A Potpourri of Opinions

  The Courtesan's Daughter Susanne Dunlap Publication date: April 25, 2023 by Atmosphere Press Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 3 🍷🍷🍷 Summary: What happens when a daughter’s dream and a mother’s sordid past collide? 1910 New York. Seventeen-year-old Sylvie and her French-immigrant mother Justine eke out a living doing piecework in a tenement on the Lower East Side, while Sylvie attends school so that she can escape their life of poverty by becoming a teacher. At least, that’s what her mother believes should happen. Sylvie, though, has a different dream. She wants to be a star in the new moving pictures, just like the beautiful Vitagraph Girl. When she meets a dangerously handsome Italian boy at church one Sunday and he encourages her ambitions, she begins secretly taking steps toward the career she knows her mother won’t approve of. But Sylvie isn’t the only one with secrets. Justine has kept her sordid past from Sylvie ever since they came to New York fifteen years before, sti...

  The One Who Fell Whitecliff Bay Mystery #1 Kerry Wilkinson Pub date: April 17, 2023 by Bookouture Genre: Cozy Mystery Rating: 4 👢👢👢👢 Summary: In the seaside town of Whitecliff, everyone looks out for each other. Everyone knows your name. And everyone knows your secrets... Moonlight falls on the figure of the girl standing on the red-tiled roof. Her white dress and blonde hair flutter in the freezing night wind. And suddenly - she is gone.  Volunteering at the local nursing home is Millie Westlake 's one escape from the rumours that swirl around Whitecliff about her past. But speaking with elderly resident, Ingrid, as they play board games, Millie gets chills at her strange story about a young girl being pushed from a roof, somewhere across the valley... Everybody thinks Ingrid is confused but Millie knows how it feels to not be believed. Her parents died a year ago, and the residents of Whitecliff - such a quiet place, other than crashing waves and cawing seagulls -...

  The American Wife The Diplomat's Wife #1 Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger Publication date: April 14, 2023 by Bookouture Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 4 👢👢👢👢 Summary: With her heart in her mouth, Kitty snuck into her husband’s study. She knew what she had to do to save her dearest friend from the Nazis. She just had to make sure she did not get caught… Vienna, 1937. When the charismatic and adventurous American Kitty becomes engaged to Austrian diplomat Edgar, she finds herself thrown into a very different world in Europe, and soon realizes that adjusting to her new life is not easy at all. But when the woman designing her wedding dress, Judith, takes Kitty under her wing, she sees the city of Vienna in a new light – a city of culture and music that she can explore with her new friend. But when the Nazis infiltrate Vienna, the fact that Judith is Jewish means Kitty’s friend is no longer safe. With Edgar also growing ever more distant and secretive, Kitty wonders which side her husb...

  Strangers in the Night Heather Webb Publication date: March 21, 2023 by Harper Collins Genre: Historical Fiction  Rating: 5 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷 Summary: It was the tumultuous romance that scandalized the world: Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner fought, loved, and lived life to the hilt. Now their unbridled story is brought vividly to life by Heather Webb, the bestselling author of Meet Me in Monaco and The Next Ship Home. In the golden age of Hollywood, two of the brightest stars would define—and defy—an era… She was the small-town southern beauty transformed into a Hollywood love goddess. He was the legendary crooner whose voice transfixed the world. They were Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra. Separately they were irresistible; together they were an explosive combination. Ava’s star is rising just as Frank’s career—and public image as a family man—is taking a hit. Gone are the days of the screaming bobbysoxers and chart-topping hits. Ava, however, finds herself gracing the front page of ev...

  The Moving Finger Miss Marple #4 Agatha Christie Original Publication date: July 1, 1942  Released as an audiobook: July 3, 2012 by Harper Audio Genre: Mystery Rating: 2 🍷🍷 Summary:  (synopsis from Amazon)  Lymstock is a town with more than its share of shameful secrets - a town where even a sudden outbreak of anonymous hate mail causes only a minor stir. But all that changes when one of the recipients, Mrs. Symmington, commits suicide. Her final note says "I can’t go on", but Miss Marple questions the coroner's verdict of suicide. Soon nobody is sure of anyone - as secrets stop being shameful and start becoming deadly. (synopsis from Goodreads) The placid village of Lymstock seems the perfect place for Jerry Burton to recuperate from his accident under the care of his sister, Joanna. But soon a series of vicious poison-pen letters destroys the village's quiet charm, eventually causing one recipient to commit suicide. The vicar, the doctor, the servants—all are o...

  Madame Pommery, Creator of Brut Champagne Rebecca Rosenberg Publication date: March 21, 2023 by Lion Heart Publishing Summary: A Champagne Widows Novel Champagne, France, 1860. Madame Pommery, an etiquette teacher and orphanage founder, loses her husband and is forced to support her family. With no experience, the forty-year-old widow decides to make champagne. Her unique vision is to change it from a sweet dessert beverage to a dry, crisp wine to be enjoyed anytime. When champagne makers refuse to teach her their craft, she forges ahead on her own and secretly begins the excavation of champagne caves under the Reims city dump. Soon after, her son and her entire crew are conscripted to fight the Franco-Prussian war, leaving Madame Pommery alone to struggle with her champagne dreams. After Napoleon and a hundred thousand French troops are captured, the Prussians invaded France, and Prussian General Frederick Franz occupies Madame Pommery’s house as his army headquarters. Undaunted...

  The Woman With The Cure Lynn Cullen Publication date: February 21, 2023 by Berkley Genre: Historical Fiction  Rating: 4 👢👢👢👢 Summary: She gave up everything— and changed the world. A riveting novel based on the true story of the woman who stopped a pandemic, from the bestselling author of Mrs. Poe. In 1940s and ’50s America, polio is as dreaded as the atomic bomb. No one’s life is untouched by this disease that kills or paralyzes its victims, particularly children. Outbreaks of the virus across the country regularly put American cities in lockdown. Some of the world’s best minds are engaged in the race to find a vaccine. The man who succeeds will be a god. But Dorothy Horstmann is not focused on beating her colleagues to the vaccine. She just wants the world to have a cure. Applying the same determination that lifted her from a humble background as the daughter of immigrants, to becoming a doctor –often the only woman in the room--she hunts down the monster where it lurk...