Kate’s 2¢: “Now or never: thirty-one on the run” by Janet Evanovich

“Now or never: thirty-one on the run” by Janet Evanovich

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

Lorelei King did a fabulous job of narrating this story for us. I love the free spirit of Lola!  

www.evanovich.com

Janet Evanovich (née Schneider; April 22, 1943) is an American writer. She began her career writing short contemporary romance novels under the pen name Steffie Hall, but gained fame authoring a series of contemporary mysteries featuring Stephanie Plum, a former lingerie buyer from Trenton, New Jersey, who becomes a bounty hunter to make ends meet after losing her job. The novels in this series have been on The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Amazon bestseller lists. Evanovich has had her last seventeen Plums debut at #1 on the NY Times Best Sellers list and eleven of them have hit #1 on USA Today Best-Selling Books list. She has over two hundred million books in print worldwide, and her books have been translated into over 40 languages.

Early years[edit]

Evanovich is a second-generation American born in South River, New Jersey, to a machinist and a housewife.[1] After attending South River High School,[2] she became the first in her family to attend college when she enrolled at Douglass Residential College, part of Rutgers University, to study art.[3][4]

When Evanovich had children, she chose to become a housewife like her mother. In her thirties, she began writing novels.[1] To learn the art of writing dialog, Evanovich took lessons in improv acting.[4] For ten years, she attempted to write the Great American Novel, finishing three manuscripts that she was unable to sell. After someone suggested she try writing romance novels, Evanovich read several romances and discovered that she enjoyed the genre. She wrote two romances and submitted them for publishing.[5] Still unable to find a publisher, Evanovich stopped writing and signed with a temporary employment agency. Several months after beginning work for them, she received an offer to buy her second romance manuscript for $2,000, which she considered an “astounding sum”.[4]

Romance novels[edit]

That novel, Hero at Large, was published in 1987 in the Second Chance Love category line under the pseudonym Steffie Hall.[1] The following year she began writing for Bantam Loveswept under her own name.[5] For the next five years she continued to write category romances for Loveswept.[4] Her work within the romance novel genre helped her learn to create likable characters and attractive leading men.[6] In this time, Evanovich also became known for the humor that filled her novels. She believes that “it’s very important to take a comic approach. If we can laugh at something, we can face it.”[7]

After finishing her twelfth romance, however, Evanovich realized that she was more interested in writing the action sequences in her novels than the sex scenes. Her editors were not interested in her change of heart, so Evanovich took the next eighteen months to formulate a plan for what she actually wanted to write.[1]

Stephanie Plum Series[edit]

She quickly decided that she wanted to write romantic adventure novels.[8] She wanted to include humor, romance and adventure in her work and this fit into her style of mystery novel.[9] Unlike the style of romance novels, her books would be told in first person narrative.[4] Her new type of writing should contain heroes and heroines, as well as “a sense of family and community”.[1] In that vein, she intended her new style of writing to be based on the TV sitcom model. Like Seinfeld, her new books would have a central character that the rest of the cast of characters revolve around.[8]

Inspired by the Robert De Niro movie Midnight Run, Evanovich decided that her heroine would be a bounty hunter.[1] This occupation provided more freedom for Evanovich as a writer, as bounty hunters do not have a set work schedule and are not forced to wear a uniform. The profession is also “romanticised to some extent”.[7] To become acquainted with the demands of the career, Evanovich spent a great deal of time shadowing bond enforcement agents. She also researched more about the city of Trenton, where she wanted her books to be set.[1]

In 1994, her initial romantic adventure, One for the Money, was published to good reviews.[1] This was the first of a light-hearted series of mysteries starring barely competent bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. One for the Money was named a New York Times notable book, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1994 and a USA Today Best Bet.[10]

Evanovich has continued to write romantic adventures starring Plum. The sixth book in the series, Hot Six, was the first of her novels to reach number one on the New York Times Best Seller List.[3] Her subsequent Plum novels have each debuted at number one.[11] All About Romance has described her as the “rare breed of romance author who has left the genre and yet not alienated her many romance fans”.[5]

FROM nls/bard/loc:

Now or never: thirty-one on the run DB126056

Evanovich, Janet. Reading time: 7 hours, 42 minutes.

Read by Lorelei King.

Suspense Fiction

Humor

Mystery and Detective Stories

Bestsellers

“She said yes to Morelli. She said yes to Ranger. Now Stephanie Plum has two fiancés and no idea what to do about it. But the way things are going, she might not live long enough to marry anyone. While Stephanie stalls for time, she buries herself in her work as a bounty hunter, tracking down an unusually varied assortment of fugitives from justice. There’s Eugene Fleck, a seemingly sweet online influencer who might also be YouTube star Robin Hoodie, masked hero to the homeless, who hijacks delivery trucks and distributes their contents to the needy. She’s also on the trail of Bruno Jug, a wealthy and connected man in the wholesale produce business who is rumored to traffic young girls alongside lettuce and tomatoes. Most terrifying of all is Zoran–a laundromat manager by day and self-proclaimed vampire by night with a taste for the blood of pretty girls. When he shows up on Stephanie’s doorstep, it’s not for the meatloaf dinner. With timely assists from her stalwart supporters Lula, Connie, and Grandma Mazur, Stephanie uses every trick in the book to reel in these men. But only she can decide what to do about the two men she actually loves. She can’t hold Ranger and Morelli at bay for long, and she’s keeping a secret from them that is the biggest bombshell of all. Now or never, she’s got to make the decision of a lifetime.”– Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. Bestseller.

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Kate’s 2¢: “The master of Ballantrae: a winter’s tale” by Robert Louis Stevenson

“The master of Ballantrae: a winter’s tale” by Robert Louis Stevenson

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   Tom Martin did a good job of narrating This interesting tale of betrayal, intrigue, and a love triangle.

A few Takeaways:

–…forever falling in with extraordinary incidences and I was myself on the brink of one so astonishing, that I protest I cannot explain it.

–…JD, heir to a Scottish title, a Master of the Arts and Graces, Admired in Europe, Asia, America, in war and peace in the tents of savage hunters, to the citidles of Kings after so much acquired accomplished and endured lies here forgotten.

–HD, his brother, after a life of unmerited distress, bravely supported, died almost in the same hour and sleeps in the same grave and and sleeps in the same grave as his fraternal enemy. The piety of his wife and one old servantraised this stone to both.

Wikipedia

 Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and A Child’s Garden of Verses.

Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Sidney Colvin, Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse,[1] Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. In 1890, he settled in Samoa where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands, his writing turned from romance and adventure fiction toward a darker realism. He died of a stroke in his island home in 1894 at age 44.[2]

A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson’s critical reputation has fluctuated since his death, though today his works are held in general acclaim. In 2018, he was ranked just behind Charles Dickens as the 26th-most-translated author in the world.[3]

Family and education[edit]

Childhood and youth[edit]

Stevenson’s childhood home in Heriot Row

Stevenson was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, on 13 November 1850 to Thomas Stevenson (1818–1887), a leading lighthouse engineer, and his wife, Margaret Isabella (born Balfour, 1829–1897). He was christened Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson. At about age 18, he changed the spelling of “Lewis” to “Louis”, and he dropped “Balfour” in 1873.[4][5]

Lighthouse design was the family’s profession; Thomas’s father (Robert’s grandfather) was the civil engineer Robert Stevenson, and Thomas’s brothers (Robert’s uncles) Alan and David were in the same field.[6] Thomas’s maternal grandfather Thomas Smith had been in the same profession. However, Robert’s mother’s family were gentry, tracing their lineage back to Alexander Balfour, who had held the lands of Inchrye in Fife in the fifteenth century.[7] His mother’s father, Lewis Balfour (1777–1860), was a minister of the Church of Scotland at nearby Colinton,[8] and her siblings included physician George William Balfour and marine engineer James Balfour. Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his maternal grandfather’s house. “Now I often wonder what I inherited from this old minister,” Stevenson wrote. “I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them.”[9]

Lewis Balfour and his daughter both had weak chests, so they often needed to stay in warmer climates for their health. Stevenson inherited a tendency to coughs and fevers, exacerbated when the family moved to a damp, chilly house at 1 Inverleith Terrace in 1851.[10] The family moved again to the sunnier 17 Heriot Row when Stevenson was six years old, but the tendency to extreme sickness in winter remained with him until he was 11. Illness was a recurrent feature of his adult life and left him extraordinarily thin.[11] Contemporaneous views were that he had tuberculosis, but more recent views are that it was bronchiectasis[12] or sarcoidosis.[13] The family also summered in the spa town of Bridge of Allan, in North Berwick, and in Peebles for the sake of Stevenson’s and his mother’s health; “Stevenson’s cave” in Bridge of Allan was reportedly the inspiration for the character Ben Gunn’s cave dwelling in Stevenson’s 1883 novel Treasure Island.[14]

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

The master of Ballantrae: a winter’s tale. DB10700

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Reading time: 7 hours, 55 minutes.

Read by Tom Martin.

Classics

Adventure

Story of a tragic bitter feud between two Scottish brothers. The elder brother, believed to have died in battle, returns home to persecute his younger brother, who has succeeded him to his title and estate and married his betrothed.

Downloaded: February 11, 2025

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Kate’s 2¢: “Marcus of Umbria: what an Italian dog taught an American girl about love” by Justine Van der Leun 

“Marcus of Umbria: what an Italian dog taught an American girl about love” by Justine Van der Leun 

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   Marylyn Burridge did a nice job of reading this story about a woman in a foreign land. I think it was obvious from the get-go, that she was shacking up with the wrong guy for all the wrong reasons.

A few takeaways:

–I felt a dawning kinship with all the non-English speaking immigrants with whom I had conversed back in America.

–…subvert their personalities due to the limitations of language.

–smiling is a submissive gesture, because a lack of language strips you of your identity and makes you feel weak.

–The love for which I wandered the earth was found between a dog and me.

–We know the truth, not by the reason, but by the heart.

From BING:

Justine van der Leun is an independent journalist, an author, and a fellow at Type Media Center. Her features have been published in the Appeal, the New York Review of Books, Harper’s, the …

justinevdl.com

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Marcus of Umbria: what an Italian dog taught an American girl about love DBC27817

Van der Leun, Justine. Reading time: 7 hours, 32 minutes.

Read by Marylyn Burridge.

Biography

Animals and Wildlife

Adult.

Downloaded: February 23, 2025

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Kate’s 2¢: “The Old Man and The Sea” by Ernest Hemingway

“The Old Man and The Sea” by Ernest Hemingway

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   Ray Hagen did a good job of narrating this classic sea story. I ended up admiring both the Marlin and the old man for their perseverance. I also found it admirable that the young boy cared for and tended to the old man’s needs.

From Copilot”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and sportsman. His economical and understated style significantly influenced later 20th-century writers. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.View source at britannica.com

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

The old man and the sea DB10319

Hemingway, Ernest. Reading time: 2 hours, 13 minutes.

Read by Ray Hagen.

Classics

Adventure

Classic tale of the old Cuban fisherman Santiago and his days-long struggle with a magnificent marlin on open water in a frail skiff. Pulitzer Prize. 1952.

Downloaded: February 11, 2025

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Kate’s 2¢: “Scandinavian crime fiction” by Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen  

 “Scandinavian crime fiction” by Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen  

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   I think Peter Holdway Was the narrator for this well-researched history book analyzing Scandinavian crime.

A few takeaways:

–…Proceeding from this diagnosis of a self-perpetuated collective image of the harmonious welfare state where perceived notions of what constitutes the good society were turned on their head…

–This book will propose the crimes recorded in Scandinavian fiction are symptoms of an age of uncertainty, where the comforts of the welfare state have ceased to provide the ointment  that may relieve the collective itch.

–This is the age of intensified globalization of perpetual transients, marked by the restlessness of a rampant global consumer society…

–…Does not   represent Scandinavian society realistically.

–Pippy Longstocking, The Automatist  child under moral logic of the Swedish welfare State by Astrin Lindgren, allegory of Swedish culture.

From BING:

Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the School of European Languages, Culture and Society, University College London. His research areas include nineteenth-century, modern and contemporary Nordic Literature, publishing and media, including Scandinavian Crime FictionView source at nordics.info. He has also published studies on world literature, book history, environmentalism, Hans Christian Andersen, Henry James, Scandinavian crime fiction, and the welfare stateView source at ucl.academia.edu.

FROM nls/bard/loc:

Scandinavian crime fiction DB109134

Stougaard-Nielsen, Jakob Reading time: 8 hours, 50 minutes.

Peter Holdway

Literature

“With its bleak urban environments, psychologically compelling heroes and socially engaged plots, Scandinavian crime writing has captured the imaginations of a global audience in the 21st century. Exploring the genre’s key themes, international impact and socio-political contexts, Scandinavian Crime Fiction guides readers through such key texts as Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Novel of a Crime, Gunnar Staalesen’s Varg Veum series, Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, Henning Mankell’s Wallander books, Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy and TV series such as The Killing. With its focus on the function of crime fiction in both reflecting and shaping the late-modern Scandinavian welfare societies, this book is essential for readers, viewers and fans of contemporary crime writing.” — Provided by publisher. 2017.

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Kate’s 2¢: “The Great stone face and other tales” by Nathaneal Hawthrorne

“The Great stone face and other tales” by Nathaneal Hawthrorne

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

Nelson Runger  did a good job of narrating this classic for NLS. There is a technique to developing a short story and These pieces are good examples of success. 

From Wikipedia:

Nathaniel Hawthorne (né Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.

He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that town. Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824,[1] and graduated in 1825. He published his first work in 1828, the novel Fanshawe; he later tried to suppress it, feeling that it was not equal to the standard of his later work.[2] He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. The following year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment as consul took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to Concord in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864.

Much of Hawthorne’s writing centers on New England, and many works feature moral metaphors with an anti-Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce, written for his 1852 campaign for President of the United States, which Pierce won, becoming the 14th president.

Biography[edit]

Early life[edit]

File:Nathaniel_Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hathorne, as his name was originally spelled, was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts; his birthplace is preserved and open to the public.[3] His great-great-great-grandfather, William Hathorne, was a Puritan and the first of the family to emigrate from England. He settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, before moving to Salem. There he became an important member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and held many political positions, including magistrate and judge, becoming infamous for his harsh sentencing.[4] William’s son, Hawthorne’s great-great-grandfather John Hathorne was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne probably added the “w” to his surname in his early twenties, shortly after graduating from college, in an effort to dissociate himself from his notorious forebears.[5] Hawthorne’s father Nathaniel Hathorne Sr. was a sea captain who died in 1808 of yellow fever in Dutch Suriname;[6] he had been a member of the East India Marine Society.[7] After his death, his widow moved with young Nathaniel, his older sister Elizabeth, and their younger sister Louisa to live with relatives named the Mannings in Salem,[8] where they lived for 10 years. Young Hawthorne was hit on the leg while playing “bat and ball” on November 10, 1813,[9] and he became lame and bedridden for a year, though several physicians could find nothing wrong with him.[10]

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s childhood home in Raymond, Maine, built in 1804[11]

In the summer of 1816, the family lived as boarders with farmers[12] before moving to a home recently built specifically for them by Hawthorne’s uncles Richard and Robert Manning in Raymond, Maine, near Sebago Lake.[13] Years later, Hawthorne looked back at his time in Maine fondly: “Those were delightful days, for that part of the country was wild then, with only scattered clearings, and nine tenths of it primeval woods.”[14] In 1819, he was sent back to Salem for school and soon complained of homesickness and being too far from his mother and sisters.[15] He distributed seven issues of The Spectator to his family in August and September 1820 for fun. The homemade newspaper was written by hand and included essays, poems, and news featuring the young author’s adolescent humor.[16]

Hawthorne’s uncle Robert Manning insisted that the boy attend college, despite Hawthorne’s protests.[17] With the financial support of his uncle, Hawthorne was sent to Bowdoin College in 1821, partly because of family connections in the area, and also because of its relatively inexpensive tuition rate.[18] Hawthorne met future president Franklin Pierce on the way to Bowdoin, at the stage stop in Portland, and the two became fast friends.[17] Once at the school, he also met future poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, future congressman Jonathan Cilley, and future naval reformer Horatio Bridge.[19] He graduated with the class of 1825, and later described his college experience to Richard Henry Stoddard:

I was educated (as the phrase is) at Bowdoin College. I was an idle student, negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans.[20]

From NLS/BRD/LOC:

The Great stone face and other tales DB93698

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Reading time: 2 hours, 3 minutes.

Read by Nelson Runger.

Short Stories

Classics

Collection of four haunting stories set in the White Mountains of New Hampshire written between 1835 and 1850. Includes “The Great Stone Face,” “The Ambitious Guest,” “The Great Carbuncle,” and “Sketches from Memory. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 1850.

Downloaded: February 11, 2025

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