66. Priscilla, Princess of the Park by Pat LaMarche

#1 Priscilla series
read on Kindle (not available on Audio)
111 pgs.

2020
Middle Grades Realistic Fiction
Finished 7/27/2024
Goodreads rating: 4.88
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary Carlisle, PA

My comments: Illustrated by Bonnie Tweedy Shaw!

Goodreads synopsis:  An endearing novel about five young children, a charismatic compassionate woman, and the perils of homelessness. As the children fall madly in love with Priscilla, they begin to wonder about the story of their mentor. The children's homes are filled with everyday drama and excitement. Priscilla teaches life lessons that help them cope and find joy - as well as a sense of community.

67. These Silent Woods - Kimi Cunningham Grant

listened on Audible

2021
275 pgs.
Adult CRF
Finished 9/21/2023 
Goodreads rating: 4.10
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary - in the middle of the woods off a long, private dirt road, on the edge of a National Forest....I'm thinking somewhere in remote PA

My comments: This is one of the best books I've read in a long while.  I loved every beautiful word, the plt, the complex characters, and the very special setting...all the details.  It was almost like I'be been waiting for the story with these kinds of details - living alone in the wodds on your own (Cooper is with his 8-year old daughter) surviving, enjoying nature and the birds, and loving your kid.  It was the details that really made it for me, as well as the brief flashbacks that explained what had happened to Cooper to bring him to this place.  So well done.  And the HEA that I would have never imagined.   Loved it.

Goodreads synopsis:   No electricity, no family, no connection to the outside world. For eight years, Cooper and his young daughter, Finch, have lived in isolation in a remote cabin in the northern Appalachian woods. And that's exactly the way Cooper wants it, because he's got a lot to hide. Finch has been raised on the books filling the cabin’s shelves and the beautiful but brutal code of life in the wilderness. But she’s starting to push back against the sheltered life Cooper has created for her—and he’s still haunted by the painful truth of what it took to get them there.

The only people who know they exist are a mysterious local hermit named Scotland, and Cooper's old friend, Jake, who visits each winter to bring them food and supplies. But this year, Jake doesn't show up, setting off an irreversible chain of events that reveals just how precarious their situation really is. Suddenly, the boundaries of their safe haven have blurred—and when a stranger wanders into their woods, Finch’s growing obsession with her could put them all in danger. After a shocking disappearance threatens to upend the only life Finch has ever known, Cooper is forced to decide whether to keep hiding—or finally face the sins of his past.

Vividly atmospheric and masterfully tense, These Silent Woods is a poignant story of survival, sacrifice, and how far a father will go when faced with losing it all.

8. Attack of the Black Rectangles by A. S. King

listened on Audible

2022
272 pgs.
Middle Grade CRF
Finished 1/23/2023
Goodreads rating: 4.26
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary PA - I'm guessing a touristy place in Lancaster County, like Intercourse, though the Amish are not mentioned

My comments: Excellent. When three friends are confronted with blocked out words in their sixth grade literature circle book (The Devil's Arithmetic - a really great book in itself), they begin a campaign against censorship. A timely topic that includes a middle school boy dealing with his very odd, untrustworthy father and the usual pre-teenage angst about friendships with girls. My favorite character is the ex-Vietnam vet grandad who practices mindfulness.

Goodreads synopsis:  Award-winning author Amy Sarig King takes on censorship and intolerance in a novel she was born to write.

Everyone in town knows and fears Ms. Laura Samuel Sett. She is the town watchdog, always on the lookout for unsavory words and the unsavory people who use them.

She is also Mac's sixth-grade teacher.

Mac and his friends are outraged when they discovered that their class copies of Jane Yolen's THE DEVIL'S ARITHMETIC have certain works blacked out. Mac has been raised by his mom and grandad to call out things that are wrong, so he and his friends head to the principal's office to protest the censorship. Her response isn't reassuring -- so the protest grows.

75. Vanishing Girls by Lisa Regan

#1 Detective Josie Quinn, Denton, PA cop
listened on Audible, also have on Kindle
read by Eilidh Beaton (do not listen to anything she reads again!)
Unabridged audio (11:40)
2018 Bookouture
334 pgs.
Adult Police Procedural/Murder Mystery
Finished 8/12/2019
Goodreads rating:  4.24 - 6246 ratings
My rating: 2
Setting: Contemporary Denton, PA

First line/s:  "There was a man in the woods, she was sure of it."

My comments:  OMG, I can't believe the audio company hired this particular reader for this particular book.  The almost 30-year-old rural PA protagonist sounded like an 18-year-old valley girl and mispronounced so many words that I really wondered what her background was (Scottish?).  It was unbelievably disconcerting and totally took away from the setting and this important primary character, making her almost laughable in places where she definitely should not have been!
     The story was fast paced, but the aforementioned discrepancy re: character and setting just threw the whole story itself off...
     Josie (who ends up becoming Denton's chief of police, yeah, right...) is impulsive, screwed up, on probation, and continues to work nonstop while her fiance lies near death in the the hospital, seemingly without much thought of him at all.  And the, bad guys start spilling their guts after keeping their mouth shut for years..... The combination of horrible narrator and implausible happenings make this one an eye roller.  It didn't give me any sense of rural Pennsylvania AT ALL.
     Here are some of her frustrating pronunciations (remember, this is supposedly in Pennsylvania!
          been = bean (do you know how many times people use this word?  LOTS!)
          ate = ett
          anything = ehn ih thinn
          taco = (pronouncing the a as in apple)
          everything = ev ra thinn
          hovered = haw - verd
          tel - uh - VIZH - un
          process:  proe-sess
          die-rector
          mo-bile
          temporary - temp-ree
          Maryland = merry-land!!!!!
          tousled = tousuhld
          protest = praw-test
          cemetery = sem eh tree

Goodreads synopsis:  She was close enough to see that the girl had written a word on the wall in bright, warm red blood. Not a word, actually. A name…
          Everyone in the small American town of Denton is searching for Isabelle Coleman, a missing seventeen-year-old girl. All they’ve found so far is her phone and another girl they didn’t even know was missing.
          Mute and completely unresponsive to the world around her, it’s clear this mysterious girl has been damaged beyond repair. All Detective Josie Quinn can get from her is a name: Ramona.
          Currently suspended from the force for misconduct, Josie takes matters into her own hands as the name leads her to evidence linking the two girls. She knows the race is on to find Isabelle alive, and she fears there may be others… 
          The trail leads Josie to another victim, a girl who escaped but whose case was labelled a hoax by authorities. To catch this monster, Josie must confront her own nightmares and follow her instinct to the darkest of places. But can she make it out alive?
          Fans of Angela Marsons, Helen Fields and Robert Dugoni will be utterly gripped and sleeping with the lights on once they discover the first in this unputdownable new crime thriller series.

59. Fallen Mountains by Kimi Cunningham Grant

read on my iPhone
2019 Amberjack Publishing
256 pgs.
Adult mystery
Finished 7/3/2019
Goodreads rating:  4.13 - 240 ratings
My rating:3
Setting:  Flashing back between current times and a decade earlier in rural Pennsylvania

First line/s:  "The summer heat arrived in Fallen Mountains like a winged thing, swift and startling:  the pansies drooped, the lettuce bolted, the trees shook off their buds."

My comments:  I picked this up to read because it's set in contemporary Pennsylvania and I wanted to add some books set in my new home state to my repertoire.  It flips back-and-forth from "before" and "after," and it references 11 years ago, 17 years ago...and even before that, so that I never really knew what was taking place when.  It worked out okay though, still being pretty easy to follow, but in the end leaving a few unanswered questions in my head that I don't think I missed.  There was definitely vernacular that I've only heard in PA, and it made me laugh because it's one of my worst pet peeves - omitting the infinite "to be."  Her's an example from the book:  "when them cows needed milked, they needed milked."

Goodreads synopsis: “An intense and engaging portrait of characters driven by—and bound by—the secrets of their pasts . . . an absorbing mystery as well as a gracefully layered story of death and loss in a small town.” —Allen Eskens, USA Today bestselling author of The Life We Bury and The Shadows We Hide
          When Transom Shultz goes missing shortly after returning to his sleepy hometown of Fallen Mountains, Pennsylvania, his secrets are not the only ones that threaten to emerge. Red, the sheriff, is haunted by the possibility that a crime Transom was involved in seventeen years earlier—a crime Red secretly helped cover up—may somehow be linked to his disappearance. Possum, the victim of that crime, wants revenge. Laney will do anything to keep Transom quiet about the careless mistake they made that could jeopardize her budding relationship. And Chase, once a close friend, reels from Transom’s betrayal of buying his family’s farm under false pretenses and ruthlessly logging it and leasing the mineral rights to Marcellus shale frackers. As the search for Transom Shultz heats up and the inhabitants’ dark and tangled histories unfold, each one must decide whether to live under the brutal weight of the past or try to move beyond it.

28. Don't Let Go by Harlan Coben

listened to on Audible
read by Steven Weber
2017 Dutton Books
368 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery/Police Procedural
Finished 3/29/18
Goodreads rating: 4.01 - 22,160 ratings
My rating:5
Setting: Contemporary NJ and PA

First line/s:  "The mark peered into the glass of whiskey in front of him as though he were a gypsy with a crystal ball."

My comments: Another riveting mystery by Harlan Coben.  Twists, turns, and lots of questions put you right their in the midst of the investigation with Nap.  I loved listening to Steven Weber read this, he did one heckuva job.  Highly recommended.

Goodreads synopsis: With unmatched suspense and emotional insight, Harlan Coben explores the big secrets and little lies that can destroy a relationship, a family, and even a town in this powerful new thriller.
          Suburban New Jersey Detective Napoleon “Nap” Dumas hasn't been the same since senior year of high school, when his twin brother Leo and Leo’s girlfriend Diana were found dead on the railroad tracks—and Maura, the girl Nap considered the love of his life, broke up with him and disappeared without explanation. For fifteen years, Nap has been searching, both for Maura and for the real reason behind his brother's death. And now, it looks as though he may finally find what he's been looking for. 
          When Maura's fingerprints turn up in the rental car of a suspected murderer, Nap embarks on a quest for answers that only leads to more questions—about the woman he loved, about the childhood friends he thought he knew, about the abandoned military base near where he grew up, and mostly about Leo and Diana—whose deaths are darker and far more sinister than Nap ever dared imagine.

16. Kingdom Come by Jane Jensen

#1 Elizabeth Harris
read by Rachel Fulginiti
listened on Audible
2016 Berkley
304 pgs.
Adult Mystery - Police Procedural
Finished 3/14/17
Goodreads rating: 3.74 - 474 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting: contemporary Lancaster County, PA

First line/s:  ":It's......sensitive, Grady had said on the phone, his voice tight."

My comments: An "English" detective takes on the murder investigation of an Amish girl and her "English" (non-Amish) best friend.  Although you get an idea about whodunit and why as the story progresses, there's also a - spoiler alert - love story element that didn't put me off as much as some other books with this device have.  It's done well, I think, and is quite believable.  I love these fascinating looks into the lives of another religion and culture, particularly the Amish.  I couldn't put this book down and I'm so excited that there is another in the series.

Goodreads synopsis: In Kingdom Come, the first in a new mystery series from Jane Jensen, an ex-NYPD detective seeks escape in Amish country and finds darkness instead.
          When a beautiful, scantily clad "English" girl is found dead in the barn of a prominent Amish family, Detective Elizabeth Harris knows she's uncovered an evil that could shatter the peace of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Even though Elizabeth's boss is convinced this was the work of an "English", as outsiders are called, Elizabeth isn't so sure. Now Elizabeth must track down a killer with deep ties to a community that always protects its own - no matter how deadly the cost.

13. Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk

listened to an unabridged cd in the car
read by Emily Rankin - superb
6 unabridged cds, 7 hrs.
2016, Dutton Book for Young Readers
304 pgs.
Historical fiction for upper middle grades (and up)
Finished 3-2-17
Goodreads rating: 4.3 - 4695 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: rural Pennsylvania, just after World War II
Newbery Honor Award

First line/s:  "The year I turned twelve, I learned how to lie.  I don't mean the small fibs that children tell.  I mean real lies fed by real fears - things I said and did that took me out of the life I'd always known and put me down hard in a new one."

My comments:  Well.  This was an exceptionally heavy story, particularly for middle grade students of younger ages. That's not bad at all, though I think it might be a little tough for third or fourth graders until they're a little older - why force kids to grow up earlier than need be? It is an exceptionally well written story that will stay with me for a long, long while.  More and more in my life I wonder why people enjoy being mean, why a bully becomes a bully, and how easy it is for some people to lie.  Rural Pennsylvania in the after-World War II years is the perfect setting for this extraordinary story.

Goodreads synopsis:  Growing up in the shadows cast by two world wars, Annabelle has lived a mostly quiet, steady life in her small Pennsylvania town. Until the day new student Betty Glengarry walks into her class. Betty quickly reveals herself to be cruel and manipulative, and while her bullying seems isolated at first, things quickly escalate, and reclusive World War I veteran Toby becomes a target of her attacks. While others have always seen Toby’s strangeness, Annabelle knows only kindness. She will soon need to find the courage to stand as a lone voice of justice as tensions mount.
          Brilliantly crafted, Wolf Hollow is a haunting tale of America at a crossroads and a time when one girl’s resilience, strength, and compassion help to illuminate the darkest corners of our history.

17. Shine Shine Shine - Lydia Netzer

Audio read by Joshilyn Jackson - beautifully!

9 unabridged discs

2012 St. Martin's Press

309 pgs.

Adult CRF

Finished 11-24-2015

Goodreads rating:  3.48

My rating:  4 Liked it a whole lot

TPPL

Setting: Contemporary Virginia (but many flashbacks to Burma and rural Pennsylvania)

My comments:  This is a really difficult book to rate.  It was read beautifully by Joshilyn Jackson, one of the wonderful things about the book.  The characters were over-the-top quirky - I love quirky but are these characters just a little too-too far....every single one of them? Maxon, the husband, is awesome and believable; utterly and wonderfully autistic, I wanted more of him. Emma, the mother, sickening so quickly and refusing to die, having played such a huge part in teaching Maxon how to fit into a world that was different - and not so understanding of - a person like him.   But this is Sunny's story, and Sunny is the one I had the most difficulty with. One minute I though I had her pegged, but the next...?  The story is pretty cool - fanciful and unbelievable (as well as believable) and exotic and different and funny, too. Whew!  I guess I really liked almost all of it.  

Goodreads book summary:  A debut unlike any other, Shine, Shine, Shine is a shocking, searing, breathless love story, a gripping portrait of modern family, and a stunning exploration of love, death and what it means to be human.
          Sunny Mann has masterminded a life for herself and her family in a quiet Virginia town. Her house and her friends are picture-perfect. Even her genius husband, Maxon, has been trained to pass for normal. But when a fender bender on an average day sends her coiffed blonde wig sailing out the window, her secret is exposed. Not only is she bald, Sunny is nothing like the Stepford wife she’s trying to be. As her facade begins to unravel, we discover the singular world of Sunny, an everywoman searching for the perfect life, and Maxon, an astronaut on his way to colonize the moon.                   Theirs is a wondrous, strange relationship formed of dark secrets, decades-old murders and the urgent desire for connection. As children, the bald, temperamental Sunny and the neglected savant Maxon found an unlikely friendship no one else could understand. She taught him to feel -- helped him translate his intelligence for numbers into a language of emotion. He saw her spirit where others saw only a freak. As they grew into adults, their profound understanding blossomed into love and marriage.     

           But with motherhood comes a craving for normalcy that begins to strangle Sunny’s marriage and family. As Sunny and Maxon are on the brink of destruction, at each other’s throats with blame and fear of how they’ve lost their way, Maxon departs for the moon, where he’s charged with programming the robots that will build the fledgling colony. Just as the car accident jars Sunny out of her wig and into an awareness of what she really needs, an accident involving Maxon’s rocket threatens everything they’ve built, revealing the things they’ve kept hidden. And nothing will ever be the same.

Row by Row 2014 - Pennsylvania

I visited 14 shops in PA! Under Construction 
1 Spring, * Summer, * Fall, * Winter, 1 All-Seasons
Here are the shops, in alphabetical order:

Beary Patches Quilts 
Milford, PA  

I visited this shop on my way to Maine.  It's just before the NY border, in a pleasant small town that I've "flown" by on 84 without ever venturing within its borders.  Cute town, cute store, lovely owner. (Darn, as usual, I got my finger in the way!)

This is her row, a blossoming tulip.  SPRING!
She also had a license plate:

Half Moon Handwerks
New Cumberland, PA

You certainly can't tell from the outside the TREASURE TROVE I found on the inside.  No, this is not a "quilt shop," it's a combination of the creative spirit colliding in a very "chris" way....embroidery, beading, woolies, sculpey/fimo works for sale, a small collection of fabrics (lots and lots of whites to use as embroidery backgrounds).  It's only about a half hour from the Mt Holly Springs/Boiling Springs area, has classes of all sorts, and I loved the proprietress!  She shares the space with a friend whose original purpose for the store was a sort of gallery, but the handwerks (love the spelling) is gradually expanding, inching its way in, taking over......

This is her very cool row, embroidered in hand-dyed cottons.  Each seasonal patch has a button. She didn't like having her picture taken (I can so get that!) and I appreciate that she let me, anyways!

And yes, she also had a license plate!

Here's a link to her Facebook page and here's a link to her website.

52. Jekel Loves Hyde - Beth Fantaskey

Harcourt, 2010
HC $17.00
282 pgs.
For: YA
Rating: 3

I had such high hopes for this novel, Fantaskey's second, because I really enjoyed her first, Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side. However, it didn't quite meet up to my expectations. The story is about two young people who go through some incredible experiences together - and they are fun, crazy, surreal experiences - but the way they deal with them and the way they don't trust each other...or themselves...enough to really talk to each other doesn't seem real to me at all. I guess that's what bothered me, half the time their relationship seemed.....off..... Also, there were a number of situations that were never explained....

Jill Jekel's father has been murdered and her mother has had a breakdown. Tristen Hyde, a handsome classmate, comes to the funeral (it is never explained why) and assures her that eveything will be all right. She is quite drawn to him, as he is to her. They are both brilliant chemistry students, and both have secrets attached to their ancestry and Robert Louis Stevenson's book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekel and Mr. Hyde. They decide to try to recreate the formula that created Mr. Hyde, and of course, they do. Tristen has always had a "monster" within him that he wants to slay.

So with this mix of fantasy, reality, and a touch of Robert Louis Stevenson, the tale emerges. It IS better than yet another vampire book, and the scientific/comparison to the novel part of it was quite interesting to mull over. But even as I write this, more unanswered questions that took place within the plot are emerging. Hmmmm.

76. Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side - Beth Fantaskey

for: Young Adults
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009
HC $17.00
354 pgs.
Rating: 5

I loved this book - for many reason. It's many-layered. It starts out light and humorous then works itself slowly to a darker, heavier feel. It's really quite clever, as vampire stories go. Heads (many of them, actually) above the Marked series... I know there are lots and lots and even more lots of vampire teen books out there now, but this one is clever, well-written, and super enjoyable.

Jessica knows that she was adopted as a newborn from her Romanian parents. That's all she knows about her past - and all she really wants to know. She was raised on a farm in central Pennsylvania by "granola" parents, adored as an only child, nutured and loved. She is an ordinary, studious, fun-loving, honest American teenager. That is, until one day, on the first day of her much-anticipated senior year, Lucius Vladescu appears - and her past and future appear to become totally unbelievable. For both she and Lucius are vampires, promised to each other at the time of their births, to stop a huge vampire feud. Not only is she a vampire - but a vampire PRINCESS! Lucius becomes a foreign exchange student at Jessica (Antanasia is her real name-as much as she wants to deny it)'s high school - and the roller coaster ride starts there...a roller coaster rides with some interesting twists and turns. The storyline switches once in awhile from Jessica's first person point-of-view to letters that Lucius writes to his ancient vampire Uncle Vasile. These letters show an intelligence and humor in the young vampire that aren't to be missed - a great addition to the storyline. I read it in almost one long sitting - just couldn't put it down!

This is Beth Fantaskey's first book. I hope there are many more to follow.