REVIEW OF: WOMEN IN WHITE by SARAH PEKKANEN

 

Published: August 4, 2026 

Genre: Historical Thrillers,
Women's New Adult 
& College Fiction, 
Domestic Thrillers 

 

GENUINE … AUTHENTIC … SOMEONE IS EXPERIMENTING AGAIN SO HOPE IT’S NOT YOU!

 

Thirty-two-year-old Riley Bell is applying for a job as caretaker. While chances are slim that she’ll be chosen, with her marriage bursting apart, she needs a steady income. The gamble pays off and she’s hired by Mrs. Betty Sadler. The two women celebrate with a cup of hot tea as Sadler begins an interesting conversation about a government research project that she was involved in.  But as the minutes roll by, the words lessen in warmth until an eerie cold vibe is in the air—one that tells Riley to leave while she still has the chance.   

 

Thus begins the intriguing mystery WOMEN IN WHITE by Sara Pekkanen. The story analyzes the paranormal experiments our government sanctioned in the 1960s. While most accredited academics were careful not to push volunteers past their limits, others were enthused about reducing humans to the level of lab rats. That sort of character is where Dr. Trimble of Marquis University comes in. Handpicking the women that included Betty Sadler, they constituted the team Trimble used for his ventures into the unknown. Collectively called THE WOMEN IN WHITE, the name referred to the uniform they were forced to wear. According to the good doctor, the wearing of identical clothing erased individuality and projected the unity of one. While the women didn’t know if it were true, they quickly discovered the doctor promised one thing but delivered another. More a dictator than  someone wise and well-intentioned, his idea of research meant never-ending exhausting work and putting families and loved ones at risk.

 

I found myself enjoying Sara Pekkanen’s writing and applaud her on a great job done. She was particularly effective in describing the perilous journey taken as it is replete with the ruination of lives, loves, hopes, dreams, and tomorrows. Her style is authentic, the remarkable aspect to her writing is her ability to write in a straightforward and very genuine way. It works so perfectly with the way the book is sectioned off, and toggles between the present with past.

 

I definitely can recommend THE WOMEN IN WHITE. Great topic that is beautifully written. Once you start, you’ll soon be craving more. Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC copy that was entertaining throughout.

 

 BUY NOW!

 

 

REVIEW of HOT GIRL MURDER CLUB by Ashley Winstead

 

Published: July 14, 2026 

Genre: Crime Fiction
Murder Thrillers, 
Serial Killers, 
Thrillers 

POWER … POWER … WHO’S GOT THE POWER?

That’s the question asked in the excellently written debut novel entitled the HOT GIRL MURDER CLUB, a book where emotions, lust, and fatalities combust to  deliver a slick well-coated mystery. It becomes apparent early on that it won’t be the only one.

The story begins in the present and not in the past. Detective Grey Holloway is called upon to solve an execution-style murder. One glance at the corpse is all it takes for Holloway to see that the victim could be her twin. Since Holloway has no twin, finding out the identity of the murder victim becomes an obsession. She has all sorts of pertinent questions with no answers, but it won’t stay like that forever. 

Ten years ago, a Christmas party thrown by a Hollywood mover and shaker was the perfect venue for young starlets to be noticed. One hopeful named Scout Octavia Sage was praying it would be her. Luckily for Sage, it was another actress who garnered all the attention by winding up dead.

The story moves on from that point, equally splitting the past with the present as it unravels the clever web of connections between characters and the reasons as to how they became enmeshed in homicide. Tracking the journeys, some begin at ‘wanna be’ while others earn the right to be called  ‘rock star’. But it’s the one that comes from clawing one’s way up the ladder of success that exceeds them all: ‘star power.’ It’s been rumored that those that possess it can get away with murder—but did they in this case?  

The story is intriguing, the actions devious, and the method Machiavellian. It needs someone with a depth of understanding  to capture the essence of crime. But never fear, author Ashley Winstead digs deep. Like an LA gossip columnist on a Red Bull full-binge caffeine tear, she gets the vibe of Hollywood and how much appearance and money are treated like two gods. Worshipped, they stand together and relish human sacrifice to keep the years away and the Oscars coming. That ritualistic tingle runs throughout the pages, and no doubt you’ll be tempted to applaud.

Put succinctly, hang on to your calculators! It’s the only way to get an accurate body count. Besides, you’ll soon discover that numbers aren’t everything, especially when trying to discern if the string of carnage is accomplished by the use of the same set of expert hands. It’s where expertise and tidy police work meet—and felons deny everything.

So thank you,  Ashley Winstead, for the terrific read. Also thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for giving me an ARC copy to curl up with. It’ll be 4 stars from me. 

BUY NOW 

 

 

 

 

BOOK TOUR of FIGHTER PILOT'S DAUGHTER by Mary Lawlor

 

The story of the author as a young woman coming of age in an Irish Catholic, military family…

Fighter Pilot’s Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War tells the story of Mary Lawlor’s dramatic, roving life as a warrior’s child. A family biography and a young woman’s vision of the Cold War, Fighter Pilot’s Daughter narrates the more than many transfers the family made from Miami to California to Germany as the Cold War demanded. Each chapter describes the workings of this traveling household in a different place and time. The book’s climax takes us to Paris in May ’68, where Mary—until recently a dutiful military daughter—has joined the legendary student demonstrations against among other things, the Vietnam War. Meanwhile her father is flying missions out of Saigon for that very same war. Though they are on opposite sides of the political divide, a surprising reconciliation comes years later.

⤷Read sample here.

⤷Fighter Pilot’s Daughter is available at Amazon.

*****

╰┈➤Book Details

• Genre: Memoir
• Sub-genre: Women in History / Military Leaders Biography
• Language:English
• Pages: 323
• Paperback ISBN: 978-1442222007
• Kindle ISBN: 978-1442222014
• Publisher: Rowman and Littlefield
• Format: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook

*****

╰┈➤Here’s What Readers Have To Say!

“Mary Lawlor's memoir, Fighter Pilot's Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War, is terrifically written. The experience of living in a military family is beautifully brought to life. This memoir shows the pressures on families in the sixties, the fears of the Cold War, and also the love that families had that helped them get through those times, with many ups and downs. It's a story that all of us who are old enough can relate to, whether we were involved or not. The book is so well written. Mary Lawlor shares a story that needs to be written, and she tells it very well.” ―The Jordan Rich Show

 

“Mary Lawlor, in her brilliantly realized memoir, articulates what accountants would call a soft cost, the cost that dependents of career military personnel pay, which is the feeling of never belonging to the specific piece of real estate called home. . . . [T]he real story is Lawlor and her father, who is ensconced despite their ongoing conflict in Lawlor’s pantheon of Catholic saints and Irish presidents, a perfect metaphor for coming of age at a time when rebelling was all about rebelling against the paternalistic society of Cold War America.” ―Stars and Stripes

*****

╰┈➤Read if you love…

✎ᝰ.📓🗒Memoirs

=✪=Military Family

🎖️Life as a Military Brat

🗺️⁀જ✈︎Travel

✌️The Sixties and the Cold War

✈️Fighter Pilots

Excerpt:

The pilot’s house where I grew up was mostly a women’s world. There were five of us. We had the place to ourselves most of the time. My mother made the big decisions—where we went to school, which bank to keep our money in. She had to decide these things often because we moved every couple of years. The house is thus a figure of speech, a way of thinking about a long series of small, cement dwellings we occupied as one fictional home.

It was my father, however, who turned the wheel, his job that rotated us to so many different places. He was an aviator, first in the Marines, later in the Army. When he came home from his extended absences—missions, they were called—the rooms shrank around him. There wasn’t enough air. We didn’t breathe as freely as we did when he was gone, not because he was mean or demanding but because we worshipped him. Like satellites my sisters and I orbited him at a distance, waiting for the chance to come closer, to show him things we’d made, accept gifts, hear his stories. My mother wasn’t at the center of things anymore. She hovered, maneuvered, arranged, corrected. She was first lady, the dame in waiting. He was the center point of our circle, a flier, a winged sentry who spent most of his time far up over our heads. When he was home, the house was definitely his.

These were the early years of the Cold War. It was a time of vivid fears, pictured nowadays in photos of kids hunkered under their school desks. My sisters and I did that. The phrase “air raid drill” rang hard—the double-A sound a cold, metallic twang, ending with ill. It meant rehearsal for a time when you might get burnt by the air you breathed.

Every day we heard practice rounds of artillery fire and ordinance on the near horizon. We knew what all this training was for. It was to keep the world from ending. Our father was one of many dads who sweat at soldierly labor, part of an arsenal kept at the ready to scare off nuclear annihilation of life on earth. When we lived on post, my sisters and I saw uniformed men marching in straight lines everywhere. This was readiness, the soldiers rehearsing against Armageddon. The rectangular buildings where the commissary, the PX, the bowling alley, and beauty shop were housed had fallout shelters in the basements, marked with black and yellow wheels, the civil defense insignia. Our dad would often leave home for several days on maneuvers, readiness exercises in which he and other men played war games designed to match the visions of big generals and political men. Visions of how a Russian air and ground attack would happen. They had to be ready for it.

A clipped, nervous rhythm kept time on military bases. It was as if you needed to move efficiently to keep up with things, to be ready yourself, even if you were just a kid. We were chased by the feeling that life as we knew it could change in an hour.

This was the posture. On your mark, get set. But there was no go. It was a policy of meaningful waiting. Meaningful because it was the waiting itself that counted—where you did it, how many of the necessities you had, how long you could keep it up. Imagining long, sunless days with nothing to do but wait for an all-clear sign or for the threatening, consonant-heavy sounds of a foreign language overhead, I taught myself to pray hard.

– Excerpted from Fighter Pilot’s Daughter by Mary Lawlor, Rowman and Littlefield, 2013. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author

Mary Lawlor is author of a memoir, Fighter Pilot’s Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War (Bloomsbury 2015) and two books of cultural criticism, Recalling the Wild: Naturalism and the Closing of the American West (Rutgers UP 2000) and Public Native America (Rutgers UP 2006). She studied at the American University in Paris, the University of Maryland, and New York University. She divides her time between Easton, Pennsylvania and Gaucin, Spain. Her novel, The Translators, is set in 12^th century Spain and fictionalizes the experiences of Robert of Ketton, first translator of the Koran into Latin. She hopes to see it out next year. In the meantime, she has started a second novel, The Women’s Hospital, set in 18^th century Spain and inspired by the life story of an Irish woman whose family moved to Cádiz, escaping English oppression in their own country.

╰┈➤ You can visit her website at https://www.marylawlor.net/.

Connect with her on social media at:

╰┈➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mary.lawlor.186/ 

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