Reviews

A Must Read

EmmaLeave a comment

This biography was published in 2001 and written by Terry, one of Evelyn Ryan’s daughters. Evelyn and husband Kelly had ten children, six sons and four daughters. Her abusive husband was an alcoholic who often drank away a third of his weekly take-home pay. To supplement the family’s income often providing basic necessities, Evelyn entered contests during the “contest era” of the 1950’s and 1960’s. She was at times successful with her jingles even winning enough for a down payment on a house at one point. Over the years she won a Triumph TR3 sports car, a jukebox, a trip to New York, an appearance on the Merv Griffin show, a Ford Mustang, a trip to Switzerland, and her weight in gold. Mostly she won lesser amounts of cash just when it was most needed.

Evelyn found fun in whatever life sent her way. Her family was her focus. She was a firm believer that miracles were an everyday occurrence. In short, this is an uplifting tale filled with hope that Evelyn was able to pass on to her children.

~Emma

New Fall Mystery

EmmaLeave a comment

The story takes place in 1925 in Oak Park, an affluent suburb of Chicago. Young, attractive, wealthy Elizabeth Fairchild has been living with her parents Mildred and Kenneth Walker since the death of her soldier husband in WWI and unborn child seven years ago. Elizabeth’s friend, Mr. Anthony (Enrico Antonelli) is the owner of a quaint antiques shop she likes to shop at. Sadly Mr. Anthony is found stabbed to death and the local police quickly arrest a local music teacher as the killer.

Elizabeth announces publicly that she is determined to find the real killer with the help of a few friends including: Mrs. Grace Hemingway, lawyer-friend Fred Wilkins, Fred’s Aunt Lucy, her father, and a sympathetic police officer. With the public announcement Elizabeth and others are in danger from gangsters and the Women of the Ku Klux Klan, an auxiliary group that supported the Ku Klux Klan.

The first installment of the Oak Park Village mystery series is a slow-paced, old fashioned mystery with a little romance. I look forward to the next installment.

~Emma

New mystery

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The Desert Flowers Detective Agency is at it again. This time Tanya Cook, pretending to be a home health care aide, is fleecing her clients. Detective Poppy Harmon poses as a weakened elderly widow needing assistance and hires Tanya as her aide. It is a trap. Tanya and her two partners are arrested. Someone does not want Poppy to testify in court and attempts to kill her. Sadly, her neighbor is killed when the woman borrows Poppy’s car, and it goes over a cliff. Poppy’s new air conditioner unit explodes after a phony technician supposedly repairs it. Most people assume Poppy died in that explosion

Poppy masquerades as Matt Flowers’ advisor, his elderly Aunt Bea, when he appears on a reality show titled “My Dream Man”. Matt and Poppy fear that Jesse, the bachelorette on the show, is the stalker’s next target.

These quick cozy mysteries are fun to read.

Desert Flowers Mystery series

Poppy Harmon Investigates – 2018

Poppy Harmon and the Hung Jury – 2019

Poppy Harmon and the Pillow Talk Killer – 2021

Poppy Harmon and the Backstabbing Bachelor – 2022

~Emma



  
   

New Fiction

EmmaLeave a comment

In November 2016 three momentous things happened. Donald Trump was elected president; the Chicago Cubs won the World Series; and Bud Sullivan died. Bud and Rose Sullivan were owners of JP Sullivan’s, a restaurant and bar in Oak Park, Illinois for decades. Three generations lived and breathed the restaurant. After Bud dies, the extended family is particularly concerned for Rose as she enters assisted living. Without Bud, the restaurant is floundering. Teddy would love to take control, but no one seems to listen to him. After Rose’s death it is suggested that the grandchildren invest their inheritance to update Sullivan’s. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be interest in that. Gretchen, Jane, and Teddy have other plans for their money and not everyone agrees.

I was curious about the title of the book and was unfamiliar with the phrase. A bittersweet story full of family drama.

marrying the ketchup

~Emma

New Historical Fiction

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The Manhattan Girls: A Novel of Dorothy Parker and her Friends

It is the Jazz Age in New York City when Dorothy Parker and three other prominent professionals form a bridge club. Jane Grant is the first woman reporter at the New York Times. She is determined to launch a new magazine she calls The New Yorker. Winifred Lenihan is a beautiful and talented Broadway star. Peggy Leach is a magazine assistant at Conde Nast by day and a brilliant novelist by night. These four women form a firm friendship and part of their friendship includes keeping Dottie safe from herself. She attempts suicide twice.

Name-dropping and drama are important parts of this novel. Wild drinking parties despite Prohibition and infidelity also play a main role in this fast-paced book.

~Emma

A Coastal Cozy Mystery

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Nonna Maria and the Case of the Missing Bride
by Lorenzo Carcaterra

A widow in her seventies, Nonna Maria has never strayed far from her home island of Ischia, off the coast of Naples, Italy. She has no phone or car or TV, is known by all for her kindness and generosity, and is an expert on local history. Nonna Maria’s real skill lies in her ability to solve problems, and when things go wrong, her fellow islanders look to her for guidance.

When a local young woman confesses that she is unsure how she wound up engaged to a stranger, Nonna Maria offers to hide the bride and look into her new fiancé’s dark and mysterious past to discover how he tricked her into the promise of marriage.

Meanwhile, Pasquale, an Ischia tour boat captain and friend to Nonna Maria has drowned while piloting his boat. The local police chief believes it was a drunken accident. Nonna Maria knows that Pasquale, a lifelong sailor, could swim regardless of being drunk on wine. She decides to look into who might benefit from the man’s early demise.

Nonna Maria’s relies on her friendships with locals, including a crime boss, a priest, and a local mechanic to help her to get to the bottom of most matters, but she also has a sixth sense that tells her when something or someone is just not quite on the level. As she investigates these dangerous characters who are willing to trick innocent women or commit murder in order to get what they want, she begins to wonder if she has taken on too much this time.

Nonna Maria is like a breath of fresh air, whose recipe for happiness includes her home brewed coffee, a glass of good wine, and sharing her delicious home-cooked meals with her neighbors and family. With Nonna Maria and the Case of the Missing Bride, Lorenzo Carcaterra has gifted readers with a delightfully cozy mystery that will leave you yearning to travel to Italy or, at the very least, eagerly awaiting the next installment in this new series.

-Carol

New Historical Fiction

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Pilot Ward Millar makes a last-minute decision to bail out over North Korea. Unfortunately, even with a parachute, Ward breaks both of his ankles and is easily captured by the North Koreans and Chinese. Ward needs medical attention which his captors provide haphazardly if he shares information, mostly false information, with them.

At home when Ward’s wife, Barbara, receives notification that her husband is missing in action, she believes he still alive. Barbara is a woman of deep and sustaining faith and refuses to believe that Ward is dead despite what family and friends have to say.

North Korean soldier Kim Jae Pil is a Christian. He and his family have kept their faith secret to survive. Kim is forced to serve as a solder but wants to and plans to escape from the army and reunite with his family. Ward and Kim eventually meet and together plan their escape.

This novel is based on the true story of an American POW during the Korean War and a North Korean soldier who became unlikely allies. They were united in their shared faith in God during a daring escape to freedom. The novel is a story of courage, determination, unlikely friendship, and enduring faith.

~Emma

A Spellbinding 17th-Century Saga

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The Swift and the Harrier
by Minette Walters

In 1642, England is on the brink of civil war between Royalists, who support King Charles I and his right to absolute rule and Parliamentarians, who believe that Parliament should represent the people. Jayne Swift is a daughter of the Dorset gentry, and much to her parents’ dismay, has thus far in life resisted any offers of marriage. Instead, Jayne has trained as a physician and is devoted to healing others, regardless of their political beliefs.

When Jayne first meets William Harrier, she is led to believe that he is a footman to a Dorchester neighbor and Parliamentarian. As war rages on, Jayne remains neutral and just wants the senseless killing to stop.  Each time she encounters William, however, he appears in a different guise and Jayne is left wondering which side of the war he is fighting for.

Throughout it all, including battles that result in Jayne managing hospitals on the front lines, and up to the war’s end in 1649, Jayne and William find themselves in each other’s orbits and in each other’s hearts. But can Jayne ever have a future with the mysterious William Harrier, who presents himself as pauper one moment and a lord the next?

If you are a fan of meticulously researched historical fiction, you’ll want to put The Swift and the Harrier by Minette Walters at the top of your reading list. This sweeping tale of adventure, war, loss, and love stars an unforgettable and non-traditional heroine in Jayne and a dashing man of mystery in William. Well-paced and totally captivating, The Swift and the Harrier is historical fiction at its best.

-Carol

Step Into a Satisfying Read

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In Her Boots
by K. J. Dell’Antonia

Rhett Smith was raised by her late father and grandmother on their family farm, Pioneer Hill, in New Hampshire and has been estranged from her university dean/mother Margaret ever since she left them for academia. Instead of college, much to her mother’s disapproval, Rhett chooses to travel the world, seeking adventure and a nomadic lifestyle that doesn’t tie her down. Despite thinking she’ll never live up to her mother’s standards, on Instagram, under the name “Modern Pioneer Girl,” Rhett has garnered quite a following. As her alter-ego, or MPG, Rhett translates her diverse skill-set into a fearless, can-do attitude that inspires other young women to question their own life choices, learn how to fix their own flat tires, attempt to drive a pedicab in Thailand, or be unafraid to work odd jobs to get by. In fact, Rhett has written a successful, best-selling book about it all under a pseudonym – a book that is outselling her own mother’s book of parental advice.

When Rhett’s beloved grandmother dies, a now 40-year-old Rhett decides it is time to stop her wanderings and return to the farm and run it full-time. She is shocked to discover that she has inherited it jointly with Margaret who wants to sell it to her university. As if that weren’t bad enough, when Rhett is asked to be on the Today Show to promote her book, she chickens out and forces her best friend Jasmine to go in her place. Now the world believes that Jasmine is the Modern Pioneer Girl, and Rhett looks like an unemployed failure to her mom, once again. How will plain old Rhett ever convince her mother not to sell her half of the farm?

Pick up In Her Boots by K. J. Dell’Antonia if you are looking for a novel that is full of heart and humor. This book is perfect for fans of women’s fiction and books about friendship, family, second chances and a little bit of romance. I read this delightful novel in a single sitting.

-Carol

New Historical Fiction

EmmaLeave a comment

It was 1942 in Bergen when Rumi Orlstad’s future husband Magnus drowned at sea. He was part of the Norwegian resistance movement along with Rumi. Resistance duties included smuggling British agents, supplies, and fugitives across the North Sea into Scotland (nicknamed the Shetland Bus, a permanent link between Mainland Shetland in Scotland and Norway). Rumi’s fisherman father Peder, her almost-brother Rubio, along with her best friend and neighbor Marjit assist in their own ways with the goal of ridding Norway of the Germans.

Rumi helps rescue two SOE (Special Operations Executive) agents, and Jens Parks was one of them. He and Rumi eventually work together to free Anya, who was date raped by a German officer. She lived at one of the Lebensborn maternity homes. Hitler wanted to enhance Aryan genes and Norwegians matched his ideals. Many Norwegian women had consensual sex with Nazis or were raped. Some of those women were housed in a Lebensborn location until they gave birth. Those babies were given to childless German families to raise as their own.

I was unaware of much of the above information regarding the occupation of Norway. I was also unaware of Lebensborn which was begun by Heinrich Himmler. (There were multiple Lebornsborn locations in Germany, Norway, and occupied northern Europe, including Poland.)

An interesting story for historical fiction readers! (The Nazi German occupation of Norway began on April 9, 1940 and continued until May 9, 1945.) .

~Emma