Holly George-Warren’s new biography on Alex Chilton, A Man Called Destruction: the Life and Music of Alex Chilton From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man, is a true cautionary tale, especially if you’re planning on becoming a rock star. Talent and hard work don’t always translate to success. What you do, no matter how good it is, can be so anachronistic as to render your hard work audience-less for decades. Drugs and alcohol can really mess things up (duh).
In the late 1980's, a quiet young man with began working as a nurse in a burn ward in New Jersey. Whether initially tempted by pity or a need for control, it was there that Charles Cullen, dubbed by the media as the Angel of Death, murdered his first patient with an insulin overdose. Over the course of the next sixteen years, he murdered many more, possibly over three hundred people all told, all within the sterile confines of hospital wards.
Some readers like their fictional friends kept safe, never truly in harm’s way, despite immediate apparent dangers; you just know they’ll make out just fine in the end. I am not one of those readers—I like it when happy endings are not guaranteed, and the protagonist gets knocked around a bit.
This is the autobiography of Frank White, the 8-time Gold Glove second baseman for the Kansas City Royals. White describes his childhood and the loving support of his family while growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, his high school days at Lincoln High School, and playing baseball as a young teen. He was a pretty good pitcher in those days.
Necromancy student Tara Abernathy has been thrown out of her school--literally--only to be recruited by the stern Ms. Kevarian to work for the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao. Brother Abelard is a naive, chain-smoking priest of Kos, god of the city of Alt Coulumb, who has discovered that his god is...dead. Tara and Ms. Kevarian arrive in Alt Coulumb to bring Kos back from the dead, and that's when things get really complicated.
Unbroken gives us an opportunity to read about one World War II veteran’s war experience. It reveals what Louis Zamperini went through while serving in the United States Air Force and the hardships he endured as a Prisoner of War for over two years in Japan. His story certainly helps generate appreciation of the sacrifices that veterans have made while serving our country.
After famed dragon slayer, Lottie Thorskard, is injured on the job she takes early retirement and moves to the small town of Trondheim to escape her notoriety and the big city. She brings her partner Hannah, and nephew Owen, whose father is out fighting the carbon eating dragons that have plagued Canada since the dawn of time.
I recently missed a carpool, and instead, drove alone. But I never felt alone. Plan B included listening to Anne Lamott's Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. And she is an excellent traveling companion. Lamott, full of faith and humor hooked me in with her crazy, grace-filled life and I couldn't stop listening. It's a bummer that I missed socializing with my group. But, driving with Anne Lamott narrating Plan B made the trip worthwhile.
Naoki Higashida is a thirteen-year-old boy with autism so severe that he cannot speak aloud. But using an alphabet grid, he--letter by letter--has composed this missive from the depths of autism, revealing that a clever mind and keen perception lie behind the limits of his disorder.
NYPD Detective Kat Donovan finds herself in a place where her past, present, future and current case all merge. It took years for her to recover from her father's murder which was shortly followed by her fiance calling it quits and disappearing, but Kat is finally ready to enter the dating scene and sets up an account through an online dating website. As she is scrolling through possible matches she encounters her ex-fiance!
