Book Review: A Comedy of Nobodies

Charlie knows he’s not the main character in his own story. He’s just one more schmuck trying to navigate life in the Ivy League. He plays in a terrible jazz band, falls in love far too easily, and generally struggles with the business of being human.

With understated hilarity this collection chronicles Charlie and his friends as they explore the meaning of life through the stories they grew up with, the stories they tell each other, and the stories they tell themselves.

As Charlie tries to find love using the scientific method, babysits a toddler in exchange for a chance to loosen those financial aid purse-strings, jumps out a window to escape a jealous football player’s wrath, and enrages a packed hockey stadium by replacing the national anthem with a jazz-trio rendition of “American Pie,” he discovers that the answers to life’s most pressing questions are almost always just more questions.

Book Review: The Fellowship of Puzzle Makers

Clayton Stumper might be in his twenties, but he dresses like your grandpa and fusses like your aunt. Abandoned at birth on the steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, he was raised by a group of eccentric enigmatologists and now finds himself among the last survivors of a fading institution.

When the esteemed crossword compiler and main maternal presence in Clayton’s life, Pippa Allsbrook, passes away, she bestows her final puzzle on him: a promise to reveal the mystery of his parentage and prepare him for life beyond the walls of the commune. So begins Clay’s quest to uncover the secrets surrounding his birth, secrets that will change Clay and the Fellowship forever.

Book Review: The Rulebreaker

Barbara Walters was a force from the time TV was exploding on the American scene in the 1960s to its waning dominance in a new world of competition from streaming services and social media half a century later. She was not just a groundbreaker for women (Oprah announced when she was seventeen that she wanted to be Barbara Walters), but also expanded the big TV interview and then dominated the genre. By the end of her career, she had interviewed more of the famous and infamous, from presidents to movie stars to criminals to despots, than any other journalist in history. Then at sixty-seven, past the age many female broadcasters found themselves involuntarily retired, she pioneered a new form of talk TV called The View. She is on the short list of those who have left the biggest imprints on television news and on our culture, male or female. So, who was the woman behind the legacy?

Book Review: Godzilla - Here There Be Dragons

Before humanity had successfully traveled the entire globe, it was believed that monsters ruled the oceans just beyond the horizon. “Here there be dragons…” was written on maps to denote the areas people dared not go.That is, until Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the seas, visiting foreign lands and collecting treasure. That’s what history tells us, at least, but history does not have the full tale.

Monsters did lurk yonder, living on an island that still doesn’t appear on any map, and among them was the king of them all… Godzilla! From Frank Tieri and Inaki Miranda, the incredible team behind Old Lady Harley, comes a Godzilla adventure like no other. Collects the five-issue series.

Book Review: Marriage Toxin vol. 2

Poison Master Hikaru Gero is about to take on his most challenging assignment yet—getting married! But after training his entire life to become one of the world’s deadliest assassins, Gero couldn’t be more clueless when it comes to the art of dating. Thankfully, marriage swindler Mei Kinosaki knows everything there is to know about love, and together, this unlikely pair is going to do whatever it takes to get Gero hitched—even if they have to take on the entire criminal underworld in the process!

After assessing Gero’s romantic qualities (or lack thereof), Kinosaki decides the best strategy to find Gero a wife is to use his impressive talents as an assassin instead! Together they respond to a job listing to rescue Himekawa, an art thief who’s been taken hostage—but with a water master now standing in their way, their plan takes a turn for the worse! Can Gero win this fierce battle of poison versus water and take his first step toward marital bliss?

Book Review: Let Me Take You Down

John Lennon wrote “Strawberry Fields Forever” in Almería, Spain, in fall 1966, and in November, in response to that song, Paul McCartney wrote “Penny Lane” at his home in London. A culmination of what was one of the most life-altering and chaotic years in the Beatles’ career, these two songs composed the 1967 double A-side 45 rpm record that has often been called the greatest single in the history of popular music and was, according to Beatles producer George Martin, “the best record we ever made.”

Book Review: The Sicilian Inheritance

Sara Marsala barely knows who she is anymore after the failure of her business and marriage. On top of that, her beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away, leaving Sara bereft with grief. But Aunt Rosie’s death also opens an escape from her life and a window into the past by way of a plane ticket to Sicily, a deed to a possibly valuable plot of land, and a bombshell family secret. Rosie believes Sara’s great-grandmother Serafina, the family matriarch who was left behind while her husband worked in America, didn’t die of illness as family lore has it . . . she was murdered.

Thus begins a twist-filled adventure that takes Sara all over the picturesque Italian countryside as she races to solve a mystery and learn the story of Serafina—a feisty and headstrong young woman in the early 1900s thrust into motherhood in her teens, who fought for a better life not just for herself but for all the women of her small village. Unsurprisingly the more she challenges the status quo, the more she finds herself in danger.