Last Friday evening I stopped by the Book Exchange in Marietta, Georgia to find some 20th Century titles to add to my collection that I have not read yet or wanted to revisit. As I said in a previous post about The Book Exchange, that store is a treasure trove! I could spend hours in there! What 20th Century books would you like to read or revisit? -Stephanie M. Hopkins
Author Mike Torreano is to have a book signing for his new western mystery, The Renewal, on April 8, from 2:30-5 in Colorado Springs at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, 13990 Gleneage Dr. 80921.
Same spot as the book signing for The Reckoning, so come on out and enjoy some time with friends and neighbors. You can either order a book from Amazon and bring it or he will have plenty. Come and say hi!
Here’s an excerpt-
Ike found Lorraine at the other end of the food tables, hemmed in by several women, all chattering about what a beautiful day it was to have a spring festival. He’d certainly gotten lucky when he married her. Ike stopped short for a moment, admiring how she brought life to everything and everyone she met. That wasn’t his way, although she’d tried to encourage him to be more social. He just wasn’t a good learner, he guessed. It made him appreciate her even more. He was about to go back for more food when one of the women standing nearby noticed him.
“Mr. Ike, how nice you could join us. Ladies, let’s make a place for one of the handsomest men in town.”
The compliment came from Eleanor Whitaker, the mayor’s wife. Ike had never thought himself handsome, so he stammered a short reply. “Thank you. I was just thinking how you all added to the beauty of the day.” Where that came from he didn’t know, but it prompted giggles and broad smiles from the women.
Lorraine hurried over to him. “Now, you all just give my man a wide berth. He’s so darned good looking that if you got any closer, I’m sure you’d keel over.”
A flush spread up Ike’s neck.
One of the women asked, “Well, seeing as Ike’s not available, how about his good-looking brother? Is Rob in the men’s raffle today?” She caught Lorraine’s eye. “He can put his shoes under my table any time.”
My interview with Mike Torreano HERE
About the Author:
Mike Torreano has a military background and is a student of history and the American West.
His western mystery, The Reckoning, was released September 2016 by The Wild Rose Press and the sequel, The Renewal, is due to be released soon. He’s working on the next western now and he also has a coming-of-age Civil War novel looking for a publisher.
Mike’s written for magazines and newspapers. An experienced editor, he’s taught University English and Journalism. He’s a member of the Historical Novel Society, Pikes Peak Writers, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Western Writers of America and several other western writing groups. He brings his readers back in time with him as he recreates life in 19th century America.
Author Website
The Renewal is available on Amazon for Pre-Order.
Grief Cottage by Gail Godwin
Bloomsbury USA
General Fiction (Adult)
Pub Date 06 Jun 2017
After his mother’s death, eleven-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Aunt Charlotte, otherwise a woman of few words, points out a ruined cottage, telling Marcus she had visited it regularly after she’d moved there thirty years ago because it matched the ruin of her own life. Eventually she was inspired to take up painting so she could capture its utter desolation.
The islanders call it “Grief Cottage,” because a boy and his parents disappeared from it during a hurricane fifty-years before. Their bodies were never found and the cottage has stood empty ever since. During his lonely hours while Aunt Charlotte is in her studio painting and keeping her demons at bay, Marcus visits the cottage daily, building up his courage by coming ever closer, even after the ghost of the boy who died seems to reveal himself. Full of curiosity and open to the unfamiliar and uncanny given the recent upending of his life, he courts the ghost boy, never certain whether the ghost is friendly or follows some sinister agenda.
Grief Cottage is the best sort of ghost story, but it is far more than that–an investigation of grief, remorse, and the memories that haunt us. The power and beauty of this artful novel wash over the reader like the waves on a South Carolina beach.
My thoughts:
The story has strong characters and the protagonist, Marcus, is an old soul or how old was he really telling this story? I was never quite sure and at times I felt like there was too much telling rather than showing. He doesn’t have childhood friends really and he relates to adults more than children his own age. His Aunt Charlotte-who takes him in after his mother dies- is quite an odd bird and values her privacy in extreme ways.
While the premise is an interesting one, I found it hard to get into and it took me sometime to finish the book. When I finally got to the ending it just seemed to end abruptly and I was dissatisfied, as I was hoping there would be a strong climax to the story. How is this a thriller ghost story? I didn’t come away with that feeling at all. The conflicts seemed muted to me.
On a positive note, much of the story is atmospheric and the setting is quite good.
I am sad to report I gave this book two stars.
I obtained a review copy from the publishers through NetGalley for my honest opinion.
Stephanie M. Hopkins
I’m wanting to compile a list of titles from the 20th Century and in the next few month’s I will be posting what I selected to eventually read. Check out these titles and let me know if you have read any of them and your thoughts! -Stephanie M. Hopkins
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and when Spade’s partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby’s trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted bird, a treasure worth killing for, before the Fat Man finds him?
The Eight by Katherine Neville
Computer expert Cat Velis is heading for a job to Algeria. Before she goes, a mysterious fortune teller warns her of danger, and an antique dealer asks her to search for pieces to a valuable chess set that has been missing for years…In the South of France in 1790 two convent girls hide valuable pieces of a chess set all over the world, because the game that can be played with them is too powerful…
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid…He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man.
This is the Code of the Private Eye as defined by Raymond Chandler in his 1944 essay ‘The Simple Act of Murder.’ Such a man was Philip Marlowe, private eye, an educated, heroic, streetwise, rugged individualist and the hero of Chandler’s first novel, The Big Sleep. This work established Chandler as the master of the ‘hard-boiled’ detective novel, and his articulate and literary style of writing won him a large audience, which ranged from the man in the street to the most sophisticated intellectual.
Marlowe subsequently appeared in a series of extremely popular novels, among them The Lady in the Lake, The Long Goodbye, and Farewell, My Lovely.” ~ Elizabeth Diefendorf, editor, The New York Public Library’s Books of the Century, p. 112.
Selected as one of Time Magazine’s All-Time 100 Novels, with the following review: “‘I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be.’ This sentence, from the first paragraph of The Big Sleep, marks the last time you can be fully confident that you know what’s going on.
The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin
The classic thriller of Dr. Josef Mengele’s nightmarish plot to restore the Third Reich.
Alive and hiding in South America, the fiendish Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a horrifying project—the creation of the Fourth Reich. Barry Kohler, a young investigative journalist, gets wind of the project and informs famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, but before he can relay the evidence, Kohler is killed.
Thus Ira Levin opens one of the strangest and most masterful novels of his career. Why has Mengele marked a number of harmless aging men for murder? What is the hidden link that binds them? What interest can they possibly hold for their killers: six former SS men dispatched from South America by the most wanted Nazi still alive, the notorious “Angel of Death“? One man alone must answer these questions and stop the killings—Lieberman, himself aging and thought by some to be losing his grip on reality.
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
Cain’s first novel – the subject of an obscenity trial in Boston and the inspiration for Camus’s The Stranger – is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into an erotic obsession, and into a murder.
My Wish-List posted in February
Check out these other wish-list by my amazing fellow book bloggers!
Holly at 2 Kids and Tired
Heather at The Maiden’s Court
Erin at Flashlight Commentary
Magdalena at A Bookish Swede
I had a wonderful time at an author’s event hosted by The Book Exchange in Marietta Georgia on March 15th. I love meeting southern writers and learning about how they became writers and how the stories they tell are important to our American culture.
The Book Exchange is a treasure trove and I could spend hours in there! The booksellers that work there are kind and helpful. I had discussed on my Facebook wall about reading stories where there were male protagonist a couple of months ago and Jennifer-the store owner of The Book Exchange told me she carried the Hornblower Saga-which I am highly interested in reading. When I went to the store for the author event-I mentioned above-and asked her about it, she remembered the titles of the books! I was thrilled!
The Vain Conversation: A Novel by Anthony Grooms
Inspired by true events, The Vain Conversation reflects on the 1946 lynching of two black couples in Georgia from the perspectives of three characters—Bertrand Johnson, one of the victims; Noland Jacks, a presumed perpetrator; and Lonnie Henson, a witness to the murders as a ten-year-old boy. Lonnie’s inexplicable feelings of culpability drive him in a search for meaning that takes him around the world, and ultimately back to Georgia, where he must confront Jacks and his own demons, with the hopes that doing so will free him from the grip of the past.
In “The Vain Conversation”, Anthony Grooms seeks to advance the national dialogue on race relations. With complexity, satire, and sometimes levity, he explores what it means to redeem, as well as to be redeemed, on the issues of America’s race violence and speaks to the broader issues of oppression and violence everywhere.
Out of the Blues (Detective Sarah Alt #1) by Trudy Nan Boyce
“A fresh, gritty debut. Boyce unveils one of the best new series characters in ages. . . A book that combines fast-paced suspense with moving insights.”—#1 New York Times-bestselling author Lisa Gardner
From an author with more than thirty years’ experience in the Atlanta Police Department comes a riveting procedural debut introducing an unforgettable heroine.
On her first day as a newly minted homicide detective, Sarah “Salt” Alt is given the cold-case murder of a blues musician whose death was originally ruled an accidental drug overdose. Now new evidence has come to light that he may have been given a hot dose intentionally. And this evidence comes from a convicted felon hoping to trade his knowledge for shortened prison time . . . a man who Salt herself put behind bars.
In a search that will take her into the depths of Atlanta’s buried wounds—among the city’s homeless, its politically powerful churches, commerce and industry, and the police department itself—Salt probes her way toward the truth in a case that has more at stake than she ever could have imagined. At once a vivid procedural and a penetrating examination of what it means to be cop, Out of the Blues is a remarkable crime debut.
The Policeman’s Daughter (Detective Sarah Alt #3)
From author Trudy Nan Boyce, whose police procedural debut was hailed as “authentic” (New York Times Book Review) and “exceptional” (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), returns with a stunning prequel to the Detective Salt series, the story behind the case that earned Salt her promotion to homicide.
At the beginning of her career, Sarah “Salt” Alt was a beat cop in Atlanta’s poorest, most violent housing project, The Homes. It is here that she meets the cast of misfits and criminals that will have a profound impact on her later cases: Man Man, the leader of the local gang on his way to better places; street dealer Lil D and his family; and Sister Connelly, old and observant, the matriarch of the neighborhood. A lone patrolwoman, Salt’s closest lifeline is her friend and colleague Pepper, on his own beat nearby. And when a murder in The Homes brings detectives to the scene, Salt draws closer to Detective Wills, initiating a romance complicated by their positions on the force.
When Salt is shot and sustains a head injury during a routine traffic stop, the resulting visions begin leading her toward answers in the case that makes her career. This is the tale of a woman who solves crimes through a combination of keen observation, grunt work, and pure gut instinct; this is the making of Detective Salt.
Book Exchange Facebook Page
Book Exchange Website
Photo by Maxine Stewart
I’ve challenged Author Stuart S. Laing to write a story inspired by this photo shared on Facebook a few weeks ago and he accepted my challenge and wrote a short story called The Day of Storms that takes place in The Kingdom of Fife, Scotland, February 5th 1794. Today is Part III and in this story, you will meet Sarah, Rebecca Hopkins and a band of ruthless smugglers.
There followed a tense ten minutes. The sisters sat, hands clutching each other, horrified as they realised their very lives were in deadly peril through stumbling unwittingly into this viper’s nest of smugglers. The smugglers themselves were equally silent as they drank their ale and brandy. Only the baleful looks they cast towards the young women spoke of their cruel intentions. When Bobbie finally returned, stamping snow off his boots, with a cold smile on his face what little hope still lingering in the women’s hearts withered and died. He sneered in their direction as he said, “George has seen no’one else enter the village but for the coach. There’s no tracks in the snow either. They’re on their own.”
The doorkeeper, now clearly revealed to be the leader of this band of smugglers, gave the sisters a pitying look. “So you truly chanced upon us by no more than a cruel twist of fate?” He shook his grey head with amusement momentarily twinkling in his dark eyes. “Jings, of all of the doors you could have thought to knock on you had to come knocking on mine! Well then, young Misses Hopkins, what are we to do with you?”
“You can do as you promised,” Rebecca said with a defiant tilt of her chin. “Have your man deliver the note to our coach. We intend to be on our way home as soon as possible. Believe me, sir, we have no more desire to spend a moment longer here than is absolutely necessary. This has been a day of storms, let there be no further trouble between us. Thus far you have said nothing we could use to show you, and your friends, are involved in anything illegal, have you? We have simply taken shelter in your tavern. There is nothing else we could possibly tell father other than that simple fact.”
“That simple fact, eh?” he replied, one hand cupping his bearded chin as though considering her words carefully. “And Sir Hector, the king’s own man in Fife, a man with a burning desire to put an end to smuggling on the Fife coast once and for all, will take you at your word, will he? No, unfortunately I think I know the man well enough after all these years of making sure I always stay one step ahead of him and the Excise to say that he would not be long in coming to pay me a visit. I’m sorry, girls, I truly am, but I can’t go letting you put any naughty ideas in his head.”
“Father knows where we are,” Rebecca said urgently while Sarah seemed to shrink beside her. “And you know that this tavern is the very first place he will come looking.”
“That is probably very true,” he conceded with a lazy smile. “Do you know that I have lost count of the number of times he and his men have torn this place apart looking for contraband. Can you guess how many times he has found anything? Not once. Do you want to know why?”
“Because you aren’t smugglers?” Sarah gasped out through a terrified sob as she clutched at her sister’s hands. “You are just honest, decent men who have done nothing wrong. Father has found no contraband for there is none to be found, sir. Father will know you are a good man who did no more than offer shelter to his daughters when ill fortune left us stranded here.”
“Well said, Miss Hopkins. But in all truth this tavern is built on contraband. Your father just doesn’t know where to look.” He pointed a thick finger towards the blazing fire while gazing at the beautiful but terrified faces before him. “When I said this place was built on contraband, I meant it. Bobbie, Alfie, would you be kind enough to show our guests where their room for the night is?”
With dark laughter the two men brushed past the girls to kneel before the fire. A heavy flagstone on either side of the hearth was, with little difficulty, raised and slid a few inches to the side to reveal narrow recesses carved into the stone of the hearth. A metal rod was inserted into this recess on either side and was used to swing the heavy stone upwards to mask the fire but for a few inches at the top. Now revealed were a set of steep steps leading down into darkness.
“Well, girls, down you go then,” Bobbie sneered. “Best take a candle. It’s dark down there.”
“And don’t bother shouting. Once that hearth is back in place you could fire a cannon down there and no’one would be any the wiser,” the doorkeeper added with a shrug as unwillingly the sisters fearfully, and carefully, descended the firm wooden steps. As soon as Sarah’s head was low enough the hearth was lowered back into place and the only sound was their own breathing.
* * *
The steps delivered the Hopkins into a long, narrow, arched cellar of well-dressed stone. On every side lay all that had illegally been brought ashore. Dozens of barrels of brandy, gin, rum and wine lay stacked neatly by racks of muskets, powder and shot. Three small barrels of gun powder sat alone on a wooden rack with a dark lantern sitting by them. Rebecca, using the candle she had brought, quickly lit this before passing the candle on to her shaking sister. “Look,” she hissed as she examined a crest on one of the barrels of black powder. “It says Republique Francois, They’re not just smugglers. They are damned Jacobins! That is why they have all these muskets. They intend to bring the Revolution here. We risk suffering the Reign of Terror right here in Fife!”
Sarah, her heart thudding painfully in her chest, clutched her cloak about her shivering body as she edged forward a few inches to look at the gunpowder before shaking her head. “I think it is more likely it signifies no more than something else those rogues can sell for easy profit.”
Rebecca dismissed her words with a wave of one hand as she stalked the length of the cellar pointing the lantern light into every corner. Finally, she stopped and turned to face Sarah. “They mean to kill us!”
“I know,” came the frightened reply.
“Well then, we just have to make sure that doesn’t happen, won’t we?”
About the Author:
Born and raised on the east coast of Scotland in the ancient Pictish Kingdom of Fife Stuart grew up looking across the Firth of Forth towards the spires and turrets of the city of Edinburgh and its castle atop its volcanic eyrie.
He has always been fascinated by the history of Auld Reekie and has spent most of his life studying Scottish history in all its aspects whenever he finds the time between family, work and the thousand and one other things that seek to distract him.
Despite the vast panorama of Scotland’s history, he always finds himself being drawn back to the cobbled streets of the Old Town. Those streets have provided the inspiration for his stories and characters.
He would urge all visitors to Scotland’s ancient capital to (briefly) venture into one of the narrow closes running down from the Royal Mile to get a flavour of how alive with mischief, mayhem, love and laughter these streets once were.
Author Website
Stuart’s books on Amazon
Part IV will be posted next Friday.
Currently I’m listening two audio books through Audible and I’m quite enjoying both of them. I’m also working on a draft for a review of “Grief Cottage by Gail Godwin.” While many have given the story a glowing review, I have mix feelings about the story-line and have to admit it took me a while to get through it. This reason is why I have delayed in writing my review but I have finally decided to get my thoughts down and put it out there. In the next few days you will see what I have to say about the story. As for the audio books, it’s interesting to be listening to a crime thriller (fiction) and a true crime story at the same time. I’ll be Gone in the Dark is powerful, chilling, and well told and one of the best true crime stories published I’ve come across.
I’m looking forward to this weekend so I am able to spend time drafting another review and hopefully I will be able to pick up a couple more stories to either listen too or read. If you have any recommendations for me, do share! I’m always on the lookout for new titles I have not heard of before. -Stephanie M. Hopkins
The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1)
by Karin Slaughter
Two girls are forced into the woods at gunpoint. One runs for her life. One is left behind.
Twenty-eight years ago, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn’s happy small-town family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family home. It left their mother dead. It left their father—Pikeville’s notorious defense attorney—devastated. And it left the family fractured beyond repair, consumed by secrets from that terrible night.
Twenty-eight years later, and Charlie has followed in her father’s footsteps to become a lawyer herself—the ideal good daughter. But when violence comes to Pikeville again—and a shocking tragedy leaves the whole town traumatized—Charlie is plunged into a nightmare. Not only is she the first witness on the scene, but it’s a case that unleashes the terrible memories she’s spent so long trying to suppress. Because the shocking truth about the crime that destroyed her family nearly thirty years ago won’t stay buried forever.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
by Michelle McNamara, Gillian Flynn (Goodreads Author) (Introduction), Patton Oswal
A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer–the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade–from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case. “You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark. “For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area. Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called “the Golden State Killer.” Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was. At the time of the crimes, the Golden State Killer was between the ages of eighteen and thirty, Caucasian, and athletic–capable of vaulting tall fences. He always wore a mask. After choosing a victim–he favored suburban couples–he often entered their home when no one was there, studying family pictures, mastering the layout. He attacked while they slept, using a flashlight to awaken and blind them. Though they could not recognize him, his victims recalled his voice: a guttural whisper through clenched teeth, abrupt and threatening. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark–the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death–offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Framed by an introduction by Gillian Flynn and an afterword by her husband, Patton Oswalt, the book was completed by Michelle’s lead researcher and a close colleague. Utterly original and compelling, it is destined to become a true crime classic–and may at last unmask the Golden State Killer.
I am not a cover designer but I can agree that cover layouts play an important role in the overall presentation of stories and I must admit, often times I first judge a book by its cover.
Burning Fields by Alli Sinclair
Harlequin (Australia), TEEN / MIRA
MIRA
Historical Fiction, Romance
Pub Date 21 May 2018
Description
As returned servicemen endeavour to adjust to their pre-war lives, women who had worked for the war effort are expected to embrace traditional roles once more.
Rosie Stanton finds it difficult to return to the family farm after years working for the Australian Women’s Army Service. Reminders are everywhere of the brothers she lost in the war and she is unable to understand her father’s contempt for Italians, especially the Conti family next door. When her father takes ill, Rosie challenges tradition by managing the farm, but outside influences are determined to see her fail.
Desperate to leave his turbulent history behind, Tomas Conti has left Italy to join his family in Piri River. Tomas struggles to adapt in Australia—until he meets Rosie. Her easy-going nature and positive outlook help him forget the life he’s escaped. But as their relationship grows, so do tensions between the two families until the situation becomes explosive.
When a long-hidden family secret is discovered and Tomas’s mysterious past is revealed, everything Rosie believes is shattered. Will she risk all to rebuild her family or will she lose the only man she’s ever loved?
Cover Crush is a weekly series that originated with Erin at Flashlight Commentary.
My thoughts:
This is a beautiful cover and I like that fact that you can see all of the young girl in this cover. I feel like there are way too many images of people with their head missing on book covers. I like the soft tones in the background and the cover as a whole really says a lot about the story I’m guessing. It certainly resonates with the title…
Stephanie M. Hopkins
Other great cover crushes from my fellow book bloggers:
Magdalena at A Bookaholic Swede
Colleen at A Literary Vacation
Heather at The Maiden’s Court
Holly at 2 Kids and Tired
Meghan at Of Quills & Vellum
I’m looking for non-fiction and historical fiction titles of the following:
(Note: I’d like the Historical Fiction titles to be as accurate as possible of historic events. This list reads like a history book glossary, I know.)
My Thanks! I appreciate the help.
Stephanie M. Hopkins
Image (Public Domain): Peasant Dance, c. 1568, oil on wood, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder
About the book:
Ike McAlister has finally put the ghosts of his past to rest. He’s found new joy with a spirited wife, a young daughter, and a mountain valley ranch where a man can make something of himself. But a coming railroad through the South Park valley threatens to take his land and tear his hard-won peace apart. Discovering that the railroad could easily bypass his ranch, he organizes opposition and earns the animus of the formidable foreman. When Ike’s brother Rob, the sheriff, is bushwhacked, Ike sets out on a high stakes quest to get the killer before the killer gets him.
To learn more about Mike’s story check out my Layered Pages interview with Mike Torreano HERE
About the Author:
Mike Torreano has a military background and is a student of history and the American West.
His western mystery, The Reckoning, was released September 2016 by The Wild Rose Press and the sequel, The Renewal, is due to be released soon. He’s working on the next western now and he also has a coming-of-age Civil War novel looking for a publisher.
Mike’s written for magazines and newspapers. An experienced editor, he’s taught University English and Journalism. He’s a member of the Historical Novel Society, Pikes Peak Writers, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Western Writers of America and several other western writing groups. He brings his readers back in time with him as he recreates life in 19th century America.
Author Website
The Renewal is available on Amazon
Layered Pages 