Review schedule for the rest of 2012

The review schedule for the remainder of 2012 has changed a bit, thus:

August: Vivaldi’s Muse by Sarah Bruce Kelly (also further commentary on the August HNS review of Oleanna by Julie K. Rose)

September: Spirit of Lost Angels by Liza Perrat

October: The Concubine’s Gift by K. Ford K.  and Blomqvist by Michael Hickens

November: Saving Gerda by Lilian Darcy, and Unbidden by Jill Hughey

December: The Other Alexander by Andrew Levkoff

I will work in these other books that I have committed to (due to a lack of willpower and being way too intrigued by the content to turn down!) during this year as well; my time is becoming more manageable now, so I will be able to review more than a single book per month.

-the next two novels in the Sea Witch series by Helen Hollick

Loud, Disorderly, and Boisterous by Adam M. Johnson

Wanting Rita by Elyse Douglas

Andy Leelu by B.L. Gautam

Requiem by Bill Kitson

On the list for next year are more intriguing titles:

Malinalli of the Fifth Sun by Helen Heightsman Gordon

Absolom Rex by K.L. Coones

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I was just looking around the Indie B.R.A.G site to see what was new and I came across these gems that I am adding to my review list for 2013:

Ashford by Melanie Rose: Seventeen year old Anna is a naive American orphan, delighted to find herself on a tour of Europe in the spring of 1939. A feeling of camaraderie with all mankind thrills her as she mingles with throngs of foreigners, but her joy is short-lived. WWII shatters the world.

As fathers and sons, husbands and brothers dive grimly into the trenches, Anna is left stranded in England, disillusioned and afraid. However, this worldwide catastrophe may be the perfect catalyst to mature Anna into the brave young woman she longs to be. Even as the world is shadowed with disaster, Anna finds friends in the kindly Bertram family.

In the midst of all that threatens to tear her world apart, will she find a place to truly belong?

After the Rising by Orna Ross: When Jo Devereux returns to Ireland after an absence of 20 years, the last thing she expects is to end up writing a family history. Growing up in Mucknamore in the 1970s, with her village riven by the divides of a previous time, Jo found family pride brought her nothing but heartbreak and loss. Now, unearthing seventy-year old secrets of love and revenge in a time of war, and a killing that has haunted three generations, she begins to understand why.

In revealing astonishing truths about her mother and grandmother, Jo is brought face-to-face with her own past and her intense relationship with Rory O’Donovan, who still lives in Mucknamore.

Add to that list the Montfort series by Katherine Ashe. How can a person be expected to keep up with all the quality novels out there???

The Summer Line Up

I will soon be completing Helen Hollick’s Sea Witch, and will post a review as soon as I am able. The line up for the next few months is as follows:

May review:The Duke Don’t Dance by Richard Sharp  (All summaries from Amazon.com):

Compressed between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boom were those who became known to some by the ill-chosen name of the Silent Generation. They were those born too late to share in the triumph of the great victory, too early to know only the privilege of the American empire and in too few numbers to assure themselves a proper identity and proper legacy. Despite those attributes, they invented rock and roll, filled the streets in the struggle for racial equality, bled in the heated precipitates of the cold war and opened the doors to the sexual revolution and feminism, her serious-minded sister. Their triumph lay not in their completion of these transitions, but in their survival through them. The Duke Don’t Dance follows the adult lives of men and women who made that journey.

This book may not fall under the category of historical fiction exactly, but it comes close.

June review: The second in Sam Baty’s thriller series, Darkness into Light:

Even though the ferocious battles of World War II have concluded, the world is unfortunately not a safer place. The iron curtain has dropped in front of Eastern Europe, Josef Stalin is focused on world domination, and United States Army nurse Jennifer Haraldsson is on a mission to find her former patient and foe, German POW Otto Bruner. Once attracted to Otto until wartime secrets divided them, Jennifer must know the truth. Does she love him or not? After Otto is transferred to a detention camp in West Germany, he remains devastated by the loss of Jennifer and witnessing the post-war destruction of his beloved Germany only makes it worse. Desperate to win Jennifer back, Otto summons his friend Ernst Peiper to help, but they soon discover they are being targeted by a group of Nazi extremists and must be transferred to another camp. But Otto is ready to risk everything for love and escapes off the transporter truck into the dark of the night. In a last-ditch effort to rendezvous, Otto and Jennifer throw caution to the wind and cross into the other’s territory, never realizing that their unsettled world is much more complicated than they ever imagined.

July review: Eucalyptus and Green Parrots by Lori Eaton:

Virginia Reed has followed her husband, Clem, to Argentina, trading in her mother’s Texas poultry factory for an apartment in Buenos Aires and a cocktail-bright social life among American expatriates. But it is 1943. The Nazis have overrun Europe, Japan dominates the Pacific, and Allied and Axis agents are fighting a secret war for control of Argentina. When Clem’s clandestine activities put her family at risk, Virginia is shaken from her comfortable life and forced to take control of her family’s destiny. As Virginia navigates the political undercurrents of a country struggling to remain neutral in a war that is consuming the world, she finds friends in unlikely places and enemies frighteningly close to home. In the face of conflicting loyalties and desires, Virginia uncovers a hidden strength and a dormant thirst for independence.

I’d like to review Sarah Bruce Kelly’s Vivaldi’s Muse at some point, as it looks like a splendid read, as well as Before the Fall by Orna Ross and The Silk Weaver’s Daughter by Elizabeth Kales. For the August edition of the HNS Indie Reviews, I will be reviewing Oleanna by Julie K. Rose (and will also post comments about the book here). What a wonderful summer of reading ahead!!