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BRANDY

BALLAD OF A PIRATE PRINCESS

An appealing pirate adventure.

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The daughter of pirates reconnects with her past while investigating a diabolical scheme in this historical novel.

In 1829, no pirate is more feared than Katrina Mooney, known as the Scarlet Mistress. For years, Katrina and her husband, Capt. Eric Erasmus, have sailed their ship, The Red Witch, throughout the Caribbean with their daughter, Brandy. When a betrayal by first mate Don Lomoche leads to Eric’s death and the ship’s capture, Katrina places a curse on the vessel that only 15-year-old Brandy can break. Brandy and her uncle Skinner escape to Kingston, Jamaica, where she dyes her distinctive red hair black and he changes his name to Skynyrd. Fifteen years later they run a successful tavern called Katrina’s with a Chinese immigrant named Zhang Yong, an employee and musician, and Davonte, a waitress. Brandy believes she has left the pirate’s life behind her until she meets first mate John Edwards and the crew of the ship The Morning Star. After Edwards and Midshipman Ralphie Austin are attacked by a sailor named Faustin Reece, Brandy and Skynyrd discover that the culprit is connected to Lomoche. When Lomoche conspires with corrupt officials to expand the slave trade in the Caribbean, Brandy discovers the only way to stop him is through reclaiming her family legacy, a mission that grows complicated when she falls in love with the dashing Edwards. This latest novel from Hendrickson is a briskly paced work of historical fiction that seamlessly blends action and a love story. Brandy is an amiable hero whose romance with Edwards unfolds at a leisurely pace as she struggles with the question of whether to reveal her family history to him. Lomoche is an effective villain whose criminal activities lead to well-staged action sequences at the tale’s climax. That said, the dialogue reads like a summary of events. At one point, Austin tells Edwards after their assault: “They explained to the captain of the garrison what had happened earlier at Katrina’s with the one we now know is Faustin Reece. The garrison captain said he talked with one of those black-clad people he calls ‘The Night Watch.’ ”

An appealing pirate adventure.

Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-73451-877-1

Page Count: 254

Publisher: Self

Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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THE WOMEN

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

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THE NIGHTINGALE

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

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