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In the 1950s, advertising agencies put enthusiastic consumers to work, encouraging them to write jingles and slogans with promises of big rewards. Author Terry Ryan's mother was one of those "contesters" who accepted every challenge. With 10 children and an unreliable husband, Evelyn Ryan actually kept the family afloat, sometimes a dollar at a time from poetry contests,... Read More

Madison Castelli writes biographical sketches for a fancy Manhattan magazine, Natalie anchors a California news program, and Jamie is unhappy in her romantic marriage. When Madison discovers her father has a secret past, she seeks to learn all, but everything goes wrong (with a lot of help from other extraneous characters). Carrington MacDuffie follows the lust-filled... Read More

There is sure to be disruption and the raising of difficult emotional issues when a woman steps out from her comfortable, white, upper-middle-class life and seeks a reunion with the biracial daughter she gave up to be raised by the father alone. Carrington MacDuffie's narration brings out the mother's ambivalence and insecurities over past decisions. Setting aside her passion... Read More

Mary, a divorced school-bus driver, is the key witness to a child's death, which has shaken her up, but she can still play amateur baseball, during a game of which she develops a yen for a player on the other team, who turns out to be father to one of her riders, though not a rider in her old Mercury, but when she was six . . . . What difference does any of this make when... Read More

Another serial killer is on the loose, this one a maniac who murders, then burns, his victims. But he is observed in the book's opening, and it becomes the job of heroine Kate Conlan to protect the uncooperative witness and to find the murderer before he finds the witness and Kate herself. Reader Carrington McDuffie takes getting used to; her breathy dramatics are sometimes... Read More