Thanks to my daughter, Shannon, for her work with chatGPT!
If I don’t have yours yet, now’s your chance!
I know you probably listed your ten (or twelve?) favorites. But perhaps there was one that was just an edge outstanding.
That’s the one I want!
Running out of time, I need it before the 20th. Send your title to my website in the comments or the email addy noted in the About Me page. I’ll include your favorite book of 2025. (I noted mine in the December Recap.)
(N.B. I already have two responses naming the same book! Stay tuned to discover that title. Maybe yours also?)
Award Winner for Readers’ Favorite Memoir & Autobiography (2012)
The selection for the first book of the year, read in December (no meeting in December) for the Y Book Club was Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. This was a departure from some of the literary fiction we’ve read, certainly more profane.
Guess I’m going to be attracted to novels about extraordinary hiking trails, particularly the affectionately known as the AT, or Appalachian Trail, which runs almost 2,200 miles through fourteen states. No, this memoir recalls the experience of the author on an eleven-hundred-mile hike of the Pacific Crest Trail—newer, longer (at 2,650 miles)—and runs from Mexico to Canada over the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges.
By herself.
Cheryl was twenty-two when she found herself at the end of a marriage and having recently lost her mother. She was lost. A serendipitous discovery of a book regarding the PCT, however, fired her imagination and with little more than a burning desire to experience the trail and “find herself,” set a course.
She did do some planning, from packing and arranging boxes of necessities (including a twenty-dollar bill in each box) to be delivered to designated post offices along the route by a kind soul who agreed to mail them. Unfortunately, she didn’t train for the hike and left with gear she hadn’t actually tried, boots still to be broken in, and a backpack which proved to be almost intolerably heavy to heft.
Wild – UK cover
I’m of an older generation that does not need unnecessary profane language to engage; however, this is liberally peppered with it, not to say the least of it. She reflects heavily on her life, her relationships (particularly with her mother) throughout most of the book almost to the point of skipping over the land she is trudging through with little thought other than how much her feet hurt.
Actually, if the experience is to be taken as read, she confronts relatively little wildlife, which particularly in bear, deer, and elk country I’d have expected more. She did note one bear and handled the encounter remarkably well, also witnessing a large herd of elk at one point. Lots of snakes in the deserts, particularly rattlesnakes and, again, must have been dumb luck not to have been bitten.
I loved the hiking community as described, and found most she encountered, usually men, to be friendly and supportive with only one or two incidents of a severely vulnerable situation. Fun that each hiker is given a “trail name” and there is a “trail angel” community that provides some hospitality and support. So there is some info I could enjoy. Some hikers even starting solo, meet someone along the way with whom they can compatibly pair off at a comparable hike rate.
Cheryl steadfastly determined to remain solo. There were periods of time, however, when she had to get off the trail to claim a box waiting for her at the post office or experience a little wayside town. It was during those times she hitched a ride that I thought at most risk (from other people rather than animals).
Still, there were a number of shocking revelations, one in particular that had me gagging and putting the book down for a while. She was not a person I could identify with or in whom I could engage—her character alien to me and not sympathetic. I was shocked by some of her stupid decisions and inexcusable actions.
I was surprised to learn that Reese Witherspoon starred in the making of this movie. Not too surprised to hear it was better than the book. I appreciated my library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook though and these thoughts are my own, including the interpretation of the Book Club thoughts below.
The publisher provides pointed questions for discussion at the book club, ably kept on topic by the facilitator. Because of the severely inclement weather the morning of the meeting, we had a very small group but most were as stunned as I was by the admission of so many of societal no-nos.
We all found the narrative to be openly honest and a few thought it was not unusual in her circumstances to be that hung up on the death of her mother or who her mother actually was to her. Few had heard of the trail and fewer still with the idea of backpacking, hiking, or even camping, much less solo. Consensus thought her idea too spontaneous, lack of experience, or preparation to make sense, and a stupid idea. It was widely agreed that more than a few salient points might have been edited out, if they’d existed at all.
Items specifically examined were:
►Discussion on why she decided to change her name and how she managed to land on Strayed—it’s definition being a person lost, moved “aimlessly from a group or the right course or place.”
►Possibly writing the book was more of a catharsis for the author than the actual hike.
►The “totems”—among which was a bracelet with the name of a Vietnam casualty, and a feather, the sole totem not lost or destroyed on the hike.
The Author:Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide and was made into an Oscar-nominated major motion picture. Her book Tiny Beautiful Things is currently being adapted for a Hulu television show that will be released in early 2023. In 2016, Tiny Beautiful Things was adapted as a play that has been staged in theaters around the world. Strayed is also the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel, Torch, and the collection Brave Enough, which brings together more than one hundred of her inspiring quotes. Her award-winning essays and short stories have been published in The Best American Essays, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, and elsewhere. She has hosted two hit podcasts, Sugar Calling and Dear Sugars. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
As the dark clouds of war finally begin to break, Grace Fitzgerald and Richard Lewis glimpse the possibility of a future together after years of turmoil. Their hard-won love has withstood so much already.
Now, as the Allies launch their final assault on the European continent—determined to rid the world of Nazi terror at whatever cost—Grace must say goodbye once again. Richard has a dual mission: to witness and report on the invasion that will decide the world’s fate, and to fulfil a promise to find someone who vanished without a trace.
But in Richard’s absence, Grace faces her own reckoning. Drawn back to an old adversary, she must fight one final battle. Will their love survive not just the war, but the ghosts of their past?
My Review:
Hard to believe the journey that began with the toss of a bottle by distraught Grace Fitzgerald. Then the bottle with the note in it was found by the dog belonging to an equally disquieted Richard Lewis on one of his solitary walks along the coast.
Tis a long journey that belonged to the pen pals of nations across the pond from each other, one the victim of childhood polio in a small Irish village in Ireland, the other a man of family means and money.
The Knocknashee Story – Book 7
It’s only the spellbinding Irish storytelling pen of the author that the following years would be chronicled in a tale that would see Grace outliving her tyrannical older sister to find the strong, intelligent, and resourceful woman she becomes. Richard with his own pen, along with his Jewish buddy and rabid photographer, finds redemption as well as life-shattering journalistic experiences during the horrors of WWII.
It’s in this installment that Grace and Richard finally manage a short-celebrated wedding when he’s called immediately back to France to fulfill his last life-threatening assignment. There is egregious loss. The war conditions and the evil incarnate that Hitler ascribed to especially near the end when it became apparent of the German loss of the war painted gruesome scenes in the mind.
Grace, hampered by the mores of the time and the church, has learned how to deal with the church and Canon Rafferty specifically to achieve the safe custody of another victim. (The country and continent may change, but it’s remarkable how the people confront the same issues.)
The novel beautifully describes both locations, Savannah, Georgia, and the little town of Knocknashee—so like any little town in the US with the varied characters from scalawags to saintly. The characters are engaging and getting to know them a joy. It’s a deeply emotional narrative, pulling all the strings.
Can Richard safely return to Knocknashee? Can they ever settle into a real married life? What becomes of your favorite support characters? Can there be a happy ever after here?
Many thanks to the author for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book. The thoughts expressed here are my own.
The Author:Jean Grainger is a USA Today bestselling author with over 100,000 5* reviews of historical and contemporary Irish fiction. She is acclaimed for her authentic portrayal of Irish life and history. Born in Cork, she draws from her experience as a history lecturer, teacher, and tour guide to craft characters that feel like friends, and sometimes foes. Grainger’s works span multiple series and standalone novels, covering significant periods in recent Irish history, but told from the perspective of families, the humans behind the headlines. Her stories often intertwine historical events with personal journeys, exploring themes of family, friendship, and human resilience. Grainger’s writing style, characterized by its warmth and authenticity, has earned her comparisons to renowned Irish authors like Maeve Binchy. Her dedication to research and character development has resulted in a loyal readership who feel deeply connected to her stories and characters.
Yes, I did get my Goodreads stat data (I’d missed it’s arrival) and it shows 149 books read, 49,775 pages read. Oops!
I love to see the new numbers though there’s an error or two (again—i.e. Last Book of the Year was not How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley. It was Killing Me Softly by Sandie Jones on December 30.
Also, Goodreads shows Mark Twain by Ron Chernow as the longest book at 1,200 pages. I suppose the book was 1,200 pages, but the CE gave up at approximately 46%. The shortest book was The Builders by Maeve Binchy at 93 pages.
The real problem with showing 149 books read with 49,775 pages read, however, is that the landing page correctly showed 187 and the successful challenge of 150 books.So far this year, the landing page shows 4 books of a challenge of 175 books, but the widget zero. I have no idea why it stopped counting my books last year at 149 or why it’s failing to count my Challenge books this year.
Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Mystery & Thriller (2025)
Book Blurb:
Simon Latch is a lawyer in rural Virginia, making just enough to pay his bills while his marriage slowly falls apart. Then into his office walks Eleanor Barnett, an elderly widow in need of a new will. Apparently, her husband left her a small fortune, and no one knows about it.
Once he hooks the richest client of his career, Simon works quietly to keep her wealth under the radar. But soon her story begins to crack. When she is hospitalized after a car accident, Simon realizes that nothing is as it seems, and he finds himself on trial for a crime he swears he didn’t commit: murder.
Simon knows he’s innocent. But he also knows the circumstantial evidence is against him, and he could spend the rest of his life behind bars. To save himself, he must find the real killer….
My Review:
What? A dyed-in-the-wool devotee of legal thrillers and I haven’t read a John Grisham book lately? Is it because I equated too closely a Grisham novel with another (which shall remain unnamed) author? I suspect that might be it, but I’m certainly glad I broke down and listened to this one.
The Widow cover – US
I do love me a good legal thriller (witness how many David Rosenfelt books I’ve read/listened to with his Andy Carpenter series). Even discounting a good Carpenter legal thriller, I love the courtroom scenes. The rules of the courtroom, details of the law, and the nonsense that has to be plowed through with resulting massive losses of valuable time.
Being an attorney is not all that profitable or glamorous. Just ask Simon Latch, scraping by with his one office assistant, personal life with his marriage in ruins, and a small but significant gambling problem on the side.
Just when he’s wondering how much longer he can keep the door open on bankruptcies (BORING!), in walks Eleanor Barnett, an elderly woman looking to have her will re-written.
The Widow cover-UK
I have to admit that at first I took umbrage to that same old gravely, imperious, and high-pitched grating voice and dialogue always attributable to anyone over 65. But Simon’s boredom vanishes immediately when she appears to present as a wealthy widow—whose miserly husband stashed millions in stocks prior to his untimely death.
OMG, I couldn’t believe the way Eleanor plays Simon. And Simon, always keeping his eye on the carrot, hangs in there, using his own money to play along, betting on the come. He’s supposed to be smart, but so many stupid decisions have me wondering how he ever passed the bar.
Still, as the plot turned dark, my earlier judgment of Eleanor turned to one of antipathy while that same feeling regarding Simon turned to one of empathy.
As a result of many of his faulty decisions and the suspicious timing of her death, he is brought to trial and once again, I thoroughly enjoyed the courtroom scenes and the character of his attorney. Grisham can develop a character down to the southern accent and off-hand sense of humor.
The courtroom tap dance, however, in this case doesn’t work and now he’s in seriously hot water. He must, absolutely must, find the real killer if he is to be exonerated.
So, yeah, it might begin as a slightly slow burn, hover a bit long in the honeymoon period with Eleanor’s perceived millions, but overall, it’s a strongly engaging storyline. The pacing is over-shadowed by the development of the characters, the scenes, and the twists that catch off guard.
The tension escalates toward the reveal. I loved the combination of both the legal thriller and the whodunit. Michael Beck does an excellent job of narrating and I’d recommend the audiobook.
Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.
Rosepoint Publishing:Four point Five Stars
Book Details:
Genre: Legal Thrillers, Suspense Thrillers Publisher:Random House Audio ASIN: B0F1BGY2PF Listening Length: 14 hrs 23 mins Narrator: Michael Beck Publication Date: October 21, 2025 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections) Title Links:Amazon-US Amazon-UK Barnes & Noble Kobo
The Author:John Grisham is the author of more than fifty consecutive #1 bestsellers, which have been translated into nearly fifty languages. His recent books include The Boys From Biloxi, The Judge’s List, Sooley, and his third Jake Brigance novel, A Time for Mercy, which is being developed by HBO as a limited series.
Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.
When he’s not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.
Her life didn’t turn out the way she expected―so she made herself a new one
When Clemmie goes next door to check on her difficult and unlikeable neighbor Dom, he isn’t there. But something else is. Something stunning, beautiful and inexplicable. Clemmie photographs the wondrous object on her cell phone and makes the irrevocable error of forwarding it. As the picture swirls over the internet, Clemmie tries desperately to keep a grip on her own personal network of secrets. Can fifty years of careful hiding under names not her own be ruined by one careless picture?
And although what Clemmie finds is a work of art, what the police find is a body. . . in a place where Clemmie wasn’t supposed to be, and where she left her fingerprints. Suddenly, the bland, quiet life Clemmie has built for herself in her sleepy South Carolina retirement community comes crashing down as her dark past surges into the present.
From international bestselling author of The Face on the Milk Carton Caroline B. Cooney comes Before She Was Helen, an absorbing mystery that brings decades-old secrets to life and explores what happens when the lie you’ve been living falls apart and you’re forced to confront the truth.
My Review:
Well, this is an unexpected treat. It appears to start as a cozy mystery, but no, it proves to be a multi-layered mystery, only part of which you’re introduced to. It might begin with a whimper, but it’ll finish with a bang…and a chuckle.
I enjoyed the good-natured pick at the seniors and the descriptions of the agers populating this tale.
Helen is living in a villa in Sun City in South Carolina. Sun City’s are rather exclusive. They are lovely senior communities. The one we lived near in Surprise, Arizona, was a great source of lovely furnishings at the consignment store where I found pieces to fill the apartment I’d found upon selling our RV.
I’m aware that senior communities tend to be much like represented in the novel. When we visited my mother in her senior mobilehome community, the news (gossip) was more about the people in the park rather than any world news.
So this narrative provides a few chuckles—some close to guffaws—and many hit close to home.
Clemmie is the feisty, sharp senior who can take charge of the situation until it comes to her own. In this case, the unwitting share of a piece in a neighbor’s home where she shouldn’t have been. And in this day and age of the internet, didn’t take long to get way out of hand. Especially when the police find the neighbor deceased.
I love it when the main character is taken back some decades ago—back before she was Helen. Clemmie has quite the history! The characters past and present drive the mystery and the plot becomes complex. Solving one thread may only lead to the next.
Will the two versions of Helen collide? This is one of those stories that becomes a delightful round of entertainment while assessing the next possible twist you won’t see coming. There are references to the 50s most seniors will identify with, which may bore the socks off the younger generations. For us, just pleasant memories.
A nicely paced, engaging, and well-plotted storyline. Fun audiobook! Recommended to me and I’m happy to recommend it to you. (You’re welcome!)
Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.
Rosepoint Publishing:Four point Five Stars
Book Details:
Genre: Domestic Thrillers, Women Sleuth Mysteries, Women’s Fiction Publisher:Random House Audio ASIN: B085K92P1N Listening Length: 11 hrs 13 mins Narrator: Kimberly Farr Publication Date: September 8, 2020 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections) Title Links: Amazon-US Amazon-UK Barnes & Noble Kobo
The Author:Caroline B. Cooney is the bestselling author of teen suspense, mystery, and romance novels that have sold over 15,000,000 copies and are published in several languages. Of all her books, she is best known for the young adult novel The Face on the Milk Carton that has sold over 3,000,000 copies and was made into a television movie.
Caroline grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and spent most of her life on the shoreline of that state. She currently resides in South Carolina. She enjoys spending time with her grandchildren, playing piano, walking near her home, pottery, jewelry-making, and, of course, reading.
It’s the night of November 4, 2008. America’s first Black president has just been elected. And fifty-three-year-old Hollis Montrose—a Black ex–police officer from the suburbs of Chicago—has become the latest victim of a brutal attack. As the result of a traffic stop gone wrong, Hollis is shot ten times in cold blood, by four white men who could have been his colleagues back in his police days.
Beau Lee Cooper was born serious, as if on an urgent mission with little time to waste. Raised in the tumultuous world of 1970s Texas, he always dreamed of becoming a lawyer and fighting for what’s right, ever since he was a little boy reading To Kill a Mockingbird. And now, ten years into running his own law firm with his best friend and partner in crime, Nelson “Nellie” Rivers, and his suave right-hand-man, Brent “Cape” Capers, he feels he’s finally making a difference. When Beau Lee learns about Hollis’s situation, he’s determined to help.
Miraculously, Hollis survives the encounter, but the Chicago police department has already spun the narrative in its favor, and Hollis is given a wrongful prison sentence with an unreasonable bail. What really happened that night the car was pulled over? Was it random or was Hollis targeted? Beau Lee knows he’s treading in dangerous waters, and finding evidence of the truth will be his biggest challenge yet, but with troubling powers at play, one innocent man’s life hangs in the balance.
His Review:
Being a police officer in Chicago has never been an easy or safe job. One would think being a security officer might be safer. Also, the pay for a policeman in Chicago wasn’t enough to properly care for a family. Hollis Montrose was a policeman supplementing his income with two other jobs, one as a security guard. It was late at night behind a Macy’s department store when he was pulled over by a fellow white police officer. Hollis was held face down on the pavement and his license was never checked.
It appears that Chicago police have never strayed far from the days of Al Capone. Shoot first and ask questions later. This was Hollis’s fate. Ten slugs were found in his body as he struggled to stay alive after being rushed to the hospital. This book shares the adjustment to life after the election of Barack Obama. The chapters are at times very gruesome but the end result is apparent. White officers had little regard for their African American fellow officers. The south was not dead in Chicago! 4 stars – CE Williams
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book. Any opinion expressed here is my own.
Rosepoint Publishing:Four Stars
Book Details:
Genre: Black & African American Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Fiction, Legal Thrillers Publisher: Bantam ISBN-13: 978-0593875711 ASIN: B0FKG23528 Print Length: 368 pages Publication Date: February 17, 2026 Source: Publisher and NetGalley
The Author: Through a steadfast dedication to justice and service, renowned civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump has established himself as one of the nation’s foremost lawyers and advocates for social justice. He has worked on some of the most high-profile cases in the U.S., representing the families of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Stephon Clark, among others. He has been nationally recognized as the 2014 NNPA Newsmaker of the Year, the National Trial Lawyers Top 100 Lawyers, and Ebony Magazine Power 100 Most Influential African Americans. In 2016, he was designated as an Honorary Fellow by the University of Pennsylvania College of Law. He is the founder and principal owner of Ben Crump Law.
Unknown bones, untold secrets, and unsolved crimes from the distant past cast ominous shadows on the present in the dazzling new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen.
Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil–human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder. But whoever this nameless woman was, and whatever befell her, is knowledge lost to another time. . . .
Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, Norris Marshall, a talented but penniless student at Boston Medical College, has joined the ranks of local “resurrectionists”–those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. Yet even this ghoulish commerce pales beside the shocking murder of a nurse found mutilated on the university hospital grounds. And when a distinguished doctor meets the same grisly fate, Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect.
To prove his innocence, Norris must track down the only witness to have glimpsed the killer: Rose Connolly, a beautiful seamstress from the Boston slums who fears she may be the next victim. Joined by a sardonic, keenly intelligent young man named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Norris and Rose comb the city–from its grim cemeteries and autopsy suites to its glittering mansions and centers of Brahmin power–on the trail of a maniacal fiend who lurks where least expected . . . and who waits for his next lethal opportunity.
With unflagging suspense and pitch-perfect period detail, The Bone Garden deftly interweaves the thrilling narratives of its nineteenth- and twenty-first century protagonists, tracing the dark mystery at its heart across time and place to a finale as ingeniously conceived as it is shocking. Bold, bloody, and brilliant, this is Tess Gerritsen’s finest achievement to date.
My Review:
Not my first rodeo with Tess Gerritsen as my last foray into her popular books was Die Again (part of her popular Rizzoli and Isles series) last year. I learned to quickly appreciate her writing style and obvious personal knowledge of the human body, having been an active physician herself. Oh my stars, can she hook the interest and then run rampant over it!
This standalone narrative runs a timeline between 1830s Boston and the present day with Julia Hamill, although the real main character proves to be Rose Connolly, a seamstress. Julia has bought an old fixer-upper and working in her garden discovers a body that is discovered to have been buried more than a century before. The lucky lady gets to meet an aging relative of the owner of the home and together they begin the task of discovering to whom the body might have belonged.
Yes, once again, I find myself bonding with the earlier MC rather than the current one, although you have to give Julia some points for doggedly working on the mystery as well as plowing through all the stories of the ancient residence.
Rose is Irish and living and working under horrid conditions when she watches her older sister die of childbirth fever. The baby is saved but then must be saved again as she is destined to be whisked off to an orphanage for eventual adoption.
The Bone Garden cover – UK
Rose is fast. Smart. She pays a wet nurse to care for the baby safely. In the meantime, she meets a medical student attending the birth sympathetic to her situation. But his situation is almost as precarious as hers. It’s good he has trusted friends.
I listened to the audiobook and couldn’t wait to shop for groceries, start breakfast or dinner, so I could listen to more of the book. The pace goes frenetic at times, there are medical accounts of the time that has you gasping with shock and a growing romantic thread that even I could enjoy. The thirst for cadavers in medical universities created a cottage industry best not known about.
Loved the characters brought to life by the author’s skillful descriptive craft and the plot, although the climax was a surprise and a bit difficult.
Thoroughly enjoyed and totally recommended. Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.
Rosepoint Publishing:Four point Five Stars
Book Details:
Genre: Historical Mystery, Historical Mysteries, Suspense Publisher:Random House Audio ASIN: B000W7E5FM Listening Length: 12 hrs 56 minutes Narrator: Susan Denaker Publication Date: September 18, 2007 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections) Title Links: Amazon-US Amazon-UK Barnes & Noble Kobo
The Author: Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D.
While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction and in 1987, her first novel, Call After Midnight, was published. It was just the first of 32 suspense novels that she’s written over a 36-year writing career. She also wrote a screenplay, “Adrift,” which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson.
Tess’s 1996 medical thriller, Harvest, marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list and her novels have hit bestseller lists around the world ever since. Among her titles are Gravity, The Surgeon, Vanish, Listen to Me, and her upcoming spy thriller, The Spy Coast, which has just been optioned by Amazon Studios for a television series. Her books have been translated into 40 languages, and more than 40 million copies have been sold around the world.
Her series of novels featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the hit TNT television series “Rizzoli & Isles,” starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander.
Best Books of the Year 2012
Award Winner for Readers’ Favorite Memoir & Autobiography (2012)
Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Mystery & Thriller (2025)
It appears that Chicago police have never strayed far from the days of Al Capone. Shoot first and ask questions later. This was Hollis’s fate. Ten slugs were found in his body as he struggled to stay alive after being rushed to the hospital. This book shares the adjustment to life after the election of Barack Obama. The chapters are at times very gruesome but the end result is apparent. White officers had little regard for their African American fellow officers. The south was not dead in Chicago! 4 stars – CE Williams
The Author:
Rosepoint Publishing 