Next book

GOLDEN CARGOES

The charming spy again gives good value as she unearths secrets in an Elizabethan context.

A wedding invitation plunges Ursula Stannard into one of her oddest adventures.

Although 1589 finds Queen Elizabeth's illegitimate half sister in her 50s, Ursula’s unusual life as a spy has kept her younger than her years. Now she's traveling to Evergreens, a house she's rented to Mistress Joan Mercer, accompanied by her manservant, Roger Brockley, and his wife, Fran Dale, who are more than servants, as well as her son, Harry, and her adopted son, Ben. Joan’s daughter, the beautiful Arabella, is betrothed to Master Sylvester Waters, a wealthy neighbor, but refuses to marry him because she’s in love with Gilbert Gale, a talented local carpenter whose status is nothing compared to Waters'. Arabella refuses to listen to Ursula’s advice; only a severe beating from Joan makes her go through with the wedding. Joan’s sons have done well as captains of ships, though some of the items they own seem much more valuable than their business would account for. Ursula, who never shies away from mysteries, is soon investigating both the sons and a village vendetta against Mother Lee, whose potions help alleviate Joan’s headaches but make her suspect as a witch. Soon after information on piracy is reported at court, Ursula and her friends are looking in earnest for a place where valuables may be hidden. Then Mother Lee is murdered, and Arabella’s marriage gets even unhappier when Waters finds that she’s with child by Gilbert. The mysteries are related and unveiled in an unexpected conclusion.

The charming spy again gives good value as she unearths secrets in an Elizabethan context.

Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-4483-0922-1

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Severn House

Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 244


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller

Next book

THE WOMEN

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

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 244


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller

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

Next book

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

Close Quickview