Jan 2020 Release – Amazon Link BOOK DESCRIPTION New York, 1910: A city of extravagant balls in Fifth Avenue mansions and poor immigrants crammed into crumbling Lower East Side tenements. A city where the suffrage movement is growing stronger every day, but most women reporters are still delegated to the fashion and lifestyle pages. But Vera Garland is set on… Read more »
Oct 2019 Release – Amazon Link BOOK DESCRIPTION This poignant and heartbreaking novel explores the power of resilience, the gift of friendship, and the divine beauty to be found in the big, bright world—if only we’re willing to look. Pennsylvania, 1940s. The only life Brighton Friedrich has ever known is the one she has endured within the dreary walls of… Read more »
It’s been a very busy year with my new career as a museum director, and I have allowed my hobby of reading and reviewing to fall by the wayside. Going from working a 9-to-5 (or rather 10-to-6) for years to having no set hours has taken its toll on my free time. One might think that would be the perfect… Read more »
Born to the Badge by Mark Warren This is the second installment of Warren’s fiction trilogy based on the life of Wyatt Earp (read my review of Adobe Moon). While Wyatt’s youth is behind him, his experiences have left him with heartache and guilt. Nonetheless, he has gained wisdom and his innate ability to be the calming presence in difficult… Read more »
Adobe Moon: Wyatt Earp, an American Odyssey by Mark Warren The first in Mark Warren’s Wyatt Earp trilogy, Adobe Moon opens with a young Wyatt determined to strike out on his own, yet restrained by familial duty. Once his farming days are blessedly over, he goes through various professions, learning hard lessons along the way. The timeline in this novel… Read more »
This book came to my attention and I thought I would share it as it sounds like an interesting and unusual historical setting. I’ve been increasingly interested in mid-20th century (post WWII), especially the 60’s. I’m adding this to my ever-growing list! BOOK DESCRIPTION: “In this hauntingly unconventional novel, young Lissa Power challenges the imagination and captures the heart as… Read more »
Sovrin’s Star Mississippi Connection, Book 1 by John Reyer Afamasaga www.johnreyerafamasaga.org This historical novella follows two unique characters through the post-Civil War South–a crippled orphan boy of 10, and his new friend, Tiker, a man of many trades, who was himself an orphan in England. Having grown up in the streets, he became a prizefighter, a negotiator, and a spy…. 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 »
