Blog Tour & Review: Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner (audio)

  Today, I’m so happy to be a tour stop on the blog tour for Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner. Thank you Austen Prose PR for inviting me to participate.     Publisher: Macmillan Audio Published: May 17, 2022 Source: ALC via Macmillan Audio   SUMMARY: Natalie Jenner, the internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society, returns with a compelling and heartwarming story of post-war London, a century-old bookstore, and…

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Blog Tour & Review: The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray

  Today, I’m so happy to be a tour stop on the blog tour for The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray. Thank you Austen Prose PR for inviting me to participate.   Publisher: Vintage Anchor Books Published: May 3, 2022 Source: ARC Paperback via AustenProse PR   Summary: A summer house party turns into a whodunit when Mr. Wickham, one of literature’s most notorious villains, meets a sudden and suspicious…

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Book Event: Long Island Reads & Book Review: The Living and the Lost by Ellen Feldman

Yesterday, I attended my first of what I hope will be many Long Island Reads events. Long Island Reads is an island-wide initiative that began in 2002 to bring readers together from both Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Each spring readers across both counties read the same book, participate in book discussions and enjoy events related to the book in the libraries. Now that in-person events are happening again, this year…

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Review: Woman on Fire by Lisa Barr (audio)

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks / Harper Audio Published: March 1, 2022 Source: Print – ARC Paperback via Publisher / Audio – ALC via Publisher   Summary: From the author of the award-winning Fugitive Colors and The Unbreakables, a gripping tale of a young, ambitious journalist embroiled in an international art scandal centered around a Nazi-looted masterpiece – forcing the ultimate showdown between passion and possession, lovers and liars, history and truth. After talking her way into a job with…

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Review: The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn (print/audio)

Publisher: William Morrow / Harper Audio Published: March 29, 2022 Source: Print – Hardcover via William Morrow / Audio – ALC via Harper Audio   Summary: The New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code returns with an unforgettable World War II tale of a quiet bookworm who becomes history’s deadliest female sniper. Based on a true story. In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kiev (now known as Kyiv), wry and bookish…

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Blog Tour & Review: Mrs. England by Stacey Halls (audio)

  Today, I’m so happy to be a tour stop on the blog tour for Mrs. England by Stacey Hall. Thank you MIRA for inviting me to participate.   Publisher: MIRA / Harper Audio Published: April 12, 2022 Source: Print – Paperback via HTP Books / Audio – ALC via Harper Audio   SUMMARY: Simmering with slow-burning menace,  Mrs. England  is a portrait of an Edwardian marriage, an enthralling tale of men and…

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Review: Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company Published: March 15, 2022 Source: Personal copy   Summary: A “beautifully rendered” novel about war, migration, and the power of telling our stories, Peach Blossom Spring follows three generations of a Chinese family on their search for a place to call home (Georgia Hunter, New York Times bestselling author). “Within every misfortune there is a blessing and within every blessing, the seeds of misfortune, and so it goes, until the end…

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Review: Three Sisters by Heather Morris (audio)

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press / Macmillan Audio Published: October 5, 2021 Source: Print – ARC Paperback via Publisher / Audio via library   Summary: From Heather Morris, the New York Times best-selling author of the multimillion-copy best seller The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka’s Journey: a story of family, courage, and resilience, inspired by a true story. Against all odds, three Slovakian sisters have survived years of imprisonment in the most notorious death camp in…

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Review: Circus of Wonders by Elizabeth Macneal (audio)

Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books / Simon and Schuster Audio Published: February 1, 2022 Source: Print – ARC Paperback via Atria / ALC via Simon and Schuster Audio   Summary: From the #1 internationally bestselling author of the “lush, evocative Gothic” (The New York Times Book Review) The Doll Factory comes an atmospheric and spectacular novel where one woman’s life is transformed by the arrival of a Victorian circus of wonders… Step up, step…

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Review: Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia (audio)

Publisher: Flatiron Books / Macmillan Audio Published: March 30, 2021 Source: Print – ARC Paperback via Publisher / Audio via library   Summary: A sweeping, masterful debut about a daughter’s fateful choice, a mother motivated by her own past, and a family legacy that begins in Cuba before either of them were born In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to…

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Review: The Tobacco Wives by Adele Myers (audio)

Publisher: William Morrow / Harper Audio Published: March 1, 2022 Source: Print – Hardcover via Kathleen Carter Communications / Audio: ALC via Netgalley   Summary: North Carolina, 1946. One woman. A discovery that could rewrite history. “A beautifully rendered portrait of a young woman finding her courage and her voice.”—Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who’s just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina—the tobacco capital…

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Review: I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys (print/audio)

Publisher: Philomel Books / Penguin Random House Audio Published: February 1, 2022 Source: Print – Hardcopy via Publisher / Audio via library   Summary: A gut-wrenching, startling window into communist Romania and the citizen spy network that devastated a nation, from the number one New York Times best-selling, award-winning author of Salt to the Sea and Between Shades of Gray. Romania, 1989. Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer,…

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Review: Hotel Portofino by J.P. O’Connell (audio)

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing Published: January 18, 2022 Source: Netgalley   Summary: For fans of Downton Abbey and The Crown…welcome to Hotel Portofino, where romance, revelry, and intrigue await. A heady historical drama about a British family who opens an upper-class hotel on the magical Italian Riviera during the Roaring Twenties. Hotel Portofino has been open for only a few weeks, but already the problems are mounting for its owner Bella Ainsworth. Her high-class guests…

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Review: Beautiful Little Fools by Jillian Cantor (audio)

Publisher: Harper Perennial / Harper Audio Published: February 1, 2022 Source: Print – ARC Paperback via Harper Perennial / Audio – ALC via Harper Audio   Summary: USA Today best-selling author Jillian Cantor reimagines and expands on the literary classic The Great Gatsby in this atmospheric historical novel with echoes of Big Little Lies, told in three women’s alternating voices. On a sultry August day in 1922, Jay Gatsby is shot dead in his…

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Book Spotlight & Author Q&A: The Road We Took by Cathy A. Lewis

Publisher: Cathy Lewis Published: February 15, 2022 Source: BooksFowardPR   Summary: In 1933, before World War II, and the Holocaust, the world was unaware of Hitler’s plans to exterminate millions. Author Cathy A. Lewis discovered a tattered leather suitcase containing her deceased father’s journal documenting his six-week trek through Europe in 1933 while on his way to the 4th Boy Scout World Jamboree. Inspired by her father’s historical recount, The…

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Review: Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner (audio)

Publisher: ChristianAudio.com Published: April 16, 2015 Source: Library   Summary: The author of A Fall of Marigolds journeys from the present day to World War II England, as two sisters are separated by the chaos of wartime. She stood at a crossroads, half-aware that her choice would send her down a path from which there could be no turning back. But instead of two choices, she saw only one—because it…

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Review: A Train to Moscow by Elena Gorokhova

  Publisher: Lake Union Publishing Published: March 1, 2022 Source: ARC E-copy via Netgalley   Summary: In post–World War II Russia, a girl must reconcile a tragic past with her hope for the future in this powerful and poignant novel about family secrets, passion and loss, perseverance and ambition. In a small, provincial town behind the Iron Curtain, Sasha lives in a house full of secrets, one of which is…

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Blog Tour & Review: The Last Grand Duchess by Bryn Turnbull

  Today, I’m so happy to be a tour stop on the blog tour for The Last Grand Duchess by Bryn Turnbull. Thank you MIRA for inviting me to participate.   Publisher: MIRA Published: February 8, 2022 Source: ARC Paperback via Publisher   Summary: This sweeping new novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Woman Before Wallis takes readers behind palace walls to see the end of Imperial Russia through the eyes of…

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Blog Tour & Review: Jane and the Year Without a Summer by Stephanie Barron

Publisher: Soho Crime Published: February 8, 2022 Source: ARC Paperback via AustenProse PR   Summary: May 1816: Jane Austen is feeling unwell, with an uneasy stomach, constant fatigue, rashes, fevers and aches. She attributes her poor condition to the stress of family burdens, which even the drafting of her latest manuscript–about a baronet’s daughter nursing a broken heart for a daring naval captain–cannot alleviate. Her apothecary recommends a trial of…

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Review: Her Hidden Genius by Marie Benedict

Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark Published: January 25, 2022 Source: Hardcover via Publisher   Summary: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Mystery of Mrs. Christie and The Only Woman in the Room. Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider―brilliant, but different. Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, she feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide…

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Review: The Bait by C.W. Gortner & M.J. Rose

Publisher: Blue Box Press Published: August 10, 2021 Source: GetRedPR   Summary: Revenge is a diamond best served cold. A year after THE STEAL, Ania Throne is determined to take back what the Leopard stole from her. Together with her lover and partner, Jerome, she stages a spectacular heist during the Venetian Carnival, to lure out the treacherous mastermind they unmasked. She’s willing to risk it all—until her revenge takes a…

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Blog Tour & Review: A Lullaby for Witches by Hester Fox

  Today, I’m so happy to be a tour stop on the blog tour for A Lullaby for Witches by Hester Fox. Thank you Graydon House for inviting me to participate.   Publisher: Graydon House Published: February 1, 2022 Source: ARC Paperback via Publisher   Summary: Two women. A history of witchcraft. And a deep-rooted female power that sings across the centuries. Once there was a young woman from a well-to-do…

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Review: The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont (audio)

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press / Macmillan Audio Published: February 1, 2022 Source: Print – Netgalley via Publisher / Audio – ALC via Publisher   Summary: Nina de Gramont’s The Christie Affair is a beguiling novel of star-crossed lovers, heartbreak, revenge, and murder—and a brilliant re-imagination of one of the most talked-about unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century. Every story has its secrets. Every mystery has its motives. “A long time ago, in…

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Review: The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain (audio)

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press / Macmillan Audio Published: January 11, 2022 Source: Print – ARC Paperback via St. Martin’s Press / Audio via library   Summary: A community’s past sins rise to the surface in New York Times bestselling author Diane Chamberlain’s The Last House on the Street when two women, a generation apart, find themselves bound by tragedy and an unsolved, decades-old mystery. 1965 Growing up in the well-to-do town of Round Hill,…

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Review: A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner (audio)

Publisher: NAL / ChristianAudio.com Published: Print – February 4, 2014 / Audio – March 11, 2015 Source: Print – Personal copy / Audio via Library   Summary: A beautiful scarf, passed down through the generations, connects two women who learn that the weight of the world is made bearable by the love we give away…. September 1911. On Ellis Island in New York Harbor, nurse Clara Wood cannot face returning…

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Blog Tour & Book Spotlight: Honor by Thrity Umrigar

Today, I’m so happy to be a tour stop on the blog tour for Honor by Thrity Umrigar. Thank you Algonquin Books for inviting me to participate. ***  Reese Witherspoon has selected Thrity Umrigar’s HONOR as her January Book Club Pick! I’ve really come to enjoy Reese’s picks and will definitely be reading along this month!   Publisher: Algonquin Books Published: January 4, 2022   Summary: In this riveting and immersive novel, bestselling author Thrity…

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Review: The Last Debutantes by Georgie Blalock

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks Published: August 24, 2021 Source: Publisher   Summary: Fans of The Kennedy Debutante and Last Year in Havana will love Georgie Blalock’s new novel of a world on the cusp of change…set on the eve of World War II in the glittering world of English society and one of the last debutante seasons.  They danced the night away, knowing their world was about to change forever. They were the debutantes…

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Review: A Man of Honor by Barbara Taylor Bradford

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press Published: December 28, 2021 Source: ARC Paperback via Publisher   Summary: The prequel to Barbara Taylor Bradford’s New York Times bestselling and dazzling saga A Woman of Substance. Opening five years before the start of A Woman of Substance, A Man of Honor begins with 13-year-old Blackie O’Neill facing an uncertain future in rural County Kerry. Orphaned and alone, he has just buried his sister, Bronagh, and must leave his home to…

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Review: The Night Portrait by Laura Morelli (audio)

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks / Harper Audio Published: September 8, 2020 Source: ARC Paperback via William Morrow / Audio via library   Summary: An exciting, dual-timeline historical novel about the creation of one of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous paintings, Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine, and the woman who fought to save it from Nazi destruction during World War II. Milan, 1492: When a 16-year old beauty becomes the mistress…

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Review: Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid (audio)

Publisher: Random House Audio Published: June 1, 2021 Source: ALC via Libro.fm   Summary: Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of 24 hours, the family drama that ensues will change their lives will change forever. Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas:…

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Review: Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks Published: June 1, 2021 (First published July 2020) Source: Saichek Publicity   Summary: Over the course of one summer that begins with a shocking tragedy, three generations of the Adler family grapple with heartbreak, romance, and the weight of family secrets in this stunning debut novel that’s perfect for fans of Manhattan Beach and The Dollhouse. Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house…

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Blog Tour & Review: The Women of Pearl Island by Polly Crosby

Today, I’m so happy to be a tour stop on the blog tour for The Women of Pearl Island by Polly Crosby.  Thank you Park Row Books for inviting me to participate.   Publisher: Park Row Books Published: December 7, 2021 Source: Netgalley via Publisher   Summary: “A luminous and beautiful novel that gently lures the reader into a captivating story with a mystery at its heart.” – Jennifer Saint, bestselling…

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Review: The Women of Chateau Lafayette by Stephanie Dray (audio)

Publisher: Berkley Books / Penguin Audio Published: March 30, 2021 Source: Print – Personal copy / Audio – via library   Summary: An epic saga from New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray based on the true story of an extraordinary castle in the heart of France and the remarkable women bound by its legacy in three of humanity’s darkest hours Most castles are protected by powerful men. This one…

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Series Review: The Rainer Series by Jamie McGillen

  This month, the online bookclub I co-host, #mommaleighellenbookclub, selected In the Heart of Paradise as one of our selections. Because it is the third book in Jamie McGillen’s series and I had not read the previous two, and me being me, I knew I had to read them first and I’m so glad I did. That being said, I decided to do all three reviews in one post, rather…

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Review: The Cartographer’s Secret by Tea Cooper

Publisher: Harper Muse Published: November 16, 2021 Source: ARC Paperback via TLC Booktours   Summary: A map into the past. A long-lost young woman. And a thirty-year family mystery. The Hunter Valley, 1880. Evie Ludgrove loves to chart the landscape around her home—hardly surprising since she grew up in the shadow of her father’s obsession with the great Australian explorer Dr. Ludwig Leichhardt. So when an advertisement appears in The Bulletin magazine offering…

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Review: The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (audio)

Publisher: Viking Books / Penguin Audio Published: October 5, 2021 Source: Print – Personal copy via BOTM / Audio – Personal copy via Libro.fm   Summary: The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of…

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Review: The Wicked Widow by Beatriz Williams

Publisher: William Morrow Published: October 26, 2021 Source: Publisher   Summary: Gin Kelly, the wicked redhead, is back! Readers will delight in next installment of the Wicked City series by New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams.  June 1925. Audacious Appalachian flapper Geneva “Gin” Kelly prepares to trade her high-flying ways for respectable marriage to Oliver Anson Marshall, a steadfast Prohibition agent who happens to hail from one of New York’s most distinguished…

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Review: The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman (audio)

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio Published: October 12, 2021 Source: ALC via Publisher   Summary: Master storyteller Alice Hoffman brings us the conclusion of the Practical Magic series in a spellbinding and enchanting final Owens novel brimming with lyric beauty and vivid characters. The Owens family has been cursed in matters of love for over three-hundred years but all of that is about to change. The novel begins in a…

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Review: The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman (audio)

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio Published: October 10, 2017 Source: Library   Summary: Find your magic For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in 1620, when Maria Owens was charged with witchery for loving the wrong man. Hundreds of years later, in New York City at the cusp of the sixties, when the whole world is about to change, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are…

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Review: Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman (audio)

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio Published: October 6, 2020 Source: Library   Summary: In an unforgettable novel that traces a centuries-old curse to its source, beloved author Alice Hoffman unveils the story of Maria Owens, accused of witchcraft in Salem, and matriarch of a line of the amazing Owens women and men featured in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic. Where does the story of the Owens bloodline begin?…

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Review: The Vanished Days by Susanna Kearsley

Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark Published: October 5, 2021 Source: Paperback via Publisher   Summary: In the autumn of 1707, old enemies from the Highlands to the Borders are finding common ground as they join to protest the new Union with England. At the same time, the French are preparing to launch an invasion to bring the young exiled Jacobite king back to Scotland to reclaim his throne, and in Edinburgh the…

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Review: The Women’s March by Jennifer Chiaverini

Publisher: William Morrow Published: July 27, 2021 Source: ARC Paperback via Giveaway win   Summary: New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini returns with The Women’s March, an enthralling historical novel of the woman’s suffrage movement inspired by three courageous women who bravely risked their lives and liberty in the fight to win the vote. Twenty-five-year-old Alice Paul returns to her native New Jersey after several years on the front lines of the suffrage…

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Review: No One Goes Alone by Erik Larson (audio)

Publisher: Random House Audio Published: September 28, 2021 Source: ALC via Libro.fm   Summary: From New York Times best-selling author Erik Larson comes his first venture into fiction, an otherworldly tale of intrigue and the impossible that marshals his trademark approach to nonfiction to create something new: a ghost story thoroughly grounded in history. Pioneering psychologist William James leads an expedition to a remote isle in search of answers after…

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Review: The Rose Code by Kate Quinn (audio)

Publisher: William Morrow / Harper Audio Published: March 9, 2021 Source: Print – ARC Paperback via Publisher / Audio – via library   Summary: The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over. 1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very…

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Blog Tour & Excerpt: What Passes As Love by Trisha R. Thomas – with link to #BookGiveaway

Today, I’m so happy to be a tour stop on the blog tour for What Passes as Love by Trisha R. Thomas. Thank you @OTRPR for inviting me to participate. As part of the book tour, there is a giveaway…but the giveaway is happening on my Instagram page!!! Enjoy this spotlight and the excerpt and then you can find out where to enter the giveaway below!   Publisher: Lake Union Publishing…

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Review: The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia (audio book)

Publisher: Amazon Crossing/ Brilliance Audio Published: August 16, 2019 Source: Personal Copy (print & audio)   Summary: From a beguiling voice in Mexican fiction comes an astonishing novel—her first to be translated into English—about a mysterious child with the power to change a family’s history in a country on the verge of revolution. From the day that old Nana Reja found a baby abandoned under a bridge, the life of…

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Review: The Riviera House by Natasha Lester (audio)

Publisher: Forever / Hachette Audio Published: August 31, 2021 Source: Print: ARC Paperback via Forever / Audio: ALC via Libro.fm via Hachette Audio   Summary: The New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Secret weaves a lush and engrossing novel of World War II inspired by a true story and perfect for fans of Kate Quinn and Pam Jenoff. Paris, 1939: The Nazis think Éliane can’t understand German. They’re wrong. They think she’s merely…

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Review: The People We Keep by Allison Larkin (audio)

Publisher: Gallery Books / Simon & Schuster Audio Published: August 3, 2021 Source: Print: Personal copy via BOTM / Audio via Library   Summary: The People we Keep is about a young songwriter longing to find a home in the world. Little River, New York, 1994: April Sawicki is living in a run-down motorhome, flunking out of school, and picking up shifts at the local diner. But when April realizes…

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Review: My Mistress’ Eyes are Raven Black by Terry Roberts

  Publisher: Turner Publishing Company Published: July 27, 2021 Source: Publisher   Summary: Ellis Island, 1920. New York Harbor’s immigration and public health authorities are slowly recovering from the war years when a young, pregnant Irish woman disappears from the Isolation Hospital on Ellis Island. Stephen Robbins, a specialist in finding missing persons, is assigned the case. Yet when he arrives at the isolation hospital, he discovers an inexplicable string…

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Review: Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson (print/audio)

Publisher: Scribner / Simon & Schuster Audio Published: August 3, 2021 Source: Print – ARC Paperback via Publisher / Audio – ALC via Publisher   Summary: An epic, immersive debut, Damnation Spring is the deeply human story of a Pacific Northwest logging town wrenched in two by a mystery that threatens to derail its way of life. For generations, Rich Gundersen’s family has chopped a livelihood out of the redwood forest along…

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