Kings River Reviewers live around the globe and share with our readers their opinions on movies, books, DVDs, TV, travel and more. This is also the place to find original stories, poems & humor. Click on article titles to see full articles.
by Cynthia Chow
Maybe Freud had it right. It’s all about the mothers. In Dennis Palumbo’s third mystery featuring Pittsburgh psychologist Daniel Rinaldi, the acerbic but still hopeful PSTD specialist finds himself enlisted in two cases, due to his reputation and featured presence in the media stemming from several recent brutal events. After Wesley Currim confesses to the robbery and murder of the missing businessman, Edward Meachem, Currim agrees to reveal the location of the body only if Rinaldi, the psychologist Currim has seen on television, accompanies them to West Virginia to deal with his “trauma.”
by Dennis Palumbo
“Do any of you guys believe in ghosts?” Fred asked, nursing his second Jack Daniels on the rocks. He stood at the small wet-bar in a corner of my game room.
“Define your terms,” Mark said. “You mean actual ghosts? Apparitions of the dead that haunt the living? Like Casper. Or Keith Richards?”
by Christopher J. Lynch
“The killer crept slowly through the bushes towards his target. Through the windows of the house he could see lights blazing inside, indicating the victim was home. He wanted to make sure that there was no way a call for help could go out. When he reached the back of the house, he took his cutters and snipped the phone line.”
by Cynthia Chow
& Sue Owens Wright
A freelance reporter for the Tahoe Tattler and full-time advocate for basset hounds, Elsie “Beanie” MacBean finds herself unable to be objective when covering the story of Lakeside Animal Shelter and its inhumane conditions. Her empathy also prevents her from ignoring an unadopted “problem” basset hound named Calamity who more than lives up to her name but whose imminent death sentence has Beanie taking on the adorable hound and her less than attractive talents of destruction.
by Jessica Ham
The Great Gatsby has been my favorite book for years. It is beautiful and tragic and inspires you to experience life on a bigger scale. This book means the world to me so I was very nervous about seeing Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of it. I was worried it would be too flashy or the meaning of the book would get lost somehow. But, I was pleasantly surprised.
by Jessica Ham
The Great Gatsby is a book that almost every high school student has had to read. Most of the time students hate the books they are forced to read in school, but I can guarantee you that The Great Gatsby is not one of them. I read it my junior year of high school and although I knew nothing about it, the description sounded intriguing. I got a couple pages in and I was hooked.
by Deborah Harter Williams
A Ferrari 308GTS revs past scenes of ocean and tropical forest, a Detroit Tigers baseball cap, Hawaiian shirts, Higgins and “the lads”. T.C. pilots the chopper, Rick serves drinks at the King Kamehameha Club, the luxury of Robin’s Nest. For eight years, Thomas Magnum was on the case.
by J.R. Chabot
I have my own room. Of course, since Mamma died, the whole house is mine. Mamma left me the house and the money. But this room is really my own. I grew up here. All my treasures and all my secrets are here. My father left before I remember, so it was always just Mamma and me. And now she’s gone.
by Paula Gail Benson
The quest for scholarships is a rite of Spring, but in my twelve years as a law school admissions director, I had never seen a situation like this one.
I’d attended plenty of meetings with potential students, seeking to optimize their chances at partial or full scholarships. What I had not previously encountered was a student-parent-financial-package-tag-team.
by Paula Gail Benson
For four months, in February of my sophomore year in high school– now almost thirteen years ago– I decided that for all practical purposes my life had ended at age fifteen. I wasn’t being overly dramatic, just realistic. What hurt the most was the fact that the end was my own fault.
by Cynthia Chow
& Lucy Burdette
Hayley Snow has finally begun to feel confident at her job as a writer and food critic for the Florida biweekly style magazine Key Zest, but she has yet to face the challenge of reporting a negative review for an established restaurant. Knowing how a poor review can financially devastate a restaurant, Hayley is guilt-ridden when she thinks of all of the hard labor and emotional investment a chef puts into his creations only to have it lambasted in print. However, three visits to Just Off Duval failed to show any improvement and leaves Hayley no choice but to write up a foreboding prediction of failure for the upscale new restaurant.
by Sharon Tucker
In the interest of variety, it’s always fun to compare what is somewhat similar but is really so not. Why not examine two rather traditional cozy mysteries about rather traditional mothers—Mother’s Day is May 12, you know–and then look at Robert Bloch’s masterpiece about a different kind of mother altogether?
by Cynthia Chow
As the Director of South Carolina’s charitable Ballantyne Foundation, Elliot “Elli” Lisbon finds that the prestigious title that has her organizing events, acting as a liaison between the board and the Ballantyne family, and meeting donors actually entails acting like a camp counselor over feuding board members and their inflated egos.
by J.R. Lindermuth
“Woman has no virtue,” Simon Kemble said.
Can’t rightly say I disagreed with him, but a sheriff’s got to take things at face value. Can’t go making accusations without proof or contributing to speculation on the nature of a person. I looked from Kemble to the girl seated beside him at his kitchen table. She sure matched the description of Mary Ann Hewitt.
by Joan Leotta
My widowed Mom’s delight is treasure hunting. She is a regular at thrift shops and spends most of her Saturday morning at garage sales. She does not confine the pleasure of her bargains to herself, but often buys items and gives them away. “I just knew it was right for “blank blank” so I had to buy it,” is how she usually begins her post garage sale call to me every Saturday. Last week, my name is the one that filled in the blanks.
by Lida Bushloper
“I’m so glad that you would make time for an old lady like me. I hardly ever get to meet any of Joseph’s friends.” It was early May when I sat in the perfect kitchen of this woman I had just met, but recognized from the photograph I had been given. Of course I knew what response was expected of me, and I didn’t disappoint.
