The Literate Kitty

Small towns. Unless you’ve lived in been a regular visitor to one, they’re kinda hard to wrap your head around. Like realizing your neighbors know  so much  about you... stuff which  everyone   else in town eventually winds up knowing, too. (Small towns, they do love to talk.)   But gossip is rarely truth—at least, not the full truth—which means all sorts of misunderstandings can happen.   And, when the veracity of such isn’t questioned (or refuted)? Hurt feelings, disappointments, and resentments can linger for  years ... as in Rachel Louise Adams’s debut thriller,  No Rest for the Wicked .     Dolores Hawthorne fled Little Horton, Wisconsin (aka “Halloween Town”, thanks to its lavish celebration of the seasonally-macabre) nearly two decades ago... and didn’t plan on returning.   Ever.   But, when someone from the FBI calls her in L.A., saying her father, ex-mayor of Little Horton and former U.S. Senator, has gone missing—and ...

Anyone who’s ever gone on a trip knows that traveling is HARD.   Whether trying to follow the rules and make it to the airport literally   hours   before your actual flight... worrying about whether or not your toiletries are “small enough” to please the TSA gods... or   knowing   you forgot something vitally essential back at home (be it turning a would-be flammable electrical thingy off, or packing the laptop you’re definitely gonna need)... the whole act of traveling is A LOT.   But one thing most of us rarely factor into that already-bonkers list of variables is... MURDER.   Jessie Garcia’s no-holds-barred debut,  The Business Trip , seems destined to add that concern to your list of OMG-what-ifs, though.     Jasmine is like plenty of women you may have met—or not, depending on how you spend your off-hours. She’s a middle-aged bartender in a low-brow tavern in Madison, Wisconsin. She lives with a boyfriend who... well, leans way more...

One of my college jobs was salesgirl at a shoe store.   My manager—smart, sweet, attractive, and never-behind-bars ( that’ll be relevant in a second )—was great to work with.     But, I  seriously  questioned her choice in movies.   Her favorite genre was a mashup of female empowerment and vigilante fantasies—women in jail, enduring horrible things, only to  finally  exact graphic, brutal revenge on the men that had hurt them.    Back then, I didn’t understand the appeal... but after finishing Emma C. Wells’ debut novel,  This Girl’s a Killer , I think—at long last—I’m starting to.     Cordelia Black has—from the outside—one of those enviable lives. She’s attractive. Put-together. Healthy. Independent. Self-sufficient, with a well-paying job—Big Pharma rep—that easily funds her love of very nice things (Manolo Blahnik and Louboutin stilettos, and a collection of Louis Vuitton handbags).    She’s beloved by h...