‘The Mystery of Mrs. Christie’ by Marie Benedict is out today. Photo: amazon
Marie Benedict is a lawyer with more than ten years’ experience as a litigator at two of the country’s premier law firms, who found her calling unearthing the hidden stories of women. Her mission is to unearth the most important, complex, and fascinating women of history and bring them to present day to unlock the depth of their contributions. She is the best-selling author of “The Other Einstein,” “Carnegie’s Maid,” “The Only Woman in the Room,” and “Lady Clementine.” Her new book “The Mystery of Mrs. Christie” is out today and reconstructs one of the most notorious events in literary history: Agatha Christie’s mysterious 11-day disappearance in 1926. (amazon, 2020)
After Agatha Christie disappears, investigators find her empty car on the edge of a deep, gloomy pond. The only clues include tire tracks nearby and a fur coat left in the car — strange for a frigid night. Her World War I veteran husband and her daughter have no knowledge of her whereabouts and England unleashes an unprecedented manhunt to find the up-and-coming mystery author. Eleven days later, she reappears, just as mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming amnesia and providing no explanations for her time away. The puzzle of those missing eleven days has persisted. In “The Mystery of Mrs. Christie,” with her trademark historical fiction exploration into the shadows of the past, acclaimed author Marie Benedict brings readers into the world of Agatha Christie, imagining why such a brilliant woman would find herself at the center of such murky historical mysteries. What is real and what is mystery? What role did her unfaithful husband play and what was he not telling investigators?
The US version of ‘The Commander’ by Kevin Groh releases on Tuesday, January 5, 2021. Photo: amazon
Kevin Groh is an author born and raised in Hesse, Germany who has been imagining stories and other worlds since early childhood. He visited the United States often and fell in love with the openness of Americans and the non-judgmental environment that accepted him for who he was — a gamer and a nerd. Passionate about the English language, Kevin mastered it by reading, watching movies, playing video games, and traveling. He holds a bachelor’s degree as an industrial engineer with a focus on electrical engineering but by his early 20s, became a sensation in the German sci-fi market with his highly imaginative stories. His Omni Legends book series includes the best-selling subseries, “The Commander,” “The Black Wanderer,” and “The Shadow Guard.” Kevin was an Amazon Kindle Select All-Star in sales every month from August to December in 2019. The young author is now ready to entertain a US readership looking for its next page-turner as the first book in the series, “The Commander” is releasing in the United States on January 5, 2021. It is young adult fiction for young men and sci-fi lovers filled with adventure, suspense, and action and now available for pre-order on Amazon. (Black Château, 2020)
“The Commander – Guardian of Utopia” is the first book in the US version of the epic New Adult military sci-fi fantasy Omni Legends series. Welcome to Utopia-humanity’s second home for over two centuries. It is a world controlled by the military and corporations, waging war with advanced alien races, but 18-year-old Carter Sanders is about to change the rules of the game. Freshly recruited into boot camp, he needs all his brains and ability to survive skirmishes and develop allies among his fellow-recruits who resent his privilege. Training exercises in weaponry, close-quarter combat, strategy and tactics, and missions test his bravery, while female recruits test his moral fiber in close situations. When bionic upgrades for soldiers become mandatory, Carter feels he needs to take a stand. Can he and his mismatched fellow-recruits get their message about preserving morale through to the top brass? Will they survive sadistic drill sergeant Banes before they are sent off to battle giant, scaled Lorgans on unknown worlds?
‘Here She Is’ by Hilary Levey Friedman. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
Hilary Levey Friedman is a sociologist at Brown University, where she has taught a popular course titled ‘Beauty Pageants in American Society.’ She is an expert on beauty pageants, childhood and parenting, competitive afterschool activities and popular culture. As a leading researcher in pageantry, she merges her mother’s past experiences as Miss America 1970 with her interests as a glitz-and glamour-loving sometime pageant judge. Friedman serves as the president of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Organization for Women and was a mentor to Miss America 2018. Her first book, “Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture” focused on children’s competitive afterschool activities. “Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America” is her newest book and it uses beauty pageants to trace the arc of American feminism from the 1840s to the present.
“Here She Is” begins with the author admitting that she “can’t remember ever not knowing what a beauty pageant was.” In the Preface, she explains that as the only child of a divorced beauty queen, her mother is Miss America 1970, Pamela Eldred, her childhood was immersed in the beauty pageant world. Her home was filled with memorabilia and from a young age she instinctively knew that to win a pageant, women had to be beautiful and thin, aside from also being a good public speaker and performer. With this much firsthand knowledge of the beauty pageant world and through thorough research, she explains the history of beauty pageants and how they became acceptable and mainstream. This was due in part to P.T. Barnum’s baby shows, which he popularized at a time when women could not appear in public, but in his shows, they could take the stage while carrying said babies. The book is divided into three parts: Part I: The birth of American Pageantry and the Feminist Movement, Part II: The (Second) wave of Bras and Beliefs, and Part III: Tabloids, Trump, and tits. Her notes appear at the end of the book, which shows the amount of research that went into writing this book.
This year, America’s most popular beauty pageant celebrates its 100th anniversary. Due to ever changing attitudes and codes of morality, many people thought beauty pageants would eventually go away. While admitting that beauty pageants objectify women because they were first invented in 1921 by male businessmen to use women’s bodies to entice a crowd to stay longer in Atlantic City so that businesses could make more money, the author brings up the argument that they have helped bring women into the public sphere, helped them become leaders in business and politics and given them a path to higher education. Besides giving a background on beauty pageants, Hilary Levey Friedman provides historical tidbits including how Barbie came out in the 1950s, not coincidentally at the height of beauty pageants and how Girl Scouts, and beauty pageants, use sashes influenced by early suffragettes. Highlights include the idea that there are different pageants for different groups and ethnicities because when people feel excluded from pageants, they will make their own: pageants exist for Blacks, Asians, Latinas, Natives, disabled, petites, full figured women, seniors, etc. and that for the most part, conservative femininity is the dominant trait of pageants – they insist on a purity trait. The language is down to earth, making this an easy to read and hard to put down insight into pageants. “Here She Is” is not a how-to guide for becoming a pageant queen, nor is it a salacious behind-the-scenes look at beauty pageants. It is an impressively in-depth look at the positive and negative aspects of beauty pageants and is recommended for readers who want to learn about the historical background of pageants, including its controversies and dark past.
“Overall, it is neither an indictment of beauty pageants nor a paean instead showing that beauty pageants have never been all bad or all good – for participants, for women, or for feminism.”
*The author received a copy of this book for an honest review. The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to her.
‘Ready Player Two’ by Ernest Cline is now available everywhere books are sold. Photo: amazon
Ernest Cline is an internationally best-selling science fiction novelist, screenwriter, and poet. He is the author of the novels “Ready Player One” and “Armada” and co-screenwriter of the film adaptation of “Ready Player One,” directed by Steven Spielberg. His books have been published in over fifty countries and have spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers list. His new novel, “Ready Player Two,” the highly anticipated sequel to the worldwide bestseller “Ready Player One,” is out today, Tuesday, November 24, 2020. It takes readers on another imaginative, fun, action-packed adventure through Ernest Cline’s beloved virtual universe, and jolts them thrillingly into the future once again.
In “Ready Player Two,” days after winning OASIS founder James Halliday’s contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything. Hidden within Halliday’s vaults, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the OASIS a thousand times more wondrous, and addictive, than even Wade dreamed possible. With it comes a new riddle, and a new quest—a last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize. And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who will kill millions to get what he wants. Wade’s life and the future of the OASIS are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance.
‘Dark Tides’ is Philippa Gregory’s upcoming new historical novel. Photo: amazon
Philippa Gregory is the author of many The New York Times bestselling novels, including “The Other Boleyn Girl,” and is a recognized authority on women’s history. Many of her works have been adapted for the screen including “The Other Boleyn Girl.” She graduated from the University of Sussex and received a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, where she is a Regent. She holds honorary degrees from Teesside University and the University of Sussex. She is a fellow of the Universities of Sussex and Cardiff and was awarded the 2016 Harrogate Festival Award for Contribution to Historical Fiction. She is an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. She founded Gardens for the Gambia, a charity to dig wells in poor rural schools in The Gambia and has provided nearly 200 wells. Her new book “Dark Tides: A Novel,” Book 2 of 2 of The Fairmile Series, will be released on Tuesday November 24, 2020. This historical drama tracks the rise of the Tidelands family in London, Venice, and New England. (Simon & Schuster, 2020)
In “Dark Tides,” two unexpected visitors arrive at a shabby warehouse on the south side of the River Thames. The first is a wealthy man named James Avery. He is hoping to find the lover he deserted twenty-one years before. He has everything to offer, including the approval of the newly restored King Charles II, and he believes that the warehouse’s poor owner Alinor has the one thing his money cannot buy—his son and heir. The second visitor is a beautiful widow from Venice who is in mourning. She claims Alinor as her mother-in-law and has come to tell Alinor that her son Rob has drowned in the dark tides of the Venice lagoon. Alinor writes to her brother Ned, who is newly arrived in faraway New England and trying to make a life between the worlds of the English newcomers and the American Indians as they move toward inevitable war. Alinor tells him that she knows, without a doubt, that her son is alive, and the widow is an imposter. This is a novel of greed and desire: for love, for wealth, for a child, and for home. It is set in the poverty and glamour of Restoration London – 1670, in the golden streets of Venice, and on the tensely contested frontier of early America.
‘Intermittent Fasting for Dummies’ will be released on Tuesday, November 17, 2020.
Janet Bond Brill, PhD, RDN, FAND is a nationally recognized nutrition, health, and fitness expert and author of “Blood Pressure DOWN,” “Prevent a Second Heart Attack” and “Cholesterol Down.” She is a prolific writer with contributions to numerous scientific journals and lay publications worldwide and currently writes a column for Bottom Line Health, Inc. Dr. Janet believes whole-heartedly in the role that good nutrition and exercise play in the prevention of chronic disease and achieving optimal health. She teaches the importance of a healthy lifestyle and has helped thousands of people across the nation improve their health and wellbeing. In her new book “Intermittent Fasting for Dummies,” she explains how intermittent fasting can lead to a leaner, healthier and longer life and helps readers choose the fasting method that suits them better. It will be released on Tuesday, November 17, 2020 and is now available for pre-order on Amazon. (Black Château, 2020)
Intermittent fasting fascinates health and fitness seekers from all over the world. “Intermittent Fasting for Dummies” is a detailed guide that helps readers follow an intermittent fasting plan of their choice. It includes several variations of intermittent fasting; each one is outlined in a step-by-step plan that anyone can follow so readers can choose the style that works best for their lifestyle. Dr. Janet Bond Brill conveys the extraordinary health benefits of intermittent fasting, backed by science. People can achieve sustainable weight and fat loss, increase mental clarity and revitalize their energy levels. The book also provides tips to help readers ramp up their metabolism, reduce the risk of disease and supercharge their workout or diet programs. She makes a case for intermittent fasting as a safe practice that allows people to stop counting calories, weighing, measuring or denying themselves their favorite foods. Readers can start following one out of the five safe, effective and easy-to-follow methods that fits their individual lifestyle the best. It includes over 40 healthy and delicious nutritionist-approved recipes.
“Intermittent fasting isn’t a diet, but a pattern of eating. More specifically, it’s a lifestyle that you can sustain for a lifetime.” – Janet Bond Brill
Janet Evanovich’s new novel ‘Fortune and Glory’ will be released November 3, 2020. Photo: amazon
Over the last twenty-five years, Janet Evanovich has written twenty-three #1 The New York Times bestsellers in the Stephanie Plum series. In addition to the Plum novels, Janet has coauthored The New York Times’ bestselling Fox and O’Hare series, including “The Big Kahuna” with her son, Peter Evanovich, the Knight and Moon series, the Lizzy and Diesel series, the Alexandra Barnaby novels and the graphic novel, “Troublemaker” with her daughter, Alex Evanovich. In her new book “Fortune and Glory: A Novel,” Stephanie Plum is on the biggest case of her career as she and her Grandma Mazur search for her grandmother’s late husband’s treasure. It is the twenty-seventh Stephanie Plum novel and will be released tomorrow, Tuesday November 3, 2020.
In “Fortune and Glory,” when Stephanie’s beloved Grandma Mazur’s new husband died on their wedding night, the only thing he left her was a beat-up old easy chair and the keys to a life-changing fortune. But as Stephanie and Grandma Mazur search for Jimmy Rosolli’s treasure, they discover that they are not the only ones on the hunt. Two dangerous enemies from the past stand in their way, along with a new adversary who is even more formidable: Gabriela Rose, a dark-eyed beauty from Little Havana with a taste for designer clothes. She is also a soldier of fortune, a gourmet cook, an expert in firearms and mixed martial arts and someone who is about to give Stephanie a real run for her money.
Stephanie may be in over her head, but she has two things that Gabriela does not: an unbreakable bond with her family and a stubborn streak that will never let her quit. She will need both to survive because this search for “fortune and glory” will turn into a desperate race against time with more on the line than ever before. Because even as she searches for the treasure and fights to protect her Grandma Mazur, her own deepest feelings will be tested—as Stephanie could finally be forced to choose between Joe Morelli and Ranger.
‘The Law of Innocence’ is Michael Connelly’s upcoming new Lincoln Lawyer novel. Photo: amazon
Michael Connelly is the bestselling author of over thirty novels and one work of nonfiction. With over eighty million copies of his books sold worldwide and translated into forty foreign languages, he is one of the most successful writers working today. A former newspaper reporter who worked the crime beat at the Los Angeles Times and the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Connelly has won numerous awards for his journalism and his fiction. His first novel, “The Black Echo,” won the prestigious Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. In 2002, Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the movie adaptation of Connelly’s 1998 novel, “Blood Work.” In March 2011, the movie adaptation of his #1 bestselling novel, “The Lincoln Lawyer,” hit theaters worldwide starring Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller. His most recent bestsellers include “Fair Warning,” “The Night Fire,” “The Burning Room” and “The Gods of Guilt.” Michael is the executive producer of BOSCH, an Amazon Studios original drama series based on his bestselling character Harry Bosch, starring Titus Welliver and streaming on Amazon Prime. His new book “The Law of Innocence (A Lincoln Lawyer Novel, Book 6)” will be released on Tuesday, November 10, 2020.
In “The Law of Innocence,” Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller must defend himself against murder charges. On the night he celebrates a big win, Mickey is pulled over by the police, who find the body of a former client in the trunk of his Lincoln. Haller is immediately charged with murder but cannot post the exorbitant $5 million bail slapped on him by a vindictive judge. He elects to represent himself and is forced to mount his defense from his jail cell in the Twin Towers Correctional Center in downtown Los Angeles. All the while, he needs to look over his shoulder because as an officer of the court he is an instant target and he makes few friends when he reveals a corruption plot within the jail. Haller knows he has been framed, whether by a new enemy or an old one. As his trusted team, including his half-brother, Harry Bosch, investigates, Haller must use all his skills in the courtroom to counter the damning evidence against him. Even if he can obtain a not-guilty verdict, Mickey understands that it will not be enough. In order to be truly exonerated, he must find out who really committed the murder and why. That is the law of innocence.
‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’ by Stephen King is now available as a stand alone novel. Photo: amazon
Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes “If It Bleeds,” “The Institute,” “Elevation,” “The Outsider,” “Sleeping Beauties” (cowritten with his son Owen King) and the Bill Hodges trilogy: “End of Watch,” “Finders Keepers” and “Mr. Mercedes” (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and an AT&T Audience Network original television series). His novel “11/22/63” was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times’ Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works “The Dark Tower,” “It,” “Pet Sematary” and “Doctor Sleep” are the basis for major motion pictures, with “It” now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. His many accolades include the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Stephen King’s beloved novella, “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award nominee The Shawshank Redemption about an unjustly imprisoned convict who seeks a strangely satisfying revenge, is now available for the first time as a standalone book. (Simon & Schuster, 2020)
A mesmerizing tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape, “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” is one of Stephen King’s most beloved and iconic stories and it helped make Castle Rock a place readers would return to over and over again. Suspenseful, mysterious and heart-wrenching, this iconic King novella, populated by a cast of unforgettable characters, is about a fiercely compelling convict named Andy Dufresne who is seeking his ultimate revenge. Originally published in 1982 in the collection “Different Seasons” (alongside “The Body,” “Apt Pupil” and “The Breathing Method”), it was made into the film The Shawshank Redemption in 1994. Starring Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins. This modern classic was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and is among the most beloved films of all time.
‘Black Sun’ is the new release by Rebecca Roanhorse. Photo: amazon
Rebecca Roanhorse is The New York Times’ bestselling author of “Trail of Lightning,” “Storm of Locusts,” “Star Wars: Resistance Reborn” and “Race to the Sun.” She has won the Nebula, Hugo and Locus Awards for her fiction and was the recipient of the 2018 Astounding (formerly Campbell) Award for Best New Writer. Her new book, “Black Sun,” was released this month. It is the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, is inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue and forbidden magic.
In “Black Sun,” set in the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse; a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain. Crafted with unforgettable characters, Rebecca Roanhorse has created an epic adventure exploring the decadence of power amidst the weight of history and the struggle of individuals swimming against the confines of society and their broken pasts in the most original series debut of the decade.
SA Examiner 