by Mary Ellis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2015
Ellis, best known for her Amish series (A Widow’s Hope, 2009, etc.), starts her new Secrets of the South mystery series with...
A newly minted private eye bids to enter the big time in the Big Easy.
Nicolette Price, a small-town girl from straitened circumstances, has worked her way through college and acquired her private investigator’s license. Arriving in New Orleans, she hopes to work with her cousin Nate Price, who has his own agency. Shrugging off his suggestion that she go back home, she follows him to a meeting with Hunter Galen, a wealthy socialite with big problems. Hunter and his college roommate, James Nowak, have been running an investment firm whose tactics are not for the faint of heart or poor of purse. In the wake of his old pal’s murder, Hunter discovers that James was running a scheme, complete with double sets of books, to defraud some investors. The detective in charge of the case, who dislikes the rich on principle, is too convinced of Hunter’s guilt to look for other suspects. When Nate gets into trouble, Nicki talks her way into the job of helping Hunter find the truth. Meanwhile, lovely mean girl Ashley Menard, Hunter’s longtime girlfriend, arranges a surprise party at which Hunter feels forced to ask for her hand in marriage. A peacemaker eager to see the best in people, Hunter, who’s fallen for Nicki, finds the courage to break off the engagement before it’s publicly announced. An attempt on Nicki’s life makes her wonder whether it’s the killer or Ashley trying to get Hunter back.
Ellis, best known for her Amish series (A Widow’s Hope, 2009, etc.), starts her new Secrets of the South mystery series with a pleasant love story but not much mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7369-6169-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harvest House
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
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by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1942
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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