Category: Historical Fiction

MONTAUK by NICOLA HARRISON

 

Montauk

Montauk, Long Island in the year 1938 is where anyone who is anyone will be summering. Away from the heat of the city. Fresh ocean breezes and a small fishing village and even a lighthouse.

Beatrice Bordeaux is a young woman from the countryside of Pennsylvania.
Swept off of her feet by the charming Harry, they have been married five years and yet still have no children.

The elite of society corral their nannies and children and head to the Manor for the summer. Beatrice thinks she may like being by the ocean all summer until her charming husband tells her he isn’t staying. He will be coming on the weekends, which gradually just stops after she catches him cheating.

While it looks as though the Junior League has just moved locations, with meetings and fund-raisers and a whole lot of backstabbing, cheating, drinking and behaving badly. Bea befriends Elizabeth, who lives in town and does laundry for the Manor. And through Elizabeth, she meets a man unlike any she has ever met and before long things are getting pretty serious.

Beatrice is noticing the behavior of the city dwellers with their noses in the air and is not happy with it. As her love for her lighthouse keeper grows so does her guilt. But I did not expect that ending!

I did get upset with Beatrice a few times. But then I thought, it is 1938, and divorce wasn’t looked on as well as just putting on a brave face and having affairs of one’s own. In the beginning, her timidness irritated me. Until she found a way to address the situation in Montauk and what was really going on there. At the end, she was a strong and independent woman.

Well Done!

Netgalley/June 4th 2019 by St. Martin’s Press

THE BOOK WOMAN of TROUBLESOME CREEK by Kim Michele Richardson *Release Day*

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

A strong and beautiful story of the strength of a people and the compassion of one woman who touched many lives. In 1936 Kentucky, in the town of Troublesome Creek,  lives 19-year-old Cussy Mary Carter. The last known living woman of the Blue People of Kentucky.

The Coal mines are slowly killing her father and half the town and the other half is dying from poverty and lack of medical care. Cussy is a reader. So when she hears about the historical Pack Horse Library Project she becomes a librarian on a mule. Bringing books and reading material to the hill people of Kentucky. The route is dangerous and the mules aren’t very co-operative, but Cussy is determined to bring these people a way to read and learn and to have them trust her.

She is called Bluet because of her blue skin but is known as the Book Woman. The people in town are cruel to her. Lumping her in with the coloreds in town and making sure she knows she isn’t wanted. But to those people up the mountains, she is everything.

This book is based on the true story of the family of blue skinned people in Kentucky. You can look it up. I cried so much in this book. It broke my heart the way these people treated her.  But she never gave up. She kept the faith and the author did a beautiful job of making us feel all the feels!

bluepeople

 

 

NetGalley/  May 7th 2019 by Sourcebooks Landmark

 

 

 

 

PRISONER OF MIDNIGHT by BARBARA HAMBLY

Prisoner of Midnight (James Asher, #8)

James Asher #8

Lydia and James are back with our favorite vampire Don Simon Ysidro. While James is off being a spy at the front, Lydia is boarding a luxury liner from Paris, headed to America. All she knows is that Simon is in trouble, in pain and she must help him. Then maybe kill him. But first she must find him.

Her working theory is that someone is using him and keeping him under their thrall. That someone being an obnoxious, unscrupulous American, industrialist Spencer Cochran and his henchmen. Known for making striking workers disappear among other unsavory acts.

James is trying as hard as he can to get her information on the drug that is being used on the vampire. Even going so far as to knock on the Paris vampires door for help.

When children begin dying on the ship, time is of the essence to save not only the passengers, but also Simon.  Who she really does not want to kill, but will she?

This is one of my favorite series. Historical Fiction with Vampires. What could be better?

Very Well Done!

NetGalley Reviews/ Severn House May 01, 2019

 

 

Murder Served Cold by Eric Brown

Murder Served Cold (Langham & Dupré Mystery, #6)

A Langham & Dupre’ Mystery #6

Crime writer and Private Investigator Donald Langham and wife Maria Dupre’ are back in another puzzling crime. Along with his partner Ralph Ryland.

It’s the Fall of 1956 when an old friend of Don’s literary agent, Charles, comes to them with a need for their services. It seems as though Lord Elsmere’s Gainsborough painting has been stolen off the wall of his library! Even worse, the police do not believe it was a break in which means someone living in the house must have done it. But how? It was much too large to just pop out the window with.

Not helping matters is the fact that Elsmere recently bumped up the insurance on the painting while at the same time suffering from real money issues.

When the team gets to the manor, they find an odd assortment of characters renting rooms and any of them could have done the deed.

This had multiple smaller stories inside the mystery. Every character had a secret and someone was willing to kill for theirs. But who?

This series just keeps getting better. The characters are so quirky and imperfect you can’t help but fall in love with them all!

Well Done!

Netgalley/Severn House April 1st 2019

 

 

THE BEAUTIFUL STRANGERS by CAMILLE DI MAIO

A legendary hotel on the Pacific becomes a haven where dreams, love, and a beguiling mystery come alive.

It is 1958 and Kate Morgan wants more than serving fish in the family restaurant in San Francisco. She has dreams of Southern California and the movie business. Her grandfather, whose memory is shaky at best is adamant she must go to the famous Hotel Del Coronado and find the beautiful stranger.

Kate grabs her chance to get even a temporary job at the resort. And immediately finds out that she isn’t the only Kate Morgan there. 

Told from the points of view of the ghostly Kate Morgan and the current day Kate Morgan, the former having never left, tethered to the place of her death.

Kate loves everything about the hotel including the stars filming Some Like It Hot. Kate has to pinch herself when she is asked to bring Miss Monroe her breakfast every day and get her to the set on time. And when she isn’t coaxing Miss Monroe to eat or get to work, she’s trying to find the beautiful stranger for her grandfather. Only then can she go home.

Ms. Di Maio has done a masterful job of seamlessly weaving the past with the present as well as the fiction with the truth. Yes Kate Morgan was a real woman who died a tragic death at the hotel. Guests claim to have seen her and she sees everything and everyone grow up and grow old as she remains as she was in life. But Kate has a secret too and the author has gathered all of the threads of this story and turned them into a compulsively readable tale.

Very Well Done!

Netgalley/March 5th 2019 by Lake Union Publishing

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Camille recently left an award-winning real estate career in San Antonio to become a full-time writer. Along with her husband of 21 years, she home schools their four children. She has a bucket list that is never-ending, and uses her adventures to inspire her writing. She’s lived in Texas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and California, and spends enough time in Hawai’i to feel like a local. She’s traveled to four continents (so far), and met Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II. She just about fainted when she had a chance to meet her musical idol, Paul McCartney, too. Camille studied political science in college, but found working on actual campaigns much more fun. She overdoses on goodies at farmers markets (justifying them by her support for local bakeries), and belts out Broadway tunes whenever the moment strikes. There’s almost nothing she wouldn’t try, so long as it doesn’t involve heights, roller skates, or anything illegal. “The Memory of Us” is Camille’s debut novel, her second book “Before the Rain Falls” released in 2017, and her third, “The Way of Beauty”, came out in 2018. Her next book, “The Beautiful Strangers” will be available spring 2019.

 

 

THE AGE OF LIGHT by WHITNEY SCHARER

The Age of Light

A captivating debut about Vogue model turned renowned photographer Lee Miller, and her passionate affair with the artist Man Ray in 1930s Paris.

When Lee Miller comes to Paris in 1929 she wants nothing more than to create a new life. She is tired of being the one in front of the camera and wants to be the one taking photographs.

Lee had a rather abusive childhood which is alluded to but I would have liked to have heard more about it. It led her to make some bad life choices. When she is introduced to the famous Man Ray, they immediately have a connection. At first,he wants her to model for him but they get into an intense and not that healthy relationship.

The story is told between timelines and is rich in detail and full of all the horrors of war and the debauchery of Paris at that time. Opium dens, erotic vaudeville, multiple lovers.

After betrayals on both side you have a feeling this isn’t going to work out. He is egotistical and condescending and she is emotionally messed up.

I enjoyed reading about these two.

February 5th 2019 by Little, Brown and Company/Netgalley

Coming Out on Tuesday!

What a great week for these new releases on Tuesday!

An Anonymous Girl  Loved it!

The Lost Traveller (County Cork, #7) Love the series!

Sisters of the Fire (Blood and Gold, #2) Loved it!

Her One Mistake And that one mistake was a doozy!

The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy, #3)  I own all of these. Love!

The Water Cure  A bit odd, but check it out.

So many good books releasing this month! I am so happy that the word Girl isn’t in as many this year! I have had quite enough of the same old thing. I hope you give these a read and share your thoughts!

xxp