I’ve spent the last 21 years in the company of a golden retriever, all through my career as a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer – and ever since I left the paper in 2015 to write memoirs. I wrote a memoir for an Iranian child soldier, a memoir about my childhood beekeeping with my grandfather in Big Sur, and it was only a matter of time before I turned to my dog for inspiration. After two perfectly happy golden retrievers, Edie’s extreme anxiety baffled me: I hired trainers, behaviorists, specialist veterinarians, read everything I could on the canine brain, tried CBD oil, and even a pet psychic to understand her emotions.
As I’m writing this, my golden retriever Edie is resting her head in my lap, eyes closed in contentment. Domesticated dogs have learned to love humans because we feed and shelter them, of course, but now that I’m living with my third golden retriever, I’m certain there’s something deeper happening. I just can’t prove it. But canine behaviorist Clive Wynne is using his own scientific lab, DNA tests, measuring oxytocin levels, and embarking (pun oh so intended) on a globe-hopping research trip with a stop at a wolf sanctuary (!) to prove that I’m right - dogs really do care about us. I feel so smug.
A pioneering canine behaviorist draws on cutting-edge research to show that a single, simple trait—the capacity to love—is what makes dogs such perfect companions for humans, and explains how we can better reciprocate their affection.
“Lively and fascinating . . . The reader comes away cheered, better informed, and with a new and deeper appreciation for our amazing canine companions and their enormous capacity for love.” —Cat Warren, New York Times best-selling author of What the Dog Knows
Does your dog love you?
Every dog lover knows the feeling. The nuzzle of a dog’s nose, the warmth of them lying…
I’ve always loved mysteries and puzzles and have been an avid mystery reader since devouring all the Nancy Drew books at our library. There’s such satisfaction that comes from solving a mystery. When I started writing, my faithful golden retriever was always resting at my feet. She was the inspiration and the reason I chose to include dogs in all my books. Having a dog alongside my character allows me to show more depth in the humans in my stories and reveal weaknesses and vulnerabilities they may not be able to show others. I hope you enjoy my top picks as much as I have.
I love this series that features Andy Carpenter, a defense attorney, and his golden retriever Tara. I enjoy the realistic and procedural portions of the book concerning the legal case, this one involving Andy’s father from years ago. Andy’s dad was the District Attorney on Andy’s current death row appeals case, which creates an interesting conflict—the first of many in this exciting case. I think I’m drawn to it because of Andy’s connection to his dad. My dad and I bat around ideas when I’m writing my mysteries, since he’s been in law enforcement for decades.
I also like the subplot of learning more about Andy, his history, and family, since it makes his character feel more realistic and the addition of his golden retriever makes it a must-read for me.
Defense attorney Andy Carpenter manages to sail through any tough situation, whether inside the courtroom or in his personal life. But this all changes when his marriage breaks up and his father suddenly dies, leaving him distraught - and 22 million dollars richer. Andy doesn't know how his father accumulated this fortune or why his father begged him to take on the appeal of a death row prisoner. With the help of his newfound love, P.I. Laurie Collins, and the support of his golden retriever companion, Tara, he discovers a link between three of the most prominent men in New…
Although I’ve worked in many professions and industries, a common theme in all my jobs is that I love helping people succeed in their careers. I’ve started or sponsored employee networks that focused on professional development, I’m a certified coach that focuses on propelling a client’s career, and I am a conference keynote speaker on the topics of careers and leadership. Everyone deserves to have a great career that makes them want to jump out of bed on Monday morning and that provides a good living and lifestyle. I love to make that happen!
You hear the word “talent” used in organizations all the time, with the idea that great workers are talented in ways that others lack.
But is that true? Are all good workers “talented?”
In this book, Geoff Colvin dispels the idea that specific natural talents make great performers at work and instead shows us how the secrets and principles of extraordinary performance that can be used to excel in your career.
Since its publication ten years ago, businesspeople, investors, doctors, parents, students, athletes, and musicians at every level have adopted the maxims of Talent Is Overrated to get better at what they’re passionate about. Now this classic has been updated and revised with new research and takeaways to help anyone achieve even greater performance.
Why are certain people so incredibly great at what they do? Most of us think we know the answer—but we’re almost always wrong. That’s important, because if we’re wrong on this crucial question, then we have zero chance of getting significantly better at…
Some of my fondest memories have been of curling up with the family dog and reading a good book. This started as a child with our golden retriever OJ, and continues today with Lolo, our sweet but spoiled German shorthaired pointer. Dogs are such wonderful companions, always up for anything: hiking, exploring, car rides, sitting on the couch, and lounging. It’s no surprise, then, that not only do I love reading books featuring dogs I’ve also included a canine sidekick in each of the nine thrillers that I’ve written. I hope you enjoy this dogged list of mysteries and thrillers as much as I have.
My first experience with a Dean Koontz book was Intensity and wow, did that thriller live up to its title. The same goes for Koontz’s, suspense-packed Devoted – the perfect descriptor for Kipp, a loyal golden retriever who has that magical innate ability dogs seem to have of communicating wordlessly with their humans. At the beginning of the book, we meet Woody, an eleven-year-old non-verbal child with autism who is confident that his father’s untimely death was no accident, but an evil entity that is now after him and his mother. While Woody’s terror grows, Kipp begins his tireless search for Woody, knowing that he could be the only one who can deliver the boy to safety.
Told with Koontz’s signature page-turning suspense, Devoted is a heart-tugging, immersive thrill-ride, best experienced with your canine best friend snuggled up right next to you.
One boy with the power to save the world. One man with the will to destroy it.
The chilling, unputdownable new standalone thriller from Dean Koontz, the master of suspense.
'The master of our darkest dreams' The Times
A mother, a boy, and a desperate battle against the night.
Woody Bookman hasn't spoken a word in his eleven years of life. Not when his father died in a freak accident. Not when his mother Megan tells him she loves him.
For Megan, keeping her boy safe and happy is what matters. But Woody believes a monstrous evil is behind his…
Kat Albrecht-Thiessen is a police detective-turned-pet detective and is the founder / director of the Missing Animal Response Network (MARN). Since 1997, Kat has worked search dogs trained to find lost pets. She is widely known as the leading authority on lost pet recovery training. Kat is a regular speaker at animal welfare conferences. She and her search dogs have appeared on Animal Planet and articles about her work have appeared in People, Reader’s Digest, Parade and many other publications.In 2005, Kat launched the first-ever pet detective academy and since that time has trained over 800 volunteer and professional pet detectives from across the world.
This is a well-written story about a dog named Cormac, a Golden Retriever, who went missing from his home due to fireworks and the extensive search his guardian made in his attempts to recover his best friend. The owner following leads that came in and how he recovered his dog are an amazing read.
Cormac -- a dark-red Golden Retriever who has always been afraid of thunderstorms and lightning flashes -- runs away one stormy night while his master is away. So begins a strange adventure that lands Cormac in the back of a red pick-up truck driven by a mysterious woman, takes him to a series of dog pounds and rescue shelters, and ultimately brings him to the suburbs of Connecticut. Meanwhile, his owner, devastated and trying to juggle his family and his new novel, becomes determined to solve the "dog-napping" case, watching his small-town community come together in search of his lost…
As a painfully shy child, I found friendship and ultimately my own voice reading about, and spending time with, animals—especially dogs. Dogs didn’t judge, didn’t expect anything from me, and I never had to worry about what to say to them. They gave me the gift of their presence and time to practice communication—gifts that ultimately led me to obtain a master’s degree in counseling and work as a children’s grief counselor. Thankfully I overcame my extreme shyness. And there is no denying the role that dogs—and books about dogs—have played in my life. I hope this list helps you find that same comfort and inspiration.
Although it’s technically considered a children’s book, Lassie Come-Home is one of those special stories that crosses generations, cultures, and time periods.
As a child desperate for a dog, I loved imagining I had a dog as devoted as Lassie—and one as willing to traverse all manner of obstacles to come and find me should we ever become separated!
As an adult, I was struck by how much Lassie endured to find her way back to Joe, and how, even when presented with a comfortable life somewhere else, she chose to keep moving forward—back to the boy who held her heart.
Sold in financial desperation to a wealthy duke living in the far north of Scotland, a collie undertakes a 1000-mile journey in order to be reunited with her former master in Yorkshire.
I love
a good mystery, and this first in the series from Tammy L. Grace is a favorite of
mine. Full of twists and turns, with suspects around every corner, it also has
characters who pulled me in and made me care about them.
The main character is
a lawyer-turned-private detective named Coop, who has a humorous snark about
him. Coop’s loyal golden retriever is always by his side. His Aunt Camille
provides a roof over his head on her huge estate and keeps him well-fed with
all her southern cooking.
The food descriptions will have your mouth watering. The
quirky supporting cast of characters gets involved in Coop’s cases (whether he
wants them to or not), and together, they solve what seems to be an unsolvable
murder.
This is a fast-paced mystery that kept me
guessing until the end and made me want to continue the series.
A murdered music mogul. A high-and-mighty widow. To take down a killer, he’ll shake Nashville to its knees.
***Gold Medal Mystery Winner in the Global eBook Awards***
When private detective Cooper “Coop” Harrington meets record label mogul Grayson Taylor at a swank gathering of country music artists and politicians he never imagines he’ll be investigating his brutal murder less than twenty-four hours later.
The suspects are plentiful. More than a handful of people could have wanted him dead. Retained by Taylor’s widow, Coop works alongside his best friend and Chief of Detectives, Ben Mason. The investigation leads Coop and Ben…
I'm a writer with a passion for telling a story. My passions for characters in a novel are anything that circumvents my ADD, and holds my attention. I don’t consider myself to be a very complex person, however, since my retirement from retail management I now not only have more time to enjoy the works of other authors, but pursue my own works as well. As an author of a sci/fi-fantasy, I’ve discovered that I not only enjoy works in my own genre, but favor those that have an air of mystery about them as well. I've thoroughly enjoyed the Avery Nolan Adventure series, Game of Thrones, and the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.
The Avery Nolan Adventures series was recommended to me by my cousin, who said that she really enjoyed reading them. I believe this author to be extremely talented. I found her stories to be adventurous, mind-provoking fantasies, very much to my liking. Her characters are well defined, her stories well developed, and I find them totally relatable to my kind of genre. Hamilton’s stories reminded me of a cross between Game of Thrones and an old Irish or Scottish fairy tale set in Northern California's modern-day Lake Tahoe area. They are filled not only with adventure, but intrigue, laughter, romance, and heart-filled compassion. I loved the series and am truly looking forward to finding out if she plans to continue Avery Nolan’s adventures. Hamilton has also written a series of mysteries that are worth taking a look at.
Avery Nolan has a secret. A secret she guards fiercely.
But everyone has secrets. Her mother who draws pictures of nightmarish creatures. Her grandmother with her padlocked shed. Her student with the pale eyes and brooding father.
Leaving Sacramento after her divorce, Avery retreats to Tahoe with her golden retriever, Basil, looking for change, but as her grandmother always told her, “Be careful what you wish for.” After Basil discovers a hidden clearing with three standing stones, everything that Avery thinks she knows is suddenly upended.
Each move she makes brings her closer to a world imagined only in fairytales…
I’ve spent the last 21 years in the company of a golden retriever, all through my career as a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer – and ever since I left the paper in 2015 to write memoirs. I wrote a memoir for an Iranian child soldier, a memoir about my childhood beekeeping with my grandfather in Big Sur, and it was only a matter of time before I turned to my dog for inspiration. After two perfectly happy golden retrievers, Edie’s extreme anxiety baffled me: I hired trainers, behaviorists, specialist veterinarians, read everything I could on the canine brain, tried CBD oil, and even a pet psychic to understand her emotions.
Put a golden retriever on a book cover and I’m sold. From the opening scene, when Julie has a panic attack in her New York kitchen, I was pulled into this heart-cracking memoir about a young woman haunted by unresolved childhood trauma. She tries all the usual methods to combat depression, from therapy to Zoloft, yet the magic pill is found in the love of a golden retriever named Bunker. Having something else to take care of helped Julie get outside her own head. I felt a kinship with Julie; that sometimes the way a dog looks at you with such love in their eyes is the only thing that can make up for the ways we weren’t seen as kids.
An honest and deeply moving debut memoir about a young woman's battle with depression and how her dog saved her life
A New York Times Bestseller
"Dog Medicine simply has to be your next must-read." -Cheryl Strayed
At twenty-two, Julie Barton collapsed on her kitchen floor in Manhattan. She was one year out of college and severely depressed. Summoned by Julie's incoherent phone call, her mother raced from Ohio to New York and took her home.
Haunted by troubling childhood memories, Julie continued to sink into suicidal depression. Psychiatrists, therapists, and family tried to intervene, but nothing reached her until…
I love writing historical fiction. I enjoy the research and creating long-lost worlds filled with little-known historical accuracies that intrigue my readers. It is no surprise then that I enjoy reading about the future - the other side of the coin. I always find it interesting to see how writers create a post-apocalyptic society. What was the catastrophic event? (TCE) What caused it and how do the different characters react to adversity when their old world is taken away from them? Inevitably they have to survive in the new system but will they have learned their lesson or will they return to their old ways?
TCE here is a virus that leaves just one woman alive. I found this quite irritating at first because the law of averages would say there HAD to be at least a handful of other survivors. The story features a woman who would take to her bed for the day if she broke a fingernail. I enjoyed seeing a female character in this role although she has a tendency to be a bit wet. She spends the first few weeks post-TCE breaking into nightclubs, drug dens, and museums and getting smashed. Set in London, it’s a great travelogue for this brilliant city. I started to warm towards her when she finally pulls herself together and we watch as she learns the skills needed to survive.
It's December 2023 and the world as we know it has ended.
The human race has been wiped out by a virus called 6DM ('Six Days Maximum' - the longest you've got before your body destroys itself).
But somehow, in London, one woman is still alive. A woman who has spent her whole life compromising what she wants, hiding how she feels and desperately trying to fit in. A woman who is entirely unprepared to face a future on her own.
Now, with only an abandoned golden retriever for company,…
