August 2023 – Page 2 – Rosepoint Publishing

Sanctuary Motel by Alan Orloff – #BookReview – #domesticthriller

A Mess Hopkins Novel

Book Blurb:

Mess Hopkins, proprietor of the seen-better-days Fairfax Manor Inn, never met a person in need who couldn’t use a helping hand—his helping hand. So he’s thrown open the doors of the motel to the homeless, victims of abuse, or anyone else who could benefit from a comfy bed with clean sheets and a roof overhead. This rankles his parents and uncle, who technically still own the place and are more concerned with profits than philanthropy.

When a mother and her teenage boy seek refuge from an abusive husband, Mess takes them in until they can get back on their feet. Shortly after arriving, the mom goes missing and some very bad people come sniffing around, searching for some money they claim belongs to them. Mess tries to pump the boy for helpful information, but he’s in full uncooperative teen mode—grunts, shrugs, and monosyllabic answers. From what he does learn, Mess can tell he’s not getting the straight scoop. It’s not long before the boy vanishes too. Abducted? Run away? Something worse? And who took the missing money? Mess, along with his friend Vell Jackson and local news reporter Lia Katsaros, take to the streets to locate the missing mother and son—and the elusive, abusive husband—before the kneecapping loansharks find them first.

His Review:

Mess has been charged with running the motel while his parents are seeing the world. Problem is, Mess has a heart of gold and no business sense. His benefactor realized this was the case and left a manager at the motel to keep Mess in line.

Mess hates to see abused women and is always trying to give them a place to stay to avoid abusive relationships. The abusers are not happy with his benevolence. Escaping the beatings and abuse is not easy for the victims and Mess is risking his own life at times to aid these unfortunates.

The Fairfax Motor Inn is not exactly the pride of Fairfax and a refuge for the desperate. His current charges are a battered woman and her son. The son, Kevin, is not happy with the situation and causes many problems but Mess decides that he will protect the mother and save her son.

The rub is that the mother does not want to be saved either. There are those who seem to feel that the two might be hiding a bag of cash and now both mother and son have disappeared. Things could get messy indeed.

C E Williams This book is a fun read about a do-gooder and a fifteen-year-old dropout. Anyone tasked with raising a fifteen-year-old never-do-well will identify! Enjoy! 4.5 stars – CE Williams

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book. These are my unbiased opinions and mine alone.

Rosepoint Publishing: Four point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Domestic Thrillers, Noir Crime
Publisher: Level Best Books
ASIN: B0C8BPCN5N
Print Length: 301 pages
Publication Date: October 24, 2023
Source: Publisher and NetGalley

Title Link(s):

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

The Author: Before Alan stepped off the corporate merry-go-round, he had an eclectic (some might say disjointed) career. As an engineer, he worked on nuclear submarines, supervised assembly workers in factories, facilitated technology transfer from the Star Wars program, and learned to stack washing machines three high in a warehouse with a forklift. He even started his own recycling and waste reduction newsletter business. Now he writes fiction.

Alan Orloff’s debut mystery, DIAMONDS FOR THE DEAD (Midnight Ink), was a 2010 Agatha Award Finalist for Best First Novel. He’s written two books in the Last Laff mystery series, KILLER ROUTINE and DEADLY CAMPAIGN (also from Midnight Ink), and writing as his darker half Zak Allen, he’s published three books: THE TASTE, FIRST TIME KILLER, and RIDE-ALONG. His novel, RUNNING FROM THE PAST, was one of the initial Kindle Scout selections.

His novel, PRAY FOR THE INNOCENT, won the 2019 ITW Thriller Award for Best E-Book Original.

His novel, I KNOW WHERE YOU SLEEP, was a Shamus Award Finalist for Best First PI Novel.

HIs YA thriller, I PLAY ONE ON TV, won both the Agatha Award and Anthony Award for Best Children’s/YA Mystery.

His short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including JEWISH NOIR, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, CHESAPEAKE CRIMES: STORM WARNING, Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, WINDWARD, SNOWBOUND, LANDFALL, SEASCAPE, and MASTHEAD (BEST NEW ENGLAND CRIME STORIES 2016 – 2020), THE NIGHT OF THE FLOOD, MYSTERY MOST GEOGRAPHICAL, GUNS + TACOS, and MICKEY FINN: 21st Century Noir, Volumes 1 and 3.

His flash fiction story, “Happy Birthday,” was nominated for a 2018 Derringer Award, and his story, “Dying in Dokesville,” won a 2019 Derringer Award.

His story, “Rent Due,” won the 2021 ITW Thriller Award for Best Short Story, and “Rule Number One” (SNOWBOUND, Level Best Books) was selected for the 2018 edition of THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES anthology, edited by Louise Penny.

He loves arugula and cake, but not together. Never together.

Alan can be followed/stalked on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/alanorloff) and Twitter (@alanorloff). For more info, visit http://www.alanorloff.com

Split by Alida Bremer – #BookReview – #TuesdayBookBlog

Book Blurb:

Nazis, spies, romance, and murder collide in prewar eastern Europe in a mesmerizing historical novel by the award-winning author of Oliva’s Garden.

It’s 1936. The seaside-resort village of Split on the Adriatic coast bustles. The tourist spots are booming, passenger steamers dot the harbor, and Jewish émigrés have found tenuous refuge from persecution. But as war in Europe looms, Split is also a nest of spies, fascists, and smugglers—and now, a locale suspiciously scouted by a German Reich film crew. Then one summer morning it becomes the scene of a murder investigation when a corpse is found entangled in fishing nets in the port.

With so many suspects from all walks of life and with a myriad of motives at a time when tensions are boiling over, crime superintendent Mario Bulat has only rumors to follow. Political archrivals will take advantage of the crime. Local lovers will become embroiled in it. And a propagandist filmmaker will find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. War is coming, and for some in Split, it’s already here.

My Review:

When we took our exchange student home to Split the first time, we were shocked at the still obvious ravages of war in Croatia. He wasn’t with us two months after arriving for his senior year in an American high school before he asked to stay. His initial response to our home at the time was to pat the walls and inform us that they would not stop a grenade. No, they wouldn’t have. That was back in 1995 before the Bosnian War ended. Of course, we couldn’t say no.

So the title of this book naturally caught my eye. I checked it out, and sure enough, it was a book set in Split, right where we stayed with his parents seven years after the end of that conflict. The city so full of old world charm and the sea so green and clear, it was difficult to conceive of the conflict those walls had seen over the centuries.

Set in 1936 in Split on the Adriatic, a tourist mecca, the mood is one of caution. War is looming in Europe and there is an obvious underground of spies. There are widely spread rumors of fascists afoot and now there is a German Reich film crew scouting the town. The political climate is tenuous, opposing factions at odds. And in the middle of it, a body is found in the port.

Superintendent Mario Bulat begins an investigation with marginal characters on each side dueling against an influx of refugees fleeing the obvious hostile advances. His investigation repeatedly takes second chair to the increasing tensions within the Yugoslavian community, introducing a cadre of old boys arguing the propagandist purpose of the German film production and the division of the political atmosphere.

I enjoyed the references to the local sites, remembered many of the words, stumbled over names, and heard in my mind’s ear the animated, often heated and spirited discussions we heard while there. It was like a visit back to his country and our immersion into his culture. The characters are varied and colorful.

Not so much of a murder investigation as a biting comment of the people, the time, and the place facing yet another conflict so quickly after the shaky resolution of the last. Interesting, probably more so for those who have had a more personal introduction to the people and the history—and it could be rather slow—the mystery getting lost in the political upheaval.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the author and publisher through @NetGalley that in no way influenced this review. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Rating: Four Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Historical World War II Fiction, Historical European Fiction, World War Historical Fiction
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
ISBN: ‎ 1662507046
ASIN: B0BGT8885P
Print Length: 262 pages
Publication Date: January 1, 2024
Source: Publisher and NetGalley

Title Link(s):

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

The Author: Alida Bremer, born 1959 in Split/Croatia, lives in Münster/Germany. She received her PhD with a thesis on the postmodern detective novel (Kriminalistische Dekonstruktion. On the Poetics of Postmodern Crime Novels, Königshausen und Neumann 1998). In the novel Olivas Garten (Eichborn 2013, TB Ullstein 2017), she wrote about her Dalmatian family participating in the resistance during World War II; her manuscript of the novel Träume und Kulissen was nominated for the 2017 Alfred Döblin Prize (Jung und Jung 2021). Her poems, stories, essays, and novels have been translated into several languages. Together with Michael Krüger, she edited the anthology Glückliche Wirkungen (Ullstein 2017); together with Ulla Hahn and Andrea Grewe, she edits the poetry calendar Fliegende Wörter (Daedalus Verlag).

She has translated from Croatian into German among others Ivana Sajko, Edo Popović, Marko Pogačar, Delimir Rešicki, Zvonko Maković, Predrag Matvejević, Renato Baretić, Asja Bakić, Damir Karakaš and from Serbian Bora Ćosić, Dragan Velikić, Iva Brdar. She has received numerous scholarships and awards, most recently the Barthold Heinrich Brockes Scholarship of the German Translator Fund (2020); in 2018 she was awarded the International Literature Prize of the House of World Cultures as a translator together with Ivana Sajko, the German Youth Theater Prize together with Dino Pešut, and the Brücke Berlin Theater Prize together with Iva Brdar.

Frank’s Shadow by Doug McIntyre – #BookReview – #ContemporaryAmericanFiction

Amazon Bestseller

Book Blurb:

We leave shadows, not footprints.

Newlywed Danny McKenna’s honeymoon ends abruptly when he learns his father has died, uncannily, on the same day as his hero, Frank Sinatra. Returning home to his knotty Irish American family, Danny is confronted with a painful truth—while he knows everything about the famous singer, his own father is a mystery. Tasked with giving a eulogy for a man he hardly knows, Danny sets out to uncover his dad’s past—an immigrant’s tale of mid-twentieth-century America and the harsh realities of WWII lived in stark contrast to Frank Sinatra’s famously extravagant life.

Along the way, Danny’s own demons nearly destroy him as he struggles to accept his father’s deepest secret—a journey that takes him into the heart of darkness before he learns to live in the light.

Fame, family, and forgiveness are among the many themes in Doug McIntyre’s debut novel, a story full of vibrant scenery, gripping characters, humor, and profound moments of self-realization. Frank’s Shadow is a deeply (sometimes darkly) human story wrapped in the trappings of a delightfully gritty love letter to New York City’s less glamorous neighborhoods.

His Review:

Growing up as the youngest son of four brothers after WW II was not easy. Francis Mc Kenna was the perfect age for induction into the US Army. He was married with children but would not abandon his country in its time of need and went to serve his country in Europe.

Frank could have had a deferment but there was no way this Irish immigrant was going to let someone else fight for him. Of course, he weathered some prejudice from others because he was the offspring of Irish immigrants. They were not gladly absorbed into the growing melting pot that was the United States of America.

He participated in the Allied landing at Normandy and he and his fellow soldiers fought to save bridges necessary for the onslaught of the German homeland. He started on the shores of Normandy and fought his way into Nazi Germany. The U.S. military utilizes a “buddy system” which endears people to each other during the war. His buddy committed a very egregious act. Frank ended his buddy’s career and then walked away from the war.

The military has no patience for someone who loses the will to fight after experiencing so many physical atrocities. Frank laying down his weapon and walking away from the battlefield is a drastic error. He is brought up on charges of desertion and put into a military stockade. He doesn’t care; he refuses to pick up a gun and fire it at anyone. Never Again!

This is a very interesting and unique narrative of one soldier’s experience during the Second World War. 4.5 stars – CE Williams

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book. These are my own opinions given freely.

Rosepoint Publishing: Four point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Contemporary American Fiction, City Life Fiction
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
ASIN: B0C8PVB5DW

Print Length: 317 pages
Publication Date: July 18, 2023
Source: Publisher and NetGalley

Title Link(s):

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Doug McIntyre is the long-time columnist for the Southern California News Group which includes the Los Angeles Daily News and Orange County Register, as well as the creator of Red Eye Radio heard nationally on hundreds of radio stations. He also hosted a successful show on WABC in New York City and the long-running “McIntyre in the Morning” on KABC in Los Angeles. A television and film writer/producer, McIntyre has written for all the major networks, including the hit series, Married… With Children, WKRP in Cincinnati, Full House, Mike Hammer and the award-winning PBS series, Liberty’s Kids. As an emcee, Doug has hosted evenings with Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, President George W. Bush, Betty White, Misty Copeland, John Cleese, John Glenn, Ken Burns, Malala Yousafzai, Colin Powell, Robert Redford and many others. Doug and his wife, actress/writer Penny Peyser, wrote/directed and produced the award-winning documentary, Trying to Get Good: The Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon. New York born and raised, Doug and Penny live in Los Angeles.

Chill--It's Sunday

The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer – #AudiobookReview – #ThrowbackThursday

Book Blurb:

In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny…and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century.

Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now 15 and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate. Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears. Where Alina used to measure time between visits from her beloved, now, she measures the spaces between hope and despair, waiting for word from Tomasz and avoiding the attentions of the soldiers who patrol her parents’ farm. But for now, even deafening silence is preferable to grief.

Slipping between Nazi-occupied Poland and the frenetic pace of modern life, Kelly Rimmer creates an emotional and finely wrought narrative. The Things We Cannot Say is an unshakable reminder of the devastation when truth is silenced…and how it can take a lifetime to find our voice before we learn to trust it.

My Review:

I do enjoy the split timeline stories, this being one that jumps between 1940s Poland and today—well, at least recent.

It is Alice whose story is present day, a mother with a challenging seven-year-old boy on the autism spectrum. She also has a ten-year-old daughter, gifted, and the extremes split the household and create tension hourly. Alice has dug in 180% to the care of her son, Eddie. Her husband Wade has distanced himself from the boy and has no clue about the stress his care creates within the family. His life is his business.

Back in Poland in the late 1930s, early 40s, Alina is a teenager in love with her fiancé Tomasz. He has left for college, promising to return often to visit. The plans of both, however, are dashed when Germany invades and her brothers are forced to leave for work camps. Suddenly, their world is one of scarce food, the loss of freedom, and death.

The storyline has Alice’s grandmother suffering a stroke and facing end-of-life. They find a way to communicate with her, but she asks the impossible—that Alice travel to Poland on a mission. Unfortunately, she has no idea what it is she is seeking. And she is sure husband Wade has no clue how to care for Eddie or to what degree this will be a challenge for him.

In the meantime, Alina’s story begins to dig deep into the story of occupied Poland and the horrors beginning to become apparent. As so often happens, I find the story of Alina deeply emotional, immersive, and totally engaging, more so than Alice’s who continues to berate the very little Wade understands about the care of Eddie. He is confident, however, that as a man with a Ph.D. who oversees more than three hundred employees, he’ll have no problem with his son and daughter.

Alice very reluctantly travels to Poland where she’ll have a Wade-arranged guide to begin the quest for her grandmother, the woman who so often provided her with the love and support she lacked from her own mother. Her calls home usually end in escalated, tension-filled discussions of his failure to understand the complexities of a non-verbal Autistic child.

Alina’s story turns ever darker and more heartbreaking, exploring the depths that a woman can reach and successfully rise above, and begins to come together piece by piece, particularly after she is finally granted a visit with a long-lost great aunt. Reading those accounts, I can’t help but believe I’d fail in the same life-and-death struggle. I can’t even imagine the strength and conviction it must take to face those life and death odds, the sacrifice involved. But that’s the wonder of the human spirit isn’t it—that basic instinctual will to live.

The conclusion pulls together to create a beautifully satisfying narrative filled with intensity and passion. I won’t say I didn’t figure out how it would play out, heartbreaking though it was, knew that would be the story. We don’t or can’t really know the lives of those who came before us, can we?

Definitely an inspirational saga and one I heartily recommend, particularly as an audiobook. Great job by the narrators. I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.

Book Details:

Genre: Jewish Literature & Fiction, Jewish Historical Fiction
Publisher: Harlequin Audio
ASIN: B07MRKPHKR
Listening Length: 13 hrs 47 mins
Narrator: Ann Marie Gideon, Nancy Peterson
Publication Date: March 19, 2019
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: The Things We Cannot Say [Amazon]

Rosepoint Publishing: Four point Five Stars

The Author: Kelly Rimmer is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and internationally best selling author of contemporary and historical fiction novels including The Secret Daughter, The Things We Cannot Say, and Truths I Never Told You. Her latest novel, The Warsaw Orphan, was released in June 2021. Kelly lives in rural Australia with her family and a whole menagerie of badly behaved animals.

For further information about Kelly’s books, and to subscribe to her mailing list, visit http://www.kellyrimmer.com.

#ThrowbackThursday

Rosepoint Reviews – July Recap – Wild Weather and Scorching Temps

Rosepoint Reviews - July Recap

July in the upper Midwest is a volatile month with sudden, violent thunderstorms or tornadoes or highs in the low seventies with a cool breeze. You can’t accuse the area of boring weather. Still, I shouldn’t be grousing as with the sudden drenching rains and warm to hot days, the lawn has gone nuts—you can almost literally watch grass grow here—and my garden is loving it. Well, my sugar snap peas didn’t love it so much.

Late start with the garden, slow spring, and just now beginning to get some tomatoes trying to ripen. The baby deer are beginning to venture out—still have their spots. They look sweet until they get into my garden—squash being the current favorite. The CE is happy about that though.
Fawns with spots

We are trying to get in some steps, got the bikes all pumped up—and walking or riding any semi-cool mornings we can get. Still we managed fourteen books in July. These are mostly from NetGalley and also my local library with both audiobooks and digital. (As always, links below are to my reviews that include purchase info.)

Rosepoint Reviews - July Recap
Drowning in the Desert by Bernard Schopen (CE review)
The Night We Burned by S F Kosa
The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda (audiobook)
Splinter by Paul McHugh (CE review)
Trotting Into Trouble by Amber Camp
How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix (audiobook)
The Last Ranger by Peter Heller (CE review)
Home at Night by Paula Munier
The Wrong Victim by Allison Brennan (audiobook)
Night Owl by Andrew Mayne (CE review)
Some of Us Are Looking by Carlene O’Connor
Unwrapped by Lynda McDaniel
All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers (audiobook)
The Cove by Gregg Dunnett (CE review)

These included historical fiction, literary fiction, psychological fiction, cozy mysteries, and thrillers.

Favorite Book of the Month

I was gifted two ARCs from favorite authors in July, one being Unwrapped by Lynda McDaniel and the other, Some of Us Are Looking by Carlene O’Connor, both of which earned my five stars. I really like that slightly darker turn in Ms O’Connor’s Irish mysteries and Unwrapped proved to have a sweet Hallmark type of ending–timed perfectly for the Christmas season. The CE also had a couple he particularly enjoyed, one for the sense of humor (The Last Ranger) and another because of that totally off-the-wall wallop of a surprise ending (The Cove). There were several others hovering in the 4.5 star range for both of us–it was one of those great reading months. But in the end, I’ll have to go with–

Book of the Month for July—Unwrapped.

My Reading Challenges page… I have 88 books of a goal of 145 in Goodreads (one book ahead of schedule) and still riding at a 97% feedback ratio in NetGalley. As always, I’m struggling to keep up with the rest. *Sigh* Maybe after the summer months…

First the death of the Instagram feed—then Musk messed with Twitter—and there went that feed. I’d boycott that stupid “X” but need to Twitter away my reviews. Is anyone getting around this (other than adding another job to the post) so they can show both feeds on their blog? All I’ve got now are the blank spaces where those feeds used to show up in my right column. Any suggestions, help, or ideas? I’d welcome them all!

Welcome to my new subscribers and thank you, as always, to those who read and comment. I love hearing from you!

k-luv-u-bye