Dark Secrets of the Old Oak Tree

 Dark Secrets Of the Old Oak Tree (Southern Tree Series)

by: Delores J. Wilson

Publisher: Medalion Press

Pages: 350

Publish date: 2010

From Amazon:

Following the end of her 15-year marriage to a high-powered attorney, Evie Carson returns to her small hometown in Georgia only to stumble upon a horrible secret. She is stunned into silence as she watches a mentally-challenged member of the community carry the nude, lifeless body of her childhood friend. The authorities are sure that once the man is arrested, the town's nightmare will be over. But when he turns up dead and Evie's home becomes the center of bizarre events, she and an investigating state trooper fear she may be the next victim. With his help, Evie wages a battle to save her life against the secrets of the oak tree. Soon, she begins to wonder if she is safe from anyone in her hometown, including the state trooper.

My thoughts:

(No spoilers!)

    This is one of the best murder mysteries I have read in a long, long time. I literally could not put it down. There are all sorts of twists and turns, and the murderer is completely unexpected. This is a real page-turner. I thought I knew the culprit several times and was wrong every single time.

This is the first book I have read by this author. It will not be the last! If you read this blog, you know I love Southern Fiction. This story takes place in a small southern town. The setting and characters are very believable. 

This is a great book to cozy up with on a dreary winter day (or rainy night). I highly recommend it. You won't be able to put it down.

Read this book if...

    *you love murder mysteries

    *you love southern fiction

    *you love small-town stories

    *you have plenty of time to read (because you will not want to put it down)

The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by:Lilian Jackson Braun

 Pubisher: Putnam

Pages: 216

From Amazon: 

THE FIRST COZY MYSTERY IN THE BELOVED NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING CAT WHO SERIES!

The world of modern art is a mystery to many. But for Jim Qwilleran, it turns into a mystery of another sort when his assignment for The Daily Fluxion leads down the path to murder.
A stabbing in an art gallery, vandalized paintings, a fatal fall from a scaffolding—this is not at all what Qwilleran expects when he turns his reporter talents to art. But Qwilleran and his newly found partner, Koko the brilliant Siamese cat, are in their element—sniffing out clues and confounding criminals intent on mayhem and murder.
This riveting beginning to the Cat Who series is the perfect cozy mystery for cat lovers to start sleuthing!

My Thoughts:

    Honestly, I had never tried any of these books because mass-market fiction has never been my thing. However, I found myself in a circumstance where I had nothing to read with me at the time (gasp), and needed something to do. This book was available, so I started reading it.

    

     I like mysteries that don't depend on violence and gore for impact. This book fits that bill. I will admit, there was a part where I started getting characters confused. There are lots of plot twists and turns as Qwilleran makes his way through a small town art world, encountering an odd group of folks along the way..

    

    I won't say this is a book you can't put down, but it isn't bad. Just right for a rainy day inside or a trip to the beach. Light reading is good sometimes.

    I'm going to try another book in the series because I want to know if each book is different, or if they are all "formula fiction". I hope they are not. 

    I'd like to hear from others who have read this series. What did you think?

Read this book if:

        *you love mysteries

        *you love cats

        *you love stories about newspaper reporters who solve mysteries

Me and Patsy Kickin' Up Dust: My Friendship With Patsy Cline by: Loretta Lynn

 Author: Loretta Lynn
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Pages: 240

From Amazon: 

Loretta Lynn and the late Patsy Cline are legends—country icons and sisters of the heart. For the first time ever Loretta tells their story: a celebration of their music and their relationship up until Patsy's tragic and untimely death.
Full of laughter and tears, this eye-opening, heartwarming memoir paints a picture of two stubborn, spirited country gals who'd be damned if they'd let men or convention tell them how to be. Set in the heady streets of the 1960s South, this nostalgia ride shows how Nashville blossomed into the city of music it is today. Tender and fierce, Me & Patsy Kickin' Up Dust is an up-close-and-personal portrait of a friendship that defined a generation and changed country music indelibly—and a meditation on love, loss and legacy.

My Thoughts:

    I've been a Loretta Lynn fan since I was a toddler riding along with my dad in his pick up. He had two 8 track tapes in that truck: Johnny Cash & Loretta Lynn. If  you have read Coal Miner's Daughter and Still Woman Enough, you know about Patsy and Loretta's famous friendship. Here, Loretta tells the story in her own words: how they met, the secrets they shared....this is a truly beautiful story of a friendship that ended in tragedy when Patsy died at age 30. A beautiful, uncomplicated read, I highly recommend this book for  your next weekend book binge. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I did. It will haunt you long after you are finished reading.

Read this book if:

    *you love Loretta Lynn & Patsy Cline
    *you love biographies and memoirs
    *you love country music
    *you love warm stories about friendship

Miss Pearly's Girls: A Captivating Tale of Family Healing by: Reshonda Tate Billingsley

 Publisher:Dafina  Pages:272

From Amazon:

Raising four very different daughters on her own in rural Arkansas wasn't easy for Miss Pearly Bell. And she's always regretted that the sisters went their separate ways for good—and never wanted to see each other again. But when Pearly is stricken with a terminal illness, she summons them all home—determined to somehow help them get right with each other and forgive...But that means dealing with past secrets and lies first.
 
As the oldest sister, pastor's wife Maxine took her responsibility way too seriously—and never fails to judge everyone else. But a secret she can no longer keep will explode everything she stands for. Youngest sister Leslie is all about making a very different life with her new love—but she didn't expect a shattering past truth to be suddenly revealed and uproot everything she ever thought she knew. Elegant PR professional Stella and her earthy twin, Star, don’t see eye-to-eye on anything—and now a long-ago deception could wipe out their last chance at a relationship.
 
Soon each sister must confront the illusions they've taken refuge in for so long and deal with each other woman-to-woman. But can building an all-too-fragile trust repair the damage done—and help them come together when they are needed most?

My thoughts:

This is a wonderful book about sisters, family, daughters and mothers & healing. It is a story about love, both romantic & familial. There are secrets around every corner. Each sister has dealt with the past in her own way and none of those ways are especially healthy, with the exception of one. ( I don't want to add spoilers.) This story is told, in turn, through the eyes of each sister. The author does an amazing job of fleshing out the characters. We see them as they are- the good, the bad & the ugly. This is an unforgettable story.

Read this book if:

    *you love southern fiction

    * you love African American fiction

    *you love family sagas

    *you love stories about sisters

Memphis: A Novel by Tara M. Stringfellow

 Publisher: The Dial Press Pages:272

From Amazon:

    Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.

As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition. Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mother’s mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would not have to be defined by loss and anger—that the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush.

Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of unforgettable voices that move back and forth in time, Memphis paints an indelible portrait of inheritance, celebrating the full complexity of what we pass down, in a family and as a country: brutality and justice, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice and love.

My Thoughts:

    This book is hard to put down. The author has a beautiful writing style. She can paint a million pictures with a simple sentence. This is a beautiful story of 4 generations of women living in the family home in a Memphis neighborhood. It is a story of family, sisters, and the struggles that single mothers face.It is a story of survival. It is a story of finding one's own truth and following one's dreams. I loved this book and I look forward to reading more books by this author.

Read this book if....

    *you love African-American literary fiction

    *you love southern fiction
    *you  love stories about sisterhood & family
    *you love family sagas

The Almost Sisters by: Joshilyn Jackson

The Almost Sisters Author: Joshilyn Jackson Publisher: William Morrow Pages: 384

From Amazon:

Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs’s weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comic-book convention, Leia is swept off her barstool by a handsome, anonymous Batman. She remembers he was tall, black, and an excellent French kisser—but not much else.

The Caped Crusader leaves her with more than just a fond, fuzzy memory. She’s having a baby. Though Leia always wanted to fall in love and have a child, as a young woman she learned exactly what betrayal felt like. Before Leia can break the news of her impending single-motherhood to her conventional lily-white Southern family, her perfect stepsister Rachel’s marriage—to the very man who broke Leia’s heart all those years ago—implodes. Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie, has been hiding her dementia.

Heading seven hundred miles south to Birchville, Alabama—the small town her family founded generations ago—Leia plans to put her grandmother’s affairs in order and clean out her big Victorian house. Just when Leia thinks she’s got it all under control, she learns that Birchie is hiding more than her illness. A dangerous secret with roots that reach back to the Civil War is tucked away in an attic trunk. Its exposure threatens the family’s reputation and freedom, and will forever change the way Leia views her ancestors, herself, and her baby’s future.

This book is about as honest as it gets when it comes to viewing the south as it really is. I don't mean how outsiders see it. I don't mean how we wish it was. I mean as it is. I'm not a fan of comics, so I wasn't much into that aspect, but I love how it all ties in together. This book is a beautiful story of family and race relations in the modern south as seen through the eyes of a 38-year-old white woman, a comic nerd (her words), who is pregnant with a bi-racial child. When her grandmother becomes ill, she travels to the small town of Birchville, Alabama with the intention of shutting down and selling out the family home. Instead, she uncovers a terrible family secret that changes the way she sees herself, her family, and her own unborn child. I don't want to include spoilers. I will just say that I could not put this one down. It has been a long time since I have read a book that didn't bore me.I highly recommend this book.

Read this book if:

*you love southern fiction

*you love mysteries

*you love family fiction/ sisters

*you love stories about race and race relations

Flight of the Sparrow

Title: Flight of the Sparrow Author: Amy Belding Brown Publisher: Penguin Pages:331

From Amazon:

She suspects that she has changed too much to ever fit easily into English society again. The wilderness has now become her home. She can interpret the cries of birds. She has seen vistas that have stolen away her breath. She has learned to live in a new, free way.... 

Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1676. Even before Mary Rowlandson was captured by Indians on a winter day of violence and terror, she sometimes found herself in conflict with her rigid Puritan community. Now, her home destroyed, her children lost to her, she has been sold into the service of a powerful woman tribal leader, made a pawn in the ongoing bloody struggle between English settlers and native people. Battling cold, hunger, and exhaustion, Mary witnesses harrowing brutality but also unexpected kindness. To her confused surprise, she is drawn to her captors’ open and straightforward way of life, a feeling further complicated by her attraction to a generous, protective English-speaking native known as James Printer. All her life, Mary has been taught to fear God, submit to her husband, and abhor Indians. Now, having lived on the other side of the forest, she begins to question the edicts that have guided her, torn between the life she knew and the wisdom the natives have shown her.

Based on the compelling true narrative of Mary Rowlandson, Flight of the Sparrow is an evocative tale that transports the reader to a little-known time in early America and explores the real meanings of freedom, faith, and acceptance.

I will be honest. I just couldn't deal with the gore and violence of this book. I am sure it is historically correct, and therefore, I place the blame with me, the reader- not the author. The author has produced a well-written account. I just can't take the violence and gore. However, enthusiasts of this time period would probably love this book. It's just a little too violent and graphic for me.

Read this book if...

*you love historical novels

*you love novels of early America

*graphic violence and gore don't bother you