New Fiction Roundup – December 2018

12/4: The Accidental Beauty Queen by Teri Wilson – School librarian Charlotte finds herself filling in for her glamorous twin sister who falls ill the night before a beauty pageant.

12/4: The Dakota Winters by Tom Barbash – This family saga follows the Winters family, living New York City’s famed Dakota building, in the year leading up to John Lennon’s assassination.

12/4: Eighteen Below by Stefan Ahnhem – When a police chase in Helsingborg ends in the death of a tech entrepreneur, Danish police officer Fabian Risk makes a bizarre discovery that complicates the case.

New Fiction Roundup – November 2018

11/6: The Best Bad Things by Katrina Carrasco – In 1887, Alma Rosales goes undercover as a man to hunt for an opium shipment missing from a Washington Territory outpost.

11/6: The Colors of All the Cattle by Alexander McCall Smith – In this latest installment of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Precious Ramotswe finds herself running for office, much to her dismay.

11/6: The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem – Phoebe enlists the help of a loner with a pet possum to look for her friend’s missing daughter in California’s Inland Empire. Hailed as Lethem’s return to detective fiction.

New Fiction Roundup – October 2018

10/2: Gone So Long by Andre Dubus III – An ex-con living a solitary life in seaside New England travels to a quaint Florida town in search of his estranged daughter.

Adventures in Pet Sitting!

The last months of summer are usually a whirlwind of getting out of town. For some of us that means finding a pet sitter. Maybe it’s a friendly neighbor or a local boarder or maybe it’s you! This August I hung out for two weeks with two adorable cat brothers who act more like dogs than cats! They sneaked into grocery bags and even brought a bat in the house (thank goodness for vaccinations)! My other gig is in a few weeks with two older pups…and I’m starting to wonder what adventures they will bring! Have you had any adventures in pet sitting?

Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter by Blaize Clement

“Clement’s assured cozy debut introduces an appealing heroine, 32-year-old Dixie Hemingway, who’s given up her stressful job as a sheriff’s deputy in Sarasota, Fla., to become a professional pet sitter. When Dixie calls early one morning on her latest client, a silver-blue Abyssinian named Ghost, she finds a dead man face down in the cat bowl.

New Fiction Roundup – September 2018

9/4: The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory – When her boyfriend surprises her with a Jumbotron proposal at a baseball game, Nik says no, and is saved when a stranger steps in to whisk her away. That stranger is Carlos, and could there be a spark between the two?

9/4: The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker – Set in the midst of literature’s most famous war, Barker imagines the events of The Iliad as experienced by the captured women living in a Greek camp in the final weeks of the Trojan War.

9/11: She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore – In a novel shot through with magical realism, Moore reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years through three characters who share an uncommon bond. A Peak Pick!

9/18: 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle – Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day in this literary puzzle. Evelyn Hardcastle dies at a party Aiden Bishop is attending. Waking up the next morning, Aiden finds it is once again the morning of the party, only he is in the body of a different guest. He’ll inhabit 8 people on that day, until he can solve the crime.