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 Noted author Sy Montgomery ( The Soul of an Octopus ) has a love affair with hawks, which conflicts with her determination not to harm animals because, by their nature, hawks are predators, surviving by killing and eating other animals.  This is flaunted, and Sy must come to grips with this when she assists with the 'training' of a hawk - teaching a captive hawk how to hunt by releasing live quail into the air with the express purpose of having the hawk attack and kill the quail. Sy Montgomery's love affair with animals in our natural world has been well documented in her excellent books - her most famous probably being The Soul of an Octopus (which had been my introduction to her work). It doesn't seem strange to us, the readers, that she would also be interested in hawks until she brings up the personal conflicts she must overcome in order to train alongside an experienced hawk handler. In her very direct and personal style, Montgomery teaches us some very basic and...

 Antonia Scott does not like to be bothered.  When she hears footsteps coming up her attic stairs, she knows, just knows, that someone is coming for her.  But why? She's never been a police officer. She's never worn a badge or carried a weapon. She's never been a lawyer or a judge.  But Antonia Scott has solved dozens of crimes. She has a gifted forensic mind, and her ability to reconstruct crimes and solve baffling murders is legendary. But she's been a recluse since a personal tragedy struck. The footsteps coming to g et Antonia belong to Jon  Gutierrez, a good but currently disgraced cop who got caught planting evidence. Officially he's removed from duty, but he's now working for a secret organization that works in the shadows to solve some of the most violent crimes in the EU. Jon's first task is to convince Antonia to work with him. That might be the easy part. The pair will then be asked to solve a series of ritualistic killings (which started with the...

 Mickey Barnes, once an expendable, is now just another colonist on the remote world of Niflheim. The colony commander, Marshall, believes that creepy neighbors are currently holding on to one of their own antimatter bombs and Mickey, with his odd and unique ability to communicate with the creepers, is the only one keeping them from blowing the planet to pieces. But winter is coming on and the colony is slowly running out of provisions.  One of the biggest needs will be heat and Commander Marshall is planning to drain the energy from the antimatter bomb to use as a heat source.  But the bomb is in enemy hands. Mickey is offered his freedom from service once and for all, but first he has to retrieve that bomb before the Creepers blow Niflheim to pieces.  There's a problem though ... the Creepers don't have it any more.  They gave it to their enemies. The Humans on Niflhem are wary of the Creepers, at best, scared of them often.  Now Barnes must walk into the...

Sam is an average (ie normal) guy.  Having gone out with some friends, he is stumbling, drunk through an alley on his way home when he stops to pee against a wall.  Unfortunately for Sam, it turns out he interrupts a paranormal crime in process - two strange-looking men removing a body. And thus begins a strange, circuitous story. Cathy lives in between worlds. She lives between Mundanus (aka - our present world) and Exilium. This in-between world is known as Nether and has reflections of Mundanus cities. Cathy doesn't live between worlds by choice. She ran away from her cruel family, but was discovered by her patron (Lord Poppy). Poppy ruined the charm that kept her hidden and now she's back with her horrible family and facing an arranged marriage. Max is an Arbiter.  He protects humans from the foul Fae once a city has been compromised. But lately things have been rough for Max.  Four humans have gone missing in just as many weeks and he needs to investigate. ...

"The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman." - O Pioneers! by Willa Cather  I first encountered Willa Cather's work when I was in college and we read My Antonia for a modern lit class. I was impressed with the writing, but I never read anything else by Cather ... until now. The American frontier ... the prairie fields of Nebraska. It is a harsh and lonely life to be one of the pioneers in a young country. Willa Cather's novel, O Pioneers! is a poetic look at the realities and struggles of these early pioneers - specifically the often unsung, over-looked women who fought and toiled in the country. Swedish immigrants, the Bergson's, work a farm near Hanover, Nebraska.  When the patriarch, John Bergson, dies, his daughter Alexandra inherits the farm and despite set-backs that have neighbors giving up and moving on, she is determined to make it work. The book was published in 1913, and really brings the harsh reality of pioneer life into ...

This is a reissue of Schismatrix Plus by Bruce Sterling.  The original, from 1986, was a reissue of the novel Schismatrix , but included the short stories by Sterling that are set in the same world. This world is thousands of years in our future and humanity is divided between two main factions. There are the Shapers, who believe that humanity is allowed to change and adapt naturally - that humans change naturally through genetic adaptations.  On the other side of evolution are the Mechanists who believe that humans will only achieve their full potential with mechanical implants and prosthetics. The Shapers view the Mechanists as unnatural abominations and the conflict between the groups is often deadly. Abelard Lindsay is the one man caught n the middle of the conflict.  Lindsay is a former Shaper diplomat, highly trained in treachery and deceit, and now a man who doesn't belong in either faction. He travels between the two camps, sewing discontent and embracing revoluti...

 Nikki Tate is not just a card player, she's one of the best.  She should be - she was taught by her father, an experienced Las Vegas gambler. But Nikki is underage and not able to sit in on the legal card games. But Las Vegas, there are plenty of backroom, illegal games and Nikki knows many of them.  She's looking to build up her bank account so when it's time to head off to college, she'll have the money the finally get out of the town that's taken everything from her. Her father has been sitting in jail on death row, accused and found guilty of murdering his best friend in a gambling dispute.  But he's maintained his innocence throughout the trial and incarceration and after five years in prison, new evidence comes to light and his conviction is overturned. He is released from prison, but the man who comes home is not the same man who was wrongfully convicted.  He is now driven to learn who might have framed him, and why. Although she'd prefer to stay foc...

 Steve Rockfish is a Private Investigator in Pennsylvania.  But work has been thin to non-existent thanks to the lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.  He's got a lot of bills and not a single job to cover those bills.  His prized possession, his car, is at extreme risk of being repo-ed and he'll need to hide it until he can make payments again. When a job opportunity arises, and a pretty simple one at that - investigate a location and the legend of a supposed child-trafficking ring, on behalf of a proposed television program - he eagerly takes on the job. Early in the investigation Rockfish meets Jawnie McGee, the great granddaughter of a local policeman gone missing while investigating the original crimes. That policeman's notes have been sitting in a file box for decades and Jawnie's been trying to get them turned over to her.  The new chief sees no reason for Jawnie not to have them, so she has picked up the box the same day that Rockfish introduces him...

* * * WARNING -- POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD!! * * *  Things are heating up for the Cahills, thirteen year old Dan and his older sister Amy. One of their own ancestors, a Cahill now known as The Outcast, has recreated three of the world's worst disasters and appears to save the worst for last and if Dan and Amy can't stop him, he'll recreate a nuclear disaster that could destroy the entire world. But what the Cahills don't realize until too late is that The Outcast has used these disasters as a distraction. His real plan has been in the creating of a 'natural' enemy genetically coded to destroy only those with Cahill DNA. It looks as though there is no way out for Dan, Amy, and the rest of the Cahill clan. These 39 Clues books are a lot of fun - they are like Jason Bourne stories for middle-grade readers (Danger! Action! Excitement!) - and they offer just the appropriate amount of danger (and solutions) for young readers. When the series first began I eagerly read ...

O.R.G.Y. WEEK WARNING -- THIS BOOK AND REVIEW CONTAIN SEXUAL THEMES AND CONTENT Steve Victor, agent of O.R.G.Y., is still working for the U.S. government (and other governments who have a vested interest) to infiltrate and eliminate S.M.U.T. But Steve's got a problem - there's a bounty on his head for something he did in Malta. But Steve's never been to Malta - not that he remembers. And now even those he's worked most closely with, believe that he's an imposter, a Russian agent who looks like Steve Victor, while the real man from O.R.G.Y. is putting the screws to S.M.U.T. elsewhere.  But he's the real Steve Victor. Isn't he? Does he have a twin his mother never told him about? Enough people seem to think Steve's the imposter that he's beginning to believe it himself. Has he always been the imposter then? And which one of the Steve Victors will act on behalf of O.R.G.Y. and take down the S.M.U.T. leaders? This is the fifth book in The Man from O.R.G....

O.R.G.Y. WEEK  Steve Victor is the man from O.R.G.Y. (Organization for the Rational Guidance of You) which is really nothing more than a corporate shell for the entire well-being (the provision of food, shelter, clothing, nd a few luxuries) of its sole member - Steve Victor. Steve has used the cover of his O.R.G.Y. to further his own Kinsey-style sex surveys all over the world. Victor and his O.R.G.Y. investigations have caught the attention of some of the world's biggest criminal and criminal-apprehension agencies, and here Steve is approached by Scotland Yard and asked to infiltrate S.M.U.T. (the Society for Moral Uplift Today ["Ours is an age of initials" Steve remarks at one point]). Their goal is to stamp out anything and everything that leads to illicit sex.  This includes sculptures and paintings of nudes, any written work with a double (sexual) meaning to a fine degree (for instance, the famous Shakespeare quote would be changed to "If you nick me do I not b...

O.R.G.Y. WEEK  Book Three in The Man From O.R.G.Y. sleaze series! When we last saw 'spy' Steve Victor, he had gotten himself into a bit of a jam, but he gets out of it just in time to take on his next mission.   A wealthy man has died and left his fortune to his favorite Madame.  But that Madame has also died and left the fortune to three of her best girls.  But those girls are no longer working for her and Victor is hired to track them down to let them know that they are the heirs to a small fortune.  All Victor knows about the girls, aside from their names, is their former occupation and the fact that they have a specific tattoo on their buttocks. But Steve Victor is not the only one tracking these women - a pair of villains would like to stop the fortune from being paid out. Steve and the women are all in mortal danger. As with the other two books in the O.R.G.Y. series, I just had some goofball fun with this book and am disappointed that it doesn't get ...

O.R.G.Y. WEEK Steve Victor, the man from O.R.G.Y., is in Latin America and feeling a little trapped.  Trapped in a bathroom with a beautiful woman, Fidel Castro, and a time-bomb.  Trapped in a room making love to a beautiful rebel when a revolution breaks out. Trapped in a brothel basement with four horny hookers and a marvelous supply of champagne. Trapped by the effects of a biological weapon that will put a serious damper on what he does best - make love to beautiful women. Steve Victor may not be the world's greatest spy, but he is the world's greatest sex expert. Even an expert can learn something new, though, so Victor is always willing to jump right in and be a willing student. But right now Steve Victor has a job to do ... find Vicki Winters, the beautiful agent with British Intelligence. Vicki has gone missing after she had been assigned to finding out more information about a super secret weapon - a weapon so dangerous and so powerful, only a woman could cope with th...

O.R.G.Y. WEEK I learned about this book (and the subsequent series) while reading another book about spy fiction. It is colloquially referred to as 'sleaze fiction' which I think is a poor moniker as it greatly limits the number of people who might ordinarily read it.  The author, Ted Mark, has more than 20 books published (sixteen alone in the O.R.G.Y. series that I have been able to uncover)  and this series was re-published by a different publisher after Lancer Books went out of business.  Publishers don't typically take many risks when publishing books, especially not re-publishing a series unless they can see a profit in it, so let's not be too quick to discount this book, and this series. Steve Victor is a sex expert.  He's got a degree from a famous university to prove it. And Victor knows that the best way to fund further stud-y is to apply for grants.  But the best grants don't fund individuals, so Steve Victor started his research organization known as...

 Much has been written about the man we know as William Shakespeare, but author Jacopo della Quercia combines history with intrigue and puts Shakespeare at the center of some political uprising. William Shakespeare's political insight, as well as his commitment to serving the Crown, makes him the perfect spy among the common man, especially when the country is on the verge of a major uprising led by a man Shakespeare comes to know as Guy Fawkes. Shakespeare is invited to be a part of the uprising, making him the perfect set of eyes and ears for the government. Joining Shakespeare in his undercover activities is fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe. Marlower has tried to leave the dangerous life of a spy, faking his death and living in Italy. Meanwhile, Shakespeare is asked by the conspirators to write a play with an anti-monarchist message based in Scotland. (Hmm... wonder that could be...) I've read books and stories with Shakespeare as a main character before, but I don'...

 With Tempest Raj now a member of the company, Secret Staircase Construction (a company who, as their title suggests, builds mystery-themed, secret rooms inside homes) has finished their first job. Their client now wants to celebrate to kick off her new beginning - new home and new life now that she's divorced from her cheating ex-husband, famous mystery author Corbin Colt. First up, a mock séance to remove any trace of Corbin from the property, led by Tempest's friend, Sanjay.   But during that séance, while all those gathered sat in a dark room holding hands, Corbin's dead body crashes the party, falling across the table in front of everyone. There were eight people in the room, and they were all holding hands, but all the evidence points to one of them being the murderer.  Suspicions point to Ash, Tempest's grandfather, because he was the only one with Corbin's blood on him. Of course, as a doctor, he was also the only one who checked on the body - ...