Lyris

Our heroine, Nadia kills her sister's abusive boyfriend and discovers her life's work. She will kill people who do bad things to other people. It's a noble calling - and there's good money in it.

It helps that she's a psychopath and has no feelings of guilt or shame. In fact she feels cleansed afterward and if she goes too long without a good hit job, she begins to unravel mentally.

She's also a wife and mom and has everyone completely fooled into believing her night jobs are actually wedding planning events.

All is well until she gets an assignment to kill someone she knows (and whom she doesn't believe is really a bad person doing bad things to others.) After many twists and turns to the story and we are left somewhat hanging at the end – perfect for another book to continue the saga.

As someone who reads lots of books about serial killers, I really enjoyed this one – especially with its different version of psychopathy and hints that she may have inherited it from her now (maybe) demented grandmother.

This is a very fun read and I highly recommend it.

1967 Haight Asbury was the place to be wearing flowers in your hair, enjoying free love, powerful music, and turning on, tuning in and maybe dropping out. It seemed so ideal and for a time, it was.

This is the backdrop of the story of a California Napa Valley wine family. Winnie is a free spirit while her sister Miranda is the serious one. Their mother, Joan is left to run the family winery after her husband's alcoholic suicide. Dawn is Joan's granddaughter. All are affected by family secrets, addictions, love gone wrong, and ultimately by recovery.

If only we could all subscribe to the "all good things in moderation" dictum, but wine, like life in the Haight – when consumed to excess - is depicted as the family's downfall. Miranda is the only one who actually enjoys the wine for its taste – who refines the grapes to produce better product and who generally drinks sparingly. Everyone else drinks for the feeling – or the blocking of feeling - and that's where things fall apart.

This seems to be a cautionary tale. It also raises the issue of inherited addictive tendencies – Dawn seems to embody the nature vs. nurture example here.

However, there is definitely hope. Recovery is depicted as real people helping each other. As one person notes, this is the only disease cured by storytelling. People sharing and taking care of each other make a difference. Interestingly, t's a fictional story about a heroine named Phoebe that leads Dawn to finding help, her family, her true self and ultimately healing and love.

Since I grew up during the sixties, I identified with the ideals of the hippies and also with the characters in this book. And I still definitely enjoy a good glass of wine – for the taste – and in moderation.

Highly recommend this book – it would be excellent for discussion groups.

So many questions.

When is violence justified? Do the hoped for ends justify the means? What about the innocent victims – are they just necessary collateral damage? Is it noble to sacrifice your children to make the world better for other people's children – especially since there are so many more of them?

And even if the cause is just, does the violence actually advance it? Did bombing buildings and killing police end the Vietnam war/pave the way for Civil Rights legislation/end racism/sexual assault/human trafficking etc. etc? And finally when the author asks about today – and whether it's just as bad? Is it? Is ICE the Gestapo – does attacking them make for a better world? Are all illegal immigrants deserving of all rights including absolute freedom from arrest – even if they have committed multiple assaults on innocent people – are they today's radical victims acting out in virtuous violence? (Admittedly he doesn't defend the violence of the immigrants, but he does seem to believe defending them no matter what they may have done – as with the Black victims of the 60's70's who were arrested for actual crimes may be the new ideal.)

The author is ambivalent on these questions – particularly on the question of the effect on the children of the radicals. His adopted brother, particularly, suffered greatly as a result of his parents decisions.

Yet at the same time, the author wants us to understand the motivations of the revolutionaries– which are presented as pure and noble. And he makes us see that they were true believers. It wasn't just virtue signaling. They put their own lives literally on the line (and put their children at risk even when they hated doing it).

He makes us see them as humans doing what they thought was right. He forgives his parents for any harm he, himself, and his brothers suffered and shows us the love he also experienced.

Yet the questions remain.

I didn't follow the Murdaugh trial nor did I watch any of the made for TV dramatizations of his family life and events leading to the murders. This book was my introduction to all this and it has made me want to learn more.

The author does a masterful job of attempting to explain Alex Murdaugh, but as even he finally notes, it's not clear if anyone – even Alex himself – can truly understand what motivates him.

Did he really murder his wife and son? The jury convicted him – and relatively quickly. But was that because he is such a liar, fraud, and cheat that since he's clearly a bad person and one can't believe anything he says, that murder is not unbelievable and no one else seems to be a suspect? And maybe, as the author points out, the jury really didn't like being taken in even temporarily by his good-ole-boy-hale-fellow-well-met-you-know-I-would-never-lie-to-you persona – when it became clear that he had lied to them about why he lied repeatedly to the police about not being at the kennel. After that, his I would never hurt my wife and son rang less and less true apparently.

The author also did an amazing amount of research trying to understand Alex – was he a psychopath (he certainly didn't care about the people he hurt), an opioid addict (he was certainly that, but did that cause violent episodes), a "family annihilator" (someone who was so desperate to save them – and/or himself – from the shame about to come down on him over the fraud) or was he some portion of all three and even more besides?

This is a fascinating book and I highly recommend it.

This is a heartwarming story of a woman who wins a lottery offering a home in Greece at just the moment when she has lost her job and needs to get away from troubled relationships in England. She finds community with the other lottery winners as well as with the locals. She also finds letters hidden in the house from a woman who lived through the occupation in WWII.

As the result of her relationships with her new neighbors and with the inspiration from the letters, she finds the strength to stand up to her past and find healing in her new life. The descriptions of the Greek island and her new home are beautifully done and make me want to travel there.

Enjoyed the book and definitely recommend.

History is written by the winners. However, members of The Founders, an exclusive club in Rhode Island, whose ancestors go back to the Mayflower, are not satisfied with all they've won, they want to create a shrine to themselves via a museum incorporating the bones and relics of the Narragansett Indians they've vanquished – which they hope will also make them even richer than they currently are.

It was not enough to take the land, and to take native children from their families to "save" them and to relegate the native population to low paying jobs. While pretending to agree to incorporate native perspectives in their "educational" museum, they actually would prefer total elimination of the natives and, in fact, continually to them in the past tense as if they no longer existed.

All this is background for the story of a native woman who goes missing, native bones and relics (or more appropriately, "belongings") which are dug up from sacred burial grounds and then stolen. Syd, a Cherokee from Oklahoma (with a backstory of her own) and archeologist working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs investigates these two crimes.

This was a fascinating depiction of not only our early history with conquering native populations but also of some current attitudes – while also being a compelling mystery with some very interesting characters. Highly recommend!

Twenty-five years ago, on the Fourth of July, a girl disappears. Two local rich boys are suspected of her murder, but without a body, the case goes nowhere. Now, each of them has a son who is nearly drowned under very mysterious circumstances. One of them has a skull deposited in his mailbox.

The lead investigator, Lt. Koray, is the daughter of a serial killer who claimed the magical powers of the forest. She, also, experiences the sense of some sort of spirit power – in the forest, in the water, even in animals. She, herself, feels both attacked by that power when she tries to stop its revenge and later inhabited by it when she sees its justice.
So, is there really some sort of forest/river spirit avenging angel or is she imagining this due to trauma she experienced as a child?

Whatever is ultimately true, this is a story of several powerful men abusing primarily women, but also the overall community, who, while they get away with it for years, are finally called to account.

It's a very satisfying tale in the end and one I highly recommend.

Beginning in 2001, University of Alaska, Fairbanks journalism professor, Brian O'Donoghue enlisted the aid of his students - over several years - to investigate a 1997 murder in which 4 men were convicted - he believed wrongly.

In 2013, the Innocence Project joined in and finally, the convictions were overturned and the men were freed.

It was an interesting idea to involve journalism students - who actually did excellent work in turning up sources and evidence. What was so disheartening was the time it took to unravel what actually happened. To some extent, it shows how difficult it can be to arrive at the truth, but also how when the pressure is on to solve the crime quickly, how easy it can be to railroad someone.

In this case three of the four were Athabascan Indians and the victim was white - which many think contributed to the immediate assumption of guilt and conviction despite lack of clear evidence. What was most troubling was the refusal of the prosecutor to seriously question the methods of achieving confessions, the problem with their star witness and most importantly the insistence that the confession of the actual killer (admitted not only to his lawyer, but also to a prison guard) should not be permitted to be heard. I hadn't realized until reading this that one of the exceptions to lawyer/client confidentiality occurs when an admission reveals that an innocent party has been convicted. And, of course, the admission to the prison guard was not confidential in any case. Yet she still argued for suppression.

The only criticism I have of the book was that there was too much detail. Many of the witnesses interviewed - at length - really had little to nothing to add to finding the truth. It did illustrate how difficult investigations of this sort are, but it was a slog at times to read all of it. Also, while the author was writing about his experience, some of the details of his life - like his trip to India, didn't add much to the story either.

Overall, I would recommend the book as a treatise in how the justice system often does not work without a lot of help from committed investigators.

Back in the 1970's when much of society, including police officers, weren't sure sexual assault was actually a crime – or how to prove it if it was, Martha Goddard invented the rape kit. However, in true – you can get more accomplished if you don't care who gets the credit- form, she allowed a Chicago police sergeant named Louis Vitullo to take credit for it.

She then pushed for acceptance – even getting a grant from Playboy to pilot her program. Once DNA was discovered as an evidence tool in the 1980's the rape kit was instrumental in securing convictions – and exonerating the wrongly accused.

It also proved that some serial rapist profiling theories were inaccurate, and that rape was often a crime of opportunity rather than targeted at specific women or enacted in always the same way.

However, the rape kit was only successful in identifying rapists when it was used and there were
– and still are – problems with kits languishing in police warehouses untested and unimplemented in solving these crimes.

The inventor, herself, declined after her success in marketing the kit. She had been abused as a child and raped on vacation in the late 1970's and she eventually succumbed to mental illness.
We all owe a great debt of gratitude to Margaret Goddard for believing sexual assault is a crime that can be solved as well as to Pagan Kennedy for telling her story.

The narrator cries at funerals in order to support her husband (who does not work and who may or may not be having an affair) and herself. In so doing, she tries to honor the deceased by praising their lives and expressing sorrow at their deaths. In this way, she hopes to add meaning to their lives.

She also searches - and does not find, sadly - meaning in her own life.
It was hard to get into this book. I mean if the narrator doesn't really care if her husband is having an affair, why should I? She brings similar detachment to her other relationships - apparently reserving her emotion for her funeral crying.

I found this to be a sad, unsatisfying read and would not really recommend it.

In recording the history of what is happening in the ghetto, we see not only the daily cruelties, but also stories of love, kindness, sacrifice, and hope.

Shortly after WWI, Robert Barnes builds a mansion to surprise his wife, Anna, for her fortieth birthday. When he tells her he is taking her to Miami to celebrate, she imagines a romantic weekend and a gift of expensive jewelry. She certainly didn't expect to live there – in the swamp and the heat and among the bugs, iguanas, and alligators. She is not pleased. "This feels like the end of civilization as we know it – a far cry from Manhattan and the sensibilities we have grown accustomed to."

While, eventually, Florida grows on her and to some extent so does the luxurious house, she soon finds that the heat, bugs, and alligators are the least of her problems. When they give their first party, a woman falls into the bay and drowns. The police detective thinks it may not have been an accident.

Fast forward to 1941 when Carmen comes to stay with her sister, Carolina and brother-in-law, Asher, the current occupants of the house. Asher Wyatt bought the mansion in the 30's after it had been abandoned and eventually taken over by the state. Many strange and frightening things have been happening there and it is rumored that they are linked to the original owners.

Is the house cursed? Does it have a ghost? Are the deaths (yes more than 1) accidents – or murder?

This is the first book by the author, Chanel Cleeton, I've read and she has definitely left me wanting more. She does an excellent job maintaining suspense throughout – I was never sure who I could believe and who might be lying. I loved the character of Anna and her comments about Florida, her husband, his friends, and life in general.

Overall, I highly recommend this book.