Svetlana's Reads and Views

Title of the book: Yummy me feels so good Author: Lion I am  Publisher: Funny Bird Production Publishing Date: 2020 ISBN: 9781647648381 Summary: Parents this book is a great way to explore and play with feelings together with your children. There are animal pictures that children can enjoy and talk about. This is a beautiful way for your children to make friends with their feelings and learn how to "play" with them. It's also a way to encourage us to keep remembering and returning to positive and nurturing feelings and memories. This creates healthy neural networks in our brains. Something as simple as remembering an animal or happy feeling can change our whole body chemistry. We can anchor happy feelings and memories in our neural networks by remembering them and "replaying" them to strengthen our "Happy Muscles". We probably all remember when we were young how feelings came and went quickly and didn't "stick" so much. A simple belly lau...

Name of Book: The Aosawa Murders (Eugenia in Japanese) Author: Riku Onda (Trans by Alison Wats) ISBN: 978-1-912242-24-5 Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press, Kadokawa Corp in Japan Type of book: Japan, 1970s-2000s, murder, family, blindness, narrative, mimicking, truth, motivation, puzzle, poison, Kanto region, weather,  monologues, timeline, friendship, charisma  Year it was published: 2005, 2020 Summary: The novel starts in the 1970s when 17 people die of cyanide poisoning at a party given by the owners of a prominent clinic in a town on the coast of the Sea of Japan. The only surviving links to what might have happened are a cryptic verse that could be the killer's, and the physician's bewitching blind daughter, Hisako, the only person spared injury. The youth who emerges as the prime suspect commits suicide that October, effectively sealing his guilt while consigning his motives to mystery. The police are convinced Hisako had a role in the crime, as are many in the t...

Name of Book: The Road to Urbino Author: Roma Tearne ISBN: 9781910709481 Publisher: Gallic Type of book: Sri Lanka, England, Italy, 1990s?-2017? Art, relationships, painting, barrister, dreams, immigration, living in Italy, Pierro della Francesca, unrequited love, Sri Lankan male/ British female, perception  Year it was published:  2012, 2020 Summary: A story of obsession, love and art set in Tuscany, Sri Lanka and London. Ras, a Sri Lankan who fled his country as a child following the violent death of his mother and his father's disappearance, has committed a crime. Dogged by his past and unable to come to terms with the killing of his mother, he struggles to make a new life for himself in the UK. Alex has loved Dee since he was 19 but failed to realise that it was a love he wouldn't find again. After Dee's marriage, he too struggles to build a meaningful life for himself. But when Ras' and Alex's lives connect, each man takes a new path culmin...

Name of Book: Darling Rose Gold Author: Stephanie Wrobel ISBN: 978-0-593-10006-6 Publisher: Berkley Type of book: suspense, Missouri? Relationships, 2012-2017, survival, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, USA, modern times, thriller, mother/daughter, revenge, diseases, desperation, hunger Year it was published: 2020 Summary: Sharp Objects meets My Lovely Wife in this tightly drawn debut that peels back the layers of the most complicated of mother-daughter relationships... For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold. Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar. After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go a...

Name of Book: Miracle Creek Author: Angie Kim ISBN:  9780374156022 Publisher:  Sarah Crichton Books Year it was published: 2019 Summary: How far will you go to protect your family? Will you keep their secrets? Ignore their lies? In a small town in Virginia, a group of people know each other because they’re part of a special treatment center, a hyperbaric chamber that may cure a range of conditions from infertility to autism. But then the chamber explodes, two people die, and it’s clear the explosion wasn’t an accident. A powerful showdown unfolds as the story moves across characters who are all maybe keeping secrets, hiding betrayals. Chapter by chapter, we shift alliances and gather evidence: Was it the careless mother of a patient? Was it the owners, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? Could it have been a protester, trying to prove the treatment isn’t safe? Miracle Creek uncovers the worst prejudice and be...

Name of Book: Little Faith Author: Nickolas Butler ISBN:  9780062469717 Publisher:  Ecco Year it was published: 2019 Summary: In this moving new novel from celebrated author Nickolas Butler, a Wisconsin family grapples with the power and limitations of faith when one of their own falls under the influence of a radical church Lyle Hovde is at the onset of his golden years, living a mostly content life in rural Wisconsin with his wife, Peg, daughter, Shiloh, and six-year old grandson, Isaac. After a troubled adolescence and subsequent estrangement from her parents, Shiloh has finally come home. But while Lyle is thrilled to have his whole family reunited, he’s also uneasy: in Shiloh’s absence, she has become deeply involved with an extremist church, and the devout pastor courting her is convinced Isaac has the spiritual ability to heal the sick. While reckoning with his own faith—or lack thereof—Lyle soon finds himself torn between his unease about the church...

Name of Book: The Things We Cannot Say Author: Kelly Rimmer ISBN:  9781525823565 Publisher: Graydon House Year it was published: 2019 Summary: In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny…and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century. Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate. Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappear...

Name of Book: The Sisters of the Winter Wood Author: Rena Rossner ISBN:  9780316483360 Publisher: Redhook Year it was published: 2019 Summary: In a remote village surrounded by vast forests on the border of Moldova and Ukraine, sisters Liba and Laya have been raised on the honeyed scent of their Mami's babka and the low rumble of their Tati's prayers. But when a troupe of mysterious men arrives, Laya falls under their spell - despite their mother's warning to be wary of strangers. And this is not the only danger lurking in the woods. As dark forces close in on their village, Liba and Laya discover a family secret passed down through generations. Faced with a magical heritage they never knew existed, the sisters realize the old fairy tales are true...and could save them all. Link for Review 5 out of 5 (0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep...

Name of Book: The Golden Wolf Author:  Linnea Hartsuyker ISBN:  9780062563743 Publisher: Harper Year it was published: 2019 Summary: The fates of Ragnvald and his sister Svanhild unfold to their stunning conclusion in this riveting final volume in The Golden Wolf Saga, a trilogy that conjures the ancient world with the gripping detail, thrilling action, and vivid historical elements of Game of Thrones and Outlander. Ragnvald has long held to his vision of King Harald as a golden wolf who will bring peace to Norway as its conqueror—even though he knows that Harald's success will eventually mean his own doom. He is grateful to have his beloved sister, the fierce and independent Svanhild, once more at his side to help keep their kingdom secure. Free from the evil husband who used her, she is now one of Harald's many wives. While Svanhold is happy to be reunited with her beloved brother, and enjoys more freedom than ever before, she is restless and lonely. When ...

Name of Book: Queen for a day Author: Maxine Rosaler ISBN:  9781883285753 Publisher:  Delphinium Year it was published: 2018 Summary: After Mimi Slavitt’s three-year-old son, Danny, is diagnosed with autism, she finds herself in a world nearly as isolating as her son’s. It is a position she shares only with mothers like herself, women chosen against their will for lives of sacrifice and martyrdom. Searching for miracles, begging for the help of heartless bureaucracies while arranging every minute of every day for children who can never be left alone, they exist in a state of perpetual crisis, normal life always just out of reach. In chapters told from Mimi’s point of view and theirs, these women emerge as conflicted, complex individuals, totally unsuited for sainthood, often dreaming of the day they can just walk away. Taking its title from the 1950s reality TV show in which the contestants—housewives living lives filled with pain and suffering—competed with...

Name of Book: Her Secret Son Author: Hannah Mary McKinnon ISBN:  9780778351269 Publisher: Mira Year it was published: 2019 Summary: How far would you go to protect the ones you love…when they may not be yours to protect? When Josh’s longtime partner, Grace, dies in a tragic accident, he is left with a mess of grief—and full custody of her seven-year-old son, Logan. While not his biological father, Josh has been a dad to Logan in every way that counts, and with Grace gone, Logan needs him more than ever. Wanting to do right by Logan, Josh begins the process of becoming his legal guardian—something that seems suddenly urgent, though Grace always brushed it off as an unnecessary formality. But now, as Josh struggles to find the paperwork associated with Logan’s birth, he begins to wonder whether there were more troubling reasons for Grace’s reluctance to make their family official. As he digs deeper into the past of the woman he loved, Josh soon finds that ther...

Name of Book: Mother Country Author: Irina Reyn ISBN: 9781250076045 Publisher:  Thomas Dunne Books Year it was published: 2019 Summary: Award-winning author Irina Reyn explores what it means to be a mother in a world where you can't be with your child Nadia's daily life in south Brooklyn is filled with small indignities: as a senior home attendant, she is always in danger of being fired; as a part-time nanny, she is forced to navigate the demands of her spoiled charge and the preschooler's insecure mother; and as a ethnic Russian, she finds herself feuding with western Ukrainian immigrants who think she is a traitor. The war back home is always at the forefront of her reality. On television, Vladimir Putin speaks of the "reunification" of Crimea and Russia, the Ukrainian president makes unconvincing promises about a united Ukraine, while American politicians are divided over the fear of immigration. Nadia internalizes notions of "union...

Name of Book: The Woman in the Window Author: A.J Finn ISBN:  B06Y55Z36S Publisher: William Morrow Year it was published: 2019 Summary: Anna Fox lives alone—a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her days drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble—and its shocking secrets are laid bare. What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems. Twisty and powerful, ingenious and moving, The Woman in the Window is a smart, sophisticated novel of psychological suspense that recalls the best of Hitchcock—an unforgettable thriller that Gillian Flynn calls “amaz...

Title of the book: The shame factor; heal your deepest fears and set yourself free Author: Stephan B. POULTER, PhD Publisher: Prometheus Books Publishing Date: 2019 ISBN: 978-1-63388-522-6 Summary: A popular clinical psychologist explores an often misunderstood and unrecognized emotion that's the root cause of many self-defeating and harmful behaviors. Emotional paralysis, a distorted view of self, a feeling of being a fraud, lack of trust in others, fear of criticism resulting in underdeveloped talents, and a chronic sense of being worthless, invisible, or disposable--these are typical symptoms of shame. In this book, psychologist Stephan B. Poulter delves into this "primary emotional wound." Distinguishing it from commonplace guilt over a particular moral failing, he describes this toxic emotion as a pervasive but largely unrecognized "emotional cancer," with the power of undermining many aspects of life. Dr. Poulter guides the reader th...

Name of Book: the fragility of bodies Author: Sergio OLGUIN (translated by Miranda France) ISBN: 978-1-912242-19-1 Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press Part of a Series: Veronica Rosenthal Trilogy Type of book: Argentina, trains, mystery, journalism, 2000s, poverty, wealth, connections, South America, daily life, Buenos Aires, coca cola, soccer Year it was published: 2019 (original 2012) Summary: When she hears about the suicide of a Buenos Aires train driver who has left a note confessing to four mortal ‘accidents’ on the train tracks, journalist Veronica Rosenthal decides to investigate. For the police the case is closed (suicide is suicide), for Veronica it is the beginning of a journey that takes her into an unfamiliar world of grinding poverty, crime-infested neighborhoods, and train drivers on commuter lines haunted by the memory of bodies hit at speed by their locomotives in the middle of the night. Aided by a train driver with whom she has a tumultuous and reckles...

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 ...

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: 120 Days Author: Ronald L Ruiz ISBN: 978-1-937484-67-5 Publisher: Amika Press Type of book: Law, lawyers, relationships, ambition, romance, forbidden deeds, attractions, court rooms, California, OWN VOICES, modern times, interracial relationship, American female/ Hispanic male Year it was published: 2019 Summary : Barbara Blake is a bright, young, attractive, and ambitious defense attorney. Alejandro Soto, an inmate already serving two life sentences for the brutal murder of a drug dealer and the man’s mother, is on trial for a third murder, one he did not commit but that could well result in the Death Penalty. When Blake and Soto meet in the San Cristobal, California courtroom, they begin a 120-day journey that will invariably alter both of their lives. Together, they spiral ever more deeply into the dark heart of a quintessentially American story of sex and love, truth and lies, justice and prejudice, crime and punishment, and, ultimately, life and d...

Name of Book: Wunderland Author: Jennifer Cody Epstein ISBN: 978-0-525-57690-7 Publisher: Crown Type of book: 1930s to 1989, dual timeline, Germany, life as Mischling, friendship, family, relationships, secrets, life post WW2, America, living, estrangement Year it was published: 2019 Summary: East Village, 1989 Things had never been easy between Ava Fisher and her estranged mother Ilse. Too many questions hovered between them: Who was Ava's father? Where had Ilse been during the war? Why had she left her only child in a German orphanage during the war's final months? But now Ilse's ashes have arrived from Germany, and with them, a trove of unsent letters addressed to someone else unknown to Ava: Renate Bauer, a childhood friend. As her mother's letters unfurl a dark past, Ava spirals deep into the shocking history of a woman she never truly knew. Berlin, 1933 As the Nazi party tightens its grip on the city, Ilse and Renate find their friendship und...

Name of Book: The Southern Side of Paradise Author: Kristy Woodson Harvey ISBN: 978-1-9821-1662-0 Publisher: Gallery Part of a Series: Peachtree Bluffs Trilogy Type of book: Georgia, Peachtree Bluffs, sisterhood, motherhood, secrets, family, friends, unexpected changes, love, dreams vs desire, marriage, happiness Year it was published: 2019 Summary: From internationally bestselling author and “rising star of Southern fiction” (Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author) Kristy Woodson Harvey comes the third novel in her Peachtree Bluff series, in which a secret threatens the tight-knit bond between a trio of sisters and their mother. With the man of her dreams back in her life and all three of her daughters happy, Ansley Murphy should be content. But she can’t help but feel like it’s all a little too good to be true. Meanwhile, youngest daughter and actress Emerson, who is recently engaged and has just landed the role of a lifetime, seemingly has the...