Colorways by Vicki Welsh

There wasn’t one bad book this month! The month got off to a great start with The Road To Tender Hearts. What a fun book, even though a lot of people die.

Two of my favorite mystery writers were available to me this month: John Sandford and Nick Petrie. But my favorite book, in a month of great reads, was The Calamity Club. I want a follow up book so I know how all of the characters lives went.

What great books have you read lately?

This morbidly funny book features a cat named Pancakes that predicts when people will die. But the central character is PJ Halliday. He’s 63 and retired from the Post Office in Pondville, MA. He’s also a million dollar lottery winner who has spent most of his winnings at the local bar. His life is defined by a series of tragedies starting with his oldest daughter’s death on the day of her high school graduation. After that his marriage fell apart and his second daughter is fed up with him and her own disappointing life.

PJ reads an obituary about the spouse of his high school sweetheart. He think he might be able to rekindle the flame and plans to drive to Arizona to see her. But one last surprise hits him before leaving town. He finds out that he’s the named guardian for two 4th grade children that he’s never met. He figures that they probably could benefit from getting out of town too. He invites his daughter, Sophie and the newly adopted, Pancakes.

It’s a great cross-country adventure with Pancakes providing some tragedy at every stop. Mark Bramhall narrates it perfectly.

When I posted my May books Jan commented and suggested this book. She didn’t know it but I had just started reading it the day before. I was hooked after the first chapter. In case if you, like me, don’t recognize the author’s name, this book is written by the author of The Help. I loved The Help so this seemed like a safe bet and it was! I loved it. It’s a long one at 29 hours but I didn’t want it to end even at that length.

The story takes place in Oxford, MS in 1933. Ole Miss University is the only thing that keeps this town from collapsing during the Depression. Our main characters are Bertie Calhoun, Meg Lefleur and, her mother Charlie Lefleur.

Birdie is a young spinster living with her mother. Because of a childhood illness, she is barren. She and her mother live on a pittance and are at risk of losing the house. She decided to travel to Oxford to ask her socialite sister, Francis, for money to keep the family afloat. But the Depression and financial mismanagement by her husband has brought dire times to the family.

Francie volunteers at a local orphanage for girls and asks Birdie to help clean up the orphanage’s books. While there, Birdie meets Meg, one of the older girls that live in horrible and hopeless conditions. Meg was abandoned by her mother several years before.

Later meets Charlie, Birdie’s mother. She has had her own hardships and she is determined to get her daughter back. They hatch a risky plan that could save the lives of all of them.

Set in Honolulu in 1941 just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Police Detective Joe McGrady has ended his day the way he usually does, in his favorite local bar. He gets a call at the bar to attend the site of a homicide. Following the trail of the murderer takes him to Hong Kong just before the attack. He ends up a prisoner in Japan during the war.

He returns to Hawaii after the war to discover that everyone he left behind thinks he’s dead. The murder still hasn’t been resolved and no one, except Joe, is interested in solving it.

The timeframe covers 5 years, 5 Decembers. It is a mystery but it’s also a love story and a story of surviving desperate times. It was different and I really enjoyed it.

This is #36 in the Lucas Davenport series. These are fast paced crime thrillers, usually with some international aspect. Lucas works for the US Marshall Service and he’s working with the CIA to get a Russian defector and his family into Witness Protection near Minneapolis. Things go wrong immediately as shots are fired.

The FBI is also involved and it’s fun to see the dissention between the various services. I expect it’s mostly realistic.

Like all of the Prey series, this is very fast paced with lots of shots fired.

This is the 9th book in the Peter Ash series. Peter is a former Marine who is dealing with severe PTSD from his experiences. In book 1 he can barely sleep inside a building. By book 9, he’s slowly learning how to deal with his PTSD.

Peter is near Seattle and his girlfriend, June, askes him to check in on a journalist friend who is receiving death threats. Katelyn Thorsen has received death threats before but these seem more serious. She may be dealing with a story more explosive than she knows.

Two other former Marine friends, Lewis and Manny, come to help. Even with their skills and resourcefulness, it’s a dangerous scenario.

Both of these last two books were fun, fast-paced reads that I couldn’t put down. Yes, they are formulaic but I like these formulas.

Mom and I had a short road trip this month and I wanted something that we could listen to and finish in about 3 hours. This book fit the bill perfectly.

The title describes it perfectly. It’s an older book, about 15 years old to be exact but it’s still funny today. The narrator is absolutely perfect!

This book has been hot on BookTube. Everyone seems to be recommending it and I don’t disagree. This is a crime detective novel with a very unique twist.

We are introduced to Beverley, Margot and Elsie. It’s 1966 and these ladies really only have each other. Aside from one thing, they have nothing in common. But because each of their husbands is a convicted murderer, they have no other people to share experiences with. Their exes are now either dead or serving life in prison.

They all struggle with how other people perceive them. Wondering how they could live with murderers and not know. How much blame do they deserve for the crimes of their husbands. They meet up on a regular basis and are each others best therapists.

On this hot summer there’s a string of murders of women. The police see them as separate incidents but our ladies think they are all related and begin to investigate on their own. Who better to find a killer than another killer’s wife?

Good pacing, good character development and a monumental twist.