A Potpourri of Opinions

  Sad Cypress (Hercule Poirot #19) Agatha Christie Orig. Pub. date: Mar. 1, 1940 Genre: Mystery Rating: 3 🍷🍷🍷 Elinor Carlisle and Roddy Welman are the model English couple, perfect companions set for a life of ease when they inherit Aunt Laura's considerable fortune. But a poison pen letter begins a chain of events which is to end in tragedy. Convinced that Mary Gerrard, a childhood playmate of Elinor's, is attempting to ingratiate herself with her aunt for financial gain, the pair travel to the family home to investigate. They find no evidence but Roddy falls desperately in love with the beautiful Mary, little realising that beneath Elinor's restrained and unemotional exterior lies an almost obsessive passion for him. Elinor obeys her aunt's deathbed wish despite her heartbreak, and gives Mary a large bequest from the estate. But when Mary is found poisoned, the evidence against Elinor is damning. It's up to Hercule Poirot to find out if the case is as simple as

The Prisoner B. A. Paris Publication Date: November 1, 2022 by St. Martin's Press and Macmillan Audio Genre: Thriller, Suspense Rating: 4 👢👢👢👢 Summary: Amelie has always been a survivor, from losing her parents as a child in Paris to making it on her own in London. As she builds a life for herself, she is swept up into a glamorous lifestyle where she married the handsome billionaire Ned Hawthorne. But then, Amelie wakes up in a pitch-black room, not knowing where she is. Why has she been taken? Who are her mysterious captors? And why does she soon feel safer here, imprisoned, than she had begun to feel with her husband Ned? My thoughts : B.A. Paris has become a go-to author for me whenever I'm in the mood for something suspenseful. What began with an abduction turned into the unraveling of a web of lies, cover ups, and murder. While this story started off fast, overall it was a slow build up. Paris use of short chapters helped to keep the reader on the right path. The main

  The Three Live of Alix St. Pierre Natasha Lester US Publication date: January 10, 2023 by Forever (Grand Central Publishing) Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 4 🍷🍷🍷🍷 Summary: Alix St. Pierre. An unforgettable name for an unforgettable woman. She grew up surrounded by Hollywood glamor, but, as an orphan, never truly felt part of that world. In 1943, with WWII raging and men headed overseas to fight, she lands a publicity job to recruit women into the workforce. Her skills—persuasion, daring, quick-witted under pressure—catch the attention of the U.S. government and she finds herself with an even bigger assignment: sent to Switzerland as a spy. Soon Alix is on the precipice of something big, very big. But how far can she trust her German informant…?   After an Allied victory that didn’t come nearly soon enough, Alix moves to Paris, ready to immerse herself in a new position as director of publicity for the yet-to-be-launched House of Dior. In the glamorous halls of the French fashi

The Night Travelers Armando Lucas Correa Publication Date: January 10, 2023 by Atria Books Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 5 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷 Summary: Four generations of women experience love, loss, war, and hope from the rise of Nazism to the Cuban Revolution and finally, the fall of the Berlin Wall in this sweeping novel from the bestselling author of the “timely must-read” (People) The German Girl. Berlin, 1931: Ally Keller, a talented young poet, is alone and scared when she gives birth to a mixed-race daughter she names Lilith. As the Nazis rise to power, Ally knows she must keep her baby in the shadows to protect her against Hitler’s deadly ideology of Aryan purity. But as she grows, it becomes more and more difficult to keep Lilith hidden so Ally sets in motion a dangerous and desperate plan to send her daughter across the ocean to safety. Havana, 1958: Now an adult, Lilith has few memories of her mother or her childhood in Germany. Besides, she’s too excited for her future with he

  Son of the Poison Rose Jonathan Maberry Publication date: January 10, 2023 by St. Martin's Press Genre: Fantasy Rating: 5 👢👢👢👢👢 Summary: Son of the Poison Rose marks the second installment of New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry's epic, swashbuckling Kagen the Damned series. The Silver Empire is in ruins. War is in the wind. Kagen and his allies are on the run from the Witch-king. Wild magic is running rampant everywhere. Spies and secret cabals plot from the shadows of golden thrones. Kagen Vale is the most wanted man in the world, with a death sentence on his head and a reward for him—dead or alive—that would tempt a saint. The Witch-king has new allies who bring a terrible weapon—a cursed disease that drives people into a murderous rage. If the disease is allowed to spread, the whole of the West will tear itself apart. In order to build an army of resistance fighters and unearth magical weapons of his own, Kagen and his friends have to survive attacks an

  The Piano Tuner Chiang-Sheng Kuo translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-Chun Lin Publication date: January 3, 2023 by Arcade/Skyhorse Publishing Genre: Fiction Rating: 2 🍷🍷 Summary: This bestseller and winner of every major literary award in Taiwan is an elegiac novel about love and loss, broken dreams and desolate hearts—and music: "A delightful read."—Ha Jin A widower grieving for his young wife. A piano tuner concealing a lifetime of secrets. An out-of-tune Steinway piano. A journey of self-discovery across time and continents, from a dark apartment in Taipei’s red-light district to snow-clad New York.  At the heart of the story is the nameless narrator, the piano tuner. In his forties, he is balding and ugly, a loser by any standard. But he was once a musical prodigy. What betrayal and what heartbreak made him walk away from greatness?  Long hailed in Taiwan as a “writer’s writer,” Chiang-Sheng Kuo delivers a stunningly powerful, compact novel in The Piano Tuner

  Courting Dragons Jeri Westerson Publication date: January 3, 2023 by Severn House Genre: Historical Fiction/Mystery Rating: 4 👢👢👢👢 Summary: Introducing Will Somers, the king's jester but nobody's fool in this exuberant, intriguing and thoroughly entertaining mystery set in Tudor England – the first in a new series from the author of the critically acclaimed Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series. 1529, London. Jester Will Somers enjoys an enviable position at the court of Henry VIII. As the king's entertainer, chief gossip-monger, spy and loyal adviser, he knows all of the king's secrets – and almost everyone else's within the walls of Greenwich Palace. But when Will discovers the body of Spanish count Don Gonzalo while walking his trusted sidekick Nosewise in the courtyard gardens, and a blackmail note arrives soon after demanding information about the king, is one of his own closely guarded secrets about to be exposed? Trouble is afoot at the palace. Are the kin