The Purest Bond

An entertaining, thoroughly researched and profoundly informative book addressing the tremendous impact dogs have on human lives.

 

“Dogs…serve as a sort of balm to the mental health struggles and ongoing stress that are plaguing people worldwide. Our canine companions help us feel grounded and present-minded, leading by example,” writes authors Jenn Golbeck (The Golden Ratio Cookbook) and Stacey Colino (Unlock Your Menopause Type). In The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human-Canine Connection, they present an entertaining, insightful treatise on the impact dogs have on human life. This writing duo--with accomplished backgrounds in academic, scientific, and psychological issues--weaves together groundbreaking research and down-to-earth stories that explore the many benefits of the human-canine bond.

 

Supported by scientific information, the narrative weaves in psychological studies examining how dogs impact, support, and improve the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of the human condition. A thorough section on aging dogs and coping with loss and grief is most compassionately rendered.

 

“In exchange for us feeding, loving, and caring for them, (dogs) pay us back many times over.” The gratifying research culled and entertainingly presented by Golbeck and Colino, will change the lives of dog lovers and readers similarly.

 

The Purest Bone: Understanding the Human-Canine Connection by Jen Golbeck and Stacey Colino

Atria Books, $28.00 hardcover, 9781668007846, 256 pages

Publishing Date: November 14, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

The Patron Saint of Second Chances

A small, diminishing village in Italy--facing financial ruin; threatened with having the entire water supply cut-off--faces a hilarious revitalization by the prospect of an upcoming film shoot.

Community loyalty and the power of taking pride in one’s hometown--doing anything to save it--is the central theme of the very funny debut novel, The Patron Saint of Second Chances by Christine Simon.

Prometto, Italy (fictional) has 212 occupants, and one resident, Signor Giovannino Speranza, believes he has the power to change things—or at least he hopes so. Speranza is of the old school and traditional values. He is a 62-year-old husband, father and grandfather—a vacuum cleaner salesman-repairman disillusioned with young people always on their phones and social media and eagerly determined to leave town. He regularly turns to the saints to guide him and dispel his disappointments and arguments with God. Having always taken pride in Prometto, he’s become something of the local mayor.

Now that the town, in dire financial straits--the budget doesn’t have enough funds to restore the plumbing system and faces having the water turned off, forcing residents to relocate--desperate Speranza concocts a story about how Dante Rinaldi, a heartthrob movie star, is planning to film his next blockbuster near Prometto. The invented news takes off and injects a hopeful jolt of enthusiasm that rallies the town and beyond, including young people and even the local parish priest, while boosting tourism and local businesses in the process. But what will happen when Dante Rinaldi doesn’t descend on Prometto with a film crew and news gets out about the ruse Speranza has crafted?

Simon’s fun, clever story offers a hilarious literary escape. Readers will smile and laugh out loud at her well-drawn cast of quirky characters, those who long--and will do anything--to be a part of the film and its production. The plot snowballs, twisting in madcap ways with turns as sharp as the narrow roads that wind their way through the lovable charm of Prometto.  

The Patron Saint of Second Chances: A Novel by Christine Simon

Atria Book, $27.00 hardcover, 978-1982188771, 360 pages

Publication Date: April 12, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE 

Grave Reservations

 

An energetic cozy mystery follows a travel agent as she puts her psychic tendencies to work on a police cold case.

Cherie Priest (The Toll; The Inexplicables) is a prolific author who has published across genres, including steampunk, horror and sci-fi. In Grave Reservations, a smart and sassy first cozy mystery, she dips into the paranormal, telling the story of a fledgling travel agent with often erratic psychic tendencies. 

Leda Foley of Seattle owns and operates her own travel agency--Foley's Far-Fetched Flights of Fancy--and is struggling to get it off the ground. Leda also experiences very "strong feelings" and vibes about things. For fun, she practices her supernatural skills at a local bar, where she clairvoyantly selects karaoke for customers. When Leda books a flight heading out of Orlando, Fla., for Seattle Police detective Grady Merritt, a widowed father of a 17-year-old daughter, she gets a flash of insight that he should not board the plane. It leads her to proactively change his flight plans, redirecting him into Atlanta.

Leda's hasty decision upsets Grady. However, when Leda's hunch spares the detective from a fatal plane accident, it creates a bond. When grateful Grady returns to Seattle, the two begin a secret partnership, where the detective enlists Leda's psychic ability to help solve a cold case. In the process, demons from Leda's and Grady's pasts resurface, forcing them both to tie up loose threads and reconcile respective losses.

Polished prose, steady pacing and quirky characters, including Leda's lovable and loyal, long-term best friend--along with a cast of eccentric bar patrons--add levity and wit to this suspenseful story that unravels darker themes.

Grave Reservations: Booking Agents Book One by Cherie Priest

Atria Books (Simon and Schuster), $26.00 Hardcover, 9781982168896, 304 pages

Publication Date: October 26, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (October 29, 2021), link HERE

Piglet: The Unexpected Story of a Deaf, Blind, Pink Puppy and His Family

In this inspiring true story, a severely disabled rescue dog positively changes the life of one veterinarian and the world.

Sometimes, the little things in life have the power to change everything. Such was the case with Connecticut veterinarian Melissa Shapiro, who was asked by a local animal rescue organization to foster a barely two-pound puppy that was deaf, blind and morbidly skittish.

 

Piglet--named because of his pink coloring--was added to the family pack that included Shapiro's husband, three college-aged kids and six other dogs. Through weeks of trying to calm and stabilize the traumatized little puppy, Shapiro provided canine comfort through lots of love, the familiarity of established routines and developing a touch-style of sign language. When it came time to release the dog from foster care, Shapiro was faced with a dilemma: Did she really want someone else taking care of a dog she and her family had fallen in love with?

 

Thus, Shapiro embarked on a new chapter where she adopted Piglet and decided to share him--and the lessons of his life--with the world. His popularity soared on social media, where he raised awareness about special needs rescue organizations and other animal causes. This later led to Shapiro establishing an educational outreach program where Piglet--severely disabled, yet a joy-filled, loving teacher--helped children learn how to accept and work through life challenges.

 

Shapiro's inspirational memoir--candid details of her veterinary career, her family, lovable Piglet and his incredibly sweet, resilient spirit--will win hearts.

 

Piglet: The Unexpected Story of a Deaf, Blind, Pink Puppy and His Family by Melissa Shapiro, DVM; Mim Eichler Rivas

Atria Books (Simon and Schuster), $26.00 hardcover, 9781982167165, 320 pages

Publication Date: August 3, 2021

 

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (August 6, 2021), link HERE

Anxious People

This clever, dark comedy about human nature and relationships starts with a real estate open house that goes dreadfully awry when a bumbling bank robber shows up.

 Swedish author Fredrik Backman has entertained readers worldwide, drawing them into fictional realms with ordinary people facing the absurdities of life and death. In Anxious People, he mines similar terrain, cleverly assembling an ensemble cast of characters, some of them utterly exasperating. He sets them in a darkly comic predicament that will challenge them as a group and personally, opening the story to larger themes about the foibles, pitfalls and traps of living.

 

Backman's construct is straightforward: an open-house apartment viewing. What could possibly go wrong? Everything, especially when a gun-wielding bank robber targets a cashless bank and winds up, through a series of mishaps, at the open house. In bumbling, snowballing desperation, the robber takes eight people, high-maintenance strangers at the viewing, hostage. When the robber ultimately escapes, two police officers--a father and son facing personal struggles of their own--investigate the crime and try to make sense of the who, how and why of this topsy-turvy, totally-gone-awry robbery scenario and all involved.

 

Backman (Us Against You) skillfully employs an omniscient narrative voice and short, focused chapters that unwind an intricate plot through interspersed--extremely telling and very funny--police interrogation scenes. Readers are kept off-balance by details of the hostage siege as characters reveal their personal dilemmas. This intensifies the narrative tension and drama, upping the literal and figurative anxiousness of the book's title. Backman's signature storytelling wit and wisdom--the way he unravels his puzzle while peeling back layers of complex relationships, personal burdens and secrets carried by all--enables this fresh, quirky, over-the-top comedy to coalesce into poignant profundity.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Atria, $28.00 Hardcover, 9781501160837, 352 pages

Publication Date: September 29, 2020

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (September 8, 2020), link HERE

 

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (August 14, 2020), link HERE

Louisiana Lucky

A richly entertaining story about three sisters who share a winning lottery jackpot that upends all their lives.

In Julie Pennell's Louisiana Lucky, three sisters from Brady, La., share a lottery jackpot of $204 million, and the outcomes result in a novel that is breezy and enjoyable, filled with charm and wit, romance and wisdom.

 

The Breaux sisters, all in their 20s, are hard-working, middle-class and bonded by family. One night a month, the lottery-playing girls gather for dinner and drinks and watch the Powerball drawing on television. Hanna, the oldest, lives with her struggling contractor husband and two kids in an inherited Victorian house in disrepair. Callie, the middle sister, is a still-single, brilliant journalist selling herself short working at a local paper. And Lexi, the youngest, is a hairdresser engaged to a vet school student with an overbearing, controlling, high-society mother. Each sister dreams of taking home the jackpot. Every month, they play two random and one predetermined number, as well as meaningful numbers selected from the heart--years parents have been married, house numbers, date they met a true love, number of kids. When their ship finally comes in, each sister takes home $68 million (before taxes), but that's when the real trouble starts. New choices and challenges upend the manageability of their former lives.

 

Pennell (The Young Wives Club) spins fresh perspective into classic adages like "be careful what you wish for" and "money is the root of all evil." She delivers a winning story--with appealing characters and a well-conceived, page-turning plot--about ordinary people changed by money in their individual ways.

Louisiana Lucky by Julie Pennell

Atria/Emily Bestler Books, $16.99 Paperback, 9781982115630, 320 pages

Publication Date: August 4, 2020

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (August 7, 2020), link HERE

 

The Helpline

A 30-something numbers wiz uncovers surprising truths about herself, her small Australian town and the people in it.

When Germaine Johnson loses her job as a senior mathematician at an insurance company, the 30-year-old Australian numbers wiz and sudoku aficionado's life is upended. Data points, algorithms and variables are how Germaine--with a very high opinion of herself and her abilities--navigates the world. She may be mathematically brilliant, but her social skills are dismal. This makes her virtually unemployable, until her cousin Kimberly offers a lead on a job at a council office in the city of Deepdene. The facility manages the senior citizens helpline, a phone-in service for older residents who need advice, or are lonely and need someone to talk to.

Perceptive, painfully exacting and over-achieving, Germaine soon catches the attention of Deepdene's mayor, who asks her to deal with a parking problem plaguing the senior center and an adjacent golf club. The task brings Germaine in contact with Don Thomas, who owns the club. She instantly recognizes good-looking Don as Alan Cosgrove, the 2006 national sudoku champion. Alan was once a very positive influence--from afar--in Germaine's life. "Sort of like the father I never had," admits Germaine, who is instantly starstruck and smitten. But why has Alan changed his name? Why is he managing a golf club? And is there really a parking problem, or is something else actually going on in town?

These questions form the basis of The Helpline, a clever and moving—often madcap--journey through the realities of everyday life, local politics and power plays. Debut Australian novelist Katherine Collette delivers a hilarious story that is sure to charm readers.

The Helpline: A Novel by Katherine Collette

Atria Books, $26.00 Hardcover, 9781982111335, 304 pages 

Publication Date: July 23, 2019

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 23, 2019), link HERE

Book Club Ideas: Historical Fiction

From My Shelf

Orphan Train (paperback, $14.99, Morrow) by Christina Baker Kline remains a book club favorite. This story about the fictional friendship between a young Irish immigrant and a 91-year-old woman ties in with the history of the trains that transported 200,000 abandoned children put up for adoption in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century.

The aim of historical fiction is to situate characters--sometimes real, sometimes imagined--amid actual events and backdrops that are accurately rich in detail and/or epic in scope. The genre continues to flourish. Here are some other titles worth a closer look:

Isabelle Allende examines the past and present, youth and old age, in The Japanese Lover (paperback $16, Atria, July), a novel about destiny, sacrifice and redemption. The story is set in a senior home, but the details are anchored in 1939, when an eight-year-old Polish girl flees the Nazis and goes to live with her aunt and uncle in San Francisco. There, the girl makes friends--and eventually falls in love--with a Japanese boy interned in the United States following Pearl Harbor.

Lee Smith sets Guests on Earth (paperback, $14.95, Algonquin) in 1936 in Highland Hospital, a noted psychiatric facility in Asheville, N.C. Smith examines ideas of sanity versus insanity, art and madness via her orphaned, 13-year-old protagonist, Evalina Toussaint. Evalina is institutionalized and falls under the spell of flamboyant Zelda Fitzgerald (wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald) who was an actual patient in the hospital before a tragic, suspicious fire killed her and several other women.

The Civil War and the horrors of slavery infuse The Invention of Wings (paperback, $17, Penguin) by Sue Monk Kidd, a tale inspired by the life of 19th-century abolitionist and suffragist Sarah Grimké. Kidd tackles issues of race, gender, activism, religion and feminism via the creation of two richly drawn characters: the strong-willed daughter of a wealthy South Carolina plantation owner and her personal slave whom she seeks to liberate.

Note: This column (published 6/10/16) has been reprinted with the permission of Shelf Awareness: Shelf Awareness for Readers. Link HERE to read the article as it originally appeared.

First Pages in Fiction: Scents and Sensibility

The first paragraphs of a novel can set the foundation for what's to follow in terms of tone, character and story intent.

Here are the first few paragraphs from the novel, Scents and Sensibility by Spencer Quinn:

Home at last! We'd been away so long, first in swampy country, then in a big city--maybe called Foggy Bottom--that confused me from the get-go. Is there time to mention the air in both those places before we really get started? Soggy and heavy: that sums it up.

Where were we? Was it possibly . . . home? Yes! Home! Home at last! Our home--mine and Bernie's--is on Mesquite Road. Mesquite Road's in the Valley. Quite recently I might have heard that the Valley's in Arizona, but don't count on that. What matters is that right now I was inhaling a nice big noseful of Valley air. Light and dry, with a hint of greasewood and just plain grease: perfect. I felt tip-top. Bernie opened our door, kicked aside a huge pile of mail, and we went in.

"Ah," said Bernie, dropping our duffel bag on the floor. I did the first thing that came to mind--just about always my MO--which in this case meant sniffing my way from room to room to room, zigzagging back and forth, nose to floor. Front hall, our bedroom, Charlie's bedroom--mattress bare on account of Charlie not being around much since the divorce--office, with the circus-elephant-pattern rug, where I actually picked up the faint whiff of elephant, even though no elephant had ever been in the office. I'd had some experience with elephants, specifically an elephant name of Peanut, no time to go into that now...

Do you get the idea the narrator isn't a person? Can you tell the voice leading you into the story is that of a dog? How? The speaker seems conflicted, yet what person do you know who sniffs his way from room to room? And the setting? It's telling that the speaker doesn't really know where "the Valley" is located, but as he inhales a "big, noseful of Valley air," he finds it light and dry, so we can gather this scene is set in the desert. And what's with the elephant rug? Well, that's what makes the reader keep reading...

If you're not familiar with the Chet and Bernie mystery-thriller series, you're missing out. Each book, there are eight in all, is narrated by Chet, a hyperactive dog, who works with his laid-back master and partner, Bernie Little of the Little Detective Agency.

In Scents and Sensibility, the duo have returned home from visiting Bernie's girlfriend in Washington D.C. and realize they've been robbed. The safe in Bernie's office has been pried out of a wall and stolen—complete with a prized watch that belonged to Bernie's grandfather. Then they realize their neighbor has an adult son (one they never knew he had, who is now residing next door) and also has a mature Saguaro Cactus suddenly growing on his front lawn. Where did it come from? How did it get there? It's against the law to move a cactus of this variety. Knowing the neighbor had a key to Chet and Bernie's house in case of emergency, is it possible the neighbor's son is the thief and the cactus transporter? What begins as a simple welcome home set-up evolves into another case—another dangerous, crime-solving adventure—for Chet and Bernie involving cactus thieves, murder and a kidnapping.

This clever, funny and riveting series is perfect for fans of crime/mystery fiction and animal/pet lovers.

Scents and Sensibility by Spencer Quinn

Atria Books, $25.00 Hardcover, 9781476703428, 320 pp
Publication Date: July 14, 2015
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Ordinary Grace

Mystery writer William Kent Krueger has taken a break from his award-winning Cork O'Connor mystery series to give readers the gift of ORDINARY GRACE, an atmospheric novel about forty year-old Frank Drum looking back on a fateful summer that changed him and his family - as well as his perceptions of the world and people in it. 

The book details Frank's journey in the summer of 1961, when he was 13 years old and living in New Bremen, Minnesota with his traditional, "All-American" family - his father, a Christian minister; his mother a once-budding musician; his younger brother, a stutterer, who is wise and compassionate;  and his beautiful, musically gifted and much-adored older sister, headed for Julliard. In 1961, the country, and this community, was infused with faith and wholesome innocence, but death paid several visits to New Bremen during a sweltering summer via the accidental death of a teenager (was it really an accident?), the natural death of a stranger, a suicide and a murder that shatters lives and futures.

William Kent Krueger renders a thoughtful portrait of small town life and the inhabitants therein. Via strong, multi-layered characterizations, the author maps the deep-rooted values that once marked the souls of flawed, God-fearing people. Frank narrates this story from the perspective of adulthood, which lends authority to the magnitude of grief and the search for understanding when evil impacts the lives and hearts of an entire community. In the end, the themes that emerge in this moving coming-of-age story become timeless as the Drum family could be any faith-filled family--past or present--forced to confront and come to terms with the vagaries of life, guilt and dark nights of the soul.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Atria Books, $24.99, Hardcover, 9781451645828, 320 pp

Publication Date: March 26, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This book was provided for review by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster

The Comfort of Lies

Motherhood is at the crux of The Comfort of Lies, a novel that braids the stories of three, very different women - women bonded by secrets, lies and a child conceived out of wedlock, the byproduct of an illicit affair between Tia, a young woman grappling to find her place in the world, and Nathan, a happily married man and father of two boys. 

When Tia tells Nathan that she's pregnant, he suddenly vanishes from her life. Thus, Tia decides to give her baby girl up for adoption to a woman named Caroline, a workaholic doctor/pathologist, whose husband is pressuring her to start a family.  

Fast forward five years: Caroline, the girl's adoptive mother, persists in working long hours, making excuses and skirting her responsibilities for the child,which takes a toll on her marriage.  Maybe she's just not cut out to be a wife and a mother, after all?

In the meantime, Nathan's wife, Juliette, believes she's put the knowledge of her husband's affair behind her. But when a letter arrives addressed to her husband from Tia, "the other woman," and she discovers that Nathan has a child, a daughter, he's never told her about, Juliette's seemingly re-created life and marriage is again shattered. She secretly goes in search of both Tia and Caroline in order to learn more.

Issues of trust, vulnerability and forgiveness emerge as these three women's lives intersect. Each is forced to face the facts of her life and make hard decisions for the future. Is there any way this five year-old child might be loved by all three women?

Randy Susan Meyers (The Murderer's Daughters) has written a multi-faceted, thought-provoking novel about the complicated lives and challenges contemporary women--and families--face. Chapters told from alternating viewpoints allow readers to experience the psyches of the characters as their private motivations and pain are examined until truth is ultimately exposed.

The Comfort of Lies by Randy Susan Meyers

Atria Books, $25.00, Hardcover, 9781451673012,  336 pp

Publication Date: February 12, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This book was provided for review by Atria Books/Simon and Schuster

Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society

Amy Hill Hearth (Having our Say: The Delaney Sisters' First 100 Years) takes the reader back to 1962, when Naples, Florida was a "sunbaked southern backwater town" and not what it is today, one of "the richest, swankiest places on earth." The book is told from the perspective of 80 year-old, divorced Dora Witherspoon, who recollects a time when she was a postal worker and was caught, on the job, violating postal regulations by perusing the latest issue of Vogue addressed to a glamorous newcomer in town, a transplant from Boston, Massachusetts , Jackie Hart. When Jackie catches Dora in the act and asks, "What else do you like to read?" the encounter sparks the formation of the Collier County Women's Literary Society, a group that draws an array of local misfits who gather to read and discuss great books - and inadvertently reveal mysteries and secrets about their own lives.

The society grows to include the local librarian; the town's one and only Sears employee; a woman who once did prison time for allegedly killing her husband; a middle-aged poet; a token male member; and a young "colored" girl, a maid, who is secretly whisked to the meetings in the racially segregated town.

In the midst of it all, the KKK is hard at work and Collier County becomes rapt by an anonymous radio show anchored by Miss Dreamsville, whose mysterious identity spices up life in the small town. Inspired by true events, Amy Hill Hearth has written a heart-tugging story about how this band of colorful characters finds liberation--and friendship--amid a time and place where "sameness" was once revered.   

Miss Dreamsville and The Collier County Women's Literary Society by Amy Hill Hearth

Atria Books, $15, Trade paper, 9781451675238, 272 pp

Publication Date: October 2, 2012

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (10/12/12), click HERE.