Firsty, I’m not sure it needs to be noted, but there are spoilers here. If you’ve not watched the movie and wish it to be a surprise, you may want to move along. I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society several years ago, and recently was inspired to reread it when I saw a preview of the… Read more »
Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce The idea for this story stems from a fascinating subject–the content of women’s magazines from the WWII era. What topics were they covering and what was the tone during this time of hardship? In Dear Mrs. Bird, the protagonist, Emmaline Lake, is a young woman planning to become a war correspondent, or a journalist… Read more »
In general I am not one to reread books–with the exception of audiobook versions. In this case, I was prompted to pick Guernsey up a second time because I caught the trailer for the new film and it intrigued me (I loved Lily James in Pride & Prejudice & Zombies). When I read this book some 8 years ago, I… Read more »
This giveaway is for a Kindle eBook copy, and is open until June 30, 2018. Leave a comment to enter. The Beginning: A Multicultural Tale of Transformation by Urban Vyaas Book Description: On June 16, 1914, journalist Alec Bannon and his young wife, Millie Bloom, meet an Inuit called Piugaattoq (also known as Minik Wallace) at the Museum of Natural… Read more »
I had several reasons for setting THE FAIRFAX INCIDENT in 1933 New York City. The first reason is that I love history in general and New York City history in particular. The thousands of tourists who visit my hometown every year might be shocked to hear that New York doesn’t have much of a history when compared to other world… Read more »
Bonnie & Clyde: Dam Nation Book 2 by Clark Hays & Kathleen McFall In this second installment of Hays & McFall’s Bonnie & Clyde series, the dynamic duo find themselves in Boulder City, Nevada at the site of the Hoover Dam (then styled Boulder Dam), with orders from the ever persistent government official, Sal, to discover the source of apparent… Read more »
While You Were Mine by Ann Howard Creel This story opens upon the protagonist, nurse Gwen Mullen, finding herself the subject of the famous LIFE magazine image that is so well known–the V-J Day sailor kiss–although this inclusion has little to do with the storyline, other than setting the tone and some other small details later. Gwen lives with a… Read more »
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath Esther Greenwood is a promising, young college student from Boston who had been given the chance to gain real world experience and connections at a month-long literary program in New York City. Somewhere along the way she began to lose pieces of herself, and once she returned home her reality quickly unraveled. She started… Read more »
One of the most important events in American music happened at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1938. There was a Benny Goodman concert that night. It actually was radical to have Goodman there at all playing his brand of swing music on the stage of such a prestigious venue. The seminal moment came when he brought out his quartet to… Read more »
The Secret Kingdom: Nek Chand, a Changing India, and a Hidden World of Art by Barb Rosenstock, Illustrated by Claire A. Nivola This story follows a boy named Nek Chand as he grows up in the village of Barian Kalan in the Punjab region of what is now Pakistan. He had an ideal childhood, learning his people’s history and legends… Read more »
Please welcome author John R. Bell today with a guest post about his WWII novel, The Circumstantial Enemy, and one copy of the book up for grabs! “If you don’t write it, Grandad’s story will be lost forever,” My daughter said. I’ll never forget the yearning in her eyes. That was 17 years ago. Grandad was 80 at the time…. Read more »
The Woman on the Orient Express by Lindsay Jayne Ashford Favorite Quote: “For the train, like life, must go on until it reaches its destination. You might not always like what you see out of the window, but if you pull down the blind, you will miss the beauty as well as the ugliness.” A fictionalized account of author Agatha… Read more »