A Potpourri of Opinions

  The Moving Finger Miss Marple #4 Agatha Christie Original Publication date: July 1, 1942  Released as an audiobook: July 3, 2012 by Harper Audio Genre: Mystery Rating: 2 🍷🍷 Summary:  (synopsis from Amazon)  Lymstock is a town with more than its share of shameful secrets - a town where even a sudden outbreak of anonymous hate mail causes only a minor stir. But all that changes when one of the recipients, Mrs. Symmington, commits suicide. Her final note says "I can’t go on", but Miss Marple questions the coroner's verdict of suicide. Soon nobody is sure of anyone - as secrets stop being shameful and start becoming deadly. (synopsis from Goodreads) The placid village of Lymstock seems the perfect place for Jerry Burton to recuperate from his accident under the care of his sister, Joanna. But soon a series of vicious poison-pen letters destroys the village's quiet charm, eventually causing one recipient to commit suicide. The vicar, the doctor, the servants—all are o...

  Madame Pommery, Creator of Brut Champagne Rebecca Rosenberg Publication date: March 21, 2023 by Lion Heart Publishing Summary: A Champagne Widows Novel Champagne, France, 1860. Madame Pommery, an etiquette teacher and orphanage founder, loses her husband and is forced to support her family. With no experience, the forty-year-old widow decides to make champagne. Her unique vision is to change it from a sweet dessert beverage to a dry, crisp wine to be enjoyed anytime. When champagne makers refuse to teach her their craft, she forges ahead on her own and secretly begins the excavation of champagne caves under the Reims city dump. Soon after, her son and her entire crew are conscripted to fight the Franco-Prussian war, leaving Madame Pommery alone to struggle with her champagne dreams. After Napoleon and a hundred thousand French troops are captured, the Prussians invaded France, and Prussian General Frederick Franz occupies Madame Pommery’s house as his army headquarters. Undaunted...

  The Woman With The Cure Lynn Cullen Publication date: February 21, 2023 by Berkley Genre: Historical Fiction  Rating: 4 👢👢👢👢 Summary: She gave up everything— and changed the world. A riveting novel based on the true story of the woman who stopped a pandemic, from the bestselling author of Mrs. Poe. In 1940s and ’50s America, polio is as dreaded as the atomic bomb. No one’s life is untouched by this disease that kills or paralyzes its victims, particularly children. Outbreaks of the virus across the country regularly put American cities in lockdown. Some of the world’s best minds are engaged in the race to find a vaccine. The man who succeeds will be a god. But Dorothy Horstmann is not focused on beating her colleagues to the vaccine. She just wants the world to have a cure. Applying the same determination that lifted her from a humble background as the daughter of immigrants, to becoming a doctor –often the only woman in the room--she hunts down the monster where it lurk...

  Night Flight to Paris  (Kate Rees #2) Cara Black  Publication date: March 7, 2023 by Soho Crime Genre: Historical Thriller Rating: 5 👢👢👢👢👢 Summary: It is once again up to American markswoman Kate Rees to take the shot that just might win—or lose—World War II, in the follow up to national bestseller Three Hours in Paris. Three missions. Two cities. One shot to win the war. October 1942: it’s been two years since American markswoman Kate Rees was sent to Paris on a British Secret Service mission to assassinate Hitler. Since then, she has left spycraft behind to take a training job as a sharpshooting instructor in the Scottish Highlands. But her quiet life is violently disrupted when Colonel Stepney, her former handler, drags her back into the fray for a dangerous three-pronged mission in Paris. Each task is more dangerous than the next: Deliver a package of penicillin to sick children. Assassinate a high-ranking German operative whose knowledge of secret invasion pla...

  The Minuscule Mansion of Myra Malone Audrey Burges Pub. date: Jan. 24, 2023 by Berkley Genre: Romance/Fantasy Rating: 3 🍷🍷🍷 Summary: A woman learns to expand the boundaries of her small world and let love inside it in this sparkling and unforgettable novel by Audrey Burges. From her attic in the Arizona mountains, thirty-four-year-old Myra Malone blogs about a dollhouse mansion that captivates thousands of readers worldwide. Myra’s stories have created legions of fans who breathlessly await every blog post, trade photographs of Mansion-modeled rooms, and swap theories about the enigmatic and reclusive author. Myra herself is tethered to the Mansion by mysteries she can’t understand—rooms that appear and disappear overnight, music that plays in its corridors. Across the country, Alex Rakes, the scion of a custom furniture business, encounters two Mansion fans trying to recreate a room. The pair show him the Minuscule Mansion, and Alex is shocked to recognize a reflection of his...

  Partners In Crime (Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries #2) Agatha Christie Orig. Pub. June 7, 1929 Genre: Mystery Rating: 3 🍷🍷🍷 Summary: Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are restless for adventure, so when they are asked to take over Blunt's International Detective Agency, they leap at the chance. Their first case is a success—the triumphant recovery of a pink pearl. Other cases soon follow—a stabbing on Sunningdale golf course; cryptic messages in the personal columns of newspapers; and even a box of poisoned chocolates. But can they live up to their slogan of "Any case solved in 24 hours"? My thoughts: This is my first Tommy and Tuppence book and I enjoyed the refreshingly witty relationship that the two had. The overarching plot was that the two were posing as the owners of the Blunt's Detective Agency in order to assist Scotland Yard with apprehending Russian spies. During the course of their time at the agency they took on other cases to solve. With each case they atte...

  Any Where You Run Wanda M. Morris Publication Date: October 25, 2022 by William Morrow & Company, Harper Audio Genre: Historical Thriller Rating: 4 👢👢👢👢 Summary: From the award-winning author of All Her Little Secrets comes yet another gripping, suspenseful novel where, after the murder of a white man in Jim Crow Mississippi, two Black sisters run away to different parts of the country . . . but can they escape the secrets they left behind? It's the summer of 1964 and three innocent men are brutally murdered for trying to help Black Mississippians secure the right to vote. Against this backdrop, twenty-one year old Violet Richards finds herself in more trouble than she's ever been in her life. Suffering a brutal attack of her own, she kills the man responsible. But with the color of Violet's skin, there is no way she can escape Jim Crow justice in Jackson, Mississippi. Before anyone can find the body or finger her as the killer, she decides to run. With the help o...