Lovin To Read Little Book Corner

  They say every cloud has a silver lining. . . When Freya Miller is struck by tragedy, losing her husband and her home within a short time, she is burdened with many worries. The main one being where she and her five-year old daughter, Skye, are going to live. A chance meeting with the charismatic Dr. Marsden changes all that. He offers the young mother the most amazing opportunity; an apartment at one of London's most exclusive addresses for a fraction of the market rental cost. It's an offer Freya simply can't refuse. Within a couple of weeks, Freya and Skye are moving into Adder House and meeting the other welcoming residents. They very quickly feel part of the family. But just when Freya truly believes all her problems are history, a series of strange, unexplained occurrences begin. It leaves Freya with the unshakeable feeling that even when their apartment door is securely locked, she and her daughter are not alone. Freya thought she'd left all her troubles behind...

  How Far Would You Go for Revenge? Finley and Betty's Close Friendship survived Fin's ninth grade move from their coastal Maine town to Manhattan. Calls, letters, and a summer visits kept them close, and in the fall of their senior year they both applied to NYU, planning to reunite as roommates. Then Betty Disappears. Her ex-boyfriend Calder admits to drowning her, but his confession is thrown out, and the entire town believes he was coerced and Betty has simply ran away.  Fin knows the truth, and she returns to Williston for one final summer, determined to get justice for her friend, even if it means putting her loved ones -and hers. This book was nowhere on my radar.  I was thumbing through the section at a local thrift store and the cover is what reeled me in. A grungy, big claw foot bathtub in the middle of the woods.  What speaks suspenseful and psychological thriller does that ?  So i read the back of the book and decided $.50 what a steal.  Nothing ...

Becc was a good girl. A dedicated student. Aspiring reporter. Always where she was supposed to be. Until a secret affair with the charming Cal one summer in college cost her everything she held dear: her journalism dreams; her relationship with her best friend, Eric; and her carefully imagined future. Now Becc's  past is front and center as she travels up the scenic California coast to a wedding--with a man she has seen in a decade. As each mile flies by, Becc can't help but  feel the thrilling push and pull of  memories, from the infinite nights at beach bonfires and lavish boat parties to secret movie sessions. But the man beside her is not so eager to re-create history. And  as the events of that heartbreaking summer come into view, Becc must decide if those dazzling hours they once shared are worth fighting for or if they're lost forever. I thoroughly enjoyed the character of Becc. I, at times, could identify with her as I was at that juncture of lea...

  A widow hires Nils Shapiro to investigate her husband's savage murder, but she's not the only one to seek him out.  Everyone from the widow's boyfriend to a polarizing congressional candidate to the FBI wants to know what happened to Todd Rabinowitz.  As Nils unravels the convoluted case, the bodies pile up.  Someone doesn't want him to discover what happened to Todd , and won't stop until they silence Niles as well. This is a good as a stand-alone but is part of the Nils Shapiro series by author Matt Goldman.   Nils is a gumshoe detective, one day a widow walks into his office and puts him on the case to investigate her husbands death.  He isn't that sure if he even likes the woman but is intrigued enough to start working the case.   Nils, with help from colleagues Annika and Ellegaard,and Minneapolis PD detective Gabriella Nunez they try and figure out the twist and turns of unique spider web of lies, tangles and spins.  Bo...

The Girl Before by J.P. Delaney Please make a list of every possession you consider essential in your life. The request seems odd, even intrusive --and for the two women who answer, the consequences are devastating Emma Reeling from a traumatic break-in, Emma wants a new place to live. But none of the apartments she sees are affordable or feel safe.   Until One Folgate Street.  The house is an architectural masterpiece:  a minimalist design of pale stone, plate glass, and soaring ceilings.  But there are rules. The enigmatic architect who designed the house remains in full control:  no books, no throw pillows, no photos or clutter or personal effects of any kind. The space is intended to transform it occupants--and it does. Jane After a personal tragedy, Jane needs a fresh start.  When she finds One Folgate Street she is instantly drawn to the space--and to its aloof but seductive creator.  Moving in, Jane soon learns about the unti...

A Negro and an Ofay (The Tales of Elliot Caprice) by  Danny Gardner On the run for killing two crooked cops, Chicago PD Detective Elliot Caprice finds himself in a jailhouse in St. Louis on false charges. He enlists friends from his hometown of Southville, IL. to secure his release and returns to find the family farm in foreclosure and the man who raised him dying in a flophouse. Desperate for money, he accepts a job from the son of a deadly Jewish mobster and eventually crosses paths with a powerful family from Chicago's North Shore. A captain of industry is dead, and the key to his estate disappeared with the Chauffeur. There's good money in it if Elliot finds him, but the mixed-race son of Illinois farm country must return to the Windy City with the cops on his heels, the Syndicate with a knife to his throat, and the wealthy and powerful at his back. Good thing he is used to playing both sides to the middle.   What a great change of pace. I can easily...

The Saturday Evening Girls Club: A Novel by Jane Healey For four young immigrant women living in Boston's North End in the early 1900s, escaping tradition doesn't come easy. But at least they have one another and the Saturday Evening Girls Club, a social pottery-making group offering respite from their hectic home lives-and hope for a better future. Ambitious Caprice dreams of opening her own hat shop, which clashes with the expectations of her Sicilian-born parents. Brilliant Ada secretly takes college classes despite the disapproval of her Russian Jewish father.  Stunning Maria could marry anyone yet guards her heart to avoid the fate of her Italian Catholic mother, broken down by an alcoholic husband.  And shy Thea is torn between asserting herself and embracing an antiquated Jewish tradition The friends face family clashes and romantic entanglements, career struggles and cultural prejudice.  But through their unfailing bond,  forged through ...

Lie to Me by Jess Ryder We're going to tell our story and then it will all stop and Mummy will be safe. You want Mummy to be safe, don't you? Three minutes. That's all it takes for Meredith's entire world to fall apart when she watches the videotape of her four-year-old self with Becca the mother she's never known. Meredith can't believe what her eyes have seen. Yet what if her memory has locked away the painful reality of her childhood? Can there be any truth in the strange and dangerous story her mother forced her to tell on camera? The search for answers leads Meredith to Darkwater Pool, the scene of the murder of a young woman, Cara, over 30 years ago.  What could possibly be the link between her mother and the victim? To find the truth Meredith must search through a past that is not her own.  The problem is, she's not the only one looking... Meredith thought she knew her childhood, she accepted her mother, Becca, had her own...

Making Waves (Beach Lane #1) by  Laura Moore  As the responsible daughter of an irresponsible socialite, Dakota Hale has plenty of practice in catering to the rich and spoiled and she has turned that experience into a thriving concierge business serving the Hamptons'  wealthy elite. But living and working among the upper crust has never tempted Dakota to follow in her jet-setting mother's footsteps. Anytime the drama on land gets too outrageous, Dakota finds calm surfing the Atlantic waves. But when sexy mogul Max Carr hires her, it rocks her in a big way. Max works hard but he's never put an effort into winning a woman over until now. With her stunning beauty and keen intelligence, Dakota is worth the effort. But it is plain she has no interest in a casual fling, and that's all Max with his grief-stricken heart can offer. But one fraught night changes everything, with consequences neither Dakota nor Max anticipated. Now they must navigate the rough waters of...

Last Breath by  Robert Bryndza He's your perfect date. You're his next victim. When the tortured body of a young woman is found in a dumpster, her eyes swollen shut and her clothes soaked with blood, Detective Ericka Foster is one of the first at the crime scene. The trouble is, this time, it's not her case.  While she fights to secure her place on the investigation team, Erika can't help but get involved and quickly finds a link to the unsolved murder of a woman four months earlier. Dumped in a similar location, both women have identical wounds-a fatal incision to their femoral artery. Stalking his victims online, the killer is preying on pretty women using a fake identity. How will Erika catch a killer who doesn't seem to exist? Then another girl is abducted while waiting for a date. Erika and her team must get to her before she becomes another dead victim, and, comes face to face with a terrifyingly sadistic individual. OMG, Robert Br...

    The Grave Tender by  Eliza Maxwell A chilling psychological suspense novel, The Grave Tender, explores the dark boundaries people cross to save loved ones and the limits of family bonds tested by the deepest of betrayals.  Endless questions from a shadow-filled East Texas childhood haunt Hadley Dixon. People said her mother, Winnie, was never quite right, but with one single, irreparable act, life as Hadley knew it was shattered. The aftershocks of that moonlit night left her reeling, but the secrets and lies had started long before. When a widowed and pregnant Hadley returns years later, it's not the safe harbor she expects. The mysteries surrounding a local boy's disappearance remain, and the townspeople still whisper about Hadley's strange and reclusive Uncle Eli-whispers about a monster in their midst. But Hadley's father and grandmother, the cornerstones of everything safe in her world, avoid her questions. If Hadley stays here, will she...

A Bridge Across the Ocean  by Susan Meissner. February 1946.  World War Two is over but the recovery from the most intimate of its horrors has to just begun for Annaliese Lange, a German ballerina desperate to escape her past, Simone Deveraux, the wronged daughter of a French Resistance spy. Now the two women are joining other European war brides aboard the renowned RMS Queen Mary to cross the Atlantic and be reunited with their American husbands. Their new lives in the United States brightly beacon until their tightly-lipped are laid bare in their shared stateroom. When the voyage ends at New York Harbor, only one of them will disembark... Present day. Facing a crossroads in her own life, Brette Caslake visits the famously haunted Queen Mary at the request of an old friend. What she finds will set her on a course to solve a seventy-year-old tragedy that will draw her into the heartaches and the triumphs of the courageous war brides and will ultimately lead her ...

Wish Me Home by Kay Bratt A hungry, stray dog is the last thing Cara Butter needs. Stranded in Georgia with only her backpack and a few dwindling dollars, she already has too much baggage.  Like her twin sister, Hana, who has broken Cara's heart one too many times. After a lifetime of family troubles, and bouncing from one foster home to another, Cara decides to leave it all behind and strike out alone-on foot. Cara sets off for Florida to see the home of her literary hero, Ernest Hemingway, accompanied only by Hemi, the stray dog who proves to be the perfect travel companion.  But the harrowing trip takes unexpected turns as strangers become friends, who make her question everything, and Cara finds that as the journey unfolds, so does her life--in ways, she could never imagine. Kay Bratt has written children's novels and eleven other novels but this is the first cross-over into contemporary women's fiction and I can say she crossed over and staked her claim....

Lori Golden's family has had more than its fair share of troubles. But through it, all Lori and her sister, Jessie, have always supported each other. Then Jessie is killed. And Lori's world is turned upside down. Devastated, Lori struggles to cope with her loss, and learn to live in a world without her bright, bubbly sister by her side. Around her, her already fractured family starts to fall apart. And as Lori and her mother try and pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, secrets long lost buried are coming painfully to light. Faced with the unthinkable, Lori is forced to ask herself how well she really knows those that are left behind... Have you ever been so excited or intrigued by a book cover that you just thought the book would far exceed your dreams?  Well, I was very drawn to the cover of this one, however, it didn't exceed my dreams.  I will say the book wasn't a total loss. It just feels a little flat or too predictable... Someone is s...

Every morning and evening, Zoe Walker takes the same route to the train station, waits at a certain platform, finds her favorite spot on the platform, finds her favorite spot in the car, never suspecting that someone is watching her... It all starts with a classified ad. During her commute home one night, while glancing through her local paper, Zoe sees her own face staring back at her, a grainy photo along with a phone number and a listing for a website called findtheone.com Other women begin appearing in the same ad, a different one every day, and Zoe realizes they've become victims of increasingly violent crimes-including rape and murder. With the help of a determined cop, she uncovers the ad's twisted purpose...a discovery that turns her paranoia into full-blown panic. For now, Zoe is sure that someone close to her up as the next target. And now that man on the train--the one smiling at Zoe from across the car--could be more than just a friendly stranger. He could be...

"Roanoke girls never last long around here. In the end, we either run or die." After her mother's suicide, fifteen-year-old Lane Roanoke came to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, on their vast estate in rural Kansas. Lane knew little of her mother's mysterious family, but she embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But when she discovered the dark truth at the heart of the family, she ran...fast and far away. Eleven years later, Lane is adrift in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her Allegra has gone missing. Did she run too? Or something worse? Unable to resist his pleas, Lane returns to help search, and to ease her guilt at having left Allegra behind. Her homecoming may mean a second chance with the boyfriend whose heart she broke that long ago summer. But it also means facing that devastating secret that made her flee, one that she may not be strong enough to run from again. As it weaves between Lane...

Saving Abby by Steena Holmes All children's book illustrator Claire Turner ever wanted was to be a mother.  After six years trying to conceive, she and her husband Josh, have finally accepted that she will never get pregnant with a baby of their own.  Yet, once they have given up hope, the couple gets the miracle they've been waiting for.  For the first few months of her pregnancy, Claire and Josh are living on cloud nine. But when she begins to experience debilitating headaches, blurred vision, and even fainting spells, the soon-to-be mother goes to the doctor and receives a terrifying diagnosis. Since any treatment could put the unborn baby's life at risk, the Turners must carefully weigh their limited options. And as her symptoms worsen, Claire will have to make an impossible decision; Save her own life, or save her child's?? Wow, right???!!! This is so loaded with emotion from the start that I literally was 😭😢😭. Even when I calmed myself down, I was sti...