Black Panther: Avengers of the New World Part Two by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Writer), Leonard Kirk (Penciler, Inker), Marc Deering (Inker), Walden Wong (Inker), Laura Martin (Colorist), Matt Milla (Colorist), and VC's Joe Sabino (Letterer)

In the previous comic, the world of Wakanda has come together and formed a new government, a constitutional monarchy. Representatives from each region will sit on a council and meet regularly with T'Challa and discuss Wakanda business. When he can't be there his mother Ramonda will fill in for him. They are experiencing problems though.  A door has opened and half snake half man creatures have come out and began attacking the people.  Black Panther kills them off, but he realizes that the Orisha, the Wakanda gods have not been present protecting the people, including Bast, the goddess that gives him his power.  More doors open with more creatures coming out and they tell him that the "Originators" is coming.  The Originators are the gods before the Orisha took over.  Ras the Exhorter is leading the people to worship a new god called Sefako.

T'Challa and Shuri figured out that some of the portals weren't real, but holograms using sound rather than light.  Meanwhile, Aneka and Ayo tracked down Asira an old friend of T'Challa's who was kidnapped and taken to Azania and found themselves walking into a trap. Now they are in the hands of Klaw who is not alone, he is with Ezekiel Stane, Doctor Faustus, Zenzi, and Ras.

Klaw has used Faustus's ability to control other's with his voice and Zenzi's ability to liberate others hearts to create a device for his arm that will cause his enemies to bend to his will. His goal is to bring his sister back out of the coma she is in.  Klaw uses reverbium since he can't get his hands on vibranium. It has dangerous drawbacks.

Eden, the portal maker, takes Shuri to go and get Dr. Franklin out of jail to help in their cause.  They need the physicist as well as the man with the superpowers.  He fights with Black Panther, Shuri, and Storm on a landscape that has suddenly become a desert.  A request has been made to Ramonda to rescue Aneka and Ayo and at first, she says she can't due to the fact that it has to go before the council, but then Dora Milaje appears in Midnight Angel outfits to go and fight against Klaw and his gang and rescue Aneka and Ayo.  Will the Orisha gods reappear? Will they be able to stop Klaw from achieving his goal?  This book is even more exciting than the first part with the reintroduction of Dr. Franklin and Klaw with his sad backstory that almost makes you pull for him.  I give it five out of five stars. 

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Black-Panther-Vol-Avengers-2016-2018-ebook/dp/B07C7HRTRV/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543597408&sr=8-1&keywords=black+panther+avengers+of+the+new+world+part+2

The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom

Eddie was the top maintenance man at a seaside theme park at the Ruby Pier and on his 83rd birthday gave his life trying to save a little girl's life.  Now, he's in heaven meeting the first of five people who will explain his life to him.  The first person is The Blue Man, a sideshow freak at the Ruby Pier. He drank too much silver nitrate to cure his nerves and it turned his skin blue so he joined the show to make a living.  Eddie's ball ran out into the road just as he was learning to drive a car and he slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting him, but the shock to his heart caused him to have a heart attack and die.  Here he learns that life is short.

Then he meets with his old Army Captain from World War II when he was captured in the Philippines.  They were starved and tortured, but one night they overtook their captors and decided to burn down the buildings and village they were being held in.  Eddie could have sworn he saw someone in one of the buildings and ran into it to save whoever it was inside, but it was just a shadow.  His fellow soldier tried to stop him but was unsuccessful and Eddie was getting burned so his Captain shot him in the knee to bring him down so they could get him out of there.  Losing his knee meant losing his dreams on the life of becoming an engineer because for him the War had really become real for him at that moment.

Eddie will go on to meet the Ruby of Ruby Pier and learn about forgiveness and letting go and then meet his wife.  The fifth person will be a complete surprise and someone you won't be expecting, which makes the book worth reading.  Eddie is a man who does not think much of his life and while this book shows the good and the bad, Eddie is more than just a maintenance man for a theme park.  This book shows how we are all special in our own way and that there are five people waiting in heaven to explain to us why. I was expecting this book to be a real saccharine read that overdid the waterworks, but I was wrong. It wasn't sugary at all but rather realistic in the parts that deal with life on earth and logical with the ones that deal with the afterlife.  I can't promise, though, that it won't keep away the waterworks as my book club read this book and some of them cried during parts of it, but it doesn't manipulate you into crying.  I have to admit this is a very good book and I give it four out of five stars.

Quote
That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind.

-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven p 48)

Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.

-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven p 49)

No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.

-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven p 50)

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped.  Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others, crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces beyond repair.

-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet In Heaven p 104)

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them.  They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them—a mother’s approval, a father’s nod—are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.

-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet In Heaven p 126)

People say they “find” love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find is a certain love.

-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet In Heaven p 155)

Life has to end. Love doesn’t.

-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet In Heaven p173)

Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.

-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven p 141)

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Five-People-You-Meet-Heaven-ebook/dp/B000PLXEU2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543414436&sr=8-1&keywords=the+five+people+you+meet+in+heaven

A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley

Set in 1950s Bishop's Lacy, England, at the church fete, eleven-year-old Flavia de Lucie decides to get her fortune told. But when things go wrong she accidentally sets fire to the tent when the gypsy gives her a fortune about her dead mother and runs off.  She comes forward to Dr. Darby to confess what she has done and offer to pay, but the gypsy woman, Fennella, says it was an accident and there are no charges.  However, Fennella does not have a place to stay so Flavia offers up the Palings, an area of land on her dead mother's estate for Fennella and her horse and caravan to stay.

On the way there, Mrs. Bull, who is camped out there, freaks out and accuses Fennella of stealing her baby that went missing several years ago.   Flavia gets her out of that situation and settled for the night.  The next morning when she goes to check on her she finds her barely alive having been bludgeoned nearly to death.  She sets out for the doctor's and brings him back and Fenella's life is saved, though she is in a coma.

Her granddaughter, Porcelain comes down to look after her grandmother.  Flavia hides her in her section of the house, which she uses sometimes when she isn't accusing Flavia of attacking her grandmother because Flavia's father kicked her grandparents off of the property years ago which caused the death of her grandfather.

But there are others up and about that night acting mysteriously.  Brookie Harewood.  is paid money by his mother to stay away.  But that doesn't seem to be enough money because he was seen by Flavia inside her home returning two fancy fireplace pokers.  Then not long after that Porcelain and Flavia find him hanging from the Poseidon's trident with a lobster fork shoved up his nose.  She calls in Inspector Hewett but doesn't tell him about Brookie's break-in at Buckshaw, her home.

Flavia plays inside her laboratory concocting chemical compounds that help her solve the mystery.  She will need the help from her odioius older sisters Feely and Daffy who abuse her awfully, but upon whom she will seek her revenge.  Did the same person attack Fennella and kill Brookie or were they separate crimes?  Why are there more than one set of fireplace pokers? Will Flavia figure out who the killer or possibly killers are in time?  Flavia is a delightful child who is clever, yet longs for a friend.  She hopes Porcelain will be that friend but is sometimes disappointed.  She is such a unique child that there is no one like her to be friends with her.  She constantly feels as though she is pitting her wits against Inspector Hewett and seeks his approval.  This is a fabulous book and I give it a four and a half stars out of five.

Quotes

There are times that I see, but do not observe.

-Alan Bradley (A Red Herring Without Mustard p 10)

“Love’s not some big river that flows on and on forever, and if you believe it is, you’re a bloody fool. It can be dammed up until nothing’s left but a trickle…” “Or stopped completely,” I added.

-Alan Bradley (A Red Herring Without Mustard p 155)

Chemistry has more gods than Mount Olympus and here in my solitude I could pray to the greatest of them: Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (Who, when he found a young assistant in a linen draper’s shop surreptitiously reading a chemistry text which she kept hidden under the counter, promptly dumped his fiancée and married the girl); William Perkin (Who had found a way of making purple dye for the robes of emperors without using the spit of mollusks); and Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who probably discovered oxygen, and---more thrilling than even that—hydrogen cyanide, my personal pick as the last word in poisons.

-Alan Bradley (A Red Herring Without Mustard p 185)

I had always marveled at the way in which three clear liquids—nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, and water—when combined could produce, as if by magic, color—and not just any color, but the color of a flaming sunset.

-Alan Bradley (A Red Herring Without Mustard p 244)

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Red-Herring-Without-Mustard-Flavia-ebook/dp/B004C43FTS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543245766&sr=8-1&keywords=a+red+herring+without+mustard

       

DC Universe Rebirth Wonder Woman Vol 1: The Lies by Greg Rucka (Writer), Liam Sharp (Artist), Matthew Clark (Penciler), Sean Parsons (Inker), Laura Martin (Colorists), Jeremy Colwell (Colorists) Jodi Wynne (Letterer)

Wonder Woman doesn't know what the truth is anymore. Was she fashioned of clay or is she the product of the union of her mother and Zeus?  She wears the Helm of the god of war but did she get that from when a sailor crashed on the island asking for help and she was chosen to go fight Ares and in killing him became the god of war?  Her lasso tells her all the memories she has are true because she believes them to be true.

Olympus has been changed over to something guarded by Hephaestus and his creations.  Or to find her way back to the island, Themyscira, so she is in search of someone who can help her: Barbara Ann.  She is living in the jungle wilds and has been cursed and turned into the Cheetah by the god Urzkartaga who was looking for a bride, but hasn't been happy with what he has.  He turns women into worshipers of him and sacrifices the men as meat to eat.

Steve Trevor and his men are in country where Wonder Woman is, trying to capture a man named Cadulo who is kidnapping young women.  Cadulo is working for Urzkartaga and plans to be his vessel for his body, but they don't know that.  They're planning a rescue mission for the young girls and are wondering what Wonder Woman is doing there, though they think she's there to help them.  Then things go south for Steve and the guys as Barbara Ann and Wonder Woman try to plan a way to take down Urkkartaga.  This book connects with past books written like The New 52! Wonder Woman Series.  It ends on a real cliffhanger that leaves you wanting more.  The complex relationship between Diana and Steve is really great as is the one between her and Barbara Ann.  Wonder Woman is in a very dark place right now and will need help to find her way out.  On top of that something shady is going on within the organization Steve works for that his boss Etta must try to figure out.  This was a stellar comic. I give it five out of five stars.

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Wonder-Woman-Vol-Rebirth-Universe/dp/1401267785/ref=sr_1_2?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1542979292&sr=8-2&keywords=dc+universe+rebirth+wonder+woman+volume+one

Christmas Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke

This book takes us back to when Hannah's father had just died and she had completed six years of college and just broken up with her professor boyfriend who married someone else.  Andrea is pregnant with her first child and is a happy homemaker. Michelle is a high school student acting in the school plays who is friends with Lisa.  There is, of course, no Mike or Norman as they haven't moved to Lake Eden yet.

Dolores, Hannah's mother spends most of her time in bed weeping and Hannah and her sisters are worried that she'll follow their father to the grave in her grief.  Grandma Knudson whose grandson is the local Luthern minister and Annie who runs the orphanage are powerhouses at getting things done.  They come by once again to visit Dolores and Hannah tells them of her worries. But they have just the thing to pull Dolores out of her depression. A project to help Essie, a local woman who owns the rundown, now shut down hotel who used to have storytime for the kids which gave the mothers a chance to get things done.

Essie fell down the stairs of the hotel and broke her hip and can't stay at the hotel to recuperate so she is staying at hospice until she can get better.  But Essie has declared that nothing would make her happier than to have a Christmas Ball like the one where she met her husband Alton all those years ago at the hotel.  Complete with a Christmas cake walk and a dessert buffet.  The problem is the hotel is in disrepair and needs to be fixed up and they need someone to spearhead the project. Would Dolores agree to take on this monumental task? Of course, she does and immediately feels better when she does.

Hannah, Michelle, and Lisa agree to make the cakes and desserts.  But Hannah will need a big freezer to hold the cakes they make in advance. Dolores agrees to buy one.  However, Michelle and Andrea and Hannah are talking about what Hannah wants to do with her life and she says that her dream is to open up a coffee and bakery shop.  Dolores hears her and lets her know that there is still money left in her college fund to put down on the old bakery that is being rented to buy in town if she is serious.

When Delores and Hannah go to the Hotel to get some things for Essie to have in the hospital they stumble across some old notebooks written faintly in ink. Essie tells them they can read them if they want that she was trying her hand at fiction but that she didn't finish the book because she couldn't figure out an ending. The story is about a young pregnant woman who works for her cousin, a mobster, and how she and her husband plan on turning him in and escaping the life.  He stays behind to face them like nothing is wrong because they shouldn't suspect and she sneaks out and mails off the evidence to the authorities, then gets on a train and heads off to Minnesota where no one will find her.

This book is alright in that it explains how Hannah got her start, but its a murder mystery series and there's no murder.  There's a tiny bit of a mystery at the end that she's kinda been stringing you along throughout the book if you've been wise enough to pick up on.  Overall, it was a bit of a disappointment.  Some of the recipes included are Cocoa Crunch Cookies, Ultimate Lemon Bundt Cake, Bacon, and Sausage Burritos, Chocolate Hazelnut Bon-Bons, and Minty Dreams Cookies.  I give this book three stars out of five stars.

Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Murder-Hannah-Swensen-Mystery-ebook/dp/B078QSL9FY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542813701&sr=8-1&keywords=christmas+cake+murder

Glass Houses by Louise Penny

'Armand Gamache, who was the Commander of the Surete Police Academy last we saw, is now the Chief Superintendent of the Surete police of Quebec.  The book opens with him giving testimony at a trial and goes back and forth in time to tell the stories of a murder of a young woman and how the Surete plan on battling the drug problem in Quebec.

One day a cobrador del frac, a person dressed all in black, a black robe with a hood and in a black mask appears at the Three Pines Halloween party and then goes and stands outside on the square facing the shops.  It looks like Death personified.  But a cobrador del frac in modern times hunts down people who owe a debt and shames them into paying it. But the cobrador is older than that. There is a moral one that shames those have committed a moral debt into making it right and this cobrador seems to be this of this kind.  He has spooked the entire town and they are looking to Gamache to do something about it. He talks to him and tries to convince him to move on but to no avail.

Four friends are staying there that weekend as they do every year. Katie, Lea, Mateo, and Patrick. Mateo is a journalist who told Gamache about the cobrador as he did an article about them.  Lea is a politician and is married to Mateo and tried to get legislation passed for a drug bill named in honor of a friend of theirs who walked off of a top of a building while high. They blame the drug dealer who they were never able to find.  Katie had been dating him but just broke up with him to begin dating Patrick.  Katie and Patrick own a successful architect firm.

But they're not the only ones who know what the cobrador is.  Jaqueline who works at the bakery and Anton the busboy and sometimes cook at the bistro both know what it is.  Both of them used to work at the same house together. She was the nanny and he was the chef for a shady character named Antonio Ruiz who has gone back to Spain and has faced charges there that didn't stick but has also faced his own cobrador there.

Katie Evans is the victim which leads you to wonder was the cobrador there for her? What did she do in her past that was so horrible that she deserved to die over? Or was it something else?  She was found with the cobrador's costume on when she died.  Was someone trying to say something with that?  And what happened to the cobrador?

Also, Gamache is trying to fight the war on drugs, which he knows is lost, but he believes he can strike a devasting blow but it means acting incompetent for the better part of a year and lulling the criminal world into believing that the Surete are idiots and that they can do whatever they want before the Surete finds a way to strike back in one fell swoop. It comes at a heavy cost, though and not just that they and those involved in the scheme may lose their jobs, but that some may lose their lives.

This novel won the 2017 Agatha for Best Mystery and was a finalist for the 2018 Anthony best series/novel, as well as a finalist for the 2018 Lefist and McCavity.  It really keeps you guessing. You don't even know who is on trial at the beginning of the novel and don't figure it out until the very end.  Penny uses some very good sleight of hand to keep you from figuring out this book.  I figured out pieces but never the whole picture.  It also takes a cold hard look at the drug problem, especially the pharmaceuticals and the damage they do and how hard it is to prosecute them when drug dealers change the formula by a few degrees making it a different drug altogether and one that isn't illegal and trying to keep up with the latest designer drugs.  Quebec is on the border of the U.S. and with it harder to get drugs across the Mexico border, some see it as easier to get them across the Canadian border.  This is an excellent book and one really worth reading.  I give it five out of five stars.

Quotes

 And Lacoste remembered the advice given to Mossad agents.  Advice Lacoste had found abhorrent, wrong on ever level. Until it had been explained. The instruction given the Israeli agents, if they met resistance during an assault, was kill the women first.  Because if a woman was ever driven so far as to pick up a weapon, she would be the most committed , the least likely to ever give up. Kill the women first.  Lacoste still hated the advice. The simplicity of it. The baldness of it. But she also hated that the philosophy behind it was almost certainly true.

-Louise Penny (Glass Houses p 290)    

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Glass-Houses-Novel-Inspector-Gamache-ebook/dp/B01N9ZULCJ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542632386&sr=8-1&keywords=glass+houses+by+louise+penney

Elevation by Stephen King

Elevation is not your typical Stephen King novel in that it is only 146 pages and the book is smaller than the typical book making it even shorter than that which, if you read King's books is highly unusual as his books can be used as a doorstop or a weapon in killing someone they're so long.  It's also not a horror novel, so in that way, it's not typical. But it's still typical King in that something unusual is going on and that it takes place in his most famous town of Castle Rock.

Scott Carey a divorced architect has decided to confide in his friend a retired doctor, Bob Ellis that according to his scale he is losing weight even though he still looks the same with the slight belly roll over the belt.  He also weighs the same naked as he does with clothes on that have five pounds of coins in his pockets which brings the total up to about fourteen pounds.  He's losing a pound or two a day.  Ellis suggests going to a hospital to figure out what's wrong with him, but Scott knows that they won't be able to figure out what's wrong with him before he dies and he wants to just live his life.

Scott's next door neighbors are a lesbian couple Misty and Deidre and they have a contentious relationship because when they run in the neighboorhood they allow their dogs to poop on his lawn and don't clean it up.  They deny that their dogs are doing it.  Scott captures it on camera and goes over there to confront them and Deidre, who has a chip on her shoulder, gets snotty when he says that this isn't how good neighbors solve things like this.  That his intent isn't to get them in trouble with animal control only to fix the problem.

Misty comes by to explain Deidre and why she has the chip on her shoulder. They moved here from Boston because the restaurant market seemed perfect and the summer went well, but the fall hasn't gone as well as they had hoped and they need the locals to get them through the winter. And the locals have a problem with married lesbians.  It's like how dare they throw it in their faces.  This is an area that voted for Trump. And their restaurant Holy Frijoles a vegetarian restaurant is having trouble no matter how good the food is.

Castle Rock is having it's annual Turkey Trot marathon race that benefits the Rec Center. Scott hoping to try to win Deidre over to his side makes a bet with her that if he wins he will make a vegetarian dinner for her and Misty and if he loses the dogs can poop on his lawn and he won't say anything.  Deidre was a professional runner and isn't worried about losing, but Scott has been continuously losing weight and feeling lighter and believes that maybe he has a chance.

This book is filled with a special magic and not just that Scott is losing weight without appearing to.  It's the magic of the human spirit and how one man can make a difference.  This is King at his greatest examing people and seeing the best and the worst, but leaving you feeling pretty good about the world, hence the title of the book Elevation.  I give it five out of five stars.   

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Elevation-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B07CMKXZ2J/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542380687&sr=8-1&keywords=elevation+stephen+king

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate More

In 1987 Cinemax aired a documentary called Radium City based on the Radium Dial plant in Ottawa, Illinois that interviewed family members of victims and even a victim.  I vividly remember this documentary so that when this book was published recently I was anxious to read it and learn more.

The Radium Luminous Materials Corporations would begin sometime after 1913 with the advent of the radium paint by Sabin von Sochocky for use on dials for watches and later when the World War I started up to paint instrument dials. The plant existed first in Newark than in Orange, New Jersey.  The women were told it was harmless. They were told to lip the paintbrush in their mouth to get it wet, then dip it in the paint, then brush it on the dial, then repeat. This would mean that they would be ingesting radium.

Now at that time, the company was selling radium tonics and radium was a known treatment for cancer so it was seen as a wonder drug.  But at the same time, those that worked with it in the company were missing pieces of their fingers and had burns.  The women began to have problems with their teeth and jaws and their arms and legs.  But they weren't necessarily all working at the plant anymore or going to the same dentist so the pieces falling together that something was wrong would take a while.  On September 12, 1922, Mollie Maggia would die due to radium poisoning, but no one would know it.  She was only twenty-four-years-old.

Some of the women would begin to see the same dentists who believed that they had "phossy jaw", or phosphorous in their jaw which was causing the decay of their mouth.  The Radium Luminous Materials Corporations knew this to be false, but they also knew what was causing the women's troubles.  The women got together and decided to sue for damages once they had radium poisoning made an occupational hazard.

While they were making progress on their cases, the women in Ottawa, Illinois who were working for a different company were being told that radium was healthy and that the paint the women in New Jersey used was Mesothorium, a different type of paint.  It was still a type of radium isotope, but radium nonetheless.  For a short while, they used glass stylus to paint the dials on Westclox clocks and watches but the brushes were quicker.  The women weren't able to sue like they were able to in New Jersey, but they were able to go before the Illinois Insurance Commision to get money that way.  The problem was that with the radiation of the women from their checkups had cost the Radium Dial Company it's insurance, but was forced to leave $10,000 in an exchange with the IIC.  The company itself had left and gone to New York being run by its manager, while its owner had opened a new and separate company down the road where they told the women it was safe.

These women would paint the radium paint on their faces and their teeth for when they would go out on a date.  People could see them at night while they walked about town even without the paint because they glowed in the dark and they called them "ghost girls".  They lost their jaws, they lost arms, legs to a disease they didn't understand and were lied to about.  It affected their ability to reproduce and affected their children.  But their sacrifice wasn't in vain. Due to them, we have OSHA and the international Limited Test Ban Treaty on 1963. These women's bodies were examined by scientists throughout their life and after their death in order to better understand radium contamination.  This book is an incredible book that really examines the lives of these unsung women who should have been warned of the dangers of their working conditions and who fought to have compensation for medical costs paid out to them if they are lucky.  This was an American Tragedy.  I really loved this book and the lives it introduced me to. I give it five out of five stars.

Link to part of Radium City documentary:https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6itzf2
                                                                    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6itzel
                                                                     https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6itzer
                                                                     https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6iwlzr

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Radium-Girls-Story-Americas-Shining-ebook/dp/B01N7KMS7X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542197450&sr=8-1&keywords=radium+girls

Catwoman: Soulstealer by Sarah J. Maas

In this latest of the DC Icons series that has focused in the past on Wonderwoman, Batman, and Superman, this one hones in on Catwoman.  Selena Kyle has a sister with cystic fibrosis and a mother who is rarely around but when she is she brings around abusive boyfriends and is abusive herself. So Selena and her sister Maggie are living on their own. Selena, a stellar student, and a star gymnast has basically dropped out of school in order to join the Leopard gang so she can earn money stealing and in the ring fighting for mob boss Falcone when people can't pay their debts and try to fight them off.  If they lose, they die.  Selena leaves them unconscious, but she knows that Falcone takes them and dumps them into the river already dead.

She has twenty-seven leopard tattoos for confirmed wins as an undefeated fighter.  The money goes toward medical bills for her sister. But her sister isn't getting better no matter how experimental the procedure.  Then the cops and a social worker show up their door and she attacks them which is the third strike against her record and means jail time especially since she's three weeks from turning eighteen.  That's when she's approached by a woman who wants to educate her in Italy. She agrees if they place her sister with a really good family that can take care of her.

Luke Fox, son of Lucius Fox the inventor of Wayne Enterprises, is an ex-Marine who suffers from PTSD and deals with it by being Batwing.  Like his father, he tinkers with devices so he works at Wayne Enterprises at that capacity as his dad is running the company now while Bruce is off on some mission that he won't tell anyone about.

Selena picked up the name cat while training with the League of Assassins due to her tattoos so when she made her helmet and her gloves she made them in the shape of a cat with claws.  Now, she's back in Gotham under the name Holly Vanderhees, socialite and has moved in right next door to Luke.  She shows up to all the galas and steals the riches right off of the people there without them knowing it.

Then Luke decides to trap her with putting an expensive painting on display at a gala. When Selena goes to steal it, Poison Ivey shows up to steal it too, so they agree to split the profits.  Selena has a run-in with Batwing while escaping and she makes a fool of him while getting away landing him on his ass and records the whole thing and sends the photos to the press the next morning.  Luke is not only not happy, but he also gets a call from Batman asking if he needs help.

Selena tells Ivey that if she wants to join her she needs to bring Harley Quinn aboard.  Ivy says that the only way Quinn will come aboard will be if she gets the Joker out of Arkham and she says she will do that.  Ivey is appalled as she doesn't like the Joker and she is in love with Harley and believes that the Joker is bad for her.  Harley agrees to join and the three go on a wild crime spree even breaking out of prison three of the Joker's men to help fight against Falcone's people.

Meanwhile, Holly and Luke are getting a little bit closer than either perhaps want, but both seem to enjoy.  Neither seems to have guessed who the other is, but Nyssa and Talia al Ghul have sent people to Gotham after Selena to kill her and stop her mission.  This is a fantastic book with great characters.  You don't want Selena, Ivey, or Harly to get caught, but then you don't want Luke to be made a fool of either.  And you don't don't want to see the League win either.  Maas has done an excellent job of bringing Selena to life. I'd love to read another book about her or one on Ivy or Harley.  I give this book five out of five stars.   

Quotes

“Being normal is a trap.” He blinked. Selina whispered as the song came to a close, “Don’t let it cage you.”

           -Sarah J. Maas (Catwoman: Soulstealer p 223)

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Catwoman-Soulstealer-Sarah-J-Maas-ebook/dp/B077CQ6KW2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542042073&sr=8-1&keywords=catwoman+soulstealer

     

Ms. Marvel Vol. 4: Last Days by G. Willow Wilson (Writer), Adrian Alphona (Artist), Ian Herring (Colorist), adn VC's Joe Caramagna (Letterer)

In the previous comic Kamara's parents, old friends have returned to New Jersey with their very eligible son, Kamaran who she is dreading meeting until she does and finds out that they have lots in common. Poor Bruno, her best friend who has a crush on her is getting his heart broken.  Then she goes up against the inhuman Killowatt who tells her that there is someone looking after Inhumans better than Medusa.  While she was changing in an alley, Kamaran saw her and now knows her secret. But he has a secret of his own: he's also inhuman.  Soon, though, Kamala finds that Kamaran is the one behind gathering the Inhumans and attacking the humans and stealing and whatnot.  She goes up against him and fights him with some success, but with a broken heart.

Kamala is now doubting herself for not seeing Kamaran for who he was.  But there is no time to be doing this as there is a giant planet in the earth's sky right now. On top of that Kamaran has kidnapped her brother and is going to expose him to the Terrigen Mist in the hopes that he will develop powers and be on his side.

Captain Marvel has arrived to help Kamala to find her brother and fight Kamaran and his minions.  Her brother has been exposed and what happens to him and what he chooses to do with them are in question.  Also, they have to deal with the giant planet in the sky.  Also included in this book is a  comic with the Amazing Spider-Man and Cindy Moon aka SILK with Ms. Marvel.  This is a really good comic that explores her family life and she gets to work with her hero for the first time the one she named herself after.  I really enjoyed these two cmoics and I give the overall book five out of five stars.

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Ms-Marvel-Vol-Last-2014-2015-ebook/dp/B017JEFFMW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541781164&sr=8-1&keywords=ms+marvel+4

Gone Gull by Donna Andrews

Meg Lanslow and her husband Michael Waterson are teaching blacksmithing and theater respectfully at Meg's grandmother Cordelia's art center in the mountains of Virginia called the Biscuit Mountain Craft Center.  Her grandfather with his photographer assistant is teaching nature photography.  But nowhere Meg goes that murder doesn't follow and soon the despised art teacher Edward Prine is found by Meg with a knife in the back.

They were already dealing with a vandal who turned up the kiln and messed up the pottery, left the windows open on a rainy day and got the watercolors class's pictures destroyed, as well as poured paint on the art classes paintings, and then messed up the photography for the nature class, That was all last week. They had hoped the vandal left with those students.  Then someone put S & M lingerie on the clotheslines in the children's theater class.  Some of the teachers are new, but some are the same. The same with the students, which makes it hard to figure out who is doing the vandalism.

Cordelia suspects that the Jazz Hands Company which holds a summer program is possibly behind the vandalism because they are threatening to sue her for opening a summer craft program in the area.  The other suspect is Smith Corporation who wants to buy her land and develop it.  They could be getting someone, either a student or teacher, to sabotage the Craft Center.  Some of the teachers worked at the Jazz Hands Company at one point or another including Prine.

Also, a few of the teachers were involved in a venture with Prine where they put in what money they could and worked if they couldn't contribute as much money.  The idea was to open a craft store and cut out the middleman and make more profit for themselves.  But Prine, who put the most money in cut out early, taking his money with him and the venture failed.  Some are still in debt and haven't recovered from it and one lost his marriage to it.

A student is killed in the pottery room and found by Meg.  Then there's also the case of the picture Prine took of some gull's thought to be extinct that her grandfather wants her to figure out where they are. Between that and the vandalism and the murders, Meg's got her work cut out for her in this delightful mystery that will keep you guessing right up till the end.  I give this book four out of five stars.       

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Gone-Gull-Langslow-Mystery-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B01N6P4B4A/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541603045&sr=1-1&keywords=gone+gull+by+donna+andrews

A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny

A mysterious map has been found in the wall of the Bistro of Three Pines. It is an old detailed map of Three Pines with oddities on it like a snowman holding a hockey stick and a pyramid and a cow marking where a particular cow got stuck years ago as legend held.  Who made this beautiful map and why? There has been no known map of Three Pines ever and the village is not on any map of any kind.  If you use GPS to try to find it it will show that you are in a giant field not in a village.  So the map is indeed a great mystery.

The former Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is now the Commander of the Surete Acadamy for police officers.  The former Chief Superintendent who had corrupted the Surete also corrupted the Acadamy and bad officers were still graduating from it so he took the position to clean it up.  He fired half of the teachers and went over the applications again changing acceptances to rejections and rejections to acceptances.

One professor he kept on was the second in command, Serge Leduc who really ran things there, but he removed him from his position and made him just a teacher. His reason for this is because Leduc was involved in all sorts of illegal activities involving the school but Gamache couldn't prove them. He was hoping Leduc would slip up and lead him to the evidence.  Gamache brings in his childhood friend and old Surete Superintendent Michel Brebeuf who was forcibly retired after being the one to open the gate to the corruption years ago, not just to teach but to serve as an example as to what happens when you break the rules.

Each teacher invites students to his living room for an informal gathering one day a week. Gamache, of course gathers the quite a few oddities, including first-year Amelia Choquet a tattooed, pierced loner, Huifen, a third-year Asian woman just trying to survive, Nathanial Smythe a first-year gay Anglo with two strikes against him, and Jaques Lauren, a third-year head boy who thinks the old way of doing things is best and that Gamache is a coward.  All four also visit with Leduc.  When Amelia notices the map on the wall Gamache gives them the assignment of figuring out the mystery of the map.

When Nathanial goes to bring Leduc his breakfast one morning against Gamache's new policy, he finds Leduc dead with a gunshot wound to the head.  Gamache has Jean-Guy Beavouir, his second in command and a teacher there at the academy call in Chief Inspector Isabelle Lacoste.  He notices that one of the copies of the maps he gave to the students is in the bedside drawer of Leduc.  After talking to Lacoste and telling her she needs to bring in someone from the outside to overlook the investigation since those being investigated are all former or current officers of the Surete on leave of absence.  Then he takes the four students and has them taken to Three Pines after they have been interviewed.  He believes either they were involved or they knew something that could get themselves killed and needed to be protected.  He told them they were being sent there to work on the mystery of the map which had a bearing on the murder.

Gamache believes that Leduc didn't have the intelligence to pull off the operation he was doing alone. Someone was behind him pulling the strings.  But who? Did they kill him believing that he might talk to save his skin with Gamache closing in?  Also, the mayor of the town hated Leduc with a passion when he screwed them over by building the Acadamy on the site they had planned on building their children's recreational center that they had spent years saving money for.

Chief Superintendent Brunel sends in Deputy Commissioner Paul Gelinas of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Gamache's request to overlook the investigation.  He tells him it is because he is being considered for the Commissioner's job and Gamache recommended him and wants to know that he was right in doing so.  Gelinas suspects everyone, including Gamache himself of murdering Leduc.

This book keeps you guessing as to who the murderer is right up to the very end.  Leduc was truly an evil man in what he made the students do and the terror he caused and the belief that you had to hate to be a cop and get them before they get you.  Gamache didn't know everything he was up to and part of him wonders whether or not he would have killed him himself if he had.  The Reckoning is a good title because it is one for Leduc.  His crimes will get him killed in the end.  This is an excellently woven novel that blends the tale of the map with the tale of the murder.  It won the 2016 Agatha Award for best novel and 2017 Anthony, Barry, Lefty, and McCacvity Awards which says a lot.  I give it four out of five stars.     

Quotes

Not food. Not dope. Not some stolen wallet. Something far more precious, and dangerous. The poetry book had joined the others hidden under there. Books in Latin and Greek. Poetry books and philosophy books. She’d taught herself the dead languages, and memorized poetry. Among the filth. Shutting out the sounds of sex, the mutterings and shouts and screams of other boarders. All erased by poetry. 

-Louise Penny (A Great Reckoning p 53)

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Reckoning-Novel-Inspector-Gamache-ebook/dp/B01BBXF0HC/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541431018&sr=1-10&keywords=louise+penny

Black Panther World of Wakanda by Roxane Gay (Writer), Ta-Nehisi Coates (Writer), Yona Harvey (Writer), Rembert Browne (Writer), Alitha E. Martinez (Penciler, Inker), Joe Bennett (Penciler), Roberto Poggi (Inker), Rachelle Rosenberg (Colorist), Tamra Bonvillain (Colorist), Afua Richardson (Artist), VC's Joe Savino (Letterer)

This comic is not so much about the Black Panther and more about the Dora Milaje the all-female guard who protect the royal family.  It focuses mainly on two characters: Captain Aneka and trainee Oyo.  The two feel an immediate attraction toward each other that Aneka tries to deny.  Oyo pushes to break through both physically on the field of practices as well as emotionally after class.

Months later during the Avengers war against the X-Men, Namor attacks Wakanda and the Dora Milaje capture one of his men to interrogate.  Later Namor floods Wakanda.  The Dora Milaje take it upon themselves to gather up the dead bodies and clean up the streets.  Oyo doesn't believe in doing this work. She is eager to go and get Namor.  When they finally get the chance with the Black Panther, he tells them he has Namor but that he won't be punished because there is another purpose afoot and Namor is needed for it and must be set free.  Oyo is furious and thinks he is wrong. Aneka believes in T'Challa and that whatever he has decided must be right.

Oyo and Aneka will finally consummate their relationship, but Aneka insists on keeping it a secret. The Dora Milaje must be available to T'Challa as possible brides.  Oyo is becoming disillusioned by T'Challa who let Thanos come to Wakanda and wreak havoc looking for something.  He is never there and his association with the Avengers has brought danger to their doorsteps. Also, what happened with Namor is unforgivable.  She is trying to get Aneka to see things her way.

It is brought to the head of the Dora Milaje Zola that one of the chieftains is raping women in his village and no one is doing anything about it.  Since T'Challa isn't here to help, they decide to look into it and look at other villages and see what is going on in them. But they have a serpent in the Dora Milaje who will be a problem with this.  I really loved this book. In other Black Panther books, I have read about Oyo and Aneka and its great to read about how their relationship came together.  Also included in this book is a short story of how Zenzi started out and another one about Officer Kevin "Kasper" Cole, the White Panther.  This is a great book and I give it five out of five stars.

Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Black-Panther-Wakanda-Ta-Nehisi-Coates/dp/130290650X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541158772&sr=1-2&keywords=black+panther+world+of+wakanda&dpID=51VeK3CIl8L&preST=_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&dpSrc=srch