A Potpourri of Opinions

Big Red Jerome Charyn Publication date: August 23, 2022 by Liveright Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 3 📽📽📽 Summary:  Set amidst the noir glamour of Hollywood’s Golden Age,  Big Red  reenvisions the life of one of America’s most enduring icons: Gilda herself, Rita Hayworth, whose fiery red hair and hypnotic dancing helped make her the quintessential movie star of the 1940s. With narrator Rusty Redburn—a feisty second-string gossip columnist from Kalamazoo tasked with spying on Hayworth by Columbia movie mogul Harry “The Janitor” Cohn—as our guide, we follow the meteoric rise and heartrending demise of the actress, encountering her exploitative father, Eduardo; her controlling husband, “boy genius” Orson Welles; and notorious journalist Louella Parsons, among many others. Mixing his trademark screwball comedy and unerring tragedy, Jerome Charyn, with his “polymorphous imagination” (Jonathan Lethem) reanimates film classics such as Cover Girl, Gilda, and The Lady from S...

The Portraitist: A Novel of Adelaide Labille-Guiard Susanne Dunlap Publication Date: August 30, 2022 by She Writes Press Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 5 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷  Summary:  Based on a true story, this is the tale of Adélaïe Labille-Guiard's fight to take her rightful place in the competitive art world of eighteenth-century Paris. With a beautiful rival who's better connected and better trained than she is, Adélaïde faces an uphill battle. Her love affair with her young instructor in oil painting gives rise to suspicions that he touches up her work, and her decision to make much-needed money by executing erotic pastels threatens to create as many problems as it solves. Meanwhile, her rival goes from strength to strength, becoming Marie Antoinette's official portraitist and gaining entrance to the elite Académie Royale at the same time as Adélaïde. When at last Adélaïde earns her own royal appointment and receives a massive commission from a member of the royal family, ...

The Lost Girls of Willowbrook Ellen Marie Wiseman Publication date: August 30, 2022 by Kensington Publishing Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 5 👢👢👢👢👢 Summary:  Sage Winters always knew her sister was a little different even though they were identical twins. They loved the same things and shared a deep understanding, but Rosemary—awake to every emotion, easily moved to joy or tears—seemed to need more protection from the world. Six years after Rosemary’s death from pneumonia, Sage, now sixteen, still misses her deeply. Their mother perished in a car crash, and Sage’s stepfather, Alan, resents being burdened by a responsibility he never wanted. Yet despite living as near strangers in their Staten Island apartment, Sage is stunned to discover that Alan has kept a shocking secret: Rosemary didn’t die. She was committed to Willowbrook State School and has lingered there until just a few days ago, when she went missing. Sage knows little about Willowbrook. It’s always been a place ...

The Manhattan Girls Gill Paul Publication Date: August 16, 2022 by William Morrow Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 4 🍷🍷🍷🍷 Summary:  It’s a 1920s version of   Sex and the City , as Dorothy Parker—one of the wittiest women who ever wielded a pen—and her three friends navigate life, love, and careers in New York City. Perfect for fans of Fiona Davis, Beatriz Williams, and Renée Rosen. NEW YORK CITY 1921: The war is over, fashions are daring, and bootleg liquor is abundant. Here four extraordinary women form a bridge group that grows into a firm friendship. Dorothy Parker: renowned wit, member of the Algonquin Round Table, and more fragile than she seems. Jane Grant: first female reporter for the New York Times, and determined to launch a new magazine she calls  The New Yorker . Winifred Lenihan: beautiful and talented Broadway actress, a casting-couch target. And Peggy Leach: magazine assistant by day, brilliant novelist by night.  Their romances flourish...

The War Librarian Addison Armstrong Publication date: August 9, 2022 by G.P. Putnam's Sons Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 5 👢👢👢👢👢 Summary:  Two women. One secret. A truth worth fighting for. 1918. Timid and shy Emmaline Balakin lives more in books than her own life. That is, until an envelope crosses her desk at the Dead Letter Office bearing a name from her past, and Emmaline decides to finally embark on an adventure of her own--as a volunteer librarian on the frontlines in France. But when a romance blooms as she secretly participates in a book club for censored books, Emmaline will need to find more courage within herself than she ever thought possible in order to survive. 1976. Kathleen Carre is eager to prove to herself and to her nana that she deserves her acceptance into the first coed class at the United States Naval Academy. But not everyone wants female midshipmen at the Academy, and after tragedy strikes close to home, Kathleen becomes a target. To protect hersel...

Stay Awake Megan Goldin Publication date: August 9, 2022 by St. Martin's Press Genre: Thriller/Suspense Rating: 5 👢👢👢👢👢 Summary: A murder she doesn’t remember committing. A killer she doesn’t remember meeting.  Megan Goldin’s  Stay Awake  is an electrifying novel that proves memory can be deadly. Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there. When she’s dropped off at the door of her brownstone, a stranger answers—a stranger who claims to live in her apartment. She reaches for her phone to call for help, only to discover it’s missing. In its place is a bloodstained knife. Her hands are covered in scribbled messages, like graffiti on her skin: STAY AWAKE. Two years ago, Liv was thriving as a successful writer for a trendy magazine. Now, she’s lost and disoriented in a New York City that looks nothing like what she remembers. Catching a glimpse of the local news, she’s horrified to see reports of a crime scene where the victim’...

The Many Daughters of Afong Moy Jamie Ford  Publication date: August 2, 2022 by Atria Books Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 5 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷 Summary:  Dorothy Moy breaks her own heart for a living.  As Washington’s former poet laureate, that’s how she describes channeling her dissociative episodes and mental health struggles into her art. But when her five-year-old daughter exhibits similar behavior and begins remembering things from the lives of their ancestors, Dorothy believes the past has truly come to haunt her. Fearing that her child is predestined to endure the same debilitating depression that has marked her own life, Dorothy seeks radical help.  Through an experimental treatment designed to mitigate inherited trauma, Dorothy intimately connects with past generations of women in her family: Faye Moy, a nurse in China serving with the Flying Tigers; Zoe Moy, a student in England at a famous school with no rules; Lai King Moy, a girl quarantined in San Francisco ...