THE GOOD SISTER (WENDY CORSI STABU)

THE GOOD SISTER (WENDY CORSI STAUB)

Story Description:
HarperCollins|Sept. 9, 2013|Mass Market Paperbound|ISBN: 978-0-06-222237-4


In New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub's electrifying new thriller, a mother races to save her daughter before her darkest nightmare comes true.

Sacred Sisters Catholic girl's school has hardly changed since Jen Archer was a student. Jen hoped her older daughter would thrive here. Instead, shy, studious, Carley becomes the target of vicious bullies. But the real danger at Sacred Sisters goes much deeper.

The only person Carley can talk to is "Angel", a kindred spirit she met online. Carley tells Angel everything - about her younger sister, about school, about the sudden death of her former best friend. Angel is her lifeline. And Angel is closer than she knows.

When another schoolgirl is found dead, Jen's unease grows. There are too many coincidences, too many links to her past. Every instinct tels her that Carley is the next target. For someone is intent on punishing the guilty, teaching the ultimate lesson in how to fear...and how to die.
My Review:

Jennifer Archer had been a student at Sacred Sisters Catholic girl's school when she was a teenager. Now married to, Thad and with two teenage daughters of her own, she hoped at least one of them would attend the same school.

Carley, was a shy, studious student whom Jen thought for sure would thrive and flourish and do well at Sacred Sisters. However, that was not the case at all. Carley found herself a victim of vicious bullying and taunts that hurt her deeply. She spoke to the Guidance Counsellor who talked her out of leaving Sacred Sisters for another school and instead told her to suck it up and hold her head up high and not to give into the bullies, and run tail tucked between her legs.

Emma, Carley's younger sister attended a different high school where she flourished and had lots of friends but Carley couldn't talk to her about anything because they didn't get along. Emma was outgoing, happy, and openly opinionated and Carley was the complete opposite.

Then, Carley found "Angel", a kind and understanding girl from California she met online. Carley ends up telling Angel everything from her sister to her family to her school problems to the suicide of her former best friend. To Carley, Angel is her lifeline but Angels is a lot closer than she realizes.

Suddenly, a second female student is found dead from suicide and Carley's Mom, Jen fears there are just too many coincidences and too many links to her past. Every thing inside her tells her that Carley is the next target and oh how right she is, for someone is intent on punishing the guilty, teaching the ultimate lesson in how to fear...and how to die.

THE GOOD SISTER was a definite page-turner with mystery, suspense and thrills at every turn of the page. As usual, Ms. Staub does not disappoint. I have read every single book she has ever written and have never been let down nor disappointed in any of her writing. Way to go, Wendy! Another finely crafted suspense/thriller that kept me at the edge-of-my-seat!

RECKONING (BOOK TWO) KELLY COZY

STORY DESCRIPTION:
Smite Publications|November 1, 2013|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 97809851234

Remorse...All Sean Kincaid wanted was to use his Special Operative skills to bring a domestic terrorist to justice. But he left a trail of bodies in his wake: foes, colleagues - an an innocent woman. Now he's pursued by enemies, while desperately searching for a way to make amends. Revenge...Deirdre Monahan was expecting a happy afternoon with her cousin Anna. But she found a corpse abandoned like trash - and no one who could tell her why. Now Deirdre's looking for answers, and bent on giving whoever killed Anna the gift of knowing Deirdre's pain. In Ashes, Sean sacrificed everything. In this thrilling sequel, there will be...a Reckoning.
MY REVIEW:

Reckoning is one of the most thrilling and suspenseful novels I've read in a long time. Ms. Cozy knows her characters well and delves into the intracacies of their personalities and what makes them tick.

In Reckoning we are introduced to Deirdre Monahan who is the cousin of Anna. Deirdre looks very much like Anna that it startles a lot of people. She is having a very, very difficult time coping with and accepting Anna's death, they were very close.

Deirdre decides she is going to investigate and find out who is responsible for Anna's death but what she doesn't know is just how dangerous this plan is going to be. She will be dealing with some very tough people who have no respect for life whatsoever and ends up in a few nail-biting moments.

Sean Kincaid is still on his quest to ensure Jennifer Thomson is okay. He and Deirdre eventually meet up in a scene that had me biting my own nails. I was almost afraid to see what was going to happen.

Kelly Cozy is such an amazing author who gives real voices to what seems real people. You almost forget that you're reading fiction. Her characters are so well-developed that I feel as though I know each one personally.

I would highly recommend that you read Book One "Ashes" first so you can get a better idea of the background and how all this started. You can read "Reckoning" as a stand-alone, but I promise you'll enjoy the sequel much more if you read Book One first.

I'm really hoping there will be a Book Three! Great job, Ms. Cozy you've made a fan for life!!

ASHES (KELLY COZY)

REVIEW

Smite Publications|Feb. 24, 2013|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 97800985123451


Jennifer Thomson worked as a receptionist in one of the Federal buildings in Los Angeles, California.  She was single, happy, and enjoyed her life.  One morning she was on her way to the photocopier when she ran into her friend, Cindy.  They chatted for a few minutes and then made a date to meet for lunch at 11:30a.m. so they could beat the lunch crowd.  Cindy then reminded Jennifer that the photocopier in their department still hadn't been repaired so she'd have to go over to the Human Resources department and use the one there.  Jennifer began walking away when there was a sudden swaying and shaking of the building and then a loud explosion.  Jennifer was thrown to the floor with ceiling tiles, lights, and other debris raining down on her.  Suddenly it was deathly quiet and she finally opened her eyes to see a huge gaping hole in the side of the building right in front of her - 18 floors up!!!  She saw a man falling past the window on the way to his death.  Finally getting her sense about her, she got up and ran into Mr, Danvers who told her to get out quickly, and to use the stairs. 

Jennifer ran for the stairwell and began her descent down meeting more and more people on the way.  When "she survived the domestic terrorist attack, her last-minute escape became the iconic image of the event," she became front page news.  Her photo was plastered everywhere! 

Jennifer couldn't handle being noticed and hounded by the media, she only wanted to "disappear and become just another fact in the crowd."  So, she "cashed in on her unwanted fame and moved to a small town" in Canada. 

Sean Kincaid was a retired covert operative - a black ops living in Florida which I don't think he really liked all that much but it was somewhere to live. 

The type of black ops that Sean was, is the kind that governments like to deny exist although we're all aware they are around and in operation.  He was watching television the day the Federal building in Los Angeles came down.  When he saw, Jennifer on the news something touched him deep inside and he decided he was going to help her.  He was going to find those responsible for what they did and bring justice to, Jennifer "even if it meant turning rogue." 

"What Jennifer and Sean will both find is that nothing goes to plan, and their paths will cross in a way neither could have foreseen."

ASHES was wonderfully written with a lot of mystery and suspense.  I couldn't turn the pages fast enough!  I can hardly wait to read the sequel titled: "Reckoning" which is out now.  Great job, Ms, Cozy...I loved it!!!

SWEET MANDARIN (HELEN TSE)

 

 

Story Description:

 

St. Martin’s Press|October 13, 2009|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 978-0-312-60481-3

 

Spanning almost a hundred years, this rich and evocative memoir recounts the lives of three generations of remarkable Chinese women. 

 

Their extraordinary journey takes us from the brutal poverty of village life in mainland China, to newly prosperous 1930’s Hong Kong and finally to the UK.  Their lives were as dramatic as the times they lived through.

 

A love of food and talent for cooking pulled each generation through the most devastating of upheavals.  Helen Tse’s grandmother, Lily Kwok, was forced to work as an amah after the violent murder of her father.  Crossing the ocean from Hong Kong in the 1950’s, Lily honed her famous chicken curry recipe.  Eventually she opened one of Manchester’s earliest Chinese restaurants where her daughter, Mabel, worked from the tender age of nine.  But gambling and the Triads were pervasive in the Chinese immigrant community, and tragically they lost the restaurant.  It was up to author Helen and her sisters, the third generation of these exceptional women, to re-establish their grandmother’s dream.  The legacy lived on when the sisters opened their award-winning restaurant Sweet Mandarin in 2004. 

 

Sweet Mandarin shows how the most important inheritance is wisdom, and how recipes passed down the female line can be the most valuable heirloom.  

 

My Review:

 

Helen Tse’s grandmother, Lily was born in a small village in Southern China in 1918 and is said to be a stubborn woman, but at 88 years of age she is still fit and intelligent. 

 

Helen and her sisters were immersed from birth in the Chinese catering business – the fourth generation of her family to make a living from food.  Although Helen became a lawyer, her sister Lisa a financier, and Janet an engineer they all gave up their well-paying careers to open a restaurant they named Sweet Mandarin in Manchester, England.  All their friends thought they were crazy to give up white collar jobs for the long, arduous and unrelenting hours that go into running a restaurant.  They viewed it as taking a step backwards in their lives.  However, the older generation understood. 

 

The business brought the sisters closer together and allowed Helen to test her entrepreneurial streak and also set the path for the sisters to be reintroduced to their beloved grandmother and mother by opening up a bridge between them that crossed East and West, uniting the past and the present. 

 

Each Saturday morning, Helen, her mother, and her grandmother shopped at the Chinese grocery store.  They purchased stock for the restaurant and their own home cooking.  In the past, Helen had only known the barest of facts about her grandmother’s long life, but the weekly shopping trips allowed Lily to begin to reveal her real story to Helen, bit by bit. 

 

Helen had only been aware of the odd anecdote or funny character who made up her family folklore – but now the detail and scale of what Lily had gone through began to emerge.  Each bottle or package Lily picked up in the store was tied to a different chapter of her life. 

 

Sweet Mandarin is a courageous true story about a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter: three generations of independent Chinese women whose lives take in Guangzhou in southern China in the 1920’s, colonial Hong Kong in the 1930’s, the horrors of the Japanese occupation and a changing England from the 1950’s to the present day. 

 

This was an excellent memoir that was remarkable and one I just couldn’t put down.  If only all of us had such in-depth knowledge of our family’s from four generations back.  The women in Helen Tse’s family were definitely survivors. 

 

 

 



THE SEARCH (SUZANNE WOODS FISHER)

 

 

Review:

 

Baker Publishing Group|June 6, 2013|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 978-0-8007-3387-2

 

It had been fifteen years since Lainey O’Toole lived in Stoney Ridge, a small Amish community.  Now all these years later her car breaks down in that very same town.  She had no plans whatsoever to stay as she was only passing through on her way to culinary school but when the local mechanic informed her that her car was unrepairable, she had no choice but to stay for at least a short period of time.

 

That very same day, the local bakery had posted a help wanted sign and Lainey took the job.  The owner had a sister who even had a room to rent right across the street from the bakery.  Lainey was all set up in one day.  Now she just had to work long enough to save up for a new car so she could continue her journey.  However, that’s not how things worked out for Lainey at all.  She was forced to face her past and discover how her decisions had affected so many other people. 

 

Bess Reihl is spending the summer with her grandmother, Bertha at Rose Hill Farm in Stoney Ridge.  Bess isn’t at all happy at the prospect of being there as Bertha is a domineering, out-spoken, and impulsive woman with a knack for drawing attention to herself and to Beth once she arrived in town. 

 

However, it isn’t very long before Bess realizes there is a specific reason her grandmother summoned her to Rose Hill for the summer.  Initially she’d told Bess’s father, Jonah that she’d had “female surgery” and required Bess’s assistance but in fact she’d only had a tooth pulled.   Bertha knew her son, Jonah well enough to know that he wouldn’t allow his daughter to spend the entire summer over a pulled tooth. 

 

Lainey and Bess will soon meet and their worlds will be rocked to the core!  The secrets that come to light will shock them both. 

 

The Search was as easy, quick, pleasant read with a good storyline and strong characters.  I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed stories about the Amish or Christian fiction. 

 



THE INNKEEPER OF BETHLEHEM: THE STORY OF SANTA CLAUS (SCOTT ROLOFF)

 

 

Story Description:

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9860573-0-4

 

Ever wondered how Santa Claus came to be?  This book will permit you and your family to enjoy Santa Claus and the other secular customs of Christmas within the Christian celebration of Jesus’s birth.  For little children, Santa Claus becomes a real person delivering presents to them from Jesus.  Each Christmas season, reading a chapter a night will become a holiday tradition for the entire family. 

 

The tale begins with Shai and Adi, the childless owners of an Inn in Bethlehem.  When Shai rents out their bedroom, they must sleep in the stable.  During the night, Joseph and Mary arrive and Adi helps Mary through a difficult labor.  They bond, and when an angel appears telling Joseph to flee Egypt with Mary and Jesus, Shai and Adi go with them and become Jesus’s uncle and aunt.

 

The book tells of Jesus growing up with his friends Mary Magdalene and John, his ministry, and his death and resurrection.  These vignettes teach the lessons of life and the Bible through Jesus’s experiences. 

 

The book concludes with Shai and Adi following the Lord’s Star to the North Pole, where angels have built a palace.  Jesus wants Shai and Adi to raise the baby angels there until they reach adulthood.  The baby angels, or elves as the grown angels derogatively refer to them, are a mischievous lot.  Shai becomes known as Santa Claus when a baby angel mispronounces “Shai, Uncle of Jesus,” claus being the angelic word for uncle. 

 

Jesus also wants to give a present to each boy and girl on his birthday.  Christmas Day, a tradition he began during his life when he gave presents to his family.  As part of their training, once a baby angel sprouts wings he or she is assigned to watch children and make toys for them.  On Christmas Eve, Santa flies the sleigh to heaven to present the new adult angels to God, and then flies around the world delivering Jesus’s presents to the children of the world. 

 

The book is a story within a story, told by a visiting uncle to a little girl and her nephew.  Each night before bedtime beginning on December 6^th, St. Nicholas’s Day, and continuing through Christmas Eve, the uncle tells part of the story.  Instead of numbers, the chapters are titled by day.  The book can be read as a normal book or a chapter each day, and it can be read to oneself or out loud to children.  When read out loud, the chapter lengths vary between 10 and 15 minutes. 

 

Wherever you may live, and by whatever name that you may know him – Santa Claus, Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, Father Christmas, Pere Noel or Sinter Klaas – you will never forget the true story of Santa Claus, as you read it every Christmas with your children, who will someday read it every Christmas with their children too.

 

My Review:

 

Aunt Trixie, Uncle Aaron and cousin Jack were visiting from Jerusalem for Christmas.  Kalie and Pinkie were so excited that they kept asking Mom when Daddy would be back from the airport.  No sooner had she told them that the flight from Jerusalem had already landed, everyone arrived at the door.  The kids were so excited!  

 

Uncle Aaron was apparently a very good story teller and Kalie asked if he’d tell one.  Uncle Aaron was more than happy to comply.  He began by telling Kalie, Pinkie and Jack that this particular story took place in a little town called Bethlehem which was approximately a half day’s walk south of Jerusalem. 

 

Shai and Adi lived in an Inn and pretty much every other inn was full because people were registering for the tax rolls.  Adi was a bit miffed at Shai because he’d rented out their bedroom for the night when Adi thought they’d be sleeping on the kitchen floor instead.  But, Shai was offered double the money for the bedroom so he just couldn’t refuse.  He strolled outside to collect some extra blankets from the stable when he was approached by a man named, Jadon.  He asked Shai if he had any room left in his inn for himself and his family.  Shai told him he did as long as they didn’t mind sleeping on his kitchen floor.  Jadon was more than happy to do that for it meant they’d have shelter from the coming storm. 

 

Suddenly, Adi was calling: “Shai! Shai!” and he knew he was in trouble for she had just discovered that he’d also rented out their kitchen floor as sleeping space.  Adi demanded to know where they were supposed to sleep and when Adi answered: “the stable…” she was shocked to say the least.  But, nonetheless Adi said she’d bring their dinner out to the stable. 

 

Uncle Aaron and the rest of the family enjoyed a nice dinner together and told the kids that he’d tell them more of the story every day until Christmas, but decided to tell them a bit more before bedtime. 

 

The storm was fierce with loud thunder and gusting winds.  The noise woke Adi.  She got up to fix a slamming shutter when she saw a man with a woman on a donkey standing outside the inn.  Wrapped only in her robe she approached the couple.  The man said his name was Joseph, and his wife, Mary was pregnant and feverish.  Adi immediately ushered them with their donkey into the stable.  Mary was burning up with a  fever and about to give birth.  After laying her down it wasn’t long until baby Jesus was born.  What a miraculous night this had turned out to be! 

 

The following day Shai and Joseph were sitting outside sharing a bag of almonds.  Shai was almost asleep when suddenly a bright light flashed through his closed eye lids.  Right before him was a huge man wearing a brilliant white robe.  The giant man told them his name was Uriel, an angel of the Lord.  He told them that the baby Jesus was “the long promised savior of the Jews and the other people of the earth” and that He “must be raised in the ways of God so that He is prepared for His destiny.  King Herod had heard of Jesus’s birth and was fearful that he would “usurp the crown of Israel from him and his heirs.”  So, he had already ordered his soldiers to leave Jerusalem at sunset, march to Bethlehem and kill the baby Jesus that very night!  They were warned that the soldiers would break through the doors of the inn at midnight so they therefore must run at sunset. 

 

What is going to happen now?  What are Kalie and the other kids’ reaction to Uncle Aaron’s story?  And where does Santa Claus enter into all this? 

 

Scott Roloff has penned a most beautiful Christmas story that every family should read together every year.  For me the best way would be to read one chapter each day until Christmas just like Uncle Aaron did in the story as it helps the tension mount and gives the children lots to think about until the next installment.

 

Thank you Mr. Roloff for writing a most precious story that can be shared again and again and again for generations to come. 

 



THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS (ELIZABETH GILBERT)

 

 

Story Description:

 

Viking Adult|October 1, 2013|Hardcover|ISBN: 978-0-670-02485-8

 

A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed. 

 

In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery.  Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia.  Born in 1800, Henry’s brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father’s money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself.  As Alma’s research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a man named Ambrose Pike who makes incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact opposite direction into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, the sun, likely couple is a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all life. 

 

Exquisitely researched and told at a galloping pace, The Signature of All Things soars across the globe from London to Peru to Philadelphia to Tahiti to Amsterdam, and beyond.  Along the way, the story is peopled with unforgettable characters, missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses, and the quite mad.  But most memorable of all, it is the story of Alma Whittaker, who was born in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolution bears witness to that extraordinary moment in human history when all the old assumptions about science, religion, commerce, and class were exploding into dangerous new ideas.  Written in the bold, questing spirit of that singular time, Gilbert’s wise, deep, and spellbinding tale is certain to capture the hearts and minds of readers. 

 

My Review:

 

The Signature of All Things begins in the 1700’s with Henry Whittaker.  Being immensely poor for his family had nothing, Henry decides to become a man of his own making.  As a young lad he stole from the Royal Botanical Kew Gardens various types of flowers and barks used in the pharmaceutical business to cure people’s ills.  Sir Joseph Banks was the Director and he finally caught young Henry.  But by this time, Henry had already amassed a little fortune for himself but admitted nothing to Sir Banks.  As a punishment for stealing from him, Banks sent Henry to far off places to learn all he could about plants.  He was to keep copious clear and concise notes and provide sketches for everything he studied.  The conditions on the ships he travelled were absolutely abhorrent but Henry never so much as complained once.  He took everything in his stride. 

 

When the young adult Henry returned to England he had decided to make it his life’s work and aimed to become the richest man in the world. 

 

He married, Beatrix, a Dutch woman who was well-educated and they moved to Pennsylvania.   Henry had already amassed such a sizable fortune by this time that he built himself an overly elaborate estate which he named ‘White Acre.’  The people of Pennsylvania were in awe of the this mansion on the hill and the elaborate and beautiful gardens. 

 

Together, Beatrix and Henry had one daughter whom they named, Alma and a few years later adopted another girl named, Prudence who was suddenly in one night left without a family.  Prudence was a strikingly beautiful and small as Alma was homely and large.  The sisters could never become close. 

 

Henry valued education and the girls were schooled at home by their mother and a tutor until they were eighteen-years-old.  Alma followed the path of scientific explanation, loving to study plants, trees, barks, and mosses like her father had.  She ended up with a specialty in Bryology, the study of mosses. 

 

Alma’s life did not always go the way she had hoped and often suffered greatly.  She struggled for years and years to find personal happiness and fulfillment. 

 

The Signature of All Things is an epic masterpiece that should be read by all.  The way the prose and language Gilbert used is hauntingly beautiful and something which I enjoyed very much.  The writing was fresh, the characters so well fleshed out you felt like you knew them personally.  The descriptive narrative made it easy to hear, see, and smell everything the characters did as if you’d gone through the pages of the book and into the story itself. 

 

I would very, very highly recommend this book to anyone and would like to say “thank you” Ms. Gilbert for the best two days of reading I’ve done in a while.