Scotland, 1707. Queen Anne’s commissioners have begun paying out money sent up from London to settle the losses and wages owed to Scots who took part in the disastrous Darien expedition eight years earlier, an ill-fated venture that left Scotland all but bankrupt. When the young widow of a Darien sailor comes forward to collect her husband’s wages, her claim is challenged. One of the men assigned to investigate has only days to decide if she’s honest, or if his own feelings are blinding him to the truth. First off, a disclaimer. I am a huge fan of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, which has likely influenced my review of The […]
Read more...
My Favorite Book of 2021
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 Ward sets out to write his grandparents’ remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America’s western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he’s willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family. Stegner’s novel is stylistically complex and simply outstanding. I savored every […]
Read more...
The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child – Book Review
“As much as we all like happy endings, the trust is we are all works in progress with broken pieces and, hopefully, with repairs. We win, we lose, we carry on. We soar, we crash, we pick ourselves up. Or not. The choice is always our own.” – Tana Amen, The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child. I read Tana Amen’s book just after Thanksgiving and was inspired by her journey toward emotional and physical health. Her memoir about growing up in poverty, neglected and abused with God’s help. It was also to discover that her husband, Daniel Amen, developed The Daniel Plan for Saddleback Church. Although I found the […]
Read more...
The Heron’s Cry – Book Review
North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder—Dr Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed with a shard of one of his glassblower daughter’s broken vases. Then another body is found—killed in a similar way. Matthew must tread carefully through the lies that fester at the heart of his community. Ann Cleeves’ 30+ books have been translated into twenty languages. She is wildly popular in the UK and two of her book series have been made into multi-season […]
Read more...
Sousanna: The Lost Daughter – Book Review
“I came to understand that people must often make desperate decisions in desperate times; that we cannot scorn someone without understanding what brought that person to that place; that good people sometimes make bad decisions; that words spoken over children have lasting effects on their destiny; and most of all, that war, love, greed, desperation, and determination each have effects that last for generations.”—Sousanna Stratmann, Sousanna: The Lost Daughter. Five-year-old Sousanna is often cold and always hungry, but she’s happy living in post-WWII Greece with her loving family. Then one day a stranger approaches Sousanna’s father with a startling proposition, made bearable only by the assurance that the situation is […]
Read more...
The Women with the Blue Star – Book Review
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...
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...