THOUGHTS ON THIS 'n THAT

  Kathleen Basi offers us a story about honoring the ones we love and learning to love ourselves in her novel, A SONG FOR THE ROAD(AlcovePress). It's been one year since Miriam Tedesco's life came to a screeching halt. Her husband and twin teenagers were killed in an auto accident. Then the flowers that come every year for her anniversary arrive. She completely falls apart. Her BFF, Becky is by her side 24/7 and wants to help her move on. Miriam goes into her daughter, Talia's bedroom and opens her computer. She finds an embedded program which her children, Talia and Blaise created for Miriam and her husband, Teo to travel when the kids went off to college later that year.  After watching the video and seeing pictures of her family, she decides to go on the trip to honor her children. Music was the center of the their lives, so Miriam packs her husband's guitar, daughter's cello and son's unfinished piano sonata. She hits the road and embarks on a musical pilgri...

  In Suzanne Parks's new novel, SUNNY SONG WILL NEVER BE FAMOUS (Sourcebooks) a social influencer is sent off to a digital detox summer camp. Who knew there are such things, right? Sunny Song's Big Summer Goals: 1) Make Rafael Kim my boyfriend (finally!) 2) Hit 100K followers (almost there…) 3) Have the best last summer of high school ever Not on Sunny's list: accidentally filming a PG-13 cooking video that goes viral (#browniegate). Extremely not on her list: being shipped off to a digital detox farm camp in Iowa (IOWA??) for a whole month. She's traded in her WiFi connection for a butter churn, and if she wants any shot at growing her social media platform this summer, she'll need to find a way back online. But between some unexpected friendships and an alarmingly cute farm boy, Sunny might be surprised by the connections she makes when she's forced to disconnect. Suzanne Park is a Korean-American writer who was born and raised in Tennessee. In her former life...

LOVE FOR BEGINNERS (WilliamMorrow) by Jill Shalvis is the 7th book in Wildstone series. It can be read as a standalone. What would you change if you had to start your life—and love life—over again? When Emma Harris wakes up from a coma she learns that her fiancé and her BFF have fallen in love, she’s lost her job, and the life she knew is gone. Overwhelmed but grateful to be alive she starts over from scratch. Not as easy as it sounds, of course. But she’s never been a quitter.  Emma grows from the pain of her past and takes on her new path, she comes to realize that life isn’t what you’re given, it’s what you make of it.   LOVE FOR BEGINNERS has all the necessary elements for a book you're going to take to the beach or pool. It has great characters that form a sisterhood and enviable friendships. It's heartwarming, funny and unforgettable. The best part of LOVE FOR BEGINNERS? Hog. The 110-lb St. Bernard-esque scaredy can farting dog. Life: It's not what you're given, b...

  No one enjoys reading about growing up Catholic more than fellow Catholics, usually recovered Catholics. In many cases, it's taken our entire adult life to recover from the guilt, shame, and in some instances recognize the joyful experiences, too. In Kathy Gereau's memoir, SERIOUS LITTLE CATHOLICS (SheWritesPress) we follow her journey growing up in the mid 50's and 60's as the oldest of seven children. I too, grew up Catholic and attended Catholic school. It's true what Tina Fey has said, you'll leave (Catholic School) with a damaged psyche, but God knows, you'll know the capitals of Vermont and all forty-nine states. Kathy's book is comprised of short stories featuring some of the more interesting topics of Catholicism such as how does Jesus fit into that tiny wafer, what are the nuns wearing under those hideous black robes and what's the difference between a moral or venial sin? And most importantly, how to stay out of the way of the devil so yo...

When I first started reading Janet Ake's novel, HER BEAUTIFUL MIND, memories of reading Cheryl Strayed's, WILD came to mind. But that's where the similarities somewhat ended. Janet Ake's book is a fictional account of a woman who hikes the Appalachian Trail as opposed to Strayed's, memoir of hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail. But what both of them have in common, is they are stories of self-discovery and self-acceptance.  Ariella Dobbs is a mathematics genius who grew up in the mountains of Georgia. Her intelligence gets her an education at MIT and an entry into living in the upper crust of the East Coast. She changes the way she dresses, talks and acts. When Ariella finds herself dating and in love with New York's prominent Hudson Calder and all that comes with that, she finds herself insecure. Ariella and Hudson use ordered patterns of numbers that lead them to theories which they use to develop new software. The day their software is to be introduced, Ariella...

  New York Times bestselling author Kelly Rimmer's newest novel, THE WARSAW ORPHAN (GraydonHouseBooks/HarperCollins) is an epic WWII saga and love story, based on the real-life efforts of two young people taking extraordinary risks to save their countrymen, as they try to find their way back to each other and the life they once knew. Following on the success of The Things We Cannot Say , this is Kelly Rimmer's return to the WWII category with a brand new novel inspired by Irena Sendler, the real-life Polish nurse who used her access to the Warsaw ghetto to smuggle Jewish children and babies to safety. Spanning the tumultuous years between 1942 and 1945 in Poland, The Warsaw Orphan follows Emilia over the course of the war, her involvement with the Resistance, and her love for Sergiusz, a young man imprisoned in the Jewish ghetto who's passion leads him to fight in the Warsaw Uprising. From the Warsaw ghetto to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, through Nazi occupation to t...