"The Predator, The Making of a Wiseguy" by Anthony Aqua ~ Going Viral

SUMMARY :

He was about to take Julie against her will. Having her body would not be the same as having her heart and mind, but Don didn't realize it at the time.

Obsession takes on terrifying form in Anthony V. Aqua's The Predator. This sexually explicit cat-and-mouse game will take readers into the mind of a man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

Don Ricci is handsome, rich...and a psychopath. After a humiliating rejection by Julie, an old classmate, he kidnaps her at knifepoint and locks her away in a homemade dungeon.

Determined to make Julie into his idealized version of the perfect "wife," Don's violently sexual encounters with his traumatized captor are interrupted only by his intermittent carousing around town.

As his tempter spirals out of control, Don runs into more and more trouble both in and out of his underground lair. His erratic behavior eventually brings him to Black Jack Roma, a grizzled veteran of the New England mafia who assumes Don is there to silence him for good.

But as Black Jack realizes the true nature of Don's derangement, he decides to make the rich playboy an offer that he simply can't refuse.

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :

Published by:  CreateSpace
Pages:  248
Genre:  Thriller
Series:  Don Ricci  The Making of a Wiseguy  Book 1
Author: Anthony V. Aqua
Purchase the book: 
Barnes & Noble    Amazon


ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Anthony V. Aqua is second-generation Sicilian, having grown up in Boston and graduated from Northeastern University. After working a variety of jobs, including as an employee in his family’s import/export business and as a police officer, he settled into a twenty-five-year career in real estate.
Mr. Aqua currently lives with his wife in Naples, Florida, where he is hard at work on his Don Ricci series.


THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

This is not the type of book I generally read or review, but this one is starting to go viral, and I wanted to bring it to you.  Like "Shades of Grey," Anthony V. Aqua's "The Predator" is a shocker. It stands out in a unique way. It is more than risqué, it's downright explicit sexual material; more so than any book I've ever read.  But, it's completely un-put-downable!  People have commented they are compelled to keep reading.

Dedicated to those who have been kidnapped and held hostage, and those who have been sex slaves, it gives an eye-opening glimpse into the heart and mind of a predator and psychopath.  It's not a beautiful story, but it's more realistic than any I've read in my life.

The book is fraught with the type of violence that only those connected with criminals would know to be an every day matter.  It's stuff that will absolutely shock you to read.  While Mr. Aqua swears he has no connection to the mob and never has, it is difficult to believe when you read this book!  Amazing chapters, and such fine, descriptive writing in some places, you feel you're watching a movie.

The weakness in the book is that Mr. Aqua is a new author, so there are some obvious loose points and less intriguing sections.  These are easily over looked in the long run. 

This isn't one for everyone, and I hesitate to recommend it.  I'm just letting you know it's out there.  I suspect it will become a cult novel fast.  If you have the stomach for something sexually explicit and violent that's about the mafia, you might like to give it a try....  Warning!!

Deborah/TheBookishDame
 

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"What Is Visible" by Kimberly Elkins ~ Fascinating...

SUMMARY :

A vividly original literary novel based on the astounding true-life story of Laura Bridgman, the first deaf and blind person who learned language and blazed a trail for Helen Keller.

 At age two, Laura Bridgman lost four of her five senses to scarlet fever. At age seven, she was taken to Perkins Institute in Boston to determine if a child so terribly afflicted could be taught. At age twelve, Charles Dickens declared her his prime interest for visiting America. And by age twenty, she was considered the nineteenth century's second most famous woman, having mastered language and charmed the world with her brilliance.

 Not since The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has a book proven so profoundly moving in illuminating the challenges of living in a completely unique inner world.

With Laura-by turns mischievous, temperamental, and witty-as the book's primary narrator, the fascinating kaleidoscope of characters includes the founder of Perkins Institute, Samuel Gridley Howe, with whom she was in love; his wife, the glamorous Julia Ward Howe, a renowned writer, abolitionist, and suffragist; Laura's beloved teacher, who married a missionary and died insane from syphilis; an Irish orphan with whom Laura had a tumultuous affair; Annie Sullivan; and even the young Helen Keller.

Deeply enthralling and rich with lyricism, WHAT IS VISIBLE chronicles the breathtaking experiment that Laura Bridgman embodied and its links to the great social, philosophical, theological, and educational changes rocking Victorian America. Given Laura's worldwide fame in the nineteenth century, it is astonishing that she has been virtually erased from history. WHAT IS VISIBLE will set the record straight.

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :

Published by Grand Central/Hachette Publishing
Pages:  320
Genre:  Historical Fiction
Author:  Kimberly Elkins
Website:  http://www.kimberlyelkins.com
 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Kimberly Elkins was a finalist for the National Magazine Award and has published fiction and nonfiction in the Atlantic, Best New American Voices, Iowa Review, Chicago Tribune, Glamour, and Village Voice, among others. WHAT IS VISIBLE is her first novel.

THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

When I decided to preview this novel on Netgalley with a "taste" of the book, I never thought I would be caught up, leading me to purchase it just so I could finish the story.  This is a fascinating account of Laura Bridgman, the very first known woman who was both deaf and blind, and who learned to communicate.  It is a book I imagine will mesmerize everyone.  I was held rapt, absolutely.

While "What Is Visible" is a historical novel, Kimberly Elkins writes with such grace and delicacy that it flies off the pages as a real account.  Absorbing and disturbing at times, it's a book I couldn't put down and raced through the night hoping to finish.  It took me longer than I had eyes to keep open!

Each of the characters she describes are vivid in their every day lives in her novel.  I was completely engaged with Laura and the Doctor.  I was drawn in like a voyeur, able to see what a magnificent and complicated person Laura was, and how she loved the Doctor who sculpted her life.  I think the underlying study of what her inner life might have been like was most compelling.  This is a novel with teeth, but also with a strong heart at the center.  Laura seems to reach for us from its pages and she touches us!

I can't say enough about the genius of Ms Elkins's writing.  The novel is beautifully crafted.  The characters engender caring and tender feelings.  The story is moving.  You can tell her heart is in this book.

This is a must read!

5 stars                                          Deborah/TheBookishDame

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Summer Reading~New Books

SUMMER READING BOOKS :

This is my newest collection of books I'm planning on reading in August or before.  I'm including below a couple of pictures of more which I don't yet have in earnest, but which I've ordered.  Just about everything has a blue tinge!

My head is doing better and it's getting easier to read again, so I'm excited about that.  I'm hoping as the months increase, my eyes will get better and I'll be back to my reading speed again.  I'm coming out of my slump, as well.  It feels great!

So let me give you some summaries of the above books:

In 1860, Alexander Ferguson, a newly ordained vicar and amateur evolutionary scientist, takes up his new parish, a poor, isolated patch on the remote Scottish island of Harris. He hopes to uncover the truth behind the legend of the selkies—mermaids or seal people who have been sighted off the north of Scotland for centuries. He has a more personal motive, too; family legend states that Alexander is descended from seal men. As he struggles to be the good pastor he was called to be, his maid Moira faces the terrible eviction of her family by Lord Marstone, whose family owns the island. Their time on the island will irrevocably change the course of both their lives, but the white house on the edge of the dunes keeps its silence long after they are gone.

It will be more than a century before the Sea House reluctantly gives up its secrets. Ruth and Michael buy the grand but dilapidated building and begin to turn it into a home for the family they hope to have. Their dreams are marred by a shocking discovery. The tiny bones of a baby are buried beneath the house; the child's fragile legs are fused together—a mermaid child. Who buried the bones? And why? To heal her own demons, Ruth feels she must discover the secrets of her new home—but the answers to her questions may lie in her own traumatic past. The Sea House by Elisabeth Gifford is a sweeping tale of hope and redemption and a study of how we heal ourselves by discovering our histories.

*Note:  I'm a sucker for books about the Scottish coasts and its legends.  This one about mermaids and selkies should be good.

 

A heartbreaking, wildly inventive, and moving novel narrated by a teenage runaway, from the bestselling author of Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls.

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless teen living in an igloo made of ice and trash bags filled with frozen leaves. Half a year earlier, a nuclear plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom had experienced a cataclysmic meltdown, and both of Emily's parents were killed. Devastatingly, her father was in charge of the plant, and the meltdown may have been his fault. Was he drunk when it happened? Thousands of people are forced to flee their homes in the Kingdom; rivers and forests are destroyed; and Emily feels certain that as the daughter of the most hated man in America, she is in danger. So instead of following the social workers and her classmates after the meltdown, Emily takes off on her own for Burlington, where she survives by stealing, sleeping on the floor of a drug dealer's apartment, and inventing a new identity for herself — an identity inspired by her favorite poet, Emily Dickinson. When Emily befriends a young homeless boy named Cameron, she protects him with a ferocity she didn't know she had. But she still can't outrun her past, can't escape her grief, can't hide forever—and so she comes up with the only plan that she can. 

A story of loss, adventure, and the search for friendship in the wake of catastrophe, Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is one of Chris Bohjalian’s finest novels to date—breathtaking, wise, and utterly transporting.

*Note:  I've started this one.  Bohjalian is a great author, so what's not to love.  I'm excited to get further into this post apocalyptic novel.  Something new for him...

Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet . . . So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother’s bright blue eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue—in Marilyn’s case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James’s case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party.

When Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart. James, consumed by guilt, sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to find a responsible party, no matter what the cost. Lydia’s older brother, Nathan, is certain that the neighborhood bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it’s the youngest of the family—Hannah—who observes far more than anyone realizes and who may be the only one who knows the truth about what happened.

A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

*Note:  I did a preview read of this one, as well.  Great writing.  This one was a recommended read for me.  It captured my interest immediately.  I'm interested in getting to it very soon.

From the author of Queen’s Gambit, which People magazine called, “A must-read for Philippa Gregory fans,” a gripping historical novel about two sisters who tread as dangerously close to the crown as their tragic sister, Lady Jane Grey, executed after just nine days on the throne.

Early in Mary Tudor’s turbulent reign, Lady Catherine and Lady Mary Grey are reeling after the brutal execution of their elder seventeen-year-old sister, Lady Jane Grey, and the succession is by no means stable. In Sisters of Treason, Elizabeth Freemantle brings these young women to life in a spellbinding Tudor tale of love and politics.

Neither sister is well suited to a dangerous life at court. Flirtatious Lady Catherine, thought to be the true heir, cannot control her compulsion to love and be loved. Her sister, clever Lady Mary, has a crooked spine and a tiny stature in an age when physical perfection equates to goodness—and both girls have inherited the Tudor blood that is more curse than blessing. For either girl to marry without royal permission would be a potentially fatal political act. It is the royal portrait painter, Levina Teerlinc, who helps the girls survive these troubled times. She becomes their mentor and confidante, but when the Queen’s sister, the hot-headed Elizabeth, inherits the crown, life at court becomes increasingly treacherous for the surviving Grey sisters. Ultimately each young woman must decide how far she will go to defy her Queen, risk her life, and find the safety and love she longs for.

From “a brilliant new player in the court of royal fiction,” (People) Sisters of Treason brings to vivid life the perilous and romantic lives of two little known young women who played a major role in the complex politics of their day.

*Note:  Elizabeth Fremantle became one of my favorite historical fiction authors when she wrote "Queen's Gambit" last year.  A brilliant read...   I can't wait to get to this one!


NOW FOR BOOKS I'M EXPECTING IN THE MAIL OR ON NETGALLEY :

The Girl With All the Gifts is a groundbreaking thriller, emotionally charged and gripping from beginning to end.

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class.

When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.

Melanie is a very special girl.

*Note:  Creepy!!  This is a novel I just ordered from Amazon after a "taste" of it on Netgalley.  It's a fabulous read....I can't tell you more.  :]

"Funny and moving. After this, nothing will ever taste the same again."—T. C. Boyle

It's 1973, and David Leveraux has landed his dream job as a Flavorist-in-Training, working in the secretive industry where chemists create the flavors for everything from the cherry in your can of soda to the butter on your popcorn.

While testing a new artificial sweetener—"Sweetness #9"—he notices unusual side-effects in the laboratory rats and monkeys: anxiety, obesity, mutism, and a generalized dissatisfaction with life. David tries to blow the whistle, but he swallows it instead.

Years later, Sweetness #9 is America's most popular sweetener—and David's family is changing. His wife is gaining weight, his son has stopped using verbs, and his daughter suffers from a generalized dissatisfaction with life. Is Sweetness #9 to blame, along with David's failure to stop it? Or are these just symptoms of the American condition?

David's search for an answer unfolds in this expansive novel that is at once a comic satire, a family story, and a profound exploration of our deepest cultural anxieties. Wickedly funny and wildly imaginative, Sweetness #9 questions whether what we eat truly makes us who we are.

*Note:  Can't resist this one!  I like a book like this for a change.  I'm getting a snap of it on Netgalley this week...but you can find it for purchase on B&N and Amazon.


So, those are my newest choices.  Wonder what you're reading this summer....

Deb

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"One Kick" by Chelsea Cain ~ Explosive!

SUMMARY :

From the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling Archie Sheridan/Gretchen Lowell thrillers: The first in a nail-biting new series featuring Kick Lannigan, a young woman whose complicated past has given her a very special skill set.

Famously kidnapped at age six, Kick captured America’s hearts when she was rescued five years later. Now, twenty-one, she finds herself unexpectedly entangled in a missing child case that will put her talents to the test.

Trained as a marksman, lock picker, escape artist and bomb maker by her abductor, Kick could not return to the life of the average young girl after her release. So, in lieu of therapy, she mastered martial arts, boxing, and knife throwing; learned how to escape from the trunk of a car, jimmy a pair of handcuffs, and walk without making a sound—all before she was thirteen.

Kick has trained herself to be safe. But then two children go missing in three weeks, and an enigmatic and wealthy former weapons dealer approaches her with a proposition. John Bishop uses his fortune and contacts to track down missing children. Not only is he convinced Kick can help recover the two children—he won’t take no for an answer.

With lives hanging in the balance, Kick is set to be the crusader she has always imagined herself. Little does she know that the answers she and Bishop seek are hidden in one of the few places she doesn’t want to navigate—the dark corners of her own mind.

A heart-stopping, entertaining thrill ride, One Kick announces the arrival of a blistering new series by a stunning talent in the thriller realm.

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :

Published by:  Simon & Schuster
Pages:  320
Series:  Kick Lannigan Series Bk 1
Genre:  Thriller/Mystery/Suspense
Author:  Chelsea Cain
Website:  http://www.chelseacain.com


ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Chelsea Cain is the author of the New York Times bestselling Archie Sheridan/Gretchen Lowell thrillers Heartsick, Sweetheart, Evil at Heart, The Night Season, Kill You Twice, and Let Me Go. Her Portland-based thrillers have been published in twenty-four languages, recommended on the TODAY show, appeared in episodes of HBO’s True Blood and ABC’s Castle, been named among Stephen King’s top ten favorite books of the year, and included in NPR’s list of the top 100 thrillers ever written. According to Booklist, “Popular entertainment just doesn’t get much better than this.”

CHECK out her website for a link to a Goodreads giveaway!!!  http://www.chelseacain.com


THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

It's after midnight and I've just finished another Chelsea Cain novel much to my delight.  She's a long time favorite thriller/suspense novel writer who never fails to give a great "ride" for the money.  Chelsea is one of those authors who calls you to pick up every book she writes because you know you're going to get consistent thrillers that speed along and are gripping.  "One Kick" is no exception to this rule.  I'm excited to have this introduction to a new set of characters and a new series.

Loved, loved the story here of a young woman who is a grown up "rescue" from a child kidnapping.  The details of what she went through in her transition back to "normal" are exceptional and believable.  They add a broad dimension to this thriller based on finding two children who have also been kidnapped. 

Kick Lannigan is a wiry and wild protagonist who is worthy of a series of her own.  I absolutely love her.  Beautiful and brilliant, she is also physically powerful and; yet, psychologically vulnerable.  A startling combination for a potent storyline.  Her strange relationship with John Bishop adds that sugar and vinegar aspect to the plot that's pitch perfect!  These two are dynamic and fun to read about.

I couldn't put this book down all day until I'd finished it.  I think you'll love it if you're interested in a fast-paced suspense novel.  Great storyline with fascinating characters.

5 stars                    Deborah/TheBookishDame

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"The Matchmaker" by Elin Hilderbrand~A Summer Hit!

SUMMARY :

A touching new novel from bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand in which a woman sets out to find love for those closest to her - before it's too late.

48-year-old Nantuckter Dabney Kimball Beech has always had a gift for matchmaking. Some call her ability mystical, while others - like her husband, celebrated economist John Boxmiller Beech, and her daughter, Agnes, who is clearly engaged to the wrong man - call it meddlesome, but there's no arguing with her results: With 42 happy couples to her credit and all of them still together, Dabney has never been wrong about romance.

Never, that is, except in the case of herself and Clendenin Hughes, the green-eyed boy who took her heart with him long ago when he left the island to pursue his dream of becoming a journalist. Now, after spending 27 years on the other side of the world, Clen is back on Nantucket, and Dabney has never felt so confused, or so alive.

But when tragedy threatens her own second chance, Dabney must face the choices she's made and share painful secrets with her family. Determined to make use of her gift before it's too late, she sets out to find perfect matches for those she loves most. The Matchmaker is a heartbreaking new novel from Elin Hilderbrand about losing and finding love, even as you're running out of time.

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :

Published by:  Little, Brown & Co.
Pages:  357
Genre:  Fiction
Author:  Elin Hilderbrand
Website:  http://www.elinhilderbrand.net


ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Elin Hilderbrand does her best writing on the beaches of Nantucket, as well as on the charming streets of Beacon Hill in Boston. She has three magical children who beg her not to sing along to the radio or dance in public. The Matchmaker is her 13th novel.

THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

I know, I know....beach reading, right?  My daughter said to me tonight, "Mom, don't give in to the girly and the light!!  Go back to your dark and drafty reading material, quick!"  I know.  But, honestly, Elin Hilderbrand just can't be resisted.  Her stories that take place on Nantucket are like cherries dipped in chocolate glimmering on a cold, silver plate to me.  I can't help myself...I'm just hooked every summer!

This is a particularly gripping story of Elin's.  It starts out light and fluffy, I'll give you that.  But, before you know it, you're a huge fan of the main character, Dabney.  You're feeling like her best friend.  And, you kind of remember well that boyfriend you had that you were madly in love with in  high school that you haven't seen in years.  And before you know it, you're drawn in and can't stop reading.

Elin Hildebrand's characters are simply charming.  They are the friends you never had but wish you did.  They are real and vulnerable, wholesome and lovable.  The family members she writes about are your family, too.  I just couldn't get enough of the people that populate this novel.

As Dabney is reunited with her first love, my heart was laid out right there with hers.  As she negotiated around all the obstacles in their path, I held my breath for them.  And when tragedy began its viney way towards them, I was shell shocked along with them.

This is the first book in a long time that's lifted my heart; made me laugh and cry in the same sittings.
In fact, I cried a bucket at the end.

It's a summer read, of course.  But, it's a great one!

5 stars                           Deborah/TheBookishDame

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"Frog Music" by Emma Donoghue ~ Magical and Spirited!

SUMMARY :

From the author of the worldwide bestseller Room: "Her greatest achievement yet...Emma Donoghue shows more than range with FROG MUSIC—she shows genius." — Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life

Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead.

The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice—if he doesn't track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers, and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women, and damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts.

In thrilling, cinematic style, FROG MUSIC digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue's lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other.

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :

Published by:  Little, Brown & Co.
Pages:  416
Genre:  Fiction/Historical Fiction
Author:  Emma Donoghue
Website:  http://www.emmadonoghue.com
Purchase this book:  Amazon   or  Barnes & Noble


ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Born in Dublin, Ireland, in October 1969, I am the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue (the literary critic, Henry James Professor at New York University). I attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one eye-opening year in New York at the age of ten. In 1990 I earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin (unfortunately, without learning to actually speak French). I moved to England, and in 1997 received my PhD (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. From the age of 23, I have earned my living as a writer, and have been lucky enough to never have an ‘honest job’ since I was sacked after a single summer month as a chambermaid. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 I settled in London, Ontario, where I live with Chris Roulston and our son Finn (10) and daughter Una (6).

a bit more about Ms Donoghue:

Although I work in many genres, I am best known for my fiction, which has been translated into over forty languages.
My latest novel, Frog Music (2014), is a multi-faceted murder mystery set in San Francisco in 1876.
Room (2010) is narrated by a five-year-old called Jack, who lives in a single room with his Ma and has never been outside. An international bestseller, Room was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prize, and won the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Prize (Canada & Carribbean Region), the Canadian Booksellers’ Association Libris Awards (Fiction Book and Author of the Year), the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award and the W.H. Smith Paperback of the Year Award.
I began by writing about contemporary Dublin before the Boom in a coming-of-age novel, Stir-fry (1994), and a tale of bereavement, Hood (1995, winner of the American Library Association’s Gay and Lesbian Book Award, and recently republished by HarperCollins in the US), and I returned to my transformed home city with a love story that contrasts it with smalltown Ontario in Landing (2007, winner of a Golden Crown Literary Award).
I have a great love for the short story form; my stories have been published in Granta, the New Statesman, One Story, the Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday, The Lady, the Globe and Mail, as well as 30 other journals and anthologies.  They have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4, RTE and CBC. Touchy Subjects (2006) is a set of nineteen contemporary stories about social taboos that moves between Ireland, Britain, France, Italy, the US and Canada.
I became a YA author by accident. Kissing the Witch (1997), my sequence of re-imagined fairytales, was published for adults in the UK but bought by Joanna Cottler Books (HarperCollins) in the US; they managed to win me a whole new 12-and-up audience, and Kissing the Witch was shortlisted for the James L. Tiptree Award. 
Perhaps inevitably, given my scholarly background and bent, I moved into historical fiction with Slammerkin (2000), a whydunnit inspired by a 1763 murder.  Slammerkin was a Main Selection of the Book of the Month Club, won the 2002 Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction, and was a finalist in the 2001 Irish Times Irish Fiction Prize. 
I followed it with a sequence of short stories about real incidents from the fourteenth century to the nineteenth, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits (2002), and then Life Mask (2004, a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award), which tells the startling true story of a love triangle in 1790s London. The Sealed Letter (US/Canada 2008, UK 2011) is a domestic thriller about an 1860s cause celebre (the Codrington Divorce), joint winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Three and a Half Deaths, my first mini ebook (UK/Ireland only), brings together four stories of calamities ranging from 1840s Canada to 1920s France. And  Astray (2012, shortlisted for the Eason Irish Novel of the Year) is a sequence of fourteen fact-inspired stories about travels to, from and within North America; one of them, ‘The Hunt’, was a finalist in the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Prize, the world’s most valuable award for a single story.


THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

Naturally, I'm a huge fan of Ms Donoghue after having read "Slammerkin" and "Room," but even I was caught off guard by this strange sounding book with an odd plot...  I need not  have been.  "Frog Music" is just as engaging and challenging as her other books.  I absolutely loved it. 

There's a sort of "Deadwood" (if you remember the TV program from some years ago) quality about this book.  It's dark and it's filled with singular characters that lift off the pages like illuminated glyphs.  The characters are small miracles from the mind of Donoghue.  Exacting in detail, beautifully rendered, they speak with perfect pitch their roles in this vignette of the old west and settling of a still wild San Francisco in the 1800's. 

Blanche, the central figure, is a sympathetic, baudy-house lady with a pretty little Frenchman lover and his fellow who depend upon her, a sickly baby who wrenches her heart and a friendship with Jenny, a gal who wears pants and totes a gun in a time when it's against the law for women.  The mystery of who shot and killed Jenny carries the plot of the story, but it's the surrounding details that really make this book sing.

Emma Donoghue is a genius at making her stories come alive in the details.  We can sense the tension, feel the fear, joy and love of the characters, hear what they hear, and see what they see.   The songs of the era shared in the book are lilting and eerie, lending another element to support this petite, masquerade of characters.

This is a book that picks you up gently at the beginning and before you know it you're hooked.  It's the kind of book that's difficult to describe.  One where the writing tends to outshine the summary.  You know the type...

I highly recommend it.

5 stars                                   Deborah/TheBookishDame

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"Little Mercies" by Heather Gudenkauf- Absorbing!

SUMMARY :

In her latest ripped-from-the-headlines tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Heather Gudenkauf shows how one small mistake can have life-altering consequences…

Veteran social worker Ellen Moore has seen the worst side of humanity—the vilest acts one person can commit against another. She is a fiercely dedicated children's advocate and a devoted mother and wife. But one blistering summer day, a simple moment of distraction will have repercussions that Ellen could never have imagined, threatening to shatter everything she holds dear, and trapping her between the gears of the system she works for.

Meanwhile, ten-year-old Jenny Briard has been living with her well-meaning but irresponsible father since her mother left them, sleeping on friends' couches and moving in and out of cheap motels. When Jenny suddenly finds herself on her own, she is forced to survive with nothing but a few dollars and her street smarts. The last thing she wants is a social worker, but when Ellen's and Jenny's lives collide, little do they know just how much they can help one another.

A powerful and emotionally charged tale about motherhood and justice, Little Mercies is a searing portrait of the tenuous grasp we have on the things we love the most, and of the ties that unexpectedly bring us together.


PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :

Published by:  Harlequin MIRA
Pages:  320
Genre:  Fiction
Author:  Heather Gudenkauf
Website:  http://www.heathergudenkauf.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Heather Gudenkauf is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Weight of Silence and These Things Hidden.

Heather was born in Wagner, South Dakota, the youngest of six children. At one month of age, her family returned to the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota where her father was employed as a guidance counselor and her mother as a school nurse. At the age of three, her family moved to Iowa, where she grew up. Having been born with a profound unilateral hearing impairment (there were many evenings when Heather and her father made a trip to the bus barn to look around the school bus for her hearing aids that she often conveniently would forget on the seat beside her), Heather tended to use books as a retreat, would climb into the toy box that her father’s students from Rosebud made for the family with a pillow, blanket, and flashlight, close the lid, and escape the world around her. Heather became a voracious reader and the seed of becoming a writer was planted.
Heather Gudenkauf graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in elementary education, has spent her career working with students of all ages and continues to work in education as a Title I Reading Coordinator.

Heather lives in Iowa with her husband, three children, and a very spoiled German Shorthaired Pointer named Maxine. In her free time Heather enjoys spending time with her family, reading, hiking, and running. She is currently working on her next novel.


THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

It wasn't until I read Heather Gudenkauf's bio. that I discovered she has "profound unilateral hearing impairment."  Now that I'm deaf in one ear, I feel a new kinship with her.  I wonder if this hearing loss of  hers contributes to her extraordinary sense of characterization and conversational timing as she writes.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and can hardly wait to read her latest, "Little Lies."

The opening chapters of the book are shocking and simply drag us into the story.  The predicament of the social worker mother is one we immediately identify with, and; now that her same "mistake" is in our nation's attention this summer, it's even more compelling!  I was physically rocked by what happened to her and her child.

The secondary storyline kept close pace with the primary one...it was just as gripping.  Ms Gudenkauf is a great storyteller who knows how to captivate and keep us guessing.  None of her characters are run-of-the-mill.

If you're looking for a book that is different and will hold your attention throughout, this is one of them.  I've been tired reading books with similar plots and themes.  Heather Gudenkauf took me on a journey I appreciated and will look forward to in others of her books.

5 stars                                Deborah/TheBookishDame

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