If I am going to read the occasional historical romance, Eloisa James is one of the authors I reach for, so I was glad to have the opportunity to review her newest romance, “Viscount in Love,” the first in her new series called “Accidental Brides.”
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Kids love picture books and especially picture books featuring dogs. All of these books have adorable dogs in them, one also has a cat, and one has a host of wild animals! All have wonderful messages about patience, acceptance, and learning from a dog; and one special book is about why a dog is a better pet than a wild animal! Perfect for children like my grandson, who wants to have a home filled with wild animals he will care for.
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While Spencer Quinn’s very popular, very enjoyable, Chet and Bernie series is filled with marvelous mysteries, including the newest one, “A Farewell to Arfs,” we read the novels for the pitch perfect narration by perhaps the most lovable of canine characters, Chet. This story begins with Chet and Bernie’s elderly neighbors, the Parsons, losing their life savings.
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PLEASE JOIN US:
Lake County Board of Health Meeting on Wednesday, August 28, at 6pm at 3010 Grand Ave, 3rd floor Board Room, Waukegan, IL 60085 IL.
Illinois law: 510 ILCS 5/2.16, supports TNR (trap/neuter/release) of feral cats and protect “caretakers” (feeders) from ownership laws. Lake County’s ordinance deeming “owners” as anyone “feeding an animal 7 days or more” does not support the TNR process.
What is important for taxpayers to know?
TNR saves taxpayers money! TNR is not just about saving cats, it is about population control and disease control. Each female cat can produce up to 10 kittens three times a year. TNR sterilizes cats thus decreasing reproduction. Each cat going through the TNR program is vaccinated for rabies and distemper. Decreasing the feral cat population through sterilization saves taxpayers the cost of euthanasia, which is what LCAC does for feral cats (they are euthanized). TNR organizations cover the costs of both sterilization and vaccinations which saves taxpayers money!
PLEASE SHOW UP AND HELP CHANGE Lake County’s lamentable lack of support for TNR. Lake County’s ordinance needs to mirror the State of Illinois’ TNR language.
For more information about TNR and this issue in Lake County, please read the previous blog post. Instead of supporting the trapping of feral cats so they can be sterilized, vaccinated, and returned back to their home area where they know how to find food or where there is a colony caretaker who provides food and shelter, Lake County animal control recently charged a Lake County resident with having animals at large.
Toward the goal of changing or amending the Lake County ordinance, concerned residents are urged to attend the meeting of the Health Department this Wednesday, August 28th, at 6:00 pm, at 3010 Grand Avenue in Waukegan. Please attend if you can to show your support for the feral cats who have no voice of their own. Supporting TNR policies saves taxpayers money, reduces the spread of disease, and at the end, is the humane way to deal with the feral cat issue.
Jodi Picoult’s masterful new novel, “By Any Other Name,” tackles a question that has been bandied about regarding the most famous of playwrights, William Shakespeare. Did that man, revered for over 400 years, really write the plays with which he is credited? Plays which feature outspoken, feminist women, a Jew who utters an extraordinarily sympathetic speech, and many works which were set in locations that Shakespeare had never visited, like Italy and Denmark.
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At rescues and most shelters, public and private, across the country, volunteers are the lifeblood that pumps the shelters with energy and free work hours enabling those entities to save dogs. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to be. In too many cases, when volunteers blow the whistle on shelter practices they see and believe are detrimental—and perhaps even cruel—to the animals the shelter is supposed to be caring for, the volunteers are fired. And this is what volunteers at Washington, DC’s Humane Rescue Alliance claim happened to them.
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In “House of Glass,” bestselling author Sarah Pekkanen creates a brilliant symphony of clashing melodies as Stella Hudson, appointed as a best interest attorney (BIA) to young Rose Barclay, must listen carefully to the song being sung by Rose’s family to determine the truth under those false notes. And while she is tasked with determining which parent Rose should live with as a result of their divorce, Stella realizes that what she really needs to find out is who killed Tina, Rose’s nanny, who fell from a third story window in her attic bedroom to her death on the patio. It was witnessed by Rose and her grandmother Harriet.
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This is not my usual post, but we all love our dogs and/or cats. This is important information, even if you don’t have any pets.
I am sharing information provided by Susan Thixton, a natural pet food advocate, whose newsletters I have read for many years. She advocates for transparency regarding ingredients and manufacturing of pet food, and her list of best pet foods is one that I use and highly recommend. The following is her most recent newsletter. Please pay special attention to the information about krill meal, which can contain harmful chemicals and is fed to farmed salmon that humans also eat. Also, note the information about how the FDA appears to be preventing pet food manufacturers from providing important information about possibly harmful ingredients in the pet food we buy. If you find this information useful and informative, please subscribe to her newsletter and visit her website: truthaboutpetfood.com. Note that AAFCO stands for Association of American Feed Control Officials.
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Ruth Ware’s latest thriller, “One Perfect Couple,” has all the trappings of a television series. There’s a reality show in the works, five “perfect” couples, a deserted beach paradise, and the search for which couple is really the perfect one. This gripping novel has plenty of mysteries to keep us reading well past midnight (as I did); and even at the end, we are left with a few questions.
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When the title of a murder mystery is “One Big Happy Family,” you can bet that this family will be anything but happy. And that’s the first clue in this suspense-filled tale by Jamie Day about the members of a fractured family reuniting because of the death of their father. George Bishop was a terrible father, a horrible husband, and a nightmare employer. No one is sorry he’s dead. But it’s time for the reading of his will, and his three daughters, some estranged and some semi-estranged, show up with their sons and spouses in tow to see what they are due to get from George’s rather substantial estate.
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Authors Kendra Elliot and Melinda Leigh are both successful mystery writers with a combined readership of more than 27 million, and “Echo Road” is their first cowritten mystery, four years in the making. While they’ve been friends for over a decade, and cowritten novellas, this is their first novel—and it is well worth the wait.
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Lynne Kelly, author of “The Secret Language of Birds,” is one of my favorite authors for a very simple reason: she writes about kids and animals. Her first book, “Chained,” is a wrenching story of a captive elephant and the boy who saves her. Then she penned “Song for a Whale,” about the loneliest whale in the world and the deaf girl who can’t seem to find her place in the world just as this misfit whale can’t communicate with other whales. It seems a natural progression to go from a jungle setting to an oceanic world and then to Texas, which Kelly calls home, to share the story of whooping cranes. Her inspiration came from a new article about a pair of whooping cranes just east of Houston who nested there, the first time whooping cranes had done so in over a century.
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