Julia Kelly’s elegant historical fiction novels about England now include “The Lost English Girl.” This book isn’t a mystery, or a twisty tale, but rather a beautiful story about making mistakes, forgiveness, and family. When two young people from different cultures—a young Jewish musician and a young Catholic working girl—make a huge mistake, their lives change.
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In Kelley Armstrong’s second book of the “Rip Through Time” series, we see that Mallory Atkinson is still adjusting to being thrust back in time to 1869. In the current time, she had been a homicide detective in Canada, but somehow went back in time while visiting her ailing grandmother in Edinburgh. Luckily, she ended up in the body of a maid who worked for an unusual family, the head of which is interested in crimes and who runs a funeral business. His sister is a chemist with whom Mallory has become friends.
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With her latest introspective novel, “Just a Regular Boy,” Catherine Ryan Hyde takes us on a journey that we’d never imagine taking ourselves — going with a survivalist and his five-year-old son into the wilds of northern Idaho to survive what he believes is a coming apocalypse. Remy’s father, Roy, plans to survive off the land, and he believes that he has everything they need to survive.
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Can the stories we tell ourselves have the power to save us? In “The Secret Book of Flora Lea,” author Patti Callahan Henry brings us a tale within a tale as we meet two sisters, bound by the fantasy world that the elder sister, Hazel, creates and shares with her much younger sister, Flora, during difficult times. Their father is killed the first week he starts training to fight in WWII, and the family is bereft from his loss. When their mother goes to work to do her part in the war effort, Hazel cares for Flora and tells her stories to keep her busy and happy. We especially see the sisters’ bond as they are evacuated from London and parted from their very loving mother, and sent to a small village on the River Thames near Oxford, where they are lucky enough to go live with a wonderful woman and her son.
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Forget the debutantes in this clever new historical romance series starting with “The Scandalous Ladies of London: The Countess,” by Sophie Jordan. This series isn’t about the teenage girls (because aren’t seventeen and eighteen-year old girls still pretty much children?), but rather about their mothers and other women who are not quite in their prime. While these “ladies of London” are not still in the early blush of youth, they are mature women who want to have romance and love in their lives.
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It’s not often that a sequel is written over four decades after the first book, but in “Where Are the Children Now?” that’s exactly what Alafair Burke has done with Mary Higgins Clark’s “Where Are the Children?” which was published in 1975. While some readers might want to reread the first book, it’s really not necessary as Burke does a masterful job cluing us in as to what transpired all those years before, while making the sharing of that backstory completely natural and a part of the story.
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Author Charlie N. Holmberg writes a lot of fantasy, and her latest novel, “Heir of Uncertain Magic” is the sequel to “Keeper of Enchanted Rooms,” the first book in the “Whimbrel House” series. Unfortunately, neither title gives even a hint of the delightful character of this magic-filled series about two fairly tortured souls in search of some stability and in desperate need of some love in their lives. We meet those two, Merritt Fernsby and Hulda Larkin, in the first book as Merritt inherits a magical house, and Hulda is sent to help him figure out how to control the magic of the house. It’s filled with action, danger, and some truly heart-wrenching moments.
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In his latest novel, brilliant “Going Zero,” author Anthony McCarten goes to great lengths to scare the dickens out of us by exploring the issue of privacy—and the fact that any notion that it still exists is archaic—in this brave new world of technology which surrounds us almost everywhere we go. Billionaire tech mogul Cy Baxter has a brilliant idea for the future. His technology will enable the law enforcement agencies of our country to stop crime almost before it happens. The only downside? In order for it to work, the government, in concert with his tech company, will be able to monitor virtually our every move, every conversation, every action.
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Three children’s books that would be fabulous additions to any school or home library are “I Am Temple Grandin” by Brad Meltzer and Christopher Eliopoulos, “The Outdoor Scientist: The Wonder of Observing the Natural World” by Temple Grandin, and “Calling All Minds: How to Think and Create Like an Inventor” by Temple Grandin. The first book is engaging and explains how being different is not a bad thing, and actually can be very special. The other two books are for exploration and activities that kids might want to do. Not a bad choice with summer vacations coming up because they are filled with information and ideas for great projects!
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While “The Seaside Library” is about the lengths to which friends will go to protect and support each other, it’s not basically about a library. The setting is Mariners Island, a fictional island author Brenda Novak imagines off the coast of New England where all three main characters grew up. Ivy, Ariana, and Cam were best friends, and when a tragedy occurred one summer, the teenagers lied to protect Cam. That lie grew and took on a life of its own in the next two decades.
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Lauren Willig is known for historical fiction that delves deeply into little-known aspects of war and the women who have supported victims of war. In “Two Wars and a Wedding,” she presents Betsy Hayes, a valiant woman, who is based on a real figure. Betsy becomes a nurse and ultimately saves lives when those in charge of the war efforts would do otherwise.
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Nonfiction picture books for children are a great way to introduce information to kids about the world around them in a very digestible manner with vocabulary that’s just right for them to understand. This group of nonfiction picture books about animals and plants is for a range of ages. Two books are a part of the “Meet Your World” series. One is “You Are a Honey Bee!” and the other is “You Are a Raccoon!” for young readers who will enjoy the book’s physical suggestions to move like those animals. “Stinkbird Has a Superpower” is about a hoatzin, an Amazon bird that lives in the rain forest. This picture book is filled with information but also with lots of humor that will engage young readers and cause them to want to read and reread this adorably illustrated book. “A Home for Every Plant: Wonders of the Botanical World” is a large, information-filled book about plants from all over the world. “Whale Fall: Exploring an Ocean-Floor Ecosystem,” begins with a sad event, the death of a seventy-year-old whale, but then we learn about how that death goes on to nourish other creatures for half a century. “Cicada Symphony” is all about the cicadas we see every summer, and this colorful book is chock-full of information. “We Are Starlings: Inside the Mesmerizing Magic of a Murmuration” is filled with stunning watercolor illustrations of the birds and the fantastic and beautiful shapes they make as they fly together, as the story is told in first person plural, the band of starlings to fly together so amazingly. And three books in the “Save the…” series are about blue whales, frogs, and giraffes, and would be great informational texts for a classroom.
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