Madeleine's War

When Colonel Matthew Hammond was posted to the European theater during World War II, he sustained a serious injury on the front lines that cost him a lung. Now he is back in England, unable to fight, but continuing to serve his country by training new resistance fighters in SC2, a specialist sabotage outfit. One of the recruits under his tutelage is the spellbinding Madeleine Dirac, an exotic French-Canadian nurse. Despite protocols discouraging romance, they fall deeply in love.
        Matthew is torn about putting Madeleine’s life in danger: he has mixed duty and pleasure before, with tragic results—his former lover, Celestine, was killed in an attempt to assassinate a Nazi doctor. But the Allies are mustering all their resources for crucial beach landings in Normandy, and Matthew knows his unit will be needed to parachute its agents in behind Nazi lines. Vivid and unforgettable, Madeleine’s War is a gripping tale of love in wartime—and of men and women caught in the sweep of history.

My review: I really enjoyed this book it was well written and interesting. I would read it again. Its a good and enjoyable read.

I would like to thank the publisher for sending me an advanced readers copy of this book.

the resurrection of tess blessing

After she's diagnosed with breast cancer, forty-nine-year old Tess sets forth on a mission to complete her TO-DO List before, what she's sure is, her impending death. She needs to make peace with her estranged sister, Birdie, scatter her mother's long-kept ashes, rescue her daughter, Haddie, from the grip of an eating disorder, guide her teenage son, Henry, through a bumpy adolescence, and reignite the spark in her almost thirty-year marriage to her husband, Will.

Tess is aided on her quest by narrator, Grace, who lends the story its most brilliant elements: subtle magical realism and deep psychological complexity. Is Grace an imaginary friend, guardian angel, or a part of Tess that knows better than she? The Resurrection of Tess Blessing is by turns poignant, gritty, spiritually uplifting, and hilarious as hell.

Lesley Kagen has created an unforgettable, redemptive story about a middle-aged woman with the odds stacked against her, who discovers that in the end, love really does conquer all.

Author Info:

Lesley Kagen is an actress, voice-over talent, sought-after speaker, and award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, including the yet-to-be released coming-of-age mystery The Mutual Admiration Society. Her work has been translated into seven languages. A mother of two and grandmother of two, she lives in a hundred-year-old farm house in a small town in Wisconsin. Visit with her on Facebook and at her web site www.lesleykagen.com












My review:
Overall I thought this was a very well written novel. It wasn't one of my favorites, but I would consider it a good read. I just couldn't connect with the book. I would recommend it however.

If you were me and lived in china

Book Info:
Carole P. Roman's award winning series has traveling again and this time it's to East Asia to visit the People's Republic of China. In this book, younger readers can learn about the wide variety of climate when they read about China's vast size.

They will begin their journey in China's ancient capital, Beijing, where they will discover the Imperial Palace of the Forbidden City. Different regions of cuisine are discussed, highlighting the variety of styles and spices of food. Currency, sports, exciting tourist attractions, and a lovely description of the New Year Festivities are included in this introduction the beautiful land of China. Embraced by educators, parents, and children, the series gently and respectfully introduces the subjects of cultures and customs around the world.

 Author Info:


Named to Kirkus Reviews' Best of 2012 for her first book, award winning author Carole P. Roman started writing as a dare from one of her sons. Using an imaginary game she played with her grandson as a base, Captain No Beard was born."Captain No Beard- An Imaginary Tale of a Pirate's Life" has not only been named to Kirkus Best of 2012, it received the Star of Exceptional Merit, and won the Pinnacle Award for 2012. "Pepper Parrot's Problem with Patience" Book 2 in the series, received 5 Stars from The ForeWord Review The Clarion Review. Strangers on the High Seas has won second place in the Rebecca's Reads Choice Awards 2013. It has followed with six more books to the series. This year, Captain No Beard and the Aurora Borealis was named to Kirkus Best 2015. The entire cultural non-fiction series If You Were Me and Lived in... was named Best Series by Shelf Unbound. She has begun work on two new series that will be released in early 2016.
Motivated by her love of yoga, Roman has written a book that not only teaches four poses, but shows how easy and accessible yoga can be.

Her new non fiction series, "If You Were Me and Lived in..." combines her teaching past with her love of exploration and interest in the world around us. The debut book in the series, "If You Were Me and Lived in...Mexico" has won the Pinnacle Award for Best in Children's Non Fiction 2012. France, South Korea, and Norway. Rebecca's Reads has given If You Were Me and Lived in...Norway an honorable mention in the 2013 Choice Awards. If You Were Me and lived in ...France won second place. ForeWord Review has nominated If You Were Me and Lived in...France for best in children's non fiction literature 2013. They will be followed with Kenya, Turkey, India, and Australia. She plans to do Portugal, Greece, and Argentina next year.
Writing for children has opened up a whole second act for her. While she is still working in her family business, this has enabled her to share her sense of humor as well as love for history and culture with the audience she adores. Roman lives on Long Island with her husband and near her children

My Review:
Again not impressed with this book or this series. Minimal information is provide and the illustrations aren't that great. As a reader I felt this book was sugar coated and a lot of things glossed over. Would not recommend it to students who are curious and want to learn more about cultures.

I would like to thank the publisher for providing me this book to read and review.

Societe review

Christian Matters is a neurotic twenty-nine year old architect living in Chicago, USA. After a bizarre episode throws him off his morning routine, he abandons his promising career, girlfriend, and home for a life-changing journey to San Francisco, where he meets a cavalier aristocrat named Lester Rothschild and his beautifully extravagant love, fortepianist Ella Athens.

Mysterious and insane, Lester takes Christian on his adventure to open Société, the most luxurious entertainment complex at the heart of the world's richest city. But, with the chance meeting of an unlikely visitor and the sudden death of a lover, colliding events lead Christian to unravel the true ambitions behind the greatly anticipated opening of Société, and discovers the fate of something much greater is at stake.

In his modern and magically profound debut novel, Alexander Helas delivers a masterful, thought-provoking vision on the struggle of free will at the hands of society's quest for progress.

For some we are heroes. For others we are villains.
Tomorrow, we may become something else entirely.

Check out excerpts and more at: www.AlexanderHelas.com

Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
@AlexanderHelas

My final thoughts:
This is going to be a short one but I was not very impressed with this book. I thought it was boring. The summary is what made me interested but I don't think it met its mark.

I Truly Lament

Book Info: "Freese says that 'memory must metabolize [the Holocaust] endlessly,' and his book certainly turns hell into harsh nourishment: keeps us alert, sharpens our nerves and outrage, forbids complacent sleep so the historical horror can't be glossed over as mere nightmare. The Holocaust wasn't a dream or even a madness. It was a lucid, non-anomalous act that is ever-present in rational Man. In the face of this fact Freese never pulls punches. Rather, his deft, brutal, and insightful words punch and punch until dreams' respite are no longer an option and insanity isn't an excuse."

—David Herrle, Author of Sharon Tate and the Daughters of Joy

 

"... Freese's haunting lament might best be explained (at least to me) by something Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about Herman Melville's endless search for answers to questions that perplexed him all his adult life. Melville was incessantly obsessed with what one might call the why of it all-life, death, metaphysical mysteries. Similar to Freese, Melville was repeatedly afflicted with a dark and depressive state of mind."

—Duff Brenna, Professor Emeritus CSU San Marcos

Author Info: Mathias B. Freese is a writer, teacher, and psychotherapist. His recent collection of essays, This Möbius Strip of Ifs, was the winner of the National Indie Excellence Book Award of 2012 in general nonfiction and a 2012 Global Ebook Award finalist. His I Truly Lament: Working Through the Holocaust was one of three finalists chosen in the 2012 Leapfrog Press Fiction Contest out of 424 submissions.

My review:

This is a hard one for me to review as I must say I really didn't enjoy this book. The book just didn't grab me and I wasn't feeling it. I just felt the book in a way was stiff there was really no emotion that the reader could connect with, but of course I might have missed it as I did not finish the whole book it was just so painful. I can not recommend this book (or the author as he sent me an angry email last time I gave him a bad review). I have to be honest though I didn't like the book.

THE MONTAUK MONSTER Promo Post

Now Available in GraphicAudio® A Movie In Your Mind® Audiobook Format

GraphicAudio® A Movie in Your Mind,® in conjunction with Kensington Publishing Corp., brings to the audio format THE MONTAUK MONSTER. Author Hunter Shea says, "Listening to the audio production gave me goose bumps! This isn't your everyday audiobook - it's a fully acted play, just like the old time radio dramas. Simply amazing."

It Kills...

On a hot summer night in Montauk, the bodies of two local bar patrons are discovered in the dunes, torn to shreds, their identities unrecognizable. . .

It Breeds...

In another part of town, a woman's backyard is invaded by four terrifying creatures that defy any kind of description. What's clear is that they're hostile--and they're ravenous. . .

It Spreads...

 

With every sunset the terror rises again, infecting residents with a virus no one can cure. The CDC can't help them; FEMA can't save them. But each savage attack brings Suffolk County Police Officer Gray Dalton one step closer to the shocking source of these unholy creations. Hidden on nearby Plum Island, a U.S. research facility has been running top-secret experiments. What they created was never meant to see the light of day. Now, a vacation paradise is going straight to hell.

 

Ken Jackson, the title’s director, says, "Hunter Shea is masterful at building suspense. He juxtaposes apple pie and ice cream normalcy with strange and increasingly violent events, so that the reader finds himself off-balance, treading a taut wire of tension between two realities, hoping for the best but fearing the worst. I told my actors “It’s like The Andy Griffith Show meets The X-files.” You have to ask yourself: When the Boogie Man comes to Mayberry, will Barney Fife survive? If you enjoy well-crafted suspense, THE MONTAUK MONSTER is for you!”

 

To celebrate the release of THE MONTAUK MONSTER in GraphicAudio, they will be giving away free koozies, a foam sleeve that is designed to thermally insulate a beverage container, like a can or bottle, featuring their illustration of THE MONTAUK MONSTER throughout the month of July.

 

Available from www.GraphicAudio.net and via the FREE GraphicAudio Access™ Mobile App which allows customers to directly download titles on their Android or iOS smartphones and tablets. 

About GraphicAudio® A Movie in Your Mind.

 

About Hunter Shea: Hunter Shea is the author of the novels Sinister Entity, Forest of Shadows, Swamp Monster Massacre, and Evil Eternal. His stories have appeared in numerous magazines, including Dark Moon Digest, Morpheus Tales and the Cemetery Dance anthology, Shocklines: Fresh Voices in Terror. His obsession with all things horrific has led him to real life exploration of the paranormal, interviews with exorcists, and other things that would keep most people awake with the lights on. He lives in New York with his family. You can read about his latest travails and communicate with him at www.huntershea.com.

 

About Kensington: Established in 1974, Kensington Publishing is America's Independent Publisher, located in New York City, and the foremost independent publishing house in the United States publishing over 500 books annually in all areas of commercial fiction - in hardcover, trade paperback, and mass market

Things we lost in the night

Book Info:




















LARRY J. DUNLAP DELIVERS A FAST-MOVING, romance-filled memoir of a young singer and his friends search for success in the 1960s music business of California and Las Vegas - if you liked memoirs from Carly Simon, Keith Richards, Patti Smith, Tommy James, and "The Wrecking Crew," you're sure to enjoy Night People.

"Instead of sharing a life with the woman I'd expected to be married to forever, my friends and I shared a dressing room, divided by thin wallboard, with a covey of topless showgirls and dancers."

In 1965, when Larry's scattered-to-the-winds, Indianapolis rock and roll vocal group is improbably reunited in distant San Francisco, they barely survive their clumsy transformation into entertainers in a rock and roll nightclub band. As their fortunes change, Larry and his band are plunged headfirst into an adventure that lures them into mob-run nightclubs, Las Vegas showrooms and backrooms, famous Hollywood night spots and recording studios, celebrity managers, and passionate romance--and the sacrifices it demands.

It's the West Coast in the mid-Sixties: a historic era of tectonic cultural, political, musical, and sexual upheaval--and the draft. The band scrambles to overcome, or at least endure, every obstacle in its path. But in the tumultuous nights the band inhabits, where things and people are too easily found and lost, everything Larry thought he knew about life, love, and himself is being challenged

Author Info:

Larry J. Dunlap is the author of NIGHT PEOPLE, Book 1 of Things We Lost in the Night, A Memoir of Love and Music in the 60s with Stark Naked and the Car Thieves and is currently preparing ENCHANTED, Book 2, the concluding volume, for publication in early 2016.

During the years following his memoir Larry continued in the Seventies music business inhabiting the streets of the Hollywood as a personal manager, publisher, and Sunset Boulevard recording studio owner/operator. In the Eighties Larry co-founded the first digital broadcasting network, to deliver computer games and internet to homes via cable television, followed by several years in video and film production, and post production.

Larry earned his bones for several years as a pencil-for-hire, technical and training writer for Fortune 50 companies. He developed and designed the curricula and training for a national network engineer training program for CompUSA, later freelancing to write extensive training programs for Sprint, basic computer training curricula for Section 8 housing for HUD, and consumer electronics sales training for Sam's Club.

Larry's favorite project has been imagining a galactic empire, and then designing, authoring, and developing a graphical multiplayer online strategy game, IMPERIAL WARS, to play in it. He is a published short story author, music magazine columnist, and authored and drew a published music-based cartoon strip named Frets. Currently Larry writes fiction and creative non-fiction from his home near the mountains east of Los Angeles where he shares his life with Laurie and their Chilidog.

My review:
I thought this book was ok. It was interesting for what it was, but it was not perfect. I did enjoy learning more about these people but I could not connect and didn't like the prose. I do not see myself reading anymore of this series. I would not recommend this book.

SWEET AND SAVORY SATURDAY

GET YOUR BAKE ON: SWEET AND SAVORY RECIPES FROM MY HOME TO YOURS by Brian Emmett

 

“Emmett, winner of CBS's The American Baking Competition, shares 75 recipes that have been passed down through the generations of his family. Dessert classics, such as lemon meringue pie and a yellow cake with vanilla buttercream frosting, are offset with savories including chicken pot pie, Chicago and New York–style pizzas, and a "Mile-High" quiche. Fans of The American Baking Competition will recognize the "Petit Four Flag Cake"…Emmett offers clear instructions on his popular "Peanut-Vanilla Chiffon Roll with Peanut Praline and Gold-Dusted Peanuts" and carefully walks home bakers through the multiple steps, including making a chocolate-peanut mousse, chocolate ganache glaze, peanut praline, and gold-dusted peanuts. His down-to-earth tone makes this a good buy for those new to baking.”

—Publishers Weekly

 

“Distinguished by its ease of use and down-home midwestern ’tude…[with] family-type-introductions to each type of dish…Good tips on techniques precede every chapter…The proof of his talent is in the collection: For the most part, the inclusions are standard Americana, often with a twist.  Try oatmeal muffins for a breakfast differentiator, maple mascarpone frosting on a carrot, and poppy-seed sugar-plum rolls (translation: filled donuts).  Demyth-ifying the craft of baking.”

—Booklist

 

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Whip up some delicious down-home goodness with GET YOUR BAKE ON: SWEET AND SAVORY RECIPES FROM MY HOME TO YOURS, a cookbook of sweet and savory recipes from Brian Emmett, who burst onto the culinary scene with his charm, confidence, and superior baking and cooking skills on CBS’s The American Baking Competition™.  He won the hearts of Americans nationwide, who watched this enthusiastic husband and father immerse himself in his passion—and, ultimately, take home the illustrious title of America’s Best Amateur Baker.

 

Now in GET YOUR BAKE ON, Brian shares over seventy-five recipes that leave no doubt as to why he was crowned champion of the show.  This cookbook encompasses a hearty mixture of The American Baking Competition favorites, brand-new concoctions, and Emmett family recipes passed down for generations.  Staying true to the show’s theme, there are plenty of sweets.  From Poppy Seed Sugar Plum Rolls to his famous Cakey Chocolate Chip Cookies, Brian’s baked goods are sure to satisfy even the most demanding of sweet tooths.

 

GET YOUR BAKE ON also features a strong savory element with classic, feel-good recipes such as Sunday Brunch Strata and Sky-High Cheese and Chive Soufflés.  Some of these delicious treats include:

 

·         Pies and Tarts…Lemon Meringue Pie
·         Scones, Muffins, and Biscuits…Blueberry and Almond Scones
·         Breads and Pizzas…Focaccia with Fresh Thyme
·         Cookies, Bars, Biscotti, and Brownies…Salted Peanut Cookies
·         Cakes…Cheesecake with Caramel-Apple Topping
·         Pastry and Pie Dough…Apple Cider-Spiked Pie Dough
·         Soufflés and Custards…Sunday Brunch Strata

“This is by far one of the favorites with my family and friends, but not just for brunch!  It’s a hit for tailgating, Bunco night, bowling leagues, housewarming parties, baby showers…you are sure to be the MVP at any event if you show up with this amazing casserole.  It’s great because you can assemble all the ingredients the day before, refrigerate, and then bake fresh in the morning.  It’s also easy to change up the ingredients, use different cheeses, substitute the meats with seasonal vegetables such as broccoli, asparagus, or spinach, or add fresh herbs such as chopped parsley or basil as garnish for a beautiful presentation.”

 

With Brian Emmett’s GET YOUR BAKE ON, readers are expertly equipped to gather with friends and family for any occasion and enjoy the most savory food.  So grab a spoon, America—Brian’s back, and he’s ready to dish!

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Brian Emmett, the ultimate foodie and home entertainer, has been baking, cooking, serving, and designing unique culinary experiences for family and friends for over twenty years.  He lives near Chicago with his wife and daughters. 

 

Facebook: brianemmettbake

Twitter: @BrianEmmettBake

Website: brianemmetbake.com

 

Hallmark’s Home & Family (7/10/15)

 

COME MEET BRIAN!

Saturday, August 22^nd, 2:00 – 4:00 pm

Barnes & Noble

7200 Harrison Avenue

Rockford, IL 61112

 

Friday, November 13^th

America’s Baking and Sweet Show

Chicago, IL