Book Review

The demons within

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By Ande Jacobson

Linda Castillo’s fourth Kate Burkholder novel is Gone Missing which picks up where the last one left off and gives readers another wild ride through the Amish community. While the story starts with a tragedy from the past, the suicide of a troubled Amish teen, it delves into a dark corner of the Amish community when fundamentalism goes awry although that doesn’t become clear until late in the story. This time, Kate is asked to join an investigation a little farther from home when a number of Amish teens have gone missing over a period of years. There are numerous cases that on the surface appear to have no connection other than the missing are all Amish teens, but there’s a very dark secret at the core of the case that only with Kate’s help can an expanded team from several counties and the famed BCI eventually crack. Of course the crucial break in the case is Kate’s doing, and once again almost becomes the last thing she does. Continue reading →

Monsters in the dark

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By Ande Jacobson

Breaking Silence is the third book in Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder series, and it’s another fast-paced thriller with plenty of twists and turns. This one again exposes some of the ills plaguing the local Amish community. To start, both parents and a visiting uncle are found in a manure pit by their four children. There’s a frantic attempt by Kate and company to rescue the victims, but by the time they eventually get the people out of the pit, none survive. Two were already dead, and the third was too far gone to save. Kate and team initially think an accident caused them to fall into the pit. Noxious gases that emanate from the pit can collect in an enclosed space that isn’t properly ventilated and that can cause someone to lose consciousness or worse. Their initial theory is that one of the men was overcome by the gases and fell into the pit. They think the other two suffered the same fate as they tried to rescue the first man. Further investigation shows that wasn’t the case, and that at least one of the men was struck in the head before he either fell or was pushed into the pit. So begins a grueling investigation to determine who would commit such a heinous crime leaving four Amish children orphaned. Continue reading →

How to catch a sociopath

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By Ande Jacobson

Pray for Silence is the second book in Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder series. This one picks up where the first one left off, and Kate and her team are again faced with a horrible crime against an Amish family in the fictional Ohio town of Painters Mill. This time, an entire family is brutally murdered, and it’s up to the Painters Mill PD, led by Chief Kate Burkholder, to stop the assailants from continuing their spree. For a quiet little town, the murder rate appears to be rivaling that of that quaint fictional Maine village of Cabot Cove, but instead of an amateur sleuth like Jessica Fletcher, Kate is a professional crime fighter. She and her team are faced with seven victims from the Plank family, hardworking Amish farmers with a passel of kids ranging from a toddler to older teens. Continue reading →

Quiet can be deceptive

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By Ande Jacobson

Sworn to Silence is the first book in Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder series and was first released in 2009. Kate is the chief of police in the quaint, fictional Ohio town of Painters Mill, a small, rural community. About a third of the town’s residents are Amish, and the rest are what the Amish refer to as English, or non-Amish. They had coexisted for centuries until a series of brutal murders occurred. Since that time, the Amish and the police suffer from mutual suspicion. The killer wasn’t caught, but eventually life went on, until, sixteen years later at the time of the current story the killings begin anew with the same signature. A lot changed in that time. For one thing, Kate lived through the first killing spree and has since harbored a secret. Although most Amish children commit to their church and community when they reach 18, Kate took a different path. Continue reading →

Surviving and thriving despite family challenges

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By Ande Jacobson

Teri Kanefield has had multiple careers from teaching, to practicing law as an appellate attorney, to entertaining and informing through her writing. There is some overlap in all of it as she’s pursued her writing from many perspectives. She’s written numerous books across a wide spectrum from detailed biographies of various icons from American history, to entertaining and informative novels, to children’s books. And of course there were her appellate briefs that also told serious, factual stories and in doing so had to capture the attention of and persuade her intended audience – the judges and justices sitting in judgement. More recently, she’s also taken her writing to the internet through her blog and social media as she entertains and informs her audience.

When Kanefield releases a new work, it’s always worth reading, and she’s releasing a new novel entitled The Family Liar at the end of March 2026. The story is riveting and tough to put down. It’s a coming of age story that takes readers on quite a journey. Despite the challenges that Natalie faces at home and in life overall she perseveres and ultimately thrives. Her humble and tortured beginnings are more than a little disturbing. Her family is dysfunctional. It’s led by her mother, Lenora, who is clearly a disturbed individual. Lenora also has difficult beginnings which undoubtedly inform her later dysfunction. Kanefield begins with Lenora’s background in her Prelude chapter. She then picks up the main story which follows Natalie’s life from her troubled childhood through her eventual emergence as a well-rounded, highly educated force for good in the world. Continue reading →

Musical ensembles are like family

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By Ande Jacobson

Aja Gabel’s debut novel, The Ensemble, is a masterwork combining her early training as a musician with her prowess as a writer. She follows Jana, Brit, Henry, and Daniel from their first meeting as graduate students at the San Francisco Conservatory through the twists and turns of their lives as musicians playing together in a tight string quartet. Of course the closeness the ensemble requires tightly intertwines their personal and professional lives. Gabel injects her thorough knowledge of music and the idiosyncrasies of the instruments involved given her experience as a violinist and cellist into the story. She alternates voices between the members of the quartet by chapter focusing on each individual’s point of view. Continue reading →

A complicated gift

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By Ande Jacobson

Imagine that you could read another person’s thoughts seeing what they see or have seen. In Nora Roberts’ 2024 book, Mind Games, Thea Fox has such a gift. It’s a gift that runs in her maternal line. While her mother also had the gift, it scared her, so she chose not to use it. Thea’s grandmother, on the other hand, recognized that the gift wasn’t something she asked for, but it was something that she had, and as such she wasn’t afraid of it. Instead, she treasured it, but didn’t abuse it. She knew its power, and chose to use it to help others. Continue reading →

What became of Soap Lake?

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By Ande Jacobson

Matthew Sullivan’s second book, Midnight in Soap Lake, was released in early 2025 and is another windy mystery. Like his first book, this is a standalone story even though its title is similar to Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. This story takes place in a real Washington town, Soap Lake, where Sullivan and his family lived for a time. There are a few aspects of the story that are real. The town of Soap Lake is named for its lake of the same name, and it’s a special kind of lake. Soap Lake is meromictic, i.e., the water is effectively stratified so that the water at the bottom stays at the bottom, and the water higher up stays higher up in various layers. This allows for different ecosystems and the appearance of extremophiles, special microbes specifically adapted to the unique conditions of the portion of the lake they inhabit and not seen anywhere else. As in the story Sullivan weaves, various limnologists have studied the lake over the years, and it even served as a sort of healing spa for a time. A giant lava lamp also figures in both reality and fiction, and in neither telling does it come to fruition. Finally like in the story, Soap Lake is a rather isolated small town in the middle of the desert northwest in eastern Washington state. After that, reality and story part ways. Continue reading →

Save the BookFrogs

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By Ande Jacobson

Matthew Sullivan, previously known for his short stories, burst onto the book scene in June 2017 with his debut novel, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. With shades of O. Henry in its twists and turns and a surprise ending, Sullivan gives readers puzzles within puzzles to solve as he leads them through parallel mysteries from the present and a harrowing past. Lydia is a bookseller who is more comfortable with the books she sells than with people, and yet she’s a favorite of the BookFrogs, the dejected loners from multiple walks of life who find solace in the Bright Ideas Bookstore. One young BookFrog, Joey Molina, a troubled fellow with a past and a secret takes a shine to Lydia. She’s his favorite bookseller, and she’s kind to him. One night when she finds Joey in the store’s upper room hanging from a self-fashioned noose, her life changes forever. She too has a past seeping with violence that she’d rather forget but can’t, and now she is caught in the present with a mystery she must solve. Why did Joey kill himself? And, after finding out that he’d left her all of his earthly possessions, she discovers a disturbing yet tantalizing puzzle going beyond that single event. Continue reading →

The race to understand consciousness

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By Ande Jacobson

The latest Dan Brown book, The Secret of Secrets, is a wild ride. This sixth Robert Langdon book was released in September 2025 and is a little longer than typical Dan Brown fare. Like the others in the series, this one too stands on its own. The only connection to the series is that Brown’s protagonist, Robert Langdon, finds himself in yet another mishap not of his own making but with much at stake. Brown starts with a note to readers that all of the science, symbols, artwork, organizations, and documents referenced are real, fantastic as they will seem. The premise of the book is that noetic research is reaching a critical point in proving that human consciousness is nonlocal, i.e., doesn’t emanate from within our own minds but is instead something that exists outside of individuals. In essence, although it takes some time to get to this point in the story, nonlocal consciousness implies that human minds are merely receivers much like radios. The consciousness is out there to be experienced, we just have to learn to tune our filters to let it in. Imagine the power that implies. As such, there’s an international race to both understand and harness that power, not necessarily all for good. Continue reading →