Introduction During the last three weeks in June my husband and I undertook a huge road trip to attend a family wedding: 3,000 miles from the West Coast to the East Coast of the U.S., then 3,000 miles back. That trip provided lots of time to listen to audiobooks. We had enjoyed a TV series
Author Focus: L.R. Wright Read More »
Surprise, surprise. When I went to enter this book on Goodreads, I discovered that I had finished the audiobook on November 1, 2023. I did not remember this book AT ALL. How could I have listened to the name April Clarke-Cliveden spoken so many times without remembering it? I could understand if I didn’t remember
“The It Girl” by Ruth Ware Read More »
A man awakens with no memory of who he is, where he is, or why he’s here. He’s being ministered to by robotic arms apparently controlled by a computer that keeps asking, “What is your name?” As flashes of memory play out in his mind, he struggles to remember. He asks questions, but all the
Reading Notes: March Read More »
Definition: Novella Novella is an indeterminate designation, defined loosely as a work of fiction longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. The most commonly given lengths are 15,000-80,000 words or 70-160 pages, though these numbers are always given with the caveat that they are approximate. The number of pages, especially, can vary
Two 5-Star Novellas Read More »
The best book I read this month is Buckeye by Patrick Ryan. Here are the other two. When you’ve been in the writing business as long as I have, the one thing you need to constantly search for are stories that will challenge you as a novelist . . . This is probably the most
Reading Notes: December Read More »
My last read of the year turned out to be one of the best books I read in 2025. Buckeye by Patrick Ryan is my favorite kind of novel: old-fashioned storytelling from an omniscient narrator, a multi-generational family saga that follows characters over the courses of their lives. Ryan sets his novel in the fictional
“Buckeye” by Patrick Ryan Read More »
Related Post: In addition to three works of nonfiction, I also listened to two novels this month. We learn about humanity from stories of individual lives. In A Calamity of Souls David Baldacci introduced us to two people fighting for civil rights during the Jim Crow era in the American South. The historical novel Strangers in
Reading Notes: November Read More »
Related Post: I had a dismal reading month in terms of numbers: I finished only one audiobook. But that one was not dismal at all; in fact, I found it rewarding because it was written by Joy Fielding, a writer I was glad to have rediscovered. We meet Linda Davidson, our first-person narrator, as she
Reading Notes: September Read More »
My reading intentions for March were interrupted by the sudden death of my cousin in New Hampshire, an event that hit me more heavily than I thought it would. Waiting to hear about funeral arrangements and then the actual traveling knocked me out of commission for about two weeks. I therefore have only two books
Reading Notes: March Read More »
I didn’t get much reading done in February. I only read two novels, The Three Lives of Cate Kay, which I’ve already reviewed, and The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight, which I review below. Last month I promised a later review of The Last Russian Doll by Kristen Loesch, which I read
Reading Notes: February Read More »
