Kate Padilla has long enjoyed reading, and for the last decade, combined her writing skills and book pleasure to review books for Authorlink.
Kate’s journalism career began in high school with a weekly column in her hometown newspaper, and later, after graduating from the University of Wyoming, she moved into newspapers as a reporter and editor and also as a radio news director. She subsequently worked as a U.S. Senate staffer helping write legislation and then as a public lands manager for the Department of Interior until her retirement. Now, she is an award-winning poet, artist and writer living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her passion is exploring, traveling to places not often frequented by tourists, ranging from Albania in the Balkans to isolated Honduran islands in the Caribbean.
Not surprisingly Kate favors foreign authors because they immerse her in other worlds and cultures, books such as those written by Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, who writes about the Arab world, or Milan Kundera, from Czechoslovakia. Any book written by women with Latin or Mexican roots is a must, she says, listing authors Isabel Allende and Sandra Cisneros as idols. She never passes up a poetry book sent her way, though they are a challenge to review because the poetry is subjective. She also enjoys a good detective novel, and at times, magical fanaticism. Her review favorites include offerings from the Library of America, a nonprofit that collects and preserves writings from America’s key authors. If she had a genre she doesn’t prefer, it would likely be most Western novels. Her pet peeves are preachy religious or moralizing books, those that demean women or have disregard for the environment.
Hunt Them Down, Simon Gervais, Thomas & Mercer - “Hunt Them Down,” by Simon Gervais, is a crime thriller riddled with immense and constant firepower, bodies strewn from Chicago to Miami, and crashing to a conclusion in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where one of the drug cartel’s most vicious leaders plots horrific revenge.
The Future i Female!, Lisa Yazek Editor, Library of America - Shocking, disturbing and awe-inspiring is Lisa Yaszek ’s compilation of 25 science fiction and pulp stories, all written by women, in a special publication by The Library of America,The Future is Female! It comes with a warning: Visionary women writers in this landmark anthology may permanently alter your perception of American science fiction.
The Last Kids on Earth and the Cosmic Beyond, Max Brallier, Viking - Jack Sullivan is back, fighting monsters and zombies (Boosh! Mergh! Boom!) with his trio of friends in Max Brallier’s The Last Kids on Earth and the Cosmic Beyond, the fourth in this popular illustrated youth-thriller novel series.
Pride, Ibi Zoboi, Harper Collins - Ibi Zoboi has successfully “remixed” Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice into a contemporary coming-of-age love story of race and family.
The Invention of Race in the Middle Ages, Geraldine Heng, Cambridge University Press - “The Invention of Race in Middle Ages” challenges “race theorists” who claim “race” identification is a modern phenomenon. Rather, as author Geraldine Heng’s research back to European Middle Ages reveals, it was actually then that different race distinctions emerged
The Lying King, Alex Beard, Greenleaf Book Group - This thin and nicely illustrated volume looks like a children’s book, but the tale inside “The Lying King” offers a timely and uncanny resemblance to our current adult times.
All This I Will Give To You, Dolores Redondo, Amazon Crossing - The crime occurs in Galicia, Spain, where even in the 20th century, aristocratic families expect to be recognized as nobility and granted extraordinary privileges.
The Masterpiece, Fiona Davis - Fiona Davis’ “The Masterpiece” is a light, romantic historical novel about the journey of two women, fifty years apart in age, who discover self-achievement as their lives collide when New York’s Grand Central Terminal was facing demolition.
Bandwidth, Eliot Peper, 47 North - Eerily, Eliot Peper’s futuristic-thriller, Bandwidth, mirrors today’s reality with computer hackers manipulating voters, government policies made via Twitter and world leaders confronting climate change.
Elmore Leonard: Westerns, Terrence Rafferty Editor, Library of America - Generation X folks more likely recognize Elmore Leonard as a pulp-fiction crime novelist and screenwriter focused on the “mob” and Mexican drug cartels, but his early writing zeroed in on America’s “wild west.”