The Sandburg Connection by Mark De Castrique

Sam Blackman and his partner, Nakayla Robertson, have a new case.  Having opened a detective agency and riding high on solving several cases in Asheville, NC, they are more than willing to serve as contractors in a medical damages case.  A professor at UNC-Asheville, Janice Wainwright, is sueing the surgeon who performed her back surgery.  She claims that the operation left her in such pain that working is almost impossible.

Sam and Nakayla agree to do surveillance on Janice to see if she is truly disabled, or if they will find her going about her everyday life, lifting heavy objects or performing physical tasks that a person with a valid case couldn't do.  In the case of this surveillance, they follow her to Connemara.  Connemara is the former home of Carl Sandburg, the people's poet, and now a historic landmark.  It is home to the Flat Rock Theatre and near steep hiking trails.  Janice heads up a trail, and sure that this is a breakthrough for the case, Sam follows.  He gets to her location as she screams, falls and is killed.  Was it a slip caused by post-surgery painkillers or did Sam see someone slipping away through the woods after pushing her?

The case is complicated by Janice's daughter, Wendy.  Agreeing to help her, Sam and Nakayla meet her father and aunt, various individuals either in the teaching profession or the arts or interested somehow in Asheville's history.  Each provides a piece of the puzzle.  Can Sam and Nakayla discover what really happened on the mountain that day?

Mark de Castrique grew up in western North Carolina.  He has worked in both television and the film production industry, and still serves as an adjunct professor at UNC-Charlotte.  He has written three Sam Blackman mysteries,  five mysteries in the Burying Barry series and a stand-alone thriller, The 13th Target.  The 13th Target will be reviewed here in the coming weeks.  This book is recommended for mystery fans.  The pace is nice, the characters well-drawn and the kind of people you can imagine meeting and getting to like.

The Duke Don't Dance by Richard Sharp

The Silent Generation.  These are the men and women between The Greatest Generation who won World War II and The Boomers who resulted when that generation came home and made families.  The Silent Generation didn't have a war that everyone supported; they had Vietnam.  They didn't have a President from their ranks.  Instead the political crown skipped from men like Eisenhower and Nixon to John Kennedy.

But what did they have and what did they contribute?  The start of the computer industry that changed the world.  The rise of rock and roll; Janis and Jimi to Motown.  Flower Power.  The desegration acts that gave African Americans their dignity and rights.  The rise of feminism and reliable birth control.  The Cold War  and the post-Bomb era.  An era when going to college became imaginable instead of just reserved for the wealthy and powerful. 

In The Duke Don't Dance, Richard Sharp tells the story of the Silent Generation.  He follows a group of friends from 1960 to the present.  The reader follows their lives and is privy to their loves, their politics, their work and careers.  In doing so, the contributions and issues of this generation come alive. 

Richard Sharp is a member of this generation.  Born in 1941, he traveled with his career all over the world and currently lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Ring Of Fire by Bill Cokas

Wally Gibbs has a master plan.  Not content with being a professor of marketing, he has come up with the ultimate marketing plan; a plan that will make him rich beyond his wildest dreams.  So what if a few deaths have occurred during the planning stages?

The plan involves class rings, gemstones found only on a Greek island, miniature cameras and sophisticated database software.  Can Gibbs be stopped before his plan takes hold and more people die?  The only ones who might be able to stop him are a cartoonist who happens to be one of Gibb's students and a surly campus policeman with issues of his own.  They form an unlikely team determined to stop the plan and expose Gibbs.

Bill Cokas has created an interesting, quirky mystery that is bound to please mystery lovers, especially those with a North Carolina tie.  His characters are interesting and the plot moves along at a perfect pitch.  This book is recommended for mystery lovers who enjoy mysteries that are more cerebral than gory.

Cokas graduated from the University of Carolina-Chapel Hill and then went into the advertisement business, writing ads and commercials.  He is now back in North Carolina, and teaching at the university he graduated from.  Ring of Fire is his most recent mystery, but fans will hope it is not his last.

Enchantment by Orson Scott Card

Just as in the fairy tales, Ivan has discovered his purpose in life.  While in the Ukraine visiting his uncle and working on his graduate dissertation, he comes upon a sleeping princess, whom he kisses and awakes.

That much of the story is familiar, but Orson Scott Card's take on the Sleeping Beauty tale is skewed into an enchanting tale that will leave the reader full of wonder and hope.  There are witches, both good and evil.  A talking bear.  A princess who has no use for a modern man who doesn't even know how to handle a sword.  Spells and charms abound, but are there enough spells in the world to make such dissimilar individuals fall in love and live happily ever afterwards?

Orson Scott Card is well known for his science fiction.  He has won both the Hugo and the Nebula Prizes in consecutive years for Ender's Game and Speaker For The Dead, the only author to receive this honor.  Card has written multiple books, most of them best sellers.  He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

Look Homeward, Angel is Thomas Wolfe's masterwork, the novel that made his reputation.  Born in Asheville, NC, in 1900, he was educated at the University of North Carolina and at Harvard.  He spent his time teaching and traveling, building his reputation as one of America's master novelists.  Wolfe died in 1938.

The novel tells the life of the Gant family in a small mountain town in North Carolina.  It is widely acknowledged that the town is Asheville, NC and that the book is a thinly disguised account of Wolfe's own life there.

The Gant family was made of Oliver and Eliza Gant and their children, Steve, Luke, the twins Ben and Grover, the girls Daisy and Helen, and the baby, Eugene.  Eugene is the individual whose life most closely mimics Wolfe's own.  The family is portrayed for the twenty years of Eugene's childhood and early manhood, as he grows up and learns that he must move on to achieve what he wants from life.

The daily lives of the Gant family are richly portrayed, each detail building upon the next to demonstrate daily life in the mountain region of North Carolina from 1900 to 1920.  Oliver is a stone mason, Eliza becomes the owner of a boardinghouse.  They both are so consumed with the thought of money and what it takes to make a living that they neglected the emotional lives of their children.  The children are left to provide emotional support for each other, to force their way through life trying, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing to achieve their goals.

Education was a great good, although expensive and those who had the opportunity to get an education were reminded daily of their great fortune.  Wolfe details the daily working life of laborers, of those revered in small towns such as lawyers, doctors and politicians.  He covers the relationships between men and women, and those between the races.   The first Great War and the iinfluenza epidemic are covered.  The United States was changing and the Gant family is a representation of how the country changed over this time period.

This book is recommended for readers interested in knowing how daily life was in western North Carolina during the early years of the 19th century as the population moved from a rural to a city focus.  It is intricately detailed and moves the reader through the daily life of this family and the constant questions of why we are here and what we are to do with our lives. 

The Traitor's Wife by Susan Higginbotham

The Traitor's Wife is the story of Eleanor de Clare and her love for and marriage to Hugh le Despenser, known as Hugh the Younger in the early 1300's in England.  The couple were both royalty and highly placed politically.  Eleanor was the granddaughter of Edward the I and the niece of the current king, Edward the II.  Hugh's father, Hugh the Elder was a trusted advisor of the King.

The book follows the couple over their entire lives together, through their marriage, their nine children, and their political ups and down in a tumultuous period in English history.  The reader will be surprised at the constant political maneuvering that led to treachery and betrayals, to a family being feted one day and scorned or imprisoned the next.  The country was in upheaval as the nobles tried to rein in the power of their kings and force them to rule in a manner they approved of. 

As the years passed, Hugh and Eleanor became ever more entangled in court affairs.  Hugh became the King's Chamberlain, basically the King's right-hand man.  He was the conduit between others and the King, and Hugh used this position to enrich himself and become ever more powerful.  Over the years, Edward and his queen, Isabella from France, became estranged.  Isabella eventually joined forces with her lover, Roger Mortimer, and they enlisted enough support from the nobles to force Edward to abdicate in favor of his son. 

This was disastrous for Hugh and Eleanor.  Hugh was arrested and given a traitor's death, while Eleanor and her oldest son were imprisoned off and on for many years.  Eleanor was left with nine children and the Queen's enmity.

This is a richly written, painstakingly researched account of one of England's leading families.  The Princess of Wale, Lady Diana, was a descendant of Hugh and Eleanor.  Although the reader will learn much about 13th century England and the military and political forces sweeping the country, The Traitor's Wife is above all a love story between Hugh and Eleanor.  This book is highly recommended for readers of historical fiction.

Susan Higginbotham is an attorney by education, and currently in addition to writing, works for a legal publisher.  She lives in Apex, North Carolina.  The Traitor's Wife was her first book, published in 2005 and republished in 2008 by Sourcebooks.  It received ForeWord Magazine's 2005 Silver Award for historical fiction and the 2008 Independent Publisher's Award for Historical/Military Fiction.

The Watery Part Of The World by Michael Parker

Michael Parker's hauntingly beautiful novel, The Watery Part Of The World, tells the story of one of North Carolina's barrier islands, Yaupon Island.  A tiny strip of sand between the ocean and the sound, it serves as the land's first break in the water; a tough land where survival demands the same toughness from its inhabitants.

The novel moves in time between the early 1800's to the present.  The earlier time is the story of the island's first inhabitants; shipwreck survivors, pirates, fishermen and slaves.  Among these is Theodosia Burr Alston, an aristocrat.  Daughter of the Vice-President, Aaron Burr and wife of Joseph Alston, the governor of South Carolina, she is brought to the island where her ship is wrecked by pirates.  She survives with the help of Whaley, a man who fights for her release by the outlaws and takes her as his wife.  She lives out her life in this new environment, unsure that her former privileged life had ever really existed.

Fast forward to the future.  After decades when the island thrived as a tight community, it has dwindled down to three people.  Theodosia and Maggie Whaley are the great-great-great-granddaughters of Theodosia and Whaley.  Woodrow Thornton is the descendant of the slave that Whaley bought and freed and who lived out his life on the island.  Woodrow takes care of the two white women, even at the expense of his own life.  Woodrow is married and he and Sarah have a large family.  Over the years, all drift off to the mainland, but Woodrow refuses to leave his responsibility to the Whaley women, even when Sarah dies. 

Parker has written a book that explores the ties that people have to specific landscapes and places; how the land can shape lives and the relationships that grow there.  It is a grand mixture of love and duty, of the relationship between black and white people in the South, of the toughness and will to survive, of an old culture whose vestiges remain.  This is not the 'beach' of tourists and gaudiness; it is the coast, stripped down to the mechanisms of survival and the love that allows people to survive there.  This book is highly recommended to all readers who want to understand one of the cultures of North Carolina.  Michael Parker is a professor in the MFA writing program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

NC Writer's Workshop

POPULAR FALL WRITERS’ RETREATS NOW OPEN FOR REGISTRATION

Writers of fiction, memoir, poetry and even music can now register for an annual workshop known for helping seasoned writers and first-timers alike to recharge their creative batteries in one of North Carolina’s most glorious mountain settings.

Applications are being accepted on a first-come, first-served basis for this year’s Table Rock Writers Workshop, to be held Sept. 17 -21 at the rustic Blue Ridge Mountain artists’ resort, Wildacres Retreat.

SOLATIDO, a southern singer/songwriters’ workshop that runs concurrently in adjacent facilities at Wildacres, is also open for registration.  Table Rock, originally known as the Duke University Writers’ Workshop, was reorganized in 2010 and continues with the same leadership and philosophy of support for writers of all genres and levels of experience.

Georgann Eubanks, who has directed the popular literary workshops for more than 20 years, also runs Solatido.  Table Rock enrolls a maximum of 50 writers, using a non-competitive, first-come, first-served application process. Eubanks said some registrants are returnees, but newcomers always infuse the weeklong sessions with creative diversity.

The faculty for Table Rock includes North Carolina writers Abigail DeWitt, Darnell Arnoult, Anna Jean Mayhew and Scott Huler. This year participants can also choose to take advantage of a first-time Reader-in Residence, Dawn Shamp. Writers can submit up to 25 pages of manuscript and Dawn will provide a detailed critique that includes copy editing and structural and technical advice.

Music producer and composer Richard Putnam leads this year’s Solatido workshop. The keyboardist and arranger is comfortable with all musical styles and has been a session player in the Southeast for 30 years.

“This is a unique opportunity for participants to have quality time with excellent instructors, away from day-to-day distractions,” said Eubanks. “And the individual and group discussions led by the experienced, published writers on the Table Rock faculty as well as the polished, savvy musicians of Solatido are made even better by the breathtaking surroundings.

More information is at www.tablerockwriters.com and http://www.solatido-workshop.net/. 
Contact Cindy Campbell, 919.923.8857, cincam02@gmail.com

A Lovely, Indecent Departure by Steven Lee Gilbert

Anna had to leave.  Caught in a marriage with a man who needed to control her every move, she left for her sanity.  But she never meant to leave Oliver, her five year old son.  When Evan, her ex-husband, tries to manipulate her through Oliver, making her joint custody more and and more difficult, she makes a momentous decision.

Since Anna has joint citizenship with both the United States and Italy, she is able to take Oliver and flee overseas.  She leaves everything else behind; job, house, family, friends.  Her remote relatives, most of whom she hasn't seen since she was a small girl, help her to get reestablished in Florence.  But can Evan ever concede failure in what he regards as a battle to establish his rightful dominance?

Evan enlists the big guns.  He goes to the police, for Anna has indeed committed a crime, kidnapping.  He goes to the press to make sure his side of the story is the one that gets told.  Finally, after months with no results, he hires a private investigator to locate Anna and kidnap Oliver back.  Evan's single focus brings the rest of his world into jeopardy; his job and marriage soon show the cracks of his obsession. 

Steven Gilbert has written a masterful debut novel.  The reader can empathize with each character in turn and the motives that drive their actions.  The writing is crisp and spare, yet portrays each side of this situation; mother, father, law enforcement, family and friends, fully.  Gilbert lives in the Piedmont region of NC.  In 2007 he was the recipient of a Durham Arts Council Emerging Artist Grant for Literature.  A Lovely, Indecent Departure is recommended for all readers interested in a compelling story and excellent character portrayal. 

North Carolina Tribute Month

I am lucky enough to live in one of the best states in the country, North Carolina.  We have it all.  There are beaches with wide sandy shores and mountains with steep climbs and gorgeous foliage.  There are bustling cities and rural paradises.  We have a thriving public university system and a large community college system.  Did I mention the North Carolina Tarheels, one of my obsessions outside of reading?  There is wonderful seafood, barbecue and apple butter from the mountains.  There is a thriving pottery industry and some of the most beautiful furniture every created.

North Carolina also has wonderful authors.  Some of these include Clyde Edgerton, Betsy Byar, Srah Dessen, Charles Frazier, Kaye Gibbons, Margaret Maron, Tom Robbins, O'Henry, Maya Angelou, Orson Scott Card, Doris Betts, Fred Chapell and Patricia Cornwell.  Others are Marianne Gingher, Michael Parker, Thomas Wolfe, Michael Malone, Jil McCorkle, Robert Morgan and Ron Rash.  There are new NC authors just hitting their stride like Wiley Cash.

I've decided to set aside June to celebrate all things North Carolina.  All books reviewed in June will either be by a NC author (born here or currently living here) or have a North Carolina location.  I hope you will enjoy this month as much as I plan to!

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

The mountains of North Carolina have their own culture.  The families have lived in their own specific valley for years and everyone knows everyone else's business; whose farm is doing well, who is drinking a bit too much, who is sleeping with whom.  It is a culture ripe to grow feuds; an atmosphere where wrongs can be brooded about and allowed to fester for generations. Loyalty and betrayal are everyday affairs that echo across the years.

It is also a culture in which religion can play a large part.  This is the land of small rural churches where some of the more fundamentalist beliefs play out.  Churches where snake-handling or poison drinking to prove belief that God will protect the righteous is not unusual.  Churches where charismatic preachers can hold huge influence over the families that attend their churches.

Jess Hall is a curious young boy, living on a farm with his parents and his older brother, Christopher, known as Stump to everyone.  Stump is a mute and Jess is protective of him even though he is the younger.  The boys stumble into a secret that will have consequences that impact the entire community and make life change in ways they could never foresee.

A Land More Kind Than Home is Wiley Cash's debut novel.  He grew up in this area of North Carolina and his portrayal of the area brings it to life.  The plotting is intricate and the pacing is excellent.  The characters are portrayed realistically.  This book is recommended for readers interested in family relationships.

The Cradle In The Grave by Sophie Hannah

A killer is on the loose in England and he has very specific targets. He is obsessed with the topic of women accused of killing their babies. Some of these women have been convicted, some found not guilty. Some have been released on appeal to a general consensus that they were innocent, while others have been released but may well have done the crime. The obsession spreads further to doctors who testified either for the prosecution or the defense, especially one doctor, who is about to have her license revoked due to her testimony in scores of these cases.

Fliss Benson becomes entangled in this web due to her work. She works in television documentary production and is an assistant producer at a company whose star is determined to tell the story of these women. He perceives them all as innocent, and is instrumental in getting several released on appeal and in hounding the doctor who was instrumental in putting them behind bars with her expert testimony. Suddenly, the star decides to leave for another company and the documentary is dumped in Fliss’ lap.

One of the released women is terrorized on the street and then another one is killed. The killer leaves a card with four rows of what appear to be random numbers on each of their bodies. Fliss is pulled even further into the mystery when she begins to receive the same cards with the same numbers. Can she solve the mystery before the killer targets her?
Sophie Hannah has written a series of taut, engaging mysteries. The characterizations are fresh and striking. The interplay and politics in the police department are worth reading the book for, with the interesting character of DC Simon Waterhouse, a detective who can figure out the most complex motivations. This book was originally published in England as A Room Swept White. Readers of mysteries will be captivated and rush to read more of Hannah’s work.

Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

In Berlin, between World War I and II, jazz was the thing. Black musicians flocked there and to Paris, fleeing the discrimination at home. One group formed then had members from all over. There were Sid and Chip, the bass player and drummer, childhood friends who came over from Baltimore. Ernst was a German, son of a rich and powerful industrialist. Big Fritz was also German, as was Paul, the group's only Jewish member.

Then there was Hieronymus, or Hiero Falk, the band's trumpeter. Hiero is young, barely twenty, a decade or so younger than the rest of the band. He is also German, but most people would be surprised to learn this. Born of a German mother and a Senegalese father, he is one of a handful of 'half-bloods' born in a region where Senegalese troops had been stationed. These children were not accepted but shunned and singled out for unfair treatment. But Hiero has a gift; he plays the trumpet in a manner that rivals the king of all trumpeters, Louis Armstrong.

By 1939, things had gotten bad in Berlin. The SS were everywhere, targeting Jews first, but also blacks and other minorities. Jazz was denounced as savage music not worthy of a true German's attention. As tensions mount and the men start to fear for their lives, a woman appears. She is Deliliah Brown, the singer in Louis Armstrong's band, and she wants them to come to Paris and play with Louis. After Paul is captured on the streets one day, the men decide to go there.

Once there, things are better for a time, but not for long. Dissension starts to strain the band as members vie for Deliliah's attention and time to record. The group falls apart when Hiero is swept up and sent to a camp, but Sid manages to sneak out one precious recording, 'Half-Blood Blues' when he and Chip go back to America that makes the group's reputation. Hiero survives the war, but dies soon afterward.
As the book opens, Chip and Sid are on their way to a Hiero Falk Festival in Berlin, put together by a German documentary maker who wants to reestablish the glory of those days when jazz ruled the music scene. This is surprising enough, but Chip has a shock in his pocket. It turns out that Hiero did not die, but has been living in obscurity for forty years. The men are reunited and all the old disagreements and tensions are resolved.
Esi Edugyan has written a glorious book. The reader is transported into the world of jazz musicians, where the music is the thing, the only thing that matters. The tension and danger of the Nazi government is strikingly portrayed, and how it swept apart friends and families and whole generations of people. There is friendship and betrayal, sacrifice and pain along with a determination to survive and make the music survival. This book was long-listed for the Mann Booker Prize and is recommended for all readers.

Scarlet Rose by Julia Madeleine

In her day, Sylvia had it all.  Men adored her and flocked to see her dance.  She was a stripper known as Scarlet Rose and she basked in the admiration.  After all, it was no more than her due; she was made to be rich and adored.

But life doesn't always turn out the way a young girl dreams of.  Now, Sylvia is middle-aged, fat and dumpy, living on handouts from her daughter, Fiona.  She was dragged down by motherhood, kept from what she knew was her rightful place by the demands of three kids.  Now that they were grown, they owed her.  She put Fiona out as a stripper and prostitute at age sixteen.  Suzanne escaped to the streets and drug addiction while her son is in prison.  There there was her angel, her baby, another son who was kidnapped when he was four, perhaps by a former lover, perhaps by a stranger.  He is now back in town, ready to be reunited with his vision of a perfect mother and willing to do Sylvia's bidding.

When her use of her son goes awry, Sylvia flees town, forced once again by a cruel world to figure out how to survive.  Never mind that she tried to force her son to kill her daughters, ingrates that resented supporting her lavish ways.  She should have been able to get enough money from her schemes to live as she wanted.  Now, she will have to figure out a new way to get her dreams, and in Sylvia's world, if you stand between her and what she wants, your life has a short shelf life.

Julia Madeleine has created a woman in Sylvia who the reader will not soon forget.  Totally self-absorbed, the picture of narcissism, she blunders from situation to situation, using others to meet her goals and fulfill her self-image of what life owes her.  This book is recommended for readers of suspense novels.

Raylan by Elmore Leonard

Fan's of FX TV channel's hit show, Justified, will be excited to read Elmore Leonard's new book, Raylan.  Justified is based on a short story by Leonard where the characters in the show were introduced.  Raylan Givens is a U.S. Marshall who grew up in Harlan County, Kentucky.  He worked in the coal mines as most men did, but got out as soon as he could and ended up in law enforcement.  After a showdown in Florida where he shot and killed a fugitive, he is transferred back to Kentucky.

Raylan is back with the folks he grew up with; his family and former friends, but things are not the same.  Many of those he knew break the law routinely, and he is now responsible for bringing them in when they do so.  The book is full of shady characters, from pot-growing and Oxcy selling drug dealers to a female coal-mine owner's thug, from poker players to men who will do anything for a buck.  One of the more interesting characters is Boyd Crowder, a former miner who is now The Head of Disagreements for the coal mine owners.  There are female bank robbers and a kidney-stealing ring who steals kidneys from the owners and then ransoms them back.

Raylan is a laconic Marshall who speaks little but what he says others need to listen to.  He is known for his ability to outdraw and shoot to kill when needed.  The violence is casual but deadly, and the stories in the book contain betrayal and loyalty, shifting alliances and an underworld of criminals who are determined to rule the area.  This book is recommended for crime novel readers. 

Not Untrue And Not Unkind by Ed O'Loughlin

Owen Simmons has a comfortable life these days.  His work as a foreign correspondent over, he potters around in the newspaper's home office, doing little real work but a fixture nonetheless.  The death of an office mate and the discovery of an old file of Simmons' stories from his time in Africa leads him to wonder why his colleague was interested in his time there and forces him back in his mind to relive those days.

Owen went to Africa as a stringer, a journalist who wrote articles hoping to sell them afterwards to someone.  He falls in with the journalist circle there, those with full-time jobs, photographers, TV journalists, print journalists.  Although they are all after the same story, they become a society, helping each other and making friends and lovers within the group.  Owen travels and befriends various members of the group, including a woman journalist he loves but feels he knows little about.

Owen spends several years there in the 1990's, covering the Rwandan genocide and the various national uprisings.  The group becomes hardened to violence and death as they move from one hot spot to another, seeing how little any one death meant in the grand scheme of things.  Owen leaves when he is caught in an ambush and gravely wounded.  Several of his friends are also in the ambush, and what happened that day and their various fates are the mainspring of the book. There is also a secret associated with the ambush that serves as a focal point of the novel.

Ed O'Loughlin writes from first-hand experience, as he himself spent time in Africa as a correspondent for the Irish Times.  Readers will be interested in this subset of war, those who document it so that most of us can experience it comfortably in an armchair.  He accurately portrays the suddenness of violence and death in a war zone, and how banal it all becomes when it is an everyday occurrence. Not Untrue And Not Unkind was a Mann Booker Prize nominee in 2009.  This book is recommended for adult readers interested in how world events are reported and the lives of journalists.

Over 55? Check out Novel Seniors!

Indie Book Collective, a grand group of folks, has started a website and giveaway program for seniors; anyone over fifty-five.  Each month you can choose an e-book as a free gift; to keep and read at your leisure. 

The books are in the categories of mystery/thrillers, science fiction/fantasy, fiction, paranormal romance, historical romance and romance.  Each categories has subsets, so there are a ton of books!

Don't have a Kindle?  Don't worry.  If you have any kind of electronic device (computer, IPad, smartphone, etc), you can download the Kindle reading application to it and take advantage of this great offer.  There are directions on how to do this on Amazon's Kindle page. 

Interested?  Go to the website, http://novelseniors.com/  to sign up on the right hand side.  You can view this month's books, get your questions answered, and find out all about this marvelous opportunity.  Thanks to IBC, what a grand idea.

Blue Eyes by Jerome Charyn

Detective Manfred Coen is a product of the streets.  Raised in the '40's in New York City in the Bronx, he grows up with Jewish gangsters, con men, policemen and politicians.  Most guys gravitated either to the police or the gangs, and Coen ends up in the police.  He is the protege of Captain Issac Sidel and is disliked by the rank and file both for his mentor and for his blond hair, blue-eyed Hollywood handsome good looks.

But times change.  Sidel is now out of the force, disgraced in a bribery scandal.  Coen floats from precinct to precinct, never finding a home but still the most effective cop the force has on the streets.  His world is full of Chinese Hispanic gunman, a clubfooted confidential informer, a gangster's son who is a man with the mind of a child, a rich girl who ends up as a porn star and stripper, an ex-wife who married a dentist the second time around, a ping-pong club owner.  All have roots in Coen's past and he moves among them, taking what he needs from each to solve the case while protecting them all the best he can.

There are hints of a white slavery ring operating out of New York and sending girls to Mexico to become brides.  There are currents and cross-currents of shakeups and realignments in the gang structure that has held true for decades.  Coen seems to be the one who can solve the cases; but is he also being manipulated behind the scenes?

Jerome Charyn is an important figure in American literature.  Two of his thirty books have been New York Times Notable Books.  Michael Chabon calls him “one of the most important writers in American literature.”  Blue Eyes was released in 1974 and is a gritty representation of the world Charyn grew up in.  The language can be jarring with street talk and name-calling, but the sense of place is done superbly.  There are picturesque characters, loyalties and betrayals that stretch across decades, plots and counterplots.  This book is recommended for mystery readers and for those interested in reading about the streets of New York City in the '60's and '70's.

The Last Romanov by Dora Levy Mossanen

Darya Borodina is one hundred and four years old, living in the old Russian Entertainment Palace among the ruins, haunted by her life and her time with the Romanovs.  Born of royal parents who were close friends with the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, Darya lost her parents as a teen and was brought to live in the royal household.  There she became a companion to the royal children, the four Duchesses and the heir apparent.  Darya had healing powers which were important since the heir had hemophilia and could die at any moment.

We watch royal life through Darya's eyes.  Drawn to the arts, she and the Empress create an artistic salon to showcase the talents of Russia's sculptors, artists and ballet masters.  We see the strife and pain that comes as Russia starts to awake and decide that being ruled by the royal aristocracy will not work.  Darya is torn between these two worlds.  She is loyal to the royal family, but madly in love with one of the artists, a Jewish painter she knows she can never acknowledge publicly.  Through him, she starts to see the turmoil that will soon tear the country apart.

After the Revolution and the assassination of the Royal Family, what keeps Darya alive is her belief that the heir was not killed that horrible day with the rest of the family; that her magic portions kept him alive.  She spends decades searching for him, and now she receives word that 'the last Romanov' has been found.  This starts her final journey to determine the truth once and for all.

The Last Romanov is a marvelous book.  Steeped in history and full of the haunting brooding history of the Russian Empire, the reader is transported to another time and place.  Mossanen has created an interesting heroine in Darya to portray both sides of the Revolution and the pain that the conflict between the sides brought to both.  This book is recommended to historical fiction readers and those interested in the strong women or Russian history.

True Love Way by Nancy Scrofano

Marlo Spencer's dreams are about to come true.  Twelve years ago, the love of her life, Josh, abandoned her to attend chef school in Paris and stayed in France since.  While Marlo has dated, there's been no one serious as she can't get over Josh.  She spends her time with her best friend, Savannah and her daughter.  Savannah was also abandoned by a high school sweetheart and has been a single parent for eleven years.  Marlo's other mainstay is Savannah's brother, Nik.  Nik was too much older to hang with the girls in high school but now that he and Marlo are living in the same city away from their families, they have formed a close friendship.

But now Marlo has a decision to make.  She receives an email after twelve years from Josh.  Josh says he is back in town and has never forgotten Marlo.  He reminds her of the pact they made in high school to get married to each other if neither was married at age thirty, and asks her to come back to town to visit and get reacquainted.  Marlo is overjoyed and nervous all at once.  Will things be the same?  Will Josh explain why he left her alone?

She goes back home, accompanied by Nik who is ready for a family visit.  Once there, she meets up with Josh, but things seem a bit off.  As the week goes on, secrets her friends have been keeping from her start to emerge, along with a sense that she may need to reevaluate her true feelings.  Will true love's way make the decision for Marlo?

Nancy Scrofano has written a breezy, interesting romance that keeps the reader turning the pages to see what choices Marlo will make.  Marlo is a quirky character, loyal to a fault, but determined not to change.  Her favorite things are from the past; old TV shows from the 1960's and 1970's, when life was simpler and every issue could be solved during a half hour sitcom.  Will her life follow the same path, or will Marlo discover that real life is more complicated and more rewarding?  This book is recommended for readers who like romance and modern day relationships.