Jane Litte's Blog, page 65

REVIEW: The River of Time by Dinah Dean

Rags to riches and a second chance of love on the journey of a lifetime.

Mila de Romanin has lived in genteel poverty since she had a choice of two suitors—and chose the wrong one. But an invitation to chaperone her spurned lover’s niece on a trip to find the girl’s father changes everything.

Swept up in her young charge’s adventure, Mila is assured there’s no chance of seeing Igor Grigorovich Charodyev. But their paths cross in Moscow and Mila’s heart is set racing. When Igor decides to accomp...

REVIEW: I Can’t Wait to Call You My Wife by Rita Roberts

This book honors the voices of African Americans of the Civil War era through their letters, inviting readers to engage personally with the Black historical experience.

Amidst bloody battles and political maneuvering, thousands of African Americans spent the Civil War trying to hold their families together. This moving book illuminates that struggle through the letters they exchanged. Despite harsh laws against literacy and brutal practices that broke apart Black families, people found ways ...

Review: The Bullet that Missed (Thursday Murder Club #3) by Richard Osman

It is an ordinary Thursday, and things should finally be returning to normal.

Except trouble is never far away where the Thursday Murder Club are concerned. A local news legend is on the hunt for a sensational headline, and soon the gang are hot on the trail of two murders, ten years apart.

To make matters worse, a new nemesis pays Elizabeth a visit, presenting her with a deadly mission: kill or be killed…

While Elizabeth grapples with her conscience (and a gun), the gang and their unlikely ...

REVIEW: The Jaws Log: 30th Anniversary Edition by Carl Gottlieb

Winner of three Oscars and the highest-grossing film of its time, Jaws was a phenomenon, and this is the only book on how twenty-six-year-old Steven Spielberg transformed Peter Benchley’s number-one bestselling novel into the classic film it became.

Hired by Spielberg as a screenwriter to work with him on the set while the movie was being made, Carl Gottlieb, an actor and writer, was there throughout the production that starred Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss. After filming was...

REVIEW: Fakes, Scams & Forgeries by Brian Innes and Chris McNab

For as long as historical annals have been kept, they have recorded the frauds and fakes that have been imposed upon innocent dupes. Perhaps the earliest Christian story of all is that which tells of the deception that Jacob practiced on his unsuspecting father Abraham, pretending to be his brother Esau; and today the theft of identity is reported to be the most rapidly spreading crime. And throughout the ages works of art and literature, coinage, and documents of all kinds have been forged fo...

REVIEW: Dinner on Mars by Lenore Newman and Evan D.G. Fraser

From Impossible Burgers to lab-made sushi, two witty, plugged-in food scientists explore leading-edge AgTech for the answer to feeding a settlement on Mars — and 9 billion Earthlings too.

Feeding a Martian is one of the greatest challenges in the history of agriculture. Will a Red Planet menu involve cheese and ice cream made from vats of fermented yeast? Will medicine cabinets overflow with pharmaceuticals created from engineered barley grown using geothermal energy? Will the protein of choic...

REVIEW: The Battle Cry of the Siamese Kitten by Philipp Schott

From Dr. Schott’s 30 years in veterinary practice come over 60 heartwarming, funny, and adorable stories about angry pelicans, bug-eyed goldfish, and plenty of cats and dogs

In the third book in this bestselling series, we meet the oddest creatures, from an escaped newt to a baby snow leopard, but the focus is on the dogs and cats that make up most of a pet vet’s day, and on the wacky and wonderful people who bring them in.

Dr. Schott also pulls the curtain back on what it’s really like to b...

REVIEW: When We Meet Again by Carla Kelly

If you must fight a war, make it good one, so you can entertain admiring children and grandchildren years in the future.

What if your World War II stories are nothing more glamorous than an aircraft factory in boring Kansas, or a sugar beet farm in Southeast Wyoming

Dear Ms. Kelly,

When I saw this book arc, I leapt on it, partly because you wrote it and partly because it’s a slight change from your usual. Yes, both stories are historical but they take place during World War II and both are al...

REVIEW: Into the Storm by Rachel Grant

Dear Rachel Grant,

Into The Storm is the first book in the Evidence: Under Fire series, where your Evidence and Flashpoint series’ meet and make babies. Evidence is a lengthy series and while I have them all (or most of them) on my TBR I haven’t read them all, unlike the four Flashpoint books (highly recommend, especially on audio, they’re great). As best I can tell, the connection to the Evidence series is strongest, with important cameos from Luke and Undine (from Cold Evidence #6) but there is...

JOINT DISCUSSION (WITH SPOILERS): The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

In our second post on The Golden Enclaves (you can find the spoiler free part one here), book three in Naomi Novik’s Scholomance trilogy, we discuss spoilers from start to finish, so if you’re spoiler-wary, avoid this discussion or come back after you’ve read the book (if you’re not, please join us in this comment thread; we plan to make it chock full of spoilers too).

Jennie: It seemed pretty obvious that Orion was not going to actually be dead the first time, at the beginning of the book. Whe...