A Winner

in every sense of the word.  The Only Road is the first book and now I MUST read the sequel, The Crossroads.    TOR by Alexandra Diaz was named a Pura Belpré Honor Award for narration in 2017.  And may I just say in my humble opinion, it deserved it.  Don't know if this was 1954 because I have not yet read the winner, Juana & Lucas. 
This book is timely and heartbreaking.  And boy did I learn a great deal.  Jaime and his cousin travel from their home in Guatemala across the border to Mexico and then into the United States. 
Please note that in the past I have linked countries to the CIA World Fact Book.  I love this country.  But right now it is run by an administration that has proven time and time again to be untrustworthy, that is why I am not linking to them this time. 

Quick and Engaging

Amal Unbound was super-good.  Aisha Saeed is an author I must watch!  Sad, shocking, hopeful.  Excellent. 

Spring!

And how excited does that make me for a new Prey novel from John Sandford!!!  Twisted Prey was GOOOOOOOD!  I was so worried I wouldn't like it, being that it was a political-type thriller.  But this was a Prey novel, so it was beyond political and it was, indeed twisted.  REALLY GOOD 

In a Short Story Collection

this year I was introduced to J.A. Jance.  For some reason I used to think that Jance was British and you know how I am about off-putting Briticisms, so I never gave her much thought.  The short story captured my interest though and so I thought I would try the first in the Joanna Brady series, Desert Heat, even though I am not big on female detectives.  This was good though.  I did enjoy it very much and I hope to read the second one and keep going if it is as good as this one was!  It's set in the real town of Bisbee, AZ. 

Mr. Woods

keeps on putting out Stone after Stone after Stone!  And I have to say, I am still enjoying them!  Not to much Dino in this one and no Peter and Ben at all, but that is okay, this one was still good and still Stone!  Holly is now Secretary of State, President Lee has been reelected and I was glad for that because the way it was going in the first chapter or so I was thinking art was going to imitate life and some unqualified candidate was going to get elected!  But the title is Indecent Exposure, not Indecent Executive Office.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

I figure that most ideas seem like good ones at one time or another, don't you?  Ideas we try out, anyway.  I mean I have had lots of bad ideas, but I think that when I have tried out ideas, put ideas into action, they really all seem like good ones.  Reading A Good Idea seemed like a good idea at first.  Then when I started listening to it, it seemed like a bad idea and I quit.  But then I picked it up again and it was a good idea!  In short, I really liked A Good Idea.  The only thing that I thought was weird was all of the underage drinking, but the store was really tough on checking IDs when people bought cigarettes.  Underage drinking went on all the time.  In bars, in houses, in front of the law and the mayor and parents, but yet, when the main character, Fin, went to purchase her cigarettes she was ID'd, even though the guy selling the smokes knew she was 18.  I guess I am sensitive to this because drinking can have such potential damage for people other than the drinker.  But smoking?  It just kills the smoker.  I think it's just such a strange thing.  Strange to see people pouring themselves into their cars, behind the wheel, after concerts, and driving off.  Yet people can't smoke in an outdoor concert venue.  Just strange to me.

But this was a good book.  A mystery that I really figure out.  It is a sad book in so many ways.  But good one.

Political

More politics than I usually like in Stuart Woods' fortieth Stone Barrington book, Below the Belt.  But hey, it's Stone, and he has yet another new house! And yes, you have to love (however guiltily) Stone!  Not sure why it is called Below the Belt, other than there is the usual activity from Stone- though, really, less in this one than in some!

A New Series!

Stuart Woods has started a new series.  This one features Teddy Fay!  I have compared Stuart Woods books to YA guilty pleasure fun and I can compare them yet again.  This time recall Private and Privilege.  You can't get all you need out of Privilege without first reading some of the Private series. That is true for the Teddy Fay series.  You really have to read Stone before you jump into Teddy. Still, this was really good!  And I didn't even know it wasn't a Stone book until I went to log into goodreads!  So if you are waiting for the new Stone book, but need something to hold you over, this will do it!  Smooth Operator is the first and it is written by Woods and Parnell Hall.  I have not read any of Hall's other books, though I see he has a lot of them.

Sucked Me Right In...but then got too complicated :(

I am an easy kinda reader.  Political thrillers can be too much for me.  Same with the legal thrillers.  I like easy.  Maybe I am lazy, maybe I am just not that smart.  Probably a combination of both.  Daughter of Deep Silence was great, it was.  It starts out very exciting and keeps on being very exciting, but then...it just gets too complicated for me...well, the end does.  I mean the "reveal" was too complicated.  The descriptions of Frances' passion for Gray were a little too Harlequin for me, too.  But over all, this was worth the read. Totally different from The Forest of Hands and Teeth series.  Totally.  But I liked it just the same!

The World Lost

an amazing voice on July 1 of this year.  Walter Dean Myers went Home.  On a Clear Day comes out in September and so it will be the first Myers book published after his passing.  That sounds odd, I mean, it has to be the last one as well, right? But there is rumor that there are more Myers books out there, and that they will be published posthumously also.  I can't find where I read that, but I swear I did!
Myers once said, "I'll never live to write all the stories I have in my head."
On a Clear Day was a tough book for me.  I just couldn't really get into it.  I mean, it was well written and it was full of good stuff and thought-provoking stuff.  It is set in the near future, but man, I think that a lot of the bad guys in this book, the multi-national corporations who really run the world and run it with their bottom line as the only thing of any importance, I think that they are more real than we would dare to believe.  Yes, yes, yes, I am a big conspiracy theorist.  But I do think that money makes folks do evil things. And I do think that greed corrupts and so I found this book not to hard to believe.
I didn't really like any of the characters though, but I think that if this was going to be a series, I would have read the next one.  It was just too intriguing not to.
Ah...but now WDM is gone...so I don't think that will be happening.  But it is something I will want to ask him about for sure.

Boxing

When I read a book, it is a full-emersion kind of experience for me.  If it's a book about parkour, I'm reading all about parkour.  If it's about Mormonism, I'm reading all about Mormonism.  If it's about Zora Neal Hurston, I'm all over Zora Neal Hurston.  Even though Spenser and Hawk did their share of boxing, I never really got into learning more about it until I read The Boxer and the Spy.  The Boxer and the Spy is supposed to be a YA book, but it is another one that is great for adult fans of Parker, too.  Boxing plays a huge part in this murder mystery.  Terry Novak and his almost-girlfriend, Abby are set on figuring it out.  Great stuff.  Why?  Because nobody writes like the Dean of American Crime Fiction.