The Woman by Jack Ketchum and Lucky McKee

Blurb:

The Woman is the powerful story of the last survivor of a feral tribe of cannibals who have terrorized the east coast from Maine into Canada for years now. Badly wounded in a battle with police, she takes refuge in a cave overlooking the sea. Christopher Cleek is a slick, amoral — and unstable — country lawyer who, out hunting one day, sees her bathing in a stream. Fascinated, he follows her to her cave. Cleek has many dark secrets and to these he’ll add another. He will capture her, lock in his fruit cellar, and tame her, civilize her. To this end he’ll enlist his long-suffering wife Belle, his teenage son and daughter Brian and Peg, and even his little girl Darlin’, to aid him. So the question becomes, who is more savage? The hunter or the game?

Review:

Since I am still thinking about this story weeks after completing the book, I give The Woman by Jack Ketchum and Lucky McKee 5 roses. Depending on the type of horror story you like, “The Woman” is a book you will want to read if you plan to feel repulsion and disgust for days after you have put the book down. There is not a lot of blood and gore, so if that is what you like in your horror stories; it may not be what you are looking for.

This story is about a woman from a primitive past who is found by a man while out in the woods. He brings the woman home to his family, and the horror begins. Due to the behaviors of the father, it is very believable that members of the family would allow these events to occur.

While this is an extreme example, I consider the book to be about the primitive past encountering the present showing that humanity and cognitive development have not progressed as much as one would think.

Length: 336 Pages

Prices:

Print: $ 26.00

Digital: $4.99

BuyLink: http://store.crossroadpress.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_150_152&products_id=160

You’ll notice we always include the publisher’s buy link. That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher. Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%. When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left. So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40. If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive. Plug the larger USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory. You can download your books onto your computer using “Save As” to a “Books” file you create and sort them into sub-folders by genre, author, or however you wish before transferring them to your Kindle. That way, if there’s a glitch with your Kindle, the books are on your computer. Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Thanks for visiting. Rose Julie & Rochelle

The Sign for Drowning by Rachel Stolzman

Blurb:

Anna has grown up haunted by her younger sister's death. In the life she constructs as a barrier against the emotional wreckage of her family tragedy, Anna settles comfortably into a career as a teacher of deaf children. But a challenge arrives—in the form of a young girl. Adrea's disarming vulnerability and obvious need for love offer Anna the possibility of reconnecting with the world around her—if she has the courage to open her heart. The Sign for Drowning is a poignant story of loss and the unexpected occasions of grace that enable us to heal from it and grow beyond it.

Review:

The Sign for Drowning is a touching story about the drowning death of a five year old girl, Meagan, and the life-long impact it had on her eight year old sister, Anna. It has a contemporary setting, and is told in first person by Anna. It has all the pain of heartbreak and expressive love that comes with loss and the grief that envelops the ones who loved. This personal account is dry in places, as would be this type of emotional journey in reality. It incorporates Anna’s connection to the deaf world with an endearing look not only at the silence of deafness, but also the silence of death—not merely its ability to silence the dead one, but also its capacity to silence the living ones left behind. This book is an emotional read that ends in hope and recovery. It’s not for everyone, but I do recommend it as one that takes its reader on an engrossing journey from sorrow and despair to inner strength and acceptance.

Length:  208 Pages

Prices:

Print:  $19.95

Digital:  $1.99

Buy Link:  http://www.shambhala.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=The+Sign+for+Drowning

Thanks for visiting. Rose & Rochelle

The Silk Romance by Helena Fairfax

Blurb:

Jean-Luc Olivier is a devastatingly handsome racing-driver with the world before him. Sophie Challoner is a penniless student, whose face is unknown beyond her own rundown estate in London. The night they spend together in Paris seems to Sophie like a fairytale—a Cinderella story without the happy ending. She knows she has no part in Jean-Luc’s future. She made her dying mother a promise to take care of her father and brother in London. One night of happiness is all Sophie allows herself. She runs away from Jean-Luc and returns to England to keep her promise.

Safely back home with her father and brother, and immersed in her college work, Sophie tries her best to forget their encounter, but she reckons without Jean-Luc. He is determined to find out why she left him, and intrigued to discover the real Sophie. He engineers a student placement Sophie can’t refuse, and so, unwillingly, she finds herself back in France, working for Jean-Luc in the silk mill he now owns.

Thrown together for a few short weeks in Lyon, the romantic city of silk, their mutual love begins to grow. But it seems the fates are conspiring against Sophie’s happiness. Jean-Luc has secrets of his own. Then, when disaster strikes at home in London, Sophie is faced with a choice—stay in this glamorous world with the man she loves or return to her family to keep the sacred promise she made her mother.

Review:

The Silk Romance was a good read. The characters were sympathetic, and the book held my attention. Ms. Fairfax obviously did her homework. Taking place largely in Lyon’s silk district, I learned a lot about the manufacture of silk, and the world that surrounds it in France.

Surprisingly, the book is a contemporary tale. Jean-Luc is a modern celebrity, still a subject of paparazzi, even in retirement—a fact that adds to the story’s conflict. Grab a copy, visit Lyon and learn about silk while enjoying a sweet romance.

Length:  402 Pages

Price:  $5.50

Buy Link:  https://museituppublishing.com/bookstore/index.php/now-available-in-ebook/the-silk-romance-detail

You’ll notice we always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive. Plug the larger USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory. You can download your books onto your computer using “Save As” to a “Books” file you create and sort them into sub-folders by genre, author, or however you wish before transferring them to your Kindle. That way, if there’s a glitch with your Kindle, the books are on your computer. Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Thanks for visiting. Rose, Julie & Rochelle

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Blurb:

A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck, and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.

Review:

Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson, is a powerful novel for its look inside the emotions, thoughts and dreams of young Ruth, in whose voice the story is told. It is a solemn tale, yet whimsical in its details. It is uniquely descriptive with unusual depth into the outer surroundings as well as the inner facets of its characters. It is fiction; however, in my own assessment, much of it must have been truthfully experienced in order to have been written because it contains an on-going element of incipiency totally unnatural to novels, which for the most part rise and fall with a smoothness of waves in creation. Robinson’s scenes are vivid—mostly depictions of winter and dimness, with every minute component seen and unseen in these conditions. Somewhat down-played in the plot is the magnitude of sacrifice Ruth’s aunt is willing to make to change the very fiber of her own being in order keep Ruth with her, but this makes sense because the story is told from Ruth’s perspective, whose awareness was muted to some extent by her internal struggles.

I did not closely identify with Robinson’s characters, but found them to be extremely interesting in their differences from myself. I consider this a well-written and remarkable book, and I highly recommend it.

Length:  219 Pages

Prices:

Print:  $15.00

Digital:  $9.99

Buy Link:  http://us.macmillan.com/housekeeping/MarilynneRobinson

Thanks for visiting. Rose & Rochelle