All This Could Be Yours

 Wow, what a fun look behind the scenes at the life of an author on the road. As author Tesse Calloway becomes an overnight sensation with her new novel, her life becomes a nightmare, of feeling stalked by someone from her past.  

Tesse leaves her corporate job behind to support her husband and two young children as a successful book author.  But she finds out life on the road publicizing your book from bookstore to bookstore is a hard life.  Away from home, missing the routine family adventures takes a toll.  Then add in a person who may know the secrets you are hiding from your past and the pressure intensifies. 

All these ingredients make for a twisting and mind bending psychological thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat and reading late into the night.  It also makes a reader wonder what secrets this author Hank Phillippi Ryan may be hiding from her readers.?  Should we be following her social media and trying to suss out some secrets?

The Women

 The Women by Kristin Hannah is another fantastic novel.  The Nightingale was one of my all time favorites and The Women comes close.  I had been putting it off until my book discussion group put it on their list for this month.  That forced my hand and I am glad it did.  

This is a wonderful plot of a young woman coming of age in the sixties during the Vietnam War.  Living with her Republican family on Coronado Island in California.   It is at a time when going to war was still a patriotic act.  When her brother signs up and joins the Navy the family is very proud of him.

But when Jamie goes off to Vietnam as a nurse facing all the horrific horrors of young soldiers who are wounded her family is not as excited and supportive.

Coming back after her tour of duty she is not welcomed back with support and happiness.  She is suffering from PTSD even though that was not known at the time.  She is afraid to tell other people what she is suffering, thinking she is the only one.  

This novel beautifully handles the topics of war and the horrible way veterans were received back in the US.  The trauma they suffered.  Other topics raised are sacrifice, heroism, love and understanding.  There were so many incredible stories there were from that period in history .  The research and interviews the author did were very comprehensive and give the characters a realistic perspective.

Incredibly touching and poignant.

Marble Halll Murders

 Anthony Horowitz is probably one of the best mystery authors around.  Definitely on my favorites list and as soon as his newest novel comes out I am putting everything else aside to read it.

Horowitz has an incredible background having written for many of the television shows I have enjoyed. He wrote episodes of Midsommer Murders and Foyle's War.  He also wrote scripts for Agatha Christie's Poirot TV programs and also the Alex Rider middle school books.  Then there are the fabulous series he is writing now.  Two of them.  Magpie Murders and The Word is Murder.   

Each of these new series are so well written; they are funny, captivating and you never can guess where the plot is taking you.  One series is written about a mystery writer who has been writing a cleever very popular mystery series. The plots are a story within a story, the author tells the story and the editor is reading the story and living her real life.

In this latest book, Marble Hall Murders, the editor is working with a new mystery author.  This author is trying to continue the series of a dead author.  When the editor and the author clash over edits and rewrites they part ways.  But the editor cannot seem to separate from the author, her future is tied to this relationship.  Either shee finds a way to resolve things or she may not ever work in the business again.

Of course there are intriguing  questions about all the relationships between the characters, and there is a murder or two.  The writing is phenomenal and always very insightful.

Songs of the Broken Hearted

 

Author Ayelet Tsabari brings us her latest masterpiece of writing in Songs for the Brokenhearted.   Though the voice may sound similar to her nonfiction book, The Art of Leaving with essays about her family and their lives as Yemeni Jews in Israel, this time she has fictionalized the storyline.

It is critical that we read books by Israeli and Jewish authors both to give them a voice and for the powerful message we send that these books are important.  But it is also amazing to read books written by Israeli and Jewish authors because they always teach us something new, some new historic knowledge or a new perspective on news that we grew up with but may not have looked back at lately.

Songs for the Brokenhearted does all of that and more.  This is the story of many Yemeni Jews immigrating to Israel in the 1950s living in an overcrowded immigrant camp in Rosh HaAyin.  They are living under harsh conditions, not accepted by the Israelis as full citizens, looking for work and learning a new language.  Following the narrative of Yaqub, a shy young man who is trying to find his promised golden future we learn about how hard it was for these immigrants to get settled.  He meets the beautiful Saida in the camp but his love for her cannot be acted upon because she is already married.

Then we meet Zohara, a young thirty year old woman who is returning to Israel from New York,  for her mother’s funeral.  Zohara is at loose ends, confused, angry and not sure she is following the path she really wants.  She had left to study in the United States and felt she had escaped the life of poverty and embarrassment of having an illiterate Yemeni mother.  Growing up surrounded by Ashkenizi she always wished her skin was lighter and that her father was still alive.

Coming back now to Israel and trying to get along with her older sister, Lizzie, who Zohara thinks does not understand her, she finds she may have been wrong about quite a few things.  . She may have misunderstood her mother and the relationship her parents had.  She finds out her mother was a beautiful singer of Yemeni women’s songs.  This is an important part of the Yemeni culture that Tsabari weaves throughout the narrative.

Tsabari also brings in a little known harsh historic fact that nurses in the camps were taking Yemeni children away from their families and giving them up for adoption.  They were telling the parents their children had gotten sick, were taken to a hospital and then the nurses told the parents the child had died.  

Also setting Zohara’s story in 1995 the historic events of the Oslo Accords and the association of Yizak Rabin plays a large role in this novel. Zohara’s nephew, Yoni gets caught up with a group of Israeli reactionary young men who attend rallies and protests.  Tsabari sets out viewpoints from the different sides of the political argument around peace in the Mideast during this time period.

The book is beautifully written about a very emotional time in everyone’s life when a loved one’s life ends and you not only re-evaluate yourself and your relationship to that person, but also find out secrets about their lives.  The book follows multiple romantic plot lines and also the relationship between sisters, and friends.  It is interesting to read about historical facts that have led to where Israel and its neighbors are now. A time when a hope for peace in the Mideast was really thought to be an imminent possibility.