Reading
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Special Feature: THE SCRIBE OF SIENA by Melodie Winawer
Yesterday a new time travel book hit the shelves for your reading delight! Sadly I couldn’t fit this one into my review schedule for the month but I have it on my radar for possible review this summer! This is a book that some are calling ‘Outlander with an Italian accent’. And you all know how much I love Outlander so this obviously caught my attention. The book follows a time-traveling neurosurgeon from the twenty-first century who discovers love and a plot to destroy Siena in medieval Italy. (Winawer herself is a neuroscientist.)….. Accomplished neurosurgeon Beatrice Trovato knows that her deep empathy for her patients is starting to impede her…
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Review: The Lost Book of the Grail by Charlie Lovett
I’ve been a fan of grail lore since I watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when I was 8 years old. I’ve seen it at least a hundred times I feel like, so needless to say, I am a huge fan of anything related to the Holy Grail and I LOVE cathedrals. I am also a fan of Charlie Lovett’s novels, and this latest book combined both grail lore, cathedrals, and Lovett’s charming prose. This book appealed to my love of English mythology and King Arthur, so I couldn’t pass it up for review when I saw it. Arthur Prescott is happiest when surrounded by the ancient books and manuscripts of…
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Review: What Angels Fear (Sebastian St. Cyr #1) by C.S. Harris
Later this week I have another book in this series up for review. Having not read this series before, I felt like it might be a good thing to start with the first book to at least get my barrings. The book I am reviewing is the 12th book, so obviously there is a lot I will have missed, but I wanted to at least get to know the back story of the protagonist, Lord Devlin. It’s 1811, and the threat of revolution haunts the upper classes of King George III’s England. Then a beautiful young woman is found raped and savagely murdered on the altar steps of an ancient…
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Review: The Book of Summer by Michelle Gable
I’ve always wanted to read one of Michelle Gable’s novels and now, it’s finally happening! The first two books that caught my eye of her’s were both set in Paris so when I saw this one set on Nantucket Island, I felt kind of gypped. However, I have heard such great things about her writing style that I agreed to review it anyway. Physician Bess Codman has returned to her family’s Nantucket compound, Cliff House, for the first time in four years. Her great-grandparents built Cliff House almost a century before, but due to erosion, the once-grand home will soon fall into the sea. Though she s purposefully avoided the island,…
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Review: Murderous Mayhem at Honeychurch Hall (Honeychurch Hall Mystery #4) by Hannah Dennison
Not going to lie, there is something about a cute little dog on the cover of a book that just makes me want to read it all the more! When this book came across my desk for review, I was knee deep in cozy mysteries (Lady Darby series) and was totally on a cozy kick. So when I saw this cozy with an adorable little terrier on the cover, I was 100% sold! Typically I hate starting a series in the middle, however I just couldn’t pass this one up….I’m a sucker for animal cozies! When the only copy of Ravished, Iris Stanford’s new manuscript, never arrives at her London…
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Excerpt and Special Feature: BECOMING BONNIE by Jenni L Walsh
From debut historical novelist Jenni L. Walsh comes the untold story of how wholesome Bonnelyn Parker became half of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde duo. The summer of 1927 might be the height of the Roaring Twenties, but Bonnelyn Parker is more likely to belt out a church hymn than sling drinks at an illicit juice joint. She’s a sharp girl with plans to overcome her family’s poverty, provide for herself, and maybe someday marry her boyfriend, Roy Thornton. But when Roy springs a proposal on her and financial woes jeopardize her ambitions, Bonnelyn finds salvation in an unlikely place: Dallas’s newest speakeasy, Doc’s. Living the life of a moll…
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Review: The Half Wives by Stacia Pelletier
The first thing that caught my eye about this novel, was it was story told in one day–May 22 1897. In my mind I was thinking, how is this going to work out? One day? Will this even hold my interest or would there be enough content in that one day to keep me interested? Because this sounded like a challenge, I agreed to review it even if it sounded a little on the odd side. Over the course of one momentous day, two women who have built their lives around the same man find themselves moving toward an inevitable reckoning. Former Lutheran minister Henry Plageman is a master secret…
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Book Blast: Lilli de Jong by Janet Benton
Lilli de Jong by Janet Benton Publication Date: May 16, 2017 Nan A. Talese Hardcover & eBook; 352 Pages Genre: Fiction/Historical/Literary READ AN EXCERPT. A young woman finds the most powerful love of her life when she gives birth at an institution for unwed mothers in 1883 Philadelphia. She is told she must give up her daughter to avoid lifelong poverty and shame. But she chooses to keep her. Pregnant, left behind by her lover, and banished from her Quaker home and teaching position, Lilli de Jong enters a home for wronged women to deliver her child. She is stunned at how much her infant needs her and…
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Review: In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II by Rhys Bowen
Rhys Bowen is probably best known for her Royal Spyness Mysteries series and her Molly Murphy Mysteries. She typically writes cozy mysteries, so when this book came across my desk for review, it sounded like something completely new for her which is why I decided to try it. I’ve been reading a lot of cozy mysteries lately and welcomed a little break. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this one. The title suggests more literature, ‘A Novel of World War II’ says more literature rather than mystery to me. But yet the description sounded more mystery. Either way, I liked what I saw for the description and ultimately…
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Review: The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence: A Story of Botticelli by Alyssa Palombo
Last year I had the pleasure of being introduced to Alyssa Palombo’s debut novel, The Violinist of Venice, a love story about Antonio Vivaldi. I love how Palombo takes relatively well known and passionate artists (musicians and painters) and crafts a historical fiction novel. People like Antonio Vivaldi and in this book, Sandro Botticelli, aren’t characters that I would think of in history and decide to write a romantic novel about them which is what makes these books so unique to me. A girl as beautiful as Simonetta Cattaneo never wants for marriage proposals in 15th Century Italy, but she jumps at the chance to marry Marco Vespucci. Marco is…