Effie Olsen's Summer Special

A fun, delicious romcom about a down-on-her-luck chef who returns to her small Maine hometown and rekindles a relationship with an old friend. 

Second-chance romance, culinary culture, and a beautiful seaside setting sweetly combine in Effie Olsen’s Summer Special, a deliciously appetizing romcom by Rochelle Bilow (Ruby Spencer’s Whiskey Year).

 

Broke and without a backup plan, Effie Olsen--a single, 33-year-old, professional chef--loses her “dream job” in San Francisco. She packs up her “knife bag and a few chef’s coats” and returns, after 16-years, to her “absurdly small, insufferably chatty” hometown of Adler Isle, Maine. Effie takes refuge under the pretext of a summer visit with her father and her younger sister, a “Generation Z financial prodigy.”

 

Effie’s return reunites her with Ernie Callahan, her still-single, former high school BFF. Ernie works as a chef at “Brown Butter,” a “farm to table… Michelin-starred restaurant” operated by a sexist male head chef who offers Effie a job. With Effie and Ernie working under the same roof, the two easily fall into favor and rekindle a “bucket list” of planned field trips of watching sunsets, indulging in giant lobster rolls, and even salsa dancing.  Along the way of their making fun, new memories, a situation arises at the restaurant that calls professional integrity into question—might the dilemma impinge upon the old friends turning into lovers?

 

Bilow’s insider knowledge of the restaurant industry is a key ingredient that adds depth and authenticity to this spicy, richly satisfying story that blends the pleasures of true love with elements of self-discovery.

 

Effie Olsen’s Summer Special by Rochelle Bilow

Berkley, 18.00 paperback, 9780593547908, 384 pages

Publication Date: April 30, 2024

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

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (May 2, 2024), link HERE 

The Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County

A tenderly drawn, multi-generational novel about the bonds of family, food, faith, and the rallying sustenance of small-town communities.

 

In The Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County, Claire Swinarski debuts her first adult novel, a poignantly refreshing story centered on the bonds of family, food, faith, and small-town communities.

 

At the helm is Esther Larson, a warm, 82-year-old, Wisconsin widow—a mother and grandmother. Esther and a group of local women, ‘The Funeral Ladies,’ have shared a bond for decades, providing luncheons for the bereaved in the basement of St. Anne’s Catholic Church. When the ‘funeral ladies’ learn that Esther’s been conned out of $30,000, they--along with Esther’s family--devise a plan to write a local cookbook. Can they raise enough funds to save Esther’s home?

 

Along the way, a pie Esther serves at a funeral arranged by celebrity chef, Ivan Welsh-- his wife dies in a tragic car accident--wows him enough to take notice. After Ivan and his Chicago-based adult stepson, Cooper, and Cricket, the 13-year-old daughter Ivan shared with his deceased wife, visit the town for the burial services, they decide to stay on. They rent an Airbnb from Esther’s adult granddaughter, Iris, who falls romantically for Cooper, a former paramedic who now works “flipping pancakes” at the local diner. Cooper harbors a secret that impinges upon his life—might it affect Irises’ life, as well?

 

Serious themes--underscored by tenets of love, acceptance, and forgiveness--are compassionately threaded through Swinarski’s (What Happened to Rachel Riley?) tenderly drawn story that will hold multi-generational appeal.

 

The Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County by Claire Swinarski

Avon Books (Harper Collins), $30.00 hardcover, 9780063319875, 272 pages

Publishing Date: March 12, 2024

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

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (March 12, 2024), link HERE 

A Happier Life

The renovation of an old family house in North Carolina reveals discoveries about the past and encourages a young woman at a crossroads in the present to make a fresh start in life. 

Author Kristy Woodson Harvey has built a brand writing tender, heartfelt stories that showcase Southern flair, smalltown life, and the bonds of family and friendship. In A Happier Life, she adds to her growing body of work, offering readers a poignant story about one contemporary woman and one woman from the past, both facing change in their lives.

 

The book launches with 30-something, Keaton Smith. She is Southern woman transplanted to a high-powered job working for a New York City “lifestyle brand” company. On the same day Keaton gets dumped from her job and by her beau, she’s asked by her mother to clear out the house her mother grew up in--a home Keaton didn’t know was still in the family--in Beaufort, North Carolina.

 

Keaton is reluctant. However, being at a crossroads and with time on her hands, she takes on the task. When she steps into the 254-year-old house, she finds it has been left eerily untouched--complete with rotary telephone--since the night her grandparents died unexpectedly in a tragic car accident in August 1976.

 

As Keaton settles in and begins to assess the home, she starts to assemble pieces, like a puzzle, of her grandparents’ lives. Did they really die by accident? Or could there be more to the story? Keaton becomes more greatly intrigued when she starts to read her grandmother’s journal. It further encourages Keaton in her determination to find answers. She mingles with the locals and even strikes up a relationship with a young father who lives with his son next door.

 

What ensues is a captivating, heartwarming story that combines a long-lost family saga with elements of mystery and romance. Readers will be riveted and wowed by Woodsen’s (The Summer of Songbirds, The Wedding Veil) 12^th winning novel.

 

 

A Happier Life by Kristy Woodson Harvey

Gallery Books (Simon and Schuster), $28.99 hardcover, 9781668012192, 384 pages

Publication Date: June 25, 2024

To order this book on Bookshop/INDIEBOUND, link HERE

15 Summers Later

A moving, thought-provoking story about how a shared, horrific experience from the past resurfaces and upends the lives of two, estranged sisters. 

The different ways individuals process, cope with, and try to move on from trauma marks the central theme of 15 Summers Later, a thought-provoking novel from prolific author, RaeAnne Thayne. 

The past is never past for the Howell sisters of Emerald Creek, Idaho. The two girls suffered a life-changing trauma in their childhoods that became a secret that impacted and forever changed both of their lives…and also estranged them. 

The one sister, Ava, moved away and built a new life for herself via a seemingly happy marriage to Cullen. However, when Ava publishes a memoir that details the private horror from the past--the book becomes a best-seller--Cullen cannot deal with the publicity. He feels Ava, harboring a shocking secret, has betrayed him. Thus, their marriage comes undone. With her ‘perfect’ world in a shambles, Ava returns home to try and make amends with her sister, Madison. 

“Madi” has taken years to overcome and heal. Tenacious, she, too, has struggled to move on. Working hard to establish a “no-kill” shelter for abandoned pets, she finds herself falling in love with her long-time, secret crush—local veterinarian, Dr. Luke Gentry. But when Ava resurfaces in her life and the past again comes calling, questions are raised: If Luke knew the truth about Madi (and her sister)--the horrors faced fifteen years before--would he, too, turn his back on her? 

Readers--especially fans of Debbie Macomber, Susan Wiggs and Robyn Carr--will bask in Thayne’s (The Café at Beach End, Christmas at the Shelter Inn) characteristically sensitive, compassionate storytelling. Readers will not soon forget this suspensefully drawn story--infused with themes of love, forgiveness, and redemption--that maps sibling drama, family loyalty, affection for animals, and two, tender love stories that unfold side-by-side.

15 Summers Later: A Novel by RaeAnne Thayne

Canary Street Press (Harlequin Books/HarperCollins Publishers), $17.99 paperback, 97813350009333, 352 pages

Publishing Date: June 18, 2024

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

The Year of What If

An enlightened, feel-good novel about a middle-aged woman who goes on a quest to revisit her past in order map out her future. 

Just when it appears as though 42-year-old Carla Carter--a divorced dating expert and entrepreneur--is about to start a glorious new chapter in her life, a visit to a psychic upends her hoped for ‘happy ending’ in Phaedra Patrick’s enlightened, feel-good new novel, The Year of What If. 

Carla is emerging from a sordid past. A supposed curse was said to be placed upon her family many years before that has familial folks believing that all females in the bloodline will never find true and lasting love. Carla has always attributed the hex to her first, regrettable (and forgettable) first marriage. 

After she establishes Logical Love, a dating app, and the algorithm pairs her up with Tom, a game inventor who later becomes her fiancé, it would appear as though Carla is on the road to a fresh, new start…and she’ll finally be the one to break the dreaded spell. 

Her superstitious family, however, intervenes and forces Carla to visit a psychic who urges that Tom isn’t the man she should marry. Rather, she believes a man Carla met twenty years before, during Carla’s ‘gap-year’ after college graduation, is really the love of her life. 

Upon the urging of the psychic and her family, Carla cannot rest. She sets off on a quest--not telling Tom about the nature of her travels--through Europe in search of looking up men who might’ve crossed her path during that oh-so-innocent time in her life. 

With signature insight and tender humor, Patrick (The Little Italian Hotel, The Messy Lives of Book People) once again takes readers on an exciting, adventurous literary journey where one woman’s search for a former flame actually leads her down a path to self-discovery.

The Year of What If: A Novel by Phaedra Patrick

Park Row Books/HarperCollins, $17.99 paperback, 978-0778310891, 336 pages

Publishing Date: June 25, 2024

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

Mystery Magazine

I am pleased to share that Mystery Magazine has featured one of my comic mystery short stories in their latest issue (May 2024). 

In "My Son, My Son," a Southern woman (a wife and mother) becomes exasperated by her notorious small-time criminal son, her "do-good" of a husband, and the stifling nature of her hometown.

The issue of the magazine is available to read as an ezine (via Kindle), via select library platforms, and it can also be purchased in hardcopy from Amazon or direct from the Mystery Magazine website. 

Happy Reading! Click directly on links below to purchase: 

Mystery Magazine (May 2024) 

Kindle (digital copy) Newsstand

Amazon (paper copy) 

NOTE: Back in 2019, I had another mystery short published by this same magazine (when it was called Mystery Weekly). You can learn more about that story, "To Whom It May Concern" - a comic mystery about a corporate Client Intimacy Expert, with a very high opinion of himself, whose career snowballs into a life of crime - by clicking on the link HERE.

If you like the story (and the magazine), please consider leaving a review on Amazon...and I would also appreciate your leaving (hopefully positive) reviews for my other books/work on Amazon, as well. Reviews help (struggling) authors better promote their work. Thank you :)

Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice

The continuation of a fun, comic mystery series where a dysfunctional family travels to Atlantic City and faces mayhem, mischief, and murder.

Fast action and clever wit course through Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice, the fourth installment in a wildly fun, comic mystery series by Elle Cosimano.

 

Finlay “Finn” Donovan is a divorced, mother of two; a chronically blocked romantic suspense novelist who, over three books, has been up to her eyeballs in mayhem, mischief, and murder. She’s been mistaken for a contract killer. She’s kept her ex-husband safe, away from someone (other than her) wanting to kill him. And she’s gone up against the Russian mob. Along the way, Finn’s been wooed by a ‘hot’ police officer.

 

The antics continue when Finn and her tribe travel from Virginia to Atlantic City, NJ, on the pretext of a much-needed, get-away weekend. The trip covertly involves Finn tracking down a stolen car, negotiating with a devious loan shark, and rescuing the long-lost beau of Vero—her bilingual, live-in nanny, confidante, and crime-solving cohort. A posse piles into an old Buick and sets off on a zany adventure. The passengers include Finn and her two young children; their father, Finn’s jealous ex, Steven; Finn’s overbearing mother; and Vero. Once in Atlantic City, a murder suddenly upends the secret agenda. Will the clever ingenuity of Finn and Vero bring luck enough for them to hit a jackpot for justice?

 

Cosimano (Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun, Finlay Donovan Knocks ‘Em Dead) ups the stakes, once again keeping readers laughing all the way through a maze of well-plotted danger. 

Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice (The Finlay Donovan Series, Book 4) by Elle Cosimano

Minotaur Books/MacMillan, $28.00 hardcover, 9781250846006, 320 pages

Publishing Date: March 5, 2024

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

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (March 22, 2024), link HERE 

Night and Its Longings

A dark, deeply engrossing crime noir about a soul-searching, middle-aged writer determined to find out what happened to his missing ex. 

Night and Its Longings is a hauntingly atmospheric, beautifully crafted crime noir written by accomplished novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright and filmmaker, Philip Cioffari.

 

The book, set in June 1995, centers on Jake Garrett, a “less-than-famous,” hardboiled crime novelist. On the brink of age 40, Jake is “short on money and friends.” He does his best writing late at night and often keeps company via the disaffected, spiritually wounded lonely-hearts who call in to an after-midnight, radio program. Jake has been known to take walks in the shadowy wee-hours, through "abandoned city streets, past shuttered bars, darkened storefronts."

 

“I wasn’t what you’d call a fearful man, except in the way most life-long New Yorkers are fearful,” Jake tells the reader. “Never leaving my car unlocked. Always keeping tabs on my surroundings. Trusting my sixth-sense to detect danger…The fact of the matter was this: the self was the enemy I feared most, not strangers on the street.”

 

One night, just as Jake is hitting his writing stride--drawing “wisdom in dark hours”--he’s jarred by a knock on the door that opens onto the courtyard of his Village (New York City) apartment building. There, he is surprised by Norm Davison, the husband of Vera Davison, a woman with whom Jake had a passionate, one-year love affair ten years prior. After Vera went back to Norm, Vera and Jake had lost touch. However, on this dark night, the spirit of Vera is suddenly resurrected in a chilling and foreboding way.

 

Norm is beside himself, worried about Vera, who has disappeared for 11 days. Is she in danger? Alive? Dead? Did she leave by force or vanish voluntarily? Norm, Vera’s husband, is frustrated by the police investigation. While he was aware of Jake and Vera’s affair, he is now desperate to find his wife—this includes his enlisting his wife’s adulterous ex-lover to aid the search.

 

What ensues is a dark, deepening story that reveals, layer by layer, details of the love affair shared between Jake and Vera and the life Vera went on to live without Jake—as a wife, mother, and budding photographer. When Norm allows Jake access into the minutia of Vera’s life--including his poring over her journals and photographs--even more questions arise. Amidst an extensive search that winds through New York and later, South Carolina, Jake’s crime-writing detective skills are put into action. Along the way, he begins to search his own soul, realizing that Vera’s departure from his life created a “dead center” in him—an abyss of sorrow, guilt, and regret. Might Vera have experienced a similar void?

 

The introspective intrigue of Jake’s narrative voice propels a suspenseful plot where danger unspools via short, ratcheting chapters. Cioffari (If Anyone Asks, Says I Died from the Heartbreaking Blues) delivers a spellbinding--profoundly thought-provoking--literary mystery that ultimately unravels with surprising twists.  

 

Night and Its Longings by Philip Cioffari

Livingston Press, $18.99 paperback, 978-1604893748, 234 pages

Publishing Date: March 26, 2024

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

 

To learn more about Philip Cioffari and his extensive body of work, link HERE

The Threat

A clever dark comedy about an unassuming New Yorker whose dull, stunted life takes wildly hilarious turns after he receives a death threat. 

Nathaniel Stein, writer for the New Yorker, dishes up an inventively absurdist, dark comedy about an unassuming middle-aged man whose life goes farcically off the rails in The Threat.

 

Melvin Levin is a single, conscientious, rule-following, 41-year-old with a bad back. He lives alone in a New York City apartment, and his social circle consists largely of bestowing good deeds upon an elderly neighbor. One night while Melvin is anticipating a promotion at his totally nondescript job, the boring, dull routine of his life is suddenly overturned when he receives a “plain little note” in the mail: “Mr. Melvin Levin, I’m going to kill you,” the note begins. “You’ve worn out my patients for the last time and your through…” The unelaborate note, complete with poor grammar, becomes like a “flag planted atop the mountain of bad luck” that was Melvin’s life. The threat produces a ferocious sense of anxiety in Melvin, who--having lived with “unerring politeness” and an “unceasing, almost superstitious rectitude, taking great pains to avoid rubbing people the wrong way”--struggles to decipher whom he might’ve wronged. Despite the chilling implications of the note, Melvin ultimately becomes empowered and excited by the idea of having an anonymous, formidable enemy, and he undergoes a hilarious life transformation.

 

Stein’s smart, clever first novel will charm readers with a simple premise that snowballs into a side-splitting, thought-provoking meditation about how one man’s seemingly inconsequential life finally overflows with grandiose meaning when faced with the prospect of death.

The Threat by Nathaniel Stein
Keylight Books (Turner Publishing), $27.99 hardcover, 9781684429691, 192 pages
Publishing Date: January 16, 2024

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

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (February 2, 2024), link HERE 

 

The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center

A thoroughly researched, eye-opening study of the deep value platonic friendships can hold in enriching and empowering personal lives.  

In her first book, The Other Significant Others, Rhaina Cohen, an NPR editor and producer, presents an eye-opening exploration into the many ways friendship, in various forms, can enrich and empower lives for the better. 

In 2022, Cohen attended six weddings in six months. Amidst these pandemic-deferred nuptial celebrations, where couples vowed to spend the rest of their lives together as a “we,” Cohen began to question societal expectations of love and its meaning. Was sex the essential component of a truly committed relationship? Was a person’s life somehow incomplete without a long-term romantic partner? Cohen, married, had always felt that friendships “electrified” her life. Thus, she began to examine the “we” of friendship: what draws people together on a purely platonic plane? What made some friendships endure despite the parties not formally professing a long-term commitment to each other?

 

Cohen presents stories from her own life--along with other historical and contemporary case studies--that deconstruct diverse friendships of all stripes. These include people of varying ages, races, genders, marital states, sexual orientations, and religions. She delves into co-parenting friends; shared homeowners; friends who serve as executors of estates; and even those who act as primary caregivers, helping to shoulder the demands and burdens imposed by illness and debilitating medical treatments.

 

Cohen’s well-researched, appealingly structured narrative stretches modern assumptions of love, making the case that a life bonded by friendship can hold limitless potential for a more fulfilling, deeply meaningful existence.

 

The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center by Rhaina Cohen

St. Martin’s Press (Macmillan), $29.00 hardcover, 9781250280916, 320 pages

Publishing Date: February 13, 2024

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

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (February 23, 2024), link HERE 

The Mystery Guest

When a world-famous author dies at a five-star hotel, a neurodivergent maid sets out to find the culprit for his suspicious, sudden death.

The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose is a bright, dynamic continuation of her cozy mystery series that features Molly Gray, a lovable, learning-as-she-goes maid who works at the Regency, an elegantly sophisticated, five-star boutique hotel.

In the first book, The Maid, neurodivergent Molly struggled to navigate life after the death of her touchstone, her grandmother, “Gran,” who spent her life working as a maid. Molly, then a meticulous maid-in-training, became swept up in a murder investigation of a hotel patron that called her and her co-workers into question. In The Mystery Guest, Molly’s story picks up three and a half years later. Molly, now 29-years-old, has since been promoted to Head Maid at the Regency. 

The hotel is eager to redeem its image, hosting “world-famous,” reclusive author, J. D. Grimthorpe. He is intent on making a major public announcement. Standing before a gaggle of press people and adoring fans in the Regency Tea Room, he suddenly drops dead before the big reveal, sending Molly and those in her orbit into mayhem. Could it be that Grimthorpe was murdered? If so, why? 

Prose deftly employs a familiar cast of quirky characters plus adds a few new ones, each with dubious motives. As in the first book, “Gran” and her wisdom continue to influence Molly’s smart perceptions. Molly’s strong narrative voice mines experiences from the past that just might hold clues to her solving this suspensefully well-drawn, second-in-the-series mystery.

The Mystery Guest: A Maid Novel (Molly the Maid Book Two) by Nita Prose

Ballantine Books, $29.00 hardcover, 9780593356180, 304 pages

Publishing Date: November 28, 2023

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

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (December 29, 2023), link HERE