The Literate Kitty

  insomnia: inability to obtain sufficient sleep, especially when chronic; difficulty in falling or staying asleep; sleeplessness.   There are all sorts of reasons for insomnia. For most people, it’s just an occasional problem. Not fun to go through—feeling cranky, tired, and muzzy-headed—but once it’s over, things tend to go back to normal. Imagine if sleeplessness was your “normal”, though. Something that went on night after night after night... leaving you in a  permanent  state of absolute exhaustion, with your body—and brain—never getting the chance to rest and heal. That’s where four strangers find themselves, in  New York Times  bestselling author Allison Will Scotch’s new thriller,  The Insomniacs .   Sybil—a midlife stay-at-home mom, anxious and sleepless since her kids went off to college—listens to all the true-crime podcasts she can find, to cope. Julian—a secretive widower whose health forced him into an early retirement—laments all t...

Jetting off for cool photoshoots in exotic places.  Being the instantly-recognizable face of high-end luxury products and fantasy experiences. Enjoying the rush from seeing “likes” numbering in the hundreds of thousands on your last Instagram post or TikTok video. Ah, the glamorous life of the Influencer... Or so it’s easy to think.  But, like the old saying goes, “all that glitters is not gold”, there’s a less-shiny, less-sexy side to being a social media darling. Tanya Grant peels back the curtain to give us a peek at what being an internet sensation is  really  like in her debut thriller,  Made You Look .      A week-long, all-expenses-paid trip to Reverie Retreat, a posh, not-yet-open-to-the-public ecolodge nestled deep in the Catskills. For mega-Influencer Sydney Kent—along with her little entourage of fellow influencers, stylist, photog, and publicity manager—it’s a sweet gig, posting content hyping the new retreat prior to its grand opening...

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 ...

Some jobs just lend themselves to stereotypes.   Take librarians. Say the word, and almost everyone envisions  something .   For most people, that probably looks like an older female—matronly, with grey hair, a cardigan over her buttoned-up dress, high-Rx glasses, sensible shoes, and a stern expression. (Lots of “shushing” with this one.)   The rest go straight into fantasyland, with the “Sexy Librarian” trope—beautiful younger woman, long hair in a messy bun, buxom chest straining at the buttons of her shirt, snug pencil skirt, not-really-necessary glasses, and impractical high heels. (The secret dominatrix just waiting to get her freak on.)    So it’s like a breath of fresh air, that Sherry Thomas offers up not one, but  four , stereotype-busting librarians in her latest mystery novel,  The Librarians ... and tosses in a murder or two for them to solve, as well.     A cozy, suburban branch of the Austin, Texas public library system....

Who  doesn’t  love a great big wedding?   The idea of two people, symbolically sharing their Happily-Ever-After with those nearest-and-dearest... even for the semi-cynical amongst us, it’s hard to resist.   But make it a  celebrity  to-do—where one of them is famous (or infamous), or insanely-wealthy—and suddenly, it’s a whole different ballgame.   [Plus, zero chance most of us would merit an invitation...]   If any of us had the opportunity to attend The Wedding of the Year, we’d RSVP “Yes!”, wouldn’t we?   Especially if we had no clue, going into it, that we’d be RSVPing to the scene of a murder... as in Joan O’Leary’s  A Killer Wedding .     It’s quite a coup when Christine, a lowly staff writer for elite  Bespoke Weddings  magazine—which only covers the  most -fabulous nuptials—is singled out to cover the Wedding of the Year, the Ripton-Murphy union.    Grandmother-of-the-groom, octogenarian Gloria ...

The job market is TOUGH. So what’s a recent college grad to do, armed with a shiny degree in whatever, saddled with a mountain of debt... and finding few—if any—job prospects?   Go to work for a secretive multinational corporation dealing in “problem-solving”... essentially, a “fixer” for issues no one dares talk about, outside of hushed boardrooms?    You bet.   And then one day, make a deal with what may be an  actual  agent of Hell... all for the sake of a promotion?   I mean, sure, that's a plan.   Of course, such deals never come without a few strings... as one young man quickly discovers in Mark Waddell’s darkly-satirical take on climbing the corporate ladder,  Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World .     After several years of feeling like the lowest man on the totem pole in Dark Enterprises’ Human Resources department, earnest, cardigan-clad Colin receives the dreaded notice: he has one week to fix his latest screw-up, or f...

By now—a quarter of the way through the 21 st  century—we probably couldn’t survive without the internet.   We use it for shopping. Keeping up with friends and family. Work. Job hunting. Looking for love. And finding answers to every  “How do I fix this?”  or  “What do I do now?”  question that pops into our heads.   But it isn’t  just  a shopping mall/phone-and-snail-mail alternative/meeting place/encyclopedia.   Because while it  does  draw us together, it also allows for anonymity... a murky, shadowy space where con artists, conspiracy theorists, and bullies converge.   And sometimes, where maniacs come out to play.   Thriller author Sara Driscoll’s latest,  Shadow Play , looks at the downside of online.     When physical therapist Krista agrees to be part of a weekly, live-streaming show offering relationship and life advice with her best friend, Hailey, it sounds like a fun hobby.   After all,...

So, a little about me. ( Trust me, it'll all make sense soon. ) I devoured the entire Nancy Drew book series—more than once—when I was little.    It followed, then, that sometimes one of my Barbie dolls got to act out being a detective; I was completely hooked on the idea.   Even now (years later!), whenever I read a mystery novel—or watch one in show/movie form—a little part of me is still right there in the detective’s shoes.   I’m hardly alone in my secret dreams of being a P.I., of course.    For most of us, though, that’s all it remains... a fantasy we live out vicariously on the page or screen.    But imagine, for a minute, what might’ve happened if you’d scrambled to make that dream a reality.   If, say, you finagled your way (possibly over-hyping your abilities a tiny bit) into an apprenticeship with not just a private investigator... but with a  legendary  one.   Well, then you might get something like the tale that u...