Guess who Mary Russell marries? Go on, guess! Nope, she marries Sherlock Holmes! And what a wonderful job this author does telling this tale. She crafts, for us, the background story of Mary, while keeping the personality of Holmes aligned during what would be an unlikely event for him. What a wonderful read!

Yes, this was written by that Steve Martin and I did this as an audio book which was read by the author. Martin’s writing is crisp and to the point and has no difficulty evoking the emotion he wants you to feel. The story starts off a bit like Pretty Woman but then grows and matures and goes in a completely different direction. I did enjoy the book but was sad it was not a happier ending.

For those of us who read a lot of mysteries, after a while, you can often see the ending coming. Not in this one! The central character’s alibi appears to be that she is just too dumb to organize and commit this crime. And it turns out what she did do really ends up confusing the police. A good whodunit.

A wonderful book

This is a good old fashioned detective story where women were “dames” and were “notin but trouble”. The language is fun and the central character is the grounding influence here as everyone else in the story is either crazy or a killer…..and one is both.

A great exploration of the attention economy throughout history. It was a little slow in the first half, but that could just be my extremely deteriorated attention span. Last two chapters on the current state of affairs are excellent.

This is the story of a woman and her ex-lover who wind up running for governor at the same time. It’s wonderfully done, mixing the story with present day natation and that of the past. It also tells the story from both protagonists’ point of view. And there is so much more to this story than first appears, and even when you think you have the whole story a whole other layer appears. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

A charming book. My best description is that it's a cozy adventure.

The trouble I had with this book is that I did it as an audiobook. There were just too many characters, and sometimes the characters were referred to differently depending upon who was speaking about them. Add to that the challenges of the language of 1826 and I was not able to enjoy the book or really follow what was going on.

OK, so this book has an interesting beginning. A highly successful pistachio grower in Italy in the 1920 becomes a popular man in his town. Citizens love him and value his expertise. Then enter the Mafia, who begin to shake down the town’s people. The grower resists and encourages others to do the same. This makes him and his family a target and thus begins a years long battle between the Mafia, along with the police, and the Sacco family. It is based on a true story and while the beginning is interesting, the rest of the book is just a back and forth of fighting and arresting. It was informative but not really interesting.