A Shimmer of Red (Odessa Jones #3) by Valerie Wilson Wesley ****

In A Shimmer of Red by Valerie Wilson Wesley, Odessa Jones works for Risko Realty and owns D&D Delights, a catering company she started with her deceased husband, Darryl. Risko Realty’s competition is the wealthy Delbarton Realty owned by Emily (Dickenson) Delbarton and he crazy brother Edgar (Allan Poe) Delbarton. In a coup, Risko recruits salespeople Anna Lee and Bella Mondavi from Delbarton. Shortly after the transfer Anna is killed in a hit-and-run while jogging. Odessa's psychic gift tells her this was murder. “With great power comes great responsibility—Uncle Ben to Peter Parker.” Now she must track down the culprit.

Anna worked at BUNS, a gentlemen’s club, where Edgar became infatuated with her because she was Annabel Lee and he was named after Edgar Allan Poe. He recruited her to Delbarton Realty against the wishes of his sister Emily who owned Delbarton Realty, BUNS, and much more. After her death, he sent so many flowers to Risko Realty. Was this grief or guilt?

Odessa’s boyfriend Terrence, who left her at the alter when she was twenty, more than twenty years ago, returned. He was near death and explained that he could marry Odessa when he learned he had a daughter Rosalie. Rosalie and Terrence are both successful. Odesa is torn between resentment for his betrayal and empathy for his eminent death.

Odessa spends more time on family conflicts than solving the murder, but she does solve the murder in the end.

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Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez *****

TAKE THE INVISIBLE WOMEN CHALLENGE. Men need to read this book by Caroline Criado Perez. It will change your worldview. Women can skip it because they live it every day. With the subtitle, Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, the author shows (with 70 pages of references) the subtle and egregious ways bias against women plays out in daily life, work, product design, medicine, and politics. While you might imagine a familiarity with these topics, the author presents them with details and evidence that will surprise every reader. This book should be required for everyone. Three hundred pages to a new you.

The book introduces a few important concepts…

Default Male: This concept is seen throughout society. Drugs are tested, diseases are studied, cars are designed, laws are made, economies are measured… all with the default male in mind. Thus, women die and are disadvantaged. Examples? Crash dummies are male. GDP doesn’t include women’s caring and homemaking work. Doctors don’t recognize women’s symptoms. Houses built after disasters lack kitchens.

Data Disaggregation: Most research aggregates data for men and women (usually a minority or not included). In this way, sex differences are lost.

Quotas: From the workplace to medical research to product design to politics, requirements to consider/include women always result in more qualified people and better products. Said another way: Quotas do not make spaces for less qualified women. They bring in more qualified women and drive out less qualified men!

Chapter 1: Can Snow-Clearing be Sexist? The city of Karlskoga, Sweden, first cleared the snow from the streets and then from the sidewalks. When they reversed this, hospital admissions decreased – predominantly pedestrians, and predominantly women. “The original snow-clearing schedule in Karlskoga hadn’t been deliberately designed to benefit men at the expense of women. Like many of the examples in this book, it resulted from a gender data gap – in this instance, a gap in perspective. The men (and it would have been men) who originally devised the schedule knew how they traveled, and they designed it around their needs. They didn’t deliberately set out to exclude women. They just didn’t think about them.”

TAKE THE CHALLENGE!

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The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst *****

The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst. Keila is a librarian. “It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. It was only that she liked books more.” “If there was anything in the world, she was good at, it was research.” “Are you ever lonely? How can I be? I have books.” Her companion is Caz, a sentient spider plant. “When the revolutionaries took the palace and defenestrated the emperor,” she escaped the capital with five crates of books. How will she survive with a “growing list of useful skills she didn’t possess?” The author says, “I want to write a book that reads like drinking hot chocolate.” She succeeded.

Keila has sequestered herself in the Great Library of Alyssium. Power and prosperity in the Crescent Islands Empire have been concentrated among the elite…until the revolutionaries depose the emperor and burn down the library, she escapes with five crates of books to Caltrey, an outer island where she was born. Once there, she makes friends.

This book includes magic spells, mermaids, merhorses, unicorns, and cloud bears. Keila’s first friend is a sentient spider plant named Caz. She plans to support herself with “Keila and Caz’s Jam Shop” selling jam and magical spells on the side. This doesn’t go as smoothly as she hoped.

SARAH BETH DURST is the author of more than twenty-five fantasy books for adults, teens, and kids.

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The Women by Kristin Hannah *****

The Women by Kristin Hannah might be titled The Women Who Served in Vietnam. If you recall, the Vietnam War was a difficult time for the United States, especially for the returning veterans. This book mixes Vietnam-era music, clothes, and protests in the United States with the military life in Vietnam. April 30, 2025, is the golden anniversary of the end of that war and now is a good time to revisit that period. I was not in the military, but I vividly recall the time. I highly recommend this review of the war.

The book follows Frankie McGrath, a 20-year-old woman from a well-to-do, conservative family on Coronado Island in San Diego, as she enlists as an Army nurse and ships out to Vietnam (1966). The book's first half is about her two tours in-country (The 36^th Evacuation Hospital on the coast outside of Saigon and the 71^st Mobile Army Surgical Hospital [MASH] in the jungle near the Cambodian border). The second half follows Frankie’s difficulties returning with PTSD and a common misconception that there “were no women in Vietnam.”

The author presents a balanced view of the period.

The book includes “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll,” along for war injuries, deaths, suicide, and PSTD. Don’t expect a happy ending or easy answers.

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