Reviews

1952 South Africa is the setting for this mystery that brings the first years of apartheid to life. An Afrikaner police Captain has been found shot dead and left face down in a river near his hometown of Jacob’s Rest. Detective Emmanuel Cooper is dispatched from Johannesburg to solve the case.

Alice is only seven years old when she, her parents, and two brothers sail from London to the new world chasing her father’s dream of a better life. But the crossing is full of misery and death and when the ship finally arrives in Boston, Alice and her father are all that is left of their family. Without a backward glance or proper farewell to Alice, her father sells her into servitude to pay his debts and she becomes indentured until she reaches the age of eighteen. Luckily for Alice, the family to which she is now bound is a loving one. Over the years Mr. and Mrs.

Despite what my other reviews have covered, I do have friends or occasions where special diets are needed.  Vegan Brunch was just what I needed when vegan & vegetarian friends stopped over for a weekend.  It’s arranged by type of food, divided up in chapters such as The Savory, The Sweet, and The Toppings.  There are many tips on buying and preparing vegan ingredients, setting a table for brunc

Do you like mysteries set in the art world? Do you like mysteries with Wiseguys? Then this is your ticket. The main character is a mixture of hero/anti-hero who has gotten himself into a fine pickle and has only himself to blame! Tom Davin is an insurance investigator who works both sides of the art world and now everyone is out to make him pay! I enjoyed the dialogue and all the twists and turns. A fun read!

A friend said it was the best book she’s read in a long time, so I took The Elegance of the Hedgehog on my vacation – seemed perfect, nice little paperback to travel easy with plenty of time to read. After a couple of chapters I was not feeling the same love as my friend, but I was stuck in a hotel room with only that book, so I plodded on. I’m glad I did.

While most historical non-fiction works focus on large arcs of history through the lens of politics or religion or war, Bernstein looks at commerce from almost an evolutionary standpoint, as a beneficial process that has given people what they desire and what they need from the dawn of recorded history.

The publishers tout this book as a funny memoir about a white girl who is raised in a poor, predominately African-American inner-city by her divorced dad who acts like a black man.

Written in 1966 as science fiction, Make Room! Make Room! is set in New York City in 1999. It is August and unbearably hot. The city is overcrowded with 35 million residents who are forced to live in tiny rooms, abandoned cars and on the streets.

Lucy, by Laurence Gonzales, questions what it means to be human. Even more, it questions how we treat those we consider to be less than human. Lucy is not what she appears to be. While she looks totally human, she is not. Does that mean that she has no rights?