Svetlana's Reads and Views

Name of Book: Reinbou  Author: Pedro Cabiya trans Jessica Powell ISBN: 978-1-6626-0251-1 Publisher: Astra House   Type of book: Dominican Republic, American intervention, Santo Domingo, 1965, 1976, leadership, dreams, resilience, hope, imagination  Year it was published: 2024 (2017)  Summary: Dominicana meets Woman of Light in this propulsive work of historical fiction about U.S. intervention and corruption in the Dominican Republic. The basis of the 2017 film adaptation by Andrés Curbelo and David Maler. In 1976 Santo Domingo, Ángel Maceta uncovers the real story behind the murder of his father, Puro Maceta, ten years prior. In the process, events that unfolded during and after the war are revealed, unleashing a series of small revolutions in his community that in turn unravel other intrigues of what really took place during the Civil War of 1965. Weaving together the brutal realities of war with the innocence of childhood imagination, Reinbou expl...

Title of the book: Heart of American Darkness; Bewilderment and horror on the early frontier   Author: Robert G. Parkinson  Publisher: W.W. Norton  Publishing Date: 2024  ISBN: 978-1-324-09177 Summary: A fundamentally new account of the American frontier, showing that it was defined not by hardy pioneers or imperial power, but by sheer mayhem. We have long been divided over how exceptional the United States is, and that debate has often revolved around the frontier. In Heart of American Darkness, acclaimed historian Robert G. Parkinson presents a startling narrative of the ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans. He reveals that the colonization of the interior was not a rational process or heroic deed―nor the act by which American democracy was forged. Rather, it was as bewildering, violent, and haphazard as European colonization of Africa. Bringing a Conradian lens to the central episodes of the early American frontier...

Name of Book: Forgottenness  Author: Tanja Maljartschuck trans Zenia Tompkins   ISBN: 978-1-324-09322-0 Publisher: Liveright  Type of book: Ukraine, agoraphobia, mental illness, 1900s, 2010s, men vs women identitifiers, marriages, loves, politics, history, death, recovering memories  Year it was published: 2024 Summary: From one of Ukraine’s most prolific contemporary authors comes this profound novel of belonging and uprootedness, as understood by two exiles across time. Winner of the BBC Ukrainian Book of the Year Award and the German Usedom Prize, Forgottenness movingly―and unflinchingly―illuminates the intricacies of the Ukrainian experience in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. An exceedingly anxious young narrator grapples with a host of conditions, from obsessive-compulsive disorder and alcoholism to a creeping sense of agoraphobia. As her symptoms deepen, she finds unexpected solace and companionship in researching the historical figu...

Name of Book: the STOLEN child Author: Ann Hood  ISBN: 978-0-393-60980-6 Publisher: W.W. Norton  Type of book: Italy, USA, France, art, decisions, living life, Museum of Tears, storyteller role, secrets, lost children, 1917-1974 Year it was published: 2024  Summary: An unlikely duo ventures through France and Italy to solve the mystery of a child’s fate in this moving, page-turning novel from “a gifted storyteller” ( People ). For decades, Nick Burns has been haunted by a decision he made as a young soldier in World War I, when a French artist he’d befriended thrust both her paintings and her baby into his hands―and disappeared. In 1974, with only months left to live, Nick enlists Jenny, a college dropout desperate for adventure, to help him unravel the mystery. The journey leads them from Paris galleries and provincial towns to a surprising the Museum of Tears, the life’s work of a lonely Italian craftsman. Determined to find the baby and the artist, hopeles...

Name of Book: An education in MALICE  Author: S.T. Gibson ISBN: 9780316501453 Publisher: Redhook Type of book: vampires, lesbian relationship, 1968, college, dark academia, enemies to lovers, Massachusetts, unhealthy relationships, jealousies, dark romance, dark love, choices  Year it was published: 2024  Summary: Sumptuous and addictive,  An Education in Malice  is a dark academia tale of blood, secrets and insatiable hungers from Sunday Times bestselling author S.T. Gibson, author of the cult hit  A Dowry of Blood . Deep in the forgotten hills of Massachusetts stands Saint Perpetua's College. Isolated and ancient, it is not a place for timid girls. Here, secrets are currency, ambition is lifeblood, and strange ceremonies welcome students into the fold. On her first day of class, Laura Sheridan is thrust into an intense academic rivalry with the beautiful and enigmatic Carmilla. Together, they are drawn into the confidence of their demanding p...

Title of the book: Left for dead; shipwreck, treachery, and survival at the edge of the world  Author: Eric Jay Dolin  Publisher: Live right  Publishing Date: 2024  ISBN: 978-1-324-09308 Summary: The true story of five castaways abandoned on the Falkland Islands during the War of 1812―a tale of treachery, shipwreck, isolation, and the desperate struggle for survival. The best-selling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters tells the story of a wild encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig, and a British warship in the Falkland Islands during the War of 1812. Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailors and two Americans―including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard―abandoned in the Falklands for eighteen months. A tale of intriguing complexity, with surprising twists and turns throughout―involving greed, lying, bullying, a hostile takeover, stellar leadership, ingenuity, severe p...