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Posts by Katie H
Tradition means a lot to Maelyn Jones, especially the annual Christmas gathering with her ‘chosen’ family, along with her parents and brother, in Christina Lauren’s holiday romance In a Holidaze. Gathering at the Park City, Utah cabin has been a constant even through her parents’ divorce, the upheaval of cross-country moves and the shifting relationships. And then there’s Theo and Andrew.
It’s a classic setup: a powerful and wealthy businessman has died, and his family and retainers gather at his imposing and isolated villa for the reading of his will. Knowing the will has some very peculiar stipulations and familiar with the strained family tensions, the man’s lawyers, call in sight unseen a highly recommended private investigator to ward off potential bloodshed. But in an atmosphere primed for murder, the inevitable happens, and the unorthodox PI soon finds himself trying to solve seemingly impossible killings committed by a culprit who will strike again.
Afi Tekple’s wedding is a rousing success in spite of the fact that the groom isn’t present. But that is to be expected of a young and wealthy businessman whose travels take him far from home on a routine basis, so important that even his own traditional wedding must yield to demands of business. The young Ghanaian seamstress, heroine of Peace Adzo Medie’s debut His Only Wife, is thrilled and proud to marry the son of the most powerful woman in her town and raise the fortunes of her widowed mother, her avaricious uncle and the wives he supports.
Nicola King is used to pressure. As the lead chemist for her family’s cosmetics brand, Queen Couture, she’s the genius behind the brand’s biggest hits and a leading figure in the perfume world that has her rubbing elbows with the elite of the fashion and entertainment industry. At least, that’s the image Nicola likes to project.
The 1960s was an especially rife period for political assassinations, but for years, one of the most famous deaths of the decade—the killing of United Nations General Secretary Dag Hammarskjold—was officially an accident. The downing of the general secretary’s plane in the skies of Rhodesia (modern Zambia) in the early hours of September 18, 1961, has long been cast in doubt, almost from the moment the burnt out remains of the plane and its fifteen crash victims were discovered in the sweltering jungle (the sole survivor would later die in hospital after making some intriguing comments).
Is there any guilty pleasure quite as satisfying as royal watching? We all love to tune into the elaborate weddings, analyze sartorial choices and coo when a royal baby arrives on the scene. But as basically every generation of royalty throughout history has shown, the happy ever after surface doesn’t always match what’s happening behind palace walls, and occasionally that unhappiness breaks into the public.
Though we've been lucky this summer, every Midwesterner knows its keening sound, a reminder that tornado season is upon us once again. Tornadoes remain something of an enigma today, even as technology and YouTube videos make the prediction and experience of storms more routine. But our knowledge of tornados is a very recent phenomenon, as Lee Sandlin chronicles in Storm Kings: The Untold History of America’s First Storm Chasers.
It's a bit of misnomer to call Kwana Jackson’s newest novel, Real Men Knit a romance. It’s being billed as such by its publisher, but this is really more the story of a family with strong elements of romance intertwined. And unlike many other romances, this one begins with a tragedy: Mama Joy Strong, a foster-turned-adoptive mother to four boys and the proprietor of Harlem’s Strong Knits knitting store, has suddenly died. Her boys, now all grown and more or less launched into life with varying degrees of success, are left stunned.
Jo Jones has a lot to think about. The Hollywood screenwriter and former child actress has just signed on pen her biggest project yet, a big budget action flick featuring an iconic American comic book character, while dialing back her involvement in her successful television drama series. She’s bracing for the inevitable blowback that will come when the fanboys hear their favorite comic will be written by a woman, and an Asian American one at that.
It’s the fall of 2016 and Darren Mathews feels like a seismic change has happened. The African-American Texas Ranger isn’t just bracing for whatever changes will be coming to law enforcement following the election, but his personal life is equally posed on the brink of change. After the events of Bluebird, Bluebird, Attica Locke’s first book in the Highway 59 series, Mathews thought he had reached a precarious sense of peace. His marriage to lawyer Lisa ha
