Kate’s 2¢: “Bone deep” by David Wiltse
“Bone deep” by David Wiltse
Chuck Benson did a good job of reading this story.
I’m still thinking about this story. The author planted some clever red herrings. I’m not sure I like any of these characters.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Wiltse is an American novelist and playwright known for his versatility of form. He is the author of 12 novels, 14 plays and numerous screenplays and teleplays, including the CBS series “Ladies Man”.
Mr. Wiltse was Playwright in Residence at the Westport Country Playhouse from 2007 to 2009. His comedy, “Doubles”, ran on Broadway from 1985 to 1986. His recent works for the stage include The Good German, A Marriage Minuet”, “Sedition, and Hatchetman.
As a novelist he created the character John Becker who was featured in a six-book series consisting of the titles Prayer For The Dead, Close To The Bone, The Edge Of Sleep, Into The Fire, Bone Deep, and Blown Away.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Bone deep DB42821
Wiltse, David. Reading time: 10 hours, 57 minutes.
Read by Chuck Benson.
Mystery and Detective Stories
Bestsellers
Psychological Fiction
As agent John Becker and his friend, Clamden police chief Tee Terhune, search for a serial murderer, they each wrestle with problems in their marriages. Meanwhile the killer is making his future victims fall in love with him. Strong language, violence, and explicit descriptions of sex. Bestseller.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Angels Burning” by Tawni O’Dell
Kate’s 2¢: “Angels Burning” by Tawni O’Dell
“Angels Burning” by Tawni O’Dell
Erin Jones did a good job of reading this story for us.
You’ve got to love young Derk. He is the hope of the future and isn’t going to be put down by his circumstances.
Neither Dove’s nor Derck’s families are good role models, yet their environments didn’t keep them from achieving success. This is a tough story to fathom.
www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm/author_number/299/tawni-odell
Tawni O’Dell Biography Tawni O’Dell is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Sister Mine, Coal Run, Fragile Beasts, and Back Roads, which was an Oprah’s Book Club pick and a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection. Back Roads has been made into a movie in 2014, staring Andrew Garfield and Jennifer Garner.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tawni O’Dell (born 1964) is an American novelist. Her first published novel, Back Roads, was selected by Oprah Winfrey for Oprah’s Book Club in March 2000.[1][2][3][4]
Formative years[edit]
Born and raised in Indiana, Pennsylvania in the United States, O’Dell grew up in the same town where movie actor Jimmy Stewart was born. The first in her family to attend college, she graduated from Indiana High School and then from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism.[5][6][7][8]
She lived for many years in the Chicago area before moving back to Pennsylvania, where she now lives with her two children.[9][10][11][12]
Career[edit]
O’Dell disliked journalism and preferred writing fiction.[13][14]
Her literary career, however, began with uncertainty. During a thirteen-year period, she wrote six unpublished novels and collected more than three hundred rejection slips before her first novel, Back Roads. It was widely praised.[15][16][17][18]
The July 24, 2000 issue of People magazine featured her in a story and mentioned that Oprah Winfrey described her not only as “an author but a writer.”[19]
Works[edit]
• Back Roads, novel (New York: Viking, 2000)
• Coal Run, novel (New York: Viking, 2004)
• Sister Mine, novel (New York: Shaye Areheart Books, 2007)
• Fragile Beasts, novel (New York: Shaye Areheart Books, 2010)
• One of Us, novel (New York: Gallery Books, 2014)
• Angels Burning, novel (Gallery Books (5 Jan. 2016))
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Angels burning DB87109
, Tawni. Reading time: 9 hours, 25 minutes.
Read by Erin Jones.
Suspense Fiction
Mystery and Detective Stories
Psychological Fiction
Fifty-year-old Dove Carnahan has been police chief of Buchanan, Pennsylvania, for a decade when she is rocked by the discovery of the charred remains of a teenage girl. While investigating the victim’s troubled family, Dove must also deal with her own history. Strong language, some violence, and some descriptions of sex. 2016.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Acting Out” by Benilde Little
Kate’s 2¢: “Acting Out” by Benilde Little
“Acting Out” by Benilde Little
I think the take-away from this story is that, if doesn’t matter your ethnicity, age, or race, Human frailties abound.
Gail Nelson did a good job of reading this story for us.
www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Benilde-Little/9450
Benilde Little is the bestselling author of the novels Good Hair (selected as one of the ten best books of 1996 by the Los Angeles Times), The Itch, Acting Out, and Who Does She Think She Is? A former reporter for People and senior editor at Essence, she lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with her husband.
Benilde Little, a former journalist, achieved success as a novelist with her sharp observations of class distinctions among African Americans. When her first novel, Good Hair , was published in 1996, critics described her as part of a literary wave of black female novelists forsaking tales of slavery and poverty to write about the black middle class and upper class. When that same wave of writers began to be pigeonholed as “black chick lit” in the 2000s, Little, in her mid-40s, expanded her range, combining the usual “chick lit” preoccupation with men and dating with a portrayal of generational differences in African-American families.
Little was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. Her parents were an auto worker and a nurse’s aide, placing the family on the cusp between the working class and the middle class, but her parents tried hard to elevate their children into middle-class life through education and a stable home. In one interview, Little described watching her Newark neighborhood change as white families left and poorer black families moved in. The new kids at her school, less well-off than her, disdained her middle-class wardrobe and home.
That made Little conscious from an early age of how class differences can divide African Americans, an idea that was cemented in her mind when she attended the historically black Howard University, which has long educated much of America’s black elite. Fellow students would ask her what her father and grandfather did for a living or what car her father drove. “I don’t come from a really rich background or anything, ” she told Etelka Lehoczky of the Chicago Tribune. “I went to college and saw people who had a lot of stuff, and was kind of like, ‘Oh, my God.’ I thought we were privileged, and then I got to college and it was like, ‘No, we’re not.'”
Little attended graduate school at Northwestern University and worked as a newspaper reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Newark Star-Ledger.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Acting out: a novel DB64289
Little, Benilde. Reading time: 7 hours, 14 minutes.
Read by Gail Nelson.
Family
Psychological Fiction
When African American Ina Robinson’s wealthy husband leaves her and their three kids for another woman, Ina tries to reconnect with her past self. Ina looks up her college boyfriend, returns to taking photographs, and begins to make her own decisions. Strong language and some explicit descriptions of sex. 2003.
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Kate’s 2¢: “Alter Ego” by Brian Freeman
“Alter Ego” by Brian Freeman
I enjoyed this story. I didn’t figure out the perp until the author wanted me to know who did the dasterly deeds.
–A lot of us have bad childhoods. At some point, you have to decide for yourself who you really are. If you let it make you evil, that’s on you.
–It takes a while to recognize special; especially, in yourself.
–Every journey has its failures and set-backs…all you can do is to try harder and do better at whatever comes next.
Joe Barrett did a good job of narrating this story for us.
Brian Freeman (born March 28, 1963) is an author of psychological suspense novels featuring Jonathan Stride and Serena Dial, and series featuring Cab Bolton and Frost Easton. He has also written novels in the Jason Bourne series after Robert Ludlum and Eric Van Lustbader. Freeman was born in Chicago, Illinois. He attended Carleton College where he graduated in 1984 with magna cum laude in English. Before becoming an author, Brian Freeman was a director of marketing and public relations.
New York Times Bestselling Author
Brian Freeman writes psychological thrillers that have been sold in 46 countries and 22 languages. His novel SPILLED BLOOD won the award for Best Hardcover Novel in the annual Thriller Awards, and his novel THE BURYING PLACE was a finalist for the same award. His novel THE DEEP, DEEP SNOW was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original.
He has also been named by Putnam and the Robert Ludlum estate as the official author to continue Ludlum’s famous Jason Bourne franchise. Brian’s first Bourne novel THE BOURNE EVOLUTION was named one of the Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2020 by Kirkus.
“My goal is to write books with haunting characters and a lightning-fast pace,” Brian says. “My stories are about the hidden intimate motives that draw people across some dark lines. The twists and turns keep you turning the pages, and each piece in the puzzle gives you new insight into the heroes, victims, and villains.”
“I don’t like books where the characters are all good or all bad,” he adds. “I want them to live in the real world, where morality means tough choices and a lot of shades of gray. I hope that’s why readers relate so intensely to the people in my books.”
He is particularly known for the “you are there” sense of place in his novels, from dead-of-winter Minnesota to the tropical storms of Florida. He scouts real-life locales for all of his books and brings to life dramatic settings such as Duluth, San Francisco, Tampa, Las Vegas, and Door County, Wisconsin. “Nobody writes weather like Brian Freeman,” says one reviewer.
Brian has lived in Minnesota for more than 35 years with his wife, Marcia, who is his partner in life and in the book business. They both stay closely connected to Brian’s readers.
“This guy can tell a story.”
Michael Connelly
#1 New York Times Bestselling Author
©2022 Brian Freeman. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Notice.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Alter ego DB92174
Freeman, Brian. Reading time: 10 hours, 27 minutes.
Read by Joe Barrett.
Suspense Fiction
Mystery and Detective Stories
Psychological Fiction
When a freak accident kills a driver on a remote road outside Duluth, Jonathan Stride discovers the victim has a false identity and no evidence to suggest who he really was. What’s worse, the man has a recently fired gun in the trunk. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2018.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Almost Missed You” Jessica Strawser
Kate’s 2¢: “Almost Missed You” Jessica Strawser
“Almost Missed You” Jessica Strawser
Thérèse Plummer read this story with various emotions, so it was interesting to listen to.
It is amazing how keeping secrets can come back to bite you. I like this ending, though.
Jessica Strawser is a Pittsburgh native (as the granddaughter of a steel mill worker, she has fond summertime memories of Kennywood Park and thinks the world would be a better place if all salads were topped with french fries) who spent much of her childhood reading books, rereading books, and writing in a journal—often while perched in a cherry willow tree (fortunately her own limbs are still intact) or when she was supposed to be sleeping.
At Moon Area High School (her name was Jessica Yerega then) she was co-editor of the student newspaper, The Moonbeams, and completed a senior project with The Allegheny Times that landed her first “real” front-page byline.
She went on to Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, where she took on the courts beat for The Post award-winning student newspaper, served as editor of Southeast Ohio magazine, and graduated as the outstanding senior in the magazine sequence for 2001, by which point she’d accepted an offer to relocate to Cincinnati and join Writer’s Digest as an editorial assistant.
Jessica Strawser is the editor-at-large and columnist at Writer’s Digest, where she served as editorial director for nearly a decade and became known for her in-depth cover interviews with such luminaries as David Sedaris and Alice Walker. She’s the author of the book club favorites Almost Missed You, a Barnes & Noble Best New Fiction pick; Not That I Could Tell, a Book of the Month bestseller; Forget You Know Me, awarded a starred review by Publishers Weekly, and A Million Reasons Why, called “a standout” in a starred Booklist review and named to Most Anticipated lists from Goodreads, SheReads, Frolic, E! News & others. Her latest, The Next Thing You Know, is a People Magazine Pick for Best New Novel (new in paperback March 2023). Her sixth novel, The Last Caretaker, is forthcoming December 1, 2023.
Honored as the 2019 Writer-in-Residence at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Strawser has written for The New York Times Modern Love, Publishers Weekly and other fine venues, and lives in Cincinnati with her husband and two children. A contributing editor for Career Authors and an active Tall Poppy Writer, she keynotes frequently for writing conferences, book fairs and festivals, book clubs, libraries, and other events that are kind enough to invite her. She tweets @jessicastrawser and enjoys connecting on Facebook and Instagram.
Almost missed you DB97956
Strawser, Jessica. Reading time: 9 hours, 44 minutes.
Read by Thérèse Plummer.
Friendship Fiction
Suspense Fiction
Family
Psychological Fiction
Three years into their marriage, Violet and Finn have a wonderful little boy. While vacationing, Finn leaves Violet at the beach–packs up the hotel room and disappears with their son. Then Finn shows up on his best friend Caitlin’s doorstep, demanding that she hide them from the authorities. Some violence, some strong language, and some descriptions of sex. Commercial audiobook. 2017.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “All the Wrong Places” by Joy Fielding
Kate’s 2¢: “All the Wrong Places” by Joy Fielding
“All the Wrong Places” by Joy Fielding
I’m not going to spoil the story for you, but the astute reader will heed the foreshadows throughout the whole story. Well done.
I especially like the “soft” ending that packs so much import that you can’t stop thinking about the just desserts.
Wikipedia Icon
joyfielding.com
Joy Fielding (née Tepperman; born March 18, 1945) is a Canadian novelist and actress. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Biography[edit]
Born in Toronto, Ontario, she graduated from the University of Toronto in 1966, with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. As Joy Tepperman, she had a brief acting career, appearing in the film Winter Kept Us Warm (1965) and in an episode of Gunsmoke. She later changed her last name to Fielding (after Henry Fielding) and began writing novels.
Fielding is also the screenwriter of the television film Golden Will: The Silken Laumann Story.
In the 1980s, she was also a regular contributor of book reviews to Jack Farr’s CBC Radio program The Radio Show.
Personal[edit]
At the age of 8, Tepperman wrote her first story and sent it into a local magazine, and at age 12 sent in her first TV script, however both were rejected. She had a brief acting career, eventually giving it up to write full-time in 1972.[1] She has published 30 novels and 1 Novella (as of September 2022), two of which were converted into film. Fielding’s process of having an idea to the point the novel is finished generally takes a year, the writing itself taking four to eight months.[2]
Fielding sets most of her novels in American cities such as Boston and Chicago. She has said that she prefers to set her novels in “big American cities, [as the] landscape seems best for [her] themes of urban alienation and loss of identity.”[2]
Fielding is a Canadian citizen. Her husband is noted Toronto attorney, Warren Seyffert.[3][4] They have two daughters, Annie and Shannon,[5] and own property in Toronto, Ontario, as well as Palm Beach, Florida.[2]
From NLSBARDLOC:
All the wrong places: a novel DB94449
Fielding, Joy. Reading time: 10 hours, 54 minutes.
Read by Saskia Maarleveld.
Suspense Fiction
Mystery and Detective Stories
Psychological Fiction
The man calling himself Mr. Right Now in his online dating profile knows that his looks and charming banter put women at ease about going back to his apartment. There, he has a special evening planned: steaks, wine, candlelight, and a slow, agonizing death. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2019.
Downloaded: September 27, 2023
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Kate’s 2¢: “The Mother” by Perl S. Buck
“The Mother” by Perl S. Buck
My Mother had a collection of books by Pearl Sydenstricker Buck. When she passed on, her library became mine and I read ll the Buck books. They told of a day and age that I’m not sure exists today.
During the infant days of Communism, this peasant mother didn’t realize the danger her younger son was in. She was a strong-willed advocate for him, but to no avail. It is hard to imagine the long days of toil in the fields and how it wore a person down, especially, a mother with children.
I’ve always enjoyed Buck’s stories about the struggles of the Chinese.
Encyclopedia of World Biography
Pearl S. Buck was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature. Buck’s life in China as an American citizen fueled her literary and personal commitment to improve relations between Americans and Asians.
Early years
Pearl Sydenstricker was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, on June 26, 1892. Her parents, Absalom and Caroline Sydenstricker, were Presbyterian missionaries, who were on a twelve-year leave from duty from their activities in Chinkiang, China at the time of her birth. The Sydenstrickers had returned to Hillsboro after losing all but two of their children to tropical disease. Despite their experience they returned to China when Pearl was just five months old. Unlike other foreign families, the Sydenstrickers lived in the Chinese village. Pearl spoke Chinese before learning English. Her daily lessons included morning lessons from her mother and afternoon lessons from her Chinese tutor. Pearl recalled never feeling different from the Chinese children. But at age nine the family was forced to flee to Shanghai during the antiforeign Boxer Rebellion of 1900. They returned to China at the end of the rebellion, but Pearl attended boarding school in Shanghai at age fifteen. She moved to the United States two years later and started at the Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Virginia. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1914, she took a teaching assistantship at the college but almost immediately returned to China to care for her ailing mother.
In 1917 she married John Lossing Buck, an American agricultural specialist, with whom she settled in northern China. From 1921 until 1934 they lived chiefly in Nanking, where her husband taught agricultural theory. Buck occasionally taught English literature at several universities in the city, although most of her time was spent caring for her mentally disabled daughter and her infirm parents. In 1925 Buck returned to the United States to pursue graduate studies at Cornell University, where she received a master’s degree in English in 1926. Back in Nanking the following year, she barely escaped a revolutionary army attack on the city. Meanwhile, because of her family’s financial difficulties, she resolved to begin writing.
Novels reflect love of China
Buck’s first novel, East Wind: West Wind (1930) was a study of the conflict between the old China and the new. This was followed by The Good Earth (1931), an intense novel of Chinese peasant life, which won her a Pulitzer Prize. In 1933 Buck received a second master’s degree, this time from Yale University, and in 1934 she took up permanent residence in the United States. In 1935 she divorced John Buck and married Richard J. Walsh, her publisher. Her extensive literary output resulted in a 1938 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first ever awarded to a woman.
Humanitarian efforts occupy later life
In the next three decades, while continuing to write many volumes, Buck worked to promote racial tolerance and ease the struggles of disadvantaged Asians, particularly children. In 1941 she founded the East and West Association to promote greater understanding among the world’s peoples. In 1949 she established Welcome House, an adoption agency for Asian American children. Her special interest in children resulted in many books for them. A steadfast supporter of multiracial families, in 1964 she organized the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, which supports Asian American children and their mothers living abroad.
Although Buck’s literary career embraced a variety of types, almost all of her stories are set in China: the extremely popular novel Dragon Seed, its less popular sequel The Promise (1943), and many later novels, including Peony (1948), Letter from Peking (1957), and The New Year (1968). Among her other works are the highly successful The Living Reed (1963), which details the history of a Korean family during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the late 1940s Buck also wrote a trilogy under the pen name John Sedges.
Pearl S. Buck.
Pearl S. Buck.
Honored for generous spirit
Buck’s play A Desert Incident was produced in New York City in 1959. Her ability as an essayist is represented by American Argument (written with Eslanda Goode Robeson, 1949). Friend to Friend (1958) was an open, honest conversation with Philippine president Carlos P. Rómulo (1899–1985).
Buck died of lung cancer in 1973, with more than one hundred written works to her credit. But even more significant, perhaps, were the over three hundred awards she received for her humanitarian efforts on behalf of improved race relations worldwide.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
The mother DB38117
Buck, Pearl S, (Pearl Sydenstricker). Reading time: 7 hours, 10 minutes.
Read by Kimberly Schraf.
Family
A Chinese peasant, overwhelmed by the responsibility of an aged mother, a wife, and small children and by the routine of his daily life, is stimulated by travelers’ tales and gambler’s luck and suddenly deserts his family. The young mother slaves to support everyone with a devotion that achieves its reward at last in a grandchild.
Downloaded: September 10, 2023
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Kate’s 2¢: “The Adults” by Caroline Hulse
“The Adults” by Caroline Hulse
Well, I didn’t think the four adults had the right attitude to begin with. When you lie and manipulate other people, especially when a child is involved, yes, things are going to go sour.
This story was well-written by Hulse and read by Sarah Ovens. I enjoyed this story, although the ending wasn’t the greatest. What do you think?
BookBrowse Logo:
Caroline Hulse Biography
Caroline Hulse spends most of her days writing, having fulfilled her dream of having a job she could do in pajamas. She also works in human resources sometimes. She is openly competitive and loves playing board and card games. She can often be found in casino poker rooms. She lives with her husband in Manchester, England.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
The adults DB92998
Hulse, Caroline; Kenny, Peter. Reading time: 9 hours, 22 minutes.
Read by Sarah Ovens.
Psychological Fiction
Holidays
A separated couple decide to go on a Christmas vacation with their new partners and their seven-year-old daughter, Scarlett. The five of them (plus Scarlett’s imaginary friend) try to get along over the holiday, but the situation is a powder keg waiting to explode. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2018.
Downloaded: September 9, 2023
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