I finished this book almost two weeks ago, but a reread of several sections had to happen before I could write an honest review. The author likes to jump into a scene as the action is happening, especially in Chapter 1. He moves quickly from one scene to another with no reference link to the previous one. When I reached Page 61, I decided to return to the beginning because hints as to whatever happened in the past. Why do the descendants of the grandfather live in a fortified house carved into a cliff in a mountain cliff with no apparent entrance from the outside world. How much so the uncles who raised the sister know about the money? What happened to the father in Africa? Why is the brother living off the grid on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rico. Is the lost tourist a part of a group that also wants the money or is he really lost? The grandfather's, father's, and brother's paranoia stems from money, a lot of money swindled from the Las Vegas mafia and the Mexican Cartel. Once the action begins James McLaughlin keeps the reader on the edge of the seat; however, the flipping between past and present is like watching a suspenseful television show interrupted by twenty minutes of commercials. Book Browse sent this book to me as an Advanced Reader's Copy. I am sure fans of McLaughin's first book Bearskin will multiply when they read this book. He does write action very well; but. new readers should read the first pages very slowly. The rock falls slowly from atop the mountain but does gain speed as it nears the bottom.

After I finished it, I felt happy that she is receiving the long overdue recognition that she deserves. She is a strong-willed and brilliant woman who walks among the high society of NYC's white women’s fashion world and the male dominated critics of the NYC art circle as one of their own: a highly educated and knowledgeable art buyer backed by J.P. Morgan. The only truth to the former statement is that she is not any of those beliefs except that she is backed by J.P. Morgan. She is "home-schooled" in Renaissance art by her father and her personal ability to transcend the adversity of being Black. Being fair-skinned her mother registers the family as White forcing the father, an earlier supporter of civil rights and the first man of color to graduate from Harvard, to leave the family and continue his advocacy of equality for all races elsewhere. According to the authors, Pierpont Morgan sees something special in her and hires her to be his personal librarian as soon as he meets her. She blossoms immediately to a force with which to be reckoned. She is quick witted, has a quick eye for forgeries and a quick tongue. Plus carrying the symbolic wallet of JP Morgan is a great aid. All that being said, I finished the book, but I have a serious problem with first person narratives. I disagree that the authors use this technique to make the reader feel closer to the character. After her assertiveness with JP Morgan during the interview, I did not care for her brashness. She alienated me. I read on because I had seen the library and decided that somehow she had done what she promised. I accepted the fact that she had to lie about her ethnicity to succeed, but then she mentions that her age is 27 not 23 as she leads everyone to believe. Yhus the unreliable first person narrative enters my mind, and I ask myself what else isn't the truth. Since she burns all of her papers at the end of the book and the author's admission that they filled in the blanks, I was slightly disappointed in her love affair with the art collector and Renaissance art authority, Bernard Berenson. The authors allowed it to take over the story and minimize the art she purchased for the library while she cavorted with Berenson in Europe. Again, since she burned all correspondence at the end and there contained no mention of her in any of Berenson's writing, I asked myself how much of her personal life is true. I still believe in what she achieved very much; I am just so exuberant as to how it was written.

The Nazi Conspiracy is apparently a well known theory known to many World War II scholars and fans. I was only aware that the Big Three Conference in 1943 occurred in Teheran with Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt, and the famous picture of the three in history publications encouraged the world that victory was possible.The twist and turns in this book kept me up late turning the pages. Although I certainly knew that there were no attacks on the lives of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt, the details convinced me that it could have happened. The authors do offer other opinions that the press ran with Roosevelt's offhand comment, "It would have been quite a haul if the Nazis had gotten all three of us. The British could have been jealous that they were not informed of the plot and had no part in its exposure that quite possibly saved the world.

The Germans were losing. They were ruthless. I am on the side of the evidence that Meltzer and Mensch present. No one will never know for sure, but the authors kept me on the edge of my seat. Plus they filled in a lot of names and events that were important on both sides that I either forgot or never knew. This book is the best thriller I read in 2022. I thank BookBrowse for the advance reading copy.

Although the plot of Good Husbands reminds me of a few movies and books, Cate Ray works wonders with what happens when a buried and secret life is unearthed in a letter written by a dying woman to the wives of three men thirty years after their cruel and inhumane deed. The plot took about seventy pages to totally capture my interest because each of the three women's background stories is told in alternating chapters. As the wives become more involved in the discovery of their husband's sins, a diary of the victim is found and its contents revealed. From that point I could not close the cover of the book. How her characters agonize with the devastating and disgusting allegations of the victim is very compelling.

What kept me moving so quickly through the pages was how Ray had her characters think about the crime the husbands committed. Were they too young too realize their game was as harmful as the victim perceived? Did their belief that they moved beyond their early twenties and created good homes for their families justify their actions of the past. Through the female characters' thoughts Ray presents a good case for the plight that females face when confronted with sexual assaults and harassment.

Don't pass on this book. I think it will make for an interesting discussion among close friends and age appropriate book clubs.

I received The Smallest Lights in the Universe as an Advanced Reading Copy from BookBrowse. I was pleasantly surprised because my third least favorite genre is a memoir, and my least favorite genre is anything to do with science fiction or space travels. Seager changed my mind. Her persistence in the study of exoplanets, planets outside of our solar system, has led her to a tenured position at MIT, to the MacArthur Foundation $625,000 'genius" grants, and to work on NASA's Starshade project which is a telescope that allows scientists to see space differently than they could previously see with the Kepler and Hubble telescopes. What amazed me about the book is that her style of writing held my attention and made me understand the complicated aspects of space. Her story describes not only the life of a dedicated and intelligent woman in a field mostly made up of equally intelligent men but also the tragedies of her life. She survives a dismal childhood of separated parents, a feeling of loneness (later diagnosed as borderline autism) throughout her formative years, and the tragic death of her husband, Mike, at a young age. Their beautiful canoe trips through the lakes of Canada and the Grand Canyon, his willingness to move to Boston, and his belief in her career contributed to the sadness of his death. At the age just a few days shy of her 40th birthday, she becomes a widow with two small children. About three months before he dies and chemo ravages his body, he types her a guide to life without him. It includes everything from which grocery stores to hardware stores that he uses. On a particularly dreary day, she discovers a group of ladies who call themselves "The Widows Group." They become her anchors after his death. With help from many friends she is able to continue her work and required travels. During one of her presentations to an amateur astronomers convention, she meets her second husband. Although her sadness and grief throughout the story is apparent, the journey to what she is trying to find in her personal life is balanced with what she is trying to find in space Although she is highly respected in her field and has won many awards, she is a very humble person. I highly recommend the book.

Jessica Williams, Executive Editor of Harper Collins, writes that Catherine House blends the gothic elements of beloved Rebecca, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights. The Catherine House is not Rebecca's Manderly or Jane Eyre's Lowood; nor is Viktoria, although callous and maybe even brainwashed Mrs. Danvers. Jane Eyre's Red Room might have been the inspiration for The Catherine House Restoration Center. Beyond that there is little comparison to those books. They are three of my adolescent reading favorites, but Catherine House did not give me that sense of gothic fear that they did. The first two-thirds of the book presents some tedious reading with little description and unremarkable characters. Catherine House labels itself a liberal arts post high school college with very selective admission standards: those being a student has to be intelligent, show promise, and enter with a lot of baggage and nowhere else to go. Inez Murillo, the narrator, fits that profile. A teacher recommends that she apply to Catherine House. His relationship to Catherine House is never revealed In fact, none of the other characters have a background story. The professors are addressed with only an initial and a last name such as Inez's mentor M. Owens. The book begins as Inez awakens with a hangover and a foggy memory of a party in one of the other houses on the campus. Inez's first year is spent in drinking binges, sleeping through classes and having a lot of sex. The author provides hints that some students are dismissed because of failing grades or pregnancy, but other rules do not seem to exist. Inez is bored and interested in nothing; consequently, the plot becomes boring and uninteresting. Some of the Inez's friends believe in the program that the school projects because graduates have become famous politicians and doctors. Inez notices that no graduate says anything about their three years there except that they graduated. There will be readers who really enjoy this book. I noticed on the back cover that it is currently in development for television. Personally I think special effects and eerie music will help keep some viewer's interest. Unless the plot and characters are rewritten, I think most will change the channel.

If you don't mind at times reading a sentence consisting of 58 words, you will enjoy this book. If you don't mind reading a book in which settings change rapidly with few transitions, time periods skip from decade to decade, and characters appear and reappear, then Sarah Bake's book is for you. House Guest is an epic family drama of wealth, secrets, and mindless characters. I really tried to like this book, but I did not care for the religious and ethnic intolerance of the Milton family. Barnes and Noble selected this book for its monthly book discussion. Some of the group did enjoy the book but also agreed that it could have been about 150 pages shorter.

No matter what else is written in 2019 this will always be among my top three fiction books of the year. Through the eyes of Kya Clark, an abandoned child. Delia Owens gives a new perspective to the lowlands and this almost uninhabitable portion of North Carolina. At times i felt as I were floating through the marshes with Kya and seeing for the first time the intricacies of the aquatic life in the marshes. I loved the way the author drew analogies between the behavior of the townspeople toward Kya and the behavior of the insects in their respective habitats. Ms Owens has created a mystery, a love story, and a brilliant environmental study of the beautiful marshes of North Carolina neatly packaged in about 360 pages.

Witold Pilecki, a second lieutenant in the Polish calvary reserves, answered his country's call to bring his troop of 90 trained volunteers to defend Poland when the resistance learned that Hitler signed a pact with Stalin that would eventually destroy his country. In order to learn what the Germans were doing once they had total control of Poland, the Resistance needed someone to infiltrate Auschwitz Germany's first concentration camp. Witold volunteered to allow himself to be captured. Once inside, he studied the layout of the camp as well as the prisoners whom he could trust to become a part of the network of resistors.

The horrific acts of the SS officers are hard to read. As his network grew and more and more trains delivered Poles to their deaths, Witold sent many reports of the atrocities to the underground headquarters in Warsaw who then through many underground contacts forwarded them to the exiled Polish government in London. He and the other leaders planned an uprising with the help from the Allies to facilitate the destruction of Auchwitz. The British and Americans could not believe the statistics of the number of victims. One Brit admitted that they exaggerated some atrocities of WW I to garner more world attention.

Despite the fear and starvation under which the prisoners lived, Witold united them to fight and disrupt the German's plans. After several years in captivity and no response from the outside world, he escaped. Without offering any spoilers as to what happens to him at the end of his life, his frustration in knowing that the world had not listened must have been devastating. How many lives could he have saved? What is most memorable to me is that Witold stayed true to his convictions to the end. Some might call it stubbornness, some heroism, and others blind patriotism.

I feel grateful to Fairweather for telling his brave story which amid all of the secrecy of the Soviet Union's occupation of Poland and the Cold War that followed could easily have been buried along with the millions who were massacred during World War II.

Michiel Heyns reincarnates Henry James's 1907 Garden Room, where he dictates his novels to Frieda Wroth, The Typewriter, at Lamb House in Rye, England. Written in Jameson style complete with compound complex sentences and vocabulary, which SAT Prep students should appreciate, and I might add, punctuated correctly, as I know for certain because I checked the online website OWL from Purdue University, Heyns employs subtle humor to develop the multi-layered Frieda, the manipulative Morton Fullerton, and the flamboyant Edith Wharton. Suffragettes emerge in the background urging women to fight for equality, but the choices are few; hence encouraged by Aunt Frederica, Frieda, "whose future, though very indefinite, had never included a vision of 'taking dictation' that would deprive her of any independent agency," and the "chronic regard of Mr Dodds, an apothecary, whose placid courtship as well as his persistent odor of the tincture of iodine she had been fleeing, graduates from the Young Ladies Academy of Typewriting.

"The worst part of taking dictation is the waiting." (First line in book) "at the point from which the school-child, comma, with eyes raised to the wall, comma, gazes at the part-colored map of the world. Full stop." . . . "she clattered obediently after him, then halted, while he continued his treading of the carpet." Then, the dashing Morton Fullerton, a long time friend of James, bursts unannounced through the doors of the Garden Room, and Frieda is smitten.

At this point I realized two important facts: I was smitten with the Mr. Heyns's writing; and I wanted to peek into the mind of Henry James whose works I have not given much thought in the past forty years.

I conclude that I could have researched more about Edith Wharton, but why dispel the fond memories I have of her characters, that I am not sure of the accuracy of Mr. Heyns's portrayal of her and Morton Fullerton, although I do recall mention of their affair from past readings. Neither I am not sure if Mr. James would have been so easily duped by their actions and their use of him.
What is most important about The Typewriter's Tale is Frieda's coming of age. The effects of her betrayal to Mr. James weighed heavily on me throughout the book. Her telepathic communication with Mr. Fullerton via the machine, the typewriter, not the person Miss Wroth, and her interpretation of his physical silence after their afternoon fling in the local hotel was both sad and humorous. The mutual understanding of Frieda and James at the novel's conclusion reaffirmed Henry James brilliance and Frieda's awareness of herself.
It takes a committed reader to accept The Typewriter's Tale pace, its structure, and vocabulary usage. I admit that I did have to reread some paragraphs and check the meanings and part of speech of some of the vocabulary; but, the quasi love triangle of Wroth, Fullerton, and Wharton, the mutterings of the James's servants, and the recognition of some of the phrases from his novels create an interesting trip back to the 19th century.

I did enjoy the book.

Birdwine, an ex lover, in a moment of compassion tells Paula Vauss that she is unlike others. She is the opposite of everything and everyone. Her stay in foster care has provided her with a tough and uncompromising exterior which a high powered, expensive divorce lawyer needs. Paula also has a soft underside that her estranged mother has created. Neither she or her ex lover are very nice people. Her clients in the throes of divorce do not present their best behavior.

Then why do I like this book? Paula changes. As she faces two cataclysmic events, she accepts her mother's errant behavior and is able to forgive herself for the wrongs she believes she has committed. Jackson gives the mother her voice and quality through her retelling of a Hindu story. In the end Paula's memories of her mother center on her illustrations of those stories and frees her from her past.

Lodato's smooth style of writing flows through the novel from beginning to end. Although his use of a water motif, which becomes more apparent as the novel winds to its conclusion, terrified me at times, I absolutely loved this book. Similar to smooth flow of water as it approaches a falls camouflages the danger that lies beneath, I felt the danger as if I were living at 21 Cressida Drive or in the Pine Barrens. Edgar Allan Fini, the eight year old narrator and compulsive obsessive albino, suffers taunts from his schoolmates, loses his equally obsessive grandmother Florence Fini , his protector and surrogate mother, and turns to an equally lost adult Conrad Billings. Edgar's mother Lucy Bubko Fini survives an abusive childhood and lives a reckless young adulthood as a result of losing husband Frank Fini who has committed suicide a year after Edgar's birth Neither woman, who reside under the same roof, has come to terms with the overwhelming emptiness in their lives. No prospective reader should allow the book's length of 536 pages to deter reading the book. Yes, at times the sadness of so many situations that face the characters overwhelms, but it is the strength of the love that the mother, son, and stepfather develop that enables them to overcomes the sadness and put the past at rest.

Complaints surrounding this book baffle me. I am rating it a 5 because I had to round up to a whole number. If I could have, I would have given it a 4.9 because of the transition to one particular death scene. Some people quit after Chapter 2. At that point, however, I realized that rather than speed reading through this book I would absorb its many levels. It is definitely not an anti marriage book as some have written. For me it is a study of an intelligent and damaged woman in love with her well respected and imperfect husband. it is difficult for me to write about this book without hinting at spoilers for future readers. It took me several chapters to understand Lancelot (Lotto) is the epitome of the golden boy, the one on whom Fate has bestowed a perfect life and on whom Fate gave him the woman who would insure that life would continue through any measure possible. The second half of the book Furies is more compelling than the first, at least for me. I loved the way Lauren Groff told the two stories through different perspectives, which prevented the second part of the book from becoming a retelling of the first. Be aware future readers there aren't really any nice people in the story with the exception of Lotto's aunt and sister. Stay with it because it will stay with you for weeks after you finish it. At least it did for me.

I received this book from BookBrowse and Algonquin Publishing as an Advanced Reading Copy and wish to thank both groups. What caught my attention in the pre publicity promotion was a quotation from Lily King, one of my favorite authors: "Backdropped by the Vietnam War and the Manson murders Cruel Beautiful World is a fast-moving page turner about the naivety of youth and malignity of power." For me it was a stretch to comprehend that the two historical events play a major role in the plot. They are briefly mentioned; however, I could only find a possible connection between the Manson girls and the actions of one character.

Since I have been recently glued to the Olympics, I will add that in my overall rating of this book this minor flaw is only a one thousandth point of a deduction.
The reason I want to give this book a 5 is Leavitt's characters. The events in the span of their lives from a 16 year old girl to an 82 year old man in an assisted living facility are authentic. How many boys and girls have made a reckless decision at the age of sixteen and lived through the disastrous consequences of their decisions? Not all have had tragic endings, but I think readers will relate to the consequences of the reckless decisions of Lucy on many different levels. How many young girls with low self esteem have found a charismatic teacher, who if he asked, you would lie on railroad tracks for him? If you haven't had a teacher who brought out the best in you, then perhaps you will not understand why Lucy Gold falls in love and runs away with her English teacher, William Callahan. If you are a parent, aunt, or big sister or simply a friend of an adult who loses a child, you will grieve with Iris, the aunt who raised Lucy and Charlotte, Lucy's reticent and pragmatic older sister. If you have ever fallen head over heals in love and the recipient of your love does not meet your expectations; but you still love him or her, you might be able to come to terms with the relationship of Iris and Doug. If you live with the guilt that you somehow have failed a loved one, you will relive that guilt through Charlotte and Patrick. Watching Iris and Joe, I do believe that a second chance at love can be a reality. Much has been written about the connections that residents in assisted living make, but Iris deserves love at age 80.

I will let the readers decide on the character of William Callahan. Although I was saying to myself in the first part of the book, "You are making a terrible decision William" in regard to Lucy, I thought that maybe they might work. The author is so good at manipulating the reader that I began to question my allegiance to Lucy, but then she places Charlotte and William in a conversation and his action haunts me even twelve hours after I have finished the book.

I think the book is due to be published in October of 2016. I think it will rise quickly on the best seller list. I think also that because the characters could exist today that teenagers and parents will take notice as well as older children caring for their elderly parents. I don't think polls exist on favorite characters in fiction of the year; but in case I have missed them, I am voting for Iris as my favorite character of 2016.

Although I am not a fan of boxing, I am recommending this book to all readers who might ignore a book about female boxers in the 18th century. The brutality and consequences of the boxers' life in the ring are there, but Anna Freeman uses that setting to show life among the wealthy and impoverished people in that time period. She creates male scoundrels and strong female characters who live on the estates and in the slums. Boxing and gambling on the outcome of the bouts influence all of their lives, but her characters are sympathetic and human. She effectively develops her plot by writing from the perspective of three main characters. My copy of the book has 476 pages which I crammed into 3 1/2 days of reading. I did take time to eat, read, and work, but I found reading a book and multi-tasking are quite compatible.

The devastated , murderous terrain of the mountains of the western boundaries of the Civil War and the burned soil of Georgia creates a backdrop for the desolation which the surviving inhabitants of the Fallen Land face in the wake of Sherman's march to the sea.

Although Callum, a young Irish immigrant and adept horse thief, commits atrocities while he rides with a renegade group who had "long ago forsaken the war of the newspapers for the one they carried everywhere with them … which could be fit neatly to any new opportunity that presented itself: ambush, pillage, torture," he is not guilty of the crime which has placed a bounty on his head. Together with Ava, the daughter of a frontier doctor, whom he has rescued from his gang of marauders, they survive the ruthless elements of nature to stay hours ahead of Clayburn, the despicable and relentless bounty hunter who will stop at nothing to collect his bounty with the death of Callum.

Taylor Brown allows the reader to picture the horrors of war first hand but the war does not dominate the action. His characters' will to survive and their love for each other in a land that seems impossible to support any new life is the memorable aspect of Fallen Land. Brown's use of language and his style of writing shows great promise for future success for this young author.

Tabloids feed us a daily diet of the fortunes and misfortunes of our entertainment idols, but the plethora of scandals we absorb pale in comparison to the firestorm that Frank Sinatra "The Voice of the 40s" created when he divorced his nice Italian wife Nancy to marry screen siren Ava Gardner. As revealed in Ava and Frank In Love and War, Louis B. Mayer micromanaged the lives of the MGM screen goddesses and heart throbs like Ava Gardner and Clark Gable. 2015 fans who take a trip down memory lane while reading this book might be dismayed to learn that all that glittered was not gold for the actors who played their roles in the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Ava and Frank's marriage did not last long, but their love for each other consumed them throughout their adult lives. This book is both informative and hauntingly sad. Most importantly, it revisits two people, now deceased, who captured the minds of millions of fans nearly eighty years ago. It is a good read for fans of movie history. I am strongly recommending it.

I received The Headmaster's Wife through First Impressions from Book Browse, and I have shared it with many of my reading friends. From the mysterious first chapter to the end, it kept us engaged. It reminded me of Lolita and A Perfect Mind. It made me grieve with Dick Ives. It made me sympathize with his wife. Once I finished it, because I read it quickly in less than fifteen hours, I reread it. Its remarkable twists and turns even held my interest a second time. It is beautifully written, but sad. The unraveling of lives is never a pleasant experience to watch or read, but this is a compelling story. I highly recommend it, and I have definitely become a fan of author Thomas Christopher Greene..

Whispering Shadows is the perfect way to start a year of great reading. It presents a mystery to solve, but more importantly, it examines how people overcome the traumas of their past. Zhang Lin, a homicide detective, battles his demons with his humanity. Journalist Paul Leibovitz chooses seclusion to come to terms with the death of his young son. A serendipitous meeting with an American mother in search of her missing son, Michael Owen, brings the two old friends together to help her. Set in Hong Kong and China, the story line not only searches for the truth of what happened to Michael but also makes the reader question the extent of trust that friends enjoy and the damage that can result when truth must be told.
Corruption at all levels of government, residual fears left over from the China's Cultural Revolution, and a gently told love story balance this fast paced novel.
You will carry this book everywhere to read at any stolen moment. I highly recommend it.

"Descent" speaks to all members of a family who have lost a child. Whether or not Tim Johnston purposefully set the horrific action in the pristine setting of the Continental Divide to illustrate the corresponding violence in nature and man, he captures the loneliness and the helplessness that the Courtland family experiences as they come to terms with Caitlin's disappearance.

If only the beautifully written passages of the landscape, the crime, and the chase had not been preceded by the confusing style in the beginning of the book, I would have given it a 5. That said, it is a good read.