I missed blogging several books which I read in November. They are:

MYSTERY – CRIME  

The Waiting by Michael Connelly, 2024 Read by a small castRating: A / crime thriller-procedura (#5 of Renée Ballard/ #
Slow starting but worth it and i’ve grown rather fond of Renée. It’s now the retired also very ill Harry Bosch, with Renée Ballard, a new LAPD hire Harry helps with the Cold Case Files she’s assigned to. Bosch’s adult daughter Madeleine is also on the scene looking toward her dad as she works her way up in the LAPD. This cases involve a serial rapist and murderer. ********

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Handbook for Homicide
By Addison Moore, 2024 
Read by a  (** Virtual Voice!!**) 
Rating:  Maybe a C – at best. 
(#1 – Thanksgiving Day Murder and Killer Cozy Mystery series) 

This looked like it might be a good “cozy” for me and it seemed quite inexpensive. (I haven’t found a really good cozy since Monic Ferris retired.).Unfortunately, it’s silly and I don’t like either occult OR romance. There are 3 more in self-contained series and I wonder if I’ll bother.  The “virtual  voice” is okay unless you want to differentiate between male and female characters.  Too bad.  

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The Princess of Las Vegas 
by Chris Bouhjallian
Read by Saskia Maarleveld
Rating –  B  / mystery/thriller 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/04/18/princess-las-vegas-chris-bohjalian-review/

This was actually kind of funny and compelling for some reason (but Bouhjallian is a very proficient writer of fiction)  and it had an abundance of twists and a nicely drawn protagonist (the Princess) but for some reason it was lacking tension  – it was never a really serious mystery or thriller – maybe more of a a “zany” caper?  

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NONFICTION –

War: 
by Bob Woodward,  2024
Read by Robert Petkoff 
Rating – 9.5 / history-biography 

This is Bob Woodward doing what Bob Woodward has done all his working life. It’s a memoir of himself and his work telling us about United States issues starting in 1971 at the Washington Post investigating Richard Nixon and Deep Throat.  And he wrote what he found out and what he thought until until he got to 2024, retired from the Post, but now investigating Donald Trump.  He’s seen the times of war and writes about it so well.  

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Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life
by Elle Reeve, 2024
read by autho
Rating – 8

This is the nonfiction story of how the alt-right white Christian 
Nationalists, and other right-wing groups involved in the far right 
social platforms and web-sites of the internet had a disastrous rally
in Charlottesville. Unite the Right was a white supremacist rally 
taking place August 11 and 12 of 2017 – the first years of Trump’s 
presidency. Trump said something about there being good people 
on both sides which raised the ire of the liberals. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally

The antifascists in various guises and under a number of colors, met them and violence ensued. https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/07/10/black-pill-elle-reeve-review/

In “Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics,” the intrepid CNN correspondent Elle Reeve dives deep and wide in pursuing some of the characters who attended and were later to be found in jail or back at home or at the larger and more Black Pill:How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison, Society, and Capture American Politics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally
This is the nonfiction story of how the alt-right white Christian Nationalists, and other right-wing groups involved in the far-right social platforms and web-sites of the internet had themselves a rally which ended up violent. Unite the Right was took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, from August 11 to 12, 2017. 

A bunch of anti-fascists met them and violence resulted.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/07/10/black-pill-elle-reeve-review/
In Black Pill CNN correspondent Elle Reeve presents her the results of her investigations, how individual participants came to get involved, where she found them, and so on. 

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The Talented Mrs Mandelbaum
The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss 
by Margalit Fox, 2024Read by Saskia Maarleveld,  6h 17mRating:  8 / US History – True Crime
This is the story of  Fredericka Mandelbaum, a Jewish-Italian woman who, along with her husband, Wolfe Mandelbaum, immigrated to the US. That was in 1850,  a decade before the Civil War,  and while at first they bought small businesses, their employees were out stealing and Mrs  Mandelbaum was doing the fencing.  she went into robbery alongside their employees, then fencing what had been stolen and becoming the first female organized crime boss.  She managed to advance from her very lowly “entry level” position to head honcho of her large slice of the crime world.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredericka_Mandelbaum

Historical Fiction / (non-crime)
   
Flags on the Bayou ~
By James Lee Burke, 2024
Read by a cast; 9h 15m
Rating:  8.5–   / Civil War tale 
(a stand-alone)

From Amazon:
When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayous. Wade Lufkin, haunted by what he observed—and did—as a surgeon on the battlefield, has returned to his uncle’s plantation to convalesce, where he becomes enraptured by Hannah. Flags on the Bayou is an engaging, action-packed narrative that includes a duel that ends in disaster, a brutal encounter with the local Union commander, repeated skirmishes with Confederate irregulars led by a diseased and probably deranged colonel, and a powerful love blossoming between an unlikely pair. As the story unfolds, it illuminates a past that reflects our present in sharp relief.