Book Review: Austen Years

Austen Years

A Memoir in Five Novels

by Rachel Cohen

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Biographies & Memoirs

Pub Date 12 May 2020  

I am reviewing a copy of The Austen Years through Farrah, Strauss and Giroux, and Netgalley:

In the time between the birth of her first child and the death of her Father, Rachel Cohen found herself turning to Jane Austen to make a better sense of this new reality of hers.  She had been simultaneously grief stricken and had her spirits lifted by the birth of her daughter.  Austen’s novels helped her to answer the hard questions about her grief, her mourning and She was able to reckon with difficult questions about mourning, memorializing, living in a household, paying attention to the world, reading, writing.

In Austen years we get a deep look at the writers relationship to reading, it is written in a heartfelt and sensitive matter, allowing the readers a deeper emotional understanding to her own family, winding together memoir, criticism, and biographical and historical material about Austen herself.   This book allows you to see how her reading of Austen helped her through a time of loss.

If you are awesome fan, a reader of Austen novels you will love Austen Years.  

I give The Austen Years five out of five stars!

Happy Reading! 

Book Review: The Time of Jacob’s Trouble

The Time of Jacob's Trouble

by Donna VanLiere

Harvest House Publishers

Christian , Mystery & Thrillers

Pub Date 17 Mar 2020  

I am reviewing a copy of The Time of Jacob’s Trouble through Harvest House Publishers and Netgalley:

One of Emma Grady’s Favorite patients and several of her colleagues vanishing right in front of her turns a typical day at work into a nightmare.  Emma frantically makes her way from New York to Queens, praying that her boyfriend is safe.  The subways have closed, graves have opened up and a countless number of people have simple vanished.  New York City erupts in Mayhem as terror grips the remaining residents.

Why did everyone vanish in a moment, not only in New York but worldwide?  Emma can’t help but wonder if this was the end of the world that had been predicted.  And finds herself in a desperate search for answers.

In this story that will leave you turning the page, you will be transported From New York to Isra’el and in the Final pages the author backs her plot line up with Biblical references.

I give The Time of Jacob’s Trouble five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!

Book Review: A Cross to Kill

A Cross to Kill

by Andrew Huff

INscribe Digital

Kregel Publications

Christian , Mystery & Thrillers

Pub Date 15 Oct 2019 

I am reviewing A Cross to Kill through Inscribe Digital/Kregel,Publications and Netgalley:

John across is not the kind of man you would imagine had a checkered past.  He is a small town Pastor, doing his best to head his flock to follow God’s calling.  He is definitely not the kind of man you would imagine had a checkered past.

The truth is that the man who was preaching behind the pulpit was once, an assassin for the CIA.  When John gave his life to Christ and decided to follow him, he put his past, and that work behind him, and was determined to do penance for all the lives he took as a CIA assassin.  And he vowed never to kill.

Someone wants the a Pastor to pay for his sins with his own life now.  When a terrorist seeking revenge walks into John’s Church, his sins are laid bare for all too see.  When he is confronted with his past, he finds himself having to face his demons  and discover whether a man can truly change.  Can he keep the vote he made, even with those he loves the most are in mortal danger?  Will the people he cares for, including his congregation be caught in the crossfire?  In the end will it be John’s life, that he had to sacrifice?

I give A Cross to Kill five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!

Book Review: Alive

Alive

How the Resurrection of Christ Changes Everything

by Gabriel N.E. Fluhrer

Reformation Trust Publishing

Christian

Pub Date 31 Mar 2020

I am reviewing a copy of Alive Through Reformation Trust Publishing and Netgalley:

Despite being told over and over again that life in the West has never been more secular, the author of this book Gabriel N.E. Fluhrer argues that Despite this well-worn narrative, a closer look reveals that secularism’s victory dance is premature. A strong argument could be (and has been) made that never before have we lived in a more spiritual age.

Did Jesus really rise from the dead?  In Alive : How the Resurrection of Christ Changes Everything, Dr. Gabe Fluhrer demonstrates that Jesus’ defeat of the grave is no mere myth—it is a historic reality supported by overwhelming evidence.   Denying Christ’s resurrection is an indefensible position, but by God’s Grace we embrace the reality of the risen Lord is to have our lives changed forever.

It is pointed out too the Resurrection of Jesus makes more sense than its chief rival nihilism.  It helps when people are desperate to understand the confused age in which we live, the Bible offers us a picture of the world that explains why there is so much suffering, evil, and sin. But it doesn’t stop there.

I give Alive five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!

Book Review: Promised Land

Promised Land

by Robert Whitlow

Thomas Nelson--FICTION

Thomas Nelson

Christian , Mystery & Thrillers

Read an Excerpt

Pub Date 14 Jan 2020

I am reviewing a copy of Promised Land through Thomas Nelson Fiction and Netgalley:

Hana and Daud are unable to return to their homeland, despite having Israeli citizenship because of a dangerous terrorist ring is out to hurt Daud.  Hana would rather remain in the United States, where she works at a law firm in Atlanta, especially after learning she’s pregnant, but Daud wants to return to Israel even if it makes him a walking target.  

Hana is helping her boss plan an extremely large Middle East summit in Atlanta when her old friend and former Co-Litigator, asks for her help with a case. He has a client who is attempting to recover ancient artifacts stolen from his Jewish great-grandfather by a Soviet colonel at the end of World War II.  The case crosses several national borders, he needs Hana’s knowledge and skill to get to the bottom of what happened to these precious artifacts.

In the meantime Daud is called to help a US intelligence agency extract a Ukrainian doctor from a dangerous situation in Egypt. While overseas, he can’t resist the call of Jerusalem and thus sets off a series of events that puts thousands of people in danger, including his wife and unborn child.

I give Promised Land five out of five stars!

Happy Reading! 

Book Review: Aggie Morton: Mystery Queen: The Body Under the Piano

Aggie Morton, Mystery Queen: The Body under the Piano

by Marthe Jocelyn

Penguin Random House Canada

Tundra Books

Children's Fiction , Middle Grade

Pub Date 04 Feb 2020

I am reviewing a copy of Aggie Morton, Mystery Queen: The Body under the Piano through Penguin Random House Canada/Tundra Books and Netgalley:

This book will transport you back to 1902 in a small town on the Coast I’d England, here you will meet Aggie Morton.  Aggie is adventurous but really shy since her father died.  But one fateful day she crosses the paths of twelve year old Belgian immigrant Hector Perot, and they discover a dead body on the floor of the Mermaid dance room.  The number of suspects grow, and the town seems to becoming apart, so Aggie and her new friend will try everything in their power to find the killer so Aggie’s beloved dance instructor is not convicted of a murder Aggie knows she didn’t commit.

This book is a fun read, filled with mystery, adventure, with an unforgettable heroine, along with several helpings of teas and sweets.  

If you have a middle grade reader, who loves, historical, fun thread mysteries then they will love Aggie Morton, Mystery Queen: The Body under the Piano.

Five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!

Book Review: Mengele: Unmasking the Angel of Death

Mengele

Unmasking the "Angel of Death"

by David G. Marwell

W. W. Norton & Company

Biographies & Memoirs , History

Pub Date 28 Jan 2020

I am reviewing a copy of Mengele: Unmasking the Angel of Death through W.W. Norton and Company and Netgalley:

Disclaimer:  This book contains extremely sensitive subject matters, and tells of grotesque experiments, this book is not meant for children.

Honestly I struggled through the details of this book as well, but I feel this is an important book in order to better understand the brutality of the Holocaust, and in particular one Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.

Josef Mengele was born on March.16, 1911 and died on February 1979.  

Mengele was possibly the most Notorious war criminal ever.  Josef Mengele became was the embodiment of bloodless efficiency and passionate devotion to a grotesque worldview.   He was aided by the Role he thought was at work in popular culture.  The grotesque work of Mengele during the Holocaust has made him a twisted symbol of a twisted time.  He came to symbolize too the horrific failure of justice that allowed countless Nazi murderers and their accomplices to escape justice.   Whether looked at as a demonic doctor who directed mass killings or a fugitive that managed to escape capture that has made Mengele loom so large that some have refused to believe he died even with conclusive proof.

It is unlikely that Mengele’s Childhood would have shown any indicators of the man he was to become, The Angel of Death.  There was really no indication of extreme politics, or the brutal Anti-semitism that would lead to him to becoming ”The Angel of Death.”

David G Markell was the chief of investigation research at the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations in the 1980s and worked on Mengele’s case.  In researching the case he interviewed Mengele’s surviving victims, visited the scenes of the crimes, and held Mengele’s bones in his hands.  In this book he examines in great detail Mengele’s life and career including his grotesque, heartbreaking brutality.  He tells of Mengele’s university degree that led to two Ph.D’s and could have led to a promising career a a scientist, and Markell goes on to talk of Mengele’s war time service on the frontlines, as well as his brutality at Aushwitz which led to a great deal of deaths, in the name of his so called research.

Mengele tells the international search for Josef Mengele that ended in a cemetery in Sao Paulo, Brazil, as well as the dogged forensic investigation that produced overwhelming evidence that Mengele had died—but failed to convince those who, arguably, most wanted him dead. 

I found this book to be one of the most difficult books I’ve read in a long time, with that being said, it was very well written and researched and deserves nothing less than four out of five stars!

Happy Reading!

Book Review: More Than A Grain of Truth

More Than a Grain of Truth

The official true story behind the film 'Mr. Jones'

by Dr. Margaret Siriol Colley

Endeavour Media

Biographies & Memoirs , History

Pub Date 07 Feb 2020

I am reviewing a copy of More Than a Grain of Truth through Endeavour Media and Netgalley:

Garreth Jones was a young Welsh Journalist who was born in 1905 and died under mysterious circumstances on the eve of his thirtieth birthday in 1935.  He had also been the foreign affairs to Lloyd Jones.  He had been captured by bandits in Mongolia and held for ransom, but it is uncertain who murdered him.

In February of 1933 he flew Hitler in February of 1933 and a month later he became the first journalist to expose the famine that had been raging throughout the Soviet Union.  Telling the truth at the time meant that instead of being feted by other Moscow Correspondents he was denigrated by Moscow Correspondence blackballed by the British Establishment and blackballed by the Soviet Secret Police.

Using her uncles, letters, diaries and articles, Margaret Siriol Colley creates a picture of a man who was not afraid to tell the truth, even at the cost of his own life. 

I found More Than A Grain  of Truth, five out of five stars.  

Happy Reading!

Book Review: The Spirituality of Jane Austen

The Spirituality of Jane Austen

by Paula Hollingsworth

Lion Hudson Plc

Lion Books

Biographies & Memoirs , Nonfiction (Adult)

Pub Date 24 Mar 2017

I am reviewing a copy of The Spirituality of Jane Austen through Lion Books and Netgalley:

In 2017, the 200Th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death was marked, and this book was released.

Paul Hollingsworth offers a celebration of Jane Austen’s strong but gentle faith and explores how that impacted both her life and her writings.  The author reminds us too of the importance of being mindful of the way in which we apply the word spirituality to the way we refer to Jane Austen because it was not a term used in her day the way it is today.  We are reminded too that in England in Jane Austen’s time there was only a small portion of Jews, and Muslims were people far away from England, to her the word religious would have met Christian, and it would have meant Protestant Christianity.

We are reminded too of the importance of family to Jane Austen, but there were differences too, an older brother who was disabled lived away from home, and where as Catherine went away to school at ten, Jane was only seven.

It is learned too that two of Jane’s childhood books survive today, Goody Two Shoes, the book that popularized the term goody two shows,  and Fable Choisies by La Fontaine.

1787  was when Jane truly began to devote her spare time to writing.  She left twenty to pieces of her Juvenile writings, plays stories, and story fragments.  Today they are known as Juvenillia.  The first written when she was twelve, and the last pieces when she was about seventeen.

Jane communicated too through letters, the first one that we are aware of was in 1796 when she was twenty but there’s a good chance there were earlier letters.

We learn too that it was more acceptable for women to publish novels during Jane’s life than it was during the era to follow, the Victorian Era.  We learn too that the first draft of Pride and Prejudice, Austen’s most popular novel was written when she was only 21.

As for Church, Jane Austen attended services regularly at Chawton Church, including twice on Sundays, and if services were not held or weather prevented them for going out the Austen’s held services at home.

I found this book to be excellent, and very informative, a perfect read for fans of Jane Austen.

I give The Spirituality of Jane Austen five out of five stars!

Book Review: Hidden Pearl

Hidden Pearl

by J.E. Laufer

Little Egg Publishing Company

Biographies & Memoirs , Teens & YA

Pub Date 22 Aug 2019

I am reviewing a copy of Hidden Pearl through Little Egg Publishing Company and Netgalley:

Hidden Pearl is the incredible story of a Hidden Child,and her family during World War 2.  During these times of desperation, people faced many challenges on a daily basis.  

Hidden Pearl is a story of hope, of courage and resilience of a young girl when it seemed the world around her was falling apart.

I would recommend Hidden Pearl to anyone who is looking for a story of hope against all odds.

Pearl is a remarkable girl, who survived at a time when many adults could not.

This book would make a great teaching tool on the Holocaust, World War 2, and the courage of one young girl and her family.

I give Hidden Pearl five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!