THOUGHTS ON THIS 'n THAT

  Bobby Johnston's little book, THE SAINT I AIN'T (Fomite) packs a huge message. It took me back to the 1970s, when I attended Catholic School. Bobby attended St. Agnes on Sycamore Street in rust-belt Ohio. I went to St. Lawrence on Montauk Highway in Suffolk County, Long Island. THE SAINT I AIN'T is a first person narrative that is humorous, but heartbreaking at the same time. It's a compilation of short stories, that read like poems without any pretention.  Bobby is "sentenced to serve kindergarten through eighth grade" at St. Agnes. His was one of many "families drowning in quicksand" living paycheck to paycheck. He wanted to "sustain long enough (in Ohio) to escape circumstances before they consumed him."  No book about growing up Catholic is complete without the nuns. According to Bobby, "the nuns who taught and tyrannized us at St. Agnes School went downhill from day one of first grade." It was the same at St. Lawrence. We w...

  Lauren's father was released from prison ten years ago, after being sentenced to life for murder. He was released after a serial killer confessed to the crime. Lauren's mother was the one to testify against her father putting him behind bars. Since then, it's been too painful for her to be in touch with mom, but she tries her best. She struggles to have a relationship with her father, but he has moved on with his new family. In Victoria Helen Stone's, THE LAST ONE HOME (LakeUnionPublishing), Lauren's recently broken up with her boyfriend in LA and her paternal grandmother has suffered a stroke at her ranch. Lauren decides to visit and help her grandmother around the ranch, which is too big for her grandmother to care for. While there, Lauren's grandmother is moved into an extended living facility. She surprises Lauren by signing the ranch over to her. But there's more to the ranch than Lauren could ever imagine. THE LAST ONE HOME is a psychological thrille...

  It's WWII when twenty-five year old, Anna Cavanaugh finds out her husband has been killed in freak accident in Hawaii. She is intelligent, professional, teaches in DC and speaks fluent French and German. Her parents want her to spend the summer resting at the family cottage on Cape Cod. She can't imagine anything worse. In Jane Healey's, historical novel, THE SECRET STEALERS (LakeUnionPublishing) a friend of her father's, Major General William Donovan, a WWI hero approaches her at her husband's funeral about a job in DC. He asks her to come down from Boston if she's interested and when she's ready. She is. Anna is recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) a highly secretive communications center which oversees propaganda, resistance groups and gave her a front row seat to the history and tragedy of the war. She becomes Donovan's assistant but soon she's moving up, transferred to England and working in intelligence. But Anna wants to bec...

  Jess Clayton drives around the country in her 1993 Airstream named Vera uncluttering people's lives for her company Transitions. It's too bad, she's cluttered with too many of her own issues to take any joy from her life. In RaeAnne Thayne's new novel, THE PATH TO SUNSHINE COVE (Harlequin) Jess returns to Cape Santuary, where she grew up and her sister, Rachel still lives with her family. Thirteen years ago, Jess and Rachel suffered a traumatic event that pulled them apart, but both in their own way, misses the other. Jess pulls up to the home of Eleanor Whitaker, where she's been hired to clean out her house, after her husband passed six months ago. Instead of a warm welcome, Jess is greeted by a rude man. Nate Whitaker threatens to call the police if she doesn't get off his land. Jess is former military and not in the mood to take any of his crap, when she has a job to do. Eventually, Eleanor returns home and calms everyone down, but Jess is still angry at h...