Sunday, May 26, 2013

Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century; You & Me; Honey Pie; Salt, Sugar, Fat; The Cocktail Waitress

"Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century" by Peter Graham examines the Juliet Hume/Pauline Parker case in which the two teenage girls murdered Pauline's mother. Why they did, the events leading up to the murder, were closely examined. It was really interesting. Both girls served time in prison in New Zealand, where the murders occurred, and when Juliet got out she changed her name to Anne Perry and ended up becoming a bestselling murder mystery writer. I've never read any of her books, although I keep meaning to. Also, hilarious side note, Google's spell check did not recognize "Zealand" as a real word :)

"You & Me" by Padgett Powell was a super quick fiction read about two middle aged men sitting on a porch, discussing life, the universe, and everything in it. It was pretty funny and very clever.

"Honey Pie" by Donna Kauffman is the fourth book in her sticky sweet Cupcake Club romance series. Honey moves to Sugarberry Island from Oregon after her aunt dies and leaves her a building in her will. Honey, who is psychic and can foresee disaster, has kept herself mostly isolated from the world because of how hard it is to know bad things are coming to people, shows up on the Island only to find that a property company her aunt hired has already leased out the building she was planning on living and working in--to Lani, popular owner of Cakes by the Cup, to run her mail order cupcake business, Babycakes, out of. Of course Honey can't throw Lani out of the building, but now she has nowhere to live and no money to rent a space of her own (the rent for the building went to pay her aunt's medical bills). Luckily Honey meets the gorgeous town mechanic, Dylan, and they both fall for each other. Even *more* luckily, Dylan owns lots of office space! Isn't it lovely when everything works out?

"Salt, Sugar, and Fat" by Michael Moss was horrifying but a very important read about how basically everything in the grocery store in a box, can, bag, etc., isn't really food but specially processed by food companies to pack in as much sugar, salt, and fat as possible. Yikes. I want to move to farm in the midwest and grow my own food.

"The Cocktail Waitress" by James M. Cain was a cool fiction about Joan, whose abusive husband dies one night in a car crash after having too much to drink. In order to make ends meet and provide for her young son, Joan takes a job as a cocktail waitress. One of the detectives investigating the case is convinced Joan had something to do with the death of her husband, but can't find proof. While working, Joan meets two men: Earl K. White is older, wealthy, and has a potentially fatal heart condition that makes physical activity impossible, and Tom, who is young, handsome, and broke. Joan agrees to marry Earl in order to provide for her son, even though she really loves Tom. When Earl dies not long after they marry from a drug being slipped into his medication, leaving Joan a very wealthy widow, this time the police are convinced she had a hand in it. When Tom also turns up dead, Joan is arrested for murder. She swears she had nothing to do with it...

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Plutopia; There Was An Old Woman

"Plutopia" by Kate Brown was an interesting look at two towns built in the 1940s to produce plutonium for making bombs--one was in Richland, Washington, the other in Ozersk, Russia. The accidents, spills, design flaws, cover-ups, health issues, etc., were all devastating and residents are still suffering from health issues to this day and fighting for answers. No one seems to want to take responsibility for the messes they created.

"There Was an Old Woman" by Hallie Ephron was a quick read, a pretty good suspense story that I actually had figured out pretty quickly, a real rarity for me. When Evie's mom falls and is taken to the hospital, Evie goes out to Higg's Point to take care of her house and is stunned when she sees the filthy condition it's in. Evie figures her mother's drinking must have escalated to a dangerous point. She goes to the hospital to visit her and the doctor tells her her mom has suffered from an acetaminophen overdose and she's dying. Evie talks to her mother's elderly but still sharp next door neighbor, Mina Yetner, and more and more things aren't adding up. Why are the houses on their street slowly being emptied of residents dying off and then the houses bulldozed over? Where was all the money coming from that Evie found in her mother's house? Evie searches for answers, hoping she's in time to save Mina Yetner from the same sad fate her mother suffered.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Babycakes; The Art of Hearing Heartbeats; Suburgatory; Boy Toy; Read My Lips

"Babycakes" by Donna Kauffman is another of her fluffy Cupcake Club romances. This one was really sweet (haha). Kit moves to small Sugarberry Island (which must have the highest per capita of sweet-tooths in the world) to help Lani run her mail order cupcake business after her own family pie business is stolen out from under her by her greedy brother in law and oblivious sister. Also new to the island is Morgan Westlake, who is now guardian to his dead brother's five year old. Kit is initially wary of Morgan, since the Westlake family helped her brother in law steal her business, but she soon realizes Morgan is nothing like the rest of his scumball family and their romance goes full swing.

"The Art of Hearing Heartbeats" by Jan-Philipp Sendker was very touching. Julia's successful father disappears one day, and four years later she travels to the remote mountain village in Burma where he grew up to see if she could discover what really happened to him. She meets U Ba, who has a haunting tale of love and loss to share with her. It was very sweet.

"Suburgatory" by Linda Erin Keenan was a collection of snarky tales of a woman who thinks she's better than the suburban moms she's surrounded by. Some were funny but some were just mean.

"Boy Toy" by Barry Lyga was magnificent. Josh is almost ready to graduate from high school with perfect grades and an amazing baseball career behind him. He also has a terrible secret, which everyone knows: when he was in seventh grade he was molested by his history teacher. She's about to get out of prison, and Josh is still struggling to understand what happened to him five years earlier. It was incredibly powerful. Such a great writer!

"Read My Lips" by Sally Kellerman was a quick read, a short autobiography about her life. I haven't seen too many of her movies, but the ones I have seen I liked her in. She was funny and honest, and has never lived more than 25 miles from where she was born, which is pretty incredible.