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Publication Date:  June 28, 2022 Format:  Audio Genre:   YA AA fiction  Narrators:  Ariel Blake Publisher:  Macmillan Audio Length:  8 hours 43 min Buy:  Kindle  |  Audio Synopsis Sixteen-year-old Beau Willet has dreams of being an artist and one day leaving the Chicago projects she’s grown up in. But after her older sister, Katia, is killed by an off-duty police officer, Beau knows she has to clear her sister’s name by finding the only witness to the murder; Katia’s no-good boyfriend, Jordan, who has gone missing. If she doesn't find him and tell the world what really happened, Katia's death will be ignored, like the deaths of so many other Black women who are wrongfully killed. With the help of her fr...

  Publication Date:  January 29, 2013 Format:  paperback Genre:   Womens Fiction  Publisher:  Grand Central Publishing Length:  480  pages Buy:    Paperback  |  Audiobook  Synopsis Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of  Afterlife , has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves—lines from her favorite author...

  Publication Date:  October 9, 2018 Format:  Paperback Genre:   Non-fiction, death, dying Publisher:  WW Norton & Co      Length:  288 pages Buy:    Kindle  |  Paperback  Synopsis Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the world’s funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. Her account questions the rituals of the American funeral industry―especially chemical embalming―and suggests that the most effective traditions are those that allow mourners to pers...

  Publication Date:  April 6, 2021 Format:  Hardcover Genre:   Addiction/Recovery/memoir Publisher: Gallery Books                               Length:  272 pages Buy:  Hardcover  |  Kindle  Synopsis When he was two years old, Hunter Biden was badly injured in a car accident that killed his mother and baby sister. In 2015, he suffered the devastating loss of his beloved big brother, Beau, who died of brain cancer at the age of forty-six. These hardships were compounded by the collapse of his marriage and a years-long battle with drug and alcohol addiction. In  Beautiful Things,  Hunter recounts his descent into substance abuse and his tortuous path to sobriety. The story ends with where Hunter is today—a sober married man with a new baby, finally able to appreciate the beautiful things in life. Review:  I didn't know that much about Hunter Biden bef...

Release Date: May 3, 2016 Publisher: Thomas Nelson Format: Kindle Pages: 416 pages Genre: Fiction, religious fiction, christian lit Buy: Kindle | Paperback | Synopsis: Only in death could Bobby Barnes begin to understand the true nature of love. No one in Mattingly ever believed Bobby Barnes would live to see old age. Drink would either rot Bobby from the inside out or dull his senses just enough to send his truck off the mountain on one of his nightly rides. Although Bobby believes such an end possible and even likely, it doesn't stop him from taking his twin sons Matthew and Mark into the mountains one Saturday night. A sharp curve, blinding headlights, metal on metal, his sons' screams. Bobby's final thought as he sinks into blackness is a curious one— There will be stars. Yet it is not death that greets him beyond the veil. Instead, he returns to the day he has just lived and soon finds he is not alone in this strange new world. Six others are trap...

Title:   Dying Echo: A Grim Reaper Mystery (Grim Reaper Series) by Judy Clemens Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press 250 pages Genre: Mystery I received this book as an electronic ARC from netgalley.com .  It was published August 7, 2012 Synopsis:  It's been years since Casey Maldonado visited her hometown, and the only reason she's returning now is to get her brother Ricky out of jail, where he sits after being arrested for the brutal murder of Alicia McManus, his girlfriend of several months. Casey believes in her brother's innocence, but proving that to the cops is a different thing altogether. As Casey and her ever-present companion Death investigate Alicia's murder, it becomes clear she was not who she claimed to be, from her name to her non-existent past. Instead of a solid history, she left only questions when she died. Where did she come from? What secrets did she know? And, most importantly, who were the three people she spoke of when Death carried her away? ...

Title: The Raising by Laura Kasischke Publisher: Harper Collins 496 pages Genre: Fiction/supernatural I received this book as an advanced electronic copy from the publisher via netgalley.com  it is due to be released at the end of March. Synopsis: The accident was tragic, yes. Bloody and horrific and claiming the life of a beautiful young sorority girl. NICOLE was a straight A student from a small town. Sweet-tempered, all-American, a fomer Girl Scout, and a virgin. But it was an accident. And that was last year. It’s fall again, a new semester, a fresh start. CRAIG, who has not been charged with murder, is focusing on his classes, and also on avoiding Nicole’s sorority sisters, who seem to blame him for her death even though the police did not. PERRY, Craig’s roommate, is working through his own grief (he grew up with Nicole, after all, and had known her since kindergarten) by auditing Professor Polson’s sociology class: Death, Dying, and the Undead. MIRA has been ...

Title: Imitation in Death by Nora Roberts writing as JD Robb Publisher: Berkley Books 342 pages Synopsis:  Book 16 in the Eve Dallas death series.  In the year 2059 Eve Dallas NY homicide detective, married to multi-billionaire Rourke is drawn into a serial murder case where the killer likes imitating the most infamous serial killers in history.  Meanwhile her assistant is prepping to take her detective exam and is making Eve feel like a nervous mother, a feeling she is definitely not used to. Review:  After that horrid book I tried to read this was a great break.  If you are not already an Eve Dallas fan you should be.  Although these books are billed as romance they have all the suspense and gritty crime ridden dirt of a good mystery thriller.  Imitation in Death is not for the first time reader though, it often alludes to previous books and the relationships between the characters may leave new readers puzzled. I love all their futuristic...