W is for ….

W is for …. Whispering Wives and Wicked Witches

Lots of different wives on this self and a few witches and wizards. I have read about half this stack and loved them, the other half I can’t wait to read.

Some favorites:

The Woman in the Window
Anna Fox lives alone, a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.
Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother and their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble and its shocking secrets are laid bare. But what’s real and what’s all in her head?

Water for Elephants
When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her.

The Wedding
Follow up to the The Notebook.
After thirty years of marriage, Wilson Lewis, son-in-law of Allie and Noah Calhoun (of The Notebook), is forced to admit that the romance has gone out of his marriage. Desperate to win back his wife, Jane’s, heart, he must figure out how to make her fall in love with him… again. Despite the shining example of Allie and Noah’s marriage, Wilson is himself a man unable to easily express his emotions. A successful estate attorney, he has provided well for his family, but now, with his daughter’s upcoming wedding, he is forced to face the fact that he and Jane have grown apart and he wonders if she even loves him anymore. Wilson is sure of one thing–his love for his wife has only deepened and intensified over the years. Now, with the memories of his in-laws’ magnificent fifty-year love affair as his guide, Wilson struggles to find his way back into the heart of the woman he adores.

Looking forward to:

The Wife Who Knew Too Much
Tabitha Girard had her heart broken years ago by Connor Ford. He was preppy and handsome. She was a pool girl at his country club. Their affair should have been a summer fling.
Years later, Connor comes back into Tabitha’s life—older, richer, and desperately unhappy. He married for money, a wealthy, neurotic, controlling woman whom he never loved. He has always loved Tabitha.
When Connor’s wife Nina takes her own life, he’s free. He can finally be with Tabitha. Nina’s home, Windswept, can be theirs. It seems to be a perfect ending to a fairy tale romance that began so many years ago. But then, Tabitha finds a diary. “I’m writing this to raise an alarm in the event of my untimely death,” it begins. “If I die unexpectedly, it was foul play, and Connor was behind it. Connor—and her.”

The Water Cure
The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Virgin Suicides in this dystopic feminist revenge fantasy about three sisters on an isolated island, raised to fear men. But when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day three strange men wash ashore. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent. Can they survive the men?

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V is for ….

V is for …. Vampires

Nobody writes vampires like Anne Rice! Over the years, I have read many a variety of vampires but Lestat reigns above them all.

A pretty good looking V stack if I say so myself. The Vampire Chronicles were not my first vampire books but they quickly became my favorite. Starting reading them in high-school and into my early 20s. I will be honest I have not picked up an Anne Rice book in a very long time. I have one on list that I am hoping to get to this year however.
The Vampire Lestat is book 2 and The Vampire Armand is book 6.

Nora Roberts’ Valley of Silence is very good as well! Book 3 in the Circle Trilogy so it’s when everything comes to a head! I really enjoyed this series but then I am never disappointed in Nora Roberts.

Looking forward to:
Violets are Blue – Book 7 in the Alex Cross series, I am only on book 2 😁. But my husband, among others, loves this series!

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U is for ….

U is for…. uncommon

I clearly am lacking in U options but actually surprised I have two. 😄

The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook is awesome! It is completely unaffiliated with the HP books, author, publishers, movies,Warner Brothers, etc. It is a book of recipes for literally every food mentioned in all 7 novels. It does include the obvious ones like Caldron Cakes and Pumpkin Juice but also English Fried Eggs and a Gammon of Bacon and Crumpets. What makes this Cookbook even more fun is it includes where in the story each food item is referenced and provides a little history lesson in British and Irish culture from which they derive from. A wonderful addition to my HP collection.

Looking forward to:
I have not read any of Karen Slaughter’s series as I only have book 7 (Unseen) and book 8 (The Kept Woman) however I am looking forward to them once I get the first 6.😁
I am a huge sucker for a dark thriller.
“Her latest thriller, Unseen, pits detectives, lovers, and enemies against one another in an unforgettable standoff between righteous courage and deepest evil.”
“In a novel of fierce intensity, shifting allegiances, and shocking twists, two investigations collide with a conspiracy straddling both sides of the law. Karin Slaughter’s latest is both an electrifying thriller and a piercing study of human nature: what happens when good people face the unseen evils in their

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T is for ….

T is for …. Tortoises 🐢

Another wonderful selection of books here for “T”! Accompanied with a couple of my beautiful baby torts, Penelope and Dobby.

A favorite of mine is The Time Traveler’s Wife.

I really loved this book and the movie. I enjoy a good time travel story and the love between Clare and Henry is something to be desired. Henry has Chrono-Displacement Disorder, periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. Full of all the emotional elements; funny, romantic, sad.

Looking Forward to:

This Poison Will Remain – Commissaire Adamsberg investigates the death of three men linked by their childhood at an orphanage in Nimes, all killed by the venom of the recluse spider.

Tidelands – The story of a poor, uneducated midwife named Alinor who is tempted by a forbidden love affair–but all too aware of the dangers awaiting a woman who dares to step out of the place society carved for her.

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S is for ….

S is for …. Seriously Substantial Selection

This is why “s” is my first letter picked when playing hang man! And what a variety there is here too! This is definitely a good representation of my reading style, I enjoy just about anything!

A few of my favs:

Skipping Christmas – The Kranks daughter will be away for Christmas so they decide to skip it, save the money and take a cruise instead. But things never go as planned.

Shutter Island – U.S. Marshals Teddy and Chuck are investigated an escaped patient from Ashecliffe Hospital on Shutter Island. They start to find out there is more going on here than a missing patient.

The Silence of the Lambs – FBI Trainee Clarice Starling seeks the help of cannibal serial killer, psychiatrist Hannibal Lector to find another killer. However Lector won’t give his expertise away for free, there is always a price, quid pro quo.

Looking Forward to:

A Summer to Remember – A journey along a path revealing buried family secrets, betrayals between lovers, bonds between friends. And for Frankie, as the past unlocks the present, the chance to learn that memories define who we are, and that they can show us the meaning of home and the magic of true love.

The Smiling Man – Detective Waits and his partner are called to a murder. There they find the body of a man. He is dead. And he is smiling. The tags have been removed from the man’s clothes. His teeth filed down and replaced. Even his fingertips are not his own. Only a patch sewn into the inside of his trousers gives any indication as to who he was, and to the desperate last act of his life…

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R is for ….

R is for …. Reading and Reptiles

My two favorite things! ❤ We all know I love books and most are aware that I have MANY reptiles that I love. If interested you can check them out @wildrootsreptiles.
Here are all my “R” books with two of my reptiles, Aria and Echo the Bearded Dragons.

Do you see any of your favorites? Reconstructing Amelia is one of mine!

•The Rainmaker
•Rule of Law
•The Runaway Jury
•Rose Matter
•A River Runs Through It
•Red Dragon
•Reasonable Doubt
•Roadside Prey
•Roses are Red
•Reunion in Death
•Rocky Road to Romance
•Rising Tides
•Red Lily
•Rebellion
•Rising Sun
•The Reader
•Reconstructing Amelia
•Rafe and Jared
•The Rain Watcher
•River’s End

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Q is For ….

Q is for …. Quality over Quantity

My Q stack is small but they are a couple great series books! Two of my favorites series actually.

Another little fun fact about me, I am a also a Quilter! I don’t have quite as much time as I would like to give to this hobby but it brings me so much joy when I can.

Quicksand by Iris Johansen

Published: 4/22/2008

Book 8 in the Eve Duncan series

This is one of my favorite Crime Thriller series and I talk about it all the time! I can’t remember when I first started the series, it’s been over a decade, lefts start there. 🤔 I found The Killing Game (Book 2) and The Search (Book 3) at a garage sale. The books themselves do not call out that they are a series or what order they come in, so I assumed they were just stand alone books. After I started on the second one, I quickly realized these were related and looked up the rest to see where they fell in the series. I was very thankful that they were just # 2 and 3. I have to say that I absolutely hate starting a series unknowingly somewhere in the middle or god forbid the end. 😩 I will be honest, have a slight control problem 😏. I quickly figured out the series order and book 1 and got back on track, been reading them ever since and loving it! I will be reading Eve (Book 12) this year as part of my 50 Books 50 States Challenge.

I love everything forensics, and I am so intrigued by the forensic sculpting. To be able to reconstruct the face of the person just from the skull is amazing to me! Aside from the great plot and twists these books have, I think that it is the mix of science and art with forensic sculpting that has me captivated the most in these.

Book Blurb:

The number-one blockbuster bestselling author returns with a thriller that pits Eve Duncan against the one man who can put her darkest horror to rest – or make her relive it over and over again….

“Do you still miss your little Bonnie?”

This one sentence, spoken by a madman in an anonymous phone call, is all it takes to drag Eve Duncan right back to that horrifying day years ago when her only daughter vanished without a trace. Since that day, her life has become an obsession to find Bonnie’s remains and put the pain of her death to rest. However, one man wants nothing more than to prevent that from happening. He is every woman’s waking nightmare: a brilliant, ruthless killer whose hunting ground stretches from coast to coast. But taunting Eve Duncan might be his first and last mistake….

For Eve is armed with more than just her talent as a forensic sculptor and her fierce protective nature. She brings with her former Navy SEAL Joe Quinn, an Atlanta detective who will do whatever it takes to bring Eve some kind of peace, even if he has to lie to do it.

Eve’s only salvation may be through the mysterious skills of another woman whose chilling talent leaves her as tormented as Eve – and as driven to bring this monster to justice. But when lives are in danger, every step could be a trap, and every inch of solid ground seems to be shifting under their feet. And this killer wants nothing more than to lure Eve further and further into his swamp of madness….

With relentless pace and gut-wrenching intensity, Quicksandis Iris Johansen at her best.

Q is for Quarry by Sue Grafton

Published: 10/14/2002

Book 17 in the Kinsey Millhone series, or the Alphabet series as most like to call it.

I have not yet got to this one yet, I am only up to C is for Corpse (book 3), which I will be reading this year as part of my 2021 Popsugar Reading Challenge. If you have not heard of Popsugar or their yearly reading challenges, you need to go check them out! So much fun and a great way to expand your horizons while also smashing through your TBR’s. The 2021 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge Is Here — Ready, Set, Read! You can also join their Goodreads Group, Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge.

I was introduced to this series just a few years ago by a great friend who also gave me all the books up to this one. 💕 As a huge fan of Private Investigator books, I love these! Even with only the first two books completed I can tell already why this series is so popular and loved around the world. I can’t believe that I had never heard about them before.

I love that this particular book in the series is based on a true crime and that the author is trying to help identify the victim and bring her peace.

Book Blurb:

She was a “Jane Doe,” an unidentified white female whose decomposed body was discovered near a quarry off California’s Highway 1. The case fell to the Santa Teresa County Sheriff’s Department, but the detectives had little to go on. The woman was young, her hands were bound with a length of wire, there were multiple stab wounds, and her throat had been slashed. After months of investigation, the murder remained unsolved.

That was eighteen years ago. Now the two men who found the body, both nearing the end of long careers in law enforcement, want one last shot at the case. Old and ill, they need someone to help with their legwork and they turn to Kinsey Millhone. They will, they tell her, find closure if they can just identify the victim. Kinsey is intrigued and agrees to the job.

But revisiting the past can be a dangerous business, and what begins with the pursuit of Jane Doe’s real identity ends in a high-risk hunt for her killer.

“Q” is for Quarry is based on an unsolved homicide that occurred in 1969, and Grafton’s interest in the case has generated renewed police efforts. During the past year, the body was exhumed and a nationally known forensic artist did the facial reconstruction that appears in the closing pages of “Q” is for Quarry. Both Grafton and the dedicated members of the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department are hoping the photograph will trigger memories that may lead to a positive identification.

On the day Jane Doe was reburied, many officers were at the gravesite. “It’s eerie,” Grafton writes, “to think about the power this woman still has. Here we are, thirty-three years later, and she still wants to go home.”

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Don’t Get Stuck in a Genre Rut

When I was younger I used to only read Stephen King, R.L. Stein, Dean Koontz, you get my drift, pretty much thriller and horror only.  When I was in High School, I stared my first job as a barista and found my co-worker’s copy of Nora Robert’s novel Lawless.  That was my intro into great Romance novels.  I very rarely left that comfort zone of those authors though. I had no idea the books I was missing out on. 

The past several years I have made changes in the way I choose what books to read and I have been picking up ones that I normally wouldn’t.  I join reading challenges that prompt me to choose books outside my comfort zone.  We are two months into the year so far and my genre resume has already been so vast, Literary Women’s Fiction, Contemporary Realistic Fiction, New Adult Romance, Literary Fiction, Crime and Comedy Thriller, Poetry, and Non-fiction Memoir.

Here are a few that I have thoroughly enjoyed recently:

I hope that this will give you the push to expand your reading beyond your comfort zone as well.  There is a whole world out there to explore.  Don’t be afraid to check them out.

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P is for ….

P is for …. P.S. I Love You and palm trees.
🌴
I actually watched the movie before I read this book. I tend to do that more often, I love movies as much as I do books. What I have noticed is if I read the book first, 95% of the time I will be disappointed in the movie and won’t be able to enjoy it. However, I found that if I watch the movie first, and like it, then I read the book and I like it even more, but it doesn’t ruin the movie for me. Well, anyway, I LOVE this movie. I seriously cried the entire film. The book is very different, which I don’t mind actually, it means I can enjoy them independently of each other. I enjoyed the book too. I would recommend that if you have watched the movie, read the book, not because you like the movie but because it’s a good book. If you read the book, whether you liked it or not, watch the movie because it’s wonderful.
🌴
I am missing beaches, palm trees, and Plumeria blossoms something fierce. I was suppose to be going to the Caribbean on vacation this year however the Rona had other plans. As I have previously mention, my vacation has been rescheduled multiple times. Originally, I planned a trip to our favorite vacation spot for my husband’s 40th birthday, which was April. It was then canceled and changed to September, then to November. Well last weekend I learned that once again, November is not happening. So instead of continuing to play this game I have decided that Caribbean will have to just wait until next year. Maybe I can get a trip to Hawaii set up for December? I will take what ever test you need just let me have some sun, I’m begging you! 😭

P has some other great reads to offer here. One I am really looking forward to reading is Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed by Patricia Cornwell.

Blurb: In Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed, Cornwell combines the rigorous discipline of twenty-first century police investigation with forensic techniques undreamed of during the late Victorian era to solve one of the most infamous and difficult serial murder cases in history.  Drawing on unparalleled access to original Ripper evidence, documents, and records, as well as archival, academic, and law-enforcement resources, FBI profilers, and top forensic scientists, Cornwell reveals that Jack the Ripper was none other than a respected painter of his day, an artist now collected by some of the world’s finest museums: Walter Richard Sickert.

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O is for ….

O is for …. Others

O has good choices here, I have read about half. 

Others – A Private Investigator Thriller Mystery.  This book had so many twists and turns. I picked it up in my favorite used book store, I saw it and thought the cover was intreging and I just love PI thrillers.  But it turned out to be so much more and I was very entertained.

Blurb:  Nicholas Dismas is a Private Investigator, but like no other that has gone before him. He carries a secret about himself to which not even he has the answer . . .

He is hired to find a missing baby. One that was taken away at birth . . . Or was it?

His investigation takes him to a mysteriously located place called Perfect Rest. It is supposed to be a nursing home for the elderly . . . But is it?

Here Dismas will discover the dark secret of the Others. And in an astonishing and spectacular finale he will resolve the enigma of his own existence . . .

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