1942. Sadie Gault is eighteen and living with her parents amid the horrors of the Kraków Ghetto during World War II. When the Nazis liquidate the ghetto, Sadie and her parents seek refuge in the perilous sewers beneath the city. Ella Stepanek is an affluent Polish girl living with her stepmother, who has developed close alliances with the occupying Germans. Longing for her fiancé, who has gone off to war, Ella wanders Kraków restlessly. While on an errand in the market, she glimpses something moving beneath a grate in the street. Upon closer inspection, she realizes it’s a girl. To be a Jew hiding from the Nazis during World War […]
Read more...Category Archives: Book Reviews
November Reads – Lots to Enjoy
Here you go fellow travelers, the books I read in November. It’s a lighter list than is typical for me, but Thanksgiving with the family is a more about food and fun than reading, right? This month I discovered many new authors—Karin Slaughter, Sunjeev Sahota, Erin Bartels, Alison Gaylin, Steve Pope, Emma Brodie, David R. Boyd, and Adele Myers—the advantage of receiving advance reader copies. Some of them I will definitely read again, but there were a couple clunkers. Read on to find out which ones. The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to […]
Read more...
The Judge’s List – Book Review
Lacy Stoltz is tired of her work for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct and ready for a change. Then she meets a mysterious woman who is so frightened she uses several aliases. Jeri Crosby’s father was murdered twenty years earlier in a case that remains unsolved and that has grown stone cold. But Jeri has a suspect whom she has become obsessed with and has stalked for two decades. Along the way, she has discovered other victims. He is a sitting judge, which puts him in Lacy’s jurisdiction. He has a list, with the names of his victims and targets, all unsuspecting people unlucky enough to have crossed his […]
Read more...
Thirst for Justice – Book Review
Michael MacDougall is a talented trauma surgeon whose life in Seattle is slowly unraveling. Frustrated as an ER doctor and with his marriage in trouble, he volunteers with a medical aid charity in the Congo. Once back home in Seattle, he is haunted by his experiences in Africa and what he sees as society’s failure to provide humanitarian aid to those who most desperately need it. Locked in a downward spiral, he becomes obsessed with making his government listen to him and dreams up an act of terrorism to shock everyone into listening. I love a good legal thriller. The plot of Thirst for Justice is unique and intriguing, fast-paced […]
Read more...
The Forest of Vanishing Stars – Book Review
After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, Yona finds herself alone in 1941 after her kidnapper dies. Her solitary existence is interrupted; however, she encounters a group of Jewish refugees in the forest and shows them how to evade the Nazis and survive the harsh winters. But when she is betrayed and escapes into a German-occupied village, her past and present come collide, putting her and the group in danger. Author Kristin Harmel instantly captured my attention and held it until the last syllable of her latest novel. Her research is impressive: not only did she dig into how Jews […]
Read more...
Five-Star Reads of 2021
These were my five-star reads in 2021. I’m stingy with my stars, so these books really stood out for me among the 115+ books I read last year. I enjoyed them for a variety of reasons: Some inspired me, some taught me forgotten history, some were funny, some were creative, but one stands alone for extraordinary writing. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner Angle of Repose may be the best book I have ever read. Wallace Stegner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel traces the fortunes of four generations of one family as they attempt to build a life for themselves in the American West. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman […]
Read more...
The Lost Apothecary Book Review
One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose – selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who wished to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register. In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary […]
Read more...
Becoming Mrs. Lewis Book Review
When poet and writer Joy Davidman began writing letters to C. S. Lewis she was looking for spiritual answers, not love. Everything about New Yorker Joy seemed ill-matched for an Oxford legend and the beloved writer of Narnia, yet their minds bonded over their letters. Embarking on the adventure of her life, Joy traveled from America to England and back again, facing heartbreak and poverty, discovering friendship and faith, and against all odds, finding a love that even the threat of death couldn’t destroy. My daughter suggested I read Becoming Mrs. Lewis, so I added it to my ridiculously long TBR pile. I’m really glad I did. I’ve long been […]
Read more...
The Tobacco Wives Book Review
This historical debut set in 1946 North Carolina follows a young female seamstress who uncovers dangerous truths about the Big Tobacco empire ruling the American South. Maddie Sykes has just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina—the tobacco capital of the South—where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. She is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt’s clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives. But she soon learns the town isn’t quite the carefree paradise; it seems a trail of misfortune follows many of the women, including substantial health problems. Maddie wants to report what she […]
Read more...
Vortex Book Review
Seven years ago, Mia Briscoe was at a frat party with her best friend Serena when a fire broke out. Everyone was accounted for except Serena. She was never heard from or seen again. When an old photo taken at the frat party gives her clues, Mia realizes she knows just where to look. She enlists FBI agent Sherlock’s help to uncover a sinister string of events going all the way back to that disastrous party. But some very powerful—and very dangerous—people will do anything to keep the past buried. CIA Operative Olivia Hildebrandt is a team leader on a mission in Iran to exfiltrate a betrayed undercover operative. She’s […]
Read more...