THOUGHTS ON THIS 'n THAT

  Laine Francis believes there’s a place for everything—and New York, where her family lives, isn’t her place. But no sooner does the professional organizer’s marriage begin to unravel than her sisters drop another bomb on her: their mother, Sally, may have dementia, and they need Laine to come home. Laine agrees to briefly return to Brooklyn. After all, bringing order to chaos is what she does best. To Laine’s relief, Sally seems no more absentminded than usual. So Laine vows to help her mother maintain her independence, then hightail it back to Michigan. Except Laine’s plans go awry when she runs into her former best friend, Ben, and realizes she finally has a chance to repair their fractured relationship. Then she discovers that memory loss isn’t the only thing Sally’s been hiding, forcing Laine to decide whether to reveal a devastating truth to her sisters—and whether to follow her heart when it means breaking her mother’s.   Camille's words: Thanks for stopping by my site—and

Rachel survives WWII in Berlin hiding with her painter, mother as an U-boat girl, but once she arrives in New York City, surviving doesn't mean she's left the horrors of war behind. Her mother doesn't survive, but in Berlin Rachel finds herself under the control of a Jewess, who is called "The Angel of Death," because she turns Jews over to the Nazis. Their arrangement saves Rachel.  David R. Gillham once again looks back at WWII for his new novel, SHADOWS of BERLIN (Sourcebooks). For Rachel, a displaced Jew, the past is as close as the present. Rachel arrives in New York City with her Uncle Fritz who survived the war doing "what he had to do to survive." Once in America, Rachel marries Aaron, "a nice boy from Flatbush," who has no idea what she has experienced in Berlin. She sees a psychiatrist weekly, which Aaron reminds her is costing them a lot of money. Aaron's family warmly accepts her into the family but doesn't understand what s

It's hard for me to believe that husbands were once able to have their wives committed to an insane asylum just because he didn't like what she said or that she read too much. In Kate Moore's new book, THE WOMAN THEY COULD NOT SILENCE (Sourcebooks) a lot has changed over 160 years, but a lot hasn't. Moore's non-fiction book is the true story of Elizabeth Packard. Elizabeth's pastor husband of 21-years has her locked up because she doesn't follow his religious beliefs and dares to challenge him with her intellect, independence and own thoughts. He believes "something is wrong upstairs" and she has to be experiencing an "unhinged meltdown" to defy him. With the assistance of one unsavory doctor, and men who believe his every word, her husband is able to keep her apart from her six children and incarcerated for over three years. Inside the Illinois State Hospital, she meets rational women like herself, who aren't mad, but don't embra

  Two church-going, bingo-playing seniors take it upon themselves to solve a murder, in Linda Perelman Pohl's novel, MURDER at the BINGO HALL: An Ethel Dinwiddle Cozy Murder Mystery - Book1. What makes a COZY murder mystery, you may ask? It includes an amateur sleuth, an unsuspecting victim, a quirky supporting cast, and a trail of clues and red herrings. Maybe you already knew this piece of information. I didn't and had to look it up.  Priscilla sits in St. Angela's Church with her two trolls and rosary beads feeling like this might be it. I-17 is called!   She screams "bingo," grabs her chest and slumps over dead. Her two best bingo buddies, Ethel and Nellie have a pretty good reason to believe Priscilla has been murdered. Her friends  fear the police aren't doing enough to solve the crime, so they become amateur d etectives. But will Ethel and Nellie solve the crime before they're the next victims? What follows is a suspenseful, hilarious tale with lo

  If you’ve ever wondered if dogs are smarter than humans, Kristin Von Kreisler’s novel, A REASON for HOPE (Kensington) is just for you. Tessa Jordan lives on San Julian Island, across the Puget Sound from Seattle. She runs a mobile library – “Library on the Go - Driven to Read.” She recommends books and poems to people on her route, particularly once with problems. She broke up with her fiancé two years ago and hasn’t been serious with a man since. Will Armstrong is an attorney who is an advocate for victims of rape. He’s on a personal crusade to “give the bad guys what they deserve.” He’s teamed up with a Labrador Retriever named Hope from the Washington Facility Dogs, to help victims get through trauma. Tessa goes on-line and connects with Nicholas Payne, a bigwig in town who is running for City Council. On their second date she goes to his house expecting to meet his brother and wife, but Nick says they’ve cancelled. She’s alone with him – this so-called upstanding member of

In post-WWII Russia, a girl’s dream of becoming an actress can be an act of defiance. ELENA WORDS:  My novel, A TRAIN TO MOSCOW (LakeUnion) is based on the  career of my older sister, Marina, who was a great Russian actress and to whom this book is dedicated. Although most events in the novel are fictitious, the training method Sasha experiences at the best drama school in Moscow is completely real. As a student, my sister acted in the film-opera  A Tsar’s Bride  and later, onstage in Leningrad, in  Twelfth Night  and  The Dawns Here Are Quiet , just as Sasha does in the novel.  These are pictures of Marina when she was Sasha’s age – as a child, onstage, and in film. To me, this is what the narrator of the story in the novel looks like. Elena Gorokhova grew up in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, in a courtyard that became a more accurate emblem for the Soviet life than the ubiquitous hammer and sickle: a crumbling façade with locked doors and stinking garbage bins behind them.  Like ever