THOUGHTS ON THIS 'n THAT

@SusanMeisser once again delivers her special brand of historical fiction with her heartbreaking and complicated novel #OnlyTheBeautiful (Berkley). It's 1938 in California: Sixteen-year-old, Roxanne has a secret that she's only shared with her mother and promises to keep secret.  Rosie sees colors when she hears words of music.  When her parents and brother are killed, a family she's known all her life takes her in. Soon bad goes to worse. Rosie gets pregnant and is put in a home for unwed women, where she experiences unthinkable horrors. 1947: A nanny witnesses the results of Hitler's determination to create a pure race without any deformities or disabilities by so-called society's outcasts.  #OnlyTheBeautiful follows two women living in Europe and America during and after the war and how their lives become intertwined when affected by dark ideas and their repercussions. #OnlyTheBeautiful is about many controversial issues including synthesia, sterilization, eugeni...

Memoirist, Kanchan Bhaskar shares her very personal story of surviving domestic violence in her memoir, LEAVING (SheWritesPress) hoping no other woman has to experience the hell she went through. Raised by two loving parents in New Delhi, India, Kanchan Bhaskar has always been taught that marriage means companionship, tenderness, and mutual respect—so when she enters into an arranged marriage, this is the kind of partnership she anticipates with her new, seemingly wonderful, husband. But after they marry, she quickly discovers that his warmth is deceptive—that the man beneath the bright, charming façade is actually a narcissistic, alcoholic, and violent man. Trapped in a nightmare, Kanchan pleads with her husband to seek help for his issues, but he refuses. Meanwhile, Indian law is not on her side, and as the years pass, she finds herself with three children to protect—three children she fears she will lose custody of if she leaves. Almost overnight, she finds herself transformed into ...

  Love makes life a little wilder in the romantic comedy, BEAR WITH ME NOW (Berkley) by debut author, Katie Shepard.   After a panic attack puts him in the hospital, charity executive Teagan Van Zijl is dragged by his sister to a wilderness therapy retreat in Montana. Lost in the woods while absconding from midafternoon meditation, Teagan is nearly eaten by a bear before his rescue by a furious angel in muddy hiking boots: the program’s handywoman, Darcy Albano, who was mostly worried for the bear.    Darcy thought she was going to work as a trail guide when she was hired onto the camp staff but ended up cleaning and hauling instead—merely the latest screwing-over she’s endured since her ex stole her car and her parents ruined her credit score. Teagan becomes the silver lining she didn’t expect, a man clearly going through something yet willing to commit to Darcy’s unique brand of wilderness education as the cure for what ails him.   After weeks in the mountains...

  Make him want you. Make him love you. Make him dead. In Ren DeStafano's novel, HOW I'LL KILL YOU (Berkley), i dentical triplets have a nasty habit of killing their boyfriends, and see what happens when the youngest commits their worst crime yet: falling in love with her mark. Sissy has an...interesting family. Always the careful one, always the cautious one, she has handled the cleanup while her serial killer sisters have carved a path of carnage across the U.S. Now, as they arrive in the Arizona heat, Sissy must step up and embrace the family pastime of making a man fall in love and then murdering him. Her first target? A young widower named Edison—and their mutual attraction is instant.  Then something happens that Sissy never anticipated: She begins to feel protective of Edison, and before she can help it, she’s fallen in love. But the clock is ticking, and her sisters are growing restless. It becomes clear that the gravesite she chooses will hide a body no matter what ha...

From the author of the sensational bestseller  The Lost Apothecary ParkRowBooks), Sarah Penner  comes a spellbinding tale about two daring women who hunt for truth and justice in the perilous art of conjuring the dead. 1873.  At an abandoned château on the outskirts of Paris, a dark séance is about to take place, led by acclaimed spiritualist Vaudeline D’Allaire. Known worldwide for her talent in conjuring the spirits of murder victims to ascertain the identities of the people who killed them, she is highly sought after by widows and investigators alike. Lenna Wickes has come to Paris to find answers about her sister’s death, but to do so, she must embrace the unknown and overcome her own logic-driven bias against the occult. When Vaudeline is beckoned to England to solve a high-profile murder, Lenna accompanies her as an understudy. But as the women team up with the powerful men of London’s exclusive Séance Society to solve the mystery, they begin to suspect that they ar...

  My favorite era in American history is the roaring 20s. The way women danced, the speakeasys and music is all something I would have loved to experience. Reading Anne deCourcy's new book, MAGNIFICENT REBEL (StMartinPress) took me there.  She  e xamines the controversial life of legendary beauty, writer and rich girl Nancy Cunard during her thirteen years in Jazz-Age Paris in her new book, MAGNIFICENT REBEL (StMartinsPress). Paris in the 1920s was bursting with talent in the worlds of art, design and literature. The city was at the forefront of everything new and exciting; there was no censorship; life and love were there for the taking. At its center was the gorgeous, seductive English socialite Nancy Cunard, scion of the famous shipping line. Her lovers were legion, but this book focuses on five of the most significant and a lifelong friendship. Her affairs with acclaimed writers Ezra Pound, Aldous Huxley, Michael Arlen and Louis Aragon were passionate and tempestuous,...

A woman discovers the father of the child she is nannying may be her biggest (Only)Fan in this steamy contemporary romance by Lana Ferguson. Don't get it? Neither do I. Read on!   Suddenly unemployed and on the brink of eviction, Cassie Evans is left with two choices: get a new job (and fast) or fire up her long-untouched OnlyFans account. But the job market is terrible, and as for OnlyFans. . . . Well, there are reasons she can’t go back. Just when all hope seems lost, an ad for a live-in nanny bposition seems like the solution to all her problems. It’s almost too perfect—until she meets her would-be employer.   Aiden Reid, executive chef and DILF extraordinaire, is far from the stuffy single dad Cassie was imagining. He shocks her when he tells her she’s the most qualified applicant he’s met in weeks, practically begging her to take the job. With hands that make her hindbrain howl and eyes that scream sex, the idea of living under the same roof as Aiden feels ...