When I was growing up, one of the movies often watched at my home was The Longest Day, an epic WWII film starring classic cinema stars John Wayne, Sean Connery and Henry Fonda. Using quasi-documentary style storytelling, the film dramatizes the events of the Battle of Normandy and a small part of what happened during…
There is an old saying that states: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. In The Taster, V.S. Alexander shows that it takes many good men doing the right thing to triumph over powerful evil. Unfortunately, Germany at the time of the Second World War did not…
An AAR Top 100 Romance originally published on March 26, 1998 So often heroes and heroines of romances are larger-than-life characters. Lords, ladies, knights, cowboys, and swashbuckling types in general. There’s nothing wrong with that, we all like a little wish fulfillment and fantasy in our reading. After all, if we read nothing but books…
In Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan’s first novel in seven years, one woman struggles to find her place in an ever-changing world. Anna is only twelve years old when she first meets Dexter Styles. He’s a powerful, mysterious man, and for reasons Anna doesn’t fully understand, her father seems intent on keeping his association with Styles…
I’ve been a huge fan of Diane Chamberlain’s work since the early 2000s. Everything she writes is filled with well-drawn characters who are in the midst of varied and complex situations. When I learned she was writing a novel set during the Second World War, I was over the moon, as that’s one of my…
Dorothy Garlock’s Take Me Home caught my attention because of the hero described in the blurb – he’s a German PoW in 1945, escaped and hiding out in a small Wisconsin town. The premise reminded me a bit of a book which I read over twenty years ago but still remember, so I gave it…
I have loved Jane Porter’s women’s fiction since I read the almost autobiographical Flirting with Forty and Odd Mom Out. Ms. Porter is able to convey emotions in all their raw intensity so well, she puts my heart through the wringer while also providing it solace. I cannot turn the pages of her books fast enough….
I’ve been on a bit of a World War II kick lately, so Jessica Shattuck’s latest novel, The Women in the Castle, seemed like something that would be right up my alley. I relished the idea of seeing how a group of women and children rebuilt their lives and created a cohesive family unit after…
Code Name: Verity is one of the most memorable YA novels I have ever read. A breathtaking story about a young Scottish woman taken prisoner for being a spy in Nazi Germany, it was heart wrenching, enlightening, beautiful, and lyrical. The Pearl Thief is the prequel to that tale, a look at Julia before she…
Ruby Sutton thought the call into her editor’s office would result in the termination of her employment; instead, she is offered the opportunity of a lifetime. She is to go to London and report from there on the European war. In the summer of 1940 there could be no sweeter assignment for an ambitious young…