5th of July By: Lanford Wilson

An acrobatic piece of writing.  Realist dialogue hides the truth under the banal.  A great read and a great play!

High Strung By: Janice Peacock

I do love a creative entry in the cozy genre, and this is one such creative cozy!  Glass Bead Artistry is the back drop to the Jax O'Connell stories.  Fascinating art form, VERY quirky characters (we are dealing with artists after all) and a great who dunnit!  Really, what more could ask for in a cozy?!

Pancakes and Corpses By: Agatha Frost

Talk about airing your dirty laundry!  This great little cozy doesn't hide anything-as Julia looks into the death of a the church's organist, the secrets of practically everyone in town are laid bare...making the suspect list grow and shift continuously.  A great read!

Cruel Candy By: Mildred Abbott

What a delightful mystery!  Cruel Candy combines three of my favorite things: a bookstore; a well plotted mystery; and a protagonist with chutzpah! "Fred" (Winifred) and her snack craving Corgi, Watson move home to a tiny mountain town in Colorado to start a new life and open a book store. Finding her business neighbor dead in her new store, sets Fred on a wild owl chase and mystery worthy of Ms. Christie.  Well plotted, fun characters and a bucolic setting all add up to a great read!

Pachinko. By: Min Jin Lee

It may be that I wasn't too receptive to this book because of the atmosphere in this country at the moment, that has me deeply upset, but I couldn't find a lot about his book that was appealing.  I felt that it was one tragedy after another, after another, after another with no good points to balance it out.  I had a hard time getting through this one and couldn't wait to be finished with it.

Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This? By: Marion Meade

I never knew anything about Dorothy Parker, other than her association with the Algonquin Round Table and some of her pithy remarks.  Marion Meade has written a really in depth biography of a fascinating literary lion!

Doorways and Debts. By: J.P. Michaels

What a delightful surprise!  Having head Mr. Michaels' first book, I was worried that this one would have the same editing and structure issues, but this book is well structured and well edited.  Doorways and Debts follows 5 young boys on a journey of self discovery in a strange world.  Well developed characters, magic doorways, and personal growth...a fun read!

Death Over Easy By: Maddie Day (expected publish date: 7/31/18)

Ah... another week in the life of Robbie...you know what that means-well you do you've read any of the other mysteries in this wonderful series!  More mouthwatering food, more Abe, more Adele (one of my favorite characters ever!) more dead bodies-you know a typical week for Robbie and the denizens of of her country store/eatery.  Set against the back drop of an annual Bluegrass festival two people turn up dead.  The list of suspects is a mile long, but the food is piping hot, and so is the music.  This is one of my favorite cozy series.  The setting, the people, the food, the mysteries, everything about it is...cozy.  It's like visiting old friends and catching up on all the gossip.  Be forewarned-the books in this series should not be read on an empty stomach-Sugar Cream Pie-that's all I'm gonna say!

Badge of Loyalty By: Jude Tresswell

While I felt the writing was extremely good, and engaging, I had issue with how the book was structured and the story itself. In reading the mystery I found myself having to go back and reread sections to try and figured out was was actually happening, some parts where suggested but no stated and I missed some points. I also was not thrilled with the sub plot of the polyamorous relationship of the main character-I don't feel it added anything to the story. over all I felt this was two different books mushed into one. Personally, I think it would have worked better as one mystery and one novel about Mike and his relationships.

Night of the Sadist By: Paul Laurie

A little piece of erotica now and again is not a bad thing.  Night of the Sadist offers a bit more than your typical erotic story.  This actually has a plot...and it's a good one!  This reads more like a mystery than gay erotica-don't get me wrong, there is definitely erotic details, graphic ones, but the mystery is quite good.  A man searching for the person who murdered his brother takes him into the world of BDSM.  Its well structured and the clues are all there, and the mystery does have a satisfying conclusion.  I have to say, the introduction to this re-release was fantastic.  It gives a history of gay erotica and puts this story in it's historical context-which for a history buff was fascinating.  Kudos to the publishers for wanting to re-examine this genre in such a fascinating way.