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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “The Good Liar” by Catherine McKenzie
Kate’s 2¢: “The Good Liar” by Catherine McKenzie
“The Good Liar” by Catherine McKenzie
I enjoyed listening to Emily Ellet read this story. I’m reminded of the saying: Oh, the webs we weave.
www.CatherineMcKenzie.com
Catherine McKenzie was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. A graduate of McGill in History and Law, Catherine practiced law for twenty years before leaving the practice to write full time. An avid runner, skier and tennis player, she’s the author of numerous bestsellers including HIDDEN, FRACTURED, THE GOOD LIAR and I’LL NEVER TELL. Her works have been translated into multiple languages and PLEASE JOIN US and I’LL NEVER TELL have all been optioned for development into television series.
Her next novel, HAVE YOU SEEN HER, is releasing on June 27, 2023!
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
The good liar DB90857
McKenzie, Catherine. Reading time: 10 hours, 17 minutes.
Read by Emily Ellet.
Suspense Fiction
Psychological Fiction
A year ago, an explosion destroyed a Chicago building. Running late to meet her husband, Cecily survived, but she is not exactly a grieving widow. Although presumed dead, Kaitlyn instead fled to Canada. And Franny was determined at all costs to connect with her birth mom, who worked in the building. Strong language. 2018.
Downloaded: December 7, 2023
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “All the light we cannot see: a novel” by Anthony Doerr
Kate’s 2¢: “All the light we cannot see: a novel” by Anthony Doerr
“All the light we cannot see: a novel” by Anthony Doerr
saying…
Jill Fox did a very good job of reading this lengthy story. This was the second time I enjoyed spending the time to listen to the novel, although, the time changes of foreshadowing, current time, then, back flashes were sometimes confusing.
A few take-aways:
–To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness…there exists an older, more raw world.
–Open your eyes and see what you can with them, before they close forever.
–Was it true that Captain Nemo never left the Nautilus?
–The keeper of the stone would live forever, but …misfortune would fall on all those he loved.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anthony Doerr is an American author of novels and short stories. He gained widespread recognition for his 2014 novel All the Light We Cannot See, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Early life and education[edit]
Raised in Cleveland, Ohio,[1] Doerr attended the nearby University School, graduating in 1991. He then majored in history at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, graduating in 1995. He earned an MFA from Bowling Green State University.[2]
Career[edit]
Doerr’s first book was a collection of short stories called The Shell Collector (2002). Many of the stories take place in countries within Africa and New Zealand, where he has worked and lived. His first novel, About Grace, was released in 2004. His memoir, Four Seasons in Rome, was published in 2007, and his second collection of short stories, Memory Wall, was published in 2010.
Doerr’s second novel, All the Light We Cannot See, is set in occupied France during World War II and was published in 2014. It received significant critical acclaim and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.[3] The book was a New York Times bestseller, and was named by the newspaper as a notable book of 2014.[4] It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015. It was runner-up for the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction [5] and won the 2015 Ohioana Library Association Book Award for Fiction.[6]
Doerr writes a column on science books for The Boston Globe and is a contributor to The Morning News, an online magazine.
From 2007 to 2010, he was the Writer in Residence for the state of Idaho.[7][8]
Doerr’s third novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, follows three story lines, scattered throughout time: 13-year-old Anna and Omeir, an orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy, on opposite sides of formidable city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and octogenarian Zeno in an attack on a public library in present-day Idaho; and Konstance, decades from now, who turns to the oldest stories to guide her community in peril.[9] Cloud Cuckoo Land was released September 28, 2021. It was shortlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction.[10]
Personal life[edit]
Doerr is married, has twin sons and lives in Boise, Idaho.[11]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
All the light we cannot see: a novel DB79182
Doerr, Anthony. Reading time: 16 hours, 3 minutes.
Read by Jill Fox. A production of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress.
Bestsellers
War Stories
When Paris is invaded by the Nazis, Marie-Laure LeBlanc’s father evacuates her to St. Malo to stay with her great-uncle. Blind since the age of six, Marie-Laure must learn the town by the scale model her father has left. Then, the Germans arrive. Violence, and descriptions of sex. Bestseller. 2014.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Winter solstice” by Rosamunde Pilcher
Kate’s 2¢: “Winter solstice” by Rosamunde Pilcher
“Winter solstice” by Rosamunde Pilcher
saying…
Vanessa Maroney did a good job of reading this lengthy story for the NLS. Her British accent fit right in with the characters.
How does this sound for a picnic feast? Hot soup laced with Sherry from mugs, fresh rolls filled with thick slices of ham and English mustard, a bacon and egg quiche, chicken drumsticks, tomato salad, crisp green apples and chunck of cheddar cheese, plus a flask of boiling hot coffee.
It took a long time to introduce each character, but once they finally came together in the Estate House, all ended as it should. I enjoyed this story.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rosamunde Pilcher, OBE (née Scott; 22 September 1924 – 6 February 2019)[2] was a British novelist, best known for her sweeping novels set in Cornwall. Her books have sold over 60 million copies worldwide.[3] Early in her career she was published under the pen name Jane Fraser. In 2001, she received the Corine Literature Prize’s Weltbild Readers’ Prize for Winter Solstice.
Personal life[edit]
She was born Rosamunde Scott on 22 September 1924 in Lelant, Cornwall. Her parents were Helen (née Harvey) and Charles Scott, a British civil servant.[2] Just before her birth her father was posted in Burma, while her mother remained in England.[4] She attended the School of St. Clare in Penzance and Howell’s School Llandaff before going on to Miss Kerr-Sanders’ Secretarial College.[5] She began writing when she was seven, and published her first short story when she was 18.[6]
From 1943 until 1946, Pilcher served with the Women’s Royal Naval Service. On 7 December 1946, she married Graham Hope Pilcher,[5] a war hero and jute industry executive who died in March 2009.[7] They moved to Dundee, Scotland. They had two daughters and two sons.[8] Her son, Robin Pilcher, is also a novelist.[9]
Pilcher died on 6 February 2019, at the age of 94, following a stroke.[10]
Writing career[edit]
In 1949, Pilcher’s first book, a romance novel, was published by Mills and Boon, under the pseudonym Jane Fraser. She published a further ten novels under that name. In 1955, she also began writing under her real name with Secret to Tell. By 1965 she had dropped the pseudonym and was signing her own name to all of her novels.[5]
The breakthrough in Pilcher’s career came in 1987, when she wrote the family saga The Shell Seekers, her fourteenth novel under her own name.[10] It focuses on an elderly British woman, Penelope Keeling, who relives her life in flashbacks, and on her relationship with her adult children. Keeling’s life was not extraordinary, but it spans “a time of huge importance and change in the world.”[6] The novel describes the everyday details of what life during World War II was like for some of those who lived in Britain.[6] The Shell Seekers sold around ten million copies and was translated into more than forty languages.[2] It was adapted for the stage by Terence Brady and Charlotte Bingham.[8] Pilcher was said to be among the highest-earning women in Britain by the mid-1990s.[11]
Her other major novels include September (1990), Coming Home (1995) and Winter Solstice (2000).[10][12] Coming Home won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by Romantic Novelists’ Association in 1996.[13] The president of the association in 2019, the romance writer Katie Fforde, considers Pilcher to be “groundbreaking as she was the first to bring family sagas to the wider public”.[10] Felicity Bryan, in her obituary for The Guardian, writes that Pilcher took the romance genre to “an altogether higher, wittier level”; she praises Pilcher’s work for its “grittiness and fearless observation” and comments that it is often more prosaic than romantic.[2]
Pilcher retired from writing in 2000.[5] Two years later, in the 2002 New Year Honours, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to literature.[14][15]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Winter solstice / DB50844
Pilcher, Rosamunde Reading time: 19 hours, 25 minutes.
Vanessa Maroney A production of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress.
Human Relations
Bestsellers
Elfrida, a retired actress; Oscar, a recent widower; Carrie, recovering from a love affair; Lucy, Carrie’s niece; and Sam, deserted by his wife, spend the winter solstice in a Scottish cottage, where they form a lasting bond that allows them to recover from their various challenges and losses. Bestseller. 2000.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Lost in the Yellowstone: Truman Everts’s thirty-seven days of peril” by Truman Everts
Kate’s 2¢: “Lost in the Yellowstone: Truman Everts’s thirty-seven days of peril” by Truman Everts
“Lost in the Yellowstone: Truman Everts’s thirty-seven days of peril” by Truman Everts
Imagine living to tell about it! The descriptions of the scenery of those days is something that, apparently, hasn’t changed all that much. It would be great to visit it in its pristine state.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Truman C. Everts (1816 – February 16, 1901) was the first federal tax assessor for the Montana Territory and a member of the 1870 Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition, which explored the area which later became Yellowstone National Park. He was lost in the wilderness for 37 days during the expedition and a year later wrote about his ordeal for Scribner’s Monthly.[1]
Everts was one of six brothers born in Burlington, Vermont to a Great Lakes ship captain.[2] During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Everts as assessor of Internal Revenue for the Montana Territory, a position he held between July 15, 1864 and February 16, 1870.[2]
“Thirty-Seven Days of Peril”[edit]
In 1870, Everts, a former assessor for the territory of Montana, joined a expedition led by Henry D. Washburn and Nathaniel P. Langford into the wilderness that would later become Yellowstone National Park.[3]
After falling behind the rest of the expedition on September 9, 1870, Everts lost the packhorse which was carrying most of his supplies. Without food or equipment, he attempted to retrace the expedition’s route along the southern shore of Yellowstone Lake to rejoin the expedition. Everts faced starvation, trauma, snow storms and dangerous animals. He ate the roots of thistle plants to stay alive. The plant was renamed “Everts’ Thistle” after him.[1][4]
During the expedition, Langford kept a diary recounting efforts to locate Everts. The expedition increased their fire and shot their guns hoping to signal Everts, to no avail. It was agreed within the expedition that if a member of the party become separated, that the man would meet the party at the southwest arm of the lake, but Everts could not be found at that location.[5]
On October 16, more than a month after his separation from the group, two local mountain men – “Yellowstone Jack” Baronett and George A. Pritchett – found Everts, suffering from frostbite, burn wounds from thermal vents and his campfire, and other injuries suffered during his ordeal, so malnourished he weighed only 90 pounds (41kg).[6] Baronett and Pritchett were part of a search party which had been sent from Montana to find Everts’ remains. They discovered him, mumbling and delirious, more than 50 miles (80 km) from where he had first become lost.[6] One man stayed with Everts to nurse him back to health while the other walked 75 miles (121 km) for help.
Everts’ rescuers brought him to Bozeman, where he recovered. The next year, Everts’ personal account of the experience, “Thirty-Seven Days of Peril”, was published in Scribner’s Monthly.[7] The story of his survival became national news and contributed a great deal of publicity to the movement to preserve the Yellowstone area as the country’s first national park.[2] In spite of their assistance, Everts denied Baronett and Pritchett payment of the reward, claiming he could have made it out of the mountains on his own.[2][8]
Henry D. Washburn, as surveyor general of Montana, named a peak near Mammoth Hot Springs “Mount Everts” shortly after Everts’ rescue. During the expedition, Washburn had named a peak in the Thorofare region south of Yellowstone Lake for Everts, but later changed it to the current peak, believing it to be near the location of the rescue. In fact Everts was rescued much farther north, near Blacktail Deer Creek.[9]
After the two expeditions and the fame from his article, Everts was offered the position of first superintendent of the newly established Yellowstone National Park, but he declined since it did not include a salary. He later moved to Hyattsville, Maryland and worked in the U.S. Post Office. He died there in 1901,[2] in his home, of pneumonia.[6]
From: Gravelly Range · Gallatin Wildlife Association
Lee Whittlesey recently retired as the historian for Yellowstone National Park. Lee has studied and written about Yellowstone for the past forty years and he is an expert on Yellowstone’s vast literature. He is the author of 25 journal articles and author or co-author of eleven books including Death in Yellowstone and Yellowstone Waterfalls. With Dr. Paul Schullery, he has engaged in a 25 year project: The History of Mammals in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, 1796-1881, resulting in a two volume book to be published in 2019. Since 1996, he has been Adjunct Professor of History at Montana State University and in 2014 was awarded an honorary doctorate in history by MSU. In a two -part interview, Lee provides a historical picture of Yellowstone and tells some stories involving wildlife passed down from the tribes of Indians who inhabited the Park area.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Lost in the Yellowstone: Truman Everts’s thirty-seven days of peril. DB107288
Everts, Truman; Whittlesey, Lee H Reading time: 1 hour, 54 minutes.
Jack Sondericker
The West
Biography
Travel
This fictionalized account explores how, in September 1870, Truman Everts was separated from one of the first exploratory parties in what is now Yellowstone National Park. With little food, equipment, or cold-weather clothing, Everts spent more than a month wandering the wilderness. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 1871.
Download Lost in the Yellowstone: Truman Everts’s thirty-seven days of peril. DB107288
Kate’s 2¢: “Good As Gone” by Amy Gentry
“Good As Gone” by Amy Gentry
Very interesting. By having the characters change names, it is almost impossible to keep track of who is who. Although, I suppose that is the point.
From the WEB:
Amy GENTRY is the author of the feminist thrillers Good as Gone, Last Woman Standing, and Bad Habits, as well as Boys for Pele, a book of music criticism in the 33 1/3 series. Her book reviews and essays have appeared in numerous outlets, including the Chicago Tribune, Salon, the Paris Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Austin Chronicle. Her interests include cake decorating and horror films, and her favorite movie is The Women (1939). She holds a PhD in English from the University of Chicago, where she wrote her dissertation on miniatures and modernism, and lives in Austin, Texas.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Good as gone DB85737
Gentry, Amy. Reading time: 7 hours, 50 minutes.
Read by Kristin Allison.
Suspense Fiction
Mystery and Detective Stories
Psychological Fiction
Eight years ago, thirteen-year-old Julie was abducted from her bedroom. Julie miraculously returns, but her story doesn’t make much sense. While her mother struggles with an ex-cop’s suspicions, alternating chapters take the returned Julie backwards through her ordeal. Strong language, some violence, and some explicit descriptions of sex. 2016.
Downloaded: December 7, 2023
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “The Dark Side” by Danielle Steel
Kate’s 2¢: “The Dark Side” by Danielle Steel
“The Dark Side” by Danielle Steel
Michael Braun did a good job of narrating this story about a mental illness that is gaining notoriety. It is hard to fathom someone intentionally harming their own child, but we still don’t know all there is to know about the human mind.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
www.daniellesteel.com
Danielle Fernandes Dominique Schuelein-Steel (born August 14, 1947) is an American writer, best known for her romance novels. She is the bestselling living author and one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time, with over 800 million copies sold.[3] As of 2021, she has written 190 books, including over 140[4] novels.
Based in California for most of her career, Steel has produced several books a year, often juggling up to five projects at once. All of her novels have been bestsellers, including those issued in hardback, despite “a resounding lack of critical acclaim” (Publishers Weekly).[5] Her books often involve rich families facing a crisis, threatened by dark elements such as prison, fraud, blackmail and suicide. Steel has also published children’s fiction and poetry, as well as creating a foundation that funds mental illness-related organizations.[6] Her books have been translated into 43 languages,[7] with 22 adapted for television, including two that have received Golden Globe nominations.
Early life[edit]
Steel was born Danielle Fernandes Dominique Schuelein-Steel in New York City to a German father and a Portuguese mother. Her father, John Schuelein-Steel, was a German-Jewish immigrant and a descendant of owners of Löwenbräu beer. Her mother, Norma da Camara Stone dos Reis, was the daughter of a Portuguese diplomat.[8][9][10][11] She spent much of her childhood in France,[12] where from an early age she was included in her parents’ dinner parties, giving her an opportunity to observe the habits and lives of the wealthy and famous.[10] Her parents divorced when she was eight, and she was raised primarily by her father, rarely seeing her mother.[8]
Steel started writing stories as a child, and by her late teens had begun writing poetry.[13] Raised Catholic, she thought of becoming a nun during her early years.[14] A 1965 graduate of the Lycée Français de New York,[15] she studied literature design and fashion design,[13] first at Parsons School of Design and then at New York University.[16]
Career[edit]
1965–1971: Career beginnings[edit]
While still attending New York University, Steel began writing, completing her first manuscript at 19.[13] Steel worked for a public-relations agency in New York called Supergirls. A client, Ladies’ Home Journal editor John Mack Carter, encouraged her to focus on writing,[11] having been impressed with her freelance articles. He suggested she write a book, which she did. She later moved to San Francisco and worked as a copywriter for Grey Advertising.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
The dark side DB96431
Steel, Danielle. Reading time: 8 hours, 33 minutes.
Read by Michael Braun.
Bestsellers
Psychological Fiction
Zoe Morgan’s childhood revolved around her younger sister’s tragic illness, as her parents dedicated themselves completely to her final days before divorcing. When Zoe has her own child, she is determined to be a perfect mother, but old scars pull her to the edge of an abyss. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. Bestseller. 2019.
Downloaded: October 14, 2023
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Dream Maker” by Kristen Ashley
Kate’s 2¢: “Dream Maker” by Kristen Ashley
“Dream Maker” by Kristen Ashley
This was a book chosen at random by NLS and sent to me on a cartridge that contained seven books.
Susannah Jones did a good job of reading this story. Her voice inflections gave the dialogue and sub-thoughts the humor I think the author wanted to use to lighten the heaviness of the topic. The action scenes were enjoyable, except that we became inured by the numerous and predictable sex scenes.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kristen Ashley (born Kristen A L Moutaw: April 8, 1968) is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 75 books in 14 languages, with over three million copies sold. [1][2][3][4] Two of her novels have been adapted into film.
Career[edit]
Ashley has always enjoyed books. At age 12, she began surreptitiously borrowing her mother’s Harlequin Presents romance novels and fell in love with the genre.[1] As an adult, Ashley began writing books in the evenings, after she finished a long day of working in the medical field – first at the Rocky Mountain MS Center, then the Colorado Neurological Institute, and then, after a move to Bristol, England, at The Pituitary Foundation.[1] Over 15 years, Ashley wrote almost 25 romance novels. She attempted to find an agent or a publisher for her works but was consistently rejected.[5]
Ashley finally decided to publish her work independently on Kindle. She released three or four of her previously written titles each month and found an audience relatively quickly. Her readership expanded after a major blogger reviewed one of her novels, Sweet Dreams.[5] Between her day job and her writing and publishing efforts, Ashley worked, on average, 14–16 hours a day, seven days a week, for years.[5] Once her writing career reached a certain threshold, Ashley hired help; she now has an assistant and works with graphic designers, proofreaders, and copyeditors.[5]
In 2013, Ashley signed her first traditional publishing contract, with Grand Central Publishing’s Forever line.[6] As of 2019, she had released three series’ worth of books through traditional publishing.[5] Ashley chose to foray into traditional publishing for two primary reasons. First, she wanted to improve her craft by working with an experienced editor. Second, she wanted to make her books more accessible. With traditional publishing, her novels would be available in print as well as ebooks, which would expand her audience to people without ereaders and those who liked to browse bookstores and libraries.[6] Ashley insisted that her publisher keep ebook prices low, at $3.99, to ensure that readers weren’t priced out. In an interview in 2019, she noted that her “print sales are abysmal”; most of her income comes from ebook sales and merchandise that she creates based on her books.[5]
Passionflix purchased the film rights to several of Ashley’s novels. The Will, based on Ashley’s novel of the same name, was released on February 14, 2020. It was directed by Louise Alston and starred Megan Dodds, Chris McKenna, Martin Dingle-Wall and Patrick Byas.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] In 2020, Passionflix will be filming an adaption of Ashleys’ “Three Wishes”.[15]
As of 2019, Ashley had published more than 60 novels, which have been translated into 14 languages and sold a combined three million copies.[2]
As influences, Ashley cites Janet Evanovich, Judith McNaught, JK Rowling, Carl Hiaasen.[17][18]
In interviews, Ashley states that she struggled with sleep due to an active mind, which she turned to creating stories that she continued developing over time. Her heroes are often Alpha males with the heroine bringing a strong character to match them.[19][20][21][22] Her heroines run the gamut from independent women who run their own businesses to more traditional women whose utmost goal is to become a mother.[2] Family, friends and music are recurring thematic elements.[17] She claims that she does not tone down or restrict her characters into the typical hero and heroines found in romance novels, this being part of the reason for rejections by traditional publishers.[2] She notes that “I celebrate imperfections. …None of my characters are perfect. They don’t say the right thing. They get exhausted and they pick at each other and they bicker.”[2] She has written racially diverse characters, as well as LGBTQ characters.[2]
Though mainly in the romance genre, she covers other sub-genres in her work, including; fantasy, erotica and paranormal
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Dream maker DB110785
Ashley, Kristen Reading time: 12 hours, 59 minutes.
Susannah Jones
Suspense Fiction
Romance
“Evie is a bona fide nerd and a hyperintelligent chick who has only ever been able to rely on herself. So when she decides to earn an engineering degree, she takes a job dancing at Smithie’s club to make the tuition money she needs. But between her lack of dancing skills and an alpha bad boy who becomes overly protective, Evie realizes this gig might not be as easy as she thought. Daniel “Mag” Magnusson knows a thing or two about pain, but the mask he wears is excellent. No one can tell that this good-looking, quick-witted, and roguish guy has deep-seated issues. Mag puts on a funny-guy routine so he can hide his broken heart and PTSD. But when Evie dances her way into Mag’s life, he realizes that he needs to come face-to-face with the demons of his past if he wants a future with her.” — Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Good grief: on loving pets, here and hereafter” by E. B. Bartels,
Kate’s 2¢: “Good grief: on loving pets, here and hereafter” by E. B. Bartels,
“Good grief: on loving pets, here and hereafter” by E. B. Bartels,
This was a book chosen at random by NLS and sent to me on a cartridge that contained seven books.
Eileen Stevens Did a good job of reading this book.
It is important to know that we all grieve differently. There is no ‘right’ way. If you are having a particularly tough time reconciling with your pet’s death, you are not alone. There are organizations to contact to share your concerns.
From the WEB:
E.B. Bartels is a nonfiction writer, a former Newtonville Books bookseller, and a GrubStreet instructor, with an MFA from Columbia University. She is the author of Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter, a narrative nonfiction book about loving and losing animals, and her essays and interviews have appeared in Salon, Slate, WBUR, Literary Hub, Catapult, Electric Literature, The Believer, and The Rumpus, among others. E.B. lives in Massachusetts with her husband, Richie, and their many, many pets.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Good grief: on loving pets, here and hereafter DB110115
Bartels, E. B Reading time: 5 hours, 50 minutes.
Eileen Stevens
Psychology and Self-Help
Animals and Wildlife
“E.B. Bartels has had a lot of pets–dogs, birds, fish, tortoises. As varied a bunch as they are, they’ve taught her one universal truth: to own a pet is to love a pet, and to own a pet is also–with rare exception–to lose that pet in time. But while we have codified traditions to mark the passing of our fellow humans, most cultures don’t have the same for pets. Bartels takes us from Massachusetts to Japan, from ancient Egypt to the modern era, in search of the good pet death. We meet veterinarians, archaeologists, ministers, and more, offering an idiosyncratic, inspiring array of rituals–from the traditional (scattering ashes, commissioning a portrait), to the grand (funereal processions, mausoleums), to the unexpected (taxidermy, cloning). The central lesson: there is no best practice when it comes to mourning your pet, except to care for them in death as you did in life, and find the space to participate in their end as fully as you can. Punctuated by wry, bighearted accounts of Bartels’s own pets and their deaths, Good Grief is a cathartic companion through loving and losing our animal family.” — Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.
Download Good grief: on loving pets, here and hereafter DB110115
Kate’s 2¢: “Good Me Bad Me” by Ali Land
“Good Me Bad Me” by Ali Land
Shocking. Truly a disturbing psychological thriller. The thought of such epic child abuse is abhorrent enough, but then to have the child continue the behavior taught to her by her mother is really scary.
Imogen Church did a good job of reading this novel. She used just enough voice inflections to let you know who was talking and when it was the inner thoughts of the character.
Ali Land Biography
Ali Land graduated from university with a degree in Mental Health and spent a decade working as a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Nurse; the way in which children survive extraordinary circumstances interests her greatly. Land is now a full-time writer. Books from her teenage years – in particular The Wasp Factory and Lord of the Flies – helped inspired her debut novel, Good Me, Bad Me.
FROM NLS/BARD/LOC:
Good me bad me DB89419
Land, Ali. Reading time: 10 hours, 7 minutes.
Read by Imogen Church.
Suspense Fiction
Psychological Fiction
Milly’s mother is a serial killer. Though Milly loves her mother, the only way to make her stop is to turn her in to the police. Milly is given a new identity with an affluent foster family and an exclusive private school. But has she inherited her mother’s ways? Violence, strong language, and explicit descriptions of sex. Commercial audiobook. 2017.
Downloaded: December 7, 2023
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “The Kingdoms” by Natasha Pulley
Kate’s 2¢: “The Kingdoms” by Natasha Pulley
“The Kingdoms” by Natasha Pulley
J.P. Linton did a good job of reading this lengthy story. Although, sections were titled, it was difficult the jump from one parallel time to the other age.
I enjoyed the mystery of the narrative arc, even though, I didn’t like the ending.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Natasha Pulley (born 4 December 1988) is a British author. She is best known for her debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, which won a Betty Trask Award.
Education[edit]
She was educated at Soham Village College, New College, Oxford, and the University of East Anglia (MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction), 2012).[1][2][3]
Works[edit]
Her debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, was published in 2015[4] and was set in Victorian London.[5] It won a 2016 Betty Trask Award.[6] Her second novel, The Bedlam Stacks, was published in 2017,[7] and her third, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, was released in the UK in 2019.[8] All three are set in the same fictional universe.[9] Pulley’s fourth book, an alternative history, The Kingdoms, was released in May 2021.[10] In June 2022, her fifth book, The Half Life of Valery K, came out.[11]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
The kingdoms DB105679
Pulley, Natasha Reading time: 15 hours, 54 minutes.
J.P. Linton
Science Fiction
Fantasy Fiction
In a version of history where the French won the Battle of Trafalgar and made slaves of the British population, amnesiac Joe Tournier follows clues to learn more of his identity. While tracking down the origins of a mysterious postcard, Joe accidentally travels back in time. Strong language and some violence. 2021.
Download The kingdoms DB105679