127. Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center

listened on Audible

2015
352 pgs.
Adult Chick Lit/RomCom
Finished 8/31/2020
Goodreads rating: 4.09
My rating:  4.5
Setting: Contemporary Wyoming mountain wilderness

My comments: Didn't want this one to end a charming, fun story that you knew would end wonderfully and couldn't wait to see how you got there.  The two protagonists were incredibly lovable and believable and their survival/hiking part of the story was great to listen to.  I've got to read another by this author. A totally feel-good story, not without some sadness, but worth.  Great narrator, she nailed the different voices beautifully.

Goodreads synopsis:   A year after getting divorced, Helen Carpenter, thirty-two, lets her annoying, ten years younger brother talk her into signing up for a wilderness survival course. It's supposed to be a chance for her to pull herself together again, but when she discovers that her brother's even-more-annoying best friend is also coming on the trip, she can't imagine how it will be anything other than a disaster. Thus begins the strangest adventure of Helen's well-behaved life: three weeks in the remotest wilderness of a mountain range in Wyoming where she will survive mosquito infestations, a surprise summer blizzard, and a group of sorority girls.

Yet, despite everything, the vast wilderness has a way of making Helen's own little life seem bigger, too. And, somehow the people who annoy her the most start teaching her the very things she needs to learn. Like how to stand up for herself. And how being scared can make you brave. And how sometimes you just have to get really, really lost before you can even have a hope of being found.

Samuel S. Lewis State Park

Friday Field Trip Number One
East York, PA
York County

One letterbox:  "Hooty Hoot" (Una Marlee Sue) found in the state park

85 acres
9-hole frisbee golf course
huge mown field for kite-flying
lots of picnic tables

great view of the Susquenna River between Wrightsville and Columbia, PA

lots of big rocks for the kids to climb

less than an hour from home

114. The Fifth to Die by J. K. Barker

#2 MLK Murders
listened on Audible
narrated by Eduardo Ballerini and Graham Winton
Unabridged audio (15:07)
2018
416 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery/Police Procedural
Finished 8/6/2020
Goodreads rating:  432 - 5744 ratings
My rating:  5
Setting:  Contemporary Chicago, with forays to New Orleans and Sourth Carolina

First line/s:  "Darkness.  It swirled around him deep and thick, eating the light and leaving nothing behind but an inky void."

What I posted on GoodReads:  Flipping back and forth between many pov's, the interesting, though gritty, mystery continues.

My comments:  Talk about ending on a cliffhanger!  I'm so glad I have the next book, the final book, in the trilogy ready and waiting.   Flipping back and forth between three Chicago cops, different girls who have been abducted, an FBI agent, and the diary of Bishop, the story comes at you from all angles.  Anson Bishop, an incredibly smart serial murderer - and a particularly gruesome one at that - is still at it, this time having an accomplice.

Goodreads synopsis:  In the thrilling sequel to The Fourth Monkey, a new serial killer stalks the streets of Chicago, while Detective Porter delves deeper into the dark past of the Four Monkey Killer.
          Detective Porter and the team have been pulled from the hunt for Anson Bishop, the Four Monkey Killer, by the feds. When the body of a young girl is found beneath the frozen waters of Jackson Park Lagoon, she is quickly identified as Ella Reynolds, missing three weeks. But how did she get there? The lagoon froze months earlier. More baffling? She’s found wearing the clothes of another girl, missing less than two days. While the detectives of Chicago Metro try to make sense of the quickly developing case, Porter secretly continues his pursuit of 4MK, knowing the best way to find Bishop is to track down his mother. When the captain finds out about Porter’s activities, he’s suspended, leaving his partners Clair and Nash to continue the search for the new killer alone.
          Obsessed with catching Bishop, Porter follows a single grainy photograph from Chicago to the streets of New Orleans and stumbles into a world darker than he could have possibly imagined, where he quickly realizes that the only place more frightening than the mind of a serial killer is the mind of the mother from which he came.

112. A Room Full of Bones by Elly Griffiths

#4 Ruth Galloway  - British Forensic Archeologist
listened to audio on Audible
narrated by Jane McDowell
Unabridged audio (9:44)
2012
352 pgs.
Adult Mystery - Police Procedural
Finished 8/2/2020
Goodreads rating:  3.91 - 14,325 ratings
My rating: 4

First line/s:  "The coffin is definitely a health and safety hazard."

What I posted on Goodreads:  Another interesting mystery including a family museum, a horse farm, a 14th century bishop that turns out to be a female (!) and all sorts of ups and downs with parenting...including by Kate's father and Kate's father's wife, Michelle.....

My comments:  The mystery is about the Smith family, their horse farm, drug dealing, aboriginal bones. and a 14th century bishop(who turns out to be female) in the Smith Museum.  It's also about Harry Nelson getting sick and his wife, Michelle, coming to terms witht he fact that he is Kate's father and needs to be involved in her life (very good of Michelle, i think).  At the end of the book, Ruth and Max are becoming a couple.  Upcoming things to contemplate:  Nelson's sidekick is pregnatn, and although she is married, she has had a fling with Casbad.  A good story, though I wish Griffiths didn't use quite as many poinst-ov fivew as she did.  It all come together well, and was quite interesting to listen to.

Goodreads synopsis:  Combine a splash of Alan Bradley with a pinch of Kathy Reichs and you have a gripping new Ruth Galloway Mystery -- a good-hearted mystery series with a dark edge.
           Set in Norfolk, England, A Room Full of Bones embroils, once again, our brainy heroine in a crime tinged by occult forces. On Halloween night, the Smith Museum in King's Lynn is preparing for an unusual event -- the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop. But when forensic archaelogist Ruth Galloway arrives to supervise, she finds the curator, Neil Topham, dead beside the coffin. Topham's death seems to be related to other uncanny incidents, including the arcane and suspect methods of a group called the Elginists, which aims to repatriate the museum's extensive collection of Aborigine skulls; the untimely demise of the museum's owner, Lord Smith; and the sudden illness of DCI Harry Nelson, who Ruth's friend Cathbad believes is lost in The Dreaming -- a hallucinogenic state central to some Indigenous Australian beliefs. Tensions build as Nelson's life hangs in the balance. Something must be done to set matters right and lift Nelson out of the clutches of death, but will Ruth be able to muster herself out of a state of guilt and foreboding in order to do what she does best?