It’s that time of year again when parents of students heading to their freshman year are packing trunks and getting ready to face their first year of college. I escorted both my daughters to their chosen schools. One went to the University of California at Riverside, and five years later the younger one attended the…
Dear Pop, I often see my young granddaughter playing with her mother’s smart phone. She watches videos or plays games. What’s your take on this? LA Granny Dear LA Granny, Experts warn that addiction to digital devices prevent young people from forming normal social relationships. After a session on one of the machines they are…
Kendra Falstaff has big plans to leave Middleton, a small town three hours from Toronto, to attend the university and become a lawyer. Employed by her Aunt Irene at a small restaurant in town, Kendra and brother Jimmy were also raised by their aunt after their mother’s untimely death. Unfortunately, Kendra’s plans seem washed away…
Dear Pop, I have a teenage son who really needs hands on discipline. His father died last year and his uncle keeps offering to be his father figure and take charge of his discipline. I can’t control my son, as I have never laid a hand on him. Should I let his uncle punish the…
It’s a shame how petulant the Wrensdale Police Department treats Talia Marby. In the character’s debut in Linda Reilly’s A Deep Fried Mystery series, she confronts a man who has been harassing her boss only to find him slumped over his desk, dead. Talia eventually solves that murder mystery. In book two of the…
Titanium Flow is a collection of ten science fiction stories created by author Elyse Salpeter. The first story set a high bar of excellence for the others. “The Kaldonian Addiction” takes place far into humanity’s future on a science vessel led by Captain Maya Raker. Her ship is boarded by the dreaded Kaldonians who abduct human…
Out of the Dying Pan is book 2 of Linda Reilly’s A Deep Fried Mystery Series. Talia Marby is back again to solve her second murder. She’s not a police detective for her hometown of Wrensdale, but the owner of Fry Me a Sliver, a fish and chips fast food restaurant in Wrensdale Arcade, a…
Frannie James and twin brother Jeff have been uprooted from their Iowa home to a farmhouse in rural Oregon. Their father, a bank executive has been transferred to a more lucrative job, and their mother ran away when the twins were very young. One night, a gray veiled ghost appears to Frannie in her bedroom….
Talia Marby is between jobs. She endured a position at a Boston commercial real estate firm for a better part of a year, but resigned because she hated the job. Her boyfriend, Chet, refused to support her decision, so Talia returned to Wrensdale, Massachusetts, the small New England town where she grew up. Talia moved…
You’ve seen them on library and book store shelves—a book series. They are actually a book sequence having certain elements in common including characters, setting, and timeline. Some works in a series can be read in any order, like the Koolura Series. In a “Stand Alone” series each book makes few references to previous books…