Jane Litte's Blog, page 27

End-of-2023 Open Thread for Readers

Credit: tunejadez

Happy New Year to you all! Do you have great reads from 2023 to talk about? What were your favorites? Which books were weakest or frustrated you most? And which books are you most looking forward to in 2024? As always, chatting about stuff in general is welcome.

Kaetrin’s Best of 2023 list

 In the order I read them, here are my top 10 reads of 2023 (of books released in 2023). Plus a bonus book just because.

Chick Magnet by Emma Barry

This would be a quick visit. He wouldn’t think about her hair. He wouldn’t confess anything. Under no circumstances would he flirt.

…

Inside, in worn jeans and Chuck Taylors, stood Nicole. She had her back to him, and her hair fell loose around her shoulders, long and shiny with the slightest curl to it.

Right, he’d already failed to ignore he...

Review: A Little Bit Country by Brian D. Kennedy

Emmett Maguire wants to be country music’s biggest gay superstar – a far reach when you’re seventeen and living in Illinois. But for now, he’s happy to do the next best thing: Stay with his aunt in Jackson Hollow, Tennessee, for the summer and perform at the amusement park owned by his idol, country legend Wanda Jean Stubbs.

Luke Barnes hates country music. As the grandson of Verna Rose, the disgraced singer who had a famous falling out with Wanda Jean, Luke knows how much pain country music ha...

REVIEW: Deputy While Immigrant : The Story of a German Who Became a Deputy Sheriff in Arizona by Tom Peine

The incredible journey of a German immigrant, who came from the corporate world of business lunches and suit-and-tie dress code, to experiencing 9/11 shortly after arrival in his new home country. Then destiny flung him to the far southwestern corner of the United States, where he became a Deputy Sheriff at the age of 41.

In this autobiography, Peine takes the reader on a virtual ride-along, chronicling his life on the beat, later as detective, and finally as official spokesperson for the depa...

Review: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets? A novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived.

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the stor...

Jayne’s Best of 2023 List

Kinfolk by Sean Dietrich

Sometimes it’s the most unlikely meetings that give us life’s greatest gifts.

1970s, Southern Alabama. Sixty-two-year-old Jeremiah Lewis Taylor, or “Nub,” has spent his whole life listening to those he’s loved telling him he’s no good—first his ex-wife, now his always-disapproving daughter. Sure, his escapades have made him, along with his cousin and perennial sidekick, Benny, just a smidge too familiar with small town law enforcement, but he’s never harmed anyone—excep...

REVIEW: By Sword and Fan by Kathleen Buckley

Margaret is her brothers’ dependent. With her sister-in-law expecting another child and her younger brother soon to marry, Margaret will lose her home. When her former suitor offers her work as a governess, she accepts, despite misgivings.

Unable to marry his first love, Alasdair abandoned his home for a disappointing military career. When his dying brother begs him to return, he agrees. He must protect his brother, the children, and the estate from his brother’s wife and her greedy family.

Wh...

REVIEW: Wheel of Fortune by C.F. Dunn

1469. England is in turmoil. For almost ten years, the attractive and charismatic Edward IV has ruled with the Earl of Warwick’s support, but now rebellion threatens the fragile peace.

Young and determined, Isobel Fenton is resolved that nothing will separate her from her beloved manor of Beaumancote, even if it does mean marrying Thomas Lacey. But Isobel is unaware of the importance she and her land represent nor of the agenda of the formidable Earl in whose care she finds herself. As an unse...

Review: Murder Crossed Her Mind (A Pentecost and Parker mystery) by Stephen Spotswood

The latest action-packed installment in the Nero Award-winning Pentecost & Parker Mystery series follows Lillian and Will tracking the suspicious disappearance of a woman who might have known too much. From the author of Fortune Favors the Dead and Murder Under Her Skin.

Vera Bodine, an elderly shut-in with an exceptional memory, has gone missing and famed detective Lillian Pentecost and her crackerjack assistant Willowjean “Will” Parker have been hired to track her down. But the New York City ...

REVIEW: Graffiti on the Wall of the Universe (Sorrow Falls Series, Book 3) by Gene Doucette

Annie Collins emerged from the wreckage of the last invasion of Sorrow Falls with a spaceship in her garden, a loud alien idea in her head, and—because returning to college was out of the question—a lot of free time.
What she chose to do with the idea, the spaceship, and all that free time, kickstarted a worldwide technological boom. Now, nine years later, it seems as if not a day passes without the announcement of a new breakthrough in something, be it quantum computing, nuclear energy, neuro...