I had a great month of reading in April! I had one DNF book but that's because it's a book that needs to be read, instead of listened to. That book was Einstein's Fridge by Paul Sen. It's a history of the study of thermodynamics written for non-scientific people like me. I've purchased the paper version but Chris grabbed it before I could start it. I expect it will be a beach read. 

My listening time for April was 110 hours and 38 minutes. year to date it's 475 hours and 53 minutes. You can tell that I have my headphones on all the time!

I found a couple of new podcasts that I enjoyed this month:
Finding Genius by Richard Jacobs - Jacobs searches out experts in a variety of fields for interviews. Recent topics have been as diverse as controlling weeds, Parkinson's Disease research and improving employee mental health
Scamfluencers - This is for those of us addicted to the ID channel. It profiles various scammers.

Please let me know of any good books that you read this month so I can make my book wish list even longer!

The Songbook of Benny Lament (892)
By Amy Harmon, Read By Rob Shapiro

What a jewel of a book! I don't know how I found this book but if it was one of you, thank you.

It's December 30, 1969 and Benny Lament is doing a radio interview about is life in the music industry. Mostly the book is the story of his life but each chapter starts off with an interview question.

Benny Lament grew up in the Bronx and music has always been the most important thing in his life. It's kept him from following his Dad into the mob life with his uncle Sal. One day his dad takes him to see Esther Mine perform. He's mesmerized by her voice and confused about why his Dad is particularly interested in this singer.

56 Days (639)
By Catherine Ryan Howard, Read By Alana Kerr Collins

I think that this is the first Covid era book that I've read in that it's set in the early weeks of the pandemic in Ireland. Many reviewers commented that they couldn't finish the book because they couldn't handle a covid theme yet. This book really isn't a covid-themed book. The early lockdown is just the backdrop for the story. It didn't bother me at all and just reminded me how naïve we all were to believe our authorities when they said "two weeks to flatten the curve".

The story is about Ciara and Oliver who meet in a grocery store 56 days ago and start dating just a few weeks before covid reaches Ireland and the lockdown orders begin. Remember those good 'ole days when we were told lockdown would be only a couple of weeks? Well that's the premise for them deciding to live together during lockdown. Today, 56 days later, detectives arrive at the apartment to find a decomposing body.

I really liked the premise of the book. Ciara and Oliver, of course, are not who they portray themselves to be. Their true identities unfold and the story develops. The problem I have with this book is the telling. It jumps all over the place going back and forth in time and replays many scenes, almost word for word, from the perspective of different characters. The ultimate effect is of being dragged slowly through a river of mud before being allowed to get up and walk out to the shower. It was just too slow and too erratic and the ending was ultimately drab.

City of Saints and Thieves (673)
​By Natalie C. Anderson, Read By Pascale Armand

​This was a refreshing change of pace for a mystery. The story is set in the fictional town of Sangui City, Kanya. Tina and her mother came to Kenya as refugees from Congo. Her mother worked as a maid in The Greyhill home where Tina grew up and was friends with the Greyhill son.

When her mother is murdered in the home, Tina has to live on the streets to survive. She has a job as a master thief for the Goondas, a local gang. She's biding her time until she can get revenge on the man who murdered her mother.

This is a fast paced mystery with some really interesting characters. Aspects are ridiculous but I liked Tina and her mission so much that I couldn't put it down.

The Paris Library (713)
By Janet Skeslien Charles, read by a cast

During WWII the American Library in Paris stayed open because of the dedicated librarians. This book tells the story of that library in historical fiction format but with a lot of fact.

Where the book goes al little stray for me is the telling of it between 1939 Paris and 1983 Montana. Odile Souchet is one of the librarians. She eventually marries and settles in Montana. The 1983 story is centered around her young neighbor, Lily. I found Lily's part of the story to be not nearly as interesting and not tightly connected to the 1939 story.

​It's still a good and interesting story if you like historical fiction. 

The Runaway (695)
By Nick Petrie, Read By Stephen Mendel

This is #7 in the Peter Ash series and was an interesting development beyond the previous 6 books. One of the things I love about Petrie's writing in this series is that he avoids formula. In each novel Peter and the other characters, Louis and June, develop and grow. The interesting twist in this book is that the new character, Helena, is really the main character of the book. It's her story. Peter plays a major role but the focus is definitely on Helena. That has gotten a lot of criticism but I actually liked it.

Helena is 18 and all alone in a rural mid-western town. Her mother died in a car crash and the local deputy has Helena working for him for a pittance and for the "privilege" of living rent free in a run down travel trailer. One night while working at the gas station she sees the opportunity to leave town with a stranger. It can't be worse, right? Of course it can, and it is. Several months later when she is trying to escape she encounters Peter Ash on a highway in Nebraska pulling him into her nightmarish life.

When Brains Dream (547)
By Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold, Read By Bob Souer

I am fascinated by dreams. I have always had a very active dream life and I remember something from a dream almost every morning. My dreams are always in color. I often continue dream stories for several nights in a row. I often talk in my sleep and I used to be a pretty active sleep walker. Once, when I was traveling for work, I slept-walked my way to getting up, getting dressed, packing my suitcase and leaving my room. I woke at the elevator at 4 in the morning. It was not checkout day. It scared the daylights out of me. After that I made sure that I chain locked the room and found that sufficient to stymie my attempts to walk out in the hallway. I have woken in the morning many times fully dressed in bed. All that is to say, that I love my nightlife and love learning about what's going on in the brain while we sleep.

This book is a great intro to what we know, and mostly don't know about what and why we dream. It includes some background into early research, the pronouncements of Freud and Jung and really explains what we actually know and what we do not know. Mostly we really don't know very much except that we must sleep to survive and dreaming plays an important role. This book is an interesting look into current theories and research.​

Flight of the Sparrow (660)
ByAmy Belding Brown, Read by Heather Henderson

In 1676 there was an Indian raid on the Massachusetts Bay Colony and one of the captives was Mary Rowlandson along with 2 of her children. She was held captive for 11 weeks and later wrote of her experience. Her book, Captivity and Restoration is probably the first "best seller" published in Colonial America. It's worth a read on it's own and is good to read along with this book.

Brown has taken that book and the very little knows about Mary and turned it into an interesting novel that explores the difference between the two cultures. Based on reading Mary's own account this novel is a nice story built around basic facts but it's still a very interesting story and I finished it off in 2 days.

A Hand To Hold in Deep Water (844)
By Shawn Mocher, Read By Elizabeth Evans

This is another book on one of the Chirp daily deal lists. It hasn't gotten much press and isn't broadly read. There are only 7 review on Audible. That's a shame because it's a really good book. I couldn't put it down. I felt like I was with the characters.

Willy Cherrymill owns a farm in rural Maryland and his stepdaughter Lacey is coming home with her young daughter. Tasha, the daughter, needs medical treatment at John's Hopkins. Willy and Lacey are close but haven't spent a lot of time together since Lacey left home. Both are still dealing with the disappearance of Lacey's mother and Willy's wife, May, 30 year ago. Lacey saw her mother leave with someone in a big red truck and that was the last time she saw her. There's been not one hint of her since.

Willy and Lacey (along with Tasha's father) try to focus on caring for Tasha while avoiding any mention of May. But Lacey becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her mother.

This book is about a lot of things but the biggest thing for me was about the way that humans choose to make families.  This is the kind of book that might be good for a book club discussion. There are a myriad of themes that can be explored and discussed. One of them is incest so be aware of that. But I think it's handled well in this story.​ It's only one of the threads explored in this lovely book.

Wild Swans (1635)
​By Jung Chang, Read By Pik-sen Lim

This book is a classic that was originally published in 1991. This particular audio version was republished in 2015. If you decide to read it, get this version because the narrator is excellent.

It is a history of 20th century China told through the lives of three women in one family. Jung Chang's grandmother had her feet bound and was given to a warlord as a concubine. Her mother was a Communist and Jung was one of the first people allowed to attend school in a Western country. It's a long book at over 27 hours but it's worth the read. You will find parallels in our current cancel culture. There's a lot to think about and explore in the ways that communist and socialist ideas are presented to populations and how we see these tactics today.

I've been very remiss in posting this week but it's our last week with our friends and we are taking advantage of our time together.

I have still been getting in some reading and finished 10 books this month and listened for 112 hours and 44 minutes. That doesn't include the time I wasted on my 2 DNF books for the month. My total listening time YTD is 365 hours and 15 minutes.

I'm happy to say that all-in-all it was a good reading month for me. Aside from the 2 DNF books there were only 2 books (Stolen Thoughts and A Good Day For Chardonnay) that I thought were OK. The rest I really enjoyed. It's a good mix of fiction, non-fiction and mystery so I hope you will find something you might like to read. 

​As always, I also want your recommendations for your best books of March.

DNF Books:
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict - found it pretty boring. Belle de Costa Green is a fascinating woman and I think I'd prefer a straight-up biography to this book that painted her as awfully superficial
When Death Becomes Life by Joshua D Mezrich - I thought this was going to tell personal stories about people involved in transplants. I turned it off when he started a very detailed description of a transplant operation

Interesting Podcasts:
Biohacked: Family Secrets -  About the sperm donor business and how, with DNA services, people are finding their sperm donor fathers.....and other stories.
Twin Flames - The story of a bizarre cult that professes to match people to their "twin flames".

Void Moon (659)
By Michael Connelly, Read By L. J. Ganser

This isn't a Bosch book. It's an older book from 2009 and, frankly, I didn't enjoy it. 
Cassie Black is an ex-con under probation and working as a car salesperson. She is getting her life straight when she finds out that the daughter she gave up for adoption is being moved to France. She concocts an insane plan to get her back.
After a stupid attempt where a bunch of equally stupid and bad people get killed, she makes a decision that was completely obvious from the beginning. 
The void moon is a weak mystical/bad luck reference used throughout the book. It was clear how this was going to end from the beginning.

To The Bright Edge of the World (807)
By Eowyn Ivey, Read by a cast

This is a fictional story about the exploration of the new Alaska territory in 1885. Lieutenant Colonel Allen Forrester leads the expedition while his pregnant wife, Sophie, must stay at the Vancouver Fort for the duration. The book explores their lives while apart during the exploration and there are a lot of references to ravens and their mystical "powers".

There is a side story of letter and journals that have been handed down through the generations. The last remaining descendant of the Forrester's has sent the journals to a museum in Alaska and is corresponding with the museum curator who is reluctant, due to funding, to accept the items.

There is a good bit of mystical romance to this tale but it is well told. According to my reading diary, I read her earlier book, The Snow Child in 2013 but I don't remember anything about it.

Half a World Away (700)
By Mike Gayle, Read By Ksyi Ushe and Joanna Brooks

All The Lonely People by Mike Gayle ended up on my 2022 Top 10 list. It's one of my all-time favorite books and this book proves that Mike Gayle isn't a one-hit wonder. Those of you who are fans of Gayle please excuse me, I've only just discovered him.

This story is about Kerry Hayes, a single mother and house cleaner who lives in a tough area of London. She had a difficult upbringing, mostly in an orphanage. She had a brother who is 8 years younger but when they were taken into care they were separated. Noah was adopted and is now a successful barrister. Kerry has been writing letters to him through the adoption agency for years trying to find him.

Now that she's near 40, she hires a private detective to find him so she can get in tough. It sets off a chain of events that affects both of their lives.

This is another beautifully written story by Gayle. When you are finished with this book you KNOW these people and you want to meet them. If you read this be warned that you will cry at some parts.

​I'm officially declaring Bryce Courtenay, William Kent Krueger and Mike Gayle as my curretn favorite authors.

Tunnel 29 (573)
Written and Read by Helena Merriman

This one is for you non-fiction fans and it's a fascinating tale. This is the story of an escape tunnel built under the Berlin Wall in 1962. About 20 young men spent 6 months burrowing a tunnel under the wall and helped dozens escape. 

The interesting twist to this particular tunnel story is that it was funded by NBC (after the project was already started). NBC wanted to film it and show the escapees coming out of the tunnel. It was one of the first documentaries of it's time and you can actually watch the whole thing on YouTube.

There are some discrepancies between the documentary and book but nothing substantial that would take away from the true story.

Dead man's Grave (707)
By Neil Lancaster, Read by Angus King

This is the 1st book is a Scottish police series featuring DS Max Craigie. 

The head of a powerful Scottish crime family is murdered by an old man following through in a century-old clan feud. Craigie and detective Janine Calder are sent to investigate. Once the motive is determined, Craigie and Calder are pushed to close the case but now there are other murders that seem to be revenge.

Craigie and Calder find themselves investigating the murders but also possible corruption in the Scottish Police Service.

This was a fun read with a storyline that moved along quickly. However, if you are considering this one in audio format be sure to listen to a sample and make sure you can understand the heavy Scottish accent of the narrator. The only reason that I could listen to it was because I worked with a Scot many year ago and I eventually learned to understand what he was saying. This book might work best in paper.

Windigo Island (706)
By William Kent Krueger, Read By David Chandler

This is book #14 in the Cork O'Connor series. 

The body of an Ojibwe girl washes ashore on the fabled Windigo Island. The girl ran away a year before with a friend and now there's a search for the friend. O'Connor is now a PI and has been hired to find the girl. 

I generally really dislike fantasy and sci-fi elements in books so I was thinking about why I didn't mind the mystical elements (and there are many) in this series of books. The fact that I still enjoy these books I think speaks to the brilliance of Krueger's writing. He uses the mystical elements to honor the customs and traditions of the Ojibwe people whereas most authors use mystical elements and magic to lazily solve a storyline problem. At least, that's what I think.

I enjoy this series a lot. I love the characters and I love that the characters develop in each book. He also constantly introduces new characters, causes harm to some of the characters we love and kill some others off. It's kind of risky but it pays off in very rich stories.

Black Cake (722)
​By Charmaine Wilkerson, Read By Lynette R. Freeman and Simone Mcintyer

This is a very popular book just released in January. It's supposed to become a Hulu series.

Eleanor Bennett has recently passed and has left history voice recording for her 2 children along with a Caribbean black cake in the freezer. Eleanor shares the story of how she born on a Caribbean island and escaped to an uncertain future.

I expect that movie produces will make this into a really interesting movie or series because the basic story is good. It's the telling of it that's a mess. It's so chopped up that it's really hard to follow. Some of the chapters are a few paragraphs long and there's no need to have broken up the story into so many parts. Overall I was disappointed in it because I did enjoy the basic storyline.

Stolen Thoughts (587)
By Tim Tigner, Read By Paul Michael

I thought this was going to be like a Michael Crichton book and it could have been. The premise is that a Stanford scientist has develop mind reading technology and is using it harmlessly in Las Vegas as a psychic. One day one of her customers tries to kill her.

She figures out that someone else had developed the same technology and is trying to get rid of her to protect their technology. Sounds good, right?

The whole thing fell flat for me. The professional assassins are inept, the scientist is deaf but seems to be able to hear at convenient times and the people trying to kill her are completely unrealistic. For example, they all live on the same floor of a building....50 year old people basically living and working together. 

This is another book that could be adapted into a much better movie. At the end of this book you find out that the author eliminated 25 chapters from the beginning of the book. Thank God!

A Good Day for Chardonnay (728)
By Daryndra Jones, Read By Lorelei King

​This is the second book in the Sunshine Vicram series. I read the first one in December 2020 and you can read that review here. The books definitely need to be read in order.

In this episode, Sheriff Sunshine Vicram has all kinds of skullduggery going on. There's a bar fight that might have resulted in murder, an annoying raccoon, an old lady who confesses to every crime and her teen daughter who is an escape artist and off on an investigation on her own.

These stories really aren't mystery books. I'd call them romance novels told through a mystery plot. It's very light reading so if you are looking for a good, easy beach read this series might be for you. It sort of wore on me after a while and although the book ended with a giant cliffhanger (major pet peeve) I will not read any more of them. It's just not my genre.

If you are inclined to try it out, I will warn you of one thing. There is a very graphic sex scene about 2/3 through the book. There's a lot of sex chatter and activity in the book, but I was quite surprised at the graphic details in this one part. I'm no prude. After all, I'm watching Bridgerton for the second time, but I thought this particular scene was over the top. If you read any reviews of this book, you will see this mentioned often. 

They Came For Freedom (575)
​By Jay Milbrandt, Read By Wayne Campbell

I expect that what most of us know about the Pilgrims is what we were taught in middle school around Thanksgiving each year. This is an in-depth history of the first Pilgrims. It talks about their persecution in England for deviating from the Church of England and their hardships on coming to this new land. In a time where we have refugees fleeing countries all over the world, this is a good reminder of our earliest refugees. It also does a good job of telling the stories of the various Native American tribes that first encountered the arriving English.

It was an interesting book but it's truly for the history buffs. It doesn't read like a novel or historical fiction. I was glad it was only a little over 8 hours and not my usual 10 hour minimum.

Wow, February has flown by! It was a very interesting reading month for me. Surprisingly, my biggest disappointment was The Bonesetter's Daughter, but it wasn't a bad book! I just read a lot of good books this month. It's hard to pick favorites but I'd probably select Jessica as my favorite fiction book and A Time to Die as my totally surprising favorite non-fiction book.

My total listening time was 119 hours and 43 minutes. Year to date it's 252 hours and 31 minutes. That doesn't count any podcast hours and I listened to a lot of podcasts this month.

A couple of my favorite podcasts:
​I've become a huge fan of Sleep Cove meditations to fall asleep to.
Against the Odds is an interesting podcasts that tells historical stories. The new season is about Ada Blackjack, a 21 year old Inuit woman and the only survivor of an ill-fated artic exploration in 1921.

DNF Books:
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman - It just started off too perky for my tastes.
​
​What are your book recommendations this month?

Something to Hide (1288)
By Elizabeth George, Read By Simon Vance

This is book #21 in the Inspector Linley series. I read a lot of these books in the '90s but they dropped off my radar. This one popped up on some list recently and my library had it. The last book I had read in the series was #11 so I might have to go and catch up.

I like George's writing style and character development and you know that I love a long book with several sub-plots. At 21+ hours this one checked all the boxes. But, it has a pretty sensitive subject matter that might not appeal to everyone. It has also checked pretty much every PC box in the storylines and characters. But, the PC part isn't obnoxious. I think it's handled well.

A police detective is murdered. She had been working on a special task force in the North London Nigerian community trying to stop the cultural practice of female genital mutilation of infants and young girls. There are several possible candidates for the murder and there is a related storyline of a young boy trying to save his sister from being another victim of FGM.

​There are references to previous events in the character's lives but it works fine as a stand-alone book.

The Bonesetter's Daughter (711)
​By Amy Tan, Read by Amy Tan and Joan Chen

I have page of books on my Audible wish list and many of them are books that are considered classics. This is one of them. It's set in 2 time periods: current day San Francisco and 1920's China in the village near the discovery of Peking Man.

It tells the story of 3 generations of women starting with the Bonesetter's daughter. The book sis told in 3 sections, basically one dedicated to each generation. It opens with the current generation who is dealing with her mother as she develops Alzheimer's and losing her memories of her past. 

I loved the section about the Bonesetter's daughter and her daughter. I struggled a little with the granddaughter (current gen) I get the stresses that she had in her life but she came across a bit flat for me. But, all in all, I enjoyed the book.

A Time to Die (603)
​By Robert Moore, Read By Pete Cross

This book will not appeal to everyone but if you like non-fiction I think you will find it really interesting. It tells the story of the Kursk disaster.

The Kursk was a nuclear powered Russian submarine that sank in the Barents Sea on August 12 2000. It was participating in Russian naval exercises. There were 2 explosions that nearby ships felt but no one realized that there had been an accident for 6 hours. It was 7 days before a hatch was opened to see if there were survivors.

​I know it might not sound interesting, but it really is.

Close Your Eyes (664)
By Michael Robotham, Read By Sean Barrett

This is #8 in the Joe O'Laughlin series. Joe is a clinical psychologist that gets called in on police investigations from times to time. This one opens with the murder of a woman and her teenage daughter in a remote farmhouse. The bodies were staged. Joe discovers that these murders might be related to a rash of attacks where people are choked and mutilated.
Reluctantly Joe allows his oldest daughter to see some of the information about the murdered teenager and she starts some digging on her own.
Robotham writes a great mystery but they are dark. Sean Barrett is a good narrator but in this book he uses the exact same voice for Joe and the killer so sometimes it was difficult to navigate the character changes. 

The Magnolia Palace (669)
​By Fiona Davis, Read By Karissa Vacker

In the early 1910's there was a model who was a famous muse for sculptors in NYC. One of the artworks is above the entrance to the Frick Mansion. Davis has imagined a story where the model becomes entwined with the Frick family while they were living in the mansion.

50 years later, in the 1960's, a young British model is working on  a shoot in the mansion. Through a series of events she ends up locked in the mansion during a snow storm that shut down the city. One of the interns, Joshua, lost track of time in his basement office and also would up locked in. They use their time to follow a treasure hunt that Veronica found in one of the rooms.

Clues are uncovered in the 1960's as the story is told in the 1920's. Davis is a great story teller if you like historical fiction. This one is mostly fiction but there are elements of fact that she explains at the end of the book.

Immune (688)
By Philipp Dettmer

Try to picture the day when I was in Costco and saw this on the book table. It's a book written specifically or me and anyone else interested in understanding how the immune system works. 

This book is for the beginner researcher. I think there's a lot left out of it but it's a great basic intro to the complexities of the immune system and it has wonderful graphics. The immune system is really difficult to understand so I think he's done a masterful job for us non-medical types. If I knew a high school kid who was interested in medicine I'd buy them this book.

House of Correction by Nicci French (679)
Read By MIchelle Ford

This is the first book that I've ready by Nicci French and I really enjoyed it.
Tabatha is a troubled young woman who is accused of murder. Her attorney suggests that she plead to a lesser charge of manslaughter. She fires the attorney and proceeds to represent herself from her prison cell.

You are always rooting for Tabitha but no one is sure, not even Tabitha, if she is guilty or not. It was a fun read.

Jessica (1141)
By Bryce Courtenay, Read By Humphrey Bower

I read my first Courtenay book, The Potato Factory, in 2012 and I think I've read all of them by now. He is one of my favorite writers of all time. When I read his books I really feel like I know what Australia was during the time period of the book and I feel like I know the characters personally. 

Apparently Jessica is based on a true story. If so, Jessica is one of the strongest, bravest and most principled women ever.

She had a tough life growing up but she befriended two local boys. One of them had brain damage and one day she had to save him from lynch mob justice. Not long after that Jessica is pregnant and refuses to name the father.  Add in rivalry between her and her sister for the love of the same man and a frowned upon friendship with a local Aboriginal woman. All of those elements make for a sometimes brutal, sometimes beautiful story. I couldn't put it down.

The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women (740)
By Elizabeth Norton, Read By Jennifer Dixon

This book isn't going to be for everyone but if you like non-fiction, and specifically history, I think you will find it interesting.

It is exactly what the title says. It's all about what it was like to be a woman during the Tudor period and it covers women of all classes: royals, royal servants, influential widowed citizens and a peasant girl. The book is organized by Shakespeare's 7 stages of life so that each stage profiles different women. It might have felt more organized to just profile different women individually but I understand why she wanted to have this stage-of-life structure to the book.

​FYI, life for women is better now.

This was a pretty book-rich month because apparently December and January are dead months for pod casts. It was good to be back to reading whole books again. I finished 11 books this month and listened 132 hours and 48 minutes. You will notice numbers by each book title. That's the minute length of the book. Audible tracks listening stats in the app and when I was 100% on Audible those stats were fun to track. Now I listen on Libby and Chirp, along with Audible and I missed the stats. But, hey, I'm an accountant I can track my own stats! It's not important but it's fun for me.

This month has a lot of good books but three books stood out for me. How It Happened was a good find of a new mystery writer and I enjoyed my first Barbara Kingsolver book, Prodigal Summer. In non-fiction I really enjoyed Fortune's Children.

​DNF Books:
The Nature Fix by Florence Williams - Best I can tell Ms. Williams was completely annoyed to have to leave Colorado for DC so she created a job (writing this book) that would allow her to travel to nature parks all over the world and talk about her disdain for noise. Bottom line: nature is good for you, Ms. Williams is annoying and the narrator is awful.

The Kremlin Conspiracy by Joel C Rosenberg - I thought I was going to be on to a new spy thriller series. Three hours in and we were still in introductions and I gave up.

​What good books did you read this month?

How It Happened (639)
By Michael Koryta, Read By Robert Petkoff and Christine Lakin

I think I've found a new mystery writer to follow!  For starters this one is set in Maine and almost covers the entire state. That gets bonus points right away.

Kimbery Crepeaux is a heroine addict, teen mother and basically no good. She has decided to confess to the murders of two local sweethearts and no one believes her. FBI agent, Rob Barrett, specializes in interrogations and believes that she is telling the truth. The only problem is that the bodies aren't where they are supposed to be. When the bodies are found 200 miles away with another person's DNA the case is wrapped up and Rob is assigned to a remote western office. But the young woman's father isn't giving up and eventually drags Rob back to Maine.

I love a good "rural America" story and this is one of those.

Fortune's Children (1085)
By Arthur T Vanderbilt II, Read By Patrick Lawler

Money is good. Money is a helpful tool. Excessive money might not be so good for the families that have it. But it's great for the people and companies that make all the excessive stuff that they buy (houses, boats, jewels....). Rich families just don't seem to be good at holding on to and preserving fortunes for future generations. The Vanderbilt family is a perfect case in point.

This is the story of Cornelius Vanderbilt and how he built one of the largest fortunes in American history and how, by the end of the 3rd generation, it was mostly all gone. To me, the book is full of a lot of dysfunctional and unhappy people obsessed with social standing. It is not just the telling of the story of this family but of that age and what society deemed important during the Gilded Age. It's a pretty fascinating tale if you like family and social histories. 

The Long Call (697)
By Ann Cleeves, Read By Ben Aldridge

This is the first in the Two Rivers series with detective Matthew Venn. The story is set in North Devon, England and starts with Matthew standing outside his estranged father's funeral. Matthew had been excommunicated from his family's evangelical community.

While there he is called about a murder victim on a beach nearby. The investigation involves church members and an adult care center where his husband works. 

I liked this better than the Vera Stanhope books but less than the Shetland books. This is a new series with only 2 books so far so I expect that I'll read the second one at some point.

Hamnet (762)
​By Maggie O'Farrell, Read By Ell Potter

I'm going to preface my comments by telling you that this book has great reviews so I might be totally wrong. It is a fictionalized story of how the death of Shakespeare's son inspired Hamlet. Nothing is really known about Shakespeare's family so this is not historical fiction because there's no documented history to rely on. Shakespeare isn't ever really mentioned by name and his wife's name is changed to Agnes. 

The book is full of beautiful prose without much of a story. Imagine if you went through your day and analyzed every single moment for some sort of meaning. That's what this book is like. As an example, one of their daughter's contracted the plague and we are even told the story of the flea that bit her. It's that tedious. I'd say that the story was 11 hours of introduction and 42 minutes of plot.

I almost stopped at 3 hours but decided to trudge on. I regret that time because the next book I started had me hooked right from the beginning.

The Nesting Dolls (749)
By Alina Adams, Read By Nancy Peterson

This is a family saga focusing on 3 generations of a Jewish Russian family. It started in 1930's Odessa and Daria Kaganovitch marrying Edward Gordon, a comparatively wealthy musician. They are Jews and are eventually sent to Siberia with their 2 daughters. Daria and her daughter Natashia are eventually able to escape Russia for Brighton Beach in the 1970's. Next we are taken to 2019 and introduced to Zoe, Natashia's daughter. 

I was totally hooked on this book during the telling of Daria's story and I enjoyed Natasha's story as well but once the family moves to the US I felt that it went a bit sideways. There is another character, Julia, who is Natasha's daughter and Zoe's mother. The narrator ruins this part of the story by speaking for Julia with a heavy Russian accent. That doesn't make any sense at all since she was born in the 1970's in the US. There's no way she would have a Russian accent or have "old world" attitudes like she does in the book. Zoe is way too focused on whether or not she is Russian or American. She was born in the late 1990's so that part of the storyline is ridiculous. 

So, for me half of this book about Daria and Natashia was really good. The second half was interesting enough but the cultural battles and "old fashoined-ness" of Julia and Zoe's behaviors wasn't realistic. Their storylines were interesting enought to stick with the book but I don't think the characters were all that well developed.

A Man At Arms (560)
By Steven Pressfield, Read By George Guidell

Surprisingly, this is the first Pressfield book that I've ever read. He just had not come on my radar before. This is historical fiction set in the time of Paul The Apostle (AD55).

The Romans hire Telamon, a man-at-arms, to hunt down a letter written by Paul. Telamon is basically an assassin for hire and agrees to the assignment to find the letter and kill the courier. Through the process he has a conversion of his own.

I didn't feel like this was a bible story. I'd describe it as a really good action/adventure story that takes place around biblical events. 

Prodigal Summer (946)
​By Barbara Kingsolver, Read By Barbara Kingsolver

Here's another author I've never read before! I've almost picked up The Poisonwood Bible a few times but never followed through. I don't know how this particular one came up on my radar but it was available at the local library and I decided to give it a try. I honestly didn't have high hopes since the author is also the reader.

Those of you who are Kingsolver fans already know what I discovered; she writes beautiful prose. This books is like a slow walk in the woods in summer. 

There are 3 stories all set in Southwestern Virginia near enough to Damascus and the Appalachian Trail and somewhere between Knoxville and Roanoke. All the rest is fiction. But this is where the author also lives so she knows the landscape, flora and fauna very well and describes it beautifully.

The three stories are intertwined and are brought closer together as the book progresses. The book is about the people and the environment. She clearly has opinions about things like pesticides and killing coyotes but I think that she shows us how we should be discussing things that we disagree on.

The Last Train to Key West (603)
By Chanel Cleeton, Read by a cast

I get some of my book recommendations from Modern Mrs Darcy and that's how this and the next one landed on my reading list. 

It turns out that this is the 3rrd book in a series but I didn't know that until I was writing this review so it clearly worked well as a stand-alone book.

The story is set in Key West, Florida in the summer of 1935. It focuses on the stories of 3 women whose paths cross just before and after the great hurricane of 1935. It's historical fiction so the whole book is based in the significant events and tragedies of that hurricane. I had never heard of that one before but I just said "1935 hurricane" to my resident weather geek and was treated to a mini-Wikipedia lesson.

This book doesn't have the mastery of prose of the Kingsolver book but it has a lot more story. 

Everyone Brave is Forgiven (755)
By Chris Cleave, Read By Luke Thompson

This book is another that was on the Modern Mrs Darcy list of books that have stood the test of time. Both of these books were good for me but neither would make it on a top 12 list. 
​
This one is set in London between 1930 and 1942. It's another in my favorite WWII genre of books. Mary North leaves finishing school and goes to the War Office to sign up. Tom Shaw and Alistair Heath are roommates trying to decide what to do. 

Mary is befuddled to be assigned to be a teacher and before the children can all be shipped out to the countryside she is fired. Tom is basically the superintendent of a vacant school district in London and begs Tom to allow her to teach the children left behind. Tom falls in love with Mary and will do anything to make her happy. Meanwhile, art restorer, Alistair enlists and is sent to Malta which is constantly under attack.

It's a pretty typical WWII story of love, loss, survival and dramatic changes and how each character navigates the threats and disaster around them. It was a good book with a few flat subplots but a great exploration of British fortitude.

Dark Sky
By C.J. Box, Read By David Chandler (571)

This is #21 in the Joe Pickett series and I selected it because both of the DNF books above were right before this one. I needed an easy (and reliable) listen. I love David Chandler as the narrator of these books and I always love the appearance of Nate Romanowski, the falconer. 

In this story Box is imposing technology on the aging (51 is young to me) Joe Pickett. He's been asked to take a Silicon Valley tech CEO on an elk hunt. (Think Mark Zuckerberg going hunting.) Some people don't like "Steve 2" so the hunt doesn't go as planned. 

There's also an interesting side story around Nate's falcons that seems to be set up for another book. It's not great literature but it's a good story with interesting characters and strong men and women accustomed to living in the natural world. 

Florida Roadkill (621)
By Tim Dorsey, Read By George Wilson

I had no idea that there was "another" Carl Haissen or Christopher Moore but it turns out hat Tim Dorsey has been writing about Serge A. Storm since the 1990's and the series is now 25 nooks long.

Serge A. Storm is a highly energetic psychopath who has a unique sense of justice. Like Hiaasen, these books are all set in Florida and they are similarly insane.

If you are even moderately offended these books are not for you. Dorsey insults everyone and it's 100% politically incorrect. This book would have been politically incorrect the year it was written. It might not be published today since we have become so very tender and humorless.

But if you can stomach it, it's a funny book. The story takes a bit to get into as he introduces all of the morally corrupt characters and his target industry: insurance. 

This is the kind of book that Chris and I like to listen to on road trips so I expect to get through the second book in February.​

It was another great year of reading. Is there ever a really bad year of reading? As long as there are books I'll be happy. Looking back over 2021, my spreadsheet says that I read 148 books in 2021. That's compares well to 2020 when I read 146 books. Since I started tracking in 1995, I've read 1757 books. Most are Audiobooks but I do pick up a paper book from times to time. I'm surprised I read so many this year since I've also developed a Podcast habit.

According to my spreadsheet, these are these were my favorite books of the year:
All The Lonely People by Mike Gayle
Ship of Gold by Gary Kinder
The Girl Behind the Gates by Brenda Davies
Chronic by Stephen Phillips
The Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd
Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
Feast of Sorrows by Crystal King
This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
The Fossil Hunter by Shelley Emling

We may not agree on what makes a good book and what makes a bad book so I'd be very interested to know your favorite books of 2021.

Here's my report for December. I didn't read as many books as usual but, aside from the 2 DNF books, they were all winners!

DNF Books:
15 Seconds by Andrew Gross - The protagonist is supposed to be an intelligent professional but makes 3 really stupid decisions right at the start. I just couldn't follow a stupid character like that for a whole book.
In Search of a Kingdom - By Laurence Bergreen - It might be interesting but the narrator has made it into a sleep aid

Podcasts I enjoyed this month:
This is Actually Happening - Each episode tells a remarkable story of a survivor. The only speaker is the person who had the experience so you know that they survived whatever they went through. Recent episodes tell the stories of a woman who found out that her father wasn't her biological father, a man who survived living in public housing and doing drugs who became a prominent member of the community and a young woman why was abducted and raped. It's actually a quite uplifting podcast.

Myths and Legends by Jason and Carissa Weiser. Jason retells myths from all sorts of cultures but with a modern method of telling. He makes mythology relatable. I think kids might enjoy this one.

The Good Son
By Michael Gruber, Read By Neil Shah

Sonia Laghari is a religious woman (practicing Muslim and Catholic) and a Jungian psychologist.  She and several other professionals are on at a peace symposium in Afghanistan when they are abducted by terrorists who may have stolen nuclear materials.
Sonia's son, Theo, grew up in Pakistan but is now an American and ex-Delta Force soldier. He is trying to use his wealthy Laghari family members and military connections to rescue his mother before it's too late. The terrorists are beheading one captive each time American kill Afghan

That summary makes this sound like a straight forward spy/mystery/thriller but it's a lot more than that. It (possibly) provides insight into Arab culture and the book reflects on philosophy, religion, psychology, anthropology, and political theory. Gruber does a masterful job of discussing issues from all sides. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Long and Faraway Gone
By Lou Berney, Read By BRian Hutchison and Amy McFadden

I read Berney's November Road back in September and  liked it so I decided to give this one a try. This book explores how victims of violent crime affects the survivors. The crimes were two events in Oklahoma City in 1986. In one, a young woman was abducted from the state fair leaving her younger sister abandoned. In the second, a mass shooting/robbery at a small movie theater leaves 1 person alive. Neither crime was solved.

Twenty five years later, Wyatt, the theater survivor is a private investigator in Las Vegas but is sent to Oklahoma City on a case and it reopens old wounds and questions. Juilanna finds out that one of the original suspects has resurfaced and is determined to get answers from him.

I mostly liked this book but found the intersection of the two storylines to feel kind of forced and only for the purpose to make two short stories into one novel. It kind of jumped all over the place with 2 time periods and 2 storylines in each. 

Andy Warhol was a Hoarder
By Claudia Kalb, Read By Lisa Larsen
​
The cover is deceiving. This book is NOT humorous. It's an exploration of various mental illnesses as told through the stories of celebrities through history. Many of the celebrities (Einstein, Lincoln, Howard Hughes, etc.) were not every officially diagnosed with any of these mental illnesses. 

In the end, it was actually very interesting and at the end of each chapter it explores the pros and cons of treating some of these "illnesses". For example, when we treat an entire generation of children with ADHD medicine do we lose some important creative geniuses?

​It was a good book but it's serious and not light-hearted.

The Breaker
By Nick Petrie, Read By Stephen Mendel

This is the 6th book in the Peter Ash series and, in my opinion, they get better each time. This series is best reading order because Peter Ash's history and development through the books is important. 

In this book Peter, his girlfriend, June, and their friend Lewis are in the wrong place at the right time and are able to interrupt a crime that put a lot of school children at risk. Unfortunately, Peter needs to be low profile and this doesn't help.

They find themselves involved in a big tech theft and arms development problem. The book starts fast and keeps up the pace. Book 7 comes out in January and I can't wait.

The Woman in Red
By Diana Giovnazzo, Read By Edita Brychta

I don't know who recommended this book but I'm glad it was brought to my attention. This is a historical fiction account of Anita Garibaldi. She was the wife and partner of the famous hero of the Brazilian Resistance, Guiseppe Garibaldi. There are/were statues to her in Brazil and Italy honoring her heroics in fighting alongside her husband. (I said "were" because who knows what statues still stand anywhere after the last 2 years.)

The book was a fun read but does have a bit of a romance novel storyline going through it. I didn't mind that because she is such a fascinating character.

Sacred
By Dennis Lehane, Read By Jonathan Davis

This is the 3rd book in the Kenzie and Gennaro series. I have not read the first 2 and only got this one because it was on a Chrip deal one day. I will mention that the Chirp description of the plot of this book is all wrong! It's the description for Book 4. But, no worries, it's still a good read.

Trevor Stone is a billionaire who is dying and his only heir, his daughter, is missing. He's hired Kenzie and Gennaro to find her.

The trail starts in Boston, travels to Florida and back as they investigate a corrupt grief therapy organization and search for the missing daughter. Along the way it's hard to figure out the good guys for the bad. If was fast paced and fun. 

​I haven't read a Lehane book since 2006 but I think I'll get more in this series.

Find Your First
By Linwood Barclay, Read By George Newbern

Barclay's books, in my opinion are hit or miss. I hated Broken Promise but loved No Time For Goodbye. Fortunately, Find Your First was a winner for me.

Miles Cookson is a tech millionaire but once in his life he was financially strapped and donated sperm to make a few extra dollars. It's now 20+ years later and he's just found out that he has Huntington's Disease and he wants his "children" to know and to take care of them. He finds out that there are 9 and his wealth gets him access to the names. He's told his brother, and only heir, that he will be cared for but that the majority of his wealth will go to these 9 people. The brother's wife is not happy about that.

As Miles is searching, one of his children, Chloe, is searching for her biological father and finds someone who is a half brother. She and Miles eventually connect but a lot of things start going bad very quickly.

It was a fun ride with lots of twists and turns and a very spectacular ending involving a Winnebago.

This was a very nice reading month for me! Of all the books that I read, Road to Ruin, is the only one that I really can't recommend. It might work better in book form. It was really difficult in audio. I was very happy to have a new Amor Towles book to read and I loved The Fossil Hunter. That one would be a great Christmas gift for a science-minded teenager. It's very motivating.

But my hidden gem of the month is All The Lonely People. I almost didn't read it because it was compared to A Man Called Ove (a book that I did not like). That comparison is an insult to this beautiful book. We all need to find our own Hubert Bird.

What did you read this month that you would recommend to the rest of us? I always check out your recommendations. You might not see them on my lists anytime soon but that's because I have 3 - 4 months worth of books downloaded on my phone at any time. Some people stockpile food. I stockpile fabric, yarn and books!
​
DNF Books:
Stress Less, Accomplish More by Emily Fletcher - Supposed to be a new way to do meditation. It might be if you can find that among the promotions for her paid services.

Podcasts:
I listened to lots of podcasts this month but here are couple that were particularly interesting to me:
Bad Blood: Sometime in 2019 I read the book Bad Blood by John Carryou. It was about the fraud behind the Theranos company. Elizabeth Holmes, the founder, is now on trial and Carryou has a series of podcast episodes that go into more background than the book. If you read the book you will enjoy this series.

Bad Bets: Another business collapse that fascinated me is Enron. Bad Bets is a Wall Street Journal podcast about the history of the collapse of Enron.

Metabolic Effects of Fructose - My doctor recommended Peter Attia to listen to. His podcasts are pretty deep in medical topics and he has (IMHO) an unhealthy obsession with longevity. But occasionally there's an episode that really piques my interest. This is one of those episodes. The title is about metabolic disease but the discussion is really about high blood pressure. It talked about the rols of salt and fructose on blood pressure.

The Lincoln Highway
By Amor Towles, Read by Eduardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland and Dion Graham

One of my all-time favorite books is A Gentleman in Moscow, so anything else that Towels writes will get compared to that That's really unfair. For me, the thing that made AGIM work was that it was completely focused on the one gentleman and all the people who came in and out of his life over many years.

The Lincoln Highway does have a central character, Emmett Watson but there are a lot of surrounding characters and the story is told from everyone's different points of view. That is a powerful approach but also, sometimes, a little distracting and disjointed. Just when I get involved in one character the episode is told again from another POV. That's my one complaint. I think it took me a little longer to get into because of that but I did eventually get hooked.

The story begin in 1954 as Emmett is returned home from the juvenile work farm after serving time for involuntary manslaughter. His father is deceased, the farm has been foreclosed. He plans to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head out the Lincoln Highway to California to start a new life. But plans never work as planned.

When the warden brought Emmett home he didn't realize that he had 2 escapees, friends of Emmett's, in his trunk. The plan was altered with a detour to New York and to start their westward journey at the East Coast end of the Lincoln Highway.

What follows is 10 days of adventures and a lot of interesting and well-developed characters. You have to jump into this one and just go along for the ride! By the end I loved it.

Death in Focus 
by Anne Perry

I've read a lot of Anne Perry books. I enjoy her Monk and Charlotte/Thomas Pitt series. All of her books are period stories. In this new series the central character is Elena Standish. It's pre-WWII and she's on vacation with her widowed sister, Margot. Elena meets Ian and agrees to follow him to Berlin then on to Paris and home to England. Before arriving in Berlin, Ian is murdered but is able to give her a message to pass on to British officials in Berlin.

Unbenownst to the family, Elena's grandfather was the former head of the recently-formed MI6. He's working behind the scenes to try to get Elena safely out of Berlin.

Perry is very good at character development and she tells a story that's great to sew to.

The Road Beyond Ruin
By Gemma Liviero, Read By Saskia Maarleveld and Angelo Di Loreto

It's August 1945 and everyone is trying to find their way after the war. This story kicks us off with Stephano, Italian POW, walking across Germany to try to get home. Along the way he find a young boy beside his dead mother. He takes the boy with him. He eventually finds an abandoned house where they might rest for a couple of days.

The next day the cabin owner, Erich (a German soldier) finds them but says they can stay until they can find a safe way home to Italy. Then there's a neighbor Rosalind and her damaged husband, Georg.

What follows is a disjointed story that at it's core is good but in the delivery is hard to follow. It's told the perspective of every adult and also in present and past times. The focus on the boy in the cover and summary is baffling because it's not really about Stephano and the boy. It's about the relationships between the 4 adults and things that happened in the war. At least I think that's what it was about. I found the whole thing a slog to get through. It was too much work to keep up with all of the characters, locations and time periods. It might work better in a paper book where it's easier to go refer to previous passages.

The Fossil Hunter
By Shelley Emling, Read By Rachael Beresford

What a fascinating biography! 
Lyme Regis was a very popular area for fossil hunting in the early 1800's. Every time a storm came through people could comb the beaches for ammonites. Mary Anning used to go fossil and shell hunting on the beach and, after her father died, she continued to do it as a means of earning funds for the family. When she was 12 she discovered the first ichthyosaur skeleton. She went on to discover several other major paleontology finds.

It's a really well researched book and tells, not only of the scientific finds, but also of the difficulties getting credit for her work in a man's world. It's clear that she didn't dwell on the credit part because that's the way things were at that time. Instead she just kept at the work that she loved. Because she focused on the work and not the recognition, she actually contributed more.  

​Even if you don't love non-fiction I think you might like this one. Mary Anning was one cool lady with a singular focus.

Tamarack County
By William Kent Krueger, Read By David Chadler

This is the 13th book in the Cork O'Connor series that I still love. In this book a retired judge's wife goes missing and Cork (former sheriff) is asked to help investigate. At the same time his son, Stephen, is visiting with his girlfriend when her dog is murdered. They two events might be connected.

I love the narrator and I love the stories.

The Garden of Angels
By David Hewson, Read By Richard Armitage

About 20 years ago, 15 year old Nico Uccello is suspended from school for watching a group of bullies attack a Jewish boy. Nico just stood by and watched. At the same time his beloved grandfather, Paolo, is on his deathbed. Paolo gives Nico the first chapter of a manuscript that tells his own story of his life in Venice during the Nazi occupation. He slowly gives Nico each chapter until just before his death he gives him the key to the location of the final chapter.

Paolo's story is very interesting and it's nice to have a different venue (Italy) for another WWII story. Nico, unfortunately, isn't a particularly sympathetic character. He's basically a spoiled rich kid who does everything he can to avoid life's inevitable hard decisions but the generational aspect did add dimension to the story. In the audio version the transitions from past to present to future come without warning so it was a little difficult to keep up. That wouldn't be a problem in a paper version. All-in-all, if you like WWII novels I think you will find this one interesting and unique.

All The Lonely People
By Mike Gayle, Read By Ben Onwukwe

I haven't finished the year of reading but this book will absolutely end up in my top 10 list for 2021. Hubert Bird is a lonely 82 year old immigrant in London. Each week he talks to his daughter in Australia. He's embarrassed to tell her that he's lonely and doesn't really see or talk to other people so he invents a social life. She surprises him be telling him that she's going to visit in 4 months. Now he needs to get busy and actually create that social life.

Reviewers compare this to A Man Called Ove. That is an insult to this book. Huber is a 10, Ove is a 3 by comparison. This book is that much better. The characters are richer and the story is deeper. Everything in this book is a surprise and it's a beautiful story of dealing with loneliness and grief and finding hope in human connection. Hubert Bird is one of my favorite characters ever and the book is full of lessons for all of us.

The Perfect Theory
By Pedro G. Ferreira, Read By Sean Runnette

This one is for you hard-core science geeks. It's all about Einstein's theory of general relativity. If covers Einstein's life and the subsequent decades of research and debate on the topic. 

For the non-scientist it was the right mix of biography, history and science with a good deal of personality thrown in. One Audible reviewer referred to it as a "love letter to general relativity". I agree. 

It's a really good lesson for us on topics of "settled science". Science is never settled and we shouldn't be conned into believing that it is. If you are interested in science in general, and physics in particular, you will enjoy this. If you are an Audible member this one is in the free library.

Slightly South of Simple
By Kristy Woodson Harvey, Read By Shannon McManus and Janet Metzger

​I have a friend named Nancy who reads as much as I do and our book lists almost never cross. We like totally different genres. This book is  "Nancy" book. I would bet that she has already read the whole series.

This is the first book in a trilogy about a quintessential Southern woman and her 3 adult daughters. Each has a need to come home to Peachtree Bluffs to live with their mother. Ainsley, the Mom, has been very happy on her own but now her daughters need her. Caroline is the NYC socialite who's husband has left her for a supermodel. Sloane is on her own with 2 sons while her husband is deployed and Emerson, the actress, is going to be filming on location in Georgia. 

It's your typical Southern beach novel and a fine read but it was a little too "girly" for me. I was raised with brothers so I just don't related to some of the nonsense that happens between sisters. But if you like this genre it's well written and the characters are well developed. 

I think you will be a little shocked at how short my reading list is this month. I admit that I've been a little distracted by Podcasts lately, specifically health-focused podcasts. There are also a couple of books that I have listened to that I will not share as they might be considered controversial and I'm not interested in getting into any moral debates. Some things we all need to investigate for ourselves and we don't need to share.

But I thought I would share some of the podcasts that I'm listening to. I tend to roll in and out of particular podcasts so don't take this as a definitive list of podcasts that I'm dedicated to. These just reflect current interests.

I like to listen to podcasts to go to sleep and quiet my mind. 
- Sleep Cove is my favorite. There are 2 types of episodes. One is meditation to relax and the other type is boring narration. Both work for me and Christopher Fitton has a nice relaxing voice. I have some of the sleep meditations downloaded so I don't even have to stream them.
- Myths and Legends isn't meant to be a sleep podcast. Jason and Carissa Weiser have a great concept here to tell the stories of myth from all cultures around the world. The charm is that Janson tells the stories in more modern language. The stores are great but I found his voice to be incredibly soothing and it puts me right to sleep.

These are the only two podcasts that I can get Chris to listen to. We listen to them on car trips.
No Such Thing As A Fish - This is my #1 favorite podcast of all. The 4 hosts come together each week with 4 random fun facts and then spend about 50 minutes in hilarious discussion of the facts.
99% Invisible - Roman Mars explores lots of urban living and design topics. It's very interesting and a lot of fun.

I love true crime and there are several interesting true crime podcasts. I don't listen to all of them all of the time but these have some good episodes:
The Murder Squad - I think this was my first murder podcast. I found it because of my interest in the Golden State Killer. Paul Holes and Billy Jensen were involved with Michelle McNamara in researching GSK. They review unsolved crimes.
Criminal - More true crime by host Phoebe Judge. Great research and she has a wonderful radio voice. I've used this one occasionally to go to sleep with.
Small Town Dicks - Yeardley Smith (Lisa Simpson) is the co-host of this podcast with 2 brothers who spent their careers as detectives in a small town somewhere.  They interview detective from around the world to tell their most interesting crime stories.
The Opportunist - This one is a new one but really well researched. The most recent series tells an in-depth story of cult leader Sheryl Ruthven

On the health front I've become interested in "functional medicine". I'm not into it as a total flip from traditional medicine but I just like to research new stuff and my doctor has a functional medicine bent to her recommendations. I like that because I hate pharmaceuticals.
Peter Attia Drive - The fact that I listen to podcasts at all is because my doctor recommended one of Attia's episodes. This is a pretty intense medical discussion so you really have to be almost studying medicine. I don't listen to many of his episodes but there are a few that have been relevant to me. He's really obsessed with longevity. 
The Healthy Rebellion - Is hosted by Robb Wolf and his wife Nikki. He wrote the first book about the paleo diet and I'm reading his book "Wired To Eat". There are 2 types of episodes. One is called Salty Talk where Robb explores one topic or piece of research in depth. The second type is Q&A responding to submitted questions. You have to be able to tolerate some salty language but the information is some of the most honest health information available to us. But if you are interested in reversing metabolic disease you might like this one.
There are some others that I'm listening to to try and I haven't made any decisions yet. Some of these people really lean total carnivore. Being allergic to chlorophyll, I'm no vegan but I'm no carnivore either. But there are some interesting episodes on these:
Dhru Purohit
Dr. Ruscio Radio
Fundamental health with Paul Salidino
The Doctor's Farmacy

Do you listen to podcasts? If so, what are your favorites?

DNF Books
There are 2 books that I just could not get into this month:​
IQ by Joe Ide - This one is showing up on a lot of recommended lists lately. If it bothers you to hear the n-word in every paragraph then don't read this book.
​Brothers York by Thomas Penn - Too much like listening to a history book

Enemy at the Gates
By Kyle Mills, Read By George Guidall

This is book 20 in the Mitch Rapp series and I'm so glad that Vince Flynn's estate picked Kyle Mills to continue the Rapp series. I actually like them better since he started writing them.

There's a mole in the CIA who has stolen a file on the world's richest man, Nicholas Ward. Ward and a virologist have barely survived a kidnapping. Ward hires Rapp to protect him while they are trying to uncover the plot.
​
It's very fast paced and action packed. You will not get bored. I finished it in a day. My favorite thing about this book is that Mills wrote a book with political figures but no politics. You have no idea the political party of even the President. So refreshing! See authors, it can be done. Leave your own politics on the editing floor and just write a good story. 

Silver Sparrow
By Tayari Jones,
Read By Rosalyn Coleman Williams and Heather Alicia Simms

It's the 1980's in Atlanta and James Witherspoon (owner of a chauffeur business) has two families. Each of his wives has a daughter and it's only a matter of time before they meet and become friends. One of the girls knows the secret, the other doesn't. 

The book is told primarily from the POV of each daughter and those 2 parts are very interesting. It's very thought provoking to consider how that situation might affect a young person. The ending, though, left me looking around a bit as if I lost some pages. It was a little unsatisfying. 

If you are an Audible member this one is free for you to listen.

The Cutting Edge
By Jeffrey Deaver, Read by Eduardo Ballerini

This is number 14 in the Lincoln Rhyme series. I lost track of these books and haven't read one in a long time. Chirp reminded me by offering this one on one of their daily sales. The last one that I read was #8 so I have some catching up to do.

Lincoln Rhyme was a detective with the NYPD until he became a quadriplegic. He is now a forensic consultant and is partnered with (in life and work) Amanda Sachs, a detective. The book opens with a triple murder at a diamond merchant. "The Promiser" is offended by the diamond industry and frivolous ruining of pure diamonds for engagement rings. He's determined to punish those who have them. At the murder scene the merchants apprentice, Vimal Lahori, escapes. He could help solve the case but he's in hiding.

Around the same time there are a series of gas explosions in the city that seem to be related to some drilling activity. These explosions conveniently provide some cover for The Promiser. 

​Lots of action and lots of evil. Amanda Sachs is my favorite character. She's tough but not super-human tough. Eduardo Ballerini is one of my all-time favorite readers.

The Lost Apothecary
By Sarah Penner, Read by a cast

Poison and revenge, what's not to love.
In 18th century London there's a secret apothecary who sells poisons to help women dealing with oppressive or cruel men in their lives. 
Flip to current day and Caroline is in London on what is supposed to be a romantic 10th anniversary celebration trip. She came alone when she discovered her husband was having an affair. Caroline goes on an impromptu mudlarking adventure on the bans of the Thames and finds an old apothecary jar. 
It was an interesting read but don't cross these women!

Buried 
By Ellison Cooper, Read By Danielle Deadwyler

Well, this was a nice surprise! When it started off I wasn't so sure. All the main characters are women so I thought it was going to be another over-the-top-strong-women book. I was wrong. The characters are well developed and realistic. Although there are a dearth of men in the FBI. Who knew?

Sayer Altair is an FBI Senior Special Agent. She's just off desk duty recovering from a bullet wound 6 months ago. When an off-duty agent falls into a sinkhole in the Shenandoah Valley and finds a cache of skeletal remains, including 2 fresh bodies. Altair is sent to investigate and given basically no help because the FBI in this book reflects the total political train wreck of the modern FBI.

What I loved about this book is the detailed research that Cooper did in the Shenandoah Valley. She got the details right and Altair is a great character. I'm looking forward to diving into the 2nd installment, but not until I read the 1st one, Caged. It's the source of the bullet wound at the opening of this book.

I have to say that this was not a great month of reading for me. Most of the books I read are not ones that I'd strongly recommend. My three favorites were November Road, How Stella Learned to Talk (made me wish I had a dog) and Watching You. Everything else was pretty darned mediocre.

I hope you read some great books that you can recommend.

DNF Books:
The Innocent Man by John Grisham - I'm not a Grisham fan to begin with but this is a true crime book so I thought I'd give it a try. It's very flat. Might be the writing. Might be the narrator. Eventually I just looked up the story on the web.

Save Me From Dangerous Men by S. A. Lelchuk - This should be a really good book and it does have great reviews but I couldn't take it. The main character is a woman who dispenses vigilante justice and is able to fend off men twice her size, even when there are 3 of them because 2 of them just stand back and watch. Meanwhile she owns a book store and is broadly self-educated and is developing a love interest with a Berkeley professor.  This book is getting rave reviews so you might like it. Kick ass women are very much in literary vogue even if they are completely unrealistic.
​

Brave Companions
By Davis McCullough, Read By David McCullough

I usually love McCullough's books but this isn't one of his finest. I believe that it's a collection of magazine articles about various historical people. Some were interesting and some were really boring. 
We selected this to listen to in the car on the way home from our trip. We ended up skipping several chapters and gave up near the end. He narrated the book and that probably wasn't a wise decision. The whole thing was a kind of a ramble with a few interesting characters interspersed. 

Good Calories, Bad Calories
By Gary Taubes

Last month I shared the book Bad Science by this same author. After reading that one I was anxious to read this one. I was not disappointed. This is such an incredibly well researched book! There are over 100 pages just of footnote references!

If you struggle with metabolic disease, weight control or heart disease I think you would find this book very interesting and helpful. It's a very long read at over 400 pages but it was so worth it to find out  that all of out current dietary recommendations from the government and other health agencies, like the American Heart Association, are wrong and not based on actual research science. "Science" as it's practiced now is a total disgrace and waste of money. 

The Good Nurse 
By Charles Graeber, Read By Will Collyer

Don't read this if you are going into the hospital any time soon! This is the story of Charlie Cullen, probably the most prolific serial killer in US history. He worked as a nurse for 16 years in 9 hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Graeber did a ton of research for this book and it's a riveting tale. Look up Charlie Cullen in Wikipedia to see if you think you might like to read this story.

What Alice Forgot
By Liane Moriarty, Read By Lovatt-Smith, Tamara

Alice is 29 and pregnant with her first child when she collapses at the gym. At the hospital she discovers that she is actually 39, has 3 children and is getting a divorce. She's lost 10 years of her memory.

This isn't my favorite genre, but this one held my interest. It's interesting to ponder what you might change of you put your mindset from 10 years ago to the events of today.

Simon The Fiddler
By Paulette Jiles, Read By Grover Gardner

I'm not sure why I even tried this book because I didn't like News of The World. This one was actually better. It's about Simon (a fiddler) and his life after the Civil War. It was pretty good but it took a long time to get into it and get invested in the characters. It seemed that just as I got really involved in the story that it abruptly ended.

Little Fires Everywhere
By Celeste Ng, Read By Jennifer Lim

The Richardson family is nice, wealthy family in Shaker Heights, OH and the lease an apartment to Mia Warren and her teen daughter, Pearl. Mia is a single mother and artist.  Pearl, in a very unrealistic storyline, becomes heavily involved with the lives of the Richardson children. Meanwhile, Mia, who apparently has never cooked a real meal in her life, becomes the Richardson's maid and cook. 

I didn't like it and I didn't hate it. It was a very low energy story. The characters and the storyline were predictable and it could probably be classified as a young adult book. I think it might have appealed to the teenage me more than the old lady me. I expect that the TV version expanded more on the adult female characters and made the story more appealing for an adult audience.

The Midwife of Hope River
By Patricia Harman, Read By Ann Witman

Patience Murphy is a midwife working in Appalachia during the Depression. She has secrets from her past and doubts about her abilities, blah, blah, blah.
​I did finish this book but I didn't love it. To me it was a cozy mystery version of historical fiction. "Insurmountable" difficulties were easily overcome, including a lame attack from the KKK.

How Stella Learned To Talk
By Christina Hunger, Read By Ann Marie Gideon

I normally would not have picked this book up simply because it's only 7 hours long. But Laceflower recommended it last month (and I always check out the books you recommend) and it was available free at the library.
The I proceeded to listen to it all in one day. 
Christina Hunger is a speech pathologist and works primarily with non-verbal children. When she got Stella as a puppy she noticed that Stella signaled in a way similar to non-verbal children and she wondered if shoe could teach Stella to talk with a device in the same way that she teaches children to talk with devices. It's a cool story.
You can find videos of Stella online if you want to see her in action before reading the book. Apparently there are now a lot of products to help you train your dog to talk.

November Road
By Lou Berney, Read By Johnathan McClain

This book was refreshingly different than most of what I've read in the past few months. The book opens with the assassination of JFK in 1963. 

Frank Guidry has been working for a mob boss in New Orleans and the day of the assassination he realizes that he may have played a part in the deed and he knows that everyone associated with it is going to be killed.

Meanwhile in Oklahoma, Charlotte has 2 daughters and an alcoholic husband. One night she decides that she's fed up and packs to leave. She's heading West to California.

Frank sees Charlotte and her daughters broken down on the side of the road. When he comes upon them again in town he decides that they should travel together. It will provide some protection for her and cover for him. But the road is also a trail for the people searching for him.

It's a dark and gritty tale with great characters. The ending was a little abrupt for me but I get it, it had to end the way it did. Id' read more of his books. The audio version includes a podcast interview with the author where he shares more information on how the book and characters developed.

Watching You
By Michael Robotham, Read By Sean Barrett

Thanks to my friend, Chris, for reminding me to get back into this series. Joe O'Laughlin is a therapist with his own problems (divorce and Parkinson's disease). One of his patients, Marnie Logan, has bigger problems. Her husband went missing 13 months ago and left behind gambling debts that she must repay and she feels like she's being watched.

These books always feature some crazed psychopath so if you aren't into psychopaths this isn't the series for you. I couldn't put it down.

Telling Tales
By Ann Cleeves, Read By Julia Franklin

This is the second installment in the Vera Stanhope series. I read the first one last month and mostly liked it. This one just didn't do it for me. 
The story is about a murder that occurred in this little town 10 years ago. One of the victim's friends, a teenage girl, was convicted of the murder. She's been offered parole if she will just accept responsibility and show some remorse. She holds to her position that she is innocent. Realizing that she will never get out of jail, she commits suicide. Then suddenly someone comes forth with proof that she was not even in town the day of the murder.
Enter Vera Stanhope to investigate. Everyone has lots to hide including the original investigator. 
I don't know why but this book just didn't interest me at all. It took forever to really develop and I had trouble keeping up with all of the bland characters. I doubt I'll read any others in this series.

I haven't posted in a few days but that's because we are enjoying our last few days in Maine before we head home Friday. We've had one friend visiting with us for a few days and some other friends just arrived in town so we are having a great time catching up with everyone. I'll be back Monday with my August summary and catch up post before I get back on schedule next week.

I've done lots of reading this month and several of the books have been read with my eyes! I have one audiobook and one hardback book almost done. Both should be done by tomorrow but I'll use those to start off the September list.

It was a very good book month. I don't think I hated any book and many of them were very good. I only had one DNF:
Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz, I just could not get into it

What was your favorite book in August?​

Tinseltown
By William J. Mann, Read By Christopher Lane

We know that Hollywood is full of corruption and depravity. Through this book we know it's always been that way.

This is the story of the unsolved murder of William Desmond Taylor, head of the Motion Picture Association, in the 1920's. Mann explores everything that was going on in Hollywood at that time and profiles all of the key players in the industry and the many possible suspects for the crime.

​If you like true crime I think you will like this. If you like Hollywood history you will also like this. It's quite detailed and very well researched. 

The Crow Trap
By Ann Cleeves, Read By Anne Dover

I'm a fan of Cleeves' Shetland series (book and TV) so I was excited to find that there was another series that I could start. It's not a new series, just new to me.

Three women, all with some sort of baggage, are teamed up to perform and environmental assessment for a proposed mine. One of the team members soon finds her friend, Bella, has committed suicide. Shortly thereafter, one of the team members is murdered. Detective Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate.

Cleeves' books are so unique in the mystery genre. She keeps her "world" small and the stories focus on the local people, not politics or big issues. Everything is personal. I'm looking forward to diving into book 2. There are 9 books in the series so far.

​A History of the World in 6 Glasses
By Tom Standage, Read By Sean Runnette
 
We picked this book to listen to on our drive to Maine and it was a good choice. We both like history but you don’t want to be listening to dry history while driving. The premise of the book is that 6 drinks played pivotal roles on the history of civilization: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and cola. The story starts about 3000 BCE with the first recorded making of beer. I expect that this book came out of some sort of college course where a professor was trying his best to make history interesting. This was a good way to do it. I expect that it’s a weak book to the serious historian but for the rest of us it’s a lot of fun and very interesting. 

The Girl With the Louding Voice
By Abi Dare’ Read By Adjoa Andoh
 
Adunni is a poor young girl in Nigeria who loves school but after her mother dies the family falls on even more financial hardship. To financially recover, her father sells her to a local chieftan at the age of 14 to be his new wife. Adunni never gives up her desire to have a “louding voice” (be independent). The book is about her struggles to survive in unimaginable circumstances. Honestly, it’s a brutal read but Adunni’s spirit and hope keeps you interested and always rooting for her.

1. Bad Science

By Gary Taubes, read in hardback
 
I picked up this book for 2 reasons. First, I heard a podcast where Taubes was interviewed about another book, Good Calories, Bad Calories and during the interview he mentioned this book about Cold Fusion. He was an interesting interview so I wanted to get his books. (I also picked up Good Calories, Bad Calories and I'm almost done with it.) My second reason for getting this book, published in 1993, was that I vividly remember reading all the hoopla about Cold Fusion in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. I had just started reading the Wall Street Journal regularly and they covered this "miraculous" discovery heavily.  Coverage disappeared a few months later and I’ve always wondered what happened with that supposed miracle of free energy. What happened was that it was a fraud.
This is not the best written book I’ve ever read but it sure gives you are vivid picture into the politics and money focus of science. I’ve read enough of the detail studies on various modern science topics to view everything I read in the media regarding scientific research with a giant dose of skepticism. This book shows how science sausage is made and it’s not pretty. 

An American Marriage
By Tayari Jones, Narrated by Sean Crisden and Eisa Davis
 
Celeste and Roy are young newlyweds living the American Dream in Atlanta when Roy is wrongly accused and sentenced for rape. As his time behind bars extends longer than their marriage, the relationship is strained. The telling of the story starts and ends with the recitation of letters and everything in between comes across as diary entries with each character telling a chapter. I think the premise is very interesting. What happens to a couple or family when one of the members is in jail, falsely accused? This story is told through a black family but I felt that race was a non-factor to the telling. From that perspective I felt that the book was really successful. It can speak to any audience. But, that said, it did fall a little flat for me and I did not like the Celeste character. I felt that for someone who constantly professed herself to be a strong and independent woman, she had a very weak backbone and much of the trouble was actually caused by her own lack of action. The flatness I attribute to the structure being told through letters and monologues from individual characters. In the end, it had a ton of potential, is worth a read for something different but it misses some punch.

The Dance of Life – The New Science of How a Single Cell Becomes a Human Being
By Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz and Roger Highfield, read in hardback, I don't recommend audio for this one
 
This book is part autobiography and part science book. Dr. Zernicka-Goetz is super smart and is a developmental biologist studying embryo development. This book is her personal story as well as a lot of detail about the advances that have been made (by her and others) in embryonic research. Part of it creeps me out about what we might be able to do soon but part of it gives me some comfort that we aren’t as far along as people might think. I do think that we are headed for some serious contemplations about defining the beginning of life and that will have ethical consequences for research and women’s rights vs the rights of the unborn.  This book gave me lots of food for thought.
 
The personal stuff was OK but I don’t think knowing anything about her marriages really added anything to the book. While reading the book I noted the high percentage of women that she has hired in her labs. At the end of the book, she had a chapter on diversity and inclusion in science and I got the impression that she purposely favors female applicants to her labs. I don’t have an opinion about that, I just thought it was interesting. I also thought that the last chapter seemed a little forced as though an editor suggested that she add it to make the unavoidable ethical discussions about embryonic development more palatable. That may be totally unfair, it's jut my take on it. That last chapter seemed to be an unnecessary addition.
 
If you like science books you will like this one and you will appreciate reading about research done right. 

The Rose Code
By Kate Quinn, Read By Saskia Maarleveld
 
This is my third Quinn book. She weaves great stories about the hidden female heroes of WWII. This one tells the story of the women code breakers of Bletchley Park. Our heroines are Osla, a Canadian debutante who is dating Prince Philip; Mab, a self-made girl from the poverty of East London; and Beth, a local spinster with an overbearing mother who is brilliant at solving crossword puzzles. Beth becomes one of the few female cryptanalysts, Osla is a German translator, and Mab works on the codebreaking machines. We also meet Alan Turing and other legends of Bletchley Park.
 
Three years after the war, and no longer friends, Beth contacts them through code to ask for their help. The story switches back and forth in time smoothly. It was a fun read with a great ending. 

The Power Couple
By Alex Berenson, Read By Steven Weber and Marin Ireland
 
Alex Berenson is the author of the John Wells spy series that I like. This book isn’t John Wells.
Rebecca and Brian Unsworth have great jobs with the government. She’s with the FBI and he’s with NSA. They’ve been married 20 years and have had their problems but everything seems good now and they are celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary with their two children on a trip to Europe. One night in Barcelona, their daughter, Kira, doesn’t return home. Over the weekend they try everything to find their daughter but discover that she's been kidnapped. They are trying to figure out why and where she is and, meanwhile, Kira tries everything to get away from her captors.
 
As I was reading the first half of the book I was focused on the kidnapping and was a little off balance with the telling of so much of Rebecca and Brian’s backstory. Then I realized what the story was really about and the second half really took off. It’s a different kind of book and I enjoyed it. 

Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
By Gary Kinder, hardback
 
I think I discovered this book when I was reading a fiction novel that contained a storyline about the sinking of the SS Central America in 1857. Chris and I were living in Norfolk in the late 1980’s when a deep ocean explorer found the wreck and recovered millions in gold. I remember the news stories but wasn't all that interested. I found out about this book and decided to read about the effort to find the ship.
 
This is one of the most interesting books that I’ve read in a long time. I was completely riveted. It reads almost like a novel and tells the whole story about Tommy Thompson, his life, his genius, his fortitude and his total dedication to finding the SS Central America. The book is thoroughly researched and also tells the complete story of that last voyage. I remember reading the news accounts when the treasure was brought into Norfolk but I had no idea of the years of work, courage and ingenuity that went into the effort.
 
This book was published in 1998 so if you want a copy you will need to find it on the used market. By the way, Tommy Thompson is now in jail for contempt of court for not following through on an agreement to produce 500 gold coins from the ship. He claims that he doesn’t know where they are. The whole story is good for some research time on the internet, especially to see the underwater photos of the wreck.

The Summer Without You
By Karen Swan, Read By Katie Scarfe

Rowena Tipton has a great life in London with her boyfriend of 13 years. She expects that they will get engaged soon when he suddenly announces that he's going on a 6 month tour of Cambodia and expects the time away to make their love even stronger. (No modern woman would buy this drivel, IMHO)

It just so happens that Rowena has dual citizenship in the US and is invited to a wedding in NYC. That wedding leads to an invitation to spend the summer in The Hamptons on Long Island. (Yeah, that happens to someone every day!) She takes up the offer and is off on a summer of self discovery and sets up her "Family Media" business to cover her rent.

It was a fine summer read but Rowena is so annoyingly naïve and socially blind that you want to slap her periodically. For the first several weeks she only wears her boyfriend's clothing. In the Hamptons? Are you kidding me? Can you tell that this book annoyed me a little. It seems a perfect foundation for a Hallmark channel movie.

Vita Brevis
By Ruth Downie, Read By Simon Vance

This is book 7 in the Roman Empire series. The Medicus, Russo, and his wife, Tilla have been offered a medical position in Rome. It seems grand until he discovered that his predecessor, Doctor Kleitos, left town quickly and with everything and someone has left a dead body in a barrel outside his office.

He's also besieged by Kleitos' debt collectors and the sudden death of the local land owner (his sponsor). He and Tilla need to solve these mysteries before they also become victims.

I really enjoy this series set in Roman times. They can be read separately but I think they are best read in order.

I know I've been talking non-stop about Chirp books but I think Chirp is having a positive impact on the audiobook market. Chirp has daily deals like Audible but Audible only has 1 and Chirp has 5 or so every day. This summer I've noticed that Audible often has one of the Chirp books as their Daily Deal and also they are having a lot of $5 book sales. I love competition in the free market! I'm easily spending 70% less on books (with the addition of the library and Chrip) than I spent 3 or 4 years ago.

It was an interesting, and always good, reading month. The most impactful book of the month was The Girl Behind the Gates. But there are several other great books this month. What have you read that you enjoyed?

DNF Books:
Deacon King Kong by James McBride - This book came highly recommended by one of my blog friends so don't take my DNF status as a definitive review. I just couldn't keep up with the characters. Everyone has nicknames and both real and nicknames are used. I was confused. Plus there's lots of alcoholism. King Kong is a home brew.
Collateral by Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson - #6 in the Tier One series. Exactly like the first 5. Decided I'm tired of them.
Fast Girls by Elsie Hooper - This book is historical fiction based in the lives of 3 female Olympians in the 1928 and 1936 games. I thought it would by like Code Girls but it's way more fiction than history.

The Day That Never Comes
By Caimh McDonnell, Read By Morgan C.Jones

This is the second of four books in The Dublin Trilogy. That statement alone indicates that this is a humor series. I read the first book last month. These books are set in Ireland and the main character, Paul Mulchrone, has opened a new detective agency. One of his partners won't talk to him and the other, former detective Bunny McGarry, has disappeared. 

Meanwhile, the citizenry has had it with the people who destroyed the economy in the 00's but escaped with their own wealth in tack. Some new group had apparently decided to take on their own revenge crusade.

​These books are best described as the Irish version of Carl Hiaasen. I think they will read better in a written book rather than audio. It all depends on your ability to follow a deep Irish accent.

The Ride of Her Life
By Elizabeth Letts, Read by Tavia Gilbert

One of my favorite books, The Eighty Dollar Champion, was written by Letts. Her love of horses is obvious but she also loves the people who own those horses. This book is about Mesannie Wilkins. She was 63 in 1954 and flat broke when she was told that she had a terminal illness and should move into a charity home. Instead she made enough money to buy a horse and she left Minot, Maine for California. It was her dying wish to see the Pacific Ocean.

It's a fascinating story of her almost 2-year journey and a great read.

The Last Year of the War
​By Susan Meissner, Read By Kimberly Farr

Elise Sontag is 14 and lives in Iowa during WWII. Her father is and German immigrant and is accused (wrongly) of being a spy. They are sent to an internment camp in Texas where Elise befriends Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from LA. They become best friends and make plans for their lives after they turn 18. When they are both about 16, they are each sent "back" to Germany and Japan in exchange for American prisoners. The two girls keep in touch for a while but eventually lose track of each other.

The story revolves around Elise and opens when Elise is elderly and recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  She has, inexplicably to me, remained completely fixated on her youthful friendship with Mariko and that's the basis for the entire book.  She seems to have a constant cloud over here despite ending up with a pretty awesome life after the war.

I read As Bright As Heaven in March and didn't love it. I didn't hate it either. I think Meissner does a great job of reminding us of some trying times in out history but her characters are so burdened that it's a bit of a slog to get through the stories.

The Night Swim
By Megan Goldin, Read By January LaVoy and Bailey Carr

I'm so grateful to my friend, Marcy, for turning me on to Chirp Books. Aside from the books being bargain priced (something I always love), the books are often classics that I need to read or books I've never heard of. Audible's algorithms for book recommendations are pretty horrible these days. They either recommend books that are exactly what you read recently or something off an approved woke list of authors. Chirp is refreshing. They have woke, un-woke, new, old, US and foreign translations. I love variety!

Rachel Krall is a true crime podcaster and she's heading to a coastal North Carolina town to cover the trial of a young man charged with rape. The trial is the focus of the current season of her podcast. While traveling to the town she begins to get anonymous notes from someone wanting Rachel to help figure out who murdered her sister 25 years earlier in this same town. The story is told in 3 ways: Rachel's activities around the trial, her podcast and the letters from the sister.

I am big fan of true crime TV and podcasts (The Murder Squad is my favorite). I was also fascinated with the work the Michelle McNamara did to help solve the Golden State Killer case although her obsession led her into some deadly personal behaviors. This book fed right into that same genre of entertainment for me.

This Poison Will Remain
By Fred Vargas, Read By Chris MacDonnell

Another great find from Chirp! 
This is the 7th book in a series set in France featuring Commissaire Adamsberg. While investigating another case he hears about 3 elderly mend who have recently died of spider bites, specifically the Recluse spider. He decides to look into it even though the deaths are all ruled accidental. When it's discovered that the 3 men knew each other the investigation becomes more serious.

In some ways it's your standard police procedural but the subject matter is so unique that I found this book to be really refreshing. It explores every meaning and use of the word "recluse". I really enjoyed it.

Chirp only has the one book in the series in English and Audible has 3. You can tell it's a hidden gem because, even in Audible, it has less than 50 reviews. I wonder how many great books we miss because "the right people" don't ever read them?

The Pardon
By James Grippando, Read By Ron McLarty

I've found another new (old) series to try out. This book was first published in 1994 so it's lacking on technology. I think that's a good thing.

Jack Swytech is a defense attorney and one of his clients is about to be put to death. He tries to persuade his estranged father, the Governor of Florida, to grant a pardon. When that's unsuccessful someone decides to get revenge on both of them.

I think the basic story is really interesting and moves along at a good pace. I'm willing to try another in the series.

The Secret Keeper
By Lisa Wingate, Read By Abby Craden and Bahni Turpin

​I've read two other Lisa Wingate books, Before We Were Yours and Book of Lost Friends, that I loved.  She's a very good writer and created wonderfully rich characters.

The Secret Keeper is set in the Appalachian areas of North Carolina and East Tennessee and focuses on the history of the Melungeon people. That , in and of itself, is interesting to me because my best friend in High School was of Melungeon descent (Goins) and she didn't know it until she started doing genealogy in the '90's. 

The book opens with Jen Gibbs starting her new job at a publishing house in NYC. An old partial manuscript mysteriously appears on her desk. She recognizes the writing of the author as someone famous for writing a time travel series set in Appalachia. Jen happens to be from that area and doesn't really want to go back.

This book was very good but wasn't as good as the first 2 that I read. This one verges a little into chick lit territory. It was still very engrossing and entertaining but it didn't have quite the depth of history as the other two books. Given that the history of the Melungeon people  is so vague, I can see where she had to add more story to the story, if that makes sense. It's still a really great read.

The Beautiful and Damned
By F. Scott Fitzgerald, Read By William Dufris

If Fitzgerald's point was to make rich people seem morally bankrupt and lazy, mission accomplished! Anthony Patch is a Harvard graduate with one life mission: to wait for his Grandfather to die and inherit his wealth. He marries the beautiful Gloria and they waste their time in New York nightlife. I expect this is a story that's all too true of the 20's and today.

Flight of the Intruder 
By Stephen Coonts, Read By Benjamin Darcie

I've seen Coonts on the bestseller lists for years but never tried one of his books. When this one showed up on a sale list I decided it was time to give it a try. This is the first book in the Jack Grafton series. Grafton is a fighter pilot in Vietnam. There are so few novels set in Vietnam that I was excited to give this one a try.

I can see why the series is popular. The story is good and Grafton is a great character. But I couldn't get past the details of flights. Many times it was like listening to a flight log and that part makes up way too much of the book for me.

The Girl Behind the Gates
By Brenda Davies, Read By Charlotte Strevens

This book is exactly why I love Chirp. Chirp brings me books that I'd never hear about on Audible. 

In 1930 Nora Jennings had a wonderful life until an unplanned pregnancy. Her father, supported by the church, had her committed to a mental institution under the Mental Deficiency Act (Great Britain). Everyone though she would be out in a year or so. Instead she withstood incredible cruelty and mistreatment there for over 40 years.

It's heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. It's also based on true story. I couldn't put it down.

In Her Tracks
By Robert Dugoni, Read By Emily Sutton-Smith

Tracy Crosswhite is back for an 8th installment. She's returned to work after discovering the tragic death of her sister. Her spiteful boss assigns her to the cold case unit but a few of the cold cases might overlap with a new case of a missing jogger.

These books are fast paced and well written. My main beef with this one is the reliance on stupidity to get the plot going.  A young woman, new to Seattle, decides to go jogging after work and she chooses some obscure trail in a neighborhood just at dusk....as opposed to a public park or jogging path. It's so obscure that she can't find the entrance without asking someone for help. Are women really that stupid? I don't think so.

​Interestingly, the cases relies heavily on familial DNA modeling, like The Night Swim.

I enjoyed the book and I like the Crosswhite character but I like his Charles Jenkins series better.