March TBR 2023!

I know it’s the 13^th of February, and I’m sitting here doing my March TBR, but please hear me out. With the move, I was super stressed out because I’m someone who takes a while to process. It doesn’t help that we don’t have a decent internet connection yet since I’m someone who manages his life online. I was worried I wouldn’t finish the Readathin TBR, but I think I can do it with only three books left. Okay, now let’s get into the TBR.

Storygraph Blurb:

I am naked, bruised, and clutching a blood-stained Oscar statue.

I didn’t mean to kill him. The last thing I want is the director of my film—my first big role—dead.

Now the cops are here, and even though it’s obviously self-defense, I’m done for…my life is over. I’ll never work in this town again even if I manage to avoid jail time. I’ll be infamous instead of famous.

Temperance Johnson is straight out of central casting—a spy master with tiger’s eyes and unnatural grace—a real killer.

He offers me a solution. He’ll sweep all this under the rug and help me reach my goals if I work for him. Well, for the government. There is a long history of spies in Tinseltown; we have the perfect cover, and we’re good at lying.

I always wanted to be a star, and I never considered becoming a spy.

Now I’m both.

Storygraph Blurb:

She can pay with her life … or she can pay with her crimes.

Alison Tanner thought she was living her best life. Her husband’s seven-figure consulting business earned them entry into the country club crowd and paid for her gifted daughter’s tuition at the best private school in the area. She lives in a gorgeous house, drives an expensive car, and she could afford designer clothes, if she cared about fashion at all.

But when her husband, Tom, is killed in a gang-related shooting, it all comes crashing down. Tom’s consulting agency was just a front for his real business: keeping their wealthy neighbors supplied with cocaine, oxycontin, and every other illegal drug money can buy. Tom died owing the local drug lord a lot of money — and now Alison’s on the hook.

Worse, unscrupulous DEA Agent Banks wants her to be his informant in a sting operation and doesn’t care if she survives, as long as he gets his man.

Desperate to protect her daughter from both a vengeful mother-in-law who wants custody and a drug lord who wants her daughter to work off Tom’s debts in the streets, Alison agrees to go undercover, wearing a wire as she sells drugs to her snobby neighbors and learns more about the drug lord’s operation.

If she ever gets out of this, she vows she’ll take her daughter and disappear forever — but her chances of surviving are getting worse by the minute. Does she have a shot at ever living a normal life again, or is everything blown?

Amazon Blurb:

I have a bounty on my head worth fifty million dollars. Every assassin I can think of will come for me. Even the ones I had called my friends. To end this nonsense, I need to kill Ethan Carmotte, the man responsible for funding the contract. But first, I need to find him. Did I mention he’s also my ex?

I have a week to get from San Francisco to New York. A contact there is the best at digging up information. It won’t be easy, though. News about the big payday is out, and money-hungry assassins are circling. Attacks are imminent. I know that much for sure. But if I can make that trip and not die in the process, I’ll have a real chance at finding Ethan and making him wish he’d never made this dumb move. Wish me luck.

Amazon Blurb:

Frank Grimm is a retired detective who breaks into his neighbors’ homes searching for clues to find the man who murdered his daughter. What was once an unrelenting obsession in solving a crime has turned into something else — Frank breaking and entering, vicariously living through their lives, searching for a connection to anything.

One day he finds something waiting for him — a letter from a teenage girl who knows what he’s doing. It also says one other thing:

“Help, my father is raping me. Please kill him.”

Frank must decide how far he’ll go outside the law to save a child from a monster.

But his former ally, detective Mallory Black, is tracking his every move — she believes he escaped justice once, and she is not going to let it happen again.

Detective and ex-detective find themselves on a collision course as their lives are torn apart by their obsessions for delivering justice, no matter the costs.

Amazon Blurb:

After a Sweet Sixteen ceremony, Reyna Clifton – the mother of the birthday girl – is found severely injured at the bottom of the grand staircase of the Regal Phoenix Resort and Spa.

The Clifton family blames the resort for Reyna’s fall, and sues for negligence. Daniel Mendoza and his firm are called in to defend the lawsuit, but when Mrs. Clifton is found dead in her hospital room, Daniel’s suspicions arise.

With the help of his legal team and a private investigator, Daniel is determined to find out what really happened to Mrs. Clifton. But who would have wanted to murder her, and is there some other foul play involved?

Amazon Blurb:

Playing Doctor is a medical memoir full of laugh-out-loud tales, born from chaotic, disjointed, and frightening nights on hospital wards during John Lawrence’s medical training and time as a junior doctor. This candid autobiography will demystify medical education and inspire you. Equal parts heartfelt, self-deprecating humor, and irreverent, storytelling, John takes us along for the ride as he tracks his transformation from uncertain, head injured, liberal-arts student to intern, resident and then medical doctor.

Storygraph Blurb:

At a Valentine’s Day gala, Museum of Literature registrar Molly Graham falls in love with fellow academic introvert Albert George. After a romantic month of being swept off her feet, skeptical Molly thinks she’s met her Prince Charming. She’s about to tell him how she feels but he disappears. Molly is convinced she’s been catfished!

StoryGraph Blurb:

Once a celebrated child prodigy, Blaise Noether is now a struggling widowed mom trying to keep her head above water while she pursues her Ph.D. Only two things make her really angry: her kid’s math textbooks and jocks. In her mind, all athletes are like the bullies who terrorized her in high school. So when she crosses paths with rising basketball star Christie Dillard, Blaise’s interest is a null set. Christie is everything Blaise fears, fiercely competitive, brashly confident, and totally devoted to her game. That she is also endearingly awkward and irresistibly gorgeous is irrelevant data.

But when Blaise glimpses a paradigm-shifting epiphany in the geometry of Christie’s jump shot, she begins to suspect this jock might be the missing variable that could balance the equation of her life.

StoryGraph Blurb:

 travel through life dancing.

All I ever wanted to do was dance, as did my best friend. We’d made so many plans together, but one night an explosion changed it all. Only one of us survived, and I promised myself I’d succeed for us both. And I did, until an accident almost ruined my career, but Maze came back into my life when I needed him most. He pulled me out of the depths of my despair. But could I save him now?

I travel through life fighting.

It had always been Ivy; from the first moment I saw her leaping through the air like she had wings to lift her from the ground. But she was my dream, something I wanted more than anything else in my life. I promised myself I would stay away from her. Violence followed me everywhere and I tried to keep her far away from it. She was my point of illumination in the dark tumultuous world I lived in. But I could not stay away from her. Not when I knew she needed me. As much as I needed her. But could she accept me as I am?

StoryGraph Blurb:

Hanni flattens herself against the platform wall, looking for a gap in the chaos around her. She can see her father coming, slashing a path to her through the passengers who have realised too late where these trains are taking them…

Germany 1945. Her heart thundering, Hannelore Foss runs out of the station and into the first car she sees. For long, brutal years, she has fought against her father, a high-ranking Nazi. But her final attempt to help the families being bundled onto the trains has been discovered. Heartbroken, she escapes to Berlin, to pick up the fight for justice once more…

One year later. Hanni has a new name and a tiny, lonely apartment on the outskirts of the city. In stolen moments, she collects evidence to expose her father’s crimes to the British. But her plan is threatened when she discovers a body hidden in a bombed-out building and meets Freddy, the tortured young detective in charge of the case.

As Hanni and Freddy piece together the shocking truth of Hanni’s discovery, their hearts become hopelessly connected. But both are hiding secrets about the choices they made during the war, and Hanni knows that any future together is impossible unless she can confront the past that haunts her. For a chance of happiness, what will she have to sacrifice, and can it ever be enough?

StoryGraph Blurb:

This contract is entered into by and between Allegra Malone and Damon Dawson. The term of this agreement shall begin immediately and continue through its termination date of never.

The terms are as follows:

1. Find the bright side when your best friend (the woman you’ve secretly been in love with for 10+ years) finds an engagement ring in her live-in boyfriend’s gym bag.

2. When she discovers the ring isn’t for her, and you volunteer to mop up her tears, don’t freak out if you accidentally share a world-shattering kiss.

3.  Remember she’s your best friend and law firm partner…and a hopeless romantic. Being her rebound isn’t worth risking the only family you have.

4. Immediately—rationally—draw up a no-strings agreement, stipulating equal opportunity orgasms. Under no circumstances is PDA or catching (further) feelings allowed.

5. If while adding a wedding plus-one clause, the doorbell rings and it’s a moving company with all her belongings, and now you’re going to be roommates, shower. The colder, the better.

StoryGraph Blurb:

They come into our homes. They see us in our most fragile moments. Plumbers are a fixture in our lives. When a toilet clogs, a faucet leaks, or a sewer line plugs, we call those unsung heroes, desperately seeking help. They scoop out our poop and pull underwear, toothbrushes and cotton balls out of our toilets, doing whatever it takes to get the job done.

On a late Wednesday evening, after my toilet clogged, I asked our plumber to share his top five “greatest hits.” The stories were so hilarious, I had to share them with the world. The Poop Diaries features true stories told by my plumber, and many other plumbers, about the most memorable service jobs they have worked on and most unique people they have helped. Whether it’s nudity, rats, fake vaginas, dildos, snakes, weapons and so much more, these plumbers have seen and smelled it all.

Alex