This is a World War II story about a young girl, Magda, who lives on a farm with her parents and brothers in Czechoslovakia. Born with a large birthmark on her cheek, she’s been teased mercilessly her entire life, eroding her self confidence. During World War II, a...
I was fortunate to have read an early version of Olympus, Texas and have eagerly anticipated its final version since. Author Stacey Swann populates her novel with characters loosely based on Greek gods but with a Texas twang. Olympus, Texas is an insightful look at...
Arsenic and Adobo is the first in the Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery Series. It is a cute cozy mystery with an ever-increasing body count. It stars Lila Macapagal who leaves the big city to return home to Shady Palms to help out at her failing family restaurant. The...
I must admit I read this in one sitting, pulled along by the mysteries that were slowly unveiled. This is a modern gothic novel—which doesn’t read like a debut novel—with elements of the The Stepford Wives, a satirical thriller written in the early 1970s by Ira Levin...
Letters Across the Sea is an account of Canadian history from the Great Depression until shortly after the end of World War II. Molly Ryan, a lass with an Irish background, has loved Max Dreyfus, a Jewish boy, since childhood. During the 1933 Christie Pits Riot in...
In The Angle of Flickering Light, Gina Troisi’s lawyer father is a serial philanderer. Rather than being secretive about his affairs, he tells his two children, five-year-old Gina and her sister, about these indiscretions before he abandons them to marry his...
Daytime Drama is Sarahlyn Bruck’s second novel. In it, Callipe Hart, who’s been an actress since her teens, sees her world crumble when the network cancels her long-running daytime soap opera. She wonders if she’s too old to continue in television, but—with no other...
M.E. Hilliard’s debut novel, The Unkindness of Ravens, grabbed me from the first page. I was hooked by the first person narrator, Greer Hogan, a former New York City high-powered executive who turns into a small town librarian after the death of her husband. Greer’s...
In Times of Rain and War by Camron Wright is a fictionalized World War II historical novel that looks at the British Bomb Disposal Unit and is based, in part, upon diaries written by volunteers. It describes the devastation and destruction of England, particularly...
The Sound between the Notes by Barbara Linn Probst is beautifully-written, engrossing, and emotional journey through a woman’s search for her own identify. Throughout the novel, Susannah’s choices have dramatic effects upon her family. Adopted at birth, the...
Surrender: A Memoir of Nature, Nurture, and Love is beautifully-written, engrossing, and emotional journey through a woman’s search for her own identity. Throughout the memoir, Ms. MacDonald’s choices have rippling effects on herself and her family. Adopted at birth,...
This is another book that has been lingering on my Kindle, and having now read it, I wonder why it took me so long. I would have read this book in one sitting, but my Kindle died at 92%. I raced to my back-up Kindle only to find I’d failed to recharge it. So I had to...
Henry Hayden is a great unreliable, unlikeable character with just enough good within him to be a somewhat likable soul, yet he wreaks a swath of destruction in his wake, from childhood on. Currently he manifests himself as a well-known, prolific writer; but his wife...
The Windsor Knot was an interesting set-up of a mystery, somewhat akin to an Agatha Christie. The switch is that the detective is the Queen of England. As a queen and a nonagenarian, she has limitations on what she can do, both in terms of protocol and her advanced...
Writers seem to be rediscovering the feminist and ace reporter Nellie Bly. A vibrant, stubborn young woman thirsted to become a female journalist during the 1890s when women were relegated to the home. Bly was truly an independent woman, one of the early pioneers of...
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