The Queen of the Night, Alexander Chee, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt –Tragedy throws a young Minnesota farm girl with an incredible voice and equestrian skills in with a circus bound for Europe.
Diane Slocum
Diane Slocum has been a newspaper reporter and editor and authored an historical book. As a freelance writer, she contributes regularly to magazines and newspapers. She writes features on authors and a column for writers and readers in Lifestyle magazine. She is assigned to write interviews of first-time novelists and bestselling authors for Authorlink®
Bookstore Setting Brings Small Town Back to Life
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, Katrina Bivald, Sourcebooks – Sara and Amy are pen pals – Amy in small town Iowa, Sara in Sweden. Across the seas, they share their love of books and Amy’s stories of the inhabitants of Broken Wheel.
Belief and Disbelief Tangle in Expanded Lives of Biblical Characters
This is Why I Came, Mary Rakow, Counterpoint – A woman waits to go into confessional after decades of being away. She carries a small volume of Bible stories as she has embellished them, filling in the blanks.
Jewish Girl Seeks Favor with Persian King to Save Her People
Esther, Rebecca Kanner, Howard Books – Esther is a teenage Jewish orphan when she is rounded up by King Xerxes’ Immortals and brought to the royal harem.
Debut Novel sees Birth of Communism through Eyes of Mrs. Engels
Mrs. Engels, Gavin McCrea–Lizzie Burns and her sister, Mary, were textile factory workers in Manchester when the owner’s son, Frederick, came on board. Of all the girls who were swooning over him, he chose Mary
Lori Ostlund Debut Novel Deals with Life After the Parade
After the Parade, Lori Ostlund, Scribner–Aaron Englund’s life is divided – before and after the parade, before and after his mother leaves and before and after he leaves Walter. Trying to make it on his own in San Francisco, he finds he has to make sense of his years of growing up in small-town Minnesota . . .
Kitchens of the Great Midwest Serves a Babette’s Feast
Kitchens of the Great Midwest, J. Ryan Stradal , Penguin Publishing — Lars Thorvald got teased a lot growing up, smelling like the lutefisk his family prepared for the Scandinavians in Duluth. His daughter, Eva, also was tormented by her classmates, but her passion was growing chocolate habaneros, powerful enough to be a weapon.
Debut Novel Chronicles Mountain Family’s Violent Heritage
Bull Mountain, Brian Panowich — The Burroughs family controls its own kingdom on Georgia’s Bull Mountain through unbridled violence and supported by moonshine, marijuana and meth.
Debut Novel: Strong Women Do What it Takes to Survive
The Shore, Sara Taylor — The Shore follows The Lumsden/Day family and other inhabitants of the islands off the coast of Virginia for over a century from the 1800s and into the future. From the very rich to the barely scraping by, they all encounter hardships of survival, whether from a spouse, parent or the supernatural world.
Lithuanian Women With Wings Struggle to Survive
An interview with Michele Young-Stone, author of Above Us Only Sky (Simon and Schuster, 3 March, 2015)–All Prudence Vilkas knows about her heritage is that she was born with wings. They were removed at her birth, and only a few years later, her mother removes her more completely from the Vilkas heritage by running off from her husband. Only much later, Prudence learns of her Lithuanian grandfather and German grandmother.
