The Overbooked Bibliophile

  Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐ A new installment in author  Steve Cavanagh ’s  Eddie Flynn  series is always among my most anticipated reads, so much so that I don’t mind ordering a copy from the UK so as not to wait for the book to become available in the US ( Thank you, Blackwell’s for the getting the book to me a day before UK publication day!). I’ve enjoyed (to varying degrees) all the previous books (including one short story and one novella) in this series and I’m glad to say that the latest installment  Witness 8  is a worthy addition to the lot! Ruby Johnson, a young woman in her twenties, works as a maid and nanny in several houses in an affluent New York neighborhood. Once a resident of the same neighborhood, she is haunted by the events that caused her family’s downfall. She is cunning and perceptive and one night, after witnessing the murder of the wealthy socialite, she decides to use this information and manipulate the truth to further her own agenda. The narr...

Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐ Dan Curran, a rookie journalist at the Castlebridge Gazette, is glad to have been assigned his first investigative piece on Castlebridge Council’s last-minute decision to back out of the sale of a council-owned piece of land known as Abbot’s Meadow to local land developer – a sale that would have been beneficial to the council and the community. As Dan tries to find out the reason behind the committee's decision to not go forward with the sale, he meets with some unexpected obstacles – reports on council meetings that should have been available to the public but access to which has been restricted, a local landscaping company whose interest in the land isn’t above suspicion and certain important people aren’t too happy that Dan is looking into the issue. Aiding Den is his boss, experienced journalist Jack Marston, who sees potential in Dan and Jenny Swan, an accountant who works for the Council and who shares Dan’s suspicions about the committee’s decision. Dan and Jenn...

  Rating:  4.5⭐️ I’ve never had the privilege of watching the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, but the 1965 movie based on the same has been a favorite of mine ever since I watched it for the first time at the age of seven. Though I was too young to appreciate the more serious themes, I adored Maria and her dynamic with the Trapp children and loved the music. My father, amused by my enthusiastic renditions of the songs ( I can’t sing to save my life, but when has that ever stopped me?), gifted me a copy of the movie (a VHS tape - this was the 1980’s!) - which became one of my most cherished possessions. As I grew older, and rewatched the movie with friends and family more times than I can remember, I began to appreciate the story, (the knowledge that it was inspired by true events rendered the movie even more special), the characters and the themes addressed in the movie more. I remember a discussion I had with a colleague in the early 2000s that prompted me to read up on the ...

Rating:  4.5⭐ Revolving around themes of friendship, family, personal growth, self-acceptance and human connection,  The Wedding People  by  Alison Espach  is a beautifully written novel that will strike a chord in your heart. As the story begins, we meet Phoebe Stone, an adjunct professor in literature in her forties, as she arrives alone at the Cornwall Inn in Newport, Rhode Island, with a heavy heart. This was a place that she had hoped to visit with her now ex-husband, but here she was, in a green dress and heels with no luggage. Phoebe’s room is the only one not booked for the wedding of twenty-eight-year-old Lila, who has meticulously planned a week-long sequence of pre-wedding activities leading up to the day of her nuptials. Initially mistaken to be one of the wedding people, the misunderstanding is soon cleared up, but much to Lila’s dismay, she realizes that Phoebe’s plans for her own stay would surely ruin her wedding. The narrative follows as Phobe a...

Rating:  3.75⭐️ “ ‘He led us out of the burning city of Troy and guided us across the ocean to this fertile land. He had cared for us almost as well as he has cared for his own son.’ ” ‘He’s going to found the new Troy, and be the father of many generations of our children. We owe everything to him. Without Father Aeneas, the Greeks would have destroyed everything that is Trojan.’ ” Set in years after the Trojan War,  The Heir of Venus  by  Laura Shepperson  is a feminist reimagining of the story of Aeneas, the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and Venus (Roman equivalent to the Greek goddess Aphrodite), a demigod who escaped the fallen city with his infant son Ascanius, his aging father and several other survivors. The narrative is non-linear and is presented in alternating perspectives of the women whose lives and fates were intertwined with Aeneas’s; his wife Creusa who was left behind in the burning city and who was the daughter of Trojan King Priam and Heku...