FAVORITE BOOK!

In 1951, a storyteller, the last of a centuries-old tradition, arrives Ronan O'Mara, 9, in the Irish countryside. The old gentleman enthralls his local audience with narratives of foolish kings, fabled saints, and Ireland's accomplishments before moving on. Then the boy sets off on a years-long pursuit of the itinerant storyteller.

GREAT READ. Blends historical fiction and paranormal dystopia in a Victorian world where sin is visible in the form of smoke that leaks from a person's body. Only the powerful or rich are clean. Or are they?  Great compelling story.

Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past—including the terrible truth even Helen does not know.

Memphis, 1939.  Rill Foss, 12, and her four younger siblings live aboard a Mississippi River shantyboat. Kidnapped and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children quickly realize the dark truth of their situation.

The compelling, hidden story of Cathy Williams, a former slave and the only woman to ever serve with the legendary Buffalo Soldiers.

“Here’s the first thing you need to know about Miss Cathy Williams: I am the daughter of a daughter of a queen and my mama never let me forget it.”

You will assume you see the tangled love triangle for what it is. You won't. Read between the lies. It's a very compelling story. 

Stephen King’s apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting—eerily plausible—as when it was first published. The New York Times called it "the book that has everything. Adventure. Romance. Prophecy. Allegory. Satire. Fantasy. Realism. Apocalypse. Great!"

In 1962, five-year-old Olivia meets the half-sister she never knew existed, eighteen-year-old Kwan from China, who sees ghosts with her "yin eyes." Decades later, Olivia describes her complicated relationship with her sister and her failing marriage, as Kwan reveals her story. Good read.

On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove―to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his pregnant wife―“that the hours of his life belong to himself alone.” In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Savior, unbidden, directs the way forward for his widow.

Grace Winter, 22, is both a newlywed and a widow. She is also on trial for her life. In 1914, the elegant ocean liner carrying her and husband Henry across the Atlantic suffers a mysterious explosion. Setting aside his own safety, Henry secures Grace a place in a lifeboat, which the survivors quickly realize is over capacity. For any to live, some must die.

Elliot Rosenzweig, a wealthy philanthropist, is attending a fundraiser when he is suddenly accosted and accused of being a former Nazi SS officer named Otto Piatek, the Butcher of Zamosc. His accuser was raised in the same house as Elliot. Is he correct? Very interesting book.

A young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove—to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his pregnant wife—“that the hours of his life belong to himself alone.” In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Savior, an aging nun, appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child.

 

Nine people gather at a remote health resort. Some are here to lose weight, some are here to get a reboot on life, some are here for reasons they can’t even admit to themselves. Amidst all of the luxury and pampering, the mindfulness and meditation, they know these ten days might involve some real work. But none of them could imagine just how challenging the next ten days are going to be.

 The story of Hen and her husband Lloyd as they meet their new neighbors, Matthew and his wife---with Hen quickly becoming convinced that Matthew had something to do with an unsolved murder of a young man after she notices his old sports trophy in Matthew's office. She soon becomes obsessed with proving it.

Futuristic: anyone who is intentionally killed comes back. Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher - a licensed, bonded professional who humanely dispatches those put in death's crosshairs, so they can have a second chance to avoid the reaper. But when a fellow Dispatcher and former friend is apparently kidnapped, it's a race against time  before not even a Dispatcher can save him.

Manhattan makeup artist Jessica Farris impulsively  chases some quick cash by lying her way into an NYU psychiatrist’s study of ethics and morality. This is a psychological thriller about mind manipulation as the therapist uses her for ends of her own.

In the near-future, a pandemic called Haden's Syndrome sweeps the world. Some of its victims suffer flu-like symptoms, some die, and some experience 'Lock In', and are trapped in their own bodies, unable to move. A fast-paced science fiction thriller.

Film scholar Felix, while setting up a film in the projectionist booth, is confronted by the ghost of Lois Weber, a silent film era director. Lois invites Felix to revisit—and in some cases relive—scenes from his 1950s childhood as they are projected onto the cinema’s big screen.

At the Center—a women’s reproductive health services clinic— a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage.

 Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator,  finds out that his fifteen-year-old daughter, Wren, is inside the clinic.

Henry Smart is a precocious youth born to a sad mother and a one-legged tough guy/bouncer/hitman, who characteristically beats his marks with his prosthetic limb. All his street smarts make Henry a great target for the IRA, welcomed by Michael Collins himself.

Fascinating book.

What makes a family? That's what twelve-year-old Nicky Dillon wonders after she and her widowed father discover a wailing abandoned baby in the snow-filled woods near their New Hampshire home. 

In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.

A shocking psychological thriller of a woman's act of violence against her husband - and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. I absolutely did not see the twist coming at the end. GREAT READ!

20 years after Frank thinks his girlfriend ran away, her suitcase is found in a Dublin flat. He's called in to investigate for the P.D. What happened? Great read.

 GREAT READ!
A man crashes his car, landing him in a hospital burn unit. There the mysterious sculptress Marianne Engel insists they were lovers in medieval Germany, when he was a mercenary and she was a monastery scribe. As she spins the story of their past lives, his disbelief falters; soon, even the impossible can no longer be dismissed.

By Robert Fulgrum. The third wish is the last one left when the first wish was foolish, and the second wish was used to undo the first wish. It must be used wisely with the help of co-conspirators. The story begins at a terrace table on the Greek Island of Crete, winds its way through Greece, Japan, France, England, and Seattle. Its main characters are Alice, Max-Pol, Aleko, Wonko, Zenkichi, Polydora, Alice-Alice, and Dog. Woven into the fabric of the novel are cultural history, art, philosophy, archeology, poetry, theater and music. These people love life and will go to great lengths to find a flourishing Way onward. I LOVED this two-book set.

A man is brought to an insane asylum in contemporary Spain, claiming to be the legendary navigator Christopher Columbus. Found in the treacherous Straight of Gibraltar, he is clearly delusional and has suffered a trauma so severe that he has turned away from reality. As he spins the tall tales of adventure and romance of someone who existed in the late fifteenth century, one nurse can’t help but be enchanted by his spirit. Who is Columbus? Where did he come from? This dazzling story about one man’s painstaking search for truth and loyalty is a very compelling and memorable read. LOVED it.