The Buffalo Bills pulls off a remarkable 36-31 win in Houston last Sunday, but now have a quick turn-around game with the Detroit Lions who won in overtime over the New Orleans Saints.
This Thursday night game is special because it is not only the Home Opener for the Bills, but the first game regular season game in their new stadium. Look for the Bare Naked Ladies to sing the Canadian National Anthem tonight. The Bills are favored by 4 points, but I’m expecting a close game.
Back in 1991, I bought this Pulphouse Short Story Paperback #9. This slim, 50 page volume featured Kate Wilhelm’s The Girl Who Fell Into the Sky, The story was first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction in October 1986. It went on to win the a Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 1986.
The story is set in the magical wheatfields of Kansas. A researcher named Lorna is engaged in an oral history project. She uncovers the dark, hidden secrets of an old ruined town with a grim Past.
Pulphouse published 60 Pulphouse Short Story Paperbacks. I only own a few. I wish I’d bought more between 1991 and 1992. GRADE: B
PULPHOUSE SHORT STORY SERIES:
The music in BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB is entirely in Spanish with the musical styles of son, danzón, and bolero. All of the live band perform on the stage with the singers and the dancers. The musical opened on Broadway at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in 2025. The touring company Diane and I saw at Shea’s Performing Arts Center over the weekend delivered an outstanding performance.
The show’s cast album won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards. If you enjoy Latin music, BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB will delight you with its energy and flare. GRADE: A
Act I
Act II
Clair Stapleton (the Bard of GOOGLE) worked 11 years for GOOGLE–from 2007 to 2019. In that time, she worked for some Good Bosses and some Bad Bosses. Stapleton does a nice job describing what GOOGLE was like during those years as the corporation changed and grew more powerful…and richer.
In 2018, Stapleton helped organize the famous GOOGLE WALKOUT–a protest over the company’s handling (or more accurately, mis-handling) of sexual harassment issues. Over 20,000 employees showed up! Suddenly, Stapleton was a national figure and as a result, her job changed radically. Basically, GOOGLE forced Stapleton out.
From a young, innocent, enthusiastic GOOGLE employee, Stapleton becomes more and more disturbed by the corporate changes over the years and the treatment of GOOGLE employees–especially women. For most of her time at GOOGLE, the corporation was a “boys club” and women were an after thought in chain of command.
I was fascinated by the inside story of GOOGLE. You would be, too. GRADE: A
The Bills have lost 6 straight games to the Houston Texans. So it’s no surprise the Bills are 1 1/2 point underdogs. The Bills have a new Head Coach, Joe Brady. They have a new Defensive Coordinator in Jim Leonhard. They traded with the Chicago Bears to acquire wide receiver D. J. Moore. General Manager Brandon Beane drafted a ton of defensive players. Will this make a difference? We’ll start to find out today.
How will your favorite NFL team perform today?
Diane and I have watched THE MARLOW MURDER CLUB on PBS. The first two Seasons introduced the three women characters: Judith Potts, a retired archaeologist, sets crosswords for the local newspaper. Suzie Harris is a professional dog walker, while Becks Starling, a former music industry executive, is struggling to adapt to her new life as the vicar’s wife. Together, the three women are able to solve murders that baffle the Police. If you’re in the mood for a cozy mysteries series, this is it!
The Marlow Murder Club is a British-American cosy mystery comedy-drama television series based on Robert Thorogood‘s series of novels set in the English town of Marlow, Buckinghamshire. GRADE: Incomplete, but trending towards a B+
Series 3 consists of three stories, each split into two 45-minute episodes in both the UK and the US.
| No. overall | No. in series | Title [7] | Directed by | Written by | Original release date [a] | U.S. air date [6] | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | 1 | “The Queen of Poisons” | Steve Barron | Daniel Rusteau and Robert Thorogood | 18 March 2026 | 9/6/26 | |||||||
| 10 | 2 | N/A | |||||||||||
| Geoffrey Truman, the Mayor of Marlow, collapses and dies at a council meeting, and it is discovered that he was poisoned with aconite.Guest stars: Peter Davison as Geoffrey Truman; Sarah Alexander as Sophia Hollingbury. | |||||||||||||
| 11 | 3 | “Murder in the Dark” | Steve Barron | Amy Reith | 25 March 2026 | 9/13 | |||||||
| 12 | 4 | N/A | |||||||||||
| Becks’ university reunion game of Murder in the Dark takes a dark turn when one of the participants is found stabbed to death.Guest stars: Montserrat Lombard as Una; Harry Enfield as Hector. | |||||||||||||
| 13 | 5 | “An Appetite for Murder” | Katherine Churcher | Julia Gilbert | 1 April 2026 | 9/20 | |||||||
| 14 | 6 | N/A | |||||||||||
| An unpopular celebrity chef is stabbed to death in his restaurant kitchen just before his cookbook launch party. Becks has issues with her mother-in-law while an old admirer of Judith returns to see her.Guest stars: Cherie Lunghi as Marian Starling; Susan Lynch as Isla de Souza. | |||||||||||||
Tim Sullivan and his DS George Cross series of mysteries are emerging from the Land of Forgotten to the Land of Increasing Popularity. Could a TV series happen in the Future? I hope so!
I’ve reviewed several of Tim Sullivan’s mysteries here and here. The Bookseller (2025) and The Tailor (2026) are the seventh and eighth books in the George Cross series.
It’s not often that a bookseller or a tailor get murdered, but Tim Sullivan loves to pick unusual victims of puzzling crimes for George Cross. Cross is an autistic police detective who has remarkable investigative abilities. He solves crimes that stump other, more experienced, police detectives because of his unique perspective on clues.
In The Bookseller, DS Cross delves into the work of bookselling and the market for rare books to solve the murder. bookseller’s family, acquaintances, and enemies have a mix of motives. On top of the bookseller’s murder, Cross has to deal with the medical problems of his father. GRADE: B+
The Tailor presents a different plot from the previous George Cross mysteries. A tailor is brutally murdered in the toilet aboard a passenger train. His luggage is missing. Cross and his new partner, investigate a baffling crime what takes some international aspects. In addition, Cross has to address new problems with his ailing father. GRADE: A-
Tim Sullivan’s DS George Cross are currently my favorite mystery series. You should give these delightful book a try!
DS Cross Mysteries:
1 The Dentist (2020)
2 The Cyclist (2020)
3 The Patient (2022)
4 The Politician (2022)
5 The Monk (2023)
6 The Teacher (2023)
7 The Bookseller (2025)
The Basket Case (2025)
8 The Tailor (2026)
TRACK LIST:
My sister Eileen fell in love with Patrick Swayze in 1987 when she saw Dirty Dancing. Then, I think Eileen saw Dirty Dancing over a dozen times that year. And, she also played the Dirty Dancing soundtrack a few hundred times.
The Ultimate Dirty Dancing soundtrack from 2003 includes all of the songs from the movie. It’s like a Greatest Hits of the Sixties CD. “Be My Baby” by The Rosettes, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by The Four Seasons, “Do You Love Me” by The Contours, and “Stay” by Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs are just some of the classics from that era.
The song Eileen loved most from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack was “She’s Like the Wind” sung and co-written by Patrick Swayze. In the US, the song went to No. 1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 2 on Cashbox Top 100. Worldwide, it became a top-10 hit in nine other countries.
Do you remember Dirty Dancing? Do you remember these songs? Any favorites? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
In his INTRODUCTION, Robert Silverberg writes about why he prefers to write Science Fiction in the novella format over short stories (he’s written over 400 of them) and novels (he’s written over a 100 of them).
These six novellas are presented in chronological order so you can see Silverberg’s development as a writer from the 1950s to the 1990s.
“The Valley Beyond Time” presents a group of humans and aliens kidnapped from across the Galaxy and held on an unknown planet by The Watcher. “How It Was When the Past Went Away” shows what happens when people lose their memories. “Going” follows a composer who is a hundred and thirty-six years old in a Future where population control encourages older people to “Go.”
The title story, “This is the Road” is a harrowing story of a small group of people trying to escape from an invading army. “Lion Time in Timbuctoo” concerns a Future set in an alternate history where the Black Death of 1348 devastates Europe, leaving Western civilization too weak to colonize Africa.
“In Another Country” is the best-known story in this collection. It was written as a “sequel” to C. L. Moore’s “Vintage Season” and published as TOR Double #18. Time travel is tricky…
If you’re a Robert Silverberg fan, you might already have all of these novellas in other collections. But, if you’re a reader who wants to explore the excellence of Robert Silverberg, This is the Road is the perfect book to do that. GRADE: B+
Laser-Focused Science Fiction (Foreword by John Shirley) — vii
Introduction by Robert Silverberg — ix
I. Valley Beyond Time (1957) — 1
II. How It Was When the Past Went Away (1969) — 41
III. Going (1971) — 99
IV. This is the Road (1973) — 147
V. Lion Time in Timbuctoo (1990) — 203
VI. In Another Country (1990) — 267
About the Author — 337
It’s 1987 and the Cold War is still…cold. Ryan Reynolds plays Lieutenant Troy Kelly (no relation), a Navy pilot whose spy plane is shot down over Russia…deep into Russia. Fortunately, Kelly is rescued by a former KGB agent called Nick (Kenneth Branagh) who admires America as much as he despises the KGB. Together, the two men make their way across the rugged Russian wildness with the KGB not far behind.
When Kelly is able to contact the Moscow Embassy, he’s told the U.S. Military can’t send a Rescue Team to save him because the spy plane was a secret. So Kelly and Nick are faced with getting out of Russia on their own.
I really liked Kennth Branagh’s performance as a Russian. He’s both earnest, funny, and extremely dangerous! Ryan Reynolds is his typical snarky self. Mayday is a combination of Buddy Movie and Chase Movie. I enjoyed it. GRADE: B+
