When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem—she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they’ve been together for years.
As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actually living?
My Review:
When was the last time you willingly accepted a debut novel and actually enjoyed it? Well, okay, maybe not that rare, but this is one I think you might.
First, this is a unique plot device and one that has you nodding your head and grinning. Definitely light satire, humorous and chuckle worthy moments begin when Lauren discovers a husband in her flat in London that was a real surprise. She wasn’t married.
Her friends, and there are several constants, confirm they’ve been married for a little while. Just look at the photos. Decoŕ definitely looks different.
Well, the good news: She hasn’t gone crazy but when he changes a lightbulb in the attic, Michael is replaced by a new husband. Maybe she needs to reconsider the crazy part.
And then, OMG, she runs the gamut! Right age and education but dense. Bore you to tears but the body of Adonis. Health nut, gamer, sports nut, gambler, drinker, wondering eye. What if she found the one she wanted to keep? Could she keep him out of the attic?
It’s light-hearted and not to be taken seriously although there are a few interesting philosophical questions to ponder. The MC is not fully developed, the reader doesn’t get the depth and certainly of none of the husbands. The attic is apparently “magic.” We don’t know why. There is a solid twist later in the novel but at a reasonable length of time you’ll demand a point to it all.
Of course, I greatly enjoyed the narration of the audiobook—done very well, accents and all. Does Lauren finally pick a husband, warts and all, and stick with him? Do you still care? How does this ring road ever end? You’ll have to read it.
I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.
Rosepoint Publishing:Four Stars
Book Details:
Genre: Humorous Fiction & Satire, Humorous Fiction, Family Life Fiction Publisher:Random House Audio ASIN: B0CDCP4FCT Listening Length: 10 hrs 30 mins Narrator: Miranda Raison Publication Date: April 2, 2024 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections) Title Links: The Husbands [Amazon-US] Amazon-UK Barnes & Noble Kobo
The Author:HOLLY GRAMAZIO is a writer, game designer and curator from Adelaide, currently based in London. She founded the experimental games festival Now Play This, and wrote the script for the award-winning indie videogame Dicey Dungeons. She’s particularly interested in rules, play, cities, gardens, games that get people acting creatively, and art that gets people interacting with their surroundings in new ways. The Husbands is her first novel.
From Robert Dugoni, the #1 Kindle -bestselling author of MY SISTER’S GRAVE, and Environmental Protection Agency Special Agent Joseph Hilldorfer comes a true story of good and evil, greed and its consequences, and an elusive quest for justice…
Early in the morning on August 27, 1996, twenty year old Scott Dominguez showed up for an ordinary day at the fertilizing plant where he worked. By 11:00am, he was clinging to life, unconscious and suffocating from toxic exposure to cyanide in a tank that was supposed to contain only mud and water.
EPA Special Agent Joseph Hilldorfer was tasked with finding out what really happened on that horrific day in Soda Springs, Idaho, but the answers would not be easily uncovered. For more than four years Hilldorfer, his partner Bob Wojnicz, and a force of top-ranking U.S. attorneys struggled to expose the disturbing truths behind the tragedy, but would their efforts be enough to put the man responsible, Allan Elias, behind bars?
Dugoni, a New York Times bestselling author known for his heart-pounding legal thrillers, and Hilldorfer, the agent who lived and breathed the Dominguez case, pen a compulsively readable work that is every bit as enthralling as fiction, yet is alarmingly true.
My Review:
My dip into a non-fiction book this year co-authored by Robert Dugoni and Joe Hilldorfer, the latter an EPA special agent in charge of the investigation in Soda Springs, Idaho. Of course, my ears perked up when I started hearing several of these little rural towns, out in the middle of nowhere, small bedroom communities for a major local industry.
Idaho is riddled with heavy mineral and mining sites as well as hot springs and mineral waters, such as this town’s namesake, Soda Springs. The first time we discovered the little town with the soda water, we couldn’t believe it until we tasted it.
The opening of the book reads like a Dugoni suspense thriller with the two young men being told to clean out the sludge in the tank, unaware it contained deadly cyanide gases, sans any protection.
Then the narrative morphs into textbook presentation and switches POV to Hilldorfer. Hilldorfer is still testing the EPA waters with violations of environmental laws lacking the serious level of meted justice it deserves.
The presentation veered into technical terms, detailed presentations, environmental laws, and examples of violations successfully tried with disappointing lightweight sentences.
Lots of characters, of course, contributed to the storyline, often preceded by personal background, education, and experience of the contributions of their successful (or failed) prosecutions and the reasons. The pacing slowed as the years advanced with little advancement and the necessity of returning to the courts yet again.
The case against Allan Elias, the owner responsible for the deadly and willful assignment, proved a slippery slope as his attorneys were perceived to find one loophole after another and Elias a bottomless pit of money to fight all allegations. Meanwhile, the survivor of the cyanide suffered permanent and life-changing losses and was racking up thousands of dollars in medical bills.
An interesting look into the evolving EPA coming into power and the progress made in protecting our environment while acknowledging the extent of work still to be done.
Did they ever send Elias to prison? Did Dominguez survive?
I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.
Rosepoint Publishing:Four Stars
Book Details:
Genre: Biographies of Lawyers & Judges, Lawyer & Judge Biographies, True Crime Biographies Publisher: Tantor Audio ASIN: B06XGYM4JG Listening Length: 12 hrs 48 mins Narrator: Tom Perkins Publication Date: March 21, 2017 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections) Title Link: The Cyanide Canary [Amazon]
The Authors:
Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and #1 Amazon bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite police series set in Seattle, which has sold more than 10 million books worldwide. He is also the author of The Charles Jenkins espionage series, the David Sloane legal thriller series, the Keera Duggan legal thriller series, and several stand-alone novels including The 7th Canon, Damage Control, the literary novels, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell – Suspense Magazine’s Book of the Year, for which Dugoni’s narration won an AudioFile Earphones Award and the critically acclaimed, The World Played Chess; historical novels based on true events: A Killing on the Hill about Seattle during the great depression and Hold Strong, a WWII novel; as well as the nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Several of his novels have been optioned for movies and television series. Dugoni is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Award for Fiction and multiple awards for best novel set in the Pacific Northwest. He has also been a finalist for many other awards including the International Thriller Award, the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, the Silver Falchion Award for mystery, and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award.
Robert Dugoni’s books are sold in more than thirty countries and have been translated into more than thirty languages.
Joseph Hilldorfer is a Special Agent for the Environmental Protection Agency and a member of the National Counter-Terrorism Evidence Response Team. He has been involved in high-profile environmental investigations in the Pacific Northwest since 1992. Prior to joining EPA, Hilldorfer was a distinguished Special Agent with the FBI in Seattle and New York City, working high-profile cases such as the Green River Killer and going undercover for the Counter-Espionage Squad. With an M.A. in Criminal Justice Administration from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a law degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, he is admitted to the Pennsylvania bar. He lives in Seattle, Washington. [Google]
Award-winning author Denny S. Bryce and USA Today bestselling author Eliza Knight collaborate on a brilliant novel that uncovers the boundary-breaking, genuine friendship between Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Jazz, and iconic movie star Marilyn Monroe.
One woman was recognized as the premiere singer of her era with perfect pitch and tireless ambition.
One woman was the most glamorous star in Hollywood, a sex symbol who took the world by storm.
And their friendship was fast and firm…
1952: Ella Fitzgerald is a renowned jazz singer whose only roadblock to longevity is society’s attitude toward women and race. Marilyn Monroe’s star is rising despite ongoing battles with movie studio bigwigs and boyfriends. When she needs help with her singing, she wants only the best—and the best is the brilliant Ella Fitzgerald. But Ella isn’t a singing teacher and declines—then the two women meet, and to everyone’s surprise but their own, they become fast friends.
On the surface, what could they have in common? Yet each was underestimated by the men in their lives—husbands, managers, hangers-on. And both were determined to gain. Each fought for professional independence and personal agency in a time when women were expected to surrender control to those same men.
This novel reveals and celebrates their surprising bond over a decade and serves as a poignant reminder of how true friendship can cross differences to bolster and sustain us through haunting heartbreak and wild success.
My Review:
Marilyn died in 1962, the year we were married. Many historical events happened the same year and I must confess many of them were lost in my own life concerns at the time. Born in 1926, Marilyn was thirty-six. Born in 1917, Ella passed in 1996 at 79 years. Both achieved legendary status, and while it is true that they did form a friendship, this is a fiction accounting of that friendship.
At times, the palaver got so thick, I completely discounted the incident. Indeed, it’s explained at the end of the book that (remember) it is a work of fiction.
What isn’t fiction is that given the time in the civil rights movement, Monroe’s support of Ella could have hurt her career which was already flourishing. It was because Marilyn was up for a pic in which she was to sing that she began hounding Ella to coach her as Ella was admittedly one of her singing idols.
Ella was well-known and successful but struggled for the level of acceptance and the better gigs as that of Lena Horne, Dinah Washington, and Nina Simone. And Ella was a big woman. The Mocambo wanted small and pretty; Marilyn helped her get into the Mocambo.
While I was fully engaged in the voice of Ella in the audiobook, I found the voice of Marilyn annoying at times, cloying, sure she did not use her public persona voice during all the private conversations.
An audiobook, I hoped for a tidbit of one of Ella’s songs. And then there was the iconic Happy Birthday song to President Kennedy by Marilyn—that breathy, sexy song so familiar to generations of fans.
The book jumps between reflections of Ella and Marilyn, sometimes creating a disjointed narrative, Ella coming over as most authentic. I enjoyed the different stories of both ladies and their families, including the account of Ella’s Aunt Virginia! Marilyn’s story inevitably covered failed marriages, including the extremely physically abusive Joe DiMaggio marriage, although Arthur Miller—while not physically abusive—swung just as hard to the mental side of abusive and was just as damaging.
“There is something in the bond of an honest friendship between women that a lover can never breach and that fake friends will never understand.”
To her credit, Ella didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs and that became a heavy wedge between their friendship. While Ella decried Marilyn’s increasing dependency on drugs and booze, she couldn’t be a part of it.
Lots of literary license here, still there are tidbits to be gleaned between dramatic recreations or fictionalized accounts of what may have or could have happened. The authors spent untold hours in research. Perhaps the most telling is the insight given in the epilogue.
If you enjoy biographical accounts, historical accounts of some of our famous personalities, you might very well enjoy this collaboration. I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.
Rosepoint Publishing:Four Stars
Book Details:
Genre: Biographical Fiction, Friendship Fiction, Biographical Historical Fiction Publisher:HarperAudio ASIN: B0C7DXY8TW Listening Length: 11 hrs 15 mins Narrators: Karen Chilton, Caroline Hewitt Publication Date: March 5, 2024 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections) Title Links: Can’t We Be Friends [Amazon-US] Amazon-UK Barnes & Noble Kobo
The Authors:
Eliza Knight is an award winning, USA Today and international bestselling author. Her love of history began as a young girl when she traipsed the halls of Versailles and ran through the fields in Southern France. She can still remember standing before the great golden palace, and imagining what life must have been like. Growing up in the Washington, D.C. area, her weekends were filled with visits to museums, and historical reenactments. Escape into history for courageous heroines, irresistible heroes and daring escapades. Join Eliza (sometimes as E.) on riveting historical journeys that cross landscapes around the world. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society and Novelists, Inc., the creator of the popular historical blog, History Undressed, a co-host on the History, Books and Wine podcast and a co-host for the true crime podcast, Crime Feast.
While not reading, writing or researching for her latest book, she tries to keep up with her three not-so-little children. In her spare time (if there is such a thing…) she likes daydreaming, wine-tasting, traveling, hiking, staring at the stars, watching movies, shopping and visiting with family and friends. She lives atop a small mountain with her own knight in shining armor, three princesses, two very naughty Newfies, and a turtle named Fish.
Look for STARRING ADELE ASTAIRE a story full of glitz and glam, delving into the life of Adele Astaire, a spirited and talented woman who served up smiles and love both on and off the stage—with and without her also famous brother Fred Astaire— along with a determined young dancer with rags-to-riches dreams. Coming in June 2024, THE QUEEN’S FAITHFUL COMPANION.
For more information about book club visits, downloadable reader guides, upcoming author events, book news, newsletter and more, visit her website: http://www.elizaknight.com
If you love history and want to dive in for some fun, visit Eliza’s popular, award-winning blog:
To connect on social media, visit/follow Eliza at the following:
Twitter: @elizaknight
Denny S. Bryce is a best-selling, award-winning author of historical fiction. A former dancer and public relations professional, Denny is an adjunct professor in the MFA program at Drexel University, a book critic for NPR, and a freelance writer whose work has appeared in USA Today and Harper’s Bazaar. She is also a member of the Historical Novel Society, Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and Tall Poppy Writers. Originally from Ohio, she likes to call Chicago her hometown but currently resides in Savannah, Georgia. You can find her online at DennySBryce.com.
Set in Minnesota, Gone to Dust is the debut private-eye murder mystery from Emmy Award-winning Seinfeld writer Matt Goldman.
A brutal crime. The ultimate cover-up. How do you solve a murder with no useable evidence?
Private detective Nils Shapiro is focused on forgetting his ex-wife and keeping warm during another Minneapolis winter when a former colleague, neighboring Edina Police Detective Anders Ellegaard, calls with the impossible.
Suburban divorcée Maggie Somerville was found murdered in her bedroom, her body covered with the dust from hundreds of emptied vacuum cleaner bags, all potential DNA evidence obscured by the calculating killer.
Digging into Maggie’s cell-phone records, Nils finds that the most frequently called number belongs to a mysterious young woman whose true identity could shatter the Somerville family – but could she be guilty of murder?
After the FBI demands that Nils drop the case, Nils and Ellegaard are forced to take their investigation underground, where the case grows as murky as the contents of the vacuum cleaner bags. Is this a strange case of domestic violence or something with far-reaching, sinister implications?
My Review:
Okay, yes. I was looking for an audiobook, a nice mystery, and the blurb sounded interesting. And of course, dropping the Emmy Award-winning Seinfeld writer’s name helped. (As it happens, however, that show was not one I watched.)
The setting is Minnesota in the winter and I was reading it in the upper Midwest before we slowly ground into spring, so thought I might identify. Only so far though. Minnesota is a whole nother winter.
I’m not sure what it was. Yes, you have to say covering a body in vacuum cleaner dust patiently gathered from hundreds of vacuum cleaner bags is unusual. Even Nils Shapiro, the “Scandinavian Jew” might have been considered an unusual character, certainly considering he still pined after his ex. (I often wondered why then she is an “ex.”)
Just not one that really grabbed me. Nils is a contradiction alright. He was trying for the police department when there was a change in the budget, so he managed to create a private detective agency. I guess he found a modicum of success as he is called by a police detective buddy to help him with his vacuum dust case.
For one, there are too many degrees of coincidence. Small town—okay—I get it. Everybody knows everybody or is a relative. There are red herrings, twists, and the plot involves Nils the man as much as the case. It isn’t too hard to figure out the perp. An easy read (or listen) and entertaining but it just didn’t have the tension sufficient for me to get excited.
I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.
Rosepoint Publishing:Three point Five Stars
Book Details:
Genre: Jewish Literature, Private Investigator Mysteries Publisher:Blackstone Audio, Inc. ASIN: B074G4TM97 Listening Length: 7 hrs 24 mins Narrator: MacLeod Andrews Publication Date: August 15, 2017 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections) Title Link: Gone to Dust [Amazon]
The Author:Matt Goldman is New York Times Best Selling author and Emmy Award-winning TV writer. He has been nominated for a Shamus Award and is a Nero Award Finalist. His TV credits include Seinfeld, Ellen, and The New Adventures of Old Christine.
Anthony Award-winning author William Kent Krueger crafts this riveting tale about a small Minnesota town’s ex-sheriff who is having trouble retiring his badge. Cork O’Connor loses his job after being blamed for a tragedy on the local Anishinaabe Indian reservation. But he must set aside his personal demons when a young boy goes missing on the same day a judge commits suicide—and no one but O’Connor suspects foul play.
My Review:
Cork O’Connor is complicated and conflicted, so much going on in his life following the loss of his job as sheriff, his marriage, and the separation of his kids. Now to add fuel to the fire, a judge is found, said to have committed suicide and a young newspaper boy goes missing the same day. His mother calls Cork for help.
The judge was the last stop the boy was known to have made and to boot, the main proponent of Cork’s recall.
Boy, howdy, nothing like just heaping on the problems, huh? Cork may no longer be sheriff and is not welcome in the investigation, but couldn’t help but notice an inconsistency or two with the pronouncement of suicide. He’s pretty sure it wasn’t.
Cork wears his emotions on his sleeve right now and he’s more than a little concerned regarding the whereabouts of the boy.
It’s Minnesota.
It’s winter!
I can easily get lost in the atmospheric descriptions of the area and the people. Rugged even in good weather, the search is not easy. Lucky he has the support of the nearby tribe of the Anishinaabe. I enjoy the way the author taps into the local native lore.
The characters are well-developed and complex. Cork, a former Chicago cop has his dreams of an idyllic rural family village disintegrate before his eyes. He and his wife grow apart and he is reduced to scraping by. Being estranged from his wife, he begins to see another woman. There are twists and turns, taps into the local’s secrets.
Of course, there are technical issues, not the least of which is that he has no authority to investigate anything and we end up with a high body count—which I’m not always thrilled about. Still, I enjoy his writing style and following The River We Remember that I loved, I went looking for another book and found this series—all nineteen of them. Thought I’d start with the first. A good start.
I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.
Rosepoint Publishing:Four Stars
Book Details:
Genre: Private Investigator Mysteries, Crime Thrillers Publisher: Recorded Books ASIN: B003NGXOQ0 Listening Length: 11 hrs 57 mins Narrator: David Chandler Publication Date: May 21, 2010 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections) Title Link: Iron Lake [Amazon]
The Author: Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, William Kent Krueger briefly attended Stanford University—before being kicked out for radical activities. After that, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota. He currently makes his living as a full-time author. He’s been married for over 40 years to a marvelous woman who is a retired attorney. He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves.
Krueger writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist is Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe. His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. His last five novels were all New York Times bestsellers.
“Ordinary Grace,” his stand-alone novel published in 2013, received the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition for the best novel published in that year. “Manitou Canyon,” number fifteen in his Cork O’Connor series, was released in September 2016.
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by the Washington Post, TIME Magazine, BBC, TODAY, Elle, CrimeReads, and more
“Hailed as the queen of Irish crime fiction, French spins a taut tale of retribution, sacrifice, and family.”—TIME
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Searcher and “one of the greatest crime novelists writing today” (Vox), a spellbinding new novel set in the Irish countryside.
It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die.
Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or less: he’s built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he’s gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey’s long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.
From the writer who is “in a class by herself,” (The New York Times), a nuanced, atmospheric tale that explores what we’ll do for our loved ones, what we’ll do for revenge, and what we sacrifice when the two collide.
My Review:
The good ole boys are back and more than happy to render opinions, considered or not—in their own way and in their own time. Book 2 picks up with Cal and Trey as main characters, Cal still struggling with his transition from retired Chicago cop to rural village in the west of Ireland.
Trey, the teen, is still exhibiting all the anti-social, rebelliousness as before, worsening when her absentee dad reappears with an English millionaire. Trey sets her venomous eyes on revenge and proceeds to set in motion an action that, combined with a tale of gold in them thar hills, sets the village into a frenzy of conflict.
I hope the narrator gets paid by the word cause this is a long one. Probably much too long, though in all honesty, I must confess to listening to hours of spirited brogue-studded pub discussions partly just to hear the unique Irish vocabulary amid lilting sounds.
“They are not dishonest men, or anyway not what they or Trey would consider dishonest, not one of them would ever so much rob a package of mints from Noreen’s and between any of them a spit and a handshake would be as solid as a legal contract…(but) an Englishman wanting to reap from their land falls under different rules.”
In fact, most of the book is filled with dialogue and if the author is a master of thrillers, she might also be considered the mistress of dialogue. Like a senior who wanders from one subject to another, it just keeps going while gaining very little in advancement of the plot.
As the plot begins to reveal the sub-plot…wait: Is the main plot Johnny coming home and Trey taking umbrage or the supposed possibility of gold? And then, the discovery of the body. Hooboy! Now Cal gets to shine, if somewhat in the background as this would appear all Trey’s episode.
I enjoyed Cal’s part in mentoring Trey inThe Searcherand appreciate he’s out of his jurisdiction, but this is where the well-plotted (if overly long) storyline begins to add a few subtle twists.
Still, those long-winded, beer-driven lively and animated discussions in the pub between all those ole boys deciding whether or not to throw in money to look for gold offered a number of humorous breaks from the more serious Trey foreground leg of the plot.
Wholly atmospheric, character-driven tale of Irish proportions. If you like to ferret out the culprit, it may not be real difficult for you, or maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but I was caught by this one. There were only so many it could have been but had my money on someone else.
I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.
Rosepoint Publishing:Three Stars
Book Details:
Genre: Police Procedurals, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction, Suspense Publisher:Penguin Audio ISBN: 0593493435 ASIN: B0C7729CF8 Listening Length: 16 hrs 24 mins Narrator: Roger Clark Publication Date: March 5, 2024 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections) Title Link: The Hunter [Amazon-US] Amazon-UK Barnes & Noble Kobo
The Author:Tana French is the author of In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, and The Trespasser. Her books have won awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Dublin with her family.
From six bestselling authors, including New York Times bestseller Kate Quinn, comes a vividly imagined novel following the lives of those in ancient Pompeii on the fateful day Mount Vesuvius erupts.
Pompeii was a lively resort flourishing in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius at the height of the Roman Empire. When Vesuvius erupted in an explosion of flame and ash, the entire town would be destroyed. Some of its citizens died in the chaos, some escaped the mountain’s wrath . . . and these are their stories:
A boy loses his innocence in Pompeii’s flourishing streets.
An heiress dreads her wedding day, not knowing it will be swallowed by fire.
An ex-legionary stakes his entire future on a gladiator bout destined never to be finished.
A crippled senator welcomes death, until a tomboy on horseback comes to his rescue.
A young mother faces an impossible choice for her unborn child as the ash falls.
A priestess and a prostitute seek redemption and resurrection as the town is buried.
Six authors bring to life overlapping stories of patricians and slaves, warriors and politicians, villains and heroes who cross each other’s paths during Pompeii’s fiery end. But who will escape, and who will be buried for eternity?
My Review:
I went looking for another book by Kate Quinn for #ReadingIrelandMonth24 and stumbled across this one. Of course I was excited! Six best-selling authors collaborating on the destruction of Pompeii? And one of the two narrators my favorite from the audiobooks with Kate Quinn? A win-win for sure.
I love the collaboration of the stories, each with their own vignettes, and gradually each tale begins to overlap and meld into a solid, entertaining storyline. It’s a wide swath of humanity—from the privileged and spoiled maiden to a prostitute just trying to survive day to day with her beloved sister.
With the current disaster or dystopian craze, I can see where this would make for an edge-of-your-seat flick (never mind the one made in 2014). The suspense is killing, especially when you know what’s coming. Why aren’t these people fleeing for their lives?
They had warning—by the volcano itself.
But rather than focusing on the population, the novel brilliantly hones in on the personal lives of just a small cross-section of the residents. It’s emotional, obviously deeply character driven that engages the reader quickly and invests them in each individual’s chances for survival.
Of course there will be a woman about to give birth—what worse time could there be? Politics are, as always, playing a big part in where the Romans’s minds are—haven’t they been through earthquakes before and survived? No reason to scatter with a few rattles and rolls. The high-born daughter betrothed to a man old enough to be her father—talk about frying pan to the fire!
In the face of an apocalyptic cataclysm, how will these people react? Selfless or selfish? Will either save them from the poisonous and heated gases, a shower of ash, and another of rock and stone?
The authors take the readers to heart-pumping expectations only to switch scenes and confront another crisis. The separate contributions by authors are seamlessly woven together to create one extremely thrilling book about a historical pyroclastic flow that killed more than 2,000 people.
I really enjoyed the book! But just too much disbelief that any could have survived, given a late muster to move results in my star rating. Still, I greatly recommend the audiobook; get your copy. I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.
Rosepoint Publishing:Four point Five Stars
Book Details:
Genre: Ancient World Historical Romance, Ancient History Fiction, Literature Anthologies Publisher:HarperAudio ASIN: B0BT18P822 Listening Length: 11 hrs 19 mins Narrators: Andrew Kingston, Saskia Maarleveld Publication Date: August 8, 2023 Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Kate Quinn – Kate Quinn is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction. A native of southern California, she attended Boston University where she earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Classical Voice. She has written four novels in the Empress of Rome Saga, and two books in the Italian Renaissance, before turning to the 20th century with “The Alice Network”, “The Huntress,” “The Rose Code,” and “The Diamond Eye.” All have been translated into multiple languages. Kate and her husband now live in San Diego with three rescue dogs.
Saskia Maarleveldis an experienced audiobook narrator and voice-over actress based in New York City. Raised in New Zealand and France, she is highly skilled with accents and dialects, and many of her books have been narrated entirely in accents other than her own. In addition to audiobooks, Saskia’s voice can be heard in animation, video games, and commercials. She attributes her love and understanding of reading books aloud to coming from a large family where audiobooks were the only way to get through car rides without fighting! Visit saskiamaarleveld.com to learn more.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK READ BY MERYL STREEP
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.
My Review:
Again with the coming of age, family life fiction, I sank into the Tom Lake audiobook in no small part because of the author—listened toThe Dutch House and loved it—but also because Meryl Streep narrates this one. Can you get any better than that? Yeah, The Dutch House is narrated by Tom Hanks. Patchett can warrant a highly celebrated actor to narrate her literary fiction.
Streep is perfect for this part and, indeed, she plays it like an acting part, using that memorable voice to set the tone, the scene, and the characters beautifully. It’s much like having her in your living room and telling the story to you as if it were her own. But it’s Lara’s story, whose three daughters return to northern Michigan during the pandemic with cherry picking looming over the farm in the summer…Good Lord Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise.
It is a down home look back on Lara’s life which as a young woman revolves around the theater and the actors, support staff who present the plays—now a local theater company called Tom Lake preparing for the play Our Town. But heaven knows she had some history and though the girls have all heard stories of those years, the one they keep reverting to is their mother’s romance with Peter Duke. He went on to become a big star.
Particularly with an audiobook that switches time frames, seems like sometimes in the same paragraph, you can lose the train of thought and have to work to catch up. Even Streep can get into quiet reflection mode and slow the progression of the storyline somewhat. There are a lot of support characters, so the reader is forced to remember where in the narrative it was prior to being buried in minutia.
Patchett manages to leave little pearls of discovery that eventually become a jewel of the tale. Along the way, there have been little surprises, twists, but ones generally expected. So what are we leading up to? Could she have taken the left at the fork and gone on to stardom herself? Could she have pursued Duke and become the shadow behind him? Why did she marry Joe and face a life on a Michigan cherry farm?
Descriptions have the farm and the area sounding so lovely, the reader might crave the beauty and peace of the life (unless you also gave thought to Michigan winters). There is a lot about theater here, the secrets behind the curtain, family secrets (some of which Lara coyly retains), and well-developed characters including the family rescue dog—throw in the grandma for good measure.
Yes, I greatly enjoyed Streep’s interpretation of the novel and the writing style but found the pace was a bit slow.
I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.
Rosepoint Publishing:Four Stars
Book Details:
Genre: Coming of Age Fiction, Family life Fiction Publisher:HarperAudio ASIN: B0BPZYH97W Listening Length: 11 hrs 22 mins Narrator: Meryl Streep Publication Date: August 1, 2023Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
The Author:Ann Patchett is the author of six novels, including Bel Canto, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction. She writes for the New York Times Magazine, Elle, GQ, the Financial Times, the Paris Review and Vogue. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee. (Amazon)
Patchett was born in Los Angeles, California. Her mother is the novelist Jeanne Ray.
She moved to Nashville, Tennessee when she was six, where she continues to live. Patchett said she loves her home in Nashville with her doctor husband and dog. If asked if she could go any place, that place would always be home. “Home is …the stable window that opens out into the imagination.”
Patchett attended high school at St. Bernard Academy, a private, non-parochial Catholic school for girls run by the Sisters of Mercy. Following graduation, she attended Sarah Lawrence College and took fiction writing classes with Allan Gurganus, Russell Banks, and Grace Paley. She later attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she met longtime friend Elizabeth McCracken. It was also there that she wrote her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars.
In 2010, when she found that her hometown of Nashville no longer had a good book store, she co-founded Parnassus Books with Karen Hayes; the store opened in November 2011. In 2012, Patchett was on the Time 100 list of most influential people in the world by TIME magazine. (Goodreads)
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