by Samara Parish ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 25, 2021
An intriguing romance debut that centers class struggles along with the love story.
A woman destined to be a duchess finds herself at the bottom of the ton.
Lady Amelia Crofton, diamond of the ton, is finally getting married, but not to the man she’s been engaged to since childhood. No, rather than becoming Lady Wildeforde, she’s being rushed to the altar with Benedict Asterly, son of a footman and noblewoman—“a mere mister.” Benedict thought he was doing a good deed by rescuing Amelia from her overturned carriage in the middle of a snowstorm, but instead, it appears she has been compromised, and both find themselves trapped in a marriage they do not want, far from London. Benedict does have a grand house, courtesy of his mother, who never recovered from her hasty marriage below her station, so he eschews society in favor of his beloved business building steam engines. Amelia, having been raised to be the wife of a duke, can’t do anything practical, like start a fire or cook. She quickly makes friends with Benedict’s little sister and tries to make herself useful. Indeed, before long, Benedict and Amelia do uncover a shared attraction, bolstered by each discovering the other is more complex and intriguing than they had assumed. And they are each grappling with class tensions: The society Amelia was raised for may no longer want her in their ranks, and the community Benedict tries to support may no longer want him, or any relation of the aristocracy, either. Parish’s cleareyed examination of what life was like outside the Regency beau monde makes this debut romance a welcome addition to the genre, allowing readers the usual glimpse into the fashion and gossip of the time while also exploring how many people worked behind the scenes to make those dinners and hunting parties seem so effortless as well as the combined grievance and gratitude they might feel toward their employers. Amelia and Benedict’s story is a classic marriage-of-convenience tale told well, with a handful of intimate scenes, but the couple's relationship primarily blooms through their growing respect for each other’s abilities. Several charming supporting characters are introduced, and readers will look forward to seeing if Parish is able to use future entries in the series to continue her study of the Regency world across class boundaries.
An intriguing romance debut that centers class struggles along with the love story.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5387-0448-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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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
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 2021
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.
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New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
The miseries of the Depression and Dust Bowl years shape the destiny of a Texas family.
“Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. There were times in my journey when I felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going.” We meet Elsa Wolcott in Dalhart, Texas, in 1921, on the eve of her 25th birthday, and wind up with her in California in 1936 in a saga of almost unrelieved woe. Despised by her shallow parents and sisters for being sickly and unattractive—“too tall, too thin, too pale, too unsure of herself”—Elsa escapes their cruelty when a single night of abandon leads to pregnancy and forced marriage to the son of Italian immigrant farmers. Though she finds some joy working the land, tending the animals, and learning her way around Mama Rose's kitchen, her marriage is never happy, the pleasures of early motherhood are brief, and soon the disastrous droughts of the 1930s drive all the farmers of the area to despair and starvation. Elsa's search for a better life for her children takes them out west to California, where things turn out to be even worse. While she never overcomes her low self-esteem about her looks, Elsa displays an iron core of character and courage as she faces dust storms, floods, hunger riots, homelessness, poverty, the misery of migrant labor, bigotry, union busting, violent goons, and more. The pedantic aims of the novel are hard to ignore as Hannah embodies her history lesson in what feels like a series of sepia-toned postcards depicting melodramatic scenes and clichéd emotions.
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2501-7860-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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SEEN & HEARD
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