22. Dead of Night by Lisa Gray

listened on Audible

264 pgs.

2025
Adult Murder Mystery
Finished 5/5/2026
Goodreads rating: 4.24
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Back & forth time periods, mid-80s, mid-90s, present time on the southern California coastline

My comments:    Pulled me in fast, at first reminded me of another book, especially the setting, but couldn't place it.  Good story, but that the protagonist stayed in this big old "Cliff House" even when she knew someone was sneaking in at night to terrorize her didn't seem very prudent...actually felt stupid.  It just didn't seem like something a real person would do.  Wrapped up very neatly at the end.  Would happily read another by this author.

Goodreads synopsis: A crime writer. A cold case. Will she survive to tell the story?

Since the sudden and tragic death of her partner, bestselling crime author Serena Winters hasn’t written a word. With deadlines looming, she packs up her grief and escapes from New York City to a secluded clifftop house in small-town California, hoping the change of scenery will cure her writer’s block.

But as news of her arrival spreads, Serena finds herself facing strange accusations that she’s here to cash in on the house’s history. When she uncovers the chilling story of a young family who mysteriously vanished from the very same house thirty years earlier, she can’t help asking more questions…

Someone in the local community doesn’t want the past dug up, though. Someone willing to push Serena to the limits of her sanity to keep the truth buried. Caught in a spiraling campaign of intimidation, and harboring a dark secret of her own, Serena soon finds herself in the kind of danger she usually only writes about…

3. We Lie Here by Rachel Howzell Hall

listened on Audible

2022

416 pgs.
Adult Mystery/Thriller
Finished 1/8/2023
Goodreads rating:  3.84
My rating: 3.5
Setting: Contemporary Palmdale, CA

My comments:

Figured this out pretty early on, no surprises at all at the end.  

Pros:  I liked the setting of the dusty California high desert.  After the beginning, told quite well.

Cons:  Difficult to get into, and I figured most of it out pretty early.  Characters were similar and not really fleshed out too well.  Shifts in who the storyteller was (there were two, the protagonist and a then "bad guy" once in awhile.)

Goodreads synopsis:  A woman’s trip home reveals frightening truths in a twisty novel of murder and family secrets by the New York Times bestselling author of And Now She’s Gone and These Toxic Things.

TV writer Yara Gibson’s hometown of Palmdale, California, isn’t her first choice for a vacation. But she’s back to host her parents’ twentieth-anniversary party and find the perfect family mementos for the celebration. Everything is going to plan until Yara receives a disturbing text: I have information that will change your life.

The message is from Felicia Campbell, who claims to be a childhood friend of Yara’s mother. But they’ve been estranged for years—drama best ignored and forgotten. But Yara can’t forget Felicia, who keeps texting, insisting that Yara talk to her “before it’s too late.”

But the next day is already too late for Felicia, whose body is found floating in Lake Palmdale. Before she died, Felicia left Yara a key to a remote lakeside cabin. In the basement are files related to a mysterious tragedy, unsolved since 1998. What secrets was Felicia hiding? How much of what Yara knows about her family has been true?

The deeper Yara digs for answers, the more she fears that Felicia was right. Uncovering the truth about what happened at the cabin all those years ago will change Yara’s life—or end it.

107. Find Me by Ann Frasier

#1 Inland Empire

listened on Audible
narrated by Erin Bennett

Unabridged audio (9:16)
2020
282 pgs.
Genre/Level
Finished 7/21/2020
Goodreads rating: 4.14 - 21,189 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Palm Springs/Joshua Tree/29 Palms/High  Desert of southern California

First line/s:  "It was dark by the time Cathy Baker took off along the Southern California trail just outside the town of Redlands."

My comments: Anne Frasier is becoming one of my favorite authors in the mystery/murder mystery genre.  Always plenty to anticipate, never a dull moment; believable characters, and lots of twists and turns.  Psychopaths and sociopaths -- imagine being born into a family with these characteristices...and imagine living your whole life knowing that, as a kid, your much-adored father uses you as bait to reel in innocent young women to their deaths.  How do you live with that?  Anne Frasier takes you into the minds of her characters to allow you to hear their thoughts and feel their pain.  Couldn't put it down  Looks like there might be more in the series, too, yippee!

Goodreads synopsis:   A bone-chilling family history is unearthed in a heart-stopping thriller by New York Times bestselling author Anne Frasier.

          Convicted serial killer Benjamin Fisher has finally offered to lead San Bernardino detective Daniel Ellis to the isolated graves of his victims. One catch: he’ll only do it if FBI profiler Reni Fisher, his estranged daughter, accompanies them. As hard as it is to exhume her traumatic childhood, Reni can’t say no. She still feels complicit in her father’s crimes.

          Perfect to play a lost little girl, Reni was the bait to lure unsuspecting women to their deaths. It’s time for closure. For her. For the families. And for Daniel. He shares Reni’s obsession with the past. Ever since he was a boy, he’s been convinced that his mother was one of Fisher’s victims.

A five-hundred-mile road trip lies ahead. Thirty years of bad memories are flooding back. A master manipulator has gained their trust. For Reni and Daniel, this isn’t the end of a nightmare. It’s only the beginning

24. V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton

#22 Kinsey Millhone
listened to eAudio/Bosler Library
narrated by Judy Kaye
Unabridged audio (15:11)
2011 Putnam Adult
437 pgs.
Adult Mystery
Finished 2/4/2020
Goodreads rating: 3.96 - 26,591 ratings
My rating:
Setting: 1988 Santa Theresa (Santa Barbara), California, and a bit in San Luis Obisbo

First line/s: "So this is how it went down, folks.  I turned 38 on May 5, 1988, and my big birthday surprise was a big punch in the face that left me with two black eyes and a busted nose."

My comments:  I haven't read a Kinsey Millhone in years, so it was really fun to start listening to this.  I totally remembered the voice of Judy Kay, which is definitely the voice of Kinsey Millhone from my past.  Sue Grafton was the detail queen of the police procedural!  They were so many minute details - many of them unnecessary -  but it was fun to listen and try to determine which were important and which weren't.  Back-and-forth between a number of characters, it was fun looking at the story from all sorts of angles, including the sorta bad guy, which = spoiler alert!! = you really begin rooting for.  An entrancing story, even though it was over fifteen hours of listening, which did seem a little long at one or two points.  Fun book.

Goodreads synopsis:  A spiderweb of dangerous relationships lies at the heart.
          A woman with a murky past jumps off a bridge, or was she thrown? A spoiled kid awash in gambling debt thinks he can beat the system. A lovely woman whose marriage is about to splinter into a thousand fragments. A professional shoplifting ring working for the Mob, racks up millions from stolen goods. A wandering husband is rich and ruthless. A dirty cop is so entrenched on the force he is immune to exposure. A sinister gangster is conscienceless and brutal. A lonely widower mourns the death of his lover, desperate for answers, which may be worse than the pain of his loss. Private detective, Kinsey Millhone's thirty-eighth-birthday gift is a punch in the face that leaves her with two black eyes and a busted nose.
           And an elegant and powerful businessman whose dealings are definitely outside the law: the magus at the center of the web.
          V: Victim. Violence. Vengeance.

123. Starters by Lissa Price

#1 of 2
Listened to Audible/Chirp
narrated  by Rebecca Lowman
Unabridged audio (10:20)
2012 Delacorte Books for Young Readers
352 pgs.
YA Dystopia/Fantasy
Finished 12/11/2019
Goodreads rating: 3.90 - 39,689 ratings
My rating:  4
Setting: Dystopian Hollywood, California

First line/s:  "Enders gave me the creeps.  The doorman flashed a practiced smile as he let me into the body bank.  He wasn't that old, maybe 110, but he still made me shudder."

My comments:  What an interesting premise for a book!  YA dystopia/fantasy all the way!  I'm going to have to think about the ending of this one.  (Spoiler:  was her father the "old man?"  Why else would he have kept his face and his voice in artificial mode?  Why would he care so much about Callie and her brother Tyler?  But he was a horrible person!I am really in a bit of a tizzy about this...) Good story, indeed.  And what's to come?

Goodreads synopsis:  Callie lost her parents when the Spore Wars wiped out everyone between the ages of twenty and sixty. She and her little brother, Tyler, go on the run, living as squatters with their friend Michael and fighting off renegades who would kill them for a cookie. Callie's only hope is Prime Destinations, a disturbing place in Beverly Hills run by a mysterious figure known as the Old Man.
          He hires teens to rent their bodies to Enders—seniors who want to be young again. Callie, desperate for the money that will keep her, Tyler, and Michael alive, agrees to be a donor. But the neurochip they place in Callie's head malfunctions and she wakes up in the life of her renter, living in her mansion, driving her cars, and going out with a senator's grandson. It feels almost like a fairy tale, until Callie discovers that her renter intends to do more than party—and that Prime Destinations' plans are more evil than Callie could ever have imagined. . . .

13. The Age of Miracles - Karen Thompson Walker

listened to in the car - the last one in my 07 Malibu.....
2012 Random House
294 pgs.
Fantasy/Dystopia Adult (coming-of-age, YA)
Finished 2/24/16
Goodreads rating: 3.63
My rating: 2
Setting:  Contemporary/futuristic San Diego, CA

First line/s:  "We didn't notice it right away.  We couldn't feel it.  We did not sense at first the extra time, bulging from the smooth edge of each day like a tumor blooming beneath skin."

My comments:  Wow.  This was tough to rate - the writing was wonderful, but the story was so terribly depressing that I dreaded listening to the story.  I have no idea where the title came from, and the ending (which was quite unsatisfying) just happened.  The words, though, were beautifully crafted!

Goodreads synopsis:  “It still amazes me how little we really knew. . . . Maybe everything that happened to me and my family had nothing at all to do with the slowing. It’s possible, I guess. But I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”
          Luminous, haunting, unforgettable, The Age of Miracles is a stunning fiction debut by a superb new writer, a story about coming of age during extraordinary times, about people going on with their lives in an era of profound uncertainty.
          On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, 11-year-old Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life--the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a government conspiracy, spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues.
          With spare, graceful prose and the emotional wisdom of a born storyteller, Karen Thompson Walker has created a singular narrator in Julia, a resilient and insightful young girl, and a moving portrait of family life set against the backdrop of an utterly altered world.

24. Taken - Robert Crais

#15 in Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series
Audio read by Luke Daniels (He's really good.  My only wish is that sometimes Joe Pike didn't whisper all the time....)
7 unabridged cds
(7:47)
Brilliance Audio, 2011
However, looks like it was published in 2012
$32.99 TPPL
352 pages
Rating:  4.5 Super storytelling

Setting:  some LA, but most of the action takes place in the desert near the Dalton Sea, Indio/ Coachella/Palm Desert/Palm Springs in southern California

Written in an interesting way - the point-of-view switches, as does the time.  It might go from Elvis Cole in the current time to Joe Pike six days later to the kidnapped couple in the time between.  Keep you on your toes.  I didn't think, at first, that I was going to like it but I did.  Elvis Cole's sections are always in the first person, all the rest of the characters aren't, just in descriptive mode.

This time, Cole and Pike are assisted by , a government mercenary who'll try anything and follows orders from Joe Pike really well.  I see him a tall, cute, blonde, always laughing, nothing bothering him.  His hidden military/government credentials seem to be able to get him out of any predicament.....I bet he's going to show up again.

Elvis is hired by Nita Morales, a mom whose college daughter Christa and her boyfriend, Jack Berman,  have mysteriously disappeared.  She is afraid they've eloped, but this is very far from the truth...they've been kidnapped, in the wrong place at the wrong time when a group of coyotes who were transporting people from all over the world across the border are hijacked by really bad guys called bajadores. These are bandits that steal from bandits.   Life has no meaning to them.  They're just plain mean and heartless---I hate the thought that there really are people in the world like this!

42. Evermore - Alyson Noel

#1 in Immortal series
for:  YA
St. Martin's Griffin, 2009
paper, $9.95
306 pgs.
Rating:  3

I'm almost ashamed of myself for reading this book in one gulp, I couldn't put it down.  I spent the whole time comparing it to Twilight, which was a great higher skill on Bloom's Taxonomy for me to use, right?  There are so many similarities, but MINUS THE VAMPIRES, yippee!  Although Immortals seem pretty similar, with an  almost-more-plausible beginning.  There's the super hunky immortal (Damon), the nasty, hurtful immortal (Drina), the innocent young girl (our protagonist, Ever (Ever Bloom, get it???), and the loving but clueless guardian (Sabine).  We also have the two best friends - a goth girl (Haven) and a gay boy (Miles).  Throw in an exotic setting - southern California.  Another YA paranormal fantasy. 

But wait - I liked the protagonist!  She beats Bella by a long shot, at least in this first installment.  She has a head of her own, a will of her own.  She may become a "can't live without him clone" in the second installment, but so far, so good.  One of these days I might even read Blue Moon. (Hmmm...how similar can titles be?????)