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Once upon a time, when I heard that GRRM was writing stories that took place years before the events in A Song Of Fire And Ice, I grumbled that he should be focused on finishing the The Winds of Winter.

I was wrong.

You won't find Starks in these stories, but it was still delightful to step back into the world of Westeros with Dunk and Egg. I enjoyed reading their adventures in the riverlands and visiting places that we haven't seen in the other books. This was a fairly quick read, and once I started, I really couldn't put it down.

I was old enough to remember that day. I had gone out to dinner with my family, and when I got home, I logged onto AOL Instant Messenger. I quickly got a message from a friend: did you hear about Diana's car crash? I tuned the little 19-inch television in my bedroom to CNN and stayed up all night, watching the news breaking bit by bit until it was officially confirmed that Diana was dead.

This book does an excellent job of breaking down what was going on in Diana's life before the crash and how the aftermath of her death unfolded. I was particularly struck by how the Queen reportedly kept asking for any royal jewelry to be returned to the palace while Diana lying alone in a Paris hospital. Ironically, the Queen passed away just days after I finished this book, and I wondered if anyone made a fuss about collecting the bits of jewelry she had loaned other family members.

While this is more of background material than an actual biography of Prince Philip, it really helps to fill in the gaps of his story and the motivations of his family. I had read in some of the letters of Princess Alice that she thought her son had a good shot at becoming King of the Hellenes. Instead, the birth of the future Constantine II pushed Philip away from an unsteady Greek throne and towards a future in Great Britain. More importantly, it helped me understand the ups and downs of Philip's father and his eventual decision to have his son educated in England instead of Greece.

Oh man, this one was kind of intense.

Jules is down on her luck -- laid off from her job, came home to find her boyfriend cheating on her, and now collecting unemployment while sleeping on a friend's couch. Then she gets an opportunity that seems too good to be true. She finds a job as an apartment sitter that pays her an absurd amount of cash to stay in a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park. So what if there are a lot of intrusive questions about her lack of family or anyone else that might come looking for her? And so they have a weird requirement about sleeping in the apartment every night with no visitors allowed? And what's with the interest in her medical history?

But then Jules starts talking to another apartment sitter in the building, and the next day, the girl disappears. Can Jules find out what really happened to her new friend before she suffers a similar fate? Even if you lock every door, you can't stay hidden when an old Gothic building hides lots of other secrets…

I devoured another Riley Sager book in about a day, and I probably would have done the same with this one if work hadn't gotten in the way.

Mia is a high school junior who likes watching true crime documentaries, not the rom-coms her friends pick out on movie night. But then her older sister needs Mia to find a date for her upcoming wedding, so Mia's friends come up with The Meet Cute Project to see which one can find Mia the perfect date. Mia really just wants to focus on her math club and swim team activities, not to mention navigating family relationships when her sister has suddenly turned into a bridezilla. But along the way she learns a few lessons when the perfect wedding date turns into something more.

This was a free read this month on the Riveted by Simon Teen web site. I had a little trouble getting into it at first, but after chapter 4, I was able to keep reading straight until the end. The setting threw me off a bit. This felt like it takes place in a small town but is actually set in Chicago. Other than the references to Lake Michigan views and the Riviera Theater, I didn't get the sense of an urban landscape. But that is a small nitpick.