About the Book: Luis de Santángel, chancellor to the court and longtime friend of the lusty King Ferdinand, has had enough of the Spanish Inquisition. As the power of Inquisitor GeneralTomás deTorquemada grows, so does the brutality of the Spanish church and the suspicion and paranoia it inspires. When a dear friend’s demise brings the violence close to home, Santángel is enraged and takes retribution into his own hands. But he is from a family of conversos, and his Jewish heritage makes him an easy target. As Santángel witnesses the horrific persecution of his loved ones, he begins slowly to reconnect with the Jewish faith his family left behind. Feeding his curiosity about his past is his growing love for Judith Migdal, a clever and beautiful Jewish woman navigating the mounting tensions in Granada. While he struggles to decide what his reputation is worth and what he can sacrifice, one man offers him a chance he thought he’d lost…the chance to hope for a better world. Christopher Columbus has plans to discover a route to paradise, and only Luis de Santángel can help him. Within the dramatic story lies a subtle, insightful examination of the crisis of faith at the…
About the Book: A true classic of American history, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown’s eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell in their won words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, this book changed forever our vision of how the West was really won. Book Review: ★★★★★★ This is a book that I first came across in the movie format. I happened to be watching television one insomnia filled night — and I tuned in at about half way through. Even the movie was a gripping story. As I was watching the credits, I found out that it was based on the book. Needless to say, I went out the next day to try and locate it. I am sure glad that I did. This is a heartbreaking story in so many ways. I was most captivated, however, at the…
About the Book: “On May 11, 1970, Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old black veteran, walked into a crossroads store owned by Robert Teel, a rough man with a criminal record and ties to the Ku Klux Klan, and came out running. Teel and two of his sons chased Marrow, beat him unmercifully, and killed him in public as he pleaded for his life. In the words of a local prosecutor: “They shot him like you or I would kill a snake.”” “Like many small Southern towns, Oxford had barely been touched by the civil rights movement. But in the wake of the killing, young African Americans took to the streets, led by 22-year-old Ben Chavis, a future president of the NAACP. As mass protests crowded the town square, a cluster of returning Vietnam veterans organized what one termed a “military operation.” While lawyers battled in the courthouse that summer in a drama that one termed “a Perry Mason kind of thing,” the Ku Klux Klan raged in the shadows and black veterans torched the town’s tobacco warehouses.” “With large sections of the town in flames, Tim Tyson’s father, the pastor of Oxford’s all-white Methodist church, pressed his congregation to widen their…
About the Book: “There were no surprises in Gatlin County. We were pretty much the epicenter of the middle of nowhere. At least, that’s what I thought. Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong. There was a curse. There was a girl. And in the end, there was a grave. Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she’s struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever. Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town’s oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them. In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.” Book Review: ★★★★★★ This was a surprise book, that really caught me off guard. I have been shying away from many of the newest teenage angst, coming of age in the supernatural world following in…
About the Book: Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe is the much-awaited sequel to Sandra Gulland’s highly acclaimed first novel, The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. Beginning in Paris in 1796, the saga continues as Josephine awakens to her new life as Mrs. Napoleon Bonaparte. Through her intimate diary entries and Napoleon’s impassioned love letters, an astonishing portrait of an incredible woman emerges. Gulland transports us into the ballrooms and bedrooms of exquisite palaces and onto the blood-soaked fields of Napoleon’s campaigns. As Napoleon marches to power, we witness, through Josephine, the political intrigues and personal betrayals — both sexual and psychological — that result in death, ruin, and victory for those closest to her. Book Review: ★★★★★★ This installment of this series didn’t carry quite the impact I was expecting, following the first in the trilogy. That is not to say it was a bad read — it just seemed to be missing something in intensity in comparison. This installment covers from Josephine’s first meeting with the upcoming, and awkward young Napoleon through their marriage and his first campaigns in Egypt. It culminates in his return to France on the eve of Revolution. I think one…
About the Book: Mary’s given up everything, including an unsatisfying marriage, to become a chef. But the career comes with a side dish: Kegan, her sexy but controlling new boss. They’re soon in a relationship, and in all-too-frequent arguments, and when it becomes clear they can’t work together and be together Mary faces a dilemma: keep her dream job or her dream man? Book Review: ★★★★★★ Sometimes, when I go looking for a good book, or a specific author — I know exactly what I am looking for. At other times, this process is more of a whim. Where some women walk into clothing and shoe stores and they are drawn to the perfect shirt, or the must have pair of shoes — for me it was always the cover of a book that would captivate my attention. Frequently my favorite authors, for both my challenging reads, as well as the escapist adventures, are the ones that I have found by accident — because I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for when I found them. Heather Wardell is one such author. I came across her first book — Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo when I was…
About the Book: Includes a section of b&w photos and one section of color plates. In the fall of 1991, two deep wreck divers discovered a World War II German U-boat sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey. No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts that John Chatterton and Richie Kohler brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location. Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked a quest to solve the mystery. Book Review: ★★★★★★ This was an absolute, could not put down story that was fun to read! I picked it up because the premise of the book sounded so unreal that it qualified as absurd. A German U-boat located 60 miles off the New Jersey coastline. And I am still asking the question what an enemy, German U-boat was doing there, particularly during a time of war. This story covers many topics of interest. Originally it was the story about World War II that drew me…
About the Book: Few family secrets have the power both to transform lives and to fill in crucial gaps in world history. But then, few families have a mother and a daughter quite like Sala and Ann Kirschner. For nearly fifty years, Sala kept a secret: She had survived five years as a slave in seven different Nazi work camps. Living in America after the war, she kept from her children any hint of her epic, inhuman odyssey. She held on to more than 350 letters, photographs, and a diary without ever mentioning them. Only in 1991, on the eve of heart surgery, did she suddenly present them to Ann and offer to answer any questions her daughter wished to ask. It was a life-changing moment for her scholar, writer, and entrepreneur daughter. We know surprisingly little about the vast network of Nazi labor camps, where imprisoned Jews built railroads and highways, churned out munitions and materiel, and otherwise supported the limitless needs of the Nazi war machine. This book gives us an insider’s account: Conditions were brutal. Death rates were high. As the war dragged on and the Nazis retreated, inmates were force-marched across hundreds of miles, or packed…
About the Book: To most people, Folly Beach, South Carolina, is simply the last barrier island before the Atlantic. To some, it’s a sanctuary, which is why Janie Hamilton’s mother encourages her to buy the local book store, Folly’s Finds, hoping it will distract Janie from the loss of her husband in Afghanistan. Janie is at first resistant, but intrigued after finding love letters and an image of a beautiful bottle tree in a box of used books from Folly’s Finds, and decides to take the plunge. The store’s seller insists on one condition: Janie must allow Lulu, the late owner’s elderly sister, to continue selling her bottle trees from its back yard. Historically, bottle trees were brought by African slaves to the American South, and Janie had grown up with one in her backyard, and it has always been a symbol of refuge to her. Janie generally ignores Lulu as she sifts through the love letters, wanting to learn more. But the more she discovers of the letters’ authors, the closer she feels to Lulu. As details of a possible murder and a mysterious disappearance during World War II are revealed, the two women discover that circumstances beyond their…
About the Book: For the first time a historian has given us a national, as well as a local matrix into which one can place the life of Joseph Smith and his Nauvoo community, and in that context make better sense of it all. This book in the works for 30 years over 800 pages is the first to present such a comprehensive and detailed look at the short period preceding the Prophets martyrdom. It is ground-breaking for these reasons: It examines the Anti-Mormon network that planned the murders of Joseph and Hyrum, and the expulsion of the Saints from Illinois. It identifies key players and the involvement of eachshowing clear evidence of Governor Fords early involvement in the plans for the murders. An extensive legal analysis of the charges of treason against Joseph Smith, and concludes that the charges were completely without foundation. An extensive analysis of the freedom of the press issueoften mis-represented by historiansthat arose over the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor. It turns out that contrary to what has been written regarding the subjectthe question of freedom of the press was not an issue of the time. It examines about 250 newspapers throughout the United States…