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Romance

The many flavors of romance

Feature by Lois Dyer

With holidays approaching, we dedicated our December romance column to novels set during the Christmas season. But for those of us who have had enough Christmas cheer, we bring you three romance novels with plenty of heat and love, sans the holiday spirit.

CONTRACT AFFAIR
Award-winning Texas author Lorraine Heath wraps up her Hellions of Havisham series with The Viscount and the Vixen. Viscount Locksley, better known as Locke, is shocked when his reclusive father announces at breakfast that he has plans to marry that very day. When a beautiful young woman, many years his father’s junior, arrives on the doorstep of isolated Havisham Hall, Locke is determined to stop the marriage. But widowed Portia Gadstone has a contract guaranteeing a wedding, and when Locke objects, his father demands that Locke himself honor the legally binding document. Desperately in need of the security of wedlock and with no alternative plan, Portia has no choice but to agree. Both Portia and Locke have vowed to never fall in love, but both are in for an unexpected lesson in life’s vagaries. When secrets from Portia’s past are exposed, the couple must face betrayal and heartbreak. Will love be enough to survive scandal and lies?

This compelling Regency romance employs unconventional subject matter to its advantage and features a compassionate, kind heroine and a strong hero who balances her perfectly. The depth of emotion and passionate connection, paired with a solid English historical setting, is certain to delight readers.

SPACE SEAL
Anne Elizabeth delivers a thrilling romance in The Soul of a SEAL, the fourth in her West Coast Navy Seals series. Beautiful and brilliant Dr. Kimberly Warren has spent her career working on a super-secret space project. Just as her dream is about to be realized, the spacecraft inexplicably malfunctions and two Navy SEAL members on her team are murdered. Top brass in the Navy want answers, and they send in their best warriors, Captain Bennett Sheraton and his friend Melo, to solve the case. Bennett and Kimberly have instant chemistry, and while both worry that their connection will be a distraction, they soon realize they make excellent partners. Aided by Melo, Bennett and Kimberly move quickly to analyze data and untangle the complicated conspiracy that threatens their mission. However, just when the trio believes the saboteur has been neutralized, they discover the enemy has a last card to play. This time, Bennett may be the one to die if Kimberly can’t find a way to save him.

Fans of well-researched technical detail will thoroughly enjoy this novel. The nail-biting scenes with lives hanging in the balance are sure to keep readers on the edge of their seats.

SOUTHERN SUSPENSE
New York Times bestselling author Karen Harper begins her new South Shores series with Chasing Shadows. A forensic psychologist who suffers from a neurological disorder, Claire Britten has a unique ability to read people and discover the truth. Her skills and “razor sharp intuition” make her a powerful expert trial witness. After high-powered attorney Nick Markwood loses a case due to her brilliant testimony, he’s impressed, and he hires Claire to investigate a case involving a mysterious death. They travel to Shadowlawn, a magnificent plantation house near St. Augustine, Florida, that looks as if it is straight from Gone With the Wind. The beautiful old house hides secrets, however, and a killer stalks the portrait-hung halls. When Nick and Claire believe they’ve solved the case at last, a surprise twist throws their world into danger yet again. A happy ending is by no means guaranteed, for evil lurks close by.

With a strong cast of characters, lots of red herring clues and a wonderful Southern setting, this novel will have readers clamoring for the next installment.

Lois Dyer writes from her home in Port Orchard, Washington.

With holidays approaching, we dedicated our December romance column to novels set during the Christmas season. For those of us who have had enough of the Christmas cheer, we bring you three romance novels with plenty of heat and love, sans the holiday spirit.
Fiction

Short stories that stick the landing

Feature by Arlene McKanic

A short story is rather like a gymnastics routine at the Olympics. The best ones are brief, intense and stick the landing. A reader can only be in awe of those writers who get it just right, no matter if the story takes place in outer space or is so full of kitchen-sink realism you can imagine the rust ring around the drain. The three writers reviewed here have all just about conquered the genre that Junot Díaz justifiably called “unforgiving.” These women are writing mostly about women and their struggles with being women, or girls on the verge of becoming women, or the double-trouble of being a woman while black.

The tales in Clare Beams’ We Show What We Have Learned & Other Stories appear, at first, to be the most conventionally written. Many are set in indefinable eras that might be the present day or 70 years ago, and some have a lovely, sorrowful, Thornton Wilderesque clarity, but others have surreal twists. In the title story, a teacher literally and matter-of-factly falls to pieces in front of a class full of fifth graders. In another, a meek young girl goes to a girl’s boarding school run by a (male) headmaster whose concept of beauty is old-fashioned to say the least, and bizarre and frightening to say the worst. Then, there’s the old lady, revered by the townspeople she lives among, who owns buildings that mysteriously tidy themselves. When one building does not, in a most catastrophic way, she’s at a loss for what to say to the townspeople. Her ultimate solution is both shocking and weirdly compassionate. The collection is so adept, it is startling to learn that this is the author’s debut.

DISCOVERING A LOST GENIUS
The story of the author of Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?, Kathleen Collins, is the most puzzling and sad. These stories are being published for the first time, and posthumously; Collins died of breast cancer in 1988, at the age of only 46. In addition to writing short stories, Collins was the one of the first African American women to direct a feature film in America. That, too, premiered after the author’s death. 

Collins’ stories are powerful yet crafted with a spareness and delicacy. Focused on the contortions of race in America, they remind one of James Baldwin’s 1960s fiction, even if some of them are set in the 1970s and 1980s. The first story is written like a movie treatment, with directions for a cinematographer as he or she follows the unravelling of a couple. A continuation of the story focuses on the husband, who is a cad, and the wife, who soothes her pain by keeping continuously busy. Many of Collins’ characters can pass for white, or are educated and cultured in a way the world does not expect them to be as “Negroes,” or “colored people.” But their struggles only result in alienation from white, black and even self. The beloved uncle of one narrator literally cries himself to death. In another story, a family who interbreeds to make sure they keep their light skin and “good“ hair don’t know what to do with the dark-skinned narrator. They’re loving people, but marrying cousins generation after generation says something tragic about them and something condemnatory about the society in which they try to live.

A HAUNTING COLLECTION
The most experimental of the stories are found in Alexandra Kleeman’s Intimations. The author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, Kleeman plunges her female protagonists into topsy-turvy, Escher-like worlds—psychologically if not physically—that have no exit. Indeed, they have no entrance; these anxious stories often begin with a young woman having no idea how she got to be in a particular place, like a baby whose brain is just beginning to lock down memories. As for real babies, they simply materialize, and the girls are expected to take care of them some kind of way, even though they have no idea how. Even a mother who came by her baby in the more conventional way has no problem handing her to a complete stranger while she goes searching for a busted stroller.

In another story, a family ruled by a tyrannical, wildly imaginative father literally controls, or tries to control, the weather. The owner/protector of a feral boy taught to be a ballet dancer learns too late that not all the wildness has been beaten out of him. Not quite science fiction, not quite fantasy and not even magical realism, these haunting stories belong in a category of their own.

Arlene McKanic writes and reads from South Carolina

A short story is rather like a gymnastics routine at the Olympics. The best ones are brief, intense and stick the landing.
FictionWorld Fiction

Award winners from Down Under

Feature by Lauren Bufferd

What sort of voices are shaping Australian fiction? Two new novels offer answers. Both are firsts for their authors, both were nominated for awards before they were even published and both are by women.

But here, the passing similarities end: Jane Harper’s The Dry is a contemporary murder mystery set in a rural town, while Emily Bitto’s The Strays takes the reader to Melbourne in the 1930s.

The Dry is one of the most talked-about debuts of the new year. During the worst drought of the century, Federal agent Aaron Falk is called back to Kiewarra, a small town in West Australia, to investigate a murder-suicide. His high school friend Luke Hadler appears to have murdered his wife and son before killing himself: another farmer pushed to the brink by the punishing weather.

As a favor to Hadler’s parents, Falk reluctantly launches an investigation with the help of local policeman Greg Raco. But most of the old residents of Kiewarra aren’t pleased to see Falk, who was run out of town 20 years earlier after being suspected in the death of his classmate Ellie Deacon. As Falk digs into the circumstances around Luke’s death, long-hidden mysteries and animosities begin to surface. 

Harper’s story is tightly plotted and moves briskly, the tension as brittle and incendiary as the dried-out crops on the Kiewarra farms. Falk is a quintessential detective: introverted, reserved and deeply wounded. But it is the beautifully evoked landscape and the portrayal of a gloomy outpost on the edge of a desert that are the stars of the show. 

[Read a Q&A with Jane Harper about The Dry.]

The Strays plunges the reader into a more cosmopolitan environment. On her first day of school, the socially tentative Lily is embraced by Eva, one of three daughters of the famous painter Evan Trentham and his wealthy wife, Helena. Growing up in a conventional Melbourne home in the 1930s, where an exciting evening is hot cocoa and a jigsaw puzzle, Lily is fascinated by the Trenthams’ rambling garden and the creative chaos of their family life, especially after Helena invites a group of fellow artists into the family home. This experiment in communal living, with its lack of rules and lively conversations and parties, seems delightful at first. But the youngest daughter, Heloise, troubled to begin with, becomes unnaturally close to her father’s greatest rival, with disastrous results. 

The novel is told in a series of flashbacks by the adult Lily, who looks back with a bittersweet mixture of fondness and disgust at the benign neglect under which the girls were raised. When Eva comes back to town for a retrospective of her father’s work, Lily begins to wonder why she was drawn to the Trenthams in the first place. 

Bitto loosely based the Trenthams on the Heide Circle, a group of Melbourne artists known for their unconventional lifestyles and named for the Heide communal house in which they lived. But The Strays is more of a psychological study than a historical one: As Lily begins to understand what happened at the Trenthams, she comes to terms with her role as a bystander to her own life. Told in both the breathless voice of an easily infatuated child and the more measured tones of a wiser adult, The Strays is a powerful tale of the consequences of creativity.

What sort of voices are shaping Australian fiction? Two new novels offer answers. Both are firsts for their authors, both were nominated for awards before they were even published and both are by women.
NonfictionBusiness & Finance

Make your money work for you

Feature by Amy Scribner

In the words of P.T. Barnum, “Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.” These books are sure to help your money serve you better in 2017.

DITCH THE DEBT
Rachel Cruze hates debt. Really hates it. In Love Your Life, Not Theirs, the financial adviser and daughter of money guru Dave Ramsey advises readers to stop trying to keep up with the Joneses and—most importantly—to live debt-free. No credit cards. No car loans.

“[W]hatever you have to give up to live without debt is worth the peace of mind you’ll have and the money you get to keep instead of sending it to the bank,” she argues. 

The message is hardcore for a country in love with credit, but Cruze makes a compelling argument for using cash for most purposes, building an emergency fund, saving for the future and donating a healthy portion of your earnings. 

“People who love their money and stuff more than they love other people will live small, lonely and ultimately ineffective lives,” she writes. 

YOU & YOUR MONEY
Self-described holistic wealth expert Leanne Jacobs views money as something we earn when we open ourselves to it. In Beautiful Money, she details a path to wealth that includes changing our thought patterns about money, building multiple income streams, practicing yoga and (sorry, Rachel Cruze!) building a credit history with a credit card or car loan. 

An MBA and former executive, Jacobs clearly knows her stuff. Her unorthodox approach is not for everyone, but it’s full-hearted and sincere. She advises readers to adopt a wealth mantra, such as: Beauty, abundance and grace flow my way every day. Every cell of my body reminds me that I deserve the very best. In the end, she writes, there is one essential truth about money: “How we treat, respect, discuss, use or abuse money is a real-life measure of our own self-worth.”

SAVINGS SHORTCUTS
In Pogue’s Basics: Money former New York Times tech columnist and life hack enthusiast David Pogue shares nifty tricks for holding onto more of your hard-earned cash. By focusing on what he calls “quirks in the system,” Pogue offers some pretty ingenious ways to save, from keeping your tires inflated to reduce gasoline costs, to earning extra cash by signing up for online focus groups. The advice is packaged in a nicely designed, graphics-heavy book that highlights ballpark savings in red.

Pogue’s tips cover virtually every aspect of life, from tech and TV to food and drink. In The Last Legal Tax Dodges, he lists dozens of deductions and tax credits, downright gleeful as he explains 529 plans, charitable giving and home sales profits. “If you made a profit from selling your home after living there at least two years, the first $250,000 of profit is yours, tax free,” he writes. “If you’re married and filing jointly, make that $500,000. Ka-ching!”

 

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the words of P.T. Barnum, “Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.” These books are sure to help your money serve you better in 2017.
Children's & YAPicture Book

New picture books focus on the benefits of bonding

Feature by Julie Hale

The start of a new year is a great time for making new friends! If your young one is developing into a wallflower instead of a social butterfly, check out the terrific books below. These spirited stories will inspire introverts of all ages to step outside their comfort zones and connect.

ADVENTURE AT SEA
A verbal mix-up leads to big fun in Kat Yeh’s The Friend Ship. Hedgehog spends her time alone, “curled up in a prickly little ball.” When she overhears the words “friendship is out there,” she’s inspired to hit the high seas to find what she thinks is an actual ship. She sets sail in her own boat, asking the animals she meets along the way if they’ve seen the Friend Ship. Nobody has, but everyone wants to, and Hedgehog is soon joined in her search by a beaver, a herd of deer, a mouse, a polar bear—even an elephant! The members of this menagerie are all looking for the same thing, and by story’s end, they’ve definitely found it. Chuck Groenink’s masterful spreads of the shipmates on the water have a classic feel. His critters are irresistible. Who wouldn’t want to befriend this winning bunch?

FRIENDS AGAINST ALL ODDS
Jessica Olien’s adorable Adrift: An Odd Couple of Polar Bears demonstrates the importance of keeping an open mind when it comes to making friends. Karl and Hazel don’t get along. Introverted Hazel savors solitude—she likes to read and daydream—while rowdy Karl enjoys showing off for his bear buddies. When these polar opposites (I couldn’t pass up the pun . . .) get stranded on an ice floe in the middle of the ocean, they realize they’re stuck with each other. But once the ice floe starts to melt, they begin to bond and discover they’re more alike than they ever imagined. Olien’s cute, comic illustrations feature seals, penguins and other cold-weather creatures, all vividly depicted in bold lines and bright colors (check out Hazel’s polka-dotted scarf!). Adrift is a delightful reminder that friendship can blossom where it’s least expected.

PERFECT PAIRINGS
In the clever, quirky Before You, Rebecca Doughty uses friendship and the sense of fulfillment it brings as the basis for a series of witty comparisons: “Before you . . . I was a bowl without a fish. A birthday cake without a wish.” Doughty explores the idea of “before”—pre-friendship—throughout the first half of the book; the latter half she devotes to the time when buddies finally find each other: “I had a cup, you brought the tea. I had a boat, you brought the sea.” In minimalist ink-and-paint drawings, she uses her trademark deadpan visual style to hilarious effect—there’s a frowning four-leaf clover in need of luck, and a droopy noodle who could use some soup—and the result is a book that will appeal to readers of all ages. This is a nifty little volume that celebrates the power of companionship.

The start of a new year is a great time for making new friends! If your young one is developing into a wallflower instead of a social butterfly, check out the terrific books below. These spirited stories will inspire introverts of all ages to step outside their comfort zones and connect.

Romance

Military heroes fight for love

Feature by Lois Dyer

What better way to start the new year than with heroes who unselfishly put their lives on the line to save the women they love? We’ve picked books with three courageous, honorable men in the military that we’re certain will make you sigh and smile.

COURAGE UNDER FIRE
Piper J. Drake returns readers to the world of Hope’s Crossing Kennels with Absolute Trust, a True Heroes novel. This third installment in the series stars the founder of a kennel that helps home former military service dogs, Brandon Forte. After leaving the Air Force, Brandon returned to his hometown of New Hope because Sophie Kim lives here. He’s loved Sophie since they were teenage sweethearts, but believing he wasn’t good enough for her, he enlisted in the military and left her behind. Now Sophie and Brandon have resumed best-friend status, but each secretly craves a deeper relationship.

When Sophie barely survives two mysterious and violent attempts on her life, Brandon suspects she’s being targeted by his enemies. He’s determined to save her, but the criminals threatening Sophie are powerful and persistent. Brandon and Sophie race for their lives, trying to avoid assassins while unraveling the layers of the evil organization bent on killing them. Forced to spend long hours together, the heated attraction between them explodes. With time running out, will these two find a way to stay alive and reach a happy future together?

With a smart heroine perfectly balanced by a savvy hero, this novel has enough steam and danger to satisfy the most demanding of romantic suspense readers.

SECOND CHANCE
Married to a fighter pilot, author Chanel Cleeton writes about the world of Air Force jet pilots with affection and authenticity. In On Broken Wings, the third entry in the Wild Aces series, a year has passed since Dani Sinclair became a widow. She’s struggling to move on after the plane crash that took her squadron leader husband and turns to longtime friend, Alex “Easy” Rogers for support. What she doesn’t know is that Easy has been in love with her since the first time he saw her and has spent the last few years hiding his feelings, committed to doing what’s best for Dani. Now she needs his friendship to heal her wounded heart, and he’s determined to support her. But Dani’s view of him is slowly changing with each hour they spend together. When it’s time for Easy’s squadron to be deployed, the two are faced with separation and their fierce attraction blazes out of control. Both are left racked with guilt and attempt to come to terms with the seismic shift in their relationship. With Easy away on deployment, Dani must face changes in her life, but just when she hopes for clarity, fate shocks her yet again.

This wonderful story is a heart-rending, emotional rollercoaster, and readers are certain to cheer for these two honorable, sympathetic people.

DANGEROUS TO KNOW
The world is threatened with destruction in author Donna Grant’s The Protector, the second installment in the Sons of Texas series. Beautiful daredevil pilot Mia Carter has a history of signing up for dangerous assignments, but her current job is fiercely personal. A longtime friend and mentor has gone missing and Mia is determined to find him. When Marine Force Recon captain Cullen Loughman learns his father has been kidnapped, he starts his search by questioning Mia, the last person to see his father alive. The two join forces to unravel the complex, tangled threads of an international terror plot that surrounds the kidnapping. The hunters become the hunted, for a mysterious, powerful group called The Saints will stop at nothing to recover a bio-weapon last seen in Cullen’s father’s possession. Can Mia and Cullen stay alive long enough to discover the men behind the organization and find Cullen’s father or will they die in the attempt?

Nonstop thrills and hot romance drive this story at a breakneck speed. While the novel stands alone, readers will immediately sign up for the next tale in the series to learn more about the Loughman family and their race to save their father’s life.

Lois Dyer writes from her home in Port Orchard, Washington

What better way to start the new year than with book heroes who unselfishly put their lives on the line to save the women they love? We’ve picked books with three courageous, honorable men in the military that we’re certain will make you sigh and smile.
Children's & YA

Classics of children’s literature

Feature by Robin Smith

Children and their parents are drawn to the silver and gold stickers on picture books. The most important of these stickers designate the Caldecott Medal-winning books. Have you ever wondered where that sticker came from? The Huntington Library Press answers this question with a new offering, Randolph Caldecott's Picture Books. Nineteenth-century British illustrator Caldecott is credited with being the father of the modern picture book, and these reproductions of his published works from the Huntington's ample art collection shows that the credit is well-deserved. Turning the pages of this rich volume is to return to another era, one filled with nursery rhymes and wordplay, fairy tales and poetry. Today's readers have gotten used to seeing saturated colors in picture books, but the technology of earlier times produced subdued but beautiful etchings and watercolors. This delightful collection would be a lovely addition to any family's library.

INTO THE GARDEN
W.W. Norton, creator of many critical editions for high school and college students, brings us the gorgeous The Annotated Secret Garden edited with an introduction and notes by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina. Her well-researched commentary will add to any reader's knowledge of this classic children's book and its author, Frances Hodgson Burnett. Gerzina is an expert on all things Burnett, having written both a biography of her and the Norton Critical Edition of The Secret Garden. Readers interested in the life of Burnett will devour the introduction, a biography that recounts the soap-opera life that Burnett lived. Her early reading material was mostly penny dreadfuls and the popular magazines of the British household servants Gothic tales and romances. As she matured, moved to Tennessee and began writing short stories for mainstream magazines, her reading preferences and style changed.

The annotated story itself is sprinkled generously with illustrations by the many artists who have interpreted the beloved story of Mary and Colin, the redemptive power of nature, and the ability of a broken spirit to heal and prosper. The annotations themselves, in green type in the side margins, are child-friendly. No three-page treatises on the state of colonial India here just explications of vocabulary and insights into the times. It's hard to reread The Secret Garden without having that familiar lump in my throat when Colin and his father are reunited and Colin, at last, walks on his own two legs to Misselthwaite Manor. Pass the tissues.

FOLLOWING A DREAM
My very favorite book of the season, and one I have already tucked away for a few special friends, is Artist to Artist: 23 Major Illustrators Talk to Children about Their Art. Part advice book, part art book and part peek into the lives of 23 of the most beloved children's book illustrators, this is a volume for all ages. A wonderfully diverse crowd it is, too, from Mitsumasa Anno, Quentin Blake and Ashley Bryan through the alphabet to Jerry Pinkney and finally to Paul O. Zelinsky. Each page contains a self-portrait, a letter from the artist to children who dream of being artists and, behind a deft foldout page, examples of the artist's work.

Especially compelling are the carefully saved bits of art and photographs from the artists' childhoods. Who knew that kindergarten Jane's crayon drawing of Eskimos would lead to the familiar illustrations of Jane Dyer? But perhaps the best gifts contained here are the moving letters of the artists themselves. Never condescending, their words seem directed at the fledgling artist in all of us.

As Maurice Sendak puts it, "it's not that I draw particularly better than other people I've never fooled myself about that. Rather it's that I remember things other people don't recall: the sounds and feelings and images the emotional quality of particular moments of childhood."

The artists encourage young people to create stories and to stick with art, no matter what adults might tell them. Barry Moser puts it best: "So, my young friend, never let anyone tell you that you cannot do something. You can. All it takes and this is a lot is the desire to do it, the persistence to learn how to do it well, the courage to stand strong when people around you are discouraging your dreams." Indeed.

Children and their parents are drawn to the silver and gold stickers on picture books. The most important of these stickers designate the Caldecott Medal-winning books. Have you ever wondered where that sticker came from? The Huntington Library Press answers this question with a new…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Teachers’ picks: Listen, look and learn

Feature by Julie Hale

If wintry temps have you dreaming of spring, then read on! The outdoor adventures featured below will tide you over till the milder months. Focusing on the marvels and mysteries of nature, they’re tailor-made for storytime in the classroom or at home. Who knew that science could be so much fun?

IN THE GARDEN
What Will Grow? (ages 3 to 6) by Jennifer Ward celebrates seeds in all their many forms, from acorns and flower pods to apple pips. In short rhymed stanzas, Ward nimbly addresses the idea of plant growth, tracking it from sprout to full flower: “Very tiny. / Then so viny! / What will grow? / Tomato.” Susie Ghahremani’s detailed scenes of neat garden rows showcase each seed along with a critter who’s hungry for the yield to come (watch out for the raccoon in the pumpkin patch!). Little readers will be impressed by the book’s fold-out spreads, which emphasize the miracle of buds and blossoms. Encapsulating the magic packed into seemingly simple seeds—and the surprises they produce—this beautifully rendered story is a great way to get kids interested in the great outdoors. Here’s to the green thumbs of the future!

IN THE WOODS
Tim McCanna’s Watersong (ages 4 to 8) offers a wonderful introduction to the connections that exist between animals and their native habitats. A little fox dodges raindrops, dashes through a stream and takes shelter beneath a tree as a storm crashes through the forest. McCanna uses simple lines of onomatopoeia to communicate the drama and power of the sudden squall: “Wash! Wham! / Lash! Whirl! / Bash! Swirl!” He depicts the storm from the perspectives of other animals—geese, snails and a wide-eyed owl—to show how the downpour disrupts the tranquility of their surroundings. By story’s end, the rain has passed, and the fox emerges from hiding to play with her pups beneath a sparkling rainbow. Capturing the clarity of a world washed in rain, Richard Smythe’s watercolor illustrations up the appeal of this delightful depiction of nature’s cycles and the unexpected gifts a storm can bring.

IN THE WATER
Rivers of Sunlight: How the Sun Moves Water Around the Earth (ages 4 to 8) is the latest entry in the popular, science-inspired Sunlight Series from author Molly Bang and artist Penny Chisholm. This informative yet accessible book is filled with fun facts about H20 and the role it plays with the sun in earth’s life-sustaining cycles. The sun itself serves as narrator: “Together, water and I give LIFE to your blue planet, and to YOU.” Presenting sophisticated information in a clear and engaging style, the book delves into concepts like evaporation and photosynthesis. Chisholm’s dazzling illustrations of the sea, the stars and the sun capture the magnitude of our ecosystem while creating a sense of intimacy readers can relate to. A bold typeface and short chunks of text make the book’s big ideas easy to process. Youngsters will see the world in a new way once they spend some time with this appealing primer.

If wintry temps have you dreaming of spring, then read on! The outdoor adventures featured below will tide you over till the milder months. Focusing on the marvels and mysteries of nature, they’re tailor-made for storytime in the classroom or at home. Who knew that science could be so much fun?

NonfictionBlack History

New perspectives on slavery and freedom

Feature by Priscilla Kipp

Black History Month is an annual celebration of black achievements as well as a reminder of the ongoing struggle against adversity. In three new books, George Washington’s runaway slave achieves freedom, members of the black elite in post-Reconstruction Washington, D.C., wrestle with Jim Crow and a Mississippi murder re-invigorates the civil rights movement.

FREEDOM FROM THE FIRST FAMILY
George Washington beat all odds to win the American colonies their independence, then surrendered his private life to serve as the nation’s first president. What he never gave up were his slaves. The remarkable story of the female slave who got away, Never Caught, is a testament to her tenacity on both sides of bondage.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar’s impressive research reveals the details: Ona Judge, Martha Washington’s personal slave, slipped away from the couple’s official residence in Philadelphia, the seat of the new government. She had served the family since birth, but when Martha planned to “give” Judge away to her volatile granddaughter, she decided to risk escape. Aided by the free black community in progressive Philadelphia, where slave owners were required to free slaves after a six-month residency (a law that Washington subverted by rotating his slaves to and from his Virginia estate, Mount Vernon), Judge fled to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Using the power of his office, Washington pursued her. With winter on her heels, Judge had to find shelter and work, elude slave catchers and forget about the family she left behind. While there is scant historical record of her remaining days, the shadow Judge casts on the president is long and dark, as told in this obscure chapter of U.S. history.

REVERSING RIGHTS
In The Original Black Elite, Elizabeth Dowling Taylor meticulously traces the auspicious rise and steady decline of African-American influence and civil rights in Washington, D.C., and beyond, as seen through the Daniel Murray family. The ambitious and aristocratic Murray was assistant librarian at the Library of Congress and compiler of the first encyclopedia for “the colored race throughout the world,” but could do little to stop the degradations and injustices. 

After Emancipation and the Civil War, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution further guaranteed freedom, protection and civil rights to all African Americans—but not for long. Reconstruction led to political fence-mending between the North and South, spawning Jim Crow laws and institutionalizing racism in the largely black District of Columbia, once considered “a black man’s paradise.” 

Racial exclusions went mostly unremedied by President William McKinley, and later were allowed to flourish under President Woodrow Wilson. Even at the doorstep of Congress, buying a house, dining in a restaurant or burying the dead were matters decided by color. By the time black veterans of World War I returned home, jobless and castigated as threats to whites, Washington was ready to erupt. The Red Summer of 1919 followed, and as race riots spread to other cities, it became clear that equality would be hard won.

MURDER AS CATALYST
In The Blood of Emmett Till, Timothy B. Tyson delivers a riveting, richly detailed account of the crime that reignited the civil rights movement. Tyson begins with an exclusive interview with Carolyn Bryant, in which— decades later—the white woman at the center of the crime admits to lying about that summer day in Money, Mississippi. 

Emmett Till was a bright, church-going 14-year-old with a slight stutter. He liked doo-wop and baseball. Before his mother, Mamie, sent him by train from Chicago’s south side to Mississippi to spend the summer with his cousins and great-uncle Moses Wright, an ordained preacher, she warned him about the “Delta way of life,” a culture of strict segregation demanding black subservience, especially regarding white women. 

Raised by his mother and grandmother, Till had never been known to cause trouble. Yet, days before he was to return home, he visited the small general store operated by Roy Bryant, where he allegedly touched Carolyn’s hand as he paid for his candy and “smart talked” to her. An alleged wolf whistle sealed his fate. Till’s bloated, mutilated body soon bubbled up in the Tallahatchie River; these murders were so common in Mississippi, and so overlooked elsewhere, it might have gone unaddressed. But Mamie called the Chicago press and insisted on an open casket: “Let the world see what they did to my boy.” Thus began a new era in the civil rights movement.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Black History Month is an annual celebration of black achievements as well as a reminder of the ongoing struggle against adversity. In three new books, George Washington’s runaway slave achieves freedom, members of the black elite in post-Reconstruction Washington, D.C., wrestle with Jim Crow and a Mississippi murder re-invigorates the civil rights movement.
Romance

Protectors of the heart

Feature by Lois Dyer

Warm up these cold winter nights with three romantic novels starring handsome bodyguards and their beautiful clients. Who knew private security assignments could be so intriguing and off-the-charts sexy?

HIDING IN LOVE
Lori Foster launches a new series with Under Pressure, which stars the handsome Leese Phelps, a secondary character in an earlier Foster novel, Fighting Dirty. Once an MMA contender, Leese has decided to apply his fighting skills to a new career as a bodyguard. Catalina Nicholson is an assignment that tests all Leese’s abilities. Cat’s on the run after overhearing an incriminating conversation between her father and three dangerous, wealthy and powerful men. She can’t trust anyone, but somehow, Cat instinctively trusts Leese. Her biggest fear is that Leese and his friends will suffer harm while protecting her. The entire staff of Body Armor Security is committed to keeping Cat alive, but when a plan goes sideways, even Leese’s protection might not keep her safe and secure.

This excellent novel seamlessly blends a tender romance between a hot hero and a smart, sassy heroine with an engrossing suspense plot featuring a truly scary villain. Readers will love cameo appearances of characters from the author’s popular Ultimate series.

WICKEDLY SEDUCTIVE
Holding On Tighter is the twelfth installment in Shayla Black’s wildly popular Wicked Lovers series. Career-focused Jolie Quinn is a rising star in the Dallas fashion world. Her design company is growing at the speed of light, and to protect her creations, Jolie hires British contractor Heath Powell to upgrade the security at her company headquarters. Heath is every bit as strong as Jolie, and from their first meeting, the two strike sparks from each other. Neither is looking for love. Both are equally stubborn in rejecting the tender feelings lurking beneath the hot chemistry that blazes between them. But resolving personal issues will have to wait because someone is threatening both Jolie’s company and her beloved sister’s safety. Is it possible that the danger stems from Heath’s past rather than Jolie’s? And if it does, can he unravel the mystery before someone dies?

A solid, intriguing suspense plot and a deep emotional connection between strong, admirable characters will keep readers hooked and eager for the next installment in this terrific series.

PROTECTING THE INNOCENT
Award-winning author Brenda Jackson delivers Forged In Desire, the first novel in The Protectors series. Margo Connelly ends a six-week stint as a juror with a verdict that finds a powerful gangster guilty of murder. When the killer threatens to end the lives of everyone in the courtroom, Margo’s uncle sends bodyguard Lamar “Striker” Jennings to keep her safe. Striker plans to do everything necessary to protect the beautiful niece of his boss, but he isn’t prepared for the powerful attraction that scorches them both. With a hit man stalking her, Striker will have his hands full keeping his beautiful client alive, let alone dealing with the irresistible temptation she embodies.

This absorbing novel melds romantic, steamy scenes between a reformed bad boy and a good girl with plenty of tender moments and lots of nail-biting action.

Lois Dyer writes from her home in Port Orchard, Washington.

RELATED CONTENT: Check out Lori Foster's Meet the Author feature.

Warm up these cold winter nights with three romantic novels starring handsome bodyguards and their beautiful clients. Who knew private security assignments could be so intriguing and off-the-charts sexy?
Fiction

Upended lives, clinging to faith

Feature by Beth Bulow

Faith, desperation and mystery intersect in these novels of inspirational suspense. The faith of these characters is pushed to the limit—while the answers they seek could shake the foundation of all they believe to be true.

If the survival of another person is on the line, would you be able to put someone else’s needs ahead of your own? This challenge of selflessness is at the root of Samuel Parker’s riveting debut, Purgatory Road. Couple Jack and Laura head into the desert to escape the bright lights of Vegas for the day. Expecting a happy reprieve, they instead become stranded and are near death when they’re rescued by a desert hermit. Their rescue soon takes a bewildering turn, however, when the hermit won’t let them return to safety. Interwoven with the couple’s story is a terrifying encounter between a teenage runaway and a desert-town maniac, driven to heinous acts by an outside force, something seemingly held at bay by the very hermit who rescued Jack and Laura. As the two stories converge, the couple realizes that this is more than a desert rescue—it’s a battle between good and evil.

The resilience of Jack and Laura will have readers cheering as this dark thriller reaches its culmination. Though some violent scenes could bother sensitive readers, the convincing struggle between supernatural forces proceeds at a tense and breathless pace. Not for the faint of heart, Purgatory Road is a compelling story that suspense fans are sure to love.

AN IRISH TWIST
Because You’re Mine, bestselling author Colleen Coble’s latest novel, takes readers to picturesque Charleston, South Carolina, where Irish singer Alanna, a rising star in the world of Celtic music, has sought refuge. Her husband Liam was killed in a fiery car explosion, and Liam’s father is demanding custody of her unborn baby. To escape, Alanna accepts a marriage of convenience with her band manager, Barry, who’s from a wealthy Charleston family. Complicating matters is the open hostility other band members feel toward Barry, as well as the fact that Jesse, Liam’s best friend, survived the accident that killed Liam. When menacing events start happening at the opulent but decaying mansion that’s home to her new husband’s family, Alanna delves further into the mystery of Liam’s death.

Alanna’s love for Liam is both touching and heart-rending as she navigates her new life without him. Despite a bit of predictability, the strength of the atmospheric setting and a romance with a divine touch carry the story with ease. The nod to Celtic music adds a beautiful layer to this suspenseful tale of love lost and found.

HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER
The third entry in Sandra Byrd’s Daughters of Hampshire series portrays the life of Gillian Young, a prospering middle-class woman in Victorian England. In A Lady in Disguise, Gillian, an up-and-coming seamstress for ladies of the aristocracy and a costume designer for a famous London theater, uncovers clues that suggest her recently deceased father might have been living a secret life beyond his respected role as an officer with London’s Metropolitan Police. Though her questions about her father’s accidental death are clearly not welcome, Gillian feels there is more to the story than what his longtime partner at the department is telling her. Adding fuel to an already volatile situation, Gillian meets her dashing new neighbor, Viscount Thomas Lockwood. Despite their instant attraction, as the mysteries surrounding her father’s death deepen, she can’t help but wonder if anyone’s motives toward her are truly pure.

Byrd’s award-winning Daughters of Hampshire novels are unique in that they put the focus on women who are viewed with disdain by high society. Though she moves in aristocratic circles at times, Gillian is a woman who works to support herself. (Byrd includes fascinating details about the complexity of Gillian’s tasks as a master seamstress.) The benevolent legacy of Gillian’s deceased mother, an actress devoted to the care of orphans used and discarded by the London theater scene, packs an emotional punch. Gillian’s reliance on faith, her determination to believe the best about her father and her poignant connection with her mother’s ministry add a genuine spiritual element to the story.

Still, suspense stays front and center as Gillian undertakes a harrowing mission of danger and disguise to find her father’s killer. The vivid historical details and thrilling plot make A Lady in Disguise a perfect choice for readers of both historical romance and romantic suspense.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Faith, desperation and mystery intersect in these novels of inspirational suspense. The faith of these characters is pushed to the limit—while the answers they seek could shake the foundation of all they believe to be true.

Fiction

Fleeting connections

Feature by Horace McLevee

Junot Díaz once wrote that short stories “strike like life and end with its merciless abruptness as well.” Three new collections offer moments of insight and escape, only to zip away, as ephemeral as life itself.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer, was born in Vietnam and came to the United States with his family as a refugee in 1975. Dedicated to “all refugees, everywhere,” The Refugees is a selection of nine stories from Nguyen’s 20 years of writing. Set within California’s Vietnamese community or in Vietnam, these tales display an extraordinary range of perspectives stretched between two worlds, as parents and children grapple with memories that comfort or haunt. A ghostwriter’s dead brother returns as a ghost, dripping wet, but their mother seems to be expecting this surprise guest. An aging couple in an arranged marriage struggle as the husband’s dementia causes him to call his wife by another woman’s name. We all find ourselves between cultures, and Nguyen considers these boundaries with an empathetic and often humorous eye.

COMMON THREADS
National Book Award finalist Jim Shepard’s (The Book of Aron) keen interest in time and historical detail take center stage in his fifth collection, The World to Come. These 10 stories make vast jumps, from a snapshot of 1600 B.C. Crete to a modern-day parable about the American health care system. Perhaps the most evocative stories here are epistolary—an anxiety-inducing account of an ill-fated arctic exploration and the poignant, immersive title story about a woman’s double life on the American frontier. Though these tales vary wildly in temporal setting, a thread of quiet isolation coupled with a longing for connection binds these characters together. For masterfully crafted historical fiction, there are few contemporary authors who can rival Shepard.

BEAUTY IN SQUALOR
Following her brilliant breakout novel, Eileen (2015), Ottessa Moshfegh proves her remarkable prowess once again with Homesick for Another World. This dark collection arrives on a current of unease, each story focusing on people filled with a seemingly hopeless desire for connection: A broken man pines for the manager of a videogame café, a woman hates her unhinged boyfriend but lacks the will to leave him, an English teacher spends her summers strung out in a dying town. In blunt, unflinching prose, Moshfegh reveals her characters’ deepest anxieties and perversities without judgment or sympathy. Spiking her stories with pitch-dark humor, Moshfegh adeptly captures what it means to be alone; if you’ve ever felt homesick while sitting in your own living room, this book is for you.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Junot Díaz once wrote that short stories “strike like life and end with its merciless abruptness as well.” Three new collections offer moments of insight and escape, only to zip away, as ephemeral as life itself.

NonfictionNature

Troubled waters

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

The vastness and untamed energy of oceans, seas and lakes both fascinate and frighten us. Two new books explore our complex relationships with iconic American bodies of water.

In his vivid The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, University of Florida historian Jack E. Davis narrates the history of the Gulf of Mexico from its origins in the Pleistocene epoch and its flourishing aboriginal cultures—still evident in burial and ceremonial mounds. Davis traces various eras of exploration and conquest by Spanish, British and French explorers, the development of towns on the Gulf as tourist destinations in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and oil booms and ecological catastrophes of the late 20th century. Along the way, we meet figures who shaped the history of the Gulf: ethnologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, who explored the ancient mounds; 16th-century Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; and Randy Wayne White, the fishing guide (and bestselling author) whose promotion of the tarpon lured hundreds of anglers to the Gulf Coast.

Though Gulf waters once teemed with “crabs, shrimp, and curious jumping fish called the mullet,” by the mid-20th century, the thirst for development had disastrous consequences. In the 1960s, many scientists recommended eradicating mangroves, which prevent erosion, in order to build condominiums closer to the water. When beaches began to erode, communities built seawalls, which actually worsened the problem. As Davis demonstrates in this absorbing narrative, the history of the Gulf teaches us that nature is most generous whenever we respect its sovereignty.

ECOLOGICAL THREATS
The Great Lakes span 94,000 square miles and provide 20 percent of the world’s supply of fresh water. Yet, as award-winning journalist Dan Egan points out in The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, these inland seas face challenges unimaginable when explorer Jean Nicolet first paddled across Lake Huron in the 17th century. At that time, the Great Lakes were isolated from the Atlantic, unreachable by boat not only because of their unnavigable shorelines but also because of the challenges of crossing waterfalls. With the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, begun in 1955, ships gained what Egan calls a “front door” to the lakes, turning cities like Chicago into inland ports.

By the mid-20th century, industrial and municipal pollution created dead zones in the lakes. While the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 prompted some recovery, the law didn’t prevent ships from dumping contaminated ballast. Egan chronicles the ways that such pollution has decimated native fish populations, created toxic algae outbreaks and introduced the DNA of non-native species into the lakes. In this compelling account, Egan issues a clarion call for re-imagining the future of the Great Lakes.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The vastness and untamed energy of oceans, seas and lakes both fascinate and frighten us. Two new books explore our complex relationships with iconic American bodies of water.

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