![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The further I read, the more I was dazzled by what I discovered was also an extremely clever sleight of hand, as Nina de Gramont spins several different and seemingly unrelated mystery threads before snapping them all together into a breathtaking tapestry of crime and heartbreak and, most importantly, communion and grace. It did, however, show itself surprisingly willing to lean into a less than decorous – but very much appreciated by this reader – rage against the horrors committed against women in the early 20th century.īut at about the 72% mark, I realized that this novel, fictionalizing the relationship between Agatha and the woman who replaced her in her marriage to Colonel Archie Christie, was something much more than even the best of its contemporaries in the historical fiction genre. Purporting to advance a theory that explains Dame Christie’s eleven-day disappearance in the 1920s, The Christie Affair reads at first much like the absorbing works of Paula McLain and Gaynor Arnold: solidly researched historical fiction that sensitively explores the emotions of the women involved in turbulent events. I admit that when I first started reading this book, I expected a fairly tame historical mystery graced by the fictional presence of the grandmaster of mystery writing herself, Agatha Christie. ![]()
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![]() It includes both original stories and new additions. ![]() The 2019 edition was revised to include the changes that occurred over the past three decades and to examine what is still the same. The book changed the way many psychologists, teachers, parents, and teens themselves viewed the struggles of adolescence and the sources of teenage depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders. She wrote the collection to bring awareness to the cultural trauma and dysfunction experienced by adolescent girls and to assist girls and women around the world with their healing process. The book comprises a collection of Pipher’s essays, which are based on the interviews and focus groups with adolescent girls she conducted with her daughter, Sara Pipher. ![]() ![]() Reviving Ophelia was written in 1994 by Mary Pipher, a psychologist who works with women and teen girls, studying the ways cultural norms impact their mental health. ![]() ![]() ![]() It’s a prayer he’ll utter many times over the next twenty years, never knowing but always hoping that Claire made it through the standing stones, back to the safety of her own time. ![]() Lord, he prayed passionately, that she may be safe. Waking among the fallen on Culloden Field, he is concerned neither for his men nor his wounds but for his wife and their unborn child. Jamie Fraser is, alas, not dead-but he is in hell. However, his nose throbbed painfully, which he thought odd in the circumstances. ![]() In this rich, vibrant tale, Diana Gabaldon continues the story of Claire Randall and Jamie Fraser that began with the now-classic novel Outlander and continued in Dragonfly in Amber. Sweeping us from the battlefields of eighteenth-century Scotland to the West Indies, Diana Gabaldon weaves magic once again in an exhilarating and utterly unforgettable novel. Her use of historical detail and a truly adult love story confirm Gabaldon as a superior writer.”- Publishers Weekly ![]() ![]() ![]() Haunted Castle: Trope Codifier, taking its inspiration from Hamlet.Dude in Distress: Theodore is imprisoned and rescued by Matilda.Domestic Abuse: Not just due to Values Dissonance, either, because Isabella is initially terrified of Manfred because of how she's seen him treat his wife and daughter.Curse: When a giant helmet falls on and kills Manfred's son, Manfred fears it is the result of a prophecy laid down by his ancestors that states "That the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it.".Crazy Jealous Guy: Manfred, starting an enduring Gothic villain tradition.The Atoner: Manfred becomes this at the end.Arranged Marriage: Isabella was engaged to marry Manfred’s son at the start of the novel.And Now You Must Marry Me: Manfred tries to do this to Isabella in order to try to avert the destruction of his line, setting up the conflict.Tropes used in The Castle of Otranto include: ![]() ![]() Now it’s up to Sunshine to juggle a few good hunky men, a not-so-nice kidnapping miscreant, and Doug the ever-pesky flasher. ![]() Add to that trouble at her daughter’s new school and a kidnapped prized rooster named Puff Daddy, and Sunshine has her hands full.Įnter sexy almost-old-flame Levi Ravinder and a hunky US Marshall, both elevens on a scale of one to blazing inferno, and the normally savvy sheriff is quickly in over her head. But a teenage girl is missing, a kidnapper is on the loose, and all of it’s reminding Sunny why she left Del Sol in the first place. Sheriff Sunshine Vicram finds her cup o’ joe more than half full when the small village of Del Sol, New Mexico, becomes the center of national attention for a kidnapper on the loose.ĭel Sol, New Mexico is known for three things: its fry-an-egg-on-the-cement summers, its strong cups of coffee-and a nationwide manhunt? Del Sol native Sunshine Vicram has returned to town as the elected sheriff–an election her adorably meddlesome parents entered her in–and she expects her biggest crime wave to involve an elderly flasher named Doug. ![]() ![]() A Bad Day for Sunshine (Sunshine Vicram #1) by Darynda Jones-dual reviewĪ / Amazon.ca / B&N / KOBO / Chapters Indigo / Google PlayĪBOUT THE BOOK:Release Date April 7, 2020 ![]() ![]() But here Connelly fills in the backstory with critical depth and insight. We know he volunteered to fight, came out of the war and joined the police department. Into the tunnels of Cu Chi, onto a navy hospital ship in the East Vietnam Sea and back to home, accompanied by the ghosts of combat.Ĭertainly, we've gotten snippets of Bosch's past in earlier books. For the first time since he was introduced in 1992's The Black Echo, Bosch is propelled through his own wartime experiences.Ĭonnelly takes us with him. It marks a transition not just in the latest case, but also in character development. ![]() ![]() The scene in best-selling author Michael Connelly's latest thriller, The Wrong Side of Goodbye, is pivotal for the iconic Los Angeles homicide detective - and for readers of Connelly's seminal mystery series. ![]() He feels the familiar rush take hold, his purpose he has a new case, a new mission. ![]() He carefully unspools it, holds it up to the light, scans the image. In the glow of a flashlight, he finds a time capsule from Vietnam: books, a Zippo lighter, a cassette recorder and a roll of developed film stashed inside a camera. Detective Harry Bosch cracks open a dead soldier's footlocker that for five decades has been collecting dust in a dark Southern California attic. ![]() ![]() The result is a gripping insider narrative-and a necessary and timely account of what is at stake for all of us in the new digital age". For the first time, Harding brings together the many sources and strands of the story-touching on everything from concerns about domestic spying to the complicity of the tech sector-while also placing us in the room with Edward Snowden himself. In a tour de force of investigative journalism that reads like a spy novel, award-winning Guardian reporter Luke Harding tells Snowden's astonishing story-from the day he left his glamorous girlfriend in Honolulu carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of his secret-spilling in Hong Kong, to his battle for asylum and his exile in Moscow. His whistleblowing has shaken the leaders of nations worldwide, and generated a passionate public debate on the dangers of global monitoring and the threat to individual privacy. Edward Snowden was a 29-year-old computer genius working for the National Security Agency when he shocked the world by exposing the near-universal mass surveillance programs of the United States government. "IT BEGAN WITH A TANTALIZING, ANONYMOUS EMAIL: "I AM A SENIOR MEMBER OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY." What followed was the most spectacular intelligence breach ever, brought about by one extraordinary man. ![]() ![]() We sleep long, / if not sound, Kevin Young writes early on. Stones by Kevin Young - Penguin Books Australia Published: 18 November 2021 ISBN: 9781473598102 Imprint: Vintage Digital Format: EBook Pages: 112 Categories: Poetry Share Stones Kevin Young Formats & editions EBook Tr. Stones becomes an ode to Young’s home places and his dear departed, and to what of them-of us-poetry can save. Stones is a book of loss, looking back, and what binds us to life, by a towering poetic talent. Whether it’s the fireflies of a Louisiana summer caught in a mason jar (doomed by their collection), or his grandmother, Mama Annie, who latches the screen door when someone steps out for just a moment, all that makes up our flickering precarious joy, all that we want to protect, is lifted into the light in this moving book. No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does. ![]() This is the principal difference between a dog and man. “Like heat he seeks them, / my son, thirsting / to learn those / he don’t know / are his dead.” If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. “We sleep long, / if not sound,” Kevin Young writes early on in this exquisite gathering of poems, “Till the end/ we sing / into the wind.” In scenes and settings that circle family and the generations in the American South-one poem, “Kith,” exploring that strange bedfellow of “kin”-the speaker and his young son wander among the stones of their ancestors. ![]() ![]() A book of loss, looking back, and what binds us to life, by a towering poetic talent, called “one of the poetry stars of his generation” ( Los Angeles Times). ![]() ![]() The play is certainly powerful and maintains your interest through dramatic scenes, while it also provides for many questions - some of which remain unanswered. Interestingly we do not get much of a back story and find, other than his age of four score years, little else to suggest why Lear would surrender his power and his Kingdom at the outset. While there are some lighter moments the play is generally very dark filled with the bitter results of Lear's poor decisions at the outset. When this event goes not as planned the action of the play ensues and the reader is in for a wild ride, much as Lear himself.The play provides one of Shakespeare's most thoroughly evil characters in Edmund while much of the rest of the cast is aligned against each other with Lear the outcast suffering along with the Earl of Gloucester who is tricked by his bastard son Edmund into believing that his other son Edgar is plotting against him. ![]() ![]() ![]() The division of the Kingdom begins the play with first, the Earls of Kent and Gloucester speculating on the basis for the division and second, the actual division by Lear based on professions of love requested from his three daughters. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Quarter Storm is very different from Bacchanal. There was no compensation for this review. What follows is my opinion and mine alone. I received a free copy of The Quarter Storm for an honest review. As a killer wields dangerous magic to thwart Reina’s investigation, she must tap into the strength of her own power and faith to solve a mystery that threatens to destroy her entire way of life. Reina resolves to find the real killer and defend the Vodou practice and customs, but the motives behind the murder are deeper and darker than she imagines.Īs Reina delves into the city’s shadows, she untangles more than just the truth behind a devious crime. ![]() Detective Roman Frost, Reina’s ex-boyfriend-a fierce nonbeliever-is eager to tie the crime, and half a dozen others, to the Vodou practitioners of New Orleans. Gifted with water magic since she was a child, Reina is devoted to the benevolent traditions of her ancestors.Īfter a ritual slaying in the French Quarter, police arrest a fellow vodouisant. Haitian-American Vodou priestess Mambo Reina Dumond runs a healing practice from her New Orleans home. A practitioner of Vodou must test the boundaries of her powers to solve a ritual murder in New Orleans and protect everything she holds sacred. ![]() |