Hetta, Jan, and Rhonda are in Paris when they are "pressed" into service to help create a diversion. Once they realize they are being left out of the circle as to why they are needed, they start their own investigation. They manage to figure out most of what is being kept from them. Then they manage to solve the case.

I have never read any of this series. I will have to rectify that omission. I was able to follow the story line, but I missed the inside jokes. Hetta and Jan are a hoot. I laughed so much when they started their snark. I liked what they used to get the information they needed. The secondary characters were good. I wish Jenks would have stayed longer with Hetta instead of jetting in and out. I figured out the mystery also, but like Hetta, there was one part I did not see coming. I would not get on Hetta's bad side. I enjoyed this very much and plan on reading more of Hetta and Company.

In prison for common assault, Bryn is surprised to get a small alien visitor who offers her a life on a new world. She agrees on the condition that she gets a pardon.

On the way to her new home, there is an attack, and Bryn finds out what she is made of. It scares the hell out of her.

Surat knows that he is getting a warrior in the Lrrko Bride he is caring for. Until he is unable to help her, he has no idea that she is a born survivor. She returns to him damaged but alive.

Now, she needs to deal with the aftereffects of her actions. No pardon is forthcoming.

Review

I liked this short story well enough but if I hadn't read the other short stories set in this arc of the series, I would not have as most elements of the tale were underdeveloped.

The heroine has rage issues which is interesting. The love story is underdone.

So, yeah, meh.

This was...horrible. I don't know that I can put into words how I feel about this book, though I've tried during rants to three different people about this...book. (eye twitch)

So sorry, but you're the fourth (fifth, sixth, etc). Hopefully by now I have things lined out in a somewhat understandable way.

In the Spring of 2014, author Marjan Sierhuis read Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, an account of how the twenty-six-year-old embarked upon a life-changing hike of some eleven hundred miles.  Inspired to undertake her own (albeit shorter) odyssey, Sierhuis kept a journal of her experience which evolved into Pardon Me While I Close The Door, a different urban walk of self-exploration.

The walk reflects a middle-aged woman's life journey and choices and the changes she experiences upon the death of her parents, and it captures a vivid personal odyssey that ultimately revolves around the acceptance of loss and how to move on.

The door closes upon a chapter of pain and confusion even though the walk itself is only some thirteen kilometers and undertaken in an urban setting. Lacking the usual life-threatening rural obstacles, readers might wonder what an urban sojourn could mean to an effort to change one's familiar surroundings in order to gain perspective; but Pardon Me While I Close The Door demonstrates that a rural experience or a long journey are not prerequisites for growth and enlightenment.

The sojourn allows time for Marjan to explore memories of her family and life, to process them under different conditions than her everyday familiar world could allow, and to invite a kind of closure that wasn't possible when immersed in familiar routines.

Her memoir thus offers many touching moments that readers will find poignant, candid, and heart-felt. The author's process of accepting her parents' deaths didn't begin with her walk, but it synthesized and completed a process that had actually started before her parents died.

Pardon Me While I Close The Door also explores the movement from friendship to lover as the author forms and then re-examines different connections in her life.

The result is a memoir that intimately follows the process of how the stormy present becomes a gentler past, both in death and in romance, and shows how a walk out of one's world can serve as a catalyst for closure and change.

LL and I have just recently discovered the joys of Midsomer Murders on Netflix and though we've been binging on them, we're not even 1/2 way through the series. But I was intrigued when I realized the early episodes were based on books. Unfortunately, my library didn't have the first one - the one I really wanted to try - but they did have the second. It was certainly one of the most memorable episodes.

The CADS (Causton Amateur Dramatic Society) is putting on Amadeus, an ambitious project made worse by the undercurrents surrounding various members. Joyce, Barnaby's wife, if a long time member and all the people are known to him. When opening night sees their enraged Saliari slice his own throat with a de-safetied razor and die, everyone from the man playing his drama character's opponent, his faithless new wife or vengeful ex-wife, to the pompous and controlling director seems to dislike him if not have a reason for wanting him dead.