Colorways by Vicki Welsh

I’m a day late posting my book reviews. Honestly, I forgot what day it was! Retired life does that to you. I pretty much have to check the day every morning when I get up or I’ll start doing Thursday things on Wednesday.

I had a really nice month of reading/listening. Of the 6 books that I finished, there were no duds! The one dud that I DNFed was a dud because it’s a book that can’t be followed in audio format. If I had to pick a favorite book from the month, it would probably be the first one, This Book Made Me Think of You.

What was your favorite book of September?

DNF
The Seven Daughters of Dupree by Nikesha Elise Williams – 7 generations of daughters told skipping between generations is impossible to track in audio format. The paper book has a generation map in the front. Get the paper book. I think it’s probably good.

Tilly is a non-fiction editor and dealing with the grief over the loss of her husband from cancer. She and Joe met in a bookstore. She loves books and was an avid reader. Joe wasn’t a reader at all but they still found love. When he was diagnosed with cancer everything changed. She lost her love of reading and hasn’t read one book since then.

Five months after Joe died she gets a message from the local bookstore. There’s a book for her to pick up. Alfie, the bookstore owner, tells her that Joe left her a year of books. There’s one for every month with a letter from Joe. Slowly, over the year, Joe convinces her to get back to reading, try new things and move forward with her life.

It’s a lovely story and an easy read.

When we left for the two-day drive to Maine we wanted to find a good book to listen too. We wanted something that didn’t require too much thinking so I asked AI to find something like John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport series. One of the recommendations was the Elvis Cole series by Robert Crais. This is the first book in that series.

Elvis Cole is a former Vietnam Vet and private detective in LA. This series is a long one so this first book was released in 1987. It’s a little dated but, in my opinion, that’s a good thing. There’s no modern technology to rely on.

Ellen Lang has hired Elvis to find her husband and son. Her husband, Mort, picked up their son from school and neither has been seen again. The job leads Elvis into the seedy side of Hollywood. Ellen also has a friend named Sharon that today we would probably call Karen.

The writing is clever and the characters interesting. I will read more in this series.

Magpie’s Mumblings recommended this book to me last month.

Emmeline was born in a basket of laundry while her mother was hanging sheets out to dry on their farm in Nova Scotia. Her mother never really forgave her for being born and, especially, for being born a girl. When WWI hit her family was deeply affected. She fled to England to find one of her brothers. She stayed there to escape the disfunction in her family. She built a nice life for herself there.

As the story opens she is retired and living a quiet life in a small town in England. To be more social, she joins a memoir-writing group at the library where she makes new friends and discovers that her life has actually been very interesting.

Then she unexpectedly inherits her family farm back in Nova Scotia and she is thrown back into the lives of her family.

It’s a sweet book with a lot of humor. I probably could have done without Emmeline’s best friend, Vera, the talking dog. But even Vera couldn’t turn me off this fun book.

This is a thriller/suspense novel with a little psychological overtones.

Frankie is newly divorced and has been made redundant at work. But between the settlements from both events, she has been able to move to an upscale neighborhood in London with her cat, Blue. Her choice of neighborhood becomes questionable immediately. Blue likes to explore the neighborhood and returns one night with the words “help me” carved into his collar. She fits Blue with a cat cam collar and that begins several nights of illegally recording her neighbor’s activities but eventually she finds out where the plea for help is coming from.

Even perfectly manicured neighborhoods have secrets and this story is full of them.

It was a little slow getting started, but once I figured out all of the characters, it moved along at a fast pace and kept me engaged.

This love story is about two main characters: Pasquale Tursi and Dee Moray. They meet in a tiny Italian village when Dee, an actress working on the Cleopatra film with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, arrives at Pasquale’s remote hotel after a diagnosis of stomach cancer. She’s been sent there by the studio to rest before going to Switzerland for treatment.

The story is told between 1962 Italy and 2012 Hollywood. It’s centered on Hollywood culture, the near-disastrous making of Cleopatra and how lives interconnect over time and distance.

It’s not particularly deep and it’s often funny. I found it very entertaining.

In the 1930’s the mob was strong in New York City and Attorney General, Thomas Dewey, was singularly focused on bringing down the mob. He had a huge department of attorneys working on various avenues, like tax evasion, to try to bring down the nig boss, Lucky Luciano. One of his attorneys and the first female black attorney in the office, Eunice Carter, pursued the forced prostitution angle. The mob was attempting to impose centralized control over all of the prostitution organizations in the city.

The story brings in another real life character, Polly Adler. Polly was the owner of the best bordello in New York City in the Majestic Tower. Polly takes good care of her girls and she sees Lucky’s changes as being harmful for her business and her girls.

Together, they help each other build a case that will finally take Luciano down.

These are the same authors who wrote The Personal Librarian about JP Morgan’s librarian. I actually didn’t like The Personal Librarian but I enjoyed A Pair of Aces.