Karl Alexander does a wonderful job re-creating H.G. Wells in this sequel to his 1979, "Time After Time," but, as in the prior novel, he still is unable to create believable women characters. How does Amber Reese fall in love with Wells? Her immediate love makes absolutely no sense. Why does Amy Catherine Robbins Wells's second persona, "Catherine," come across as psychotic and why is Amy such a wimp? Notwithstanding the fact that at times I was ready to throw the book against the wall because the women characters were so badly developed, I finished the book because the plot was excellent and the character of H.G. Wells was so well crafted. This is why I gave the book four stars and why the book is worth reading.
Print Length: 336 pages
Publisher: Forge Books; First Edition edition (November 10, 2009)
Publication Date: November 10, 2009
Sold by: Macmillan
Language: English
You are five years old and your parents and sister love you and spoil you. You love going to school and playing with your friends. Your mother cooks your favorite foods and your father creates toys for you and your friends.
Eunsun Kim is not even thirty years old, but:
I have read many books written by North Korean refugees or journalists visiting North Korea under cover or journalists captured and held by North Korea. Each book had something unique to offer, and each was an important book. "My Holiday in North Korea," however, may be the most unique of the unique because Wendy Simmons brings such a love of people and joyousness to this story about her short visit to North Korea. Throughout the book, we are treated to the best and worst of North Korea: the empty, "new," Women's Maternity Hospital filled with antiquated technology; the barely edible food that was luxurious under the standard of living that most North Koreans endure; the wedding where the bride did not welcome a western tourist; the lack of stores and traffic in Pyongyang; the multiple, "spontaneous" encounters with students in classrooms, factory workers and others- all staged and pre-choreographed; and the two minders and driver who were with Ms. Simmons every waking minute.
Yeonmi Park is a human rights activist who escaped, at the age of 13, from North Korea to China in order to survive. A victim of the Kim Dynasty's famine, Park was trafficked in China, along with her mother. Her memoir, "In Order to Live," pulls no punches. She was born at a time when the North Korean government was losing its subsidies from Russia as communism collapsed. While her family lived well for a time due to her parents black market trading, eventually that ended when her father was thrown in a labor camp. His health was completely broken there, and he was unable to care for his family when he managed to get out early.
Every "Dead-End Job" mystery by Elaine Viets is fabulous. In each novel, protagonist, former corporate executive, Helen Hawthorn, works at a different job. The jobs, in a hair salon, bridal shop, dog grooming business and other businesses, are described as dead-end only because Helen becomes involved in murder investigations in each job. What Viets gets right every time is the warmth and honesty many of Helen's co-workers (except for the killers) bring to the job and to their friendships with Helen. In "Board Stiff," Viets brings to life the waitress who has graduated from the school of hard knocks, and the board-rental business owner who is under attack. Viets also brings back at least one tough and likeable character from prior books.
This book was personal for Elaine Viets. That became clear shortly after I started reading it. Having read most of her other books, the grittiness, the despair, and the pain of the protagonist in "Brain Storm" seemed out of place in a Viets novel. Yet, these elements also make it one of her best books to-date.
In "The Forgotten Flapper," Laini Giles manages to infuse a tragic, somewhat fictionalized, biography with the magic of the Ziegfield Follies, the excitement of early Hollywood, and the whimsey of the "Topper" movies. Olive Thomas, the subject of the book, was the first "Baby Vamp," and the term "Flapper" came from her 1920 film, "The Flapper." After dying in 1920 from an accidental poisoning, Olive, apparently, has haunted the New Amsterdam Theater on Times Square. (According to the current director of the theater, Disney contractors encountered Olive often while refurbishing the theater in the 1990s.) The story of Olive's journey from a poor, Pennsylvania family to star of the Ziegfield Follies and then to silent movie star, is both painful and endearing. Olive was a talented actress who, at the age of 21, was already trying to get experience in directing and writing movies. Giles has managed to present Olive's life without the usual, annoying cliches found in a rags to poor, little rich girl story. She also has managed to strip away the fictional gloss of the Pickford family, including Jack Pickford, Olive's husband, and Mary Pickford, Olive's sister-in-law. It's hard to imagine a crueler, colder set of in-laws than Mary and her mother Charlotte as depicted in the "The Forgotten Flapper."
Did you ever want to time travel back to Hollywood in the 1930s? Do you inhale the films of Hollywood's Golden Age? Do you ever wonder what Hollywood was truly like at that time? If you can answer "yes" to at least one of these questions, then you must read Martin Turnbull's "The Garden On Sunset: A Novel of Golden-Era Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah Novels, Book One)."
In his second "Garden of Allah" novel, "The Trouble with Scarlett," Martin Turnbull takes us back to the late 1930s where our three friends, Kathryn, Marcus, and Gwendolyn are a little older, much wiser, and still living at Hollywood's Garden of Allah Hotel.
The fens or fenlands, with its low-lying villages and farms, is an ancient, tradition-steeped part of eastern England. When Amber burns out at her stressful PR job in London, she moves her life to Skylark Farm, an apple farm in the fenlands managed by her boyfriend, Jake, and his 70-something Aunt Annie. As Amber settles in with her new life and friends, we also meet the farm's other inhabitants, including Pip, the pudgy pony, and Patricia, a very broody old hen, who patiently sits on eggs waiting for little chicks to hatch, despite the fact that this is impossible since there is no rooster at the farm.
In "Paris Time Capsule," Ella Carey tells the intriguing story of a Parisian flat that was sealed for 70 years.
In "The House by the Lake," Ella Carey rolls out a story of a "schloss" or landed estate, in the former East Germany that was almost destroyed, first by the Nazis and then by the Soviet occupation, and that has been left to rot in a village that is also dying. In telling the story of this schloss, Carey focuses on 94 year old Max Albrecht and his granddaughter, Anna, living in 2010, San Francisco. After the story breaks about a time capsule flat in Paris, opened after 70 years of abandonment, Max asks Anna to do one favor for him. He has never spoken of his past, but he asks her to retrieve something for him hidden in the schloss, his family's ancestral home.
