Quiet Keystrokes and Midnight Ramblings

  Every so often, I take a stroll through the best selling books on Amazon to see what the masses are reading, and boy howdy am I glad I picked up The Moonlight Child by Karen McQuestion . The Moonlight Child has a wide cast of characters. There's the grandmotherly neighbor who sees a mysterious child through the window of a home over her back yard fence. A young woman who aged out of foster care and is trying to make it on her own, with a strong sense of right and wrong. A lawyer who worked with the CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) program. And the suburbanite elitist woman keeping a secret house servant hidden within her home. This book has several interwoven stories that show who the characters are and how they relate to one another and the neighborhood surrounding them. It was an absolute delight to read this well-written story that features strong women who won't stop until the weakest among us are protected. I absolutely adored this book and will be reading more of...

My two great loves are books, and horse racing. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be a jockey. At 5 foot 3 3/4 inches, it's the only thing in my life that I've been too tall for. But my deep desire to live life on the track gets spun up with glee when I find a book that brings the daring world of horse racing alive, and Banker  does more than that. It goes behind the scenes to the underbelly of racing, revealing the schemes and cheats that industry bottom dwellers use to get a leg up in the game. Banker  is written from the perspective of an investment banker, rising through the ranks at his family owned financial company. His parents gambled their lives away at the track, and since he grew up in that environment, it comes to him to make a decision on whether or not to loan several million dollars to a horse breeder with visions of producing award-winning foals. The book is rife with charlatans, cheats, gamblers, murderers, and a few good people try...