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 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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West with Giraffes – Book Review
“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 Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is […]
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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 […]
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Love in Colonial Punjab
What remained was a feeling of quiet rapture, of dawn colours slowly involving themselves with the day, a champagne brightness starting to warm my skin and the waving acres of corn and wheat, the soft green hills that followed no pattern, a distant stone hut that held the horizon and a long tapered track driving on until I couldn’t even imagine that I could see it. The orange sun broke upwards and placed, and they did seem placed, great beams of light across all that waiting land. For the first time in my life I had a sense of the world turning. All these years later and I can still […]
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Amy’s June Reads
Need an excellent book for the long holiday weekend? Look below and you’ll find inspiration, thrills, chills, romances, and history. Something for everyone! These are in order by my favorites, top to bottom. Enjoy! The Women of Chateau Lafayette by Stephanie Dray “Glory is a bittersweet wreath of both flowers and thorns.” ~ Stephanie Dray, The Women of Chateau Lafayette A mysterious castle, a hero of the American Revolution, spies, what’s not to love? Stephanie Dray writes long, ambitious books. After reading and enjoying her historical novel America’s First Daughter (written with Laura Kamoie) about Thomas Jefferson’s eldest daughter, I was excited to receive an advance reader copy of her […]
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May Reads
June is upon us, so it is time to post my reviews of the books I read in May, a smattering from the historical fiction, thriller, memoir, mystery, biography, and literary fiction genres. I use Goodreads to track and rate my reading. 5 stars is reserved for rare blew-my-socks-off reads, 4 stars means I enjoyed it and would absolutely recommend. 3 stars is good, but not great. I very rarely rate lower because I do not finish books I’m not enjoying. The Broken Way: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life by Ann Voskamp This book is for those in need of a renewed revelation of the grace of God. […]
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The Best Historical Fiction of All Time
I have 613 books on my Goodreads “Read” list, and at least a third of them fall into the historical fiction classification. So I guess you say this is my jam. Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the story takes place in the past. Historical novels capture the details of the time period as accurately as possible for authenticity, including social norms, manners, customs, and traditions. Many novels in this genre tell fictional stories that involve actual historical figures or historical events. To help you land on some reads you may not have considered, I’ve put together a list of the best historical novels of all time. Such […]
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April Reads
A new month is upon us, fellow bibliophiles, which means it’s time to post what I read in April. There weren’t any 5-star winners, but there were no real duds either. In all the years I’ve been rating books, I’ve only given two 2-stars reviews—one because of grammatical errors and the other because of objectionable content. As an author I know how hard it is to write a book, and I think most books deserve at least three stars (unless a book is self-published, and then it’s no holds barred). April turned out to be a wonderful mix of genres: mystery, thriller, historical fiction, and memoir. I laughed out loud, […]
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The Nature of Fragile Things – Book Review
I normally take notes while I am reading an advance reader copy (ARC) to help facilitate my review. Susan Meissner’s historical novel, The Nature of Fragile Things, though, was so wonderful I didn’t want the interruption. Here’s a quick synopsis: Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and moves to San Francisco. She quickly adjusts to her new life and develops a deep affection for Kat, her new stepdaughter, but something about her husband isn’t quite right. Then one spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a chain of events. […]
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