“Sometimes I feel like I need to check out of life the way other people check out of hotels. Sign whatever I need to sign, hand back the keys to the life I am living, and find somewhere new.” ~ Alice Feeney, Rock Paper Scissors. Things have been wrong between Mr. and Mrs. Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away in the Scottish Highlands, it might be just what their marriage needs. Neither was picturing spooky Blackwater Chapel, a dilapidated, freezing cold, converted stone chapel, complete with hidden passages, a crypt, a bell tower, and mysterious locked doors. Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional […]
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The Light We Left Behind
Beginning in 1940, the Trent Park estate outside London housed captured German Luftwaffe pilots to extract military information. The rooms of the house were equipped with hidden microphones to MI19 operatives could listen in on their conversations. In 1942, it became a prisoner-of-war camp (the Cockfosters Cage) for German generals and staff officers. They were pampered with delectable meals, fine wine and whisky, and luxury accommodations in hopes they would lower their guard and converse openly about military intelligence. The British Germany’s military capabilities, weaponry, war crimes, and the resistance movement. Among the 109 German top brass held at Trent Park were generals Otto Elfeldt, Ferdinand Heim, Gerhard Bassenge, Friedrich […]
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Steel Fear – Book Review
In Steel Fear, combat-decorated Navy SEAL Brandon Web and award-winning author John David Mann come together to share a high-octane thriller about murder on an aircraft carrier. The moment Navy SEAL sniper Finn sets foot on the USS Abraham Lincoln to hitch a ride back to the States from the Persian Gulf, it’s clear something is amiss. When crew members disappear one by one, what at first seems like a random string of suicides soon reveals something sinister: there’s a serial killer onboard. Suspicion falls on Finn, the newcomer to the ship who is being sent home in disgrace, after a failed mission in Yemen—the details of which he doesn’t remember. He […]
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Life Flight – Book Review
Penny Carlton and FBI special agent Holten Satterfield have been on a few dates, but have secrets they don’t want to share. She is the daughter of a famous actress and served time in a juvenile detention center. Holt’s sister is in prison for murdering her husband. If their relationship is to move to the next level, they’ll need to be honest. As an EMS helicopter pilot, Penny is used to high-stress situations, but being forced to land on a mountain in a raging storm with a critical patient tests her skills and nerve to the limit. In the ensuing days, Penny finds herself under attack by an escaped serial […]
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Damnation Spring – Book Review
Colleen and Rich Gundersen are raising their young son, Chub, on the rugged California coast. It’s 1977, and life in this Pacific Northwest logging town isn’t what it used to be. For generations, the community has lived and breathed timber; now that way of life is threatened. Colleen is an amateur midwife. Rich is a tree-topper, a dangerous job that requires him to scale trees hundreds of feet tall, a job his father and grandfather died doing. Rich secretly spends their savings on a swath of ancient Redwoods and fashions his life to support his deceit. Colleen, who has suffered eight miscarriages and is desperate to have a second baby, […]
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Amy’s April 2022 Book Reviews
Sheesh, will I ever catch up on my book reviews? I read some amazing books in April, and I’m thrilled to share my reviews. Here goes! The Progeny By Tosca Lee Emily Porter is on a quest that will take her to the secret underground of Europe and the inner circles of three ancient orders—one determined to kill her, one devoted to keeping her alive, and one she must ultimately save. The Progeny is the present-day saga of a 400-year-old war between the descendants of “Blood Countess” Elizabeth Báthory, the most prolific female serial killer of all time, and a secret society dedicated to erasing every one of her descendants. The […]
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A Small Hotel – Book Review
It’s the summer of 1941. Europe is at war, but New York’s Thousand Islands are at the height of the tourist season. Kennet Fiskare, son of a hotel proprietor, is having the summer of a lifetime, having fallen deeply in love with a Swedish-Brazilian guest named Astrid Virtanen. But the affair is cut short. The rigors of military life help dull his heartache, but when Kennet’s battalion reaches France, he is thrown into the crucible of frontline combat. As his unit crosses Europe, from the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, Kennet falls into a different kind of love: the intense camaraderie between soldiers. […]
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The Progeny – Book Review
Emily Porter is on a quest that will take her to the secret underground of Europe and the inner circles of three ancient orders—one determined to kill her, one devoted to keeping her alive, and one she must ultimately save. The Progeny is the present-day saga of a 400-year-old war between the descendants of “Blood Countess” Elizabeth Báthory, the most prolific female serial killer of all time, and a secret society dedicated to erasing every one of her descendants. The Scions, descendants of Bathory’s victims, have sought retribution through the centuries by killing her female progeny. Emily is one such progeny, hiding under a new identity after having her memory wiped. […]
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The Violin Conspiracy – Book Review
“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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