“Alone, we are a solitary violin, a lonely flute, a trumpet singing in the dark. Together, we are a symphony.” Brendan Slocumb, The Violin Conspiracy. Black violin prodigy Ray McMillian loves playing more than anything, and nothing will stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a professional musician. Not his mother, who thinks he should get a real job, not the fact that he can’t afford a high-caliber violin, not the racism inherent in the classical music world. And when he makes the startling discovery that the violin he inherited from his great-grandfather, a freed slave, is actually a priceless Stradivarius, his star rises. Then, on the eve of […]
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The Wedding Veil – Book Review
The Wedding Veil is a sweeping new release that follows four women across generations who are bound by a beautiful wedding veil and a connection to the famous Vanderbilt family. On June 1, 1989, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser marries George Vanderbilt wearing her family’s treasured wedding veil. After her husband’s untimely death in 1914, Edit struggles to maintain their luxurious 250-room Biltmore Estate and leave it as a legacy for her free-spirited daughter, Cornelia. In the present, Julia Baxter wears a wedding veil bequeathed to her great-grandmother by a stranger on a train in the 1930s, to her own fairytale wedding at the Biltmore Estate. When she learns of her fiancé’s […]
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The Last Checkmate – Book Review
“Despite taking place in one of the darkest times and places in our collective history, I want The Last Checkmate to be a story that shows how courage, resilience and love can emerge and triumph over such evil.” ~ Gabriella Saab Maria Florkowska is many things: daughter, sister, avid chess player, and a member of the Polish underground resistance in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Poland. Captured by the Gestapo, she is imprisoned in Auschwitz, but while her family is sent to their deaths, she is spared because to play chess to entertain the camp deputy and his guards. Befriended by a Catholic priest, Maria attempts to overcome her grief, vows to avenge […]
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Run, Rose, Run – Book Review
Written collaboratively by the bestselling author in the world and one of music most beloved entertainers, Run Rose Run is a contemporary thriller about a singer-songwriter, AnnieLee, on the rise and on the run and determined to do whatever it takes to survive. Nashville is where she’s come to claim her destiny. It’s also where the darkness she’s fled might find her. There, she encounters ruthless, predatory agents and managers, but she is also taken under the wing of one of the successful artists in country music. Dolly Parton wrote and recorded twelve songs to complement the book. You have to say one thing about James Patterson. He is prolific! According […]
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The Other Woman – Book Review
In an isolated village in the mountains of Peninsular Spain, a mysterious Frenchwoman begins work on a dangerous memoir. It is the story of a man she once loved in the Beirut of old, and a child taken from her in treason’s name. The woman is the keeper of the Kremlin’s most closely guarded secret. Long ago, the KGB inserted a mole into the heart of the West—a mole who has reached the highest echelons of Britain’s MI6. Gabriel Allon, the legendary art restorer and assassin who serves as the chief of Israel’s secret intelligence service, is lured into the hunt for the traitor after his most important asset inside Russian […]
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God is everywhere
Today’s quote is from a fabulous book set in Nigeria. 5
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Amy’s March 2022 Reads
In March, my soul was stirred, my brain engaged, and my funny bone tickled. I hope you find something wonderful to read on this list! West with Giraffes By Lynda Rutledge “Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes…” Inspired by true events, this part adventure, part historical saga and part coming-of-age love story follows Woodrow Wilson Nickel as he recalls his journey in 1938 to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he recalls the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave. It’s 1938. The […]
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Never give up on your dreams
I’m old(ish) and I’m still trying to figure out what to be when I grow up. Maybe you have a little of that in you, too. My advice: don’t give up!
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God’s Smuggler – Book Review
Would I have the faith to trust God to provide for ALL my needs? If I’m being honest, I doubt I could do it. Yet in God’s Smuggler, God repeatedly answered Brother Andrew’s faithful prayers as the missionary smuggled Bibles to believers behind the Iron Curtain and throughout the Middle East, China, and Korea. God’s guidance was miraculous. “Suppose on the other hand that I were to discover God to be a Person, in the sense that He communicated and cared and loved and led. That was something quite different. That was the kind of King I would follow into any battle.”—Brother Andrew, God’s Smuggler. Millions around the world have […]
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