Drawing on the little-known true story of one tragic night at an Ozarks dance hall in the author’s Missouri hometown, this beautifully written, endearingly nostalgic novel picks up 50 years later for a folksy, character-driven portrayal of small-town life, split second decisions, and the ways family secrets reverberate through generations.

Daisy Flowers is fifteen in 1978 when her free-spirited mother dumps her in Possum Flats, Missouri. It’s a town that sounds like roadkill and, in Daisy’s eyes, is every bit as dead. Sentenced to spend the summer living with her grandmother, the wry and irreverent town mortician, Daisy draws the line at working for the family business, Flowers Funeral Home. Instead, she maneuvers her way into an internship at the local newspaper where, sorting through the basement archives, she learns of a mysterious tragedy from fifty years earlier…

On a sweltering, terrible night in 1928, an explosion at the local dance hall left dozens of young people dead, shocking and scarring a town that still doesn’t know how or why it happened. Listed among the victims is a name that’s surprisingly familiar to Daisy, revealing an irresistible family connection to this long-ago accident.

Obsessed with investigating the horrors and heroes of that night, Daisy soon discovers Possum Flats holds a multitude of secrets for a small town. And hardly anyone who remembers the tragedy is happy to have some teenaged hippie asking questions about it – not the fire-and-brimstone preacher who found his calling that tragic night; not the fed-up police chief; not the mayor’s widow or his mistress; not even Daisy’s own grandmother, a woman who’s never been afraid to raise eyebrows in the past, whether it’s for something she’s worn, sworn, or done for a living.

Some secrets are guarded by the living, while others are kept by the dead, but as buried truths gradually come into the light, they’ll force a reckoning at last.

CW – Violent death depicted on page, the aftermath of identifying remains is discussed – both these sections get graphic. Death of an infant. 

Dear Michelle Collins Anderson,

Lately I’ve been in the mood for historical fiction and when I saw this cover I fell in love with it. That plus a story set in 1978 (which I remember quite well, thank you very much) closed the deal. 

In 1928 most of the young people in the small town of Possum Flats, Missouri are at the upstairs dance hall late in the evening when suddenly it explodes in heat and flame. By reason and chance of where they are some are spared while others die horrible deaths. Stunned, the town rushes in to try to save the living then gather the dead. 

Almost fifty years later, young fifteen year old Daisy Flowers is dropped off at her grandmother’s house in some podunk town in Missouri after which her peripatetic mother leaves for California along with her latest lover. Daisy and Rose awkwardly work out how they’re going to live together until Lettie sends for her daughter. As Rose now runs the town’s funeral home and lives above it, Daisy is desperate to get out. When Rose takes Daisy along with her to the local paper to hand in an obituary (for the beloved town mayor who died in flagrante delicto with a woman who was not his wife), Daisy is fascinated by journalism and determined to get a job there. 

Some fast talking gets the interest of the editor who offers her a summer internship but writing obits (though she’s good at it) bores Daisy who jumps at Fence McMillan’s offer to dig through old newspapers and write a history piece. She latches onto the idea of revisiting the 1928 explosion and telling the story via interviews with survivors. Stunned at the negative reception she gets from various townspeople, Daisy nonetheless forges ahead. But when the last of her four part series has been published, old and well hidden secrets will be unearthed and lives will be changed forever. 

I loved these characters. None of them are perfect. Rather they are flawed in great and small ways that make them come alive. Daisy is intelligent and stubborn, things that Rose immediately remembers in her daughter Lettie who fought against the restrictions on females in the 1940s and finally fled town to escape. Rose is meticulous about her job and proud of the service she supplies but lived a painful life with her husband and in-laws who disliked her. Rose also still mourns her twin sister who died in 1928. 

One of the local pastors was a party boy until that night after which he devoted his life to God, something he never thought or planned to do after a horrible childhood. The stubborn sheriff has devoted his life to the town and its people. He might take an afternoon nap in the office every day but he’ll never leave a job undone. The other reporters take Daisy under their wing and try to give her good advice and photography lessons but warn her to tread lightly as despite the passage of fifty years, the town is still sensitive about its losses. Meanwhile Daisy keeps sending letters to her mother even though she’s yet to hear back from Lettie. 

I did guess a few of the secrets and who was responsible for them. Clues are given and if readers pay attention, not much will be a surprise. But the enjoyment is in watching the various characters interacting, remembering, and coming to terms with events past and present. There is an “epilogue” of sorts which shows what will happen to some characters and allows forgiveness for others which I liked but might be too sappy for some. I’m still debating some of the outcomes. This is not a light and fluffy book though parts are truly funny. I enjoyed watching Rose and Daisy, who are both strong women, as well as revisiting the late 1970s but be warned that there are graphic scenes in the book. B

~Jayne 

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From the time she was a young girl, Luisa Voekler has loved solving puzzles and cracking codes. Brilliant and logical, she’s expected to quickly climb the career ladder at the CIA. But while her coworkers have moved on to thrilling Cold War assignments—especially in the exhilarating era of the late 1980s—Luisa’s work remains stuck in the past decoding messages from World War II.

Journalist Haris Voekler grew up a proud East Berliner. But as his eyes open to the realities of postwar East Germany, he realizes that the Soviet promises of a better future are not coming to fruition. After the Berlin Wall goes up, Haris finds himself separated from his young daughter and all alone after his wife dies. There’s only one way to reach his family—by sending coded letters to his father-in-law who lives on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

When Luisa Voekler discovers a secret cache of letters written by the father she has long presumed dead, she learns the truth about her grandfather’s work, her father’s identity, and why she has never progressed in her career. With little more than a rudimentary plan and hope, she journeys to Berlin and risks everything to free her father and get him out of East Berlin alive.

As Luisa and Haris take turns telling their stories, events speed toward one of the twentieth century’s most dramatic moments—the fall of the Berlin Wall and that night’s promise of freedom, truth, and reconciliation for those who lived, for twenty-eight years, behind the bleak shadow of the Iron Curtain’s most iconic symbol.

Dear Ms. Reay,

I remember growing up in a world with an East Germany and a West Germany, an East Berlin and a West Berlin – divided by a wall I thought would never come down in my lifetime. Then I remember watching over some weeks as the Iron Curtain disintegrated which was then followed quickly by thousands of joyous West Berliners as they danced on the remains of the wall and welcomed East Berliners over. All of which made me want to read this book once I’d read the blurb.

This is a book that I read very quickly. It’s propulsive and takes readers from the unbelievable morning after the wall went up with no warning through to when it became irrelevant. Told in first person chapters by Louisa (covering a brief week in time in 1989) and her father Haris (from 1961 through 1989), we get a glimpse into how people living in East Berlin survived the restrictions and snitches which might lead to a message to appear before the Stasi. Who could you trust and what did you dare say?

But the events that start the book, and some that preceded it, still have long term effects on some of the characters. Louisa’s family survived the war and her mother and grandmother were there when the Soviet Army swept through eastern Germany in 1945. Louisa has heard of the repression and danger of that era but it’s only when she discovers what has been going on between her Opa and her father that she truly sees how much her Oma’s memories still terrorize her. War orphaned child Haris initially viewed the Soviets as saviors which drives his acceptance of and enthusiasm for the utopian world promised by communism. It takes years of reality to change his opinion and drive him, as a journalist, to speak the truth in the only way he can.

I will be honest and say that I enjoyed reading the sections by Haris about life in East Berlin more. The gray, hazy world and the threats that everyone lived under felt more immediate and visceral. Louisa initially impressed me with her code breaking skills both at work and with the letters she finds. But once she decides to save her father, as another reviewer says, I can see why she would have been pulled from operative CIA training – even if ostensibly her lack of skills were not the reason that was done. Louisa heads into danger with a laughable plan and then proceeds to muck even that up. Had she tried to pull off what she did a day earlier – let’s just say things would not have gone well for her. I inhaled this whole section, but I was shaking my head at it, too.

The HEA seems a little sugar coated and rushed. There are parts of it

~Jayne

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A young couple find themselves haunted by a string of gruesome murders committed along an old deserted road in this terrifying new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Cold Cases.

July 1995. April and Eddie have taken a wrong turn. They’re looking for the small resort town where they plan to spend their honeymoon. When they spot what appears to a lone hitchhiker along the deserted road, they stop to help. But not long after the hitchiker gets into their car, they see the blood seeping from her jacket and a truck barreling down Atticus Line after them.

When the hitchhiker dies at the local hospital, April and Eddie find themselves in the crosshairs of the Coldlake Falls police. Unexplained murders have been happening along Atticus Line for years and the cops finally have two witnesses who easily become their only suspects. As April and Eddie start to dig into the history of the town and that horrible stretch of road to clear their names, they soon learn that there is something supernatural at work, something that could not only tear the town and its dark secrets apart, but take April and Eddie down with it all.

CW/TW – mention of past domestic abuse, mention of past racism, mention of past mental health issues

Dear Ms. St. James,

Whoa and damn. What a wild ride this book is. I zipped through the first half in a few hours (note to self, do not read a murder/thriller before going to bed). Then I tore through the rest the next day. After finishing it, I realize I can’t really say much about it without risking spoilers galore. My advice to readers is not to peek at the end. Don’t ruin it for yourself. Just stick with the blurb.

The unsolved murders outside this small, rural Michigan town are riddles wrapped in enigmas. Is it a serial killer doing these? Over the course of nineteen years? Or is this town just cursed with a series of killers stalking lone people? Or is there something else going on?

Of course I played detective with the clues that are known and discovered along the way. I turned them and flipped them and tried to come up with a solution that made them all fit together. Nope, didn’t happen until nearly the end when the pieces fell into place and All Is Revealed. This happens in a way that hooked me and swept me along. I think by now that most readers familiar with your books will know to expect a few types of things and that it probably won’t be pretty along the way.

Stories don’t always end the way they’re supposed to. They don’t always end well.

Eddie and April Carter both have some issues in their pasts to go along with their quick marriage after only a short time knowing each other. Eddie has post Iraq PTSD while April’s backstory is amazingly convoluted. Late in the story April muses that “I saw someone who was so different from me, yet whose darkness mirrored my own.” And somehow they fit together, know each other, are ready and willing to take on each other’s demons. What I really like about these two is that they are working class, living in a cheap apartment, headed for a low rent honeymoon when “life” sweeps them into this free-for-all and they want to stay and investigate. At first it’s to get them out from under police suspicion but then it’s a quest that they just won’t give up on solving. For all their faults, Eddie and April are decent people.

There are some other fantastic characters here. The Snell sisters are pieces of work. As one person says, they should be in the FBI because we want them working for us and not against us. Rose is another wonderful though crotchety older woman. She’s been given a hard road to travel, fills her house with kitsch, holds an unshakable grudge against the town police (for Reasons) but deep (really deep) inside she’s also a person you want on your side. Brava for what they all do at the end.

The police? Oh, dear. Just about every bad thing that can be said about police could be said about these police. But one of them does see Eddie’s truth and, backhandedly, gives him sage advice. One is a bastard but also determined to get to the bottom of these killings. The way he rounds things off is maybe – no, totally – unbelievable but this does answer some questions that would have been left flapping around in my brain so, there is that.

When I saw that this book was coming out, I immediately asked for it after only a cursory look at the blurb. I didn’t even go back and refresh my memory before starting to read it. Some authors I will just trust to give me a wonderful story and that has happened again with this one. It’s dark and twisted. Secrets are unearthed and loyalties are tested. The answers, when they’re finally discovered, are things that most people would probably never admit to believing. April does one really stupid thing but then, it gives us answers. There are a few other things done that are brushed away with “Why did this person do that? We don’t know.” but overall this is one hell of a good read. B+

~Jayne

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Amid the hushed city, two hearts must navigate danger and deception, bound by a love that outshines the stars.

Katherine Schneider’s life as a dentist in 1913 New York is upended when a patient reveals details of a deadly plot while under the influence of laughing gas. As she is plunged into danger, she seeks help from the dashing Lieutenant Jonathan Birch, a police officer she has long admired from afar.

Jonathan has harbored powerful feelings toward Katherine for years but never acted on them, knowing his dark history is something she could never abide. Now, with her safety on the line, he works alongside her through the nights as they unravel the criminal conspiracy that threatens her . . . even as he keeps his deepest secrets hidden at all costs.

Dear Ms. Camden,

I love the fact that our heroine, Katherine, is a dentist working in a clinic that is forward thinking. The owner has hired a diversified staff, lowered his prices, and keeps the office open until midnight all so that the poor/immigrants of the city have a place they can afford, times that fit their working schedules, and staff who often speak their language. As Katherine later jokingly tells Jonathan, she’s probably the only dentist who went to dental school to spite someone but she’s good at what she does and handles her patients’ dental needs with care. Too bad that she overhears something she later puts together with other facts that threatens her life.

Jonathan Birch is the handsome but quiet police officer who is always on hand to walk Katherine to the subway station when she gets off in the middle of his night shift. They chat about nothing while he plies her with luscious biscotti and focaccia which he claims he buys in local stores – though Katherine has never been able to find a nearby bakery that makes chocolate biscotti. When, after hearing about a shipboard fire at sea, Katherine puts two and two together and approaches Jonathan with her information, she becomes part of a police investigation. When the newspaper reveals enough information about the “police source” to put her in danger, Jonathan strong-arms the police and the paper owner to provide protection for her. But who will protect Katherine when she learns the truth about Jonathan.

I can always count on something unique from your books and here it’s a female dentist who works late and a cop who works the night shift. The driving factor behind what threatens Katherine, and so many others in New York City, makes sense given the number of people around the world with similar views and ideas about how to change society. If bombs are what it takes, then bombing is what will be done.

Jonathan is obviously keeping something from Katherine but it turns out he’s got bigger secrets and grudges from his past. He’s escaped from something that has cost him dearly but from which he did want to be free. His lies about it aren’t innocent white ones and he lies to Katherine’s face as well as to his bosses. He also has to deal with a person who gets under Jonathan’s skin and whom Jonathan takes delight in besting. Things can reach the petty level between them but to Jonathan it’s a matter of honor not to let this guy get away with anything.

Katherine freely admits to Jonathan that she’s an open book and doesn’t hide her emotions. She wants to believe the best in people and thinks that everyone deserves to be heard and maybe get a second chance. This makes Jonathan and some of her friends shake their heads but if she gets fooled a time or two while giving someone the benefit of the doubt, Katherine doesn’t mind.

Of course they’re going to clash eventually about their different viewpoints and over how to deal with the situation Katherine finds herself in. Of course Jonathan’s past is revealed just at the worst time and Katherine, due to something in her past, takes it badly. When faced with how she reacts to one man and not another, Katherine has to do some soul searching. She and Jonathan have an exchange about the difficulties each has overcome and that no one wants to win an “I’ve had it worst” contest. Feelings are hurt and it takes each doing some hard thinking to move through and past their conflicts. These conflicts are where the main religious themes of the book lie. Also Jonathan is Catholic and yay for inspie books moving beyond only Protestantism.

Jonathan and his fellow police officers have to crack this case as the villains are trying to hurt and inconvenience as many New Yorkers as possible. But one other person will have to “man up” and put himself at risk to help solve the case. There is a degree of violence in the story. Katherine also learns that even 90 year old grandmothers are tough and gets some strong advice about being willing to let someone do what they feel called to do.

I enjoyed the everyday view of life in NYC in that day and age. It’s alive, vibrant, and filled with normal working people getting on with their everyday lives. Bonus points that it’s all effortlessly worked into the story and not just there to show off research. I’d love to have read some of Katherine’s newspaper columns about night workers. Double yay that the owlets are fine. I would have rioted otherwise. Just saying. My bet is that the next books in the series will focus on some of Katherine’s friends and fellow residents in the fascinating women’s only apartment building in which she lives. I’m looking forward to them. B

~Jayne

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I can't get the Unifi Network Application to work. I have two docker compose files:

One file is to create the mongodb part, unifi_db.yml

---
version: "3.1"
services:
  unifi-db:
    image: docker.io/mongo:4.4.18
    ports:
      - 27017:27017
    environment:
      MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME: admin
      MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD_FILE : /run/secrets/mongodb_admin_user_password
    container_name: unifi-db
    volumes:
      - db_data:/data/db
        # - ./init-mongo.js:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init-mongo.js:ro
    restart: unless-stopped
    secrets:
      - mongodb_admin_user_password
volumes:
  db_data:

secrets:
  mongodb_admin_user_password:
    file: /etc/docker/mongodb_admin_user_password.txt

The other one to instantiate the Unifi Network Application:

---
version: "3.1"
services:
  unifi-network-application:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/unifi-network-application:latest
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Europe/Amsterdam
      - MONGO_USER=unifi
      - FILE__MONGO_PASS=/run/secrets/mongodb_unifi_user_password
      - MONGO_HOST=unifi-db
      - MONGO_PORT=27017
      - MONGO_DBNAME=unifi
      - MEM_LIMIT=1024 #optional
      - MEM_STARTUP=1024 #optional
    volumes:
      - db_data:/data/db
    ports:
      - 8443:8443
      - 3478:3478/udp
      - 10001:10001/udp
      - 8080:8080
      - 1900:1900/udp #optional
      - 8843:8843 #optional
      - 8880:8880 #optional
      - 6789:6789 #optional
      - 5514:5514/udp #optional
    restart: unless-stopped
    secrets:
      - mongodb_unifi_user_password
volumes:
  db_data:

secrets:
  mongodb_unifi_user_password:
    file: /etc/docker/mongodb_unifi_user_password.txt

Both compose files work fine. Once the mongodb container is up and running, I connected to it with:

mongo -u admin -p

I enter my password and I'm in. Here I executed the following command to create a user called unifi, owner of a db called unifi:

db.getSiblingDB("unifi").createUser({user: "unifi", pwd: "KJDNFWI4R3R", roles: [{role: "dbOwner", db: "unifi"}, {role: "dbOwner", db: "unifi_stat"}]});

And I get a successful response:

Successfully added user: {
    "user" : "unifi",
    "roles" : [
        {
            "role" : "dbOwner",
            "db" : "unifi"
        },
        {
            "role" : "dbOwner",
            "db" : "unifi_stat"
        }
    ]
}

However, the Unifi Network application can't connect to the database!

I can't understand what I'm doing wrong. I looked everywhere and I really can't get the connection to work.

In the logs from the Unifi Network Application I see this:

[2023-10-17 17:25:10,082] <launcher> INFO  db     - Connecting to mongodb://unifi:~MONGO_PASS~@unifi-db:27017/unifi
[2023-10-17 17:25:11,255] <launcher> INFO  db     - db connection established...
[2023-10-17 17:25:12,634] <launcher> ERROR db     - Got error while connecting to db: Exception authenticating MongoCredential{mechanism=SCRAM-SHA-256, userName='unifi', source='unifi', password=<hidden>, mechanismProperties=<hidden>}

What am I doing wrong? Are the docker volumes set correctly? Am I injecting the secrets in the right way? I created the unifi db user in the right way?

Set in 1960s Italy, this stylish, atmospheric debut spins a bewitching web of ruthless ambition, family secrets, and the consequences of forbidden love, as an ambitious American actress snags the starring role in a mysterious horror movie shooting on location in a crumbling medieval castle outside Rome…
Readers who enjoy the moody gothic allure of Kate Morton and Silvia Moreno-Garcia or the immersive settings of Lucinda Riley and Fiona Davis will be enthralled by Kelsey James’ spellbinding web of intriguing mystery, family secrets, forbidden love, and midcentury Italian flair.

Rome, 1965: Aspiring actress Silvia Whitford arrives at Rome’s famed Cinecittà Studios from Los Angeles, ready for her big break and a taste of la dolce vita. Instead, she learns that the movie in which she was cast has been canceled. Desperate for money, Silvia has only one choice: seek out the Italian aunt she has never met.

Gabriella Conti lives in a crumbling castello on the edge of a volcanic lake. Silvia’s mother refuses to explain the rift that drove the sisters apart, but Silvia is fascinated by Gabriella, a once-famous actress who still radiates charisma. And the eerie castle inspires Silvia’s second chance when it becomes the location for a new horror movie, aptly named The Revenge of the Lake Witch—and she lands a starring role.

Silvia immerses herself in the part of an ingenue tormented by the ghost of her beautiful, seductive ancestor. But when Gabriella abruptly vanishes, the movie’s make-believe terrors seep into reality. No one else on set seems to share Silvia’s suspicions. Yet as she delves into Gabriella’s disappearance, she triggers a chain of events that illuminate dark secrets in the past—and a growing menace in the present . . .

Dear Ms. James,

It’s been a while since I’ve read a Gothic mystery teeming with secrets and hidden motives. Brava that “The Woman in the Castello,” your debut novel, kept me reading all day long until I managed to finish it right before bedtime. I sort of sussed out some points, suspected others, but the final twist took me by surprise.

Silvie Whitford is desperate. Her movie career hasn’t taken off yet, her mother is dying, and Silvie has a toddler to take care of. No, she doesn’t want the dirtbag she thought she was in love with to even know that Lucy – Lulu – exists. This chance to return to Italy, where Silvie was born to her young Italian mother and GI father who had married after a whirlwind meeting, will hopefully get Silvie more notice and enough money for them to survive.

So when she learns that the film has been cancelled, Silvie unsuccessfully tries to land waitressing jobs before reluctantly turning to her last hope – her aunt with whom her mother has been estranged for Silvie’s entire life. Gabriella Conti is charismatic with enough oomph to Be Noticed. She also informs Silvie that during the war, she worked with Musselini’s film industry because she wanted more than a dull life on a farm. She wanted fame and if that came with being a fascisti, so be it. This is the first of many moments when Silvie has to face her own weaknesses and decide what she’s willing to put up with, overlook, and accept in order to snatch at her dreams.

A twist of fate lands Silvie the lead role in a new film, a horror movie that will be filmed at Gabriella’s crumbling castello which is located hours outside of Rome. When Gabriella disappears and no one else seems to be worried or willing to look into it, Silvie risks rocking the filming schedule to pursue clues. Who could want her Aunt out of the way – or dead? And are the “accidents” that seem to dog Silvie on set and in the Castello just that – or worse?

The book is filled with incidents which could be innocent or not. People have legitimate reasons to see Gabriella out of the way but these could also be mere coincidence or figments of Silvie’s growing unease and worry. The Castello is a moldy, falling down wreck which adds atmosphere to the film but which also creeps most people out. Everyone’s got a secret or two and Silvie’s long held habit of keeping people at arm’s length makes forging friendships hard. Plus her past disastrous relationship has her doubting that any men are worth the effort. Since Silvie’s is the only (first person) POV, readers are left trying to piece the puzzle together with her, jumping at shadows, and imagining all sorts of hidden motives behind what’s going on. That is, if anything is actually going on. Could it all just be wisps of smoke?

Clues are scattered around but there are enough red herrings and suspect though maybe innocent character motives to keep readers just this side of being sure they have things figured out. The backdrop of WWII Italy looms and flares up enough to see that in the mid 1960s, some things were still not forgiven and were certainly not forgotten.

Silvie is young and her upbringing leaves her with gaps in being able to deal with some of the situations in which she finds herself. She makes mistakes which I can understand but tends to get somewhat petulant when someone didn’t act as she was hoping they would. In one case it’s a pretty big bomb that got dropped and she seemed to think it shouldn’t be so hard to accept it. Yes, Silvie, I would call a timeout, too. There is a romance but it didn’t totally convince me. A HFN would have sat better with me. Silvie is a loving mother but poor Lulu is pretty much relegated to being a plot moppet. Silvie’s, Gabriella’s, and Silvie’s mother Elena’s relationship is where I focused. Too bad that the sister’s reunion and what they discuss is mainly offpage.

I had fun sliding down into a Gothic book after a long break and this one makes me mostly satisfied in how the misdirection was handled and the heaping helpings of doom and gloom spiced up the oppressive atmosphere. Just a few things would have made me happier but I will be keeping my eyes open for your next book. B-

~Jayne

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