Friday 5ive- October 28, 2022

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly post featuring five things that caught my attention this week.

1)  Sunday is Halloween and there are lots of homes on the Upper East Side decorated for the holiday. There is one house near our apartment that decorates for El Día de Los Muertos- Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday that celebrates the welcoming back of the souls of the deceased for a brief reunion on November 1st. 

2) You know when you go to a wedding, and the bride and groom give all the guests a small gift? Back in the day it used to be something like Jordan almonds wrapped in small bag. We recently attended a wedding where the guests all received an appropriate and useful gift- a corkscrew and a wine cork. The bride and groom love wine, so this is such a perfect gift and one that we personally will use frequently. We'll toast to Gerard and Cheryl when we open our wine.

3)  We're trying to eat more healthy and this week I made a recipe that Food Network star Katie Lee Beigel created for Weight Watchers- Lightened-Up Chicken Parmesan. She uses ground chicken, spreading it out and baking it in a round skillet. Then she tops it with marinara sauce, a little low-fat mozzarella and parmesan cheese and bakes it a little longer. It was delicious, and it tasted very similar to Quality Italian's version that we enjoy at their restaurant. We'll have this again.

4) On another food related item, a bakery called Crumbl opened near us and every time I have walked by their store, there has been a long line of people down the block waiting to get in. I wanted to stop and get some cookies to bring into work, but I didn't have an hour to wait in line. I'll keep you posted when I finally make it inside the store. It sure smelled good walking by.

5) I'm on a nonfiction kick this week. I read When McKinsey Comes to Town by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe. The authors have written articles in the New York Times about the mega-management consultant corporation McKinsey, and they give an excellent overview of the beginnings of the company, which has grown into the largest and most powerful consulting company in the world. One of the biggest issues with McKinsey is that there is so much conflict of interest- they worked with a Chinese construction company that built man-made islands that China militarized in the South China Sea while they were advising the Pentagon, which has major concerns about these islands. They worked with Purdue Pharma, the infamous company that unleashed much of the deadly opioid crisis on the United States, (advising them on how to get their pharmaceutical reps to get doctors to write more prescriptions) while at the same time working with the FDA who oversees pharmaceutical companies, without disclosing to the FDA that Purdue was their customer. It's a fascinating book, and fans of the Hulu series Dopesick will want to read this one. 

Have a safe, healthy week, and Happy Halloween.

Two books featuring strong women at a crossroads

Reprinted from auburnpub.com:

The leaves are turning, the weather is cooler, it’s getting dark out earlier, and now we have more time to stay inside and read. This month’s Book Report features two books about strong women facing difficult times in their lives.


Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope WWII mysteries is one of the few series I will always read, and her latest book, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy is a fantastic standalone novel. The last Maggie Hope novel, The Hollywood Spy, had Maggie in WWII Los Angeles, where she tangled with Nazis. Mother Daughter Traitor Spy tells the story of Veronica and her mother Violet during WWII. 

When Veronica makes a bad personal choice, she loses her job in New York, and she and her widowed mother move to Los Angeles, closer to her uncle. Veronica unintentionally finds herself as secretary for someone who is heavily involved in the Nazi movement in the United States.


Meanwhile, Violet's lovely embroidery catches the eye of a Nazi leader's wife, and soon she is designing and sewing clothes for many of the women's friends. Horrified by the things they are hearing, Veronica and her mother go to law enforcement and end up working as spies for the US military.


I found myself wanting to know more about this time period in Los Angeles after reading The Hollywood Spy, and was so pleased to see that Susan Elia MacNeal was continuing to tell us more about this intriguing time in history in Mother Daughter Traitor Spy, based on the lives of a real mother-daughter team.


As I read this terrific story, I could not help but see the connections between what was happening politically in the 1940s and what is happening in our country in the last few years, and that adds to the importance of this book. I didn’t realize how many followers the Nazi had in America prior to and during WWII, it was eye-opening and honestly frightening. Mother Daughter Traitor Spy is a must-read for historical fiction fans.


Another author whose work I never miss is Anne Leigh Parrish. Her previous novels (Our Love Will Light the World, The Amendment and A Winter Night) dealt with families living in the Finger Lakes region in contemporary settings.


Her latest novel, An Open Door, is an historical novel set in the aftermath of WWII. When we meet Edith she is a young woman working at the United Nations in New York City, and married to Walt who is studying to be a lawyer and living in Boston. 

Edith enjoys her freedom working in New York and living with her husband's widowed aunt. Many people question why a married woman would choose to live and work in a different city than her husband, including her husband who pressures Edith to return to Boston.


After having watched her mother being stifled by her marriage to Edith’s overbearing father, she did not want to live a similar life. When she returns to Boston, Edith intends to continues her PhD studies in literature, but women at that time were discouraged from such a higher level of education. She saw that “the problem was what the world expected women to be, which was always less than a man.”

Unhappy in her marriage and with her life in general, Edith “wished that knowing where you didn’t belong meant knowing where you did.” When an opportunity to buy the neighborhood bookstore (along with two other people comes along), she sees this as a chance to do something more meaningful and fulfilling with her life. Edith’s life begins to revolve around the bookstore, and as someone who works in a bookstore, I so enjoyed reading about the joys, and the trials and tribulations of owning a bookstore.


No one writes characters better than Anne Leigh Parrish, and Edith is no exception. Parrish takes the reader into the heart and head of her characters so brilliantly that we relate and understand them, even when they do things with which we disagree. Edith is not perfect, and she does things that people will find objectionable.


Parrish writes so beautifully, I found myself returning time and again to her words, like this quote from her mother- “One thing I’ve learned is that kind people love kindly; careless people love carelessly; cruel people love cruelly.” She always gives her readers something deep to ponder.  I give An Open Door my highest recommendation.


Mother Daughter Traitor Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal- A

Published by Bantam

Hardcover, $28, 336 pages


An Open Door by Anne Leigh Parrish- A+

Published by Unsolicited Press

Trade paperback, $17/ Kindle $6.99, 267 pages

Friday 5ive- October 21, 2022

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly-ish post featuring five things that caught my attention this week.

1) Sunday was a beautiful day in NYC so we took a walk through Central Park. It was so good to see the park filled with people, and it seemed like everyone was celebrating a birthday, we ran into mutliple celebrations..

2) The Center for Fiction hosted a discussion between Silas House, about his book Lark Ascending, and one of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, about her novel Demon Copperhead. I read an early copy of Demon Copperhead, and it is Kingsolver's best book yet, a contemporary retelling of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. Her young protagonist deals with a mother who is an addict, living in a broken foster care system, poverty and the beginnings of the opioid crisis in Appalachia. I haven't read Silas House's book yet, but it sounds fascinating. It's a dystopian story about a young man who leaves the United States for Ireland, seeking refuge from devastating fires and political persecution  where he walks across the country with a dog he finds. The discussion was fascinating about two epic books, and what it means to be a writer from Appalachia. I watched it on YouTube, but I wish I had been there in person.

3) I love getting book mail, and this week I received my Stories & Suspects box filled with fantastic mystery books from Bantam. It features the new book from Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy, about a mother-daughter duo living in Los Angeles during WWII who end up spying on people involved in the Nazi movement for the US government. It has a lot of resonance for events happening today. It also has a new crime drama  by William Landay (I liked his Defending Jacob), a psychological suspense from Catherine Steadman (The Family Game- a Book of the Month selection for October), a locked room mystery by Jilly Gagnon (All Dressed Up), and their Buzz Pick, a debut novel from Erin E. Adams titled Jackal about missing girls in a Rust Belt town. The box was sponored by Tony's Chocolonely, one of my favorite chocolate treats.

4) Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy is back on Sunday nights on CNN, and we are enjoying traveling to the different regions of Italy. The first few episodes took us Calabria, Sardinia and Puglia and we've seen a lot of seafood dishes this season. 

5)  I adore Mary Beth Keane's books, and her upcoming 2023 novel, The Half Moon, is wonderful. Malcolm and Jess are a happy couple living in Gillam, a small town a hour upstate from New York City. Jess desperately wants a baby, and after several expensive and emotionally draining IVF tries doesn't undertstand why Malcolm is willing to give up on their dream. Malcolm's dream is to own the Half Moon, a bar he has worked in for years. They are at a crossroads, and the novel explores how that came to be and where it is headed. It is  phenomenal, I read it a little bit at a time because I did not want this fantastic book to end. I wanted to stay with Malcolm and Jess forever. 

Have a great, safe, healthy week.

An Open Door by Anne Leigh Parrish

An Open Door by Anne Leigh Parrish

Published by Unsolicited Press ISBN 9781956692341

Trade paperback, $17.99, 267 pages

An author whose work I never miss is Anne Leigh Parrish. Her previous novels (Our Love Will Light the World, 

The Amendment and A Winter Night) dealt with families living in the Finger Lakes region in contemporary settings. 

Her latest novel, An Open Door, is an historical novel set in the aftermath of WWII. When we meet Edith she is a young woman working at the United Nations in New York City, and married to Walt who is studying to be a lawyer and living in Boston. 

Edith enjoys her freedom working in New York and living with her husband's widowed aunt. Many people question why a married woman would choose to live and work in a different city than her husband, including her husband who pressures Edith to return to Boston.

After having watched her mother being stifled by her marriage to Edith’s overbearing father, she did not want to live a similar life. When she returns to Boston, Edith intends to continues her PhD studies in literature, but women at that time were discouraged from such a higher level of education. She saw that “the problem was what the world expected women to be, which was always less than a man.”

Unhappy in her marriage and with her life in general, Edith “wished that knowing where you didn’t belong meant knowing where you did.” When an opportunity to buy the neighborhood bookstore (along with two other people comes along), she sees this as a chance to do something more meaningful and fulfilling with her life. Edith’s life begins to revolve around the bookstore, and as someone who works in a bookstore, I so enjoyed reading about the joys, and the trials and tribulations of owning a bookstore.

No one writes characters better than Anne Leigh Parrish, and Edith is no exception. Parrish takes the reader into the heart and head of her characters so brilliantly that we relate and understand them, even when they do things with which we disagree. Edith is not perfect, and she does things that people will find objectionable.

Parrish writes so beautifully, I found myself returning time and again to her words, like this quote from her mother- “One thing I’ve learned is that kind people love kindly; careless people love carelessly; cruel people love cruelly.” She always gives her readers something deep to ponder.  I give An Open Door my highest recommendation.

Thanks to TLC for putting me on Anne Leigh Parrish's tour. The rest of her stops are here:

Review tour schedule:

Monday, October 3rd: @whatlizziereads

Monday, October 3rd: @spaceonthebookcase

Wednesday, October 5th: BookNAround

Thursday, October 6th: @thebphiles

Friday, October 7th: @abduliacoffeebookaddict23

Monday, October 10th: Girl Who Reads

Tuesday, October 11th: @mom_loves_reading

Wednesday, October 12th: @suzylew_bookreview

Thursday, October 13th: @fashionablyfifty

Friday, October 14th: Kahakai Kitchen

Monday, October 17th: @lindahamiltonwriter on TikTok

Tuesday, October 18th: Bookchickdi

Wednesday, October 19th: @nurse_bookie

Wednesday, October 19th: Books, Cooks, Looks

Thursday, October 20th: @pickagoodbook

Thursday, October 20th: @tammyreads62

Monday, October 24th: Bibliotica

Tuesday, October 25th: @cmtloveswineandbooks

Wednesday, October 26th: @wovenfromwords

Thursday, October 27th: Run Wright

Friday 5ive- October 14, 2022

Welcome to the Friday 5ive,  a weekly-ish post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. As I look outside my window, it's a glorious autumn day, shining sun and temperatures in the 60s.

1)  I put a bag of Paul Newman's popcorn in the microwave and the bag burst open in the microwave. Luckily it was near the end of the popping process so there weren't unpopped kernels all over the place. If this is a new design where you can serve the popcorn right out of the bag, it appears to be a failure.

2)  I wrote out and mailed forty postcards this week, encouraging women to make a plan to vote. Thanks to Moms Rising for sending me the prepaid postcards with the addresses. I hope you have a plan to vote in this most important election this year, and if you want more information, go to MomsRising.org. 

3)  It's that time of year to get your flu shot. About ten years ago I got a bad case of the flu, and after that I have gotten my flu shot every year and have not had a problem since. I didn't even feel the shot go into my arm, that's how good Helen is. My husband and I both got our shots together, it's a fun date night (or rather, early date morning.)

4)  We have been waiting for the return of the third and final (say it ain't so) season of Derry Girls on Netflix. The show is a sitcom about a group of teenage friends and their families from Londonderry in Northern Ireland during the 1990's. I laugh so hard at this show, and Sister Michael, the school principal, is my favorite. Liam Neeson makes a great cameo in one episode as a policeman interrogating the group about a school break-in. He is hilarious and needs to do more comedic roles. 

5) In this week's reading, I eagerly dug into  an upcoming book by one of my go-to authors. Amy Poeppel has a new novel titled The Sweet Spot coming out in February of 2023. It's a funny, charming, sweet story about a three women who end up caring for a baby who is not theirs. One of the women is Melinda the ex-wife of the father of the baby (who dumped her for a younger woman, successful lifestyle guru  Felicity), one is Lauren, a artist whose works are being sold by Felicity, and the third woman is Olivia, who had an unfortunate interaction with a customer that led to her being fired by Felicity. The setting of Greenwich Village in NYC is another character, and all of the characters are so interesting and well-drawn (my favorite is Lauren's mother-in-law), this one is a perfect happy read. Put this one on pre-order now, it's a great Valentine's gift to yourself or Galentine's gift for your besties.

I hope you have a happy, safe, healthy week. Until next time.

Friday 5ive- October 7, 2022

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly-ish post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. Like everyone else last week we were glued to out TV sets watching Hurricane Ian as it headed for south Florida. We have been thinking about everyone who lost so much, it was just devastating.

1) After reading Madeline Martin's fascinating novel, The Librarian Spy, set in WWII Lisbon, Portugal, I felt it necessary to look for a local Portuguese restaurant that makes Pastéis de Nata. I walked by Le Réveil Coffee & Bakery, and ordered a few of the tasty custard-filled breakfast pastries. They were everything I expected after reading (drooling) about them in the book. I will be back.

2)  I completed two virtual bike rides on Conqueror Challenges in the last few weeks. The first one was a long one- 828 miles along the Ring Road in Iceland. It took me 107 days from start to finish on my daily Peloton bike rides, only missing a week or two due to vacation and illness. The second one was a short one, the 125 mile Florida Keys ride, which only took me two weeks. Next up are two England rides.

3)  Speaking of Peloton, I took a hugely entertaining spin class featuring music from the Broadway show Moulin Rouge. Bradley Rose and Sam Yo teamed up to lead the class, which I have taken three times so far. For me, the best classes feature music I can sing along to. The music from that class has been on repeat on my Apple library while I work on my computer. (It's on now as I type and yes, I am singing.)

4)  I started watching Reboot, a sitcom on Hulu. The co-creator of Modern Family Steve Levitan's new project is about the reboot of sitcom from the 1980s. Rachel Bloom  (My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) stars as the new showrunner and leads a brilliant cast consisting of Paul Reiser as the executive producer from the 1980's version who wants back in, and Keegan-Michael Key,  Judy Greer, and Johnny Knoxville as the original cast members who reunite after some tough years. I laugh from beginning to end of each episode, and whenever there is a scene set in the writer's room featuring the original writers from the 1980s version and the new generation of young writers, I laugh even harder. Those scenes are so inappropriate and hilarious. Don't miss this one. 

5) I've tried to be better about reading every night, but sometimes I'm just too tired. I finished three good books in the last few weeks. Carter Bays, co-creator of How I Met Your Mother has written a creative novel titled The Mutual Friend. I bought this one off the Staff Recommends shelf at Bookstore1 in Sarasota, Florida. A group of people living in New York City are interconnected through various relationships, and the book is narrated by a narrator not revealed to the reader until the end. There is a lot here about the dangers of social media and our obsession with the constant presence of our phones. It took me awhile to get into this one with its multiple characters, but once I did I was hooked, and the end will make you smile.

 Moving from the big city to a small town in Texas, I read Bobby Finger's delightful 

The Old Place because it has garnered so many rave reviews. Mary Alice is a teacher forced into retirement who lives for her morning coffee sessions with her neighbor, Ellie. Ellie and Mary Alice have a special connection as they both lost their teenage sons. Mary Alice is determined to make life miserable for Josie, her replacement at school, a young woman from New York City who married the scion of the town's wealthy family. Anyone from a small town will enjoy the setting and relate to the characters living there. The preparations for the big town festival fundraiser had me laughing and nodding my head in recognition. Although billed as a humorous story, there is some sadness here, just like in real life.  

I never miss a book from author Anne Leigh Parrish. Her previous novels  (Our Love Could Light the World, The Amendment, A Winter Night) have dealt with families living in the Finger Lakes region where I'm from, and have contemporary settings. Her latest novel, An Open Door, is an historical novel set in the aftermath of WWII. The main character is Edith, a young woman working at the UN in New York City and married to a man studying to be a lawyer and living in Boston. Edith enjoys her freedom in New York living with her husband's widowed aunt, so her decision to return to her husband in Boston is fraught with complications. She feels stifled with her life as a housewife, and when an opportunity to buy the neighborhood bookstore along with two other people comes along she sees this as a chance to do more with her life. No one writes characters better than Anne Leigh Parrish, and Edith is no exception. Parrish takes the reader into the heart and head of her characters so brilliantly that we relate and understand them, even when they do things with which we disagree. My full review posts here on October 18th. 

Have a safe, healthy week, and don't forget to get your flu shot. 

Miss del Rio by Bárbara Mujica

Miss del Río by Bárbara Mujica

Published by Graydon House ISBN 9781525899935

Trade paperback, $17.99, 432 pages

I enjoy a good historical fiction, especially if the subject is based on a real person. Bárbara Mujica's historical novel Miss del Río, is a fictionalized account of the life of Mexican actress Dolores del Río, who appeared in many Hollywood movies in the 1920s- 1940s, and became the first major Latina actress to find stardom there. 

 Dolores del Río led a privileged life in Durango, Mexico in 1910 as a young child. Her family had ties to high government officials, and her father was a wealthy banker. When revolutionaries led by Pancho Villa burned down expensive villas, Dolores escaped with her family to California. 

The beautiful Dolores met a director at a party who saw potential in her, and Dolores was on her way to appearing in motion pictures. Dolores' husband Jaime wanted to be a screenwriter, but his career did not take off like Dolores' did. 

Dolores was drawn to the glamour of Hollywood, but as a beautiful woman, she was also subject to its abuses by powerful men. While her professional life was blossoming, and she sucessfully made the transition from silent movie to "talkies", her private life was less than happy. She had a series of marriages that didn't work out as she didn't always choose her mates wisely. 

Dolores' story is narrated by her childhood friend Mara, who later became her hairdresser. (Mara is a fictional character.) Mara also fled Mexico, and the contrast between Dolores' life and Mara's life fuels much of this intriguing story. Mara had a happy marriage to a man she loved, and they had several children together. Dolores longed for children, but it was not meant to be. Mara and her husband struggled financially, Dolores had plenty of money. Mara was torn by her love and appreciation for Dolores and her disappointment in the way Dolores lived her life.

As her success in Hollywood waned, Dolores moved back to Mexico.  She became a big part of the Mexican film industry, making movies about subjects that mattered to her, instead of playing the stereotypical roles she was being offered in Hollywood. She had her share of dealings with difficult filmmakers in Mexico  as well.

Plenty of famous people make cameos in Miss del Río. Dolores was good friends with Marlene Dietrich, had a torrid love affair with Orson Welles, and became enchanted with Frida Kahlo when she returned to Mexico. (Mujica wrote a fantastic historical novel Frida as well that led to Miss del Río.)

A good historical fiction always has me wanting more, and I immediately began to search out more information on Dolores del Río. If you liked Adriana Trigiani's All The Stars In The Heavens and Taylor Jenkins Reid's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, (I loved both) you'll want to read Miss del Río. It's also a great read for Hispanic Heritage Month.

Thanks to Harlequin Books for putting me on their Fall 2022 Historical Fiction Blog Tours.