Girls of Riyadh is filled with characters readers will love, hate, celebrate, and condemn – sometimes at the same time.  In this delightful story about the adventures four Saudi Arabian girls searching for their places in society, Alsanea proves that despite perceived differences, people around the world have more in common that often acknowledged.  It’s easy to identify with the Girls of Riyadh and their struggles to find love and create their own lives in this engaging story manages to be serious and fun at the same time.

Questionable Ethics introduces Mel Addison, who, in spite of a rebellious streak, has ethics that are anything but questionable.  The same can’t be said for the people she socialized with as a teenager.  Now, an adult, she wants to believe people have changed.  As Mel struggles to come to terms with the deaths of her son and her husband, she’s sure she can take care of herself even though she has a hard time convincing her family and friends.  As Mel pursues a case everyone else, including her law enforcement family, thinks is solved, she comes head to head with her old friends leaving her questioning who she can trust.  Abderhalden’s exploration of grief, the struggle of recovery, and the inner strength need to survive tragedy immerses the reader without becoming maudlin.  Questionable Ethics leaves the reader wanting more of Mel Addison.  Check back soon for a link to buy Questionable Ethics.   

The ups and downs of the stock market are nothing compared to the downs of stock broker, Austin Carr in Jack Getze’s Big Numbers.  Austin’s life is ready for a takeover and his biggest client’s wife is prepared to use all her assets to get her to invest everything, including his life, in her future.  Getze invested just the right words to keep the reader entertained in this fun, action filled read.

Sunny Frazier introduces Christy Bristol, a witty, smart astrologer, in Fools Rush In.  Serious crimes, complicated relationships, and personal realizations are interwoven with beautiful scenery and a humorous touch that keeps the reader intrigued and entertained.  The setting in Fools Rush In is so alive and vivid it almost becomes a character of its own as the reader is transported from the comfort of Christy’s apartment to the dirty, rundown, large home of the drug dealer holding Christy captive for her astrological abilities to the rural setting where Christy realizes the gravity of the danger she faces.  Although I’ve never really taken to the idea of astrology, Frazier’s description of Christy writing the natal horoscopes made me want to have mine done.  Frazier manages to humanize not only the law enforcement but also the criminals in her book creating a dimension to her characters sometimes lacking in mysteries.

Little Gods opens as a group of boys at a prestigious private school are deeply affected by the mysterious – at least to the outside world - disappearance of a favored classmate, Cody Boyle.  Twenty-three years later, Cody’s disappearance still shapes the lives of some of his classmates including Travis Mathers, Cody’s best friend.  As Travis struggles to accept the secrets he’s uncovered about the school, he must also decide if exposing them is worth the pain the exposure will cause the people for which he cares deeply.  Hoof takes the reader on a journey through human reactions and sincere emotions without over-sentimentality as he reveals the secret underpinnings that reach beyond the school’s reality – the kind of secrets that stay hidden because most people don’t want to face their existence.  Little Gods is at once engaging, intriguing, and entertaining while feeling all too plausible in the world in which we live

Water Street, Wilkinson’s follow-up to Blackberries, Blackberries, once again sets the reader right in the middle of Kentucky culture.  Focusing her short stories on fictional inhabitants of Water Street creates a novel-like feel in the character studies exploring the interconnectedness of the characters of Water Street.  Wilkinson’s stories examine human experience without being preachy.  Wilkinson again demonstrates the challenges and joys of the human experience through her exquisite use of vernacular, description, setting and character.

This House, My Enemy weaves a beautiful Southern story of the love, longing, duty, sacrifice, and a mix of denial and acceptance that has long held together the fabric of Southern pride and mystic.  Lea’s journey of self-discovery and survival leads her from a path of undeniable, undying, perfect, lost love with Ryan to the arms of a violent, self-loathing man, Walt, who is incapable of seeing beyond his own needs and pain.  As Lea and her children with Walt, bear the brunt of his violent outbursts, they find support and friends to lean on in unexpected places giving them a sense that life can be different and hope that beyond their struggle to survive, they can create lives to challenge the cruelty Walt brings to their lives form his never-ending well of pain and rage.  Meadows interweaves the issue of racism into the storyline in an undercurrent that forces re-examination of long held stereotypes.  The juxtaposition of the house’s beauty and reason for existing against the harsh realities taking place inside its walls speaks not only to the epidemic of abuse and resentments in society today but to the underlying need for support, understanding and tolerance in the world as a whole.

This House, My Enemy is not presently available at amazon, barnes and noble, or tattered cover.

A beautifully written exploration of racial divisions that transports the reader into 1946 South Africa through Paton’s vivid descriptions of place and people.  Originally written around 1948, it’s themes of race, family, injustice, and political division ring as true today throughout our world as they did then.  Though this story is set in South Africa, there are people in every country who can find relevance in the issues raised in Cry, The Beloved Country because bigotry continues to find a home in the hearts of many.  There are still many in our world who are being treated unjustly due to their skin color, their political beliefs, their religion or lack thereof, or nationality.  Reading this books touches the heart and makes one long for a world where our differences no longer divide us but become a way for us to enrich one another’s lives.

1937.  Mississippi.  Two teenage girls.  Two young boys, ages ten and twelve.  A fight ensues and one of the girls ends up dead.  The community is outraged and more interested in revenge than justice.  Why?  The girls are white and the boys are black.  Should that matter?  Regardless, it does.  French unapologetically drops the reader right into the times with all its prejudices glaring.  It’s impossible to avoid an emotional reaction to Billy.  The grief of the families’ losses, Billy’s confusion about what’s happening to him as well as what happened during the fight, and the blatant racism all serve to make the reader question whether things have really changed since 1937 or whether all that racism really just boiling under the surface searching for any excuse to break free.

Once you get past Gabriel Garcia Marquez's use of the same two names for the male descendants of the family who make up the main characters, you're drawn into the family's dramas and peculiarities even when you don't want to be. When you realize the meaning of the use of the two names in the latter part of the book, it helps with your understanding of the characters and their actions. As you're drawn into the story of this family, you'll begin to care, almost against your will, about what happens to them and want to tell them the secrets you know and they don't so they won't make the mistake you see them clearly making. Marquez's writing in One Hundred Years of Solitude will have you shaking your head in disbelief, laughing aloud, and smacking the pages in frustration at the actions of his characters. Still, you'll want to know more about them all the way to the last page!

Set in India, A Fine Balance brings together four people from varying backgrounds to create a story that transcends time and culture leaving the reader a bit more appreciative of the little things so often taken for granted.  As the four main characters grow and change, lose and win, fight each other and bring joy to one another, mourn life changing losses and celebrate fleeting happiness, the reader can’t help but feel a connection that makes one wonder how human beings can allow such suffering to exist in the world anywhere.  Mistry’s words accomplish what fiction does at it’s best reaching beyond the heart and mind to transform the soul.

Reaching Back reaches into your heart and mind as it leaves you wondering about the lives of your own ancestors.  As you’re transported into the world of the descendents of slavery through the lives of four generations of women, you’ll feel their pain as they handle rapes, incest, racism, difficult relationships, money problems, and disappointments with their children all the while struggling to provide their children with better lives.  The strength of Megan, Carrie, Ana, and Mignon will inspire you to strive to be a better person.  Simone puts a face to a history too often dismissed and ignored

Blackberries, Blackberries is a beautifully written collection of short stories that manage to bring both laughter and tears to the reader as awareness of the realness of the stories captures the heart and mind.  The stories explore mother-daughter relationships, love, soul searching, desire, loss, servitude, adultery, violence, and always the struggle to know one’s self through characters that leap off the page immersing the reader in their daily lives.  Wilkinson’s use of vernacular and descriptions provide a taste of Kentucky that is all at once welcoming, unique, refreshing, familiar, provocative, comforting and honest.

While Sushi for Beginners often addresses serious issues such as depression, anorexia, and betrayal, Keyes manages to keep the reader laughing.  Lisa Edwards is obsessed with control, ambitious, perfectionist, disappointed with her assignment as editor of a starting magazine.  Colleen struggles with what she thinks she should be as opposed to how she feels when she’s alone. Ashling Kennedy, Assistant Editor of Colleen, is organized, responsible, prepared to take care of everyone earning her the nickname “Miss Fix It” must learn how to take care of herself as well as let others take care of her.  Clodagh Kelly is Ashling’s best friend as well as unhappy mother and wife who looks for fulfillment by redecorating her home constantly, must come to terms with her unhappiness as well as the unhappiness she inflicts on others as she searches for new ways to find fulfillment.  Keyes keeps the reader amused as she leads you through each character’s romances, friendships, internal struggles, disappointments, successes, and life changes.

Opening with Mary’s funeral, And Those Left Behind delves into the depths of Steven’s grief as he dedicates his life to honoring his wife’s memory and the life they’d began together.  As Steven dedicates his life to making the list of dreams they made together come true and raising their three daughters, he struggles with his emotions as he gets to know Ellen, a woman who works at the bed and breakfast he buys. And Those Left Behind is a wonderful story to curl up in your favorite chair with a glass of your favorite wine and spend an evening transported to the Tennessee mountains while losing yourself in the romance of the enduring commitment and love Sean Ramage brings so to life in Steven and Steven’s memories of Mary.  It’s a story that will touch the romantic in you even if you think you don’t have a romantic bone in your body and possibly even make you appreciate your time with those you love just a little more than when you picked it up.