Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke****

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There’s so much buzz about the debut novel Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke, and it’s easy to see why. When a wife and mother decides to make bank off of being a tradwife, except that she really isn’t, the irony is thick and darkly funny. I was immediately absorbed by this story, and I have lots of company.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Natalie doesn’t fit in well or make friends easily, but when she meets Caleb, she thinks she’s found a man that wants the same things she wants. Caleb comes from a wealthy family; his father has presidential ambitions. He buys them a farm in Idaho, and she promises to bear lots of little grandchildren and keep her man happy and out of trouble.

While she doesn’t connect well with new friends in person, the magic of Instagram changes everything! She posts photos of her darling family, the big red barn, the cow and the chickens, and she creates videos of herself making bread in the kitchen. But this is difficult to do when there are children to take care of, so she hires nannies. She hires a producer to help create her content; her children are home schooled, alright, but not by Natalie. And behind the wall of her kitchen, there are commercial quality appliances that grease the wheels of her production; the tradwife is not what she seems.

She hardly knows her own children. And underneath the Instagram smiles and the aphorisms about gratitude, she is every bit as angry as the feminists that decry her platitudes.

Then comes the day when she wakes up and finds that she’s living in the 1800s. Her farmhouse really is an old school farm house. There’s no central heating, only chopped wood for burning. There is no electricity or washing machine. Life is hard, and so is her husband. “A lifetime of drowning, and then you are dead.”

I could hardly stand to put this thing down; I had to know how it would end. Unfortunately, the ending is not as smooth or well-paced as the rest of the book, and I didn’t find it as satisfying. Still, this is a great read, and I recommend it to you.

True Crime, by Patricia Cornwell*****

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Legendary mystery writer Patricia Cornwell didn’t intend to write a memoir, but when someone decided to put her life’s story on television, she realized that if she didn’t write it, they’d make it up as they went. What began as a treatment for television writers to use as a guide morphed into a full-length book, and this is a perfect example of what an overachiever Cornwell has become.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Cornwell grew up in Miami, but moved with her mother to Montreat, North Carolina following her parents’ separation when she was five years old. It’s a miracle that anyone whose childhood was so riddled with trauma could grow up and pass for normal, let alone accomplish the things that she has done. First, her father had a breakdown, kidnapped her and her brothers, and then tried to hand them off—permanently—to his law partner. Her mother was a hot mess most of the time, and so there were periods when there was no food prepared, and she and her brothers made do by scrounging raw hamburger out of the freezer and eating it raw! Then there was the time her mom went into a fugue state and began systematically burning all of the children’s clothing—and there was no money to replace it with. Neglected children are often a lightning rod that attracts bad actors, and so the local security cop began molesting her—up until he was caught by her older brother, who put a stop to it. And the list goes on.

Nobody walks away from such experiences unscarred, but since Cornell—who was then Patsy Daniels—was a good kid, she internalized all of it, aided by a dreadful first grade teacher that told her that her constant talking in class was probably why her father had left! (As a teacher, this reviewer wants to find that person and have her license pulled, although she is probably gone from this earth by now.) Patsy gained control of her life—sort of—by developing eating disorders. She was hospitalized, but medical science actually didn’t know what to do about anorexia or bulimia, and after months in the institution with no improvement whatever, she gave up and went home. The problem vanished many years later when other aspects of her life changed.

Her love of writing and her feverish work ethic are what has made her such a success (along with great intelligence, though she doesn’t say as much.) She rode with cops and served as a volunteer in order to gain insights into that world; she went to Quantico and studied profiling; and of course, worked in the medical examiner’s office so that she could legitimately view autopsies, which are of course not open to the public. Anything she needed to learn, she found a way to do, leaving no stone unturned. She was aided and mentored by what seems to me an unlikely cast of friends and surrogate parents, including Senator Orin Hatch, Ruth and Billy Graham (mostly Ruth,) and President H.W. Bush.

The thing I appreciate about this memoir, apart from its outstanding prose and organization, is Cornwell’s willingness to disclose personal information. Sometimes, when someone is deeply private but finds herself writing a memoir anyway, she will stay on the surface and give up as little of herself as possible. Such memoirs are frustrating to read and for those that pay money for the privilege, a bit of a cheat. But once Cornwell decided to do this thing, she really did it right. And while, on the one hand, there’s a certain amount of namedropping and braggadocio, even that aspect of it is interesting; given everything she went through to arrive at the station she’s gained in life, one can hardly begrudge her.

For those that love her books, and also for those that simply enjoy a well written memoir, this book is highly recommended.

Opera Wars, by Caitlin Vincent****

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Caitlin Vincent is a former opera singer and company owner, and so she’s in a good position to talk about its controversies. This compact little book carries a wealth of information for the interested layman. My thanks go to NetGalley and Scribner for the review copy; this book is for sale now.

Much of the book discusses, as advertised, the controversies surrounding opera. How much license can its companies, directors, etc. take with the original versions of the most canonical of operas? What if, instead of taking place in the expected setting, one was to stage the opera in outer space, or in a future world, or, or, or…? There’s no law that says it can’t be done, and sometimes it is. Yet those that take such liberties have to face the ravening hoards that take exception to such variations.

What about the new operas that aren’t famous yet? Remember, every opera was new at one point.

But the greatest controversy of all is that of race. Is it acceptable for a Caucasian singer to play Madame Butterfly, for example? Opera has long been the bastion of white musicians, and though there’s been a bit of progress, the number of performers of color is still quite small. So, if this part should be sung by an Asian woman, must she be Japanese, or Japanese-American? What if a Filipino woman wants the part and can sing it well? And then the other question: may performers of color play parts that traditionally go to white singers? A Japanese-American soprano is quoted as saying that while she is grateful for the number of times she’s been cast in that opera, at some point in her life she’d like to play a role other than Madame Butterfly!

At the tender age of 18, this reviewer wanted to become an opera singer; after less than two years in college I changed my mind. Reading this book made me thank my lucky stars that I did. Vincent explains exactly what is required of anyone that wants to pursue the dream, and though others had told me that it’s a difficult road made still more difficult when one doesn’t have financial backing or the right contacts, I had no idea just how grueling the path can be. I might have taken to the bath with a package of shiny razor blades had I gone down that road! Constant rejection; sexual harassment, even in the Me-Too era; poverty; lack of sleep from working day jobs, rehearsing and training, auditioning, and preparing to perform, should one be cast in even a tiny role are but a few of the demands this life exacts. Plane tickets to audition; plane tickets to reach the performance venue, sometimes overseas; suitable clothes for auditions; costly vocal coaching; these are among the expenses the performers are expected to meet, in addition to the ordinary expenses of room and board, transportation, and utilities.

And yet, are the artists exploited? Vincent points out that most opera companies operate on a shoestring, with the less famous ones closing at alarming rates. It’s not that someone at the top is leaching off the members of the company; in most cases, nobody is making much money. While a few principal artists are well paid and well known, those are the rare exceptions.

The narrative flows beautifully, and the hard facts are broken up with occasional humorous anecdotes.

Those interested in the world of opera but lacking much knowledge will benefit from the wealth of information packed into a relatively brief space here; the book is just over 300 pages, but nearly 40% of that is endnotes! I recommend this little gem to all that are curious.

Wolvers, by Taylor Brown*****

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Taylor Brown has become one of my favorite authors. He creates believable characters and memorable plots, and his recurring themes have to do with championing the poor and dispossessed, and an urgent sense of environmentalism. My great thanks go to NetGalley, RB Media, and St. Martin’s Press for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

Trace Temple hates wolves. His family has spiraled downward since losing its New Mexico ranch, a ranch that was in the family for generations, because of a massive legal penalty incurred by shooting an endangered wolf. It’s legal to kill a wolf that has preyed on one’s livestock, but the circumstances under which that can be done are very specific ones. Trace’s father thought he was shooting the wolf that had eaten his sheep, but he accidentally shot the wrong wolf, and it cost him and his family everything. The patriarch went to prison, and Trace’s mother developed an addiction that has become all consuming. So when some sketchy characters approach Trace and propose to hire him to shoot One-Eleven, the legendary alpha of a wolf pack that ranchers have long hated, he’s all in. But an experience that occurs while he’s on the hunt causes him to change his mind.

Once Trace is out of the running, the organization hires someone else, a man called Murdoch. Murdoch wants to kill the wolf, and he wouldn’t mind killing Trace, too.

The story starts a bit slow, then gathers steam as it goes. The Gila wilderness where all of this takes place is resonantly depicted, and given that nearly everything that Brown has written to this point is set in the Appalachians or some other part of the American South, this is all the more impressive.  The dialogue pops! There aren’t many characters in this story, and the two-legged characters that get the most ink are males; it’s all the more amazing, then, that Brown’s respect for women shines through, and it does so naturally. By the last quarter of this story, nobody could have kept me from finishing it.

There’s some gore here; the story could not have been told authentically without it. Humans get hurt, and some get dead, and so do wolves; but none of the damage is superfluous or titillating. And I loved the ending.

Brown explains what’s real and what’s fictional at the end of the book, and he even includes a two page bibliography for those interested in the subject matter.

I was lucky enough to have both the digital and audio versions of this story, and it’s the first time I’ve listened to one of Brown’s books. Ramiz Monsef does an outstanding job as narrator, and for that reason, I recommend this format for those that like audio books. But whatever your preference is, this novel is highly recommended.

Black Bag, by Luke Kennard***-****

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In this bizarre little story, an out-of-work actor accepts a position with a psychology professor. The gig is to wear a big black leather bag from his calves clear over the top of his head, and not talk to anyone. The experience leads to unexpected developments.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Zando for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

Possibly the oddest thing of all is that we are never given a name for our protagonist, so I will call him Our Actor. Our Actor answers the advertisement and is intrigued by the proposition; he’s even more intrigued by the promise of fast cash. He’s been avoiding his landlady, and his food supply is about to run out. And the job is an easy one: all he has to do is wear the bag and be quiet. He is to show up at a particular class the professor is teaching, and not communicate in any way with the students or anybody else. No words, no shrugs, no noises of any kind. The professor then observes how the students respond to the bag person (my term, not Kinnard’s.)

A secondary thread appears when another professor taps him for her research on sexuality. His job for her is to show up in her office when he is on campus, but not needed by the first prof, and during hours she’ll be there. He goes to her office, where they have sort-of sex without him removing the bag. She doesn’t want to see him outside of his bag, ever. The whole business turns pitiful when he decides he’s in love with her; she, in turn, tends to forget he’s an actual human being in there. I don’t much like this aspect of the story, but it serves the purpose of demonstrating just exactly how alienated from real life this poor schmuck is. In fact, the whole story is one of great loneliness and alienation.

The middle of the book is slow. There’s a fair amount of repetition; the most interesting occurrence is when Our Actor’s best (and possibly only) friend, who is an influencer, decides there’s a way to monetize the whole Black Bag experience. I think that I have identified the problem that will result from this decision, but I am mistaken. I can’t guess where Kennard is going.

The second half of the book is much better than the first, which is why I round my rating upwards. By the 25% mark, I am counting both the remaining pages and my regrets, but shortly after the halfway mark, the thing picks up steam and then I have to know how it shakes out, not just for the sake of an honest and informed review, but for myself.

Also interesting is the author’s note, which explains that the novel is based on a true story! *What?*

For those in the mood for something different, this brief little book may be just what you’re looking for.

Missing Sister, by Joshilyn Jackson****-*****

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“We all have a little monster in us.”

Missing Sister is the newest thriller by one of my favorite authors, Joshilyn Jackson. My thanks go to William Morrow and NetGalley for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

Penny Albright is a rookie cop, a vocation she chose after her twin sister, Nix, died of an overdose. Nix was raped by a group of three men that she knew; Penny wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, but soon after it happened, Nix’s personality changed. She moved to the city, isolated herself. Before the rape, Nix had never used street drugs. Penny is too late to save Nix, but she hopes to be able to spare others the same horrific fate.

Then she and her trainer, who’s also her partner, are called to a murder scene. The victim turns out to be one of the three men that raped Nix, and Penny forces herself to show no reaction, to keep her cop face on, but inside, she is exultant.  Then, while canvassing the area, Penny inadvertently comes upon the killer, holding the murder weapon and covered in blood. She and the woman lock eyes, and then, rather than arresting her, Penny lets her go. After that, she becomes obsessed with learning the woman’s story; she is certain that the killer had a similar experience to Nix’s, or that the killer had a sister that did. She vows to hunt the killer down in order to find out what happened.

The first half of the book is frustrating. The story is told in the first person, and after hearing Penny’s determined plan to learn the killer’s story over and over again, on a never-ending, somewhat circular loop, I want to smack her upside the head and tell her to get on with it. Leave that dangerous woman alone! She can’t bring your sister back, and you can’t either, I want to tell her. A part of me felt let down, because Jackson doesn’t usually have a weak first half, or any weak part at all in her novels. But just as I’m beginning to think, what a shame, everything changes, and the story becomes a true, grab-you-by-the-hair thriller. The ending is a complete surprise, and what’s more, it makes sense. The second half more than makes up for the first half.

I was lucky enough to have both the digital and audio review copies, and Jackson reads her own story, which makes it even better.

This story smacks of a possible series, and if that’s the plan, it explains why readers have Penny’s motivation beaten into us. That motivation may be the basis for who knows how many books to come; many, I hope! For those that are able to wade through the first half to find the reward in the second, this book is highly recommended.

The Hired Man, by Sandra Dallas*****

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The Hired Man is the newest novel by badass writer Sandra Dallas. This work of historical fiction is set in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl, and our protagonist is Martha Helen, a teenager whose family decides to take in a drifter after he saves a local boy during a dust storm.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the review copy.  This book is for sale now.

Martha Helen’s tiny rural community is hard pressed. The year is 1937, and even without the dust storms that cause crop failures across the prairie, times would be lean. Small luxuries that were once taken for granted are now saved for special occasions, at least for the fortunate, and have disappeared for many unlucky families. Domestic abuse is on the rise, as is alcoholism. And so, when Otis Hobbs, a drifter searching for work, saves a small child that went missing during a terrible storm, Martha Helen’s grateful mother insists that he be allowed to stay. Local law says that newcomers must move on if not employed, so Martha Helen’s family hires Otis to help on the farm in exchange for room and meals; he lives in a dugout on their property and eats with the family.

Their neighbors don’t like it! Though there are a handful of supportive townspeople, most have deep seated fear and loathing toward “tramps,” as men that wander in search of work were known. Rumors abound. Any small thing that goes wrong is immediately chalked up to Otis. And when Martha Helen’s best friend Frankie is found raped, murdered, and dumped, out come the pitchforks, the tar, the feathers.

Author Sandra Dallas is an established writer, but I had only read one of her novels prior to this one, which is impressive. Every stereotype and trope is deftly avoided, and the result is a highly engaging narrative, told in the first person, with characters that are nearly corporeal. I thought I knew how this story would end; I did not. Oftentimes when an author decides to end a book with an unexpected twist, they have to contort the plot in awkward ways in order to shoehorn in their surprise ending. That’s not so here. The ending is a complete surprise to me, and the twist at the end leaves me with my mouth hanging open with astonishment. What…? But, how could….oh. Yeah. It totally works!

This is one of the rare times I have only the audio galley, and since I am primarily text oriented, that’s often a dicey proposition, but for once, it worked out beautifully. The plot is linear, and between that and the great skill of narrator Jesse Vilinsky, I always understand what’s happening.

Highly recommended to those that love the genre, particularly women.

Death in Mud Lick, by Eric Eyre*****

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The place is Kermit, West Virginia, population 382. Big pharma dumped millions of opioids here regularly with impunity—until this investigation was complete, anyway—causing deaths by the score. Death in Mud Lick tells how the tiny West Virginia Gazette and its stalwart journalist, Eric Eyre, blew the whistle on this outrageous practice and, in time, held the pharmaceutical firms responsible.

My thanks go to Scribner and NetGalley for the review copy. I’m years late, partially because I knew that this was going to be a grim tale. It’s for sale now, and though it is as grim as I feared, it’s also inspirational.

Kermit had just one pharmacy, but that was all it took. The parking lot was always jammed with cars from out of state; vehicles poured in from South Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia, among others. There was free popcorn for waiting customers, and patrons who picked up prescriptions sometimes strolled out of the shop and went directly to someone else’s car, where they would hand over the bag of pills and collect money. Nobody was held accountable, and in fact, opioids served as a local currency. You could buy gas with opioids; you could use them to tip your waiter. Nobody batted an eye.

Given these statistics, how was it that nobody was ever busted for this? Perhaps it was such an integral part of the local economy that it was accepted; then again, there were real doctors writing these prescriptions, and they were ridiculously easy to get.

Eyre won the Pulitzer for his coverage of this crisis. He continued his investigation even after he received a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, though it slowed him down some, inevitably. His narrative reads almost like a thriller, and all of us owe him a great deal. There are still plenty of addicts out there, sadly—you probably know at least one, and I certainly do—but the trajectory has been checked, and it’s all because of the free press.

I highly recommend this book to you. Thanks, Eric.

The Red Queen, by Martha Grimes**

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What a shame. I was initially delighted to see a new installment of this long running series, but something has gone badly wrong here. Nevertheless, my thanks go to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The Richard Jury series was wildly successful for decades; I first began reading it in the 1990s. I was pleased to see the familiar characters, particularly Wiggins, the hypochondriacal assistant to our protagonist, as well as Jury’s friend Melrose Plant—with a brief showing of Plant’s domineering and pretentious Aunt Agatha—and Cyril the Cat, the feline that makes Jury’s boss apoplectic, yet is never truly banished. And that’s about all of the joy I found here at all.

Was there an editor involved at any point in this process? Because it sure doesn’t look like it. What a miserable jumble of elements. I couldn’t tell who was coming and who was going. At first I thought it might just be me, so I backtracked, but…nope.

I had access to an audio galley, and if there had been anything here to save, the reader probably could have done it, but the reader couldn’t rewrite the book.

Diehard fans, stay away from this thing. It will break your heart.

A Good Person, by Kirsten King***

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A Good Person is the debut novel of Kirsten King. This is one of those rare times when I decide to read a book based largely on the cover. My thanks go to NetGalley and Putnam for the review copy; this book will be available to the public March 31, 2026.

Lillian is lonesome. She has few friends and no love life. When she spies Henry in a coffee shop, she decides to change all of that, and she propositions him; from there develops a relationship that Lillian’s friend Jamie regards as a “situationship,” meaning a hook-up situation, but Lillian is determined will become true love.

That’s not really how it shakes out, though.

The thing about Lillian is that she’s abrasive. In fact, she’s a walking, talking ball of snark and negativity. She doesn’t like most people, and they feel the same about her. But when Henry says he doesn’t want to see her anymore, she does and says rash things, and unfortunately, some of it unfolds on social media. When Henry is found dead, she is an immediate suspect. And while I find Lillian to be about as toxic a main character as I’ve found in many years, I can’t help but root for her to be exonerated, because whatever else she is, I am certain she’s no killer.

Because of the hilarious looking cover, I expect this book to be humorous in a dark sort of way, but I am mistaken. In fact, it proves to be darker than I am up for. A little more than halfway in, I find myself counting the pages. The ending has an interesting twist to it, and King has crafted a credible anti-hero. The narrative unfolds in the first person, and that makes it darker still. Foreshadowing is deft and in just the right amount.  But while there are some nice moments, I can’t say I enjoy this novel, nor can I recommend it.