Review: Tiger’s Curse (The Tiger Saga #1) by Colleen Houck

For recent high school graduate, Kelsey Hayes, the summer is all about finding a job so she can start community college in the fall.

But in a sleepy Oregon town, there are not a lot of job opportunities for high school grads so when she is offered a job at a traveling circus she quickly accepts.

The jobs sounds pretty easy: selling tickets, helping clean up after shows, and she gets to live on sight….oh and she has to help care for the circus tiger.

She isn’t really sure what to do about the tiger, on one hand he scares her but she finds him oddly intriguing and comforting. Every night after the show she sneaks into the tiger tent to read to him and draw.

One night after the show, Kelsey finds a man outside the tiger’s cage. She learns that he has offered to purchase the tiger and take him back to India to a tiger refuge. But there is a catch–he wants Kelsey to accompany him and the tiger to India.

After talking to her foster parents, they agree to let her go as it would be a great for her to travel and possibly gain some job experience. When she arrives in India, it’s soon revealed that everything is not what it seems.

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Review: Bellman and Black: A Ghost Story by Diane Setterfield

As a child, William Bellman makes one tragic mistake that will haunt him all his life. Though it doesn’t seem like a big deal, William soon finds out what a big deal it was.

William is showing off for a few of his friends. He has perfected his slingshot and to impress his friends he claims he can hit a rook (of the raven family) with absolute precision.

When he kills the bird with that fateful shot, he has no idea it will be the mistake that alters his life and the lives of those present that day forever and those that William cares for most.

The Bellman family has done quite well for itself over the years. They are widely known for their textile mill throughout the country side. When William reaches adulthood, his uncle takes him under his wind and start showing him the ropes of mill operation.

His uncle’s own son has zero interest in the running of the mill so that means that when the uncle dies the mill for go to his son but he will need a trusted advisor to run it for him.

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Review: Banquet of Lies by Michelle Diener

In Sweden one fateful night, the life of a young English woman changes forever. Giselle Barrington witnesses the murder of her father, a spy for the British crown. While in Sweden, Giselle’s (Gigi) father procures a dangerous document that if discovered could mean a political nightmare for England, France, Sweden, and Russia!

It’s for this document he is killed for. He gave the document to Gigi to keep safe shortly before he will killed. After witnessing the murder Gigi knows three things–she must take the document safely back to England and second, the person who killed her father was also British which means there is a traitor in her father’s circle, and finally that man who killed her father will surely come for her next.

She needs to get it in into the hands of someone she can trust but she’s been away from the English court for so long and her father basically kept her in the dark as to his dealings.

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Review: The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Reading this book was like peeling the petals off of a flower, each petal a little more beautiful than the one before.

This novel is a complex family saga surrounded by the beauty of the budding botanical world.

We begin with the base born Henry Whittaker who dares to dream and make something of himself.

After stealing his way into some wealth, his father’s employer discovers that poor Henry has been robbing him blind.

Instead of turning him over to the authorities, he sends Henry on a voyage with the famous explorer Captain Cook.

On that voyage Henry learns a great deal about botany and life, and when he returns to England four years later he is rewarded with another voyage, this time to South America.

Here is learns more about cultivating plants and exotic botany. After a falling out with his benefactor, Henry ventures out on his own and quickly becomes one of the wealthiest men in America.

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Review: Mrs Poe by Lynn Cullen

The greatest love affairs are between two souls that speak to each other in a language that no one else but them can understand.

On a fateful night in 1845, Frances Osgood meets the most famous writer in all of New York society, the dark and mysterious Edgar Poe. From the moment they are introduced, Frances can’t help but feel a strange and unexplainable connection to Poe.

A writer herself, they run in the same circles of New York society. At the time, Frances’s philandering husband has taken up with a rich divorcee and basically abandoned Frances and their children.

Frances and the girls are staying at the home of the Bartlett’s while Frances tries to get more of her poetry published so they can have money.

Meanwhile, Poe’s fame is taking off with the success of his poem, The Raven. Poe is also married and has been for some time, but his wife is in ill health and has been for a number of years. He has not been especially happy with Virginia Poe for some time, but like everything in his life he just accepts it and moves on…..until he meets Frances Osgood.

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