Entries by Alyssa Berry

56 Days By Catherine Ryan Howard

When the pandemic started, many people – including myself – thought that no one would want to read fiction set during this time. On top of the fact that this is a disaster we are all living through, everyone was stuck in their homes learning to make their own bread and hoping they had enough […]

February 1, 2022 – Show and Tell

Do you have a closet full of unfinished projects? Have you gone to the craft store “just to look around” and found yourself leaving with an armload of goodies? Got a project you’re muddling through? Did you just pick up a new hobby — and now you’re dying to show it off? Why don’t you […]

An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed by Helene Tursten

For these dark, cold winter nights, many readers turn to the cozy mystery genre. It is a genre full of stories of charming small towns beset by serial killers and warm winter cabins playing host to locked room mysteries – with victims and perpetrators alike trapped inside by record snowfall. While the book I read […]

All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

When Nicolette Farrell was eighteen, her best friend went missing. The entire town came together to scour the woods for her, and the local police looked into everyone who knew anything about her disappearance. In the end, a detective was sent by the state to the small town of Cooley Ridge, and – according to […]

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

As the title implies, MEXICAN GOTHIC by SILVIA MORENO-GARCIA is an homage to the gothic fiction novels of the 20th century, but one set deep in the mountains of Mexico rather than the English countryside. Noemí Taboada is the strong-willed, somewhat-spoiled daughter of a wealthy family. She spends her free time reveling in the glamor […]

We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry

With its brightly colored cover and its strange title, WE RIDE UPON STICKS by QUAN BARRY caught my attention immediately. If I had been more familiar with the plot, it is possible that I would have been more suspicious of the way it instantly grabbed me. In the summer of 1989, the members of a […]

18 Tiny Deaths by Bruce Goldfarb

18 TINY DEATHS: the Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics by BRUCE GOLDFARB tells the story of a woman whose impact on crime solving cannot be overstated. Lee first learned about the importance of forensic investigation from her friend George Magrath, who was the country’s only medical examiner at […]

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Matt Haig’s THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY is a sliding doors novel about one woman’s search for a fulfilling life. In the course of one day, Nora Seed has been mugged, lost her job, and found out that her cat has died. On top of that, she has been reminded of all of the ways that she […]