Who doesn’t love a twisty mystery? Admittedly, I am a mystery fan though I know some readers do not like mysteries. In The Empty Kayak, Jode’ Millman provides readers with a page-turning mystery that begins with a drowning.
Ebony Jones, Poughkeepsie detective, discovers Lily, Jessie’s year-old daughter, at the scene of a drowning. Jessie and Ebony have been best friends for a long time. Shocked to see the child she knows so well in such a terrible situation, Ebony discovers nothing is as she imagined. The drowning victim is Kyle, Jessie’s ex, Lily’s father. What has happened and how did Lily escape death?
Besides being a mystery fan, I am also a fan of stories featuring strong women. The Empty Kayak does just that by telling the story through the eyes of Ebony, Jessie, and Cindie who is the district attorney. Each woman has her own reasons for being interested in the drowning and what is behind it.
Millman writes with precision. This description of Ebony during the search of the water for Kyle or his body illustrates how Millman captures the moment: “Ebony’s limbs were heavy, as though her body was being compressed into the rocky shore beneath her feet.” Later in the book, as the investigation progresses, another description of Ebony gives readers more insight: “Ebony’s own legs felt rubbery as they placed the woman in the back seat and locked the door.”
The story builds though the gathering of evidence, and the three women’s persistence in seeing the case through to the end. Readers will want to understand the conclusion, but they will also appreciate the friendships experienced in the story.
For book clubs, often, a mystery offers little in the way of discussion once the crime is solved. With The Empty Kayak, however, there are other issues besides the drowning and what is behind it. Members will have plenty to discuss about the connection found in the three women.
Having known Rupert Holmes for his song “Escape” or “The Pina Colada Song,” I was both surprised and delighted to learn he is also an author. His book also fit into some other recent reading I had been doing, specifically, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto. See my previous blog for that review. I followed Sutanto’s book with Murder Your Employer, Vol I: McMasters Guide to Homicide. Early in the book, I learned the apostrophe had long been dropped from McMaster’s, so dear readers, so not chastise me for leaving it off. As an English professor, I must admit the impulse to include the apostrophe is strong.
McMasters is not only a guide; it is also a school. This school is quite hidden away. In fact, students who enroll are drugged, blindfolded, and taken on a circuitous route to the institution. When they arrive, they do not know if the journey has taken hours or days. That’s how clandestine this place is.
Now, readers, you may ask, why the cloak and dagger approach to the school? That’s easy: It is a school to learn how to murder someone effectively and avoid getting caught. Four rules govern the students:
Is this murder necessary?
Have you given your target every last chance to redeem themselves?
What innocent person might suffer by your actions?
Will this decision improve the life of others?
Once the student has answered these questions affirmatively, he or she can proceed with the studies. However, constant review of the questions becomes part of the curriculum. One must be certain that murder is the only option. During the course of study, students learn about successes, but they also find their instructors “show [them] where mistakes led to failure, for which a McMasters student can pay as grim a price as they ever intended for their target.” Hmmm. Much food for thought.
To graduate from McMasters, the students must develop a sound thesis, or plan for the murder. They must be sure they have covered all the bases, reviewing the four essential questions, and ensuring their success at not getting caught.
During the course of study, students encounter challenges that could possibly lead to their own deaths, or are those ruses to help them learn? One can never be quite sure. Of course, rivalries also occur among the students just as alliances form as well.
The story is compelling and darkly funny as well as deadly serious. Read the book for the whole story!
Some of my recent reading may cause questions in my readers’ minds. I read and thoroughly enjoyed Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto. I followed that with Murder Your Employer, Vol I: McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes. I assure you, dear readers, homicide is not in my future, but these two books provide compelling reads for quite different reasons. For this review, the focus is on Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers. Look for the review of Holmes’s book soon.
Vera Wong, in her sixties, lives in San Francisco’s Chinatown above the tearoom she has named Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse. Tilbert, affectionately called Tillie by his mother, reminds his mother that she could get into trouble for using Vera Wang’s name on the teahouse, but Vera Wong believes she is being smart by using a famous name that could attract customers. Sadly, that is not true. The teahouse has only one regular customer these days, Alex Chen.
One morning, Vera goes downstairs to her teahouse only to find a dead body on the floor. After she surveys the scene, draws a line around the body, finds the dead man’s driver’s license, and discovers a flashdrive which she pockets, she calls the police. Vera is convinced the man has been murdered, but the police have different ideas, at least at first.
Vera, believing the police to be incompetent, decides she will solve the murder herself. When several people drop by the teahouse asking about the murder, she becomes convinced one of them is the murderer because she thinks “the murderer always returns to the scene of the crime.” Those who drop by include Sana, an artist, posing as a crime podcaster, Riki who poses as a Buzzfeed reporter, Julia, the dead man’s wife, and Oliver, the dead man’s identical twin brother.
Dear readers, you can imagine the start Oliver gives Vera when she first sees him. Oliver immediately reassures Vera that he is not the dead Marshall, but his identical twin. One can easily see the connection between Marshall and Julia and between Marshall and Oliver, but what brings Sana and Riki to the scene?
Vera Wong will make readers laugh, and they will also sympathize with her as she tries to solve the murder, get a little closer to her only son, and help Julia, Sana, Riki, and Oliver find some happiness. An especially touching part of the story concerns Vera’s relationship with Julia and Marshall’s young daughter, Emma. Emma has been very clingy with her mom, hanging onto her, refusing to eat good food, and generally being a disruptive toddler. Vera connects with Emma, and they develop quite a bond which changes Emma’s behavior for the better.
I truly enjoy stories that revolve around found families. Readers will find that plot line in Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers.
When a friend gave me a gift card to Barnes and Noble, I had a great time choosing how to spend the gift. As I perused the many shelves filled with books of all sorts, my eyes roved over the mystery section. When I saw Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Amanda Flower, how could I resist? As I read the blurb on the back, I discovered that Emily Dickinson becomes a sleuth to help Willa Noble, her maid, solve the mystery of Willa’s brother’s unexpected death.
How could I resist a story that features the famous poet Emily Dickinson as a sleuth? Will has worked in the Dickinson household on a few short weeks when she learns of her brother’s death in the stables where he has been working. The police are convinced the death is an accident because one of the spirited horses kicked Henry causing his death.
Willa refuses to believe Henry’s death was an accident because he was especially good with horses, and Terror, the horse in question, was a particular favorite of Henry’s. Terror also responded well to Henry’s commands and touch.
Emily herself is convinced that Henry’s death is suspicious. She enlists Willa to help her sort out the truth. When Willa receives an anonymous letter in the mail telling her to back off the investigation or she will be sorry, she and Emily both know they are on the right track.
The mystery is absorbing, and the unlikely sleuths make the story compelling. Emily is not intimidated by anyone despite being a female in 1855. She and Willa make a good team. Flower has written an engaging mystery. It is also the first in a series that will star Emily and Willa as they uncover more mysteries.
Not being familiar with Kirsten Miller who has published books for children, young adults, and adults, I picked up The Change because it was nominated for a book talk. Little did I know about the story or that it would take me on such a wild, breathless ride. I started reading on a Sunday evening and barely put the book down until I had finished it on Tuesday afternoon.
This review will contain no spoilers. Three women d’un certain âge, Harriet Osborne, Jo Levison, and Nessa James, meet unexpectedly and begin working together to solve the mysterious deaths of a large number of young women. When they begin their quest, they do not know the depth of the deception that has been taking place for several years, nor do they know the number of important people involved.
Harriet, Jo, and Nessa have all developed skills and talents they use to figure out who is behind the terrible killings. Their gifts all differ. Harriet has a strong understanding and command of plants which she uses to wreak havoc on evildoers. Jo is an enforcer with her strength and fire. Nessa has a completely different kind of gift: she can commune with the dead, especially those who are unknown by others, lost from their families.
The three women find themselves and their families the target of the evil they hope to eradicate. They even uncover one person no one would suspect of participating in the evil. Pick up The Change; you will not want to put it down until you have concluded that last page.
Book clubs will have a field day with The Change. The topics will range far and wide for discussion. It will produce a rollicking good time for the members.
When I am anticipating a new book to read, I admit to feeling a bit giddy. When I received an advance copy of The Radcliffe Ladies’ Reading Club by Julia Bryan Thomas from the author herself, I was more than giddy: words like thrilled, excited, full of anticipation, and, well, you get the drift, would describe my feelings. I could not wait to delve into the story. Many reasons come to mind. I love stories involving books, libraries, and bookstores. The setting of a college campus is also appealing. Finally, I also more than enjoyed For Those Who Are Lost by Thomas, and I have recommended it to friends and family.
In 1955, Alice Campbell escapes a bad marriage thanks to an inheritance from an aunt. She uses the money to move from Chicago to Boston where she opens a bookstore, The Cambridge Bookshop, near the Radcliffe campus. She prints some flyers about a ladies’ reading club which Tess Collins, a Radcliffe freshman, discovers when she visits the shop.
Tess then tells her roommate and two other newly made friends about the book club. Caroline Hanson, a beauty, is Tess’s roommate. Evie Miller and Merritt Weber have the room next door. The four girls attend the first book club not knowing exactly what to expect. They had never been in a reading club before, and they were still forming their own friendships since they all came from different places across the US.
Readers learn about the girls and their personalities in chapters that take place primarily in the dorm, on campus, and around the campus. Other details become apparent as the girls and Alice discuss the books Alice has chosen each month. The first book is Jane Eyre. Subsequent discussions center on A Room of One’s Own, The Age of Innocence, Anna Karenina, Gift from the Sea, Emma*, and The Great Gatsby, although that discussion never takes place because of a variety of reasons.
Our four friends do find themselves at odds with one another in the book discussions. The discussions are frank and honest even when they disagree. Alice often poses the questions, playing devil’s advocate, in a sense, to prod the girls into thinking for themselves rather than parroting what they may have learned at home.
On campus, the girls attend class; they are all serious students and have lofty goals for themselves. Merritt is a bit torn in what she would like to do; she is a talented artist, but her father, a university professor himself, keeps reminding her to “be practical.” Tess is perhaps the most driven to succeed. Caroline is a good student and does well, but, at the beginning of the story, she ponders her fate. Evie is more marriage-minded than the other girls, especially since she has a boyfriend of three years who is now at Princeton.
The girls do have some petty jealousy, especially Tess who is the most opinionated. Then two acts of absolute violence create tension within the little group. The violence will have widespread consequences for all of them.
The Radcliffe Ladies’ Reading Club is a must-read! Avid readers will identify with this notion: I wanted to finish the book because I wanted to see what happened. At the same time, I did not want to finish the book because I was so involved with the characters and the story. I am sure others will experience these feelings.
For book clubs, the story will generate a wide range of topics: women’s education, women’s place in the world, the value of books, the worth and price of friendships, and violence against women.
*Emma is my favorite Jane Austen novel even though many people will name Pride and Prejudice as their favorite!
On quite another note, I attended college and lived in a dorm some ten years after this story takes place. The rules of my dorm were much harsher than those Tess, Caroline, Evie, and Merritt encountered. We had strict curfews, and we had keys to our own rooms only, not the dorm itself. We had lovely housemothers, some kinder than others. We did not have a cafeteria in our dorm, but in another building, so there was no food available in the dorm except what we bought. We did have a kitchen and used it quite a bit, making pizzas from Chef Boyardee pizza kits in a box! Sadly, we could not leave anything in the refrigerator because others would take it. That meant in our rooms we kept staples like canned tuna, crackers, and pickles, food that did not need refrigeration.
As a book reviewer, my general rule is that I must read the book before reviewing it. Now, that seems as if it goes without saying. I have made an exception with The Human Calling: Three Thousand Years of Eastern and Western Philosophical History by Daofeng He. Daofeng He was born in 1956 in Yunnan, southwest China. He has a master’s degree in economics.
The Human Calling, with references, is 541 pages long, a hefty volume. It is not a book to be read quickly or lightly. Therefore, for this review, I am giving an overview of the book including the chapters I have completed.
There are 12 chapters with four to five sections in each chapter. The book does not treat each topic lightly. With violence a part of daily life, or so it seems, I turned to Chapter 2, Section 5: “The Depths of the Paradox of Violence.” In this section, He asks such questions as “How should we think and act?” Another question is “How can we maintain freedom while promoting the public interest?”
In Chapter 3, Section 5: “The High Peak of Aristotle’s Logic,” He addresses Aristotle’s beliefs such as “that living beings are different from other objects because they have life.” He goes on to indicate that not only humans possess a soul, but plants have a “vegetative soul, since they ingest other things while maintaining their distinctness from these things, allowing for infinite replication.”
As readers can tell, the ideas are lofty and not to be taken lightly. Reading chunks of the text and taking time to consider the chapters and reflect on them will give readers the most out of the book. It’s not the kind of book for most book clubs. For those book clubs that do tackle it, reading portions of the book for each meeting will make sense.
Having read and enjoyed The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner, I looked forward to her next book. Dear Readers, I was not disappointed! The London Séance Society, Penner’s second novel, is set completely in one time frame, a novelty for stories these days. In 1873, the mania for seances and communing with dead loved ones is rampant. As we know, even notables like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were fascinated by the paranormal, including fairies.
The story opens in an abandoned chateau near Paris with Vaudeline D’Allaire, well-known for conducting seances to help solve heretofore unsolved murders, getting ready to conduct a séance to find a young woman’s murderer. Besides the young woman’s grieving parents, Lenna Wickes is part of the ceremony.
Lenna is in training to learn how to lead seances with Vaudeline even though Lenna sports a healthy skepticism about the seances. Lenna’s interest stems from her desire to find her sister’s murderer, and her sister had a connection to Vaudeline as well since she had been Vaudeline’s student.
Suddenly, Vaudeline is recalled to London to help solve the murder of a friend of hers, a man who has led the London Séance Society. His mysterious death is unsolved. Oddly, Lenna’s sister also dies the same day as Vaudeline’s friend.
What will Lenna and Vaudeline encounter once they return to England? There are certain dangers in holding the seances themselves, but Vaudeline and Lenna through her association with Vaudeline will be in danger. The questions will be who must the women protect themselves from? Who is the real enemy? Is he or she hiding in plain sight?
The London Séance Society has been named a Most Anticipated Book by Good Housekeeping, Washington Post, Bookpage, CrimeReads, and Popsugar among others. Readers will discover a thrilling murder mystery and will enjoy seeing Lenna and Vaudeline succeed in tracking down the truth behind the murders of both the London Séance Society leader and Lenna’s sister. Readers will find the story to be a page-turner.
Always on the prowl for good books for my book club, I read Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland. The book immediately captured my attention. Without spoiling anything, Florence, 19, dies quite early in the book. She drowns even though she is an excellent swimmer and plans to swim the English Channel.
What follows is the story of family, prejudice, secrets, lies, deception, and love. In other words, what often occurs in families. Esther, Florence’s mother, insists the family and everyone else must keep Florence’s death a secret from Fannie, Florence’s older sister. Fannie is in the hospital on bedrest because she is experiencing serious complications late in her pregnancy.
This desire to keep Florence’s death a secret from Fannie produces a number of complications. The family has taken in Anna, a friend who has come from Nazi Germany. Joseph, Florence’s father, is trying to find a way to bring Anna’s parents to the US as well. It is 1934 and Hitler is making inroads of hatred and prejudice.
Readers will find the story compelling on many levels. For book clubs, the discussion will range from the dangers of the impending war to family trials to dealing with loss. It is a book well worth reading.
As previously noted, I won ten copies of Black Girls Must Have It All by Jayne Allen. Since it is the third of three books, I read Black Girls Must Die Exhausted and followed it quickly with Black Girls Must Be Magic. Readers will be glad to pick up Tabby’s story to see what is in store next for this accomplished young woman.
It’s no spoiler to say that Tabby does decide on in vitro treatments and soon learns she is pregnant. For some reason I found hard to fathom, she tells Marc about the pregnancy. At first, he is concerned that the baby is his, but Tabby assures him it is not. Tabby is determined to be the best single parent she can be.
When Tabby decides to let her hair go natural, her boss tells her he’s had complaints from viewers. As if she does not have enough on her plate, Tabby feels she is being discriminated against at work for being herself.
Readers, steel yourselves for an amazing ride with Tabby as she weathers trouble at work and a tenuous relationship with her on and off again boyfriend Marc. Luckily for Tabby, she still has her stalwart friends, Laila and Alexis as well as Ms. Gretchen, her grandmother’s friend. Sadly, Tabby’s grandmother has passed away, but Tabby relies on her memories of her grandmother and the advice she had always given.
Parkdalear's Blog 