can surrender every piece of her heart in order to build a legacy of her own. If she can dare to let go of her life she thought she wanted, she might discover something even more beautiful waiting for her beneath a painted moon.

Review: I enjoy Susan Mallery's books, and it's been a couple years since I read one. They're easy reading and a good choice in between heavier novels. I didn't think this was one of my favorite Susan Mallery novels, but I did keep thinking the characters hours after I finished it.

Other Novels by Susan Mallery
The Christmas Wedding Ring
The Friendship List
The Sister Effect

Wishing Tree Series
The Christmas Wedding Guest
Home Sweet Christmas

Mischief Bay Novels
The Girls of Mischief Bay
The Friends We Keep
A Million Little Things

A Long Walk to Water

Author: Linda Sue Park
Genre: Biography
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2011
Pages: 128
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: A Long Walk to Water begins as two stories, told in alternating sections, about two eleven-year-olds in Sudan, a girl in 2008 and a boy in 1985. The girl, Nya, is fetching water from a pond that is too hours' walk from her home: she makes two trips to the pond every day. The boy, Salva, becomes on of the "lost boys" of Sudan, refugees who cover the African continent on foot as they search for their families and for a safe place to stay.

Enduring every hardship from loneliness to attack by armed rebels to contact with killer lions and crocodiles, Salva is a survivor, and his story goes on to intersect with Nya's in an astonishing and moving way. 

Review: This is one of those books that I discovered only because I was looking for something short in an effort to get caught up in my 2025 Reading Challenge. I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for a book they couldn't put down.

The Emperor's Soul

Author: Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group Ltd., 2015
Pages: 175
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: A forger named Shai can copy and re-create any item by using magic to rewrite its history. After being condemned to death for attempting to steal the emperor's scepter, Shai is given one final chance. She'll be allowed to live if she can create a new soul for the emperor, who hovers near death.

Review: This is one of those books that I pic
ked up simply because it was short and had great reviews. The internet people don't lie. I loved this book despite the genre being way outside my comfort zone and preferences.

The Harvey Girls: Women who Opened up the West

Author: Lesley Poling-Kemps
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: Grand Publishing, 1994
Pages: 320
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: From the 1880s to the 1950s, the Harvey Girls went west to work in Fred Harvey's restaurants along the Santa Fe railway. At a time when there were "no ladies west of Dodge City and no women west of Albuquerque," they came as waitresses, but many stayed and settled, founding the struggling cattle and mining towns that dotted the region. Interviews, historical research, and photographs help re-create the Harvey Girls experience.

The accounts are personal, but laced with the history the women lived: the dust bowl, the depression, and anecdotes about some of the many famous people who ate at the restaurants - Teddy Roosevelt, Shirley Temple, Bob Hope, to name a few.

Review: Clearly I am fascinated by this group of women, The Harvey Girls, as I've now read three books about them in two weeks. This book was an account of the historical context, history, and eventual disappearance of Harvey Girls in the Southwest. I'm still fascinated.

Diary of a Waitress

Author: Caroline Meyer
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Astra Publishing House, 2015
Pages: 288
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: In 1926, droves of Americans traveled by train across the United States to visit the West. They ate at Harvey Houses, where thousands of well-trained waitresses provided first-class service. Diary of a Waitress tells the first-person story of one spunky girl, Kitty Evans, as she faces the often funny and painful experiences she and fellow waitresses Cordelia and Emmy endure. As Kitty writes about her escapades, a lovable teenager emerges; she embraces adventure, independence, her position as a Harvey girl, and a freelance writing career.

Review: Nearing the end of The Harvey Girls, I went down a rabbit hole. My search for additional historical fiction novels about Harvey Girls landed on this title and requested it from the library not realizing it's for ages 10-14. I decided to give it a try. I really liked it, and recommend it for all ages.

Other Novels by Carolyn Meyer
In Mozart's Shadow: His Sister's Story

Of Mice and Men

Author: John Steinbeck
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Covici Fried, 1937*
Pages: 112
Rating: Of Mice and Men

Synopsis: An unlikely pair, George and Lennie, two migrant workers in California during the Great Depression, grasp for their American Dream. They hustle work when they can can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations, nor predict the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught him.

Review: Despite being an English major, there are very few classics that I actually enjoy. While this was a short, easy read I failed to see why it's considered a classic. It's clearly meant for a different place and time, but I think, for the most part, the story's message was lost on me.

*I read a version published in 2002, but included the original publisher information in this post.

The Harvey Girls

Author: Juliette Fay
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Gallery Books, 2025
Pages: 384
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: 1926: Charlotte Crowninshield was born into one of the finest Boston society families. Now she's on the run from a brutal husband, desperate to disappear into the wilds of the Southwest. Billie MacTavish is the oldest of nine children born to Scottish immigrants in Nebraska. She quit school in the sixth grade to help her mother's washing and mending business, but even that isn't enough to keep the family afloat.

Desperate, both women join the ranks of the Harvey Girls, waitresses who serve in America's first hospitality chain on the Santa Fe railroad. Hired on the same day, they share three things: a room, a heartfelt dislike of each other. . .and each has a secret that will certainly get them fired.

Through twelve-hour days of training in Topeka, Kansas, they learn the fine art of service, perfecting their skills despite bouts of homesickness, fear of being discovered, and a run-in with the KKK. When they're sent to work at the luxurious El Tovar hotel at the Grand Canyon, the challenges only grow, as Billie struggles to hid her young age from would-be suitors, and Charlotte discovers the little-known dark side of the national park's history.

Review: Unfortunately, I was born about 75 years too late to be a Harvey Girl, but my imagination was off and running. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I love historical fiction and this novel had a satisfying ending. If anything, I wanted more.

Softly, As I Leave You

Author: Priscilla Beaulieu Presley
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2025
Pages: 336
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: Priscilla Presley's divorce from Elvis left his fans incredulous. How could she leave the man that every woman wanted. From the outside, life in Elvis' mansion looked glamorous and enviable, and in many respects, it was. But from inside the mansion, her husband was constantly surrounded by a male entourage while at the gates, beautiful women waited hopefully for an audience with the King. From the time she was seventeen years old, that life was all Priscilla had known. During her ten years with Elvis, it became painfully apparent that she had no idea who she was outside Elvis' world. The only way to find herself was to leave that world and seek a new life of her own, because leaving was the only way to survive, for herself and for her daughter.

Softly, As I Leave You, is the deeply personal story of what Priscilla lost and what she found when she walked away from the man she loved. Despite the legal separation, their love for one another was transformed into a touching and tender dynamic that endured until Elvis' untimely death four years later. Shattered by Elvis' passing, she had to reinvent herself a second time as the single mother of a talented, often headstrong daughter who never really recovered from her father's death. Priscilla's dedication to motherhood was enriched by the birth of her second child, and she gradually found her footing as a businesswoman, actress, designers, and legislative advocate. She transformed Graceland into an international destination and helped guide the development of Elvis Presley Enterprises. But the unexpected, shattering loss of three immediate family members years later brought Priscilla to her knees. 

Review: Sadly, I did not love this book. For some reason I had expected more reflective insights. Priscilla Presley met Elvis when she was very young and had a child when still practically a child herself. I don't doubt that she did the best she could. However, now in her 80s, I expected to have some accountability or take some responsibility for some of her children's issues, and I don't know that she has. She speaks matter-of-factly and says how there wasn't much she could have done. This memoir did not make me love Priscilla or cause me to feel much empathy toward her.

The Noel Stranger

Author: Richard Paul Evans
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Gallery Books, 2018
Pages: 352
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: Maggie Walther feels like her world is imploding. Publicly humiliated after her husband, a local councilman, is arrested for bigamy, and her subsequent divorce, she has isolated herself from the world. When her only friend insists that Maggie climb out of her hole, and embrace the season to get her out of the her funk, Maggie decides to put up a Christmas tree and heads off to buy one - albeit reluctantly. She is immediately taken by Andrew, the kind, handsome man who owns the Christmas tree lot and delivers her tree. She soon learns that Andrew is single and new to her city and, like her, is also starting his life anew.

As their friendship develops, Maggie slowly begins to trust again - something she never thought possible. Then, just when she thinks she has finally found happiness, she discovers a dark secret from Andrew's past. Is there more to this stranger's truth than meets the eye?

Review: This book started out okay, but very quickly (and unexpectedly) starts to turn a little dark. I know this author doesn't write thrillers, but I actually kind of wanted it to go that way.

I didn't like any of the characters. Maggie was weak and whiny, Andrew was creepy, and Karina was just blah. Sadly, this book was a miss for me.

Richard Paul Evans Novels
Noel Street

We Don't Talk About Carol

Author: Kristen L. Berry
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing, 2025
Pages: 336
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: In the wake of her grandmother's passing, Sydney Singleton finds a hidden photograph of a little girl who looks more like Sydney than her own sister or mother. She soon discovers the mystery girl in the photograph is her aunt, Carol, who was one of six North Carolina Black girls to go missing in the 1960s. For the last several decades, not a soul has talked about Carol or what really happened to her. But now, with her grandmother gone and Sydney looking to start a family of her own, she is determined to unravel the truth behind her long-lost aunt's disappearance, and the sinister silence that surrounds her.

Unfortunately, this is familiar territory for Sydney: Years earlier, while she worked the crime beat as a journalist, her obsession with the case of another missing girl let to a psychotic break. And now, in the suffocating grip of fertility treatments and a marriage that's beginning to crumble, Sydney's relentless pursuit for answers might just lead her down the same path of self-destruction. As she delves deeper into Carol's fate, her own troubled past reemerges, clawing its way to the surface with a vengeance. The web of secrets and lies entangling her family leaves Sydney questioning everything - her fixation on the missing girls, her future as a mom, and her trust in those she knows and loves.

Review: What a debut! I hope we see a lot more from this author.

This will likely be my favorite book of the year. This author poured her heart and soul into this layered, multifaceted, slow burn novel. I stayed up late and woke up early just to sneak more time in with this book. Five very bright stars.

Hotshot

Author: River Selby
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic Inc., 2025
Pages: 304
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: From 2000 to 2010, River Selby was a wildland firefighter whose given name was Anastasia. This is a memoir of that time in their life - of Ana, the struggles she encountered and the constraints of what it means to be female-bodied in a male-dominated industry. An illuminating debut from a fierce new voice, Hotshot is a timely reckoning with both the personal and environmental damages of wildland firefighting.

By the time they were nineteen, Selby had been homeless, addicted to drugs, and sexually assaulted more than once. In a last-ditch effort to find direction, they applied to be a wildland firefighter. Two years later, they joined an elite class of specially trained wildland firefighters known as hotshots. Over the course of five fire seasons, Selby delves into the world of the people - almost entirely men - who risk their lives to fight and sometimes prevent wildfires. Simultaneously hyper visible and invisible, Selby navigated an odd mix of camaraderie and rampant sexism on the job and, when they challenged it, a violent closing of ranks that excluded them from the work they'd come to love.

Drawing on years of firsthand experience on the frontlines of fire and years of research, Selby examines how the collision of fire suppression policy, colonization, and climate change has led to fire fire seasons of unprecedented duration and severity. A work of rare intimacy, Hotshot provides new insight into fire, the people who fight it, and the diversity of ecosystems dependent on this elemental force.

Review: I grew up in a fire service family. My dad was volunteer firefighter and eventually a fire chief, for my entire childhood, as well as a state fire instructor. My first baby pictures were taken of me at the fire station, and there are many. We spent hours helping raise money for the fire department through various fundraisers and I still love the smell of an "engine room" (the part of a fire station where the trucks are parked). My brother is now fire chief of his local department as his full-time, paid career. I work for a company that designs and manufactures many products used in the fire service industry, SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus), thermal imaging cameras, turnout gear, boots etc. You can imagine that Hotshot caught my attention when this book arrived via a "New Release" email.

Overall, I wanted more memoir and less research, but there is food for thought throughout. It was good reading.

The Mistletoe Mystery

Author: Nita Prose
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2024
Pages: 128
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Molly Gray has always loved the holidays. When Molly was a child, her gran went to great lengths to make the season merry and bright, full of cherished traditions. The first few Christmases without Gran were hard on Molly, but this year, her beloved boyfriend and fellow festive spirit, Juan Miguel, is intent on making the season Molly's most joyful yet.

But when a Secret Santa gift exchange at the Regency Grand Hotel raises questions about who Molly can and cannot trust, she dives headfirst into solving her most consequential - and personal - mystery yet. Molly has a bad feeling about things, and she starts to wonder: has she yet again mistaken a frog for a prince.

Review: This was my first Nita Prose novel, and it was cute. I picked up the clues right away and it went as expected. However, this is about the the time of year I start dreaming about Christmas so it was fun to read a Christmas novella.

Rosarita

Author: Anita Desai
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Scribner, 2025
Pages: 112
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: Away from her home in India to study Spanish, Bonita sits on a bench in El Jardin de San Miguel, Mexico, basking in the park's lush beauty, when she slowly becomes aware that she is being watched. An elderly woman approaches her, claiming that she knew Bonita's mother - that they had been friends when Bonita's mother had lived in Mexico as a talented young artist. Bonita tells the stranger that she must be mistaken; her mother was not a painter and she had never traveled to Mexico. Though the stranger leaves, Bonita cannot shake the feeling that she is being followed.

Days later, haunted by the encounter, Bonita seeks out the woman, who she calls The Trickster, and follows her on a tour of what may, or may not, have been her mother's past. As a series of mysterious events brilliantly unfold, Bonita is unable to escape The Trickster's presence, as she is forced to confront questions of truth and identity, and specters of familial and national violence.

Review: Once we cross into Magical Realism, authors lose me. I can't follow what isn't grounded in reality. The author's language and descriptions were en pointe, but the story was lost on me. I couldn't follow what was real and what wasn't.

Before Dorothy

Author: Hazel Gaynor
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2025
Pages: 368
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Chicago, 1924: Emily and her new husband, Henry, year to leave the bustle of Chicago for the purpose of their own American dream among the harsh beauty of the prairie. But leaving the city means leaving Emily's beloved sister, Annie, who was once closer to her than anyone in the world.

Kansas, 1932: Emily and Henry have established their new home among the warmth of the farming community in Kansas. Aligned to the fickle fortunes of nature, their lives hold a precarious and hopeful purpose, until tragedy strikes and their orphaned niece, Dorothy, lands on their doorstep.

The wide-eyed child isn't the only thing to disrupt Emily's world.
Drought and devastating dust storms threaten to destroy everything, and her much-loved home becomes a place of uncertainty and danger. When the past catches up with the present and old secrets are exposed, Emily fears she will lose the most cherished thing of all: Dorothy.

Review:  Purely by coincidence, I began listening to this book on the same day that I started reading, Emerald's of Oz by Peter Guzzardi It's been forever and a day since I've watched the movie, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and even longer since I read Frank L. Baum's book. 

Hazel Gaynor is a wonderful historical fiction novelist so I knew I would enjoy Before Dorothy. Within the first couple of chapters, I thought for sure this would end up being my next five-star read. However, very shortly, it became a novel that would have been more aptly titled Before Oz. I just wanted more about young Aunt Em and her sisters. That said, I still highly recommend this novel. 

Gaynor recommends Timothy Egan's book, Worst Hard Time, for related reading. It is excellent non-fiction reading for more information about the Dust Bowl.

Hazel Gaynor Novels
A Memory of Violets
The Girl from the Savoy
The Girl Who Came Home

Coauthored Novels
Fall of Poppies
Meet Me in Monaco

Emeralds of Oz: Life Lessons from Over the Rainbow

Author: Peter Guzzardi
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2019
Pages: 176 (3 hours, 16 min)
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: After a lifetime in book publishing, Peter Guzzardi had edited a remarkable group of diverse authors, from Stephen Hawking to Deepak Chopra, from Carol Barnett to Douglas Adams, from Byron Katie to Geneen Roth. yet everything he'd learned from working with them felt oddly familiar. One day it suddenly became clear: all that wisdom had its roots in a file he'd watched as a child, The Wizard of Oz.

That revelation led to this book. It's a jewel box of insights drawn from Dorothy's heroic journey from helpless in Kansas to powerful in Oz, then back to Kansas, transformed by what she found along the way. In Emeralds of Oz: Life Lessons from Over the Rainbow, we discover what the most-matched file in history has to teach us. With that knowledge we become free to embark on our own journey, having activated the power to direct our lives that we possessed all along
.

Review: Purely by coincidence, I began listening to this book on the same day that I started reading, Before Dorothy, Hazel Gaynor's latest historical fiction novel. It's been forever and a day since I've watched the movie, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and even longer since I read Frank L. Baum's book. 

Emerald's of Oz and Before Dorothy were wonderful companion novels, and between the two, served as a great refresher to the original book and movie.

The Seven Year Slip

Author: Ashley Potston
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023
Pages: 368
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Sometimes the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it. 

So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn't want to get to close to anyone - she isn't sure her heart can take it.

And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt's apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would've fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.

Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in the future. 

Her aunt always said that the apartment was a pinch in time, a plac
e where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she'll be doomed.

After all, love is never a matter of time - but a matter of timing.

Review: I typically like time travel novels, although I'm not so much into fluffy romance novels. I decided to give this one a chance and started it over Labor Day weekend. The weather was perfect and this novel had a lightness about it that suited. It was cute and enjoyable. I found myself wanting to jump ahead to see if pieces came together as expected, but I held back and went along for the ride.

The Woman in Suite 11

Author: Ruth Ware
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press, 2025
Pages:
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel - owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann - arrives, it's like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to reestablish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago.

The chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva is everything Lo's ever dreamed of, and she hopes she can snag an interview with Marcus. Unfortunately, he proves to be even more difficult to pin down than his reputation suggests. When Lo gets a late-night call asking her to come to Marcus' hotel room, she agrees despite her own misgivings. She's greeted, however, by a woman claiming to be Marcus' mistress, and in life-or-death jeopardy. 

What follows is a thrilling cat-and-mouse pursuit across Europe, forcing Lo to ask herself just how much she's willing to sacrifice to save this woman. . .and if she can even trust her?

Review: Odd that a follow-up to The Woman in Cabin 10 was 10 years later because I barely remember a thing about that novel.

The Woman in Suite 11 is not my favorite Ruth Ware novel, or even in the top three of her best, in my opinion. I mean how much bad luck can one person have in a decade.

That said, if you're able to suspend belief and don't think too much, it's not a bad story. More than once though I wanted to smack Laura and ask, what are you even thinking? And Judah. Good grief.

I don't recommend this novel, unless you're like me, and want to read all of Ruth Ware's novels.

Ruth Ware Novels
One by One
One Perfect Couple
The Death of Mrs. Westaway
The It Girl
The Lying Game
The Turn of the Key
The Woman in Cabin 10
Zero Days

From Here to the Great Unknown

Author: Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2024
Pages: 304
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-gestating memoir.

A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and now grieved. 

Riley got tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, lay in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told her story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran toward his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble.  About her singular, lifelong
relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they had in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother's wish to reveal these memories, incandescent, and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

Review: I found out to late that the audio version of this book contains Lisa Marie's actual audio recordings, and that would have been great. However, I still liked this book. 

I became an Elvis fan when my husband and I visited Graceland a few years ago. I agreed to go on the tour on a lark, but it was quite interesting. We also visited Sun Records where Elvis had recorded much of his music.

While Lisa Marie blames her dad's death for a lot of her issues later in life, I would argue that even if he had lived, she would have still been a wild child and who knows how that would have played out in her adult life. Neither parent set boundaries or expectations.

I sincerely wish things had gone differently for Lisa Marie, and her son Ben. So much tragedy.

The Younger Wife

Author: Sally Hepworth
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Pages: 368
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: The Husband: A heart surgeon at the top of this field, Stephen Aston is getting married again. But first he must divorce his current wife, even though she can no longer speak for herself. The Daughters: Tully and Rachel Aston look up on their father's fiancee, Heather, as nothing but an interloper. Heather is younger than both of them. Clearly, she's after their father's money. The Former Wife: With their mother ins a precarious position, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family's secrets, the new wife closing in, and who their father really is. The Younger Wife: Heather has secrets of her own. Will getting to the truth unleash the most dangerous impulses in all of them?

Review: I didn't love the ending in this book, but I'm still "Highly Recommending" because I liked the way the story unfolded. The characters were "mostly" likeable too, which is a bonus in a thriller.

I've been having trouble focusing while reading this year, probably because my life is very busy with one daughter graduating high school and the other entering her senior year, but this captured my attention quickly (and held it). 

Sally Hepworth Novels
The Mother-in-Law
The Good Sister
The Soulmate

Canary Girls

Author: Jennifer Chiaverini
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2024
Pages: 432
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Early in the Great War, men left Britain's factories in droves to enlist. Struggling to keep up production, arsenals hired women to build the weapons the military urgently needed. "Be the Girl Behind the Man Behind the Gun," the recruitment posters beckoned.

Thousands of women - cooks, maids, shopgirls, and housewives - answered their nation's call. These "munitionettes" worked grueling shifts often seven days a week, handling TNT and other explosives with little protective gear.

Among them is nineteen-year-old former housemaid April Tipton. Impressed by her friend Marjorie's description of higher wages, plentiful meals, and comfortable lodgings, she takes a job at Thornshire Arsenal near London, filling shells in the Danger Building - difficult, dangerous, and absolutely essential work.

Joining them is Lucy Dempsey, wife of Daniel Dempsey, Olympic gold medalist and star forward of Tottenham Hotspur. With Daniel away serving in the Footballers' Battalion, Lucy resolves to do her bit to hasten the end of the war. When her coworkers learn she is a footballers; wife, they invite her to join the arsenal ladies' football club, the Thornshire Canaries.

The Canaries soon acquire an unexpected fan in the boss' wife, Helen Purcell, who is deeply troubled by reports that Danger Building workers suffer from serious, unexplained illnesses. One common symptom, the lurid yellow hue of their skin, earns them the nickname "canary girls." Suspecting a connection between the canary girls' maladies and the chemicals they handle, Helen joins the arsenal administration as their staunchest, though often unappreciated, advocate.

The football pitch is the one place where class distinctions and fears for their men fall away. As the war grinds on and tragedy takes its toll, the Canary Girls persist despite the dangers, proud to serve, determined to outlive the war and rejoice in victory and peace.

Review: I'm on a mission to read all of Jennifer Chiaverini's historical fiction novels this year. Once again her novel piqued my interest and I did a bit of research into historical facts about the Canary Girls. While all of the canary girls in the novels are fictional, much of what they experienced was fact. Women did give birth to yellow babies, of course they suffered ill effects from working with TNT and other chemical's, and women's soccer was banned in England following the war.

Other Jennifer Chiaverini Novels
Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule
Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker
Mrs. Lincoln's Sisters
Switchboard Soldiers

Mrs. Lincoln's Sisters

Author: Jennifer Chiaverini
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2021
Pages: 368
Rating: Recommend 

Synopsis: In May 1875, Elizabeth Todd Edwards reels from news that her younger sister Mary, former First Lady and widow of President Abraham Lincoln, has attempted suicide.

Mary's shocking act followed legal proceedings arranged by her eldest and only surviving son that declared her legally insane. Although they have long been estranged, Elizabeth knows Mary's tenuous mental health has deteriorated through decades of trauma and loss. Yet is her suicide attempt the impulse of a deranged mind, or the desperate act of a sane woman terrified to be committed to an asylum? And - if her sisters can put past grievances aside - is their love powerful enough to save her?

Maternal Elizabeth, peacemaker Frances, envious Ann, and much adored Emilie had always turned to one another in times of joy and heartache, first as children, and later as young wives and mothers. But when Civil War erupted, the conflict that divided a nation shattered their family. The Todd sister's fates were bound to their husband's choices as some joined the Lincoln administration, others the Confederate Army.

Now, though discord and tragedy have strained their bonds, Elizabeth knows they must come together to help Mary in her most desperate hour.

Review: This is my second Jennifer Chiaverini novel this month. I'm trying to play catch up since she has become a prolific author and her subjects interest me.

My husband and I took our children to Springfield, Illinois a few years ago to visit Abraham Lincoln's Presidential Library and Home. Being a history nerd, I remember a lot of the places mentioned in the novel, most notably Lincoln's home which we toured, and Elizabeth Todd Edwards' home which we saw. These experiences made the novel come to life.

Later in the novel, there is much discussion about Mary Todd Lincoln's afflictions and her subsequent stay at an asylum. As I was reading, I wondered what a doctor in the 21st century would diagnosis. As it turns out, she may have had something called pernicious anemia, which you could read about here. Today it is treatable and certainly wouldn't upend someone's life the way it did Mary's.

While this novel reads a lot like a non-fiction biography instead of a historical fiction novel, I can't discredit the insight into Mary Todd Lincoln's family and background. It's an interesting read. 

Other Jennifer Chiaverini Novels 
Canary Girls
Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule
Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker
Switchboard Soldiers

The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America

Author: Kostya Kennedy
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2025
Pages: 304
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: On April 18, 1775, a Boston-based silversmith, engraver, and anti-British political operative named Paul Revere set out on a borrowed horse to fulfill a dangerous but crucial mission: to alert American colonists of advancing British troops, which would seek to crush their nascent revolt.

Revere was not the only rider that night, and indeed, he had completed at least 18 previous rides across New England and other colonies, disseminating intelligence about British movements. But this ride was like no other, and its consequences in the months and years to come - as the American Revolution morphed from isolated skirmishes to a full-fledged war - became one of our founding legends.

Review: I have never in my life been bored with the history, let alone with the Revolutionary War. However, this book changed all that. It was difficult to get engaged, but I hung in there thinking the chapter on "the ride" itself would be pulse pounding and exciting. I was wrong.

I did enjoy the chapter about William Dawes. He was an entertaining character who isn't given much notice in history books or novels about the war.

As another reviewer on Goodreads said, this was a 20 page term paper dragged out for 200 pages. 

Atmosphere

Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2025
Pages: 352
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Francis. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA's Space Shuttle Program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston's Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilots Hank Redmond and John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.

Review: I chose this novel because it's Taylor Jenkins Reid, but I have to admit, space does not excite me. That said, tennis never excited me either, but Carrie Soto is Back was excellent. This was somewhere between The Seven Husband of Evelyn Hugo and Carrie Soto is Back. I liked it, but didn't love it.

Other Taylor Jenkins Reid Novels
Carrie Soto is Back
Daisy Jones and The Six
Malibu Rising
Maybe in Another Life
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Switchboard Soldiers

Author: Jennifer Chiaverini
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2023
Pages: 464
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: In June 1917, General John Pershing arrived in France to establish American forces in Europe. He immediately found himself unable to communicate with troops in the field. Pershing needed telephone operators who could swiftly and accurately connect multiple calls, speak fluent French and English, remain steady under fire, and be utterly discreet, since the calls often conveyed classified information.

At the time, nearly all well-trained American telephone operators were women - but women were not permitted to enlist, or even to vote in most states. Nevertheless, the U.S. Army Signal Corps promptly began recruiting them.

More than 7,600 women responded, including Grace Banker of New Jersey, a switchboard operator with AT&T and an alumna of Barnard College, Marie Miossec, a Frenchwoman and aspiring opera singer, and Valerie DeSmedt, a twenty-year-old Pacific Telephone operator from Los Angeles, determined to strike a blow for her native Belgium.

They were among the first women sworn into the U.S. Army under the Articles of War. The male soldiers they had replaced had needed one minute to connect each call. The switchboard soldiers could do it in 10 seconds.

Deployed throughout France, including near the front lines, the operators endured hardships and risked death or injury from gunfire, bombardments, and the Spanish Flue. Not all of them would survive.

The women of the U.S. Army Signal Corps served with honor and played an essential role in achieving the Allied victory. Their story has never been the focus of a novel. . .until now.

Review: Sometimes when reading historical fiction, it's difficult to know what is fact and what is fiction. Grace Banker was a real person and kept a war time journal. She is mentioned on the World War I Museum website (fun fact, a few years ago my husband and I took our children to this museum in Kansas City, Missouri). She also has a Wikipedia page. The other two prominently featured characters in this novel, Marie and Valerie, are fictional ladies.

This book was so good that these characters lived in my head, and I found it difficult to concentrate on other books. This was a problem because I only had this as an audio version, and for me that means, I only listen when I drive (and only when I'm by myself). It took most of June and into July to finish.

Other Jennifer Chiaverini Novels
Canary Girls
Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule
Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker
Mrs. Lincoln's Sisters

Small Things Like These

Author: Claire Keegan
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic Inc., 2021
Pages: 128
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

Review: Sometimes short books are the hardest to get into, and sometimes they're perfect. I loved this short story. I sympathized with the characters immediately, and was in awe of the author who pulled me in with so little explanation and detail. This story packed a punch and did not belabor the subject. Five stars.

A Map to Paradise

Author: Susan Meissner
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2025
Pages: 352
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: With her name on the Hollywood blacklist and her life on hold, starlet Melanie Cole has little choice in company. There is her next-door neighbor, Elwood, but the screenwriter's agoraphobia allows for just short chats through open windows. He's her sole confidante, though, as she and her housekeeper, Eva, an immigrant from war-torn Europe, rarely make conversation.

Then one early morning Melanie and Eva spot Elwood's sister-in-law and caretaker, June, digging in his beloved rose garden. After that they don't see Elwood at all anymore. Where could a man who never leaves the house possibly have gone?

As they try to find out if something has happened to him, unexpected secrets are revealed among all three women, leading to an alliance that seems the only way for any of them to hold on to what they can still call their own. But it's a fragile pact and one little spark could send it all up in smoke. . .

Review: Susan Meissner is a reliably good author. This wasn't my favorite novel that she's written, but it was still very good reading. Some of the events/circumstances were far-fetched and I didn't love a couple of the characters. That said, Meissner knows how to tell a story.

Susan Meissner novels
As Bright as Heaven
Only the Beautiful

Fire and Bones

Author: Kathy Reichs
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Scribner, 2024
Pages: 288
Rating: Recommend  

Synopsis: Always apprehensive about working fire scenes, Tempe is called to Washington, D.C. to analyze the victims of a deadly blaze. The devastated building is in Foggy Bottom, a neighborhood with a colorful past and present, and when Tempe delves into the property's history, she becomes suspicious about the ownership.

The pieces start falling into place strangely and quickly, and sending a good story, Tempe teams up with a new ally, tele journalist Ivy Doyle. Soon the duo learns that back in the 1930s and 40s the home was the hangout of a group of bootleggers and racketeers known as the Foggy Bottom
Gang. While interesting, this fact seems irrelevant, until the son of a Foggy Bottom gang members is shot dead at his home in an affluent part of the district. Coincidence? Targeted attack? So many questions.

As Tempe and Ivy dig deeper, an arrest is finally made. Then another fire claims one more victim, and slowly, Tempe's instincts begin pointing to the obvious. But her moves since coming to Washington have been anticipated - and every path forward seems to bring a lethal threat.

Review: I had just a few minutes to browse the library's selection of books on CD, and this one sounded interesting. I should have, but I didn't realize this was part of a series until I popped the CD into my car's player. I had nothing else to listen to so I rolled with it.

Not only is this part of a series, it's book #23!

However, I actually enjoyed this and while I know I'm missing the backstory to some of the characters, it wasn't a problem. It remains to be seen if I'll read any of the books leading up to this, but at least I liked this a whole better than some of the novels I've chosen lately.

The Golden Couple

Author: Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2023
Pages: 352
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Wealthy Washington suburbanites Marissa and Matthew Bishop seem to have it all - until Marissa is unfaithful. Beneath their veneer of perfection is a relationship riven by work and lack of intimacy. She wants to repair things for the sake of their eight-year-old son and because she loves her husband. Enter Avery Chambers.

Avery is a therapist who lost her professional license. Still, it doesn't stop her from counseling those in crisis, though they have to adhere to her unorthodox methods. And the Bishops are desperate.

When they glide though Avery's door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it's no longer simply a marriage that's in danger.

Review: Yay! After a dry spell of many books that I simply did not enjoy, I loved this book. Definitely the best book this team of authors has ave written.

Other novels by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
An Anonymous Girl
The Wife Between Us

Save What's Left

Author: Elizabeth Castellano
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2024
Pages: 304
Rating: Do Not Recommend 

Synopsis: When Kathleen Deane's husband, Tom, tells her he's no longer happy with his life and their marriage, Kathleen is confused. They live in Kansas. They've been married thirty years. Who said anything about being happy? But with Tom off finding himself, Kathleen starts to think about what she wants. And her thought lead her to a small beach community on the east coast, a town called Whitbey that has always looked lovely in the Christmas letters her childhood friend Josie sends every year. 

It turns out, though, that life in Whitbey is nothing like Josie's letters. Kathleen's new neighbor, Rosemary, is cantankerous, and the town's supervisor won't return Kathleen's emails, but worst of all is the Sugar Cube, the monstrosity masquerading as a holiday home that Kathleen's absentee neighbors are building next door to her quaint (read: tiny) cottage. As Kathleen gets more and more involved in a fight against the Sugar Cube and town politics overall, she realizes that Whitbey may not be a fairytale, but it's exactly what she needed.

Review: My book picker is broken. This is another book that I simply didn't love. It's a GMA Book Club pick and People magazine posted rave reviews as well, but real people aren't rating it favorably on Goodreads and elsewhere.

It had the potential to be cute or even funny, but it wasn't either. Ugh.

The Unexpected Diva

Author: Tiffany L. Warren
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2025
Pages: 432
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Born into slavery on a Mississippi plantation, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield has been raised in the safety of Philadelphia's Quaker community by a wealthy adoptive mother. Sheltered and educated, Eliza's happy childhood always included music lessons to nurture her unique gift: a glorious three octave singing voice that leaves listeners in awe. But on the eve of her twenty-fourth birthday, young Eliza's world is thrown into a tailspin when her mother dies.

Eliza's inheritance is contested by her mother's white cousins, leaving her few options. She can marry her longtime beau, Lucien, though she has no desire to be a wife and mother. Or she can work as a tutor for rich families. Her mother's dying wish was for Eliza to pursue her talent and become a professional singer, but that grand vision now seems out of reach.

When a chance performance on a steamboat to Buffalo, New York, leads to a surprising opportunity, fearless Eliza seizes her moment. Within a year she is touring America, singing to packed houses, and igniting controversy wherever she goes. In a country captivated by "the Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Lind, Eliza is billed by tour promoters as "the Black Swan." An unlikely diva, Eliza is tall, dark-skinned, and robust of figure compared to the petite European prima donna, but even the harshest critics can't deny Eliza's extraordinary gift. Menaced by racist crowds, threatened by slave-catchers who kidnap free Black people, Eliza lives a public life full of risk, but one which holds the promise of great riches, and the freedoms those buy.

Review: A fictional account of a real person, this novel started out slow. Just as I was thinking I could not endure 432 pages whining about a man she was engaged to marry, but did not love, the author put Eliza on a boat bound for Buffalo and the novel was off to the races. I really enjoyed this novel.