In 1975 a movie was made of the popular biography The Hiding Place. Covering the horrific events of the Nazi’s occupation of the Netherlands, the narrative tells what happened to Corrie ten Boom and her family as members of the Dutch resistance. Chasing Shadows is a fictionalized account based on other stories of WWII resistance…
Lily Morton is one of my go-to authors whenever I’m looking for a sexy, funny, low-angst read, and in Merry Measure – a standalone Christmas romance – she delivers all those things and more. It’s a charming friends-to-lovers story that’s full of warmth, humour and Christmas spirit (the bottled kind as well as the other!),…
Butler Mae Valentine and former Major Hamish Kitt, the spy who loves her, return in this third instalment in Sandra Antonelli’s In Service series – which started life as a trilogy but is, according to the author’s notes, going to be expanded to incorporate a fourth book sometime in 2021. True to Your Service joins…
In 1997, the Seinfeld episode called The Yada Yada aired. While this installment is best known for coining the term “anti-dentite” and the use of yada, yada to skip details in conversation, it also takes an intriguing look at religious conversion and the confused feelings such an event creates in the people around the convert. …
Searching for Sylvie Lee, the beautiful, mesmerizing new novel by Jean Kwok, has been named a ‘Most Anticipated’ book by Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, and a host of other publications. I’ve been anticipating it since I finished her excellent Mambo in Chinatown in 2014. While this story doesn’t quite match the romantic, effervescent charm of…
Sometimes, I get tired of mysteries set in places like London, New York City, or Los Angeles, so I was pleased to discover that The Liar’s Girl was set in Ireland. Plus, the synopsis sounded fabulous, so I decided to give this psychological suspense novel a try, and I’m pretty glad I did. It’s been…
I had no interest in Eat, Pray, Love in either book or movie form; it just sounded self-indulgent to me. But a novel about a female naturalist in the nineteenth century stumbling on ideas similar to Darwin’s? Sign me up! I loved The Signature of All Things – it’s an excellent reminder of why I…
Manga is a booming business in Japan. For the uninitiated, manga is a Japanese art form that has been adopted and adapted by publishers worldwide. Manga, roughly defined, is the Japanese word for comics or drawn cartoons. In reality it’s far more than that. Manga are not just comics for kids. Subject matter can range…
In Amsterdam during the 1630s, fortunes were made and lost speculating on tulips. While comparisons are often made between the “tulip crash” of 1637 and the stock market’s plunge in 1929, reading a fictional account of the craze was quite informative. But while I loved the unique setting and enjoyed all the factoids I learned,…