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Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2099 KP) rated Easter Basket Murder in Books

Jan 25, 2024 (Updated Jan 25, 2024)  
Easter Basket Murder
Easter Basket Murder
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Here’s to a Deadly Easter
Kensington has called on their go to trio for three new holiday themed mysteries, this time featuring Easter. Up first, Leslie Meier’s Lucy Stone gets involved with a promotion for the local businesses leads to the theft of a golden Easter egg. Then Lee Hollis’s Hayley Powell finds the Easter Bunny dead at a community Easter egg hunt. Finally, Barbara Ross’s Julia Snowden’s Easter on the family island off the coast of Maine is interrupted when she finds a man in coat tails dead in the garden. Then, a few minutes later, he’s gone.

All three stories have fun with the theme, and present it in some clever ways. As is often the case, I found the first story the weakest, but the mysteries in the other two stories are strong. Still, I was engaged no matter which story I was reading. All three have some great Easter elements that made me feel like it was spring. And I love the community aspects we get. I’m only a regular reader of Barbara Ross’s series, and I was interested in the updates we got on the characters there. If you are looking for some new dishes to serve this year, you’ll be interested in the recipes we get with the second and third story. Each story is roughly 100 pages, so you can read them in a sitting or two. Overall, this is a fun anthology you’ll be happy hopped on to your to be read pile.
  
    Monkey Island Tales 2 HD

    Monkey Island Tales 2 HD

    Games and Entertainment

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Tomb Raider (2018)
Tomb Raider (2018)
2018 | Action, Adventure
The third film in the “Tomb Raider” film series has arrived and much like
the recent entries in the video game series that inspire it; the film
serves as a reboot of the franchise.

This time out Alicia Vikander takes over the title role from Angelina
Jolie and brings us a younger and far less experienced Lara Croft who
toils as a bike messenger struggling to get by in London. She has a feisty
and competitive nature but is haunted by the absence of her father
(Dominic West), who has been missing for seven years and is presumed dead.
As such, Lara is his sole heir and is being pressured to sign documents
that will legally declare him dead and turn over a vast corporation and
fortune to Lara. True to her nature, Lara resists this as she is
unwilling to move on from her father and cannot bring herself to declare
him dead and take her inheritance.

In time Lara learns that her father was also a dabbler in the supernatural
and artifacts and may have vanished trying to find a secluded tomb on a
remote Japanese island.

Undaunted, Lara sets off to get answers and finds herself in the company
of a boat Captain named Lu Ren (Daniel Wu), who reluctantly takes her to
the dangerous island. Danger arrives first in a storm then in the form of
a Mercenary named Matthias Vogel (Walton Goggins), who wants to find the
mysterious tomb as well for nefarious reasons and will stop at nothing
including murder to get it.

Lara is soon faced with the fight of her life as she must battle Vogel and
his men as well as the island and other forces in order to survive and
protect the world.

The film moves at a pace slower than you might expect as the first half of
the film is mostly setup but there are a few moments of action included to
keep things interesting. While many of the action sequences may seem like
they are either restrained or influenced from other films, they do still
work and entertain. While some may call this a female “Indiana Jones”
film, Lara is very much her own character as she has a spunk and grit that
makes her equal adapt in a cultured setting as she is solving a dangerous
trap or mixing it up with deadly threats.

Vikander also portrays Lara with a sense of vulnerability as she does get
injured, bruised and tormented. This is not an unstoppable action machine,
but rather a real person who knows there is a time use your brain and then
a time to take action, but is also remorseful about the consequences of
her actions at times.

The film does move to a satisfying finale and sets up a further chapter
very well. There are some great nods to prior games in the film which was
refreshing as I joked to my wife during some of the more intense scenes
that I feel like I need to be pushing the X and O button on our Dualshock
4 controllers to help Lara run faster and jump higher.

In the end “Tomb Raider” is a satisfying if safe reboot for the franchise
that I expect should keep fans of the series happy. I do think that
audiences in North America may want a bit more action but the film should
play well in the Asian and European markets.

http://sknr.net/2018/03/16/tomb-raider/
  
    Monkey Island Tales 3 HD

    Monkey Island Tales 3 HD

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    Karuba

    Karuba

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    Tabletop Game

    Finally! After a long boat trip, the treasure hunters have reached the island of Karuba and can go...

I(
Isolation (Faye Longchamp, #9)
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
***NOTE: I received a free review copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review***

Faye Longchamp lives on a small island with her family. Going to the mainland for breakfast one morning, her husband and recently-released-from-jail father-in-law find a local woman dead in the water off her restaurant’s pier. Fearing that her father-in-law might make an easy scapegoat, Faye starts looking into the murder

This book started out slow, and I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. In the beginning of the story, we learn that Faye has recently suffered a miscarriage, and she’s having trouble coming to terms with the loss. Faye muddles around in a haze for several chapters, but as she starts to come back to herself, the book picks up pace as well. Once it gets going and you look back on the slow beginning, you can see that it is fitting considering Faye’s state of mind. I’m glad I didn’t give up during the slow part, because it finished up as a quick-moving, can’t-stop-until-I-know-who-did-it mystery.