All of the books I’ve listed above have flawed characters. Characters that deal with emotional and/or moral dilemmas. The plots: murder, missing children, or runaway husbands are secondary to me. What I look for in a book and what I write about in my Cole and Callahan series, are characters with flaws. People who struggle with truth. Cops or investigators that hide or skew evidence because the truth would cause more harm than good. It’s the moral dilemma I want. The angst we all feel when we are faced with a particularly painful decision. That’s what real life is and that’s what brings a book and a character to life.
Not A Happy Family is a Domestic Suspense novel. The Mertons have everything, money, a beautiful home, and plenty of vacations. So why, after Easter dinner with their three children are they found dead? The kids are distraught. Or are they? What childhood secrets do each of them carry and is one of them murderously vindictive? I come from a big family and always enjoy reading about dysfunctional families. Luckily, my own family was only semi-dysfunctional for the most part. Nothing I needed to kill my parents over.
I love a mystery or thriller, a number of which climbed to the top of my
pile this year. What they all have in common is rich characters in
communities dense with secrets.
The ultimate example for me was The Hunt, in which a colorful cast of damaged working-class people are
swept up into a thriller that revolves around the threat of a string of murders
spanning twenty years in Arkansas.
Growing up poor in rural Maine, my landscape
was different, but I recognize the hardscrabble
lives and the insular nature of small-town life so well depicted in Ford’s
novel.
The setting, the flawed queer protagonist and those who love her, and
the thicket of possible suspects all combine for a fresh spin on the genre and a
satisfyingly twisty story arc.
From the author of Real Bad Things and Cottonmouths, a Los Angeles Review Best Book of 2017, comes the darkly suspenseful tale of a small-town Easter tradition and its murderous secrets.
For seventeen years, a serial murderer has used the Presley, Arkansas, Annual Hunt for the Golden Egg to find prey. Or at least that's what some people believe. Others, like the town's devoted "Eggheads," relish the tradition and think the deaths are just unfortunate accidents. But for Nell Holcomb, the town's annual Hunt dredges up a particularly painful memory: her brother's death, long believed to be "the Hunter's" first…
I have a thing about bunnies! My first plush toy was a rabbit named Boing Boing and I had a pet lop-eared bunny named Br’er. The first book I wrote in my series was The Night Before Easter because I wanted to write a story for kids who love bunnies and Easter - like me! When I was a child I also liked to read books by Beatrix Potter and hope to one day visit her house in England.
Easter isn’t all about bunnies, baskets, and bonnets. This book will remind kids that Easter is a religious holiday and that along with egg hunts and other light-hearted traditions of Easter, that families also go to church. As a rhyming author, I appreciate rhyming stories, especially for this age group (0-4). Plus this smaller-sized board book fits perfectly in Easter baskets.
Easter may have many fun traditions, but Bunny wants to know:"What is Easter?"Little ones canenjoy learning the true meaning of Easter alongside Bunny,celebrating Jesus and his resurrection with Laura Sassi's sweet and rhyming text.
Easter is for coloring eggs, wearing a lovely bonnet, joining in an egg hunt, and attending church with family! But the most important thing about this holiest of seasonsis to celebrate and focus on Jesus. Children will be introduced to the meaning of Easter through colorful illustrations and playful rhymes.
Bunny Finds Easter encourages children, parents, and grandparents to:
I am a Graphic Illustrator, Muralist, and Educator, serving as an adjunct professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art and I love birds! I was born and raised in the Chautauqua Lake Region of Western, NY and I find myself very much at home with our feathered friends. My passion for color, shape, and nature enables me to draw the viewer's eye to things that otherwise might go unnoticed. Letter Birds was created when my children were 5 and 7 and I would draw while they slept. When they awoke they would find a colorful drawing of a feathered friend along with a new letter to learn. My children continue to be my creative muses - even as teenagers!
This book touches the soul and imagination of all artists. Following a young (bunny) Artist as they make their mark within an adventurous creative family that travels the world. Each spread transports you to a world of chance where art brings together not only communities but families. An absolute joy for creative minds!
I found this book gripping and suspenseful; in short, I couldn’t put it down!
It begins with a séance in a haunted house. What a great way to start a murder mystery! The folks in this tight-knit community have interesting quirks and fascinating backgrounds, providing a host of possible perpetrators.
This is a masterful look into how people find reasons to grow suspicious of each other, and to treat each other less-than-kindly. Chief Inspector Gamache is having devastating problems of his own: someone in the organization is out to destroy his life.
Who can he trust? How can he solve this murder while watching his own back? My first Louise Penny book will not be my last. (I’ve already bought two more.)
It's Easter, and on a glorious spring day in peaceful Three Pines, someone waits for night to fall. They plan to raise the dead! When C. I. Gamache of the Surete du Quebec arrives the next morning, he faces an unusual crime scene. A seance in an old, abandoned house has gone horrifically wrong and someone lies frightened to death. For in idyllic Three Pines not all is as it seems. Toxic secrets lie buried, and something terrible has finally clawed its way out. And even Gamache has something to hide. One of his own team is preparing to betray…
Richard Yates' richly nuanced novel from 1976 also became one of my favorite novels upon reading it this year.
Depicting the early childhood-through-midlife of Emily Grimes, Yates takes us on an uncompromising, unsettling, and moving journey, from Emily's imbalanced upbringing to the challenging relationships between her mother and older sister, as well as the men that enter in and out of her life, and how her search for self becomes somewhat obscured as a result of all, despite her obvious intelligence.
While Yates was primarily known for his first novel, Revolutionary Road, this is very much a work that should be required reading for any reader who truly appreciates mature literature and complex heroines. Rarely have I read such a work set in a domestic setting depicted so honestly.
In The Easter Parade, first published in 1976, we meet sisters Sarah and Emily Grimes when they are still the children of divorced parents. We observe the sisters over four decades, watching them grow into two very different women. Sarah is stable and stalwart, settling into an unhappy marriage. Emily is precocious and independent, struggling with one unsatisfactory love affair after another. Richard Yates's classic novel is about how both women struggle to overcome their tarnished family's past, and how both finally reach for some semblance of renewal.
I’m a lifelong New Jerseyan married to a man whose family comes from Georgia. It gave me an opportunity to observe the white, Southern, upper-class weltanschauung, up close. To hear them talk, you’d think the Civil War had ended just a few days earlier, and if the Yankees had only respected states’ rights, none of that mess would have happened. My book is about a dysfunctional Georgia family who has far too much money than is good for them. Hijinks ensue.
I love a sprawling family saga set in a small town. My husband’s father came from a small town in South Georgia that was founded by one of his ancestors. My husband’s grandfather, after visiting Chicago and being impressed by the big department stores he saw there, decided that what his tiny little town needed was a huge department store of its own. He built one, and amazingly, it was a success for many years, with folks coming from all around to marvel at its architectural sophistication and its dazzling array of wares. Like the fictional town of Perdido, Alabama, where the action is centered in Blackwater, everyone there knows everybody else, and nothing secret stays hidden for long.
On Easter Sunday, 1919, a flood engulfs Perdido. Oscar Caskey, the eldest son of the town’s most influential family, discovers a stranger named Elinor Dammert waiting patiently inside a room on…
Blackwater is the saga of a small town, Perdido, Alabama, and Elinor Dammert, the stranger who arrives there under mysterious circumstances on Easter Sunday, 1919. On the surface, Elinor is gracious, charming, anxious to belong in Perdido, and eager to marry Oscar Caskey, the eldest son of Perdido’s first family. But her beautiful exterior hides a shocking secret. Beneath the waters of the Perdido River, she turns into something terrifying, a creature whispered about in stories that have chilled the residents of Perdido for generations. Some of those who observe her rituals in the river will never be seen again…
Growing up in an eccentric, liberal family, as a member of the Church of England, under the shadow of the British Government’s homophobic Section 28, the messages I received were distinctly mixed. If I’d heard the word ‘bisexual’ before the age of twenty my life might have been very different. And to this day, the most common assumption is that one can’t be simultaneously queer and Christian. As I’ve discovered, and as these books show, that isn’t true – and moving beyond that assumption reveals new and fascinating horizons.
Set in a London congregation at the height of the AIDS crisis, this is a powerful novel that packs a lot into one Easter weekend. Its ingenious triptych structure underlines the fact that there’s often more going on than a superficial understanding of either faith or sexuality would like to believe. The oldest book on this list by a couple of decades, this is one of the first novels to engage seriously with what it means to be queer in an institution that prefers to ignore that fact, and it was both a challenge and a comfort in my own coming-out years.
I’m a fantasy author and mythologist who studies myth’s place in culture, history, and heritage conservation. To finish my doctorate, I moved from Seattle to Galway, Ireland and never left. Myth and folklore permeate the landscape around me as well as my day-to-day life. After grad school I returned to my first love, fiction, with all the knowledge and passion that came from the better part of a decade spent studying mythology. When I’m not writing, I spend my time exploring 5000-year-old tombs or practicing Fiore (14th century Italian sword fighting) with my husband. The Serpent and the Swan is the debut fairy tale in a much larger series.
This book is one of the best at capturing the impact of myth on history, culture, and politics. Thompson starts long before the Easter 1916 Rising, the book’s central event, and examines how Celticity became a focal point of reclaiming an Irish identity separate from the British. Just as Jack Zipes’ Grimm Legacies demonstrates how the collection of folklore developed a unified German cultural identity, Thompson illustrates how collecting (and in many cases updating) the myths of the land gave Ireland not only a new identity but also a new history. The heroes of those mythic stories would be used for the next three centuries as allegories for both Ireland and the Irish in art, literature, theatre, and political rhetoric. It is the blueprint of all my worldbuilding.
We know from our literary histories that there was a movement called the Irish Literary Renaissance, and that Yeats was at its head. We know from our political histories that there is now a Republic of Ireland because of a nationalistic movement that, militarily, began with the insurrection of Easter Week, 1916. But what do these two movements have to do with one another?… Because I came to history with literary eyes, I could not help seeing history in terms and shapes of imaginative experience. Thus Movement, Myth, and Image came to be the way in which the nature of…
I love suggesting these topics of coloring books because my clinical work involves using art, coloring, and creativity in a therapeutic setting. I am an art therapist working with children in a hospital setting and am trained in applying the arts to build coping skills for managing difficult emotions. As a Christian author, I like to integrate both scripture and art to allow big concepts to become more comprehendible for the younger reader. Growing up, I've always been a visual learner! Art accesses parts of the brain that reading cannot. So, I hope these recommendations and my book can be just the start of discovering the benefits of art.
This devotional book is perfect for kids because they get to learn Bible stories through coloring! I believe the more a child is able to apply what they learn creatively, ideas become more concrete for them. The art a child creates can become memory cues for what is read. Personally, I love this devotional and think it offers kids a unique way of comprehending the Bible. Not only does it benefit children, but I believe adults can benefit from doodling while they read, too! We may be older, butthe inner child in all of us is still there. So—if you're looking for a good faith-based devotional for your kids, I recommend a devotional that has some aspect of coloring in it!
A great way to get kids to dig deeper into their Bibles is to have them interact with its stories and lessons. Doodle Devotions for Kids by Nancy Taylor helps children do that through its 60 devotions accompanied by doodling activities. This collection of devos goes through the entire Bible while encouraging kids to respond in their own creative ways. Do as the author says, “Write all over this book!”
Designed to be appropriate for―and enjoyed by―both boys and girls, this devotional book featuring 152 pages and lots of fun illustrations would make a great gift for any kid in…
