Half Moon Bay: A Novel by Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman #AudiobookReview #ThrowbackThursday

Clay Edison #3

Book Blurb:

Clay Edison has his hands full. He’s got a new baby who won’t sleep. He’s working the graveyard shift. And he’s trying, for once, to mind his own business. Then comes the first call. Workers demolishing a local park have made a haunting discovery: the decades-old skeleton of a child. But whose? And how did it get there?

No sooner has Clay begun to investigate than he receives a second call – this one from a local businessman, wondering if the body could belong to his sister. She went missing 50 years ago, the man says. Or at least I think she did. It’s a little complicated.

And things only get stranger from there. Clay’s relentless search for answers will unearth a history of violence and secrets, revolution and betrayal. Because in this town, the past isn’t dead. It’s very much alive. And it can be murderous.

My Review:

I really like the way the authors suffuse the professional with the personal. So many times, we see a technician going about their business and wonder what their home life looks like: six kids, a spouse equally harried, and a mortgage whose interest rates keep climbing?

In this case, Clay Edison is a new papa. The baby, as most, doesn’t sleep. Clay is working the graveyard shift so his wife can be home and she works days. It should work—doesn’t always.

Unfortunately, his call out is to the discovery of a very old skeleton—that of a small child. Whose? And how did it come to be buried in a park?

Clay might be the personification of a new dad, his baby girl Charlotte has a lot to teach him. The stark difference between his anxious self and his professional self is often laid bare by his self-talk, his first person POV.

The development of the characters in this series has been fun, and each new installment has brought growth and get-to-know-you sessions. I like Clay. He’s smart, dominating, and a strong personage around his peers, though he can be soft and sympathetic with the loved ones he must deal with in his professional capacity.

It doesn’t help that the park and the site of the skeleton is located in Berkeley, always a hotbed of political turmoil and protests. He may have a major development in the phone call from a man claiming that it may be his sister…but he can only supply a minimal amount of background to interest Clay further into the investigation.

The storyline wavers a bit with a couple of small branches off the main plot, but then I wouldn’t expect this would be Clay’s only case. It might create a slight lull in the pacing of the main plot, but there is always another tiny clue.

I’m not sure it would be classified as a slow-burn story as there is usually a lot going on and the characters, including Clay’s wife, Amy, supply a lot of lively dialogue. (I still haven’t warmed up to Amy though.) Of course, the flashbacks to the 60’s and 70’s drew me in. There are twists, divulged secrets, and evil doers as these things are never just simple straight forward…who is the skeleton.

Personally, I really enjoyed the novel and this series, one to go (Book 2), and just got it. I’ll recommend again. If you haven’t checked out this series yet and you found Alex Delaware a bit stodgy at times, you might find the collaboration between this father and son might be just what you were looking for.

I received a copy of this audiobook from my local library that in no way influenced this review. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Rating: Four Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Crime Thrillers, Suspense, Mysteries
Publisher: Random House Audio
Narrator: Dennis Boutsikaris
ASIN: B0863359SD
Listening Length: 9 hrs 35 mins
Publication Date: July 21, 2020
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)

Title Link(s):

Amazon-US | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Authors:

Jonathan Kellerman

Jonathan Kellerman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than three dozen bestselling crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher’s Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, Twisted, True Detectives, and The Murderer’s Daughter. With his wife, bestselling novelist Faye Kellerman, he co-authored Double Homicide and Capital Crimes. With his son, bestselling novelist Jesse Kellerman, he co-authored The Golem of Hollywood and The Golem of Paris. He is also the author of two children’s books and numerous nonfiction works, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children and With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars. He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards and has been nominated for a Shamus Award. Jonathan and Faye Kellerman live in California, New Mexico, and New York.

Read more at:
http://www.jonathankellerman.com/

Jesse Kellerman

Jesse Kellerman has written dozens of plays and published seven novels, two of them cowritten with his father, Jonathan Kellerman. He has won numerous awards, including the Princess Grace Award for Playwriting (“Things Beyond Our Control”) and the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle (“The Genius”/”Les Visages”). His novel “Potboiler” was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. An essay, “Let My People Go to the Buffet,” was included in Penguin’s Best American Spiritual Writing (2011). His next book, Crime Scene, was also cowritten with Jonathan Kellerman and will be published in fall 2017. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and children.

The Narrator:

Dennis Boutsikaris

Dennis Boutsikaris was born December 21, 1952 in Newark, New Jersey, to a Greek American father and Jewish mother,^[1] and grew up in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey.^[2] He took up acting while a student at Governor Livingston High School, because he felt he was too small to succeed in athletics.^[3] A graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, Boutsikaris toured the country with John Houseman’s The Acting Company doing classical theatre. Boutsikaris was married to actress Deborah Hedwall; they divorced in 2002.

He can be heard in over 160 audiobooks and has received eight Audie Awards and two Best Voices of the Year Awards from AudioFile Magazine.^[14] He was voted Best Narrator of the Year by Amazon for The Gene.

Find him at:
http://www.dennisboutsikaris.com *

*Thanks to Wikipedia for this info.

Graphic by Canva.com

The Burning and The Lost Coast by Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman #AudiobookReview #ThrowbackThursday

Clay Edison – Books 4 and 5

The Burning

Book Blurb:

Things get personal for Deputy Coroner Clay Edison when a murder hits close to home in this riveting, emotional thriller from the best-selling father-son team that writes “brilliant, page-turning fiction” (Stephen King).

A raging wildfire. A massive blackout. A wealthy man shot to death in his palatial hilltop home.

For Clay Edison, it’s all in a day’s work. As a deputy coroner, caring for the dead, he speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves. He prides himself on an unflinching commitment to the truth. Even when it gets him into trouble.

Then, while working the murder scene, Clay is horrified to discover a link to his brother, Luke. Horrified. But not surprised. Luke is fresh out of prison and struggling to stay on the straight and narrow.

And now he’s gone AWOL.

The race is on for Clay to find him before anyone else can. Confronted with Luke’s legacy of violence, Clay is forced to reckon with his own suspicions, resentments, and loyalties. Is his brother a killer? Or could he be the victim in all of this, too?

This is Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman at their most affecting and pause-resisting – a harrowing collision of family, revenge, and murder.

My Review:

It’s a story that hits too close to home for Clay Edison, Deputy of the County Coroner’s Office. He is sent to the home of a dead man but is jolted when he spots his brother’s car in the garage. It’s not like he can point that out without severe repercussions for his brother as he is not that long out of prison. With his brother’s track record, he is torn between wanting to believe he had nothing to do with the deceased, but…

In the meantime, he needs to talk to Luke and that’s the rub. Luke is not answering his phone and his wife is not exactly coming forth with the why or how of him going missing.

I like the character of Clay and we get to learn about him in this installment, as well as peek into his fatherhood role. He continues to push the boundaries of his job description and in this installment is well over propriety. There are also some strong, well developed support characters, but I’m not a huge fan of his wife, Amy.

I actually started this series with Book 1, Crime Scene. Yeah, I know what you are thinking, how very unusual! True. I was a solid fan of Kellerman’s Alex Delaware novels, so I did have some experience with Jonathan and Book 1 definitely hooked me, not only with the premise of the protagonist coming from a different angle into the investigation, but also totally loved the narrator, Dennis Boutsikaris. His delivery is extremely dynamic providing realistic dialogue between characters. So yeah, as mentioned in my review of Crime Scene, I got on the wait list for Books 2, 3, 4, and 5. Well, these popped up first. (At this point, don’t you know I’m compelled to complete the entire series.)

There are some twists and I do enjoy the authors writing style. Their collaboration produces an interesting plot, if not entirely unique, lively and well paced.

Rosepoint Publishing: Four Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Crime Thrillers, Suspense, Mysteries
Publisher: Random House Audio
ASIN: B0977QL7GY
Listening Length: 7 hrs 30 mins
Narrator: Dennis Boutsikaris
Publication Date: September 21, 2021
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: The Burning – Amazon-US
Amazon-UK
Barnes & Noble
Kobo

The Lost Coast

Book Blurb:

Cut loose from his former life at the coroner’s office, Clay Edison has set up shop as a private investigator. It’s steady, safe work. Until it isn’t.

The trouble begins when a young man, tasked with managing his grandmother’s estate, hires Clay to examine some minor financial discrepancies. What starts off as a case of simple fraud rapidly explodes into a web of deception, an elaborate con game stretching back decades and involving countless victims.

All the evidence points to a tiny town on California’s rugged, remote Lost Coast. Good luck getting there, though. And Clay’s reward for surviving the journey is a trigger-happy welcoming committee, ready to guard their secrets with lethal force.

Navigating this landscape of savage waves and savage lies brings Clay into collision with a host of other players: a grieving mother, an enigmatic teenager, a reclusive military veteran, a foul-mouthed PI pursuing her own agenda. And the price of truth will turn out to be higher—and deadlier—than Clay could have imagined.

From the minds of Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman comes a heart-stopping tale of deception and redemption—bursting with action, suspense, and unforgettable characters.

My Review:

Ugh! I hate it when the main character totally changes everything, well, almost, as somewhere between Books 4 and 5, Clay Edison goes from being a County Coroner to a PI. Wha??? I signed up because I thought he was going to do forensics stuff. Nope, now he is the guy with a license (not badges). And as if he ever did, no longer worries about rules or laws.

Eager to take on new cases, he is looking into what might be a real estate fraud for a client. There are some intriguing unanswered questions, and failing to get enough info online or research decides he must drive to Swan’s Landing. The little town is remotely located on the Lost Coast of California, barely accessible on the roughest of roads and goat trails or by boat. Few inhabitants or services are available and the simple real estate fraud case begins to split into a suspenseful sub-plot.

The Kellermans take their time building the plot amid a masterfully painted description of the desolation and wild mountains on the rugged northern coast of California. (And I might add—as wild and beautiful as it is remote.) Equally well developed are the local inhabitants, unique, each viewing Edison as an outsider.

The storyline is finely paced, allowing the reader to savor the building tension with the discovery of each new piece of information. While my heart sank just a bit in the denouement, all loose threads were creatively woven into place.

It’s the fifth in the series, not sure there’ll be a sixth, although if there is, I’ll be there to sign up. In the meantime, look for future reviews of Books 2 and 3 when I get them. Book 5 might well be read as a standalone—he switched jobs—but not personality and there is a few backstories filling in blanks. Still, you might wish to read Clay Edison the coroner as well as Edison the PI just to get a flavor of the change in depth of the storyline.

I downloaded a copy of these audiobooks from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Publishing: Four point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Private Investigator Mysteries, Crime Fiction
Publisher: Random House Audio
ASIN: B0CN3RYNZ3
Listening Length: 8 hrs 19 mins
Narrator: Dennis Boutsikaris
Publication Date: August 6, 2024
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: The Lost Coast – Amazon-US
Amazon-UK
Barnes & Noble
Kobo

The Authors:

Jonathan Kellerman

Read more at:
http://www.jonathankellerman.com/

Jesse Kellerman

The Narrator:

Dennis Boutsikaris

Dennis Boutsikaris was born December 21, 1952 in Newark, New Jersey, to a Greek American father and Jewish mother,^[1] and grew up in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey.^[2] He took up acting while a student at Governor Livingston High School, because he felt he was too small to succeed in athletics.^[3] A graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, Boutsikaris toured the country with John Houseman’s The Acting Company doing classical theatre. Boutsikaris was married to actress Deborah Hedwall; they divorced in 2002.

Find him at:
http://www.dennisboutsikaris.com *

*Thanks to Wikipedia for this info.

Crime Scene by Jonathan Kellerman #AudiobookReview #ThrowbackThursday

Book 1 of 5: Clay Edison

Book Blurb:

Natural causes or foul play? That’s the question Clay Edison must answer each time he examines a body. Figuring out motives and chasing down suspects aren’t part of his beat – not until a seemingly open-and-shut case proves to be more than meets his highly trained eye.

Eccentric, reclusive Walter Rennert lies cold at the bottom of his stairs. At first glance the scene looks straightforward: a once-respected psychology professor done in by booze and a bad heart. But his daughter, Tatiana, insists that her father has been murdered, and she persuades Clay to take a closer look at the grim facts of Rennert’s life.

What emerges is a history of scandal and violence and an experiment gone horribly wrong that ended in the brutal murder of a coed. Walter Rennert, it appears, was a broken man – and maybe a marked one. And when Clay learns that a colleague of Rennert’s died in a nearly identical manner, he begins to question everything in the official record.

All the while, his relationship with Tatiana is evolving into something forbidden. The closer they grow, the more determined he becomes to catch her father’s killer – even if he has to overstep his bounds to do it.

The twisting trail Clay follows will lead him into the darkest corners of the human soul. It’s his job to listen to the tales the dead tell. But this time he’s part of a story that makes his blood run cold.

My Review:

Always late to the party, I discovered this novel by Kellerman and thought I’d try one of his new series. But it’s not so new. I’ve read a number of his Alex Delaware novels, so I’m familiar with Jonathan. This is the first I’ve read in a collaboration with his son. I thought since it is the first in the series, I’d go for it.

I liked the debut effort with Clay Edison, MC, who is a deputy sheriff with the county coroner’s office. It’s his job to access the situation and determine which of the five causes of death left the victim deceased. In the first death of the book, he meets Tatiana, the daughter of Walter Rennert. It appears to be an accidental fall, but she is sure it is not.

Clay Edison is developed well, providing an interesting and thoughtful character in the role although it appears to me that he quickly oversteps his job description. He has to remind himself not to jump to conclusions. But the concept of coming from this direction into the mystery sets up some suspense and the tension ratchets from there. Gather the facts…(and he has the hots for Tatiana, of course, who also quickly proves an enigma).

Yes, there are other little ventures out, usually in the dead of night or crack of dawn when a body is discovered and he’s called in. Some will prove natural causes, a few won’t. The storyline settles on a wave line with interesting material and filler.

I hung in there because I really liked, from the beginning, the narration by Dennis Boutsikaris. He doesn’t just read it—he becomes the character, very dynamic—the dialogue is complete with changes in pitch, pace, tone, and pauses. These characters are actually talking to each other! He’s an accomplished actor. He’s acting the part of Clay and does it exceedingly well. Thinking I’d jump into installment 5, I went back to my library, but no. It’s on a wait list. So is episode 2, 3, and 4. Wow. This thing is good and you might want to check it out.

I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Publishing: Four Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Crime Fiction, Suspense, Mysteries
Publisher: Random House Audio
ASIN: B072BMCYK7
Listening Length: 9 hrs 38 mins
Narrator: Dennis Boutsikaris
Publication Date: August 1, 2017
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: Crime Scene – Amazon-US
Amazon-UK
Barnes & Noble
Kobo

The Authors:

Jonathan Kellerman

Read more at:
http://www.jonathankellerman.com/

Jesse Kellerman

The Narrator: Dennis Boutsikaris was born December 21, 1952 in Newark, New Jersey, to a Greek American father and Jewish mother,^[1] and grew up in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey.^[2] He took up acting while a student at Governor Livingston High School, because he felt he was too small to succeed in athletics.^[3] A graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, Boutsikaris toured the country with John Houseman’s The Acting Company doing classical theatre. Boutsikaris was married to actress Deborah Hedwall; they divorced in 2002.

Find him at:
http://www.dennisboutsikaris.com *

*Thanks to Wikipedia for this info.

#throwbackthursday

The Last Thing He Told Me: A Novel by Laura Dave #AudiobookReview #ThrowbackThursday

Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Book Blurb:

A 2022 Audie Award Finalist

The instant #1 New York Times bestselling mystery and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick that’s captivated more than a million readers about a woman searching for the truth about her husband’s disappearance…at any cost.

“A fast-moving, heartfelt thriller about the sacrifices we make for the people we love most.” —Real Simple

Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.

As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss, as a US marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.

Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they’re also building a new future—one neither of them could have anticipated.

With its breakneck pacing, dizzying plot twists, and evocative family drama, The Last Thing He Told Me is a “page-turning, exhilarating, and unforgettable” (PopSugar) suspense novel.

My Review:

Well, here we go—the stepmom valiantly trying to make friends with her new husband’s sixteen-year-old daughter. Might have been easier if she was five, but sixteen? Nope, nada.

So it’s no surprise that the daughter, Bailey, is surly, snarky, and stubborn. Bailey would prefer to go back to being just the two of them, her and her dad. Having lost her mother, she remains confused and angry. I don’t blame her.

Unfortunately, her dad has split, leaving deserted stepmother Hannah large and in charge. Of course, dear ole dad wants Hannah to take care of Bailey, protect her, raise her, keep her safe, etc. Huh? Wasn’t that his job?

Setting out to figure out why Owen chose to leave his loving family, they are supposed to work together to figure out where he went and, if alive, bring him back. Won’t happen.

In a number of ways, I thought Hannah used some good ideas to handle the prickly Bailey. I didn’t care for the character of Bailey, though felt the author nailed her level of sneer and lack of respect for Hannah perfectly, clearly describing a teen in the situation of having been left without explanation by the only family she had left.

Which, of course, did not include Hannah.

There are flashbacks, of course, to happier times between Hannah and Owen, the conversations remembered. Ugh. Did she really know him? Was everything a lie? Well, yes and no.

Then the storyline really goes off the rails to the standard mob trope and even worse, when Hannah discovers the connection and finagles a way to meet him.

There are revelations and twists and I had a problem believing the two of them, daughter and stepmom, could have turned the corner into a real familial relationship. It doesn’t come that easy or fast—could it be the circumstances?

The ending is perhaps what would have to happen, but again, I’m skeptical, remembering what my own mother told me—and she was right. I was out of there. Did she really love that man? Not as much as the daughter? This was a sacrifice that may or may never really be acknowledged or appreciated. I was left conflicted.

I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Publishing: Three point Four Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Family Life Fiction, Suspense
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
ASIN: B08N393GT5
Listening Length: 8 hrs 49 mins
Narrator: Rebecca Lowman
Publication Date: May 4, 2021
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: The Last Thing He Told Me [Amazon]

The Author: Laura Dave is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me, Eight Hundred Grapes and other novels. Her work has been published in thirty-eight languages and six of her novels, including The Night We Lost Him, have been optioned for film and television. She resides in Santa Monica.

You can follow her on Instagram @lauradaveauthor

#ThrowbackThursday

Ruthless Tide by Al Roker #AudiobookReview #ThrowbackThursday

The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood, America’s Astonishing Gilded Age Disaster

Book Blurb:

A gripping narrative history of the 1889 Johnstown Flood – the deadliest flood in US history – from New York Times best-selling author, NBC host, and legendary weather authority Al Roker.

May 1889: After a deluge of rainfall – nearly a foot in less than 24 hours – swelled the Little Conemaugh River, panicked engineers watched helplessly as swiftly rising waters threatened to breach the South Fork Dam in central Pennsylvania. Though they telegraphed neighboring towns on this last morning in May, warning of the impending danger, residents, used to false alarms, remained in their homes.

At 3:10 p.m., the dam gave way, releasing 20 million tons of water. Gathering speed as it flowed southwest, the deluge wiped out entire towns in its path and picked up debris – trees, houses, animals – before reaching Johnstown, 14 miles downstream. Traveling 40 miles an hour, with swells as high as 60 feet, the deadly floodwaters razed the mill town – home to 20,000 people – in minutes. The Great Flood, as it would come to be called, remains the deadliest in US history, killing more than 2,200 people and causing $17 million in damage.

Al Roker tells the riveting story of this tragedy, which remains one of the worst weather-related disasters in American history. Ruthless Tide follows a compelling cast of characters whose fates converged because of that tragic day, including John Parke, the engineer whose heroic efforts failed to save the dam; Henry Clay Frick, the robber baron whose fancy sport-fishing resort was responsible for modifications that weakened the structure; and Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, who spent five months in Johnstown leading one of the first organized disaster relief efforts. Weaving together their stories and those of many ordinary citizens whose lives were forever altered by the event, Roker creates a classic account of our natural world at its most terrifying.

My Review:

Yes, I found not only the authoritative book and then the movie narrated by Richard Dreyfuss regarding the Johnstown Flood and posted that review on October 3, 2024. No, I’m not fascinated with the disaster, but having read what I thought was the definitive book on the subject, discovered Roker’s book on the flood and thought I’d give it a whirl; see if or how it differed from McCullough’s book.

The city of Johnstown PA today. — The City Of Johnstown Pennsylvania From The Highest Point

McCullough’s book was almost a textbook on the who, why, and how the devastation occurred. Although that book named names, those who were the responsible parties on the side of human failure, it also described the rampage of Mother Nature that resulted in a foot of rain in a twenty-four hour period.

As noted previously, Johnstown PA was a booming coal and steel town of some 20,000 people, enjoying the gains of the Industrial Revolution. An old earthen dam had been built to create a premiere fishing lake and resort area for the wealthy tycoons of the time heavily involved in steel production and mining, including Andrew Carnegie.

Al Roker creates a more emotive human interest story, citing both those worker bees in the lower income strata as well as the merchants and the wealthy, the latter of which willing to ignore repeated warnings from knowledgeable engineers regarding the safety of the dam.

So many individual stories, from the six-year-old girl who is separated from her family by the ferocious rampage to the heroes who put their own safety behind the rescue of any they could manage. It puts the “human” back into the human interest story, a loss of more than ten percent of the population with graphic description of the horrific circumstances they faced.

The narrator puts a sober voice into the storyline, telegraphing the terrifying sight of upwards of a sixty-foot wall of mud and debris barreling down on them.

A disaster movie—real, horrifyingly real–and you don’t want to be in it.

The Johnstown Flood (locally, the Great Flood of 1889) occurred on Friday, May 31, 1889, after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam, located on the south fork of the Little Conemaugh River, 14 miles (23 km) upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The dam broke after several days of extremely heavy rainfall, releasing 14.55 million cubic meters of water. With a volumetric flow rate that temporarily equaled the average flow rate of the Mississippi River, the flood killed 2,209 people. Illustration from 19th century.

I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Publishing: Four point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Disaster Relief Studies, Natural Disasters, Disaster Relief
Publisher: HarperAudio
ASIN: B07BK9YB3J
Listening Length: 8 hrs 27 mins
Narrator: Mirron Willis
Publication Date: May 22, 2018
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: Ruthless Tide [Amazon]

The Author: In addition to being known to over thirty million viewers for his work on NBC’s Today show, a role that has earned him 13 Emmy awards, Al Roker is a bestselling author with many acclaimed books to his credit.

His first book, “Don’t Make Me Stop This Car: Adventures in Fatherhood” spent weeks atop the New York Times best-seller list. In May 2002, “Al Roker’s Big Bad Book of Barbecue” was published and, quickly became a summer blockbuster hit. His second cookbook, “Al Roker’s Hassle Free Holiday Cookbook”, became a huge success as it prepared America’s budding chefs for the holidays. “Big Shoes: In Celebration of Dads and Fatherhood” honors fathers and their contributions to lives of their children.

Working in fiction, Roker’s trilogy of murder mysteries are exciting crime novels that revolve around a fictional TV program much like TODAY. This trilogy includes “The Morning Show Murders” (recently made into a TV movie for Hallmark Movies & Mysteries starring Holly Robinson Peete and Rick Fox), “The Talk Show Murders,” and “The Midnight Show Murders.”

Al’s 2013 book, “Never Goin’ Back-Winning The Weight Loss Battle For Good” was a NY Times Bestseller and told Al’s personal struggles with his own weight, bariatric surgery, and diet/nutrition. It even included healthy eating recipes!

In 2015, Al published “The Storm Of The Century: Tragedy, Heroism, Survival, and the Epic True Story of America’s Deadliest Natural Disaster: The Great Gulf Hurricane of 1900.” In less than twenty-four hours, one storm destroyed a major American metropolis—and awakened a nation to the terrifying power of nature. Al’s use of first person narrative received rave reviews.

Al collaborated with his wife, ABC News correspondent, Deborah Roberts, on “Been There Done That – Family Wisdom For Modern Times.” BTDT has been described as a funny, heartfelt, and empowering collection of life lessons, hard-won wisdom, and instructive family anecdotes from Al and Deborah’s lives, from their parents and grandparents, and from dear friends, famous and not.

Al also recently wrote his first children’s book, “Al Roker’s Extreme Weather: Tornadoes, Typhoons, and Other Weather Phenomena” in 2017. With this mesmerizing book that covers a wide range of topics, readers will learn about the conditions that generate unique weather occurrences like red sprites, thundersnow, and fogsicles.

Al’s latest book book “Ruthless Tide – The Heroes And Villains Of The Johnstown Flood” was released in May 2018. In Ruthless Tide, Al Roker follows an unforgettable cast of characters whose fates converged because of that tragic day, including John Parke, the engineer whose heroic efforts failed to save the dam; the robber barons whose fancy sport fishing resort was responsible for modifications that weakened the dam; and Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, who spent five months in Johnstown leading one of the first organized disaster relief efforts in the United States. Weaving together their stories and those of many ordinary citizens whose lives were forever altered by the event, Ruthless Tide is testament to the power of the human spirit in times of tragedy and also a timely warning about the dangers of greed, inequality, neglected infrastructure, and the ferocious, uncontrollable power of nature.

Check the EVENTS tab on Facebook/BooksByAlRoker for appearances by Al Roker.

Follow Al on Instagram and twitter at @AlRoker.

#ThrowbackThursday

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein #AudiobookReview #ThrowbackThursday

Book Blurb:

A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope–a captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life . . . as only a dog could tell it.

My Review:

Enzo, the dog, does a great job of narrating the view of his time with Denny and his family. The book isn’t about the dog, it’s his POV of the family, their struggles with the mom’s illness, and the ultimate fight that Denny confronts as he fights for the right to keep custody of his daughter.

Denny dreams of being a race car driver. He loves his daughter and she is all that is left to him following his wife’s death—except racing. But being torn between racing and the love of his daughter is staring down another horrific loss.

Denny is a hard worker and it’s not easy for him to go on after the death of his beloved wife. It’s a tragedy, yes, but should that be compounded by another tragedy? His wife’s family believe they should raise their granddaughter.

Woven in and through the storyline is the dog’s view of what is happening to Denny, to the family, and the dog’s own love affair, both with his own canine love and that of being part of Denny’s life and racing. He can tell you more about cars and racing than you’d ever want to know and give you a way to enjoy the knowledge.

It’s interesting. Reveling in the wind, the smells, the sheer power underneath him, and the speed. Faster, faster! No, I haven’t done that in a car, though haven’t most of us fantasized about burning rubber? I never red lined my bike, but dragged pegs, and that is certainly an adrenalin rush.

I enjoyed the storyline, followed the nicely paced plot, right until it moved into absurdity which rather ruined it for me. The dog is intelligent, yes, but this moves beyond disbelief and fantasy. Also, I didn’t find it particularly funny. It’s heart-wrenching, indeed, and plays on the human qualities of love, trust, and hope, as well as the canine qualities of loyalty and empathy.

I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts. Did you read or listen to the well-narrated book or see the movie?

Rosepoint Publishing: Four Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Literature & Fiction
Publisher: HarperAudio
ASIN: B0019HXPIC
Listening Length: 6 hrs 56 mins
Narrator: Christopher Evan Welch
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: The Art of Racing in the Race [Amazon]

The Author: Garth Stein is the author of four novels: the New York Times bestselling gothic/historical/coming-of-age/ghost story, “A Sudden Light;” the internationally bestselling “The Art of Racing in the Rain;” the PNBA Book Award winner, “How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets;” and the magically realistic “Raven Stole the Moon.” He is also the author of the stage play, “Brother Jones.” He has a dog, he’s raced a few cars, climbed a bunch of really tall trees, made a few documentary films, and he lives in Seattle with his family. He’s co-founder of Seattle7Writers.org, a non-profit collective of 74 Northwest authors working together to energize the reading and writing public.

#ThrowbackThursday

A Dog’s Courage and A Dog’s Promise by W Bruce Cameron #AudiobookReview #ThrowbackThursday

Book 2 (of 2), the sequel to A Dog’s Way Home (a hit movie) and Book 3 (of 3) from A Dog’s Purpose (another major motion picture stemming from A Dog’s Journey.

Without looking more closely, I thought I was getting Book 2 and 3 of the same series. Apparently not. Which one did I prefer?

A Dog’s Courage

Book Blurb:

Bella was once a lost dog, but now she lives happily with her people, Lucas and Olivia, only occasionally recalling the hardships in her past. Then a weekend camping trip turns into a harrowing struggle for survival when the Rocky Mountains are engulfed by the biggest wildfire in American history. The raging inferno separates Bella from her people and she is lost once more.

Alone in the wilderness, Bella unexpectedly finds herself responsible for the safety of two defenseless mountain lion cubs. Now she’s torn between two equally urgent goals. More than anything, she wants to find her way home to Lucas and Olivia, but not if it means abandoning her new family to danger. And danger abounds, from predators hunting them to the flames threatening at every turn.

Can Bella ever get back to where she truly belongs?

A Dog’s Courage is more than a fast-paced adventure, more than a devoted dog’s struggle to survive, it’s a story asking that we believe in our dogs as much as they believe in us.

A Macmillan Audio production from Forge Books

My Review:

Unfortunately, this one is narrated by a woman who over-dramatizes pretty much everything. After I started the audiobook, I remember I’d started it before and DNF. This time I tried finishing the novel as the plot is interesting and it’s well-paced. The plot mirrors an often repeated problem in the mountains, that of forest fires, and just how quickly they can explode from tree-top to tree-top incinerating everything below.

This is the story of Bella, once a lost dog apparently doomed to repeat the experience and this time with the addition of the cubs and the fire. How the dog handles the cubs and her connection to the felines is engaging, suspenseful, and gratifying borne of her independent and wild experience before. The thought processes of the dog, the POV, often seem as authentically from the canine herself. Oh yes, and I liked that the main character was a female this time.

Book Details:

Genre: Animal Fiction, Family Life Fiction
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
ASIN: B08KYJRQ27
Listening Length: 10 hrs 18 mins
Narrator: Ann Marie Lee
Publication Date: May 4, 2021
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: A Dog’s Courage [Amazon]

>——————-

A Dog’s Promise

Book Blurb:

A Dog’s Promise continues the story of Bailey, the good dog whose journey started in A Dog’s Purpose (the international hit film) and continued in A Dog’s Journey (soon to be a major motion picture in May 2019). This time, Bailey is joined by Lacey, another very special dog, who helps Bailey fulfill his promise over the course of several lives.

This charming, wise canine soul brings joy, laughter, and comfort as he unites a family fractured by life’s inevitable obstacles. The love and loyalty of these two memorable dogs shows us the incredible power of hope, truth, and unending devotion in this moving audiobook by award-winning author W. Bruce Cameron.

My Review:

This is the story of Bailey who is joined by Lacey, his soul mate. This one is narrated by a man who does an admiral job of being the main character’s POV.

This one threw me when the main character dies about a third into the book. Then he begins as a puppy again and passes about two-thirds into the book, and, you guessed it, becomes a puppy again, each time with a new name but essentially the same characteristics, even some of the memories, particularly scent memories. Each time he finds his purpose as an adult and it’s during this memory of previous jobs that the humans in his life discover a possible connection. Some skepticism, but perhaps arguable points.

I liked the human characters in this book, a diverse cadre of people, although I did tire of the animosity between the brothers. The life span of the dogs takes the main human characters through years of life until all the threads are neatly brought together in conclusion, as I correctly assumed they would. After all, it’s a feel good book.

Book Details:

Genre: Animal Fiction, Family Life Fiction
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
ASIN: B07THCL254
Listening Length: 10 hrs 48 mins
Narrator: William Dufris
Publication Date: October 15, 2019
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: A Dog’s Promise [Amazon]

The Author: W. Bruce Cameron is the New York Times bestselling author of 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, The Dog Master, and the A Dog’s Purpose series. In 2011 he was named Columnist of the Year by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. He lives in California.

Summary

Both books are good although I found the inner dialogue of the dog in A Dog’s Courage a bit more intelligent using more thought processes than in A Dog’s Promise. Bailey and his successive soul brought into those dogs a more simple thought process, immediate gratification, concentrating on food first and his lady-love Lacey second. Also, the plot appears to meander a bit, sometimes losing the main thread before ascending into the next mini-drama.

No clear winner here. Preferred the male narrator of Courage, but the storyline of Promise. Plot for plot, each reader might find their preference—animal driven or (human) character driven.

I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.

#ThrowbackThursday

The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough #AudiobookReview #throwbackthursday

in Groundwater & Flood Control

Tycoons of the time, among them, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon, rebuilt an old earthen dam in the mountains above Johnstown and created what they called the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. It would lead to a disaster of massive proportions and the death of over 2,000 persons.

Book Blurb:

The stunning story of one of America’s great disasters, a preventable tragedy of Gilded Age America, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough.

At the end of the last century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation’s burgeoning industrial prosperity. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort patronized by the tycoons of that same industrial prosperity, among them Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon. Despite repeated warnings of possible danger, nothing was done about the dam. Then came May 31, 1889, when the dam burst, sending a wall of water thundering down the mountain, smashing through Johnstown, and killing more than 2,000 people. It was a tragedy that became a national scandal.

Graced by David McCullough’s remarkable gift for writing richly textured, sympathetic social history, The Johnstown Flood is an absorbing portrait of life in 19th-century America, of overweening confidence, of energy, and of tragedy. This is a powerful historical lesson for our century and all times: the danger of assuming that because people are in positions of responsibility they are behaving responsibly.

My Review:

It’s not as if the dam hadn’t been inspected. It’s not as if those who should have acted didn’t have the warning. Was it complacency then? How many people had heard that warning before? Nothing happened that time. Why would it this time?

But it did.

And when it did, a wall of water gathered trees, buildings, people, and everything else in its path in a rush down the valley towards Johnstown where witnesses estimated the brown wall of debris and death at approximately 35 to 40 feet in height.

The chronicle the author writes of this man-made and natural disaster is gripping, terrifying, and infuriating when you think it could have been prevented. Who, in the end, was to blame? The survivors worked it out but even then it lingered in the courts until nothing and no one felt the anvil.

The author describes the iconic valley with both the Conemaugh and Stony Creek Rivers providing the life-giving watershed from the mountains and allowing the burgeoning iron commerce to thrive. He brings the Gilded Age time and the people’s lives to life and plants investment in them—knowing what is to come. Where will they be?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The details of the failure of the dam and the research of the people are extensive and fill the book with the incredible statistics of the flood. It’s fascinating and devastating at the same time. There are a few periods of info dump that slow the narrative just slightly changing the narrative from a storyteller to a text reader. These are then interwoven with the situation or coming events which explains the how and why.

I’ve read this author before. He never fails to deliver a mind-blowing account of a historic event or person and his books are heartily recommended. I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Publishing: Four point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Groundwater & Flood Control, Disaster Relief Studies, Disaster Relief
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
ASIN: B0009YT418
Listening Length: 9 hrs 3 mins
Narrator: Edward Herrmann
Publication Date: June 17, 2005
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: The Johnstown Flood [Amazon]
Barnes & Noble
Kobo

The Author: David McCullough has twice received the Pulitzer Prize, for Truman and John Adams, and twice received the National Book Award, for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback; His other widely praised books are 1776, Brave Companions, The Great Bridge, and The Johnstown Flood. He has been honored with the National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award, the National Humanities Medal, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.