Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn... A Review

 Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn is a light, "fun" read by a writer that is primarily known for her 2 Victorian Mystery series that star bright female protagonists. Killers of a Certain Age is set in contemporary times, starring 4 women who were recruited while in college and trained to be international assassins for a group working outside of the “system" (Reminds me of the series Alias with Jennifer Garner). They’ve been at it for 40 years now and are on their retirement cruise... but it's not all fun and games and something is afoot on that ship…

Many people have characterized Killers of a Certain Age as The Golden Girls meet James Bond. In a way this is true. Deanna Raybourn takes us on a journey with these women in flashbacks to establish who they were and their relationships to the players in the organization as we navigate the present day “situation”. We learn quickly what that situation is… that someone or everyone is trying to kill them. They are hard pressed to trust anyone from the organization they worked for, and have to play detectives (and killers) in order to find out why they are on the hit list now and try and stay alive long enough to try and get it cleared up. 

Deanna Raybourn is a good writer and this is a good story. I found it to be on the lighter side with just enough to keep my interest, but not a lot to sink my teeth into. There is some humor, there is some danger, there is an interesting mystery to be solved and there are 4 main characters that you’ll like. I enjoyed it. And I enjoyed reading about those 4 women of a certain age breaking the molds that they would typically find themselves in with grace and a little kicka$$. I would definitely say, "Read it".

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn was published by Berkley September of last year. You can find this now at your local bookstore, or in my case, I took out the eBook from my local library! 

The Sunday Salon and Women on Journeys...

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine Some university library’s vast reading room. It’s filled with people — students and faculty and strangers who’ve wandered in. They’re seated at great oaken dests, books piled all around them, and they’re all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they’ll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon’s literary intake. Thank you to Deb at ReaderBuzz for keeping us all together on Sundays now and hosting The Sunday Salon!

Most books are journeys. These books are the journeys of three women, all involving their mothers and grandmothers. They are different journeys, but all three of these books have gotten a lot of great buzz in the book world. They all caught my attention...

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward...
Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

Publishing date for Let Us Descend is October 24, 2023 by Scribner.  Jesmyn Ward is an award winning writer and this is on my wishlist. Mark your calendars for this one!

Another great book came to mind when I was reading about this one - Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Two half-sisters whose lives take different paths. One sister marries into money and a life of ease, the other is sold into a life of slavery.  Amazing book and here is the link to MY REVIEW from 2018.

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The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young... In the small mountain town of Jasper, North Carolina, June Farrow is waiting for fate to find her. The Farrow women are known for their thriving flower farm—and the mysterious curse that has plagued their family line. The whole town remembers the madness that led to Susanna Farrow’s disappearance, leaving June to be raised by her grandmother and haunted by rumors.

It’s been a year since June started seeing and hearing things that weren’t there. Faint wind chimes, a voice calling her name, and a mysterious door appearing out of nowhere—the signs of what June always knew was coming. But June is determined to end the curse once and for all, even if she must sacrifice finding love and having a family of her own.

After her grandmother’s death, June discovers a series of cryptic clues regarding her mother’s decades-old disappearance, except they only lead to more questions. But could the door she once assumed was a hallucination be the answer she’s been searching for? The next time it appears, June realizes she can touch it and walk past the threshold. And when she does, she embarks on a journey that will not only change both the past and the future, but also uncover the lingering mysteries of her small town and entangle her heart in an epic star-crossed love.

Coming October 17th, 2023 and published by Delacorte Press. I recently received an eGalley in my ereader courtesy of the publisher and am excited to start reading this! Write this one on the calendar because you're going to want to read it!

When I originally read about this book, I thought it sounded like the Sigourney Weaver TV mini series The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart  from Amazon Prime. It takes place in Australia though, but it is a family of women who run a flower farm. A Grandmother takes in her granddaughter and raises her from when she was very young. Family secrets, lots of family secrets and an incredibly amazing series. (Warning though, it's only 7 episodes and you'll be wanting more.). And the series is actually based on a book of the same name by Holly Ringland.

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Esme Cahill Fails Spectacularly by Marie Bostwick... Esme Cahill thinks she has failed spectacularly: fired from her New York City publishing job, divorced from her husband, and possessing little more than a broken-down car and a pile of unfinished manuscripts, she drives home to Asheville at the request of her late grandmother, Adele, who had begged her, just before she died, to return to the place she grew up.

There she discovers the once-charming lakeside retreat run by her family is sliding toward financial ruin, so with the help of her grandfather, George; estranged mother, Robyn; and a traveling chef Dawes (maker of the world’s best grilled cheese sandwich) they set to work. In the attic, Esme unearths a trove of museum-worthy art quilts, sewn by Adele. Piecing together the inspiration behind them, Esme discovers a forgotten chapter in her family history and her grandmother’s untold story, that of a gifted artist who never received her due.

This is an always-emotional, sometimes humorous, very human novel of what it means to be family—the ties that bind us together and the unintentional hurts that can rend us apart. And, along the way, Esme learns that failure can be the first step toward the life you’re meant to find.

This book caught my eye initially because it takes place near where I live. And also because of the quilts, because I am also a quilter. Published by William Morrow this past May and I have an eGalley courtesy of the publisher to review and can't wait to start reading. You can find this at your favorite bookstore now. 

What's your favorite book journey?

So, that's what I have for you this week! Some great books coming your way and one you can start reading right now! What great books have you been reading? 

Fall is a great time for new books coming out and believe it or not, Fall is officially only 21 days away, so there are more great books coming your way soon and more to come on Chick with Books! 

P.S. If you missed it this week, check out Memoir Monday for a great seaworthy book.

Happy reading... Suzanne

Memoir Monday... or rather Ironing out the Truths of History

The Wager, A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann... On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.

But then ... six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could hang.

The Wager is on all the Buzz lists. Descriptions like Masterful, a Tour de Force, Incredible have all been used to describe it. Although not a Memoir, the base of its' essence is memoirs. The diaries and journals David Grann could find to lay out all the players and their accounts of the HMS Wager and what happened to the ship and its' crew. Years of research. It sounds so interesting to me. And I am also curious as to the different accounts of what happened. Published by Doubleday ( and found on the Penguin Randomhouse website), The Wager is available at your favorite bookstore! 

The Sunday Salon... and Great Books in my eReader...

 Welcome to The Sunday Salon! What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine Some university library’s vast reading room. It’s filled with people — students and faculty and strangers who’ve wandered in. They’re seated at great oaken dests, books piled all around them, and they’re all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they’ll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon’s literary intake. Thank you to Deb at ReaderBuzz for keeping us all together on Sundays now and hosting The Sunday Salon! 

There are so many great books to talk about this week! I'm limited myself to the 3 I think you've got to hear about first and are availabe right now at your favorite book... 

The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman... 

One brilliant June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden, and books are considered evil. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her? Through a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways. She learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine, and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you.

Alice Hoffman always writes wonderful, sink your teeth into stories. Some sprinkled with magic, it's been a few years since we've gotten a new story so this is exciting! Just published and released by Atria Books  August 15th, let's journey with Mia as she learns the strength that exists inside of her. This is waiting for me in my eReader courtesy of Atria Books! A thank you to them for the opportunity to review The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman! I can't wait!!

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Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death by Maria Vale... 

Death needs a do-over. Azrael--Grim Reaper, Destroyer, Angel of Death--has messed up. Instead of taking Molly Molloy's soul, he accidentally saves her from choking on a chicken wing. Molly has been visited by Death before. He took her parents, her grandparents. Her first love. But now this utterly unexceptional waitress at a breastaurant in New York can see him. Touch him. Talk to him. Say 'no' to him. Make him doubt. The Powers that Be are waiting for Death to fix his mistake but before he can, he makes one more...

He falls in love.

We've gotten a glimpse of the grim reaper in books and television (Dead Like Me fans should love this book) and it's always interesting to see another aspect of "his" personality. Of course he is the Grim Reaper, so he is gathering souls, but how does he manage to fall in love? This is waiting in my eReader for me too, courtesy of Wild & Ashe LLC who published the ebook. Sungrazer Publishing has published the paperback version. Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death by Maria Vale is now available at your favorite bookstore AND the Kindle version is only $4.99 right now!

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Someone Else's Shoes by JoJo Moyes... 

Who are you when you are forced to walk in someone else’s shoes? Nisha Cantor lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy, until her husband announces a divorce and cuts her off. Nisha is determined to hang onto her glamorous life. But in the meantime, she must scramble to cope--she doesn’t even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in. That’s because Sam Kemp – in the bleakest point of her life – has accidentally taken Nisha’s gym bag. But Sam hardly has time to worry about a lost gym bag--she’s struggling to keep herself and her family afloat. When she tries on Nisha’s six-inch high Christian Louboutin red crocodile shoes, the resulting jolt of confidence that makes her realize something must change—and that thing is herself. Someone Else’s Shoes is a story about how just one little thing can suddenly change everything.

I love JoJo Moyes writing! I interviewed her for Chick with Books in 2018, when she came out with her book Still Me, which continued the story of Louisa Clark, who we first met in Me Before You. ( You can find that interview HERE ). She writes these characters that just pull you in. Totally relatable, flawed but honest characters. Someone Else's Shoes sounds like a fun romp with the heartwarming characters JoJo Moyes is known for. Published by Pamela Dorman Books, a division of Penguin the beginning of 2023, you can find this at your favorite bookstore! Right now this is on my wishlist!

So, there you have it! 3 books that look like great reads and available right now! Next Sunday, I'll share some books that you should mark your calendars for because they are the ones you are going to want to read next!

What's on your Nightstand? or eReader?

Weekly Wrap-up:

Tuesday...

This week I've been reading about those "Golden Girls" of  a secret government agency taking care of business in Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn. It's my Library Loot for this week and in my eReader. As I get to know these ladies and the story their story, I am obsessively turning those pages to get to what happens next. I love Deanna Raybourn's Victorian Mystery series and so far, the writing here is holding my attention. It's not a "gripping" read, more light reading with a good story. Stay tuned for the review coming...

 And just in case you missed... My Review on The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston. A mix of  Top Chef and a Rom Com.

Hope you've found something interesting here! Leave me a comment and let me know what piques your interest! Happy reading... Suzanne

Library Loot....

 "Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that’s their secret weapon. They’ve spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they’re sixty years old, four women friends can’t just retire—it’s kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller"

Library cards are a great thing to have... and this week I used my Pickens County Library Card and downloaded Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn. A light, "fun" read by a writer that is primarily known for her 2 Victorian Mystery series that star bright female protagonists. Killers of a Certain Age is set in contemporary times, starring 4 women who were recruited while in college and trained to be international assasins for a group working outside of the "system". They've been at it for 40 years now and are on their retirement cruise... but it's not all fun and games and something is afoot on that ship...

Buzzfeed summed up its' review of this book as "The Golden Girls meets James Bond thriller."

Do you have a library card? 

Published September of last year by Penguin Random House,  be on the lookout for my review...

The Seven Year Slip... a Review

Light, airy and a perfect summery read. Open the pages of The Seven Year Slip and join Clementine, aka "Lemon" as she navigates life as an up and coming book publisher in a NYC job that she absolutely loves... or did love until she realizes that there is more to life than books. How does she come to realize that? By falling in love of course! And where there are plenty of books that have a "type A" heroine succumb to the wiles of a handsome hero, The Seven Year Slip gives us a fun story with a twist... a "magical" twist. You see, and I won't be giving anything away because you'll find this out soon enough, the magic is in the apartment that her Aunt gives her after she passes away. The magic is the 7 years it, meaning the apartment, jumps back to at unexpected times, where Lemon meets a mysterious handsome stranger... and slowly falls in love. 

I found the story very clever and the writing enjoyable. Ashely Poston whisked me right into the story with her wonderful characters and I never looked back. Finished the book in a few days because I just had to keep reading to find out what happened next. Good story with added romance and a bit of the "other" stuff (wink, wink), but not enough to classify this as a sizzler. I would definitely tell my besties to give it a go. 

The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston is 326 pages (even though Amazon says 352) and recently published by Berkley Romance, which means you can find this on the shelves of your favorite bookstore! 

P.S. The Readers Guide, just before the discussion questions, has some very interesting insights about Ashley and her book. That's well worth the read too!

Memoir Monday...

One Hundred Saturdays by Michael Frank... With nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never before spoken in detail about her past. Then she met Michael Frank. He came to her Greenwich Village apartment one Saturday afternoon to ask her a question about the Juderia, the neighborhood in Rhodes where she’d grown up in a Sephardic Jewish community that had thrived there for half a millennium. Neither of them could know this was the first of one hundred Saturdays that they would spend in each other’s company as Stella traveled back in time to conjure what it felt like to come of age on this luminous, legendary island in the eastern Aegean, which the Italians won in 1912 as the Ottoman empire was disintegrating, began officially governing as a colonial possession in 1923, and transformed over the next two decades until the Germans seized control and deported the entire Juderia to Auschwitz in July of 1944.

Probing and courageous, candid and sly, Stella is a magical modern-day Scheherazade whose stories reveal what it was like to grow up in an extraordinary place in an extraordinary time—and to construct a life after that place vanished. One Hundred Saturdays is a portrait of one of the last survivors, drawn at nearly the last possible moment; it is also an account of a tender and transformative friendship that develops between storyteller and listener as they explore the fundamental mystery of what it means to collect, share, and interpret the deepest truths of a life deeply lived.

In the vein of Tuesday with Morrie, Michael Frank spends 100 Saturdays, nearly 6 years, talking with Stella Levi in her Greenwich Village apartment. A chance meeting at a lecture turns into a wonderful friendship and of Stella sharing her story, her life.

One Hundred Saturdays was listed under the Indies Next selections as one the 6 Now in Paperback selections for September 2023. Originally this book was in the running for the Indie Next pick in September of 2022, but didn't win the #1 spot. But that's how I found this book... reading about Septembers' picks. And it intrigued me. I generally shy away from books about the Holocaust. They just depress me. But this book takes place in an area I'm unfamiliar with: Rhodes, Greece. But not only is this a story of survival, but it also is a coming of age story. I like how the author and Stella Levi meet and how the author takes the next 100 saturdays to listen to Stella recount her life to him. 

On my nightstand, published by Avid Reader Press, a division of Simon & Schuster last September, it is now available in paperback.

Easy & Fun Summer reading...

I've always considered summer reading light and airy. Guilty pleasure reading... books you don't normally sink your teeth into but go perfect with a glass of sweet tea on the back porch. I've added quite a few books to my 'summer reading" pile over the last few weeks. Books I don't normally turn to, such as Fantasy, have sucked me in with great writing. I'll get to the fantasy books this weekend, but for now, let me share what I opened the cover on this morning...  I don't even know how I came to find this book. Somewhere between must read books of the summer and Kirkus starred book reviews. But here it is and so far so good... really good. In a fun, light, bit of romance in the air kind of way. 

Here's the publishers blurb... 

"An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics."

I've just met Clementine. She's told me about her larger than life Aunt Analea and invited me to the Upper East Side into the quirky "magical" apartment she just inherited from her Aunt. (Well, not just, because it's been 3 years since she passed.) In a wonderful old building Clementine now calls home, we also meet a few other... characters, one of which just nudges her awake the morning after her first night sleeping there. Oh and he's cute too... but why is he there?! Oh, the fun has just started...

What grabbed my attention about The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston, (published by Penguin Random House this past June), was the "time travel" hook. I love time travel romances. Yup, my guilty pleasure from all my "serious" reading. This isn't exactly what I'd call a time travel book, but it's sprinkled with a bit of that magic. Of course there was also bookish people in the story, that was a plus. But what really hooked me was the writing. It invited me in and I felt like I was right there with Clementine walking beside her. Stay tuned for a review when I'm done, but if you'd like to read an excerpt, here's a link. And in the meantime, let me know what you're reading! Is your summer reading different from your normal reading?

Happy reading... Suzanne

Memoir Monday

Tell Me Everything by Minka Kelly... Fans know her as the spoiled, rich cheerleader Lyla Garrity on Friday Night Lights or as the affluent, mysterious Samantha on the HBO megahit Euphoria. But as revealed for the first time in these pages, Minka Kelly’s life has been anything but easy.

Raised by a single mother who worked as a stripper and struggled with addiction, Minka spent years waking up in strange apartments as she and her mom bounced around the country, relying on friends and relatives to take them in. At times they even lived in storage units. She reconnected with her father, Aerosmith’s Rick Dufay, and eventually made her way to Los Angeles, where she landed the role of a lifetime on Friday Night Lights.

Now an established actress and philanthropist, Minka takes this next step in her career as a writer. She has poured her soul into the pages of this book, which ultimately tells a story of triumph over adversity, and how resilience and love are all we have in the end.

I have not watched Friday Nite Lights, the TV series, and knew nothing really about Minka Kelly, but in a book review I happened to glance by, someone was raving about this book. There are many celebrities who have a lot to say, but I'm not really a celebrity watcher and most of those memoirs and biographies I have little interest in. Something struck me about this memoir. Maybe it's because I don't know Minka Kelly from the big screen or television. I just read about this incredibly resilient woman who came from growing up in strip clubs to become a successful woman on her own terms. We all have a history, but some are messier than others. But why write this memoir? I am always curious as to a celebrities reason, maybe more suspicious of a celebrities reason, but Minka's explains her reason in an article on TheCut.com By Monica Corcoran Harel...

Kelly also makes it abundantly clear in our conversation — and a follow-up phone call a couple weeks later — that she doesn’t see herself as a victim. She’s not seeking any sympathy either. “I decided to tell my story because the media has written a narrative of me, based on the men they have seen me with, whether I’ve dated them or not,” she says of a list of exes — which includes Derek Jeter, Chris Evans, and Trevor Noah — that prompts headlines that rarely respect her privacy and pushes an agenda that commends her for hooking up with boldface names. (Case in point: The Cut’s own recent callout, “Is Minka Kelly Dating the Imagine Dragons Guy?”) “If you’re going to have an opinion of me, you may as well have the whole picture,” she adds.

Published by Macmillan Publishers recently, this is on my wishlist. Follow the link to read an excerpt.