Two books featuring strong women at a crossroads

Reprinted from auburnpub.com:

The leaves are turning, the weather is cooler, it’s getting dark out earlier, and now we have more time to stay inside and read. This month’s Book Report features two books about strong women facing difficult times in their lives.


Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope WWII mysteries is one of the few series I will always read, and her latest book, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy is a fantastic standalone novel. The last Maggie Hope novel, The Hollywood Spy, had Maggie in WWII Los Angeles, where she tangled with Nazis. Mother Daughter Traitor Spy tells the story of Veronica and her mother Violet during WWII. 

When Veronica makes a bad personal choice, she loses her job in New York, and she and her widowed mother move to Los Angeles, closer to her uncle. Veronica unintentionally finds herself as secretary for someone who is heavily involved in the Nazi movement in the United States.


Meanwhile, Violet's lovely embroidery catches the eye of a Nazi leader's wife, and soon she is designing and sewing clothes for many of the women's friends. Horrified by the things they are hearing, Veronica and her mother go to law enforcement and end up working as spies for the US military.


I found myself wanting to know more about this time period in Los Angeles after reading The Hollywood Spy, and was so pleased to see that Susan Elia MacNeal was continuing to tell us more about this intriguing time in history in Mother Daughter Traitor Spy, based on the lives of a real mother-daughter team.


As I read this terrific story, I could not help but see the connections between what was happening politically in the 1940s and what is happening in our country in the last few years, and that adds to the importance of this book. I didn’t realize how many followers the Nazi had in America prior to and during WWII, it was eye-opening and honestly frightening. Mother Daughter Traitor Spy is a must-read for historical fiction fans.


Another author whose work I never miss is Anne Leigh Parrish. Her previous novels (Our Love Will Light the World, The Amendment and A Winter Night) dealt with families living in the Finger Lakes region in contemporary settings.


Her latest novel, An Open Door, is an historical novel set in the aftermath of WWII. When we meet Edith she is a young woman working at the United Nations in New York City, and married to Walt who is studying to be a lawyer and living in Boston. 

Edith enjoys her freedom working in New York and living with her husband's widowed aunt. Many people question why a married woman would choose to live and work in a different city than her husband, including her husband who pressures Edith to return to Boston.


After having watched her mother being stifled by her marriage to Edith’s overbearing father, she did not want to live a similar life. When she returns to Boston, Edith intends to continues her PhD studies in literature, but women at that time were discouraged from such a higher level of education. She saw that “the problem was what the world expected women to be, which was always less than a man.”

Unhappy in her marriage and with her life in general, Edith “wished that knowing where you didn’t belong meant knowing where you did.” When an opportunity to buy the neighborhood bookstore (along with two other people comes along), she sees this as a chance to do something more meaningful and fulfilling with her life. Edith’s life begins to revolve around the bookstore, and as someone who works in a bookstore, I so enjoyed reading about the joys, and the trials and tribulations of owning a bookstore.


No one writes characters better than Anne Leigh Parrish, and Edith is no exception. Parrish takes the reader into the heart and head of her characters so brilliantly that we relate and understand them, even when they do things with which we disagree. Edith is not perfect, and she does things that people will find objectionable.


Parrish writes so beautifully, I found myself returning time and again to her words, like this quote from her mother- “One thing I’ve learned is that kind people love kindly; careless people love carelessly; cruel people love cruelly.” She always gives her readers something deep to ponder.  I give An Open Door my highest recommendation.


Mother Daughter Traitor Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal- A

Published by Bantam

Hardcover, $28, 336 pages


An Open Door by Anne Leigh Parrish- A+

Published by Unsolicited Press

Trade paperback, $17/ Kindle $6.99, 267 pages

Friday 5ive- October 21, 2022

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly-ish post featuring five things that caught my attention this week.

1) Sunday was a beautiful day in NYC so we took a walk through Central Park. It was so good to see the park filled with people, and it seemed like everyone was celebrating a birthday, we ran into mutliple celebrations..

2) The Center for Fiction hosted a discussion between Silas House, about his book Lark Ascending, and one of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, about her novel Demon Copperhead. I read an early copy of Demon Copperhead, and it is Kingsolver's best book yet, a contemporary retelling of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. Her young protagonist deals with a mother who is an addict, living in a broken foster care system, poverty and the beginnings of the opioid crisis in Appalachia. I haven't read Silas House's book yet, but it sounds fascinating. It's a dystopian story about a young man who leaves the United States for Ireland, seeking refuge from devastating fires and political persecution  where he walks across the country with a dog he finds. The discussion was fascinating about two epic books, and what it means to be a writer from Appalachia. I watched it on YouTube, but I wish I had been there in person.

3) I love getting book mail, and this week I received my Stories & Suspects box filled with fantastic mystery books from Bantam. It features the new book from Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy, about a mother-daughter duo living in Los Angeles during WWII who end up spying on people involved in the Nazi movement for the US government. It has a lot of resonance for events happening today. It also has a new crime drama  by William Landay (I liked his Defending Jacob), a psychological suspense from Catherine Steadman (The Family Game- a Book of the Month selection for October), a locked room mystery by Jilly Gagnon (All Dressed Up), and their Buzz Pick, a debut novel from Erin E. Adams titled Jackal about missing girls in a Rust Belt town. The box was sponored by Tony's Chocolonely, one of my favorite chocolate treats.

4) Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy is back on Sunday nights on CNN, and we are enjoying traveling to the different regions of Italy. The first few episodes took us Calabria, Sardinia and Puglia and we've seen a lot of seafood dishes this season. 

5)  I adore Mary Beth Keane's books, and her upcoming 2023 novel, The Half Moon, is wonderful. Malcolm and Jess are a happy couple living in Gillam, a small town a hour upstate from New York City. Jess desperately wants a baby, and after several expensive and emotionally draining IVF tries doesn't undertstand why Malcolm is willing to give up on their dream. Malcolm's dream is to own the Half Moon, a bar he has worked in for years. They are at a crossroads, and the novel explores how that came to be and where it is headed. It is  phenomenal, I read it a little bit at a time because I did not want this fantastic book to end. I wanted to stay with Malcolm and Jess forever. 

Have a great, safe, healthy week.

Friday 5ive- September 9, 2022

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly-ish post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. Ive been off for the last few weeks, my family took a trip to Scotland and Ireland, and I will be posting about that separately. (It was an amazing trip!)

1)  I visited the new location of Bookstore1 in Sarasota, Florida last week. It's a wonderful bookstore, and the most inpressive part of the store is their Staff Recommends display. It is the largest Staff Recommends display I've ever seen. They have a huge two-sided unit filled with books and as you wander the store, you'll find more recommendations throughout mixed in with their regular displays. They must be a very literate staff! I chatted a bit with Roxanne, and picked up a Staff Recommended novel- Carter Bays' The Mutual Friend. If you ever visit Sarasota, you must stop by.

2)  Everyone in NYC loves to watch the US Open, and I confess that I have not been bitten by that bug- until this year. Watching Serena Williams win her match against the number two ranked player was thrilling, one of the most exciting sporting events I have ever seen. Now I am pulling for Frances Tiafoe to win on the Men's side, he has an incredible story. 

3)  Like everyone else I was saddened to hear of the death of Queen Elizabeth II. She had a remarkable reign spanning 70 years and her devotion to duty and her country will long be remembered. When we were at Edinburgh Castle a few weeks ago, we saw not only the Crown Jewels, but also the Stone of Destiny. The stone will be placed under the throne at Westminster Abbey at King Charles III's coronation as is tradition. And we saw it in person! (But we couldn't take photos.) 

4)  We're watching Five Days at Memorial on Apple TV+, based on the book by Sheri Fink. (We both thought the book was so powerful.) The true story takes place in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, when Baptist Memorial Hospital was left to fend for themselves after New Orleans flooded. They lost power, ran out of food and water, and had no plan or way to evacuate their hundreds of patients, staff and community members who sought safety from the hurricane. When the New Orleans Police Department finally shows up after five days, they are there to enforce an evacuation order, and doctors and nurses are forced to leave patients behind who cannot be evacuated. How some of these patients died is the question to be answered. It's riveting television with amazing performances led by Vera Farmiga and Cherry Jones. 

5) I've read alot recently, including some terrific historical novels based on real people and events from two books I loved in 2021. Lauren Willig's Two Wars and a Wedding  follows a character from last year's Band of Sisters (one of my favorite books from 2021). Smith College graduate Betsy Hayes studies archeology at the American School in Greece in 1896 and desperately wants to go on a dig, but women are not allowed. When a war breaks out between Greece and Turkey, Betsy ends up as a nurse and proves herself to be an outstanding nurse. Having seen the horrors and dangers of war up close, Betsy travels to Cuba in 1898 to stop her best friend Ava from joining Clara Barton's Red Cross nurses, but ends up again in the throes of war as a nurse. Once again, Lauren Willig's brilliant writing and detailed research into historical events I knew little about had me enthralled. Betsy is an unforgettable character, and watching her grow from a single-minded young student into a strong, brave and caring woman was a wonderful journey . I'll be buying this book when it publishes in March of 2023. 

Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope WWII mysteries is one of the few series I will always read, and her latest book, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy, is a standalone novel. The last Maggie Hope novel, The Hollywood Spy, had Maggie in WWII Los Angeles, where Maggie tangled with Nazis. Mother Daughter Traitor Spy tells the story of Veronica and her mother Violet during WWII. When Veronica makes a bad personal choice, she loses her job in New York and she and her widowed mother move to Los Angeles. Veronica unintentionally finds herself as secretary for someone who is heavily involved in the Nazi movement in the United States. Meanwhile, Violet's lovely embroidery catches the eye of a Nazi leader's wife, and soon she is designing and sewing clothes for many of the women's friends. Horrified by the things they are hearing, Veronica and her mother go to law enforcement and end up working as spies for the US military. I found myself wanting to know more about this time period in Los Angeles after reading The Hollywood Spy, and was so happy to see that Susan Elia MacNeal was continuing this fascinating story in Mother Daughter Traitor Spy, based on two real women. As I read this terrific story, I could not help but see the connections between what was happening politically in the 1940s and what is happening in our country in the last few years, and that adds to the importance of this book. This one publishes on September 20th, and if you like historical fiction, this is one you must read. 

Have a good, safe, healthy week.

More excellent summer reads from my favorite authors

Reprinted from the Citizen:

As summer rolls on, there are so many excellent books just waiting to pop into your beach bag, and here I’ll cover a few I have recently enjoyed.

Susan Elia MacNeal continues the saga of Maggie Hope in The Hollywood Spy. Maggie Hope is an American who worked as Winston Churchill’s secretary in the first book in the series, The Prime Minister’s Secretary. Her skills led her to become a spy for the British during WWII, working for the elite SOE agency. 

After stints in London, Paris, Berlin, and Scotland, Maggie goes to 1943 Los Angeles to help her former boyfriend John, an RAF pilot training American flyers. John’s fianceé drowned and he suspects foul play. Maggie agrees to investigate.

The most interesting part of this terrific tenth entry in the Maggie Hope series is learning all about Los Angeles during this time. It contained a large number of Nazi supporters, who went underground once the US entered the war. The Ku Klux Klan picked up where the Nazis left off, with racism against Jewish people, Blacks, and Latin people running rampant, including acts of violence against those groups.

MacNeal immerses the reader right into Los Angeles of that time, and you can feel all her research right on the page, as established by her bibliography at the end of the book. It’s also fun to see so many real people drop in, including Walt Disney, Linus Pauling, Howard Hughes, Cab Calloway, Hattie McDaniel, and more.

I highly recommend “The Hollywood Spy” for anyone who enjoys Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series.

Laura Lippman pays homage to Stephen King’s book Misery in her novel, Dream Girl. Gerry Andersen is an author who has yet to match the mega-success of his first novel, “Dream Girl”. When Gerry takes a serious fall in his Baltimore apartment, he is bedridden and dependent on the care of his young assistant and the nurses who come to his apartment. 

One night Gerry receives a disturbing phone call from a woman who claims she is the real person he based his novel on. He knows this cannot be true, the character was a figment of his imagination.

When the phone calls continue, neither his overnight nurse nor his assistant hears the phone ringing. When he sees a woman in his room late at night and calls out, the nurse comes running but no one is there, and the security cameras for the building show that no one came into his apartment. 

Is Gerry losing his mind or is someone messing with him? Could it be one of his ex-wives? The book goes back and forth in time, and we get a real feel for the character of Gerry, who he is and where he comes from. Fans of Lippman’s Tess Monaghan PI series will enjoy the cameo by Tess as Gerry looks for help to find answers.

I read Dream Girl in one day, I could not put this one down.

Anne Leigh Parrish continues her wonderful series about the Dugan family in her novel, A Winter Night. We first met the Dugans in Our Love Could Light The World, a series of linked stories, and their story continued in the novels, The Amendment and Maggie’s Ruse. 

Oldest daughter Angie takes center stage in this beautifully written story. Angie is 34, working as a social worker in adult care/nursing home. She is seeing Matt, a bartender and friend of her brother, and so far it’s going well.

After some disastrous relationships, Angie has trust issues. She is seeing a therapist to help her work through it. Angie has always been the one to care for her father, a recovering alcoholic who is remarried, but as his life seems to veering off course Angie is called in to help him once again.

It’s great to reconnect with the Dugan family, and Parrish writes dialogue that just crackles with honesty, like mother Lavinia saying that her ex-husband’s “promises are never false. They’re just seldom kept.” Or when Lavinia says “if you want your marriage to work, you have to rise up to meet it.” (Lavinia gets the best lines.)

The Dugan family lives in the Finger Lakes region, and readers will be able to relate to many of settings and character.  And with the extreme heat we have been experiencing, a book set in a central New York winter is a welcome distraction. A Winter Night is a moving character study, and I highly recommend it. 

The Hollywood Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal

The Hollywood Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal

Published by Bantam ISBN 9780593156926

Hardcover, $27, 368 pages

There are a small number of series that I impatiently wait for the next book to publish, and Susan Elia MacNeal's WWII spy Maggie Hope series is one of the few. Maggie has taken us from London to Berlin to the coast of Scotland to Paris, and in the latest book, The Hollywood Spy, Maggie is in 1943 Los Angeles to help her former boyfriend discover who killed his fianceé.

Maggie's old beau RAF pilot John Sterling is in Hollywood training pilots for war. He also has a project in the works at Walt Disney Studio, working on an animated film about pilots. Disney has opened up his studio lot for the war effort, in addition to creating films intended to promote the US involvement in the war. 

Maggie's friend and former spy Sarah has a dance role in one of the films, so Maggie is staying with her at the Chateau Marmont hotel. While investigating the drowning of John's fianceé, which the police have ruled an accident, Maggie discovers an ugly underbelly of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles was a hotbed of Nazism until Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. While the Nazis have seemingly gone underground, the Ku Klux Klan is an emerging power. Their anti-Semitism, anti-immigration, and racism attracts people drawn to the White Power movement, including people high up in the Los Angeles police department.

The more Maggie digs, the more she discovers a possible connection between John's fianceé's death and the Nazi sympathizers. But when evidence in the case disappears, Maggie doesn't know who to trust.

MacNeal immerses the reader in 1943 Los Angeles. We visit such iconic places as The Cocoanut Grove, Disney Studios, and Schwab's Pharmacy. Her descriptions of the architectural mishmash of different styles - Moroccan next to Spanish next to Greek next to Roman- highlight that Los Angeles is "a mirage in the desert- suspended between fantasy and reality", a point made more than once. (One house that Maggie visits actually contains fake marble columns from a film set.)

Since this is Los Angeles, many famous people made cameo appearances- Walt Disney, Linus Pauling, Howard Hughes, Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Hattie McDaniel, Igor Stravinsky- that add to the atmosphere of the story. It's also good to have our old friends here- Sarah and John.

I learned so much about a time in the history of Los Angeles with which I was unfamiliar, and a glance at the extensive Sources section at the end are a tribute to the substantial amount of research MacNeal did in crafting this fascinating chapter in Maggie Hope's story.

MacNeal opens the book with two powerful quotes- one from Hitler in 1933 about undermining the morale of the American people, and one from Albert Camus' The Plague about a plague lying dormant and rising again. Both of these (unfortunately) resonate with the political dynamics of today. I don't know if it should be a comfort to know that as a country we have faced these problems before or a disappointment that we still have not reckoned with anti-Semitism and racism.

The Hollywood Spy is the tenth book in the brilliant Maggie Hope series and it's good to see that Maggie has seemingly come through the personal troubles she has faced in the last two books. Fans of Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series should start reading the Maggie Hope books, they're a great companion- both women are strong, intelligent, brave and great inspirations for young women. I highly recommend The Hollywood Spy.

New in Paperback- The King's Justice by Susan Elia MacNeal

The King's Justice by Susan Elia MacNeal

Published by Bantam ISBN 9781984819598

Trade paperback, $16.99, 348 pages

Now that I have binged the entire four seasons of Netflix's The Crown, I couldn't wait to return to the world of WWII in Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope series with her ninth book, The King's Justice.

We last left Maggie on an island in Scotland where she was forced to stay with other British intelligence agents who had been deemed security risks in The Prisoner in the Castle.  (My review here) Now Maggie is back in London, but she is no longer working for British intelligence.

Her job is still dangerous though, as it is 1943 and Maggie is part of a team who dismantles the many unexploded German bombs that lie in wait around London. She is training a young man, a conscientious objector who wants to do his part.

Maggie is dragged back into her past as the man she shot and helped put behind bars, Nicholas Reitter "the Blackout Beast", a wannabe Jack the Ripper, is awaiting sentencing for his crimes. While he is in prison, a copycat killer is on loose.

Reitter, in a Silence of the Lambs scenario, will only talk to Maggie, so she is pressed back into service to help track down the new killer. The scenes between Maggie and Reitter are incredibly tense, something MacNeal excels at as a writer.

MacNeal also does a great deal of research for her Maggie Hope novels, and in this one we learn about the prejudice facing Italian immigrants in Great Britain during WWII. I had no idea that Italian immigrants were rounded up and placed in custody, much like the United States did to Japanese- Americans following Pearl Harbor.

When it becomes apparent that the killer is targeting conscientious objectors, Maggie believes that that the police, including Detective Chief Inspector James Durgin whom Maggie has worked with and cares deeply about, should warn the objectors. Durgin doesn't want to tip off the killer and refuses, which causes Maggie much anguish.

Now that we are back in London after books set in Paris and Scotland, we see the toll that the war is taken on Maggie and her friends. Maggie is drinking way too much, her flatmates Nigel and his wife Charlotte are having marital problems, and her friend Sarah is still struggling after her horrific intelligence mission in Paris.

The King's Justice gives us everything we want in a Maggie Hope novel- a suspenseful mystery to be solved, catching up with Maggie and her friends, and a new look at a piece of WWII history we knew little about. (And as someone who recently visited the Tower of London, I really enjoyed the ravens section, we loved our tour of the Tower.)

 Fans of Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series should begin the Maggie Hope series right away while we await the next Maisie book due in 2021. The new Maggie Hope mystery, The Hollywood Spy, set in 1943 Los Angeles, publishes this summer, and once again the cover is gorgeous. I can't wait!

The King's Justice by Susan Elia MacNeal

The King's Justice by Susan Elia MacNeal
Published by Bantam 9780399593840
Hardcover, $27, 352 pages

Now that I have binged the entire three seasons of Netflix's The Crown, I couldn't wait to return to the world of WWII in Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope series with her ninth book, The King's Justice.

We last left Maggie on an island in Scotland where she was forced to stay with other British intelligence agents who had been deemed security risks in The Prisoner in the Castle.  (my review here) Now Maggie is back in London, but she is no longer working for British intelligence.

Her job is still dangerous though, as it is 1943 and Maggie is part of a team who dismantles the many unexploded German bombs that lie in wait around London. She is training a young man, a conscientious objector who wants to do his part.

Maggie is dragged back into her past as the man she shot and helped put behind bars, Nicholas Reitter "the Blackout Beast", a wannabe Jack the Ripper, is awaiting sentencing for his crimes. While he is in prison, a copycat killer is on loose.

Reitter, in a Silence of the Lambs scenario, will only talk to Maggie, so she is pressed back into service to help track down the new killer. The scenes between Maggie and Reitter are incredibly tense, something MacNeal excels at as a writer.

MacNeal also does a great deal of research for her Maggie Hope novels, and in this one we learn about the prejudice facing Italian immigrants in Great Britain during WWII. I had no idea that Italian immigrants were rounded up and placed in custody, much like the United States did to Japanese- Americans following Pearl Harbor.

When it becomes apparent that the killer is targeting conscientious objectors, Maggie believes that that the police, including Detective Chief Inspector James Durgin whom Maggie has worked with and cares deeply about, should warn the objectors. Durgin doesn't want to tip off the killer and refuses, which causes Maggie much anguish.

Now that we are back in London after books set in Paris and Scotland, we see the toll that the war is taken on Maggie and her friends. Maggie is drinking way too much, her flatmates Nigel and his wife Charlotte are having marital problems, and her friend Sarah is still struggling after her horrific intelligence mission in Paris.

The King's Justice gives us everything we want in a Maggie Hope novel- a suspenseful mystery to be solved, catching up with Maggie and her friends, and a new look at a piece of WWII history we knew little about. (And as someone who recently visited the Tower of London, I really enjoyed the ravens section, we loved our tour of the Tower.)

 Fans of Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series should begin the Maggie Hope series right away while we await the next Maisie book due in 2021.

Friday 5ive- January 31, 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention during the week. Can you believe we are already through the first month of 2020? Time flies by, even during the bleakest winter months.


1)  Saturday evening we were invited to a family dinner at Bacaro, a fantastic little Italian restaurant on the Lower East Side. The food is very authentic Italian, and we had a wonderful time. There is a small bar upstairs, and downstairs is the restaurant, which feels like you are in an Italian tavern in Italy. We had a family table in a separate area, with long benches around the table. It's perfect for small private event, and the 12 of us were very comfortable and we were able to visit with each other in comfort. The photos below are from their Instagram account.

The private table

The pork shank over polenta was delicious

2)  Sunday started off with the sad news that NBA basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his 13 year-old daughter Gigi, and seven other people died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California. Kobe was my younger son's favorite basketball player, as Kobe was to many people my son's age. My older son said that Kobe was the first athlete most people their age really knew. People my age and older will remember feeling the same way when baseball great Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash at the height of his career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, bringing aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. On the day after the crash, I saw this on the NYC Link charging station up the street from me.

3)  Wednesday night, two of us from the Book Cellar took a road trip up to the Barnes & Noble store on 86th Street to listen to authors Beatriz Williams and Lauren Willig talk about their third collaboration with Karen White, All The Ways We Said Goodbye. It's a wonderful story set in three time periods- WWI, WWII, and 1964- featuring three female protagonists and their connection to the Ritz Paris Hotel. It was a fun evening, the ladies really enjoy working together. My blog post on that evening is here.

Beatriz Williams and Lauren Willig

4)  I just finished listening to a true crime podcast, The Shrink Next Door, about an NYC psychiatrist who takes over his patient's life, his business, and gets him to cut off all ties to his only sister and her children. It's a crazy story, told by Joe Nocera of Bloomberg and Wondery (who did the Dirty John podcast). You can find the podcast here. (Thanks to Rick for the suggestion.)

5)  I started reading Susan Elia MacNeal's upcoming novel, The King's Justice, the ninth book in her Maggie Hope series. It's 1943 London, and Maggie has left the SOE, where she had been working as a spy for the British government. Now she works diffusing unexploded bombs that the German had dropped, another dangerous job. She and her friends and roommates all are having problems coping with the stress of living through the war. Maggie is unwillingly drawn back into one of her old cases when a sequential (serial) murderer is on the loose, and it looks like the killer has a connection to a monster she helped put away. It's a terrific read so far, and I'm fearing for poor Maggie who is drinking too much. If you are a fan of Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series, this is the next series you should be reading. I'll post a full review closer to publication date of February 25th. 

The King's Justice

Great Reads by Emily Giffin, Susan Elia MacNeal & Beck Dory-Stein

Reprinted from the Citizen:

Why does summer fly by so fast? If you need a good vacation book or you just want to escape for a few hours at home, this month’s Book Report has some great reads for you.

Author Emily Giffin’s novel All We Wanted will resonate with anyone raising children in a world where social media impacts nearly everyone. Nina Browning leads a charmed life. She and her husband Kirk are part of Nashville’s elite, living in a mansion, attending countless galas, and raising their teenage son, Princeton-bound Finch. 

The perfect veneer cracks when Finch takes a photo of Lyla, a young woman who had passed out drunk at a party. When the photo goes viral, the lives of Finch and Lyla, and their families, are turned upside down.

Lyla is being raised by her single father Tom, and her mother occasionally pops in to wreak havoc. Tom is a working-class guy, and he is infuriated by what he sees as the wealthy getting away with bad, possibly criminal, behavior.

Giffin could have taken an easy way of out the story, but she digs deeper and writes a compelling story about money, privilege, class, social media, the treatment of women, and the values we teach our children. 

Susan Elia MacNeal’s eighth book in her Maggie Hope WWII series, The Prisoner in the Castle is an homage to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Maggie Hope, a British spy whose last assignment was in France for Britain’s SOE, now resides in a deserted castle on a Scottish island with other British spies. 

No one but a few government officials know where they are or why. When a dead body turns up, the spies are concerned, and that concern turns to fear when one by one the residents of the castle are murdered.

Maggie teams up with Sayid, an attractive doctor, to figure out what is going on and to try and stay alive. The problem they all have is knowing whom to trust. They are all spies, trained to gain the trust of people and then betray that trust.

MacNeal does a great deal of research for her books, and if you close your eyes, you’d swear that you are right there in the castle, on that island. There is an incredibly tense scene near the end, with Maggie’s life in danger, that will have your heart pounding as you turn the pages.

For those who prefer nonfiction, Beck Dorey-Stein’s memoir From the Corner of the Oval begins with Beck answering a Craigslist ad for a stenographer in Washington DC. It turns out that the job is at the White House, and Beck would be one of a few people who record President Obama’s public remarks and then type them up for official transcriptions. 

Beck has a boyfriend who works on various political campaigns (including both of Obama’s) so he frequently travels. It takes her awhile, but Beck makes good friends, and even plays basketball on Tuesday nights with the guys.

She also finds herself in love with Jason, a man who works closely with the President. Jason is a womanizer, and he is engaged to a young socialite who lives in Los Angeles. That doesn’t stop him from pursuing Beck and, unbeknownst to her, several other women simultaneously.

They have an on-again, off-again secret affair that leaves Beck desperately unhappy with own dishonesty toward her boyfriend and other friends. 

From the Corner of the Oval is a true story that reads like a terrific novel. Beck Dorey-Stein perfectly blends a young woman’s doomed romance with a fascinating workplace study where the workplace is the Oval Office.

As she travels with President Obama, we get a seat on Air Force One as they go to Europe, Asia, Africa and on an exciting visit to Cuba. We see Secretary Clinton as she spends an hour shaking hands and speaking with the kitchen staff in Myanmar, run next to President Obama on the treadmill as he teases Beck about her speed, and fear the sound of the Rattler, a mean woman who dislikes Beck and gets her nickname from the jangle of the ever-present bangle bracelets warning of her approach.

Beck Dorey-Stein is a fantastic writer and, for anyone who would love a peek at being close to the highest office in the land, this is a must-read. 

“All We Ever Wanted” by Emily Giffin- A-

Published by Ballantine

Hardcover, 334 pages, $28

“The Prisoner in the Castle” by Susan Elia MacNeal- A

Published by Bantam

Hardcover, 320 pages, $26

“From the Corner of the Oval” by Beck Dorey-Stein- A+

Published by Speigel & Grau

Hardcover, 352 pages, $28

Three Great Titles for the End of Summer

Reprinted from auburnpub.com:

It’s hard to believe that summer is almost over. If you want to get in some good last minute reading before the leaves begin to change, this month’s Book Report has a few suggestions.

Don Winslow is best known for his crime thrillers, (“Cartel”) set on the West coast. His latest novel, “The Force” is set in New York City, and it is a propulsive, action-packed crime novel that will leave you breathless.

Denny Malone is the leader of the Manhattan North Special Task Force, known as “Da Force”. They are the alpha cops, the ones you see on the news, making big drug, gun and gang busts, putting the bad guys behind bars and making Northern Manhattan safer. “If there was a secret Da Force didn’t know about, it was because it hadn’t been whispered about or even thought about yet.” 

“Da Force” are supposed to be the good guys, but when the temptation of all that drug money and their desire to provide a good lives for their families collide, trouble follows. The novel opens with hero cop Malone behind bars himself in federal lockup with a big decision to make- protect his family or his partners.

The novel then tells how Malone got there, and it whips along at a breakneck pace. Winslow so submerges the reader into the grittier parts of Upper Manhattan, you actually feel like you’re right there along with him. And if you think only the cops are dirty, let’s just say that no one gets out of this unscathed.

Stephen King calls “The Force” “The Godfather, only with cops”, and that may be the best blurb I have ever read. It utterly describes the vibe you get from reading this heart-pounding book. Winslow dedicates this novel to the law enforcement personnel who lost their lives during the time he wrote the book, and names them all- the list is two and half pages and is a sobering beginning to this outstanding book, which I highly recommend.

Author Susan Elia MacNeal’s WWII heroine Maggie Hope returns in her seventh adventure in “The Paris Spy”. Maggie goes undercover working with the Winston Churchill’s Special Operations Executive in Paris during the German occupation. 

Her work is extremely dangerous, and when an agent who has valuable information about the pending Allied invasion is captured, Maggie and two of her colleagues must find that information and get it back to England, all while looking for the traitor in their midst.

Maggie must also deal with competing intelligence agencies who don’t trust each other, and she has a personal mission- find her missing sister, who was liberated from a concentration camp and hasn’t been seen since.

Maggie and her cohorts risk their lives, and there are many tense scenes in this outstanding entry in this historical mystery. At the end of the book, Maggie faces a troubling decision, one that will resonate in the next book, which I can’t wait to read.

MacNeal does impeccable research for her novels, and “The Paris Spy” is no different. She includes an Historical Notes section at the end, which is fascinating to any WWII history buff, and she gives the reader a list of books she consulted, in case you want to continue your own historical reading.

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” may put people in mind of Elizabeth Taylor. Evelyn Hugo was a glamorous movie star during the glory days of Hollywood, beloved by millions and married to seven men. She has been out of the limelight for years, and an interview with her is coveted by many people. 

Only Hugo knows why she chose a relatively unknown reporter to secretly write her biography, each chapter about one of her seven husbands. Throughout the story, we find out that the love of Hugo’s life was not one of her husbands, but a complete surprise, a relationship she kept hidden from the public out of fear.

The characters in this fascinating novel are so well-drawn, particularly Hugo herself. She is a larger-than-life movie star and she jumps off the page as she tells her amazing story. It reminded me of Adriana Trigiani’s “All The Stars In The Heavens”, and if you are a Turner Classics Movie fan, “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” is a must-read. It’s a heartbreaker.

“The Force” by Don Winslow- A+

Published by WilliamMorrow

Hardcover, $27.99, 482 pages

“The Paris Spy” by Susan Elia MacNeal- A+

Published by Bantam

Hardcover, $26, 301 pages

“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo”- A

Published by Washington Square Press

Hardcover, $26, 400 pages