Category: From My Bookshelf – Lynn Willoughby

From My Bookshelf ~ Featuring Ian Caldwell and Elaine Neil Orr

By Lynn Willoughby The Fifth Gospel – Ian Caldwell Ten years ago Caldwell collaborated with Dustin Thomason and they wrote a wonderful book called “The Rule of Four”. When I saw that Caldwell had finally written a new book, I couldn’t wait to get started. This is an intellectual thriller set inside the walls…

February 21, 2016
From My Bookshelf ~ Featuring Louise Penny and Richard Wagamese

By Lynn Willoughby The Cruelest Month – Louise Penny This is a Chief Inspector Gamache novel, one of a series. They all take place in the same location with many of the same characters – more or less, so it all seems very familiar and friendly. However, there is no doubt that this is…

February 7, 2016
From My Bookshelf: Elizabeth George and Will Ferguson

By Lynn Willoughby A Banquet of Consequences Elizabeth George This author of the Inspector Lynley crime novels has been around for 2 decades. I have read many of her books and always enjoy the working relationship and its problems between Lynley and Barbara Havers, his partner. So I was disappointed in this book…

January 17, 2016
From My Bookshelf: Featuring Emma Donahue and Stephen King

By Lynn Willoughby Astray Emma Donahue This is the most interesting concept for short stories I have ever read. Each is only 4 or 5 pages long and at the end is the newspaper story that inspired Donahue to write the fictional story that lead to the headline. Brilliant!! Each character from the pages…

January 3, 2016
From My Bookshelf: Featuring Lori Lansens and David Adams Richards

By Lynn Willoughby The Mountain Story ~ Lori Lansens “Five days. Four hikers. Three survivors.” This is how Lansens new novel is described. It is the story of Wolf, a young man trying to survive the death of his mother, abandonment and neglect of his father, and his friendship with Bryd. It is the…

December 6, 2015
From My Bookshelf: Featuring Jenna Blum and Jennifer Robson

By Lynn Willoughby Those Who Save Us ~ Jenna Blum I have read many books about WWI – from the point of view of soldiers, pilots, nurses, doctors, resistance, fighters, generals, Japanese deatainees and prisoners of war. But this is the first book where it is from the German perspective. Not only does Blum…

November 22, 2015
From My Bookshelf: Featuring David A. Poulsen and Michael Crummy

By Lynn Willoughby Serpents Rising by David A. Poulsen This author lives just west of Clareshom and clearly enjoyed using Calgary as the locale for the plot to unravel. It is a mystery and you will enjoy his references to not only familiar places and diners in and around Calgary, but also his large…

November 8, 2015
From My Bookshelf: Featuring Robert McCammon and Paula McLain

By Lynn Willoughby Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon McCammon didn’t write anything for ten years or so. I have read several of his and they are macabre, ironic, often weird thrillers. I love them because they are complex, often with a very unexpected conclusion. This one did not disappoint, plus there was lots of…

October 25, 2015
From My Bookshelf: Featuring Julie Otsuka and Kristina McMorris

By Lynn Willoughby When the Emperor Was Divine ~ Julie Otsuka This debut novel is lyrical, sad, warm and left me feeling like I was living it. The ending is extremely powerful. It is the story of one Japanese American family and their life beginning in 1942. Overnight they were reclassified as “enemy aliens”.…

October 18, 2015
From My Bookshelf: Featuring E.C. Diskin and Julianna Baggott

By Lynn Willoughby Broken Grace ~ E.C. Diskin There are a rash of books like this one – Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train, The Start of Everything, Still Alice, to name a few. All are psychological thrillers. Some are better than this one, some are worse. Grace is a survivor of a…

October 4, 2015
From My Bookshelf ~ Kristin Hannah and Helen Simonsin

By Lynn Willoughby The Nightingale ~ Kristin Hannah This is not a typical WWII story. Instead, the setting is the small French town of Carriveau. The two protagonists are women – sisters in fact, who each react to the hardship, danger, pain and starvation of wartime in very different ways. The subject matter, the…

September 20, 2015
From My Bookshelf – Featuring Harper Lee and J. Ryan Stradel

By Lynn Willoughby Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee This book got a lot of hype prior to its release, so in anticipation, I reread “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It is a great coming of age book, and hasn’t changed since I first read it in high school. Then, the new release. What…

September 6, 2015
From My Bookshelf ~ Featuring Louise Penny and John Ironmnger

By Lynn Willoughby Still Life ~ Louise Penny Penny is not my favourite writer, but this is a nice, light read for the summer. Chief Inspector Gamache is back with his familiar colleges to solve a murder in a small town outside of Montreal. The setting is idyllic, the time is October – when…

August 23, 2015
From My Bookshelf ~ Featuring Emma Hooper and Christina Baker Kline

By Lynn Willoughby Ette and Otta and Russell and James ~ Emma Hooper This is a difficult book to review and/or categorize. On the surface it seems very simple – the language and the story. However it is a very complex mix of here and there, past and present, a love triangle, unplanned pregnancies, World…

August 9, 2015
From My Bookshelf: Featuring Leslie Parry and Annie Barrows

By Lynn Willoughby The Church of Marvels ~ Leslie Parry This is a first novel for Parry and it is brimming with odd, quirky and eccentric characters. They are all survivors in a world where most of the us would despair. Sylvan Threadgill is a night soiler who is cleaning privies one night and…

July 26, 2015