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Reviews

Reviews

by Shobha Rao - Fiction

Poornima and Savitha have three strikes against them: they are poor, they are ambitious, and they are girls. After her mother’s death, Poornima has very little kindness in her life. She is left to care for her siblings until her father can find her a suitable match. So when Savitha enters their household, Poornima is intrigued by the joyful, independent-minded girl. Suddenly their Indian village doesn't feel quite so claustrophobic, and Poornima begins to imagine a life beyond arranged marriage. But when a devastating act of cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend.

by Vic James - Dystopian, Fantasy, Fiction

In a modern Britain where magic users control wealth, politics --- and you --- an uprising has been crushed. In its aftermath, two families will determine the country’s fate. The ruthless Jardines make a play for ultimate power. And the Hadleys, once an ordinary family, must find the extraordinary strength to fight back. Abi Hadley is a fugitive. Her brother, Luke, a prisoner. Both will discover that in the darkest places, the human spirit shines brightest. Meanwhile, amid his family’s intrigues, Silyen Jardine dreams of forgotten powers from an earlier age. As blood runs in the streets of London, all three will discover if love and courage can ever be stronger than tyranny.

by Billy Coffey - Fiction

Owen Cross’ father is a hard man, proud in his brokenness, who wants nothing more than for Owen to succeed where he failed. With his innate talents and his father’s firm hand guiding him, Owen goes to college with dreams of the major leagues --- and an emptiness full of a girl named Micky Dullahan. Owen loved Micky from the first time they met on the hill between their two worlds: his middle-class home and her troubled Shantytown. Years later he leaves her for the dugouts and the autographs, but their days together follow him. When he finally returns home, he discovers that even peace comes at a cost. And that the hardest things to say are to the ones we love the most.

by Janet Fitch - Fiction, Historical Fiction

St. Petersburg, New Year's Eve, 1916. Marina Makarova is a young woman of privilege who aches to break free of the constraints of her genteel life, a life about to be violently upended by the vast forces of history. Swept up on these tides, Marina will join the marches for workers' rights, fall in love with a radical young poet, and betray everything she holds dear, before being betrayed in turn. As her country goes through almost unimaginable upheaval, Marina's own coming-of-age unfolds, marked by deep passion and devastating loss, and the private heroism of an ordinary woman living through extraordinary times.

by Henry Marsh - Medicine, Memoir, Nonfiction

Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical frontline. There have been exhilarating highs and devastating lows, but his love for the practice of neurosurgery has never wavered. Following the publication of his celebrated New York Times bestseller DO NO HARM, Marsh retired from his full-time job in England to work pro bono in Ukraine and Nepal. In ADMISSIONS, he describes the difficulties of working in these troubled, impoverished countries and the further insights it has given him into the practice of medicine. Marsh also faces up to the burden of responsibility that can come with trying to reduce human suffering.

by Terrence McCauley - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

James Hicks has spent his entire life and career fighting on the front lines of terrorism for the clandestine intelligence organization known as The University. He has learned that enemies can appear and disappear in the blink of an eye, and allegiances shift like the wind. But now, Hicks has finally discovered his true enemy: the criminal organization known as The Vanguard. This shadowy group has operated as a deadly organization comprised of weapons dealers, drug runners and money launderers for decades, but has now decided to add regime change to their catastrophic agenda. But knowing the enemy is one thing; being able to defeat it is another matter entirely. When Hicks uncovers a solid lead on his new adversaries, his world explodes.

written by Tatiana de Rosnay, translated by Sam Taylor - Biography, Nonfiction

As a bilingual bestselling novelist with a mixed Franco-British bloodline and a host of eminent forebears, Tatiana de Rosnay is the perfect candidate to write a biography of Daphne du Maurier. As an 11-year-old de Rosnay read and reread REBECCA, becoming a lifelong devotee of du Maurier’s fiction. Now de Rosnay pays homage to the writer who influenced her so deeply, following du Maurier from a shy seven-year-old to a rebellious 16-year-old, a twenty-something newlywed, and finally a cantankerous old lady.

by Donia Bijan - Fiction

When we first meet Noor, she is living in San Francisco, missing her beloved father, Zod, in Iran. Now, dragging her stubborn teenage daughter, Lily, with her, she returns to Tehran and to Café Leila, the restaurant her family has been running for three generations. Iran may have changed, but Café Leila, still run by Zod, has stayed blessedly the same; it is a refuge of laughter and solace for its makeshift family of staff and regulars. As Noor revisits her Persian childhood, she must rethink who she is --- a mother, a daughter, a woman estranged from her marriage and from her life in California. And together, she and Lily get swept up in the beauty and brutality of Tehran.

by Susan Meissner - Fiction

World War II is over, and Annaliese Lange, a German ballerina, and Simone Deveraux, the wronged daughter of a French Resistance spy, join hundreds of other European war brides aboard the renowned RMS Queen Mary to be reunited with their American husbands. But when the voyage ends at New York Harbor, only one of them will disembark. In the present day, and facing a crossroads in her own life, Brette Caslake visits the famously haunted Queen Mary. What she finds will set her on a course to solve a 70-year-old tragedy that will draw her into the heartaches and triumphs of the courageous war brides --- and ultimately will lead her to reconsider what she has to sacrifice to achieve her own deepest longings.

by Billy Coffey - Christian, Christian Fiction, Fiction

All Abel wants is a little bit of magic in his life. Enough money so his mom doesn’t cry at night. Healing for his broken body. And maybe a few answers about his past. When Abel discovers letters to him from the father he believed dead, he wonders if magic has come to the hills of Mattingly, Virginia, after all. But not everything is as it seems. With a lot of questions and a little bit of hope, Abel decides to run away to find the truth. But danger follows him from the moment he jumps his first boxcar, forcing him to rely on his simpleminded friend Willie --- a man wanted for murder who knows more about truth than most --- and a beautiful young woman they met on the train.