Not only did I read The Last Devil
to Die this year, but Richard Osman wrote it this year. Bless his heart.
It’s the 4th in the Thursday Murder Club series by this British game show host-turned-novelist,
and it is the best one yet.
You’d think “retirees solve mysteries” would be the
tamest of cozies, but you’d be wrong. These pensioners know more about drug
smuggling and untraceable poisons than any grandma has a right to, and your average
murderer should be terrified of them.
But the funny, unexpected detectives and the well-constructed plots are
not what I love most about the Murder Club series. It’s the warm and wise
perspective on aging, friendship, and the quirks of being human that make
this special.
Osman is an extraordinarily empathetic writer. I have come to
embrace his characters as family, and I look forward to spending another
Thursday with them as soon as possible.
A new mystery is afoot in the fourth book in the Thursday Murder Club series from million-copy bestselling author Richard Osman
You'd think you be allowed to relax over Christmas, but not in the world of the Thursday Murder Club.
On Boxing Day, a dangerous package is smuggled across the English coast. When it goes missing, chaos is unleashed. The body count starts to rise – including someone close to the Thursday Murder Club--as our gang face an impossible search, and their most deadly opponents yet.
With the clock ticking down and a killer heading to Cooper’s Chase, has their…
You may have heard of this King guy. Popular in the horror genre, I
hear. Turns out he writes a cracking good crime novel.
Billy Summers takes the hitman-with-a-heart trope and invests it
with such depth of character and so many plot turns that it feels entirely
fresh. I had to force myself to put it down to, you know, eat and sleep.
King's later career has been amazingly prolific (three fat novels in two
years) and more personal than his better-known horror fiction. I loved his
inclusion of a recovered alcoholic in Fairy
Tale, and his hot takes on recent history in Holly.
Billy Summers is a
novel-within-a-novel about a foster kid who grew up to be an Army sniper faking
being a writer in order to lie in wait for a killer but ends up on a road trip
to avenge a rape victim…. and then it gets complicated. You’ll love it.
Master storyteller Stephen King, whose “restless imagination is a power that cannot be contained” (The New York Times Book Review), presents an unforgettable and relentless #1 New York Times bestseller about a good guy in a bad job.
Chances are, if you’re a target of Billy Summers, two immutable truths apply: You’ll never even know what hit you, and you’re really getting what you deserve. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business—but he’ll do the job only if the assignment is a truly bad person. But now, time is catching up with him, and Billy wants…
It took a long time to mourn my 15-year-old shelter rescue Laszlo - I
had to write a children's book about him just to process it. Then, I was ready to go back to the East Valley Animal Shelter and find
Brando. Which meant it was time to go back and re-read Inside of a Dog, a groundbreaking peek at the world through the
eyes (okay, mostly nose) of a dog.
Cognitive scientist Horowitz calls it the
dog's "umwelt," and it taught me so much. Learn how to tell the difference between friendly tail-wagging and
suspicious tail-wagging, between an aggressive bark and an "assembling the
gang" bark. Learn how best to communicate with your dog – and more importantly,
how to let him communicate with you.
Oh, and in my world, all dogs are males, and all cats are female. Your
mileage may vary.
As an unabashed dog lover, Alexandra Horowitz is naturally curious about what her dog thinks and what she knows. As a cognitive scientist she is intent on understanding the minds of animals who cannot say what they know or feel.
This is a fresh look at the world of dogs -- from the dog's point of view. The book introduces the reader to the science of the dog -- their perceptual and cognitive abilities -- and uses that introduction to draw a picture of what it might be like to bea dog. It answers questions no other dog book can…
Trust me, if I got to
choose my addictions, I wouldn’t have chosen “love addict.” Who wants to ball
up in a fetal position on the floor every time a certain someone doesn’t call?
No, if I had my druthers, I would pick “anorexic shopaholic.” Then I’d be
skinny and have a great wardrobe. But sadly, we’re stuck with the addictions
we’re stuck with.
Don’t think sex and love
addiction are real addictions? Neither did most psychologists when I started
researching and writing Love Addict. Thanks to a ton of PET scans and fMRIs
that prove infatuation affects our brains the same way as cocaine (I was
addicted to that, too, once upon a time) and heartbreak is worse for you than
heroin, they have come around.
