A riveting historical novel/romance taking place during WWII in England and Ireland. It's the fifth in the Knocknashee series by one of my favorite authors. Grace and Richard have loved each other for four years, but it was never the right time to express their love.

A young woman meets the famous artist of a painting she adores. She sees something in the painting that most people don't. She learns the story behind painting and gets drawn into the lives of the artist and his friends. I enjoyed the book.

Molly Jong-Fast created a “can’t look away from this vessel careening rapidly toward a cliff kind of memoir.” I would never have guessed that life with Erica Jong, the author of The Fear of Flying, and lovely celebrity of the 70’s could have been such a mess . What’s even more unbelievable is that the author and celebrity is still alive in 2025. There is so much name dropping in this Memoir of a Daughter, one might suspect that the work is actually fiction. I remember reading novels by Molly’s grandfather, Howard Fast, in the 70’s. Molly wails that she could never get enough time with her mother who is still raging alcoholic. Molly also identifies as an alcoholic and talks about her drug use in the past but says she has been sober for some 20 years. She works as a journalist and political pundit, has a wonderful husband and three terrific kids and actually acknowledges that her life is a form of normal. There is love on every page of this book or I might have simply put it down with all the sadness that also occupies almost every page.

The Frozen River is a historical fiction murder mystery that centers around Martha Ballard ( who actually is a real person, a midwife whose diaries are a rich resource for this novel). A dead person ( villainous) has been discovered in a block of ice and Martha, using her tremendous assets of courage and sense of justice, as she champions women's rights, must discover what happened. Between death, illness, rape, miscarriage and loss of children, these rights were pretty much non existent in 18 th century America.

Ben falls in love with an abandoned former asylum in the country and convinces his pregnant wife to buy it and renovate it. While there Emma starts to feel like Ben is changing and growing more distant. She finds out that he’s cheating on her with their real estate agent. While at the house Emma starts to have hallucinations and she feels like she and her baby are in danger. Are her neighbors lying to her? Is Lindsey, the real estate agent gaslighting Emma? Is Ben a cheating husband? Is Emma imagining everything? Read and find out.

Loved this book. Great story line. So many twists and turns and surprises!!! Told from a male point of view which is a first for this author.

The novel is about Hana, present day librarian in Minnesota and past teenager during the Bonsai war in 1995. Her friend Amina’s mysterious death in the beginning of the book, keeps you eagerly reading to figure out the reason. The book educate me about the Bosnia war and the Srebrenica massacre. It made me understand more about the horrors of that war and the impact it has on individuals and communities that were involved.

Trapped in a terrifying marriage with two young daughters, and a baby on the way, Ciara knows that she and her children are no longer safe in their home. Her husband is cruel, and although he has not become physical, he is emotionally torturing her. While she has been thinking about it for a while, she impetuously leaves when one evening taking the children. Things become impossible. From here on, the book describes her attempt to leave, navigating the impossible bureaucracy, the challenging housing market, being penniless, with children, being unable to work, and being tormented by her husband, as she tries to navigate the situation and keep her children safe, and regain control of their lives. Along the way she encounters the good, the bad and the ugly. Friendships blossom; professionals try to help. The mean stay mean. An emotional rollercoaster, an insider’s look into the difficulty of “leaving”. A good attempt at exposing of how difficult it can be for a woman, especially with children to leave a marriage. A look at the practical as well as the emotional.

Pretty solid book with well developed characters. I like how they showed the passage of time and brought them through multiple cases. I do not know a lot about true crime slueths, but while reading I felt like I had to suspend A LOT of belief. Do people inuding cops just give info to these internet people like it's nothing? Great for fans of thrillers. Just had moments where i felt the characters didn't make rational human decisions, but u guess that is for the sake of the story. Justifying ending, which is rare for the genre. Wanted a where are they now at the end for the other characters.

This was another amazing book by Kristin Harmel. It’s a dual timeline set in the time leading up to WWII and WWII itself in Paris and 2018 in Boston. It explores an intriguing theme of moral ambiguities. What if someone is doing what’s considered immoral but for a good cause? In this book, the main character, Collette’s family is descended from the legendary Robin Hood. They have succeeded in following Robin Hood’s mission from stealing from the rich to give to the poor. At the age of 10, Collette learns the family trade of being a jewel thief. It all seems to go well for her and her mother Annabel until a tragic event that shakes the family to the core during WWII. It was a mission to steal some jewelry back for their Jewish friends who were sent away to the death camp. But, it ends up going horribly wrong and has Collette losing her mother and 4 year old sister, Liliane in one instant. Flash forward to 2018 in Boston and at 89, Collette is still a successful jewel thief, still stealing from evil people with wealth, to benefit the disadvantaged or for a mission to fund a Holocaust education center in Boston. What she didn’t expect was one of the bracelets of the dear friends her family lost in the war on that tragic night to turn up again. The same one her sister had on her person all those years ago when she disappeared. This leads to the mystery of where it came from and the story flashes between two timelines to fill in the gaps of what happened all those years ago. Like many of her other books, this was a quick read. In fact, I finished it in a day. It’s a testament to her engaging characters and compelling storytelling that tugs at your heartstrings. I highly recommend this book.