Pomona Afton Can So Solve a Murder

 Pomona Afton Can So Solve a Murder by Bellamy Rose turned out to be a fun entertaining romantic mystery novel.   I had downloaded it and was not sure I would read it.  Then looking trough my pile for something quick and light I thought ok give it a quick try.

It did not disappoint.  If you like a romance novel this is fits the genre and adds a mystery to the plot.  Pomona is a spoiled brat.  At the age of 20 something, she lives in a hotel that her family owns.  She has all the money, clothes and wait staff she could every want.  She does not work, left college and just parties and posts online.  She is an influencer, sharing her lifestyle to viewers for ratings.  

Then her Grandmother is murdered and all te money and luxury living is pulled out from under her.  She has to go out and live like the average person in New York.  Her childhood nanny sets her up as the roommate with her son, Gabe.  Gabe helps Pom get a job in the coffeeshop he manages.  

Pom starts to learn what it is like to really be a caring human being. She learns to actually care about other people, not just take advantage of those around her for her own gain.

Of course Pom and Gabe start to work together to find out who killed her grandmother.  There is light suspense, romance and humor.  A good book for a snowy day or a beach read.

Murder Takes a Vacation

 Laura Lippman gave me a great surprise with her newest book, Murder Takes a Vacation.

A fun entertaining mystery novel that brings the reader a new and greater perspective on Mrs Blossom who has been a small side character in previous books as assistant to Tess Monaghan.  

We meet the quiet, unassuming Mrs Blossom is feeling unsettled after following her daughter to Arizona when she was widowed ten years ago.  When her son-in-law announces he is taking a job and his family to Tokyo, she decides to move back to Baltimore.  

One day she finds a winning lottery ticket in a parking lot and her life is changed.  With the vast windfall she decides to take a cruise and bring her friend Elinor along.  The plan is made to meet at the cruise and Mrs Blossom will fly ahead to tour Paris for a few days before the cruise. Of course things start to become questionable almost immediately.  She meets the handsome Alan at the airport and he says he will assist her through the flight and to her hotel.  Just as she is feeling a spark of romance, Alan turns up dead.  Then another younger gentleman shows up on the scene, Danny.  He is very courteous, making Mrs Blossom feel better when she hears about Alan's death.  Surprisingly Danny also is on the same cruise she and Elinor have booked.  

Mrs Blossom tries to figure out who killed Alan and find answers to more mysterious facts that begin to appear as the ship cruises down the Seine.  We find out that Mrs Blossom who as an elderly full figured woman, was an assistant to another Laura Lippman character,  PI Tess Monaghan.  Mrs Blossom was good at her job because , she says, people don't notice older, heavy women.  She was invisible. She has always been able to use that too her advantage.  This time it seems she is being followed and her life may be in danger.  

A fun twisty mystery that keeps youo guessing all the way to the end.

The Goddess of Warsaw

 Lisa Barr one of my favorite authors has done it again.  The Goddess of Warsaw does not disappoint even though you may feel you have read too many Holocaust and WWII books.  Ok that was what I was feeling and I should not project that on you.  I was going to take a quick flip through this book and return it to the library when I got totally sucked right in.

This is the story of Bina Blonoski is a conglomeration of te women who lived through the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust.  She is the fictional character who represents the powerful woman who wanted to fight back and not sit by while the Nazis were killing the Jews of Poland.

Bina, her husband Jakub and his brother Alexander are living in the Ghetto and become involved with a group that is planning the uprising. Jakub is a writer and wants to record the story of their lives in the Ghetto for future generations to see what happened in Poland in 1943.  Bina and Alexander follow the leader of the resistance, Zelda to fight back wen the Nazis enter the Ghetto to kill or take the remaining people to concentration camps.  

We follow lives of the people in the Ghetto, learn about where they came from and background of their lives before the war.  Then we follow Bina as she survives the war and becomes the famous Hollywood actress, Lena Browning.  Author Barr gives the reader a picture of how the years of living through hell can affect a person for life.  When she learns about Operation Paperclip, her past comes back to haunt her and the assassin, spy that is locked deep inside comes back to her as she deals out a justice of her own.

So well written and engaging you will not want to put it down.

The Love Elixer of Augusta Stern

 This cute novel, The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Coen Loigman could be shelved in the Romance section of the library.  It is a fun lighthearted novel about losing love and finding it again a a senior citizen.

Augusta Stern is turning eighty years old and is relocating to a senior housing development in Florida at the suggestion of her daughter.  Surprisingly one morning as se goes out to swim her laps, she runs into someone from her past.

Irving Rivkin was the delivery boy for her father's pharmacy so many years ago, and he was the boy woh broke her heart.  Of course old feelings reemerge and Augusta finds herself trying to figure out what went wrong so many years ago.  Did she make a mistake or did she just read the situation wrong?

During the intervening years, Augusta followed in her father's footsteps becoming a pharmacist.  But back in her twenties, she was intrigued by her Great Aunt Esther, who was a healer.  When customers were healed by thhe pharmacist's medications, they would secretly visit Aunt Esther for a different kind of healing.  Augusta secretly tried to find out what unorthodox methods her aunt was using to help people.  When she tries to use one of Esther's powerful elixirs herself disastrous results, she promises never to use them again.

Now she and Irving are elderly and Augusta wonders if it is too late to find love and happiness.

You must suspend your need for realistic storytelling and give into thhe possibility of fantasy and magical realisim.

The Talented Mrs Mandelbaum

Amazing a Jewish crime boss and a woman no less!  What a great concept for a book. The Talented Mrs Mandelbaum is that book.  Written and throughly researched by Margalit Fox.  The extension of that title is The Rise and Fall of an American Organized Crime Boss.  

This was an interesting book teing the story of how Mrs Mandelbaum was able to get away with being a n organized crime boss, who ruled over may men who would bring her products she could mark up and sell.  They also would distribute items Mrs Mandelbaum sold and needed delivered.

This all took place at a time in American history when it was much easier to go undetected and get away with crime.  Fredericka Mandelbaum came to the US in steerage and set up a haberdashery in the Lower Eastside of New York.  She was a mother to four children and was soon widowed.  She became a well known philanthropist and well known in high society circles.  She was known for being very loyal to the thieves with whom she did business. Wen tey got in trouble she would bail them out and she became friends with them.

She managed her business and was successful for thirty years.  It is a fascinating story of how she ruled New York and was also a social butterfly.

The Author's Guide to Murder

 Three fabulous authors have joined forces and written the most entertaining novel;

The Author's Guide to Murder.  Those authors are Beatriz Williams, Karen White and Lauren Willig.  Each an author with a long book list of their own, they have teamed up here to write a mystery novel about authors. The characters are three authors who have traveled together to a Scottish castle for a writing workshop.  They are there to meet a legendary mystery writer and write a book together.

The three authors are, Cassie, a Southern mom of kids, who writes cosy mysteries withh a cooking theme and a cat whoo helps solve the crimes, Emma, an east Coast researcher who writes very detailed historical novels and wearing sexy outfits with high heeled boots, is Kat from Brooklyn who writes erotica.  

Their editor thought this trip would help them improve their careers, which they all need. But unknown to one another, the real reason these women agreed to the trip is a secret they are each keeping from the others.

When the the host of the workshop, famous author, Brett Saffron Presley is found dead, the women's bickering must end and they really must work together to get the truth.  They band together to solve te murder aong the way finding secret passages, love and a whole lot about each other.

A fun locked room whodon'it, with Scottish accents, plaid outfits and lots of fun.

All The Rivers

 All The Rivers is written by the author Dorit Rabiyan.  I picked thjhis novel top read with my Banned Book group because it was banned in Israel for students in high school and caused a public fire storm because of the banning.  Also because Jewish and Israeli authors are being challenged and dismissed here in the US.  I am so glad I decided to read this novel.

All the Rivers is a beautifully crafted novel about the tug and pull of being in love with someone who you can never spend your life with.  An intimate relationship between an Israeli and a Palestinian.  Finding each other in NYC and falling in love but knowing can never be relationship you can bring home to your family.

Liat is an Israeli studying in the United States.  She is staying in an apartment while the owners are away traveling.  She is house sitting and dog sitting.  She is studying to be an English translator, with all the intentions of going back to Israel in six months.  One night she meets Halimi, a Palestinian, living in Brooklyn try to make it as an artist, in a bar. The attraction is almost immediate.  As they travel the streets of the city together they are falling in love.  For the next few months they are together constantly.  Their relationship is intense and star crossed.  Lovers from different societies that can never really be together. While they are in New York it is like being on an island alone with each other.  But even then the outside world interferes.  Liat knows she can never tell her family about Halimi.  She hides every Sunday when she calls home to check in.  Halimi wants to share Liat with his family, but finds out that it will. not work out well.  Even Liat and Halimi have trouble getting over the very opposing views they carry of the other's political stance.

The story is told from Liat's perspective and she is constantly reminding herself that she is leaving in a matter of months.  That this relationship is temporary and cannot exist once she is back in Israel.

Beautifully worded prose paints the detailed feelings, confusion and deep divides that run through the communication and daily activities of Liat and Halimi’s lives as they intersect.

Also very interestingly is that this novel is based on a true story and the story is about the author.  Rabiyon lived in New York and had a very similar relationship.  She as lived though the emotions described in this powerful novel.

Fifty Seven Fridays

 A little more personal and closer to home, Fifty Seven Fridays, by Myra Sack is the story of a family who have a beautiful baby who is born with Tay-Sachs disease.   This is the personal story of how Myra and Matt live through the three years of life with beautiful, Havi.  When Havi  was not meeting the markers that most children meet at certain ages, Myra and Matt start looking for answers.  Havi is diagnosed with Tay-Sachs and their journey begins.  They have fifty seven Shabbats with her before she dies.  Each week they celebrate Shabbat with family and friends like it would be Havi’s birthday.  This idea and the journal they keep are the ways they decide to live the short time they have with Havi in a big way.  This is the story of that experience.

Saving Abigail; The True Story of the Abduction and Rescue of a Three Year Old Hostage

 Saving Abigail The True Story of the Abduction and Rescue of a Three Year Old Hostage.  This book is written by Liz Hirsh Naftali, the great aunt of three year old Abigail Mor Edan.

Abigail got world recognition when her parents were killed and she was kdinapped by the Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023.  Naftali, who lives between Israel and the United States, tells the story from her perspective. She was in Israel visiting on October 7th.  Her daughter lives in Jaffa with her young family.  Naftali and her ex-husband lived in Israel during the 1990 and 2000’s raising five children.  She has extended family in Israel who were all living in Kfar Aza on October 7th.

Naftali has friends in high places in WDC and was able to get access to speak to many Washington insiders and also get seen and to the microphone and speak to many who had the eaer of the law makers working to free the ohstages after October 7th.

It is an interesting account of how the process to free the hostages and what happened on October 7th