Thursday, September 3, 2015

Books Read - August 2015

Bevill, C.L.
  • Brownie and the Dame ***
Fiction.  Third in the Bubba cozy series.  Brownie is staying at the Snoddy Mansion for  his spring break, and Janie Gray has joined him for the week.  Brownie has taken on the persona of a gumshoe, and with Janie’s police expertise, the two of them hunt around town looking for a mystery to solve.

  • Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas ***
Fiction.  Second in the Bubba cozy mystery series set in small-town Texas.  Bubba lives  with his out-of-control mother, Miz Demetrice in Snoddy Mansion.  He has an old basset hound named Precious and is in love with Deputy Willodean Gray.  But Bubba keeps finding himself in trouble with the law, because it seems that everyone in town wants to frame him for murder.

  • Bubba and the Missing Woman ***
Fiction.  Third in the Bubba cozy mystery series.  Bubba is frantic with trying to find Deputy Willodean Gray.  They were all set for their first date, when she suddenly disappeared.  Her cruiser was rammed into, and there is blood on the steering wheel, but the deputy is nowhere to be found.  Bubba fears the stalker she had when she lived in Dallas has followed her to Pegramville and kidnapped her.

  • Bubba and the Mysterious Murder Note ***
Fiction.  Miz Demetrice is busy organizing the murder mystery festival in town, and Bubba’s been working on his always-ailing truck.  He finds a note in a box of old Chevy parts that says if the note is found, the writer has been murdered.  The sheriff and Big Joe aren’t sure any murder happened, but Bubba feels a strong need to find out for sure.  Butting in might just get him killed.

  • Bubba and the Ten Little Loonies *****
Fiction.  Eighth in the Bubba cozy series.  Bubba and Willodean are getting ready for their nuptials, and Miz Demetrice has hired a wedding planner from New York to make all the arrangements.  Bubba, as a typical groom-to-be, is having a hard time concentrating on all the details and at first ignores his friend David when he warns that there are have been two murders at the mental hospital on the hill.  When Bubba finally visits David, people start disappearing, and Bubba realizes that David’s fears just might be true.

  • Bubba and the Zigzaggery Zombies ****
Fiction.  Seventh in the Bubba cozy series.  A film crew  is in town filming a zombie movie, and the prevail upon Bubba to play Zombie#14/Farmboy.  He is trying desperately to find a way to ask Willodean to be his wife, but things keep getting in the way.  Mostly zombies.  Usually there are dead bodies before zombies, but in this case, there is a dead body that came after the zombies.  Miz Demetrice, Miz Adelia, and Willodean are busy doing something very mysterious and probably illegal, and it brings DEA agents down on Bubba’s head.

  • The Ransom of Brownie ****
Fiction.  Sixth in the Bubba cozy series.  Brownie is once again staying at Snoddy Mansion.  His mother is about to give birth, and his father thinks it best that Brownie stay away for a few months.  Bubba and Miz Demetrice are about at their wit’s end with Brownie’s capers, but they’re quite surprised when they find a ransom note on their  front porch.  Brownie has been kidnapped, but the kidnappers will soon regret their decision.

Blake, Lilliana & P. Seymour
Single Wide Female Bucket List ****
  • Learn Pole Dancing
  • Start a Blog
  • Learn to Cook
  • Create a Masterpiece
  • Run a Marathon
  • Go Skinny Dipping
  • Start Online Dating
  • Learn Yoga
  • Be a Mentor
  • Crash a Wedding
  • Be a Movie Extra
  • Join a Writing Group
  • Enjoy a Spa Day 
  • Donate Blood
  • Learn Poker 
  • Get a Tattoo
  • Host a Dinner Party
  • Publish a Book
  • Walk Across Hot Coals 
  • Learn to Swim 
  • Learn to Meditate
  • Quit my Job 
  • Learn to Salsa 
  • Fall in Love 
Fiction.  24 novellas about the life of Sammy, an overweight single woman challenging herself to do the items on her bucket list and hopefully find out who she really is.

  • My Valentine’s Day 
  • St. Paddy’s Day Disaster 
  • A Bunny’s Tale
Fiction. More in the life of Sammy, the SWF.

  • Becoming Zara ***
Fiction.  Books written by Sammy of SWF fame.  Zara decides to quit her job to begin working as a life coach.

Brennert, Alan
  • Moloka’i *****
Fiction.  Young Rachel Kalama is taken from her family and sent to the Kaluapapa colony on Moloka’i, where patients with Hansen’s disease are isolated.  Scared and unsure whether she’ll ever see her family again, she tries to fit in with the other girls at the convent compound, where she will live until she reaches adulthood.  Life there is hard, but Rachel manages to create her own ‘ohana, with whom she finds love and kindness that will see her through the hard times.

Charles, Ann
  • Meanwhile, Back in Deadwood ****
Fiction.  Sixth book in the paranormal cozy mystery series set in Deadwood, SD.  Violet Parker is just trying to raise her precocious twins, keep her job at Calamity Jane Realty, and spend time with her boyfriend, Doc.  However, her twins are not speaking to  her, her rotten co-worker at the office keeps trying to block her from making sales, and her past is keeping her from hoping for two much out of her relationship with the man in her life.  Add to that her newly discovered family “gift” of being an Executioner to beings from beyond the earthly plain who are determined to destroy her.

Copeland, Cyrus
  • Off the Radar *****
Non-fiction.  In 1979, 66 hostages were taken when the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was captured by a group of angry Iranian students.  While the world was focussed on the hostage situation and the growing troubles in Iran, an American man was arrested on charges that he was a CIA agent and had been stealing radar parts from the Iranian Air Force and sending them back to the U.S., from where they’d originated.  His story is this story as written by his son, a half-American, half-Iranian boy who grew up during those troubling and turbulent times.

Grafton, Sue
  • X *****
Fiction.  Kinsey Millhone is a PI living Santa Teresa, California.  She is hired by a woman looking for the son she put up for adoption.  He’s just been released from prison, and Kinsey quickly finds him and sends off her report.  Henry, Kinsey’s landlord, introduces her to their elderly new neighbor, Edna, who lives with her wheel chair-bound husband, Joseph. Henry is more than willing to help Edna out with running errands, but Kinsey is reluctant to be drawn into what could be a troublesome relationship, but she is quite surprised to find that the friendly couple aren’t quite who they say they are.

Hockensmith, Steve & Lisa Falco
  • The White Magic Five and Dime ***
Fiction.  First in the Tarot Mystery cozy series.  Alanis doesn’t even know her real name.  Growing up the daughter of a con artist, she’s has many names over the years.  Twenty years after she sent her mother to jail, Alanis is informed by a lawyer that her mother has died and left her The White Magic Five and Dime, a tarot shop where her mother made a living conning people as a tarot reader.  When Alanis arries in town, she learns that her mother didn’t die of natural causes but was murdered.  She promised her mother justice.

Silko, Leslie Marmon
  • Ceremony ***
Fiction.  Mystical story about a Native American WWII vet returning to the reservation with PTSD.  He struggles to rid himself of his demons by taking part in native healing ceremonies.

Ware, Ruth
  • In a Dark, Dark Wood ****

Fiction.  Nora receives an invitation to a hen party weekend to be held at a house in the middle of the woods.  The “hen” in question, is someone she hasn’t spoken to in ten years, and she isn’t sure she wants to accept the invitation, after all, she hasn’t been invited to the actual wedding.  Six people gather to drink and play games, and one night a game goes too far, and a shotgun goes off.