Svetlana's Reads and Views

Name of Book: The Root of Murder Author: Lauren Carr ISBN:   B07NLDJ9FQ Publisher: Acorn Book Services Part of a Series: Lovers in Crime #4 Type of book: West Virginia, marriage, running the farm, upcoming wedding, dreams, mystery, murder, hidden life, second chances, modern times Year it was published: 2019 Summary: Homicide Detective Cameron Gates learned long ago that there is no such thing as a typical murder case. Each mystery is special in its own right—especially for the family of the victim. The homicide of a successful executive, husband, and father seems open and shut when the murder weapon is found in his estranged son-in-law’s possession. The circumstantial evidence is so damning that when her step-son, J.J. Thornton, agrees to act as the defendant’s public defender, he assumes his first murder case will be a loss. Only the report of a missing husband proves that this case is not as open and shut as it seems. Strap on your seat belts for a wil...

Name of Book: Queens GAMBIT Author: Bradley Harper ISBN: 978-1-64506-001-7 Publisher: Seventh Street Books Part of a Series: Margaret Harkness Mystery Type of book: 1881, 1897, communism, socialism, Great Britain, mystery, diamond Jubilee, Queen Victoria, Germany, diplomatic relationships, assassinations, family Year it was published: 2019 Summary: Spring, 1897. London. Margaret Harkness, now in her early forties, must leave England for her health but lacks the funds. A letter arrives from her old friend Professor Bell, her old comrade in the hunt for Jack the Ripper and the real-life inspiration for Sherlock Homes. Bell invites her to join him in Germany on a mysterious mission for the German government involving the loss of state secrets to Anarchists. The resolution of this commission leads to her being stalked through the streets of London by a vengeful man armed with a powerful and nearly silent air rifle who has both Margaret and Queen Victoria in his sigh...

Name of Book: The body in Griffith PARK Author:  Jennifer Kincheloe ISBN: 978-1-63388-540-0 Publisher: Seventh Street Books Part of a Series: Anna Blanc Mysteries #3 Type of book : California, 1908s, detective work, women, prostitutes, police matron duties, relationship, family, murder, humor, traveling, treatment of genders, Year it was published: 2019 Summary: Los Angeles, 1908. Anna Blanc is a former so-so socialite, a flailing police matron, and a killer detective. Ex-heiress, Anna Blanc, is precariously employed by the Los Angeles Police Department, reforming delinquent children and minding lady jailbirds. What she really wants is to hunt criminals and be alone with Detective Joe Singer--both no-nos that could get her fired. On a lover's tryst in Griffith Park, Anna and Joe discover the body of a young gambler. Anna can't resist. She's on the case. With a murder to solve and her police matron duties piling up, a young girl shows up at Central St...

Name of Book: Killer in the band Author: Lauren Carr ISBN:  B01M193ICR Publisher: Acorn Book services Part of a Series: Lovers in Crime #3 Type of book: mystery, farm, music, band, talent, animals, horses, loyalty, horse sense, marriage, crime, animal whisperer, older woman/ younger male relationship, making peace, lawyers, study, determination Year it was published: 2016 Summary:  It's a Summer of Love & Murder! Joshua’s eldest son, Joshua Thornton Jr. (J.J.) has graduated at the top of his class from law school and returns home to spend the summer studying for the bar exam. However, to Joshua's and Cameron's shock and dismay, J.J. moves into the main house at Russell Ridge Farm and Orchards, the largest dairy farm in the Ohio Valley, in order to rekindle a romance with Suellen Russell, the one-time leader of a rock who is twice his age. Quickly, they learn that she has a deep dark secret. The move brings long buried tensions between the fat...

Title of the book: No past tense; love and survival in the shadow of the Holocaust Author: D.Z. Stone Publisher: Vallentine Mitchell Publishing Date: 2019 ISBN: 978-1912676-11-8 Summary: No Past Tense is the biography of Katarina (Kati) Kellner and William (Willi) Salcer, two Czech Jews who as teenagers were swept up by the Holocaust in Hungary and survived Auschwitz and Mauthausen, respectively. Covering their entire lives, weaving in first person ‘real time’ voices as if watching a documentary about themselves, the unique structure of No Past Tense provides a distinctive ‘whole life’ view of the Holocaust. The book begins with their childhoods, education in Budapest, and 16-year-old Kati meeting 19-year-old Willi in the Jewish ghetto in Plesivec, a Slovak village annexed by Hungary in 1938. After liberation from the camps they returned to discover most Jews were gone, and the villagers did not want them back. In defiance, Kati took up residence in a shed on her ...

Name of Book: The unity game Author:  Leonora Meriel ISBN: 978-1-911079-43-9 Publisher: Granite Cloud Type of book: aliens, philosophy, evolution, thought, mathematics, ambition, unity, emotion, humanity, keys, modern times, heaven, afterlife Year it was published: 2017 Summary: WHAT IF THE EARTH YOU KNEW WAS JUST THE BEGINNING? A New York banker is descending into madness. A being from an advanced civilization is racing to stay alive. A dead man must unlock the secrets of an unknown dimension to save his loved ones. From the visions of Socrates in ancient Athens, to the birth of free will aboard a spaceship headed to Earth, The Unity Game tells a story of hope and redemption in a universe more ingenious and surprising than you ever thought possible. Metaphysical thriller and interstellar mystery, this is a 'complex, ambitious and thought-provoking novel' from an exciting and original new voice in fiction. Characters: Main characters include David...

Title of the book: The new evil; understanding the emergence of modern violent crime Author: Michael H. Stone, MD and Gary BRUCATO, PhD Publisher: Prometheus Books Publishing Date: 2019 ISBN: 978-1-63388-532-5 Summary: A CHILLING FOLLOW-UP TO THE POPULAR TRUE CRIME BOOK THE ANATOMY OF EVIL Revisiting Dr. Michael Stone's groundbreaking 22-level Gradations of Evil Scale, a hierarchy of evil behavior first introduced in the book The Anatomy of Evil, Stone and Dr. Gary Brucato, a fellow violence and serious psychopathology expert, here provide even more detail, using dozens of cases to exemplify the categories along the continuum. The New Evil also presents compelling evidence that, since a cultural tipping-point in the 1960s, certain types of violent crime have emerged that in earlier decades never or very rarely occurred. The authors examine the biological and psychiatric factors behind serial killing, serial rape, torture, mass and spree murders, and other severe...

Name of Book: The third daughter Author: Talia Carner ISBN: 978-0-06-289688-9 Publisher: William Morrow Type of book: Russia, prostitution, Argentina, shtetls, 1889-1897, south America, life, dancing, family, friends, tricked, Zwi Migdal, loyalty Year it was published: 2019 Summary: From the author of Jerusalem Maiden comes a remarkable story, inspired by little-known true events, about the thousands of young Jewish women who were trafficked into prostitution at the turn of the 20th century, and whose subjugation helped build Buenos Aires. The turn of the 20th century finds fourteen-year-old Batya in the Russian countryside, fleeing   with her family endless pogroms. Desperate, her father leaps at the opportunity to marry Batya to a worldly, wealthy stranger who can guarantee his daughter an easy life and passage to America.  Feeling like a princess in a fairytale, Batya leaves her old life behind as she is whisked away to a new world. But soon she...

Name of Book: An unorthodox match Author: Naomi Ragen ISBN: 978-1-250-25527-3 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Type of book: orthodox and/Or Hassidic Judaism, faith, modern times, recovery, matchmaker, New York, family, community, support, romance, Baal teshuva, widower, surviving, struggling, modern world vs old world, coming home Year it was published: 2019 Summary: California girl Lola has her life all set up: business degree, handsome fiancé, fast track career, when suddenly, without warning, everything tragically implodes. After years fruitlessly searching for love, marriage, and children, she decides to take the radical step of seeking spirituality and meaning far outside the parameters of modern life in the insular, ultraorthodox enclave of Boro Park, Brooklyn. There, fate brings her to the dysfunctional home of newly-widowed Jacob, a devout Torah scholar, whose life is also in turmoil, and whose small children are aching for the kindness of a womanly touch. ...

Title of the book: Alice and Gerald: a homicidal love story Author: Ron FRANSCELL Publisher: Prometheus Books Publishing Date: 2019 ISBN: 978-1-63388-512-7 Summary: True-crime master Ron Franscell tells the grisly story of a cold case involving multiple murders committed by a husband-and-wife team. The appalling details are made even more vivid by the author's familiarity with the Wyoming times and places that formed the backdrop of his national bestseller The Darkest Night. Would you kill for love? After Alice, a desperate young mother in a gritty Wyoming boomtown, kills her husband in 1974 and dumps his body where it will never be found, she slips away and starts a new life with a new love. But when her new love's ex-wife and two kids start demanding more of him, Alice delivers an ultimatum: Fix the problem or lose her forever. With Alice's help, he "fixes" the problem in an extraordinarily ghastly way ... and they live happily ever after. T...

I feel very proud of myself for September, mainly because I finished pretty much finished almost all my planned reads for September,. so go me, yay! (Now writing the reviews is another matter...) so what plans do I have for my birthday month, the month I turn 34? A lot, I believe. For my birthday month, my plans include traveling to Indiana USA in 1860s and current time as well as traveling to Ireland for my Fresh Fiction reads. I also plan a travel to England in a conspiracy attempt and to New York followed possibly by Hungary, Russia, France, China, South Korea, and Argentina. Can I do it? Let's wait and see. Book Spotlights/Reviews: Killer in the band by Lauren Carr (October 10th, e-book) The Root of Murder by Lauren Carr (October 25th, e-book) Possible Reviews: The Devil's Wind by Steve Goble Promised Land by Martin Fletcher The Body in Griffith Park by Jennifer Kincheloe The Queen's Gambit by Bradely Harper Planned Reads: The Kennedy ...

A House Divided-Pearl S Buck SR: March 11th, 2016 FR: N/A Twine- Monica Duncan SR: October 10th, 2019 FR: October 20th, 2019 Things we lost in the fire- MARIANA ENRIQUEZ SR: October 29th, 2019 FR: People of the wolf- W Michael Gear Kathleen O Neal Gear SR: October 2nd, 2019 FR: October 15th, 2019 Blood- Maggie Gee SR: September 23rd, 2019 FR: October 10th, 2019 Seven letters- J.P MONNINGER SR: October 17th, 2019 FR: October 29th, 2019 The fragility of bodies- Sergio OLGUIN SR: September 29th, 2019 FR: October 17th, 2019 Nonfiction: Tree of Souls-Howard Schwartz SR: February 10th, 2014 FR: N/A One spoon on this earth- Hyun Ki Young SR: October 15th, 2019 FR: