bookchickdi: Karen Abbott

Showing posts with label Karen Abbott. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

August Books from the Book Expo

Every year I attend the Book Expo, one of the biggest publishing conferences in the country where publishers give out copies of the books they will be promoting in the near future. Each month I will post a photo of the books I picked up that will be published that month.
(June books are here.)
(July books are here.)

Here are the books I picked up that publish in August.

Karen Abbott's The Ghosts of Eden Park recounts the true story of legendary bootlegger George Remus, who owned 35% of all the liquor in 1921. Mabel Willebrandt, a pioneering female prosecutor sets her sights on bringing down Remus' empire, along with her investigator Franklin Dodge. When Dodge begins an affair with Remus' wife, things get really crazy. This one has gotten rave reviews and sounds fantastic for people who like true crime that reads like fiction.

In thriller writer Karen Slaughter's newest novel The Last Widow, Atlanta medical examiner Sara Linton and her partner, Georgia Bureau of Investigations Will Trent, are tasked with investigating a two deadly bombings when Sara is kidnapped and Will must save her and prevent more bombings from happening. Slaughter is at the top of her game here.

Lisa Lutz's The Swallows is about "a teacher at a New England prep school who ignites a gender war- with deadly consequences". I loved her last novel, The Passenger, and this one looks to be pretty intense and a little controversial.

Sarah M. Broom' memoir The Yellow House is about the shotgun house she and her family of eleven siblings grew up in a poor neighborhood in New Orleans. Her widowed mom raised her family in that house until Hurrican Katrina came along. It's about race, class, inequality and family and it's gotten great reviews.

Rob Hart's novel, The Warehouse, was chosen as one of the Editor's Buzz Books at the Book Expo. Paxton works for Cloud (think Amazon) that has taken over a large portion of the American economy. Zinnia has gone undercover at Cloud trying to discover exactly what is going on there. It sounds fabulous and a little scary.

In Brock Clarke's Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe, when the titular hero's mother passes away, a mysterious woman shows at her funeral and claims to be his aunt. She convinces Calvin to accompany her to Europe, where he is followed by secret agents, religious fanatics, and his stalker ex-wife. It's being called a cross between a Wes Anderson movie and John Irving book, with that odd comic sensibility.

Rick Moody tells the tale of the first month of his second marriage in his memoir The Long Accomplishment. His hope for a smooth matrimonial start is beset by "miscarriages, the death of friends and robberies, just for starters." Moody wrote the book The Ice Storm, so it will interesting to read his take on a real marriage.

See you in September.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott
Published by Harper ISBN 978-0-06-209289-2
Hardcover, $27.99, 544 pages

Karen Abbott shows us a unique perspective of the American Civil War through the fascinating stories of four women. Two of them supported the cause of the Confederacy and two of them worked to keep the Union together.

Emma Edmonds ran away from her family, cut off her hair, and enlisted as a Union soldier. She became Frank and ended up working first as a medic, carrying injured soldiers off the battlefield and assisting the doctors in their care. It was brutal and bloody.

Her next job was as a postmaster, but she eventually came to the attention of the Secret Service, run by Allen Pinkerton. He had Emma, whom he believed to be a man, pose as an Irish peddler and as a black slave and infiltrate the Confederate lines to get information. She was a woman posing as a man posing as a woman- crazy!

Pinkerton also became involved with Rose, a Washington DC widow who used her feminine charms to seduce prominent Union politicians to get information to send to the Confederacy. Pinkerton worked hard to get evidence against her and eventually arrested her for espionage.

I was shocked that not only did Rose use her eight-year-old daughter to pass information to her spies, but when Rose was arrested, her daughter was held in jail with her. The conditions were horrible, and to subject a young child to that was unfair.

Elizabeth Van Lewis was from a prominent Richmond, Virginia family. She supported the Union, not a popular thing to do in Richmond. She used her superior intellect to organize a spy network through her work assisting Union prisoners held in a Richmond compound.

She was able to recruit many spies, hide prisoners and send them back North, and get information to Union generals about Confederate troop movements. Jennifer Chiaverini wrote a historical fiction about Van Lew last year, titled Spymistress, that told Van Lew's story more in depth.

Belle Boyd was a young, headstrong teen when she shot and killed a Union soldier who was in her family's home. She loved the spotlight, and after escaping punishment for her crime, she became further emboldened and began to spy for the Confederacy.

She thought nothing of riding behind enemy lines to get the information to pass onto General Stonewall Jackson, who she had romantic feelings for.

I found it interesting that Rose and Belle both traveled to Great Britain in their quest to get England to aide the Confederacy. It was also fascinating to note that Pope Pius IX was the only world leader to recognize the Confederacy.

These women were brave and clever, using every feminine wile and intellect they had to advance the cause they held dear to them. Whether sewing secret messages in Jefferson Davis' wife's dresses or creating fake documents to fool the opposition, these women were remarkable and Abbott tells their stories with breathtaking interest.

Like many soldiers, the end of the war was difficult for them. The excitement was over, and it was difficult to return to their old lives. It was sad to find out how their lives ended.

Abbott brings these exciting women to life on the page, and I found their stories thrilling. Although this is a big book, I read it quickly, waiting to see what these brave women would do next. This is a book any history buff, but especially women, will enjoy.

Rating 4 of 5