By Ande Jacobson The twelfth Kate Burkholder novel, Outsider, delves into Kate’s more recent past. The Prologue starts with a deadly and graphic raid where the target, Gina Colorosa, barely escapes. Gina is the person who helped Kate the most when she first left the plain life. At present though,...
By Ande Jacobson I’ve kept a journal since I was a child, although in recent years I’ve not made many entries. In some ways, the essays I write have taken its place helping me delve into things that I’m thinking about. Sometimes that means writing up thoughts on books I’ve just read or delving...
By Ande Jacobson In Linda Castillo’s eleventh Kate Burkholder novel, Shamed, the Amish don’t always get it right even when their intentions are noble. Seven years before the main story takes place, something happened in the middle of the night that would later haunt a family in Painters Mill...
By Ande Jacobson Linda Castillo’s tenth Kate Burkholder novel is A Gathering of Secrets. This time the Amish community goes full vigilante trying to right a horrible wrong. The prologue begins with the suicide of a young woman on the cusp of adulthood with her whole life ahead of her, though it...
By Ande Jacobson Linda Castillo’s ninth Kate Burkholder novel is Down a Dark Road. This time, Kate finds herself face-to-face with an old childhood friend in a desperate situation. The Prologue starts out two years earlier detailing the commission of a horrific crime. Kate’s childhood friend,...
By Ande Jacobson We are quickly approaching the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. That should be cause for celebration. 250 years ago, the fledgling colonies did something momentous. They threw off the bonds of tyranny and royal rule and emphatically declared that they were...
By Ande Jacobson Linda Castillo’s eighth Kate Burkholder novel is Among the Wicked. This time, Kate goes undercover back into the plain life. After Rachel Esh, a fifteen-year-old Amish girl, is found frozen to death in the woods near a small rural New York town, Ohio BCI agents John Tomasetti and...
By Ande Jacobson I’ve long held that it doesn’t take faith for somebody to be good, or more to the point, to be a good person. What exactly is a good person though? Realistically a good person is one who treats others with respect and who sees beyond their own nose striving to do what … Continue...
By Ande Jacobson Linda Castillo’s seventh Kate Burkholder novel is After the Storm. In a sense, this book feels like a brief respite from the shocking crimes that Castillo has brought forth in the series so far, at least early on. Of course, when Kate Burkholder is involved things get complicated...
By Ande Jacobson Linda Castillo’s sixth Kate Burkholder novel is The Dead Will Tell. This time, Castillo takes readers on a different kind of journey. It still heavily involves the Amish community, and the crimes are serious involving a mystery that at first appears to be almost supernatural. It’s...