Book Reviews

Do not let the strange title deter you from this great story. We’ve all heard the expression that the love of money is the root of all evil and this story is a perfect example of that reality. Four men who work for minimum wages all have need of more money than they can ever earn under their present conditions. They work for one of the largest law firms in New York City, and their job is to copy the briefs for the hundreds of lawyers who work in the offices above their basement print shop. The four are as unlike each other as night and day. Rich, a former construction worker now attending college with the vision of going on to law school is in love with a girl from a wealthy family. Visalia, or Vise, is a former petty thief who ...

Zach Jordan may be one of the 75 lucky NYC police officers chosen to serve on the elite High Profile Victims’ Response Team or NYPD Red, but he’s not feeling lucky this morning as he anticipates his first day with his new partner, Kyle MacDonald. Not only is NYPD Red charged with protecting the hundreds of extra celebrities who will be in town as part of the Mayor’s promotion intended to encourage more filmmaking in New York, Hollywood on the Hudson, but his new partner is his ex-girlfriend. Zach and Kylie dated after they met at the police academy, and although Kylie married someone else, Zach never stopped loving her. There is no time for awkwardness when they meet at the ...

Be prepared to be amazed. This should have been the instruction given to Professor Jeremy Logan when he agrees to help treasure hunter Porter Stone unearth ancient Egyptian artifacts in the Sudd, a marshy no-man’s land in Sudan. Of course, Jeremy is used to amazing discoveries in his profession as an enigmologist or someone who is skilled at solving bizarre and incomprehensible mysteries. Porter Stone is convinced that the Sudd holds the real and secret tomb of Narmer, an early Egyptian pharaoh who was born 3100 years before Christ and is considered by historians to be the first pharaoh of United Egypt. Stone’s research has suggested that the secret tomb was deliberately located in an area that would be flooded and covered with vegetation, keeping it concealed for eternity. He also believes ...

Julie Berenson deserves more out of life than she’s been given, but that does not deter her from being a good and compassionate friend, a hard worker and a responsible dog-lover. Abandoning her abusive family at age 16 and forced to live on the streets, she maintains her integrity and virtue and finds ways to make enough money to eat. Her luck turns from tolerable to abundant when she meets Jim who finds her a job, a place to live and who falls in love with her and marries her. After just a few happy years together, Jim dies, leaving her a Great Dane puppy named Singer and the promise that he’ll always look after her—be her guardian. After having survived abuse and homelessness, Julie becomes a young widow at 25. When the story opens she is 29 and is beginning to think about dating again. Jim’s best friend, Mike Harris is her go to guy for handyman and automotive work, but she can’t imagine him as a suitor after knowing him as Jim’s friend. Mike has loved Julie ...

“Now as then, true believers loathe the moderates in their midst.” Even as a young girl, Karen Hollander proved herself to be a true believer and she surrounded herself with others who shared her ideals, but now as an esteemed 65 year old law professor she feels compelled to reveal a criminal past that came about as a result of those passions. In doing so, she will ruin not only her reputation, but those of some of her oldest, closest friends. Karen, Alex and Chuck, junior high school friends in the early 60’s, shared an obsession with everything James Bond. They devoured all of Ian Fleming’s Bond books, becoming experts on the characters, their motives and the trivia surrounding them. Their teenage exploits included assuming roles of the Bond characters and conducting spy missions in and around their suburban Chicago neighborhood, hoping to thwart Cold War enemies. The precocious trio continued their alliance when they were accepted at ...

Rocky Mountain High turns into Rocky Mountain Low for Madeline Dare, when she and her husband Dean move to Boulder, Colorado. At first, the former New Yorker is intrigued and enchanted by the relaxed, wholesome pace of the bucolic town, but she soon finds herself dissatisfied, lonely and bored. As the stay-at-home mom struggles to raise their one year old twins, Dean travels the world, eating in fine restaurants and leaving Madeline to share too many mac and cheese dinners with the twins. Convinced that she needs to get out of the house and try to regain some of the feelings of self-worth she had when she was working, she accepts a job writing an occasional restaurant review for a local newspaper. Her editor asks her to expand her writing duties by covering fires set by an arsonist and Madeline is drawn into dangerous territory. While she enjoys the opportunity to interact with adults, her devotion to her twins never falters. Since she’d never bothered to get a Colorado driver’s license, she carts them from home to stores and doctors’ appointments in a red wagon, seeing that they are impeccably dressed and fully supplied ...