Skey dreams of a dark tunnel, a place where she is safe and alone. Views: 9
"Like Tracy Chevalier in Girl with the Pearl Earring, Gregson excels at developing strong, complex female voices; a swift plot; and a story that will hold readers from beginning to end."—BooklistWhen the men of a remote Hungarian village go off to war in 1916, the women left behind realize their lives are much better without them. Suddenly, they are not being beaten; they have time for friendships; they even find romance with the injured Italian soldiers staying just outside of town. For Sari, an intelligent girl who's always been an outcast (her fellow villagers suspect her of being a witch because of her medical knowledge), it's the first time in her life she's had friends. When the men return at war's end, the freedom Sari and the others have enjoyed is suddenly snatched from them, and they realize they need to do whatever it takes to hold onto it. Sari puts her medical knowledge to use to off her husband. Then she helps one of her friends. And another. When the word spreads, she realizes her problems are only beginning. This creeping and hugely readable first novel is based on a true story.Amazon.com ReviewAmazon Best Books of the Month, December 2011: The Angel Makers, Jessica Gregson's engrossing debut, fleshes out the bones of a bizarre true story. In a remote Hungarian village, brutish men's departure for World War I offers a welcome reprieve to their women—many have endured regular beatings (and worse). In the years of their husbands' absence, women's friendships deepen, and they find previously unimagined satisfaction in work and romance with Italian prisoners at a camp on the town's outskirts. Even Sari, the clever midwife's assistant suspected of witchcraft, succumbs to the charms of Marco. When Sari's injured fiancé returns from war a changed, frighteningly violent man, she makes a desperate decision to save herself and her unborn baby, poisoning her fiancé slowly enough to avoid detection. But other desperate women take notice, forcing Sari to choose between helping them perform similar deeds and being exposed as a murderess.In truth, between 45 and 300 people were intentionally poisoned in Nagyrév, Hungary, over 15 years during and after WWI. Gregson's version of events is horrifically plausible and psychologically astute, and Sari makes a surprisingly sympathetic narrator. --Mari MalcolmJessica Gregson on *The Angel Makers*From the very first moment I came across the story, I knew I had to write about it.It was just a couple of paragraphs in a true crime paperback I'd picked up in a bored, slightly morbid moment, to read on a train ride. The bulk of the chapters were about lone, crazy serial killers, and so the outline of the events surrounding "The Angel Makers of Nagyrev" stood out. The bare bones of the story were intriguing: a female-driven murder plague in an isolated village, against the backdrop of the First World War. I was astonished that no one had written about it already!Once I started to write, though, my story started to shift further and further away from what had been the main focus of the story--the murders. The more I wrote, the more interested I became in the part that came before: what could have compelled the real women behind the story to commit actions that seem, from an outside perspective, abhorrent and unforgiveable.What were these women's lives like? What sorts of conditions might have led them to behave as they did? What was it about that place, and that time, that caused the women to succumb to such a strangely specific madness? I don't intend to excuse the actions of my characters, or the actions of the women on whom they are based, but I do try to show how easy it might be to move, step by step, outside the bonds of morality that keep (most of us) constrained.Review"Like Tracy Chevalier in Girl with the Pearl Earring, Gregson excels at developing strong, complex female voices; a swift plot; and a story that will hold readers from beginning to end."—*Booklist“Unforgettable.”—Historical Novels Review*“It’s a testament to Gregson’s skill that she lures readers on board and makes us believe—even cheer on—the grisly twists. She might get away with it because she’s so careful with her pacing and character development. She doesn’t race straight to the guts; she instead gives us enough of village life to hook us, make us believe, make us care about Sari’s strangeness, and the village’s general sicknesses and plucky misery, before any angels are made. Furthermore, Gregson possesses an enviable talent for delivering a full character in just a few lines…. her prose hangs together well overall and demonstrates an elegant ability to shift perspective, an acuity with handling the passage of time, and a touch for simple, transformative moments of beauty.” —Fiction Writer's Review“Gregson has created in Sari so curious a character that the novel, based on a true story, springs vividly alive.” Grade: B+ —Clevland Plain Dealer"Basing her novel on a true story, Gregson draws the reader into Sari’s conflicted world…. Gregson’s cautionary tale is all the more chilling for its basis in reality.” —Curled Up With a Good Book Views: 9
Following up The One Man and The Saboteur, Gross's next historical thriller brings to life the drama of the birth of organized crime in 1930s New York City from the tale of one family.After a string of New York Times bestselling suburban thrillers, Andrew Gross has reinvented himself as a writer of historical thrillers. In his latest novel, Button Men, he delivers a stirring story of a Jewish family brought together in the dawn of the women's garment business and torn apart by the birth of organized crime in New York City in the 1930s.Morris, Sol, and Harry Rabishevsky grew up poor and rough in a tiny flat on the Lower East Side, until the death of their father thrust them into having to fend for themselves and support their large family. Morris, the youngest, dropped out of school at twelve years old and apprenticed himself to a garment cutter in a clothing factory; Sol headed to accounting school; but Harry, scarred by a family... Views: 9
When Kyle finds a young dog almost drowned in a heap of seaweed on the beach, he claims the dog as his own and is happy for the first time in a while. He knows that his dog loves him, but whenever they walk on the beach, the dog swims out to sea and doesn't come back until Kyle calls and calls. Then one day, they run into an old man and it turns out that the dog may not belong to Kyle alone. Views: 9
The first few days of year 12 are disastrous for school captain Daisy Brooks. But Daisy's life takes a sudden turn when she is dared by Skye, the leader of the blonde brigade, to meet the mysterious, drop-dead gorgeous stranger, Nate, from rival school Addison Grammar. Daisy's instant attraction to him disrupts her world. Views: 9
ISIS reigns supreme in huge swathes of Iraq and Syria and poses a threat to stability in the Middle East. When an American airstrike kills the ISIS leader's only son, he vows revenge. He discovers that a U.S. Navy admiral, now on duty in the Pentagon, led the strike. The ISIS leader has him kidnapped by American home-grown ISIS sympathizers. Their orders: smuggle him out of the United States and bring him to Mosul for execution.When the normal levers of U.S. domestic security can't move quickly enough to locate the hostage, the President calls on the National Crisis Management Center-Op-Center to find the admiral and rescue him. But as the crisis drags on and it appears the admiral is hidden in a cargo shipment, already on a flight out of the country en route to Mosul, his son, a Navy SEAL, embarks on a lone-wolf mission to rescue his father.Op-Center must muster both its domestic strike force, an elite component of the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group... Views: 9
Called to the home of her fiancé's former mistress late one night, Francesca finds her curiosity piqued. But upon arrival, she is shocked to find Daisy Jones's bloodied body
and even more devastated when the evidence points to one suspecther fiancé, Calder.Francesca cannotwill notbelieve that Calder is capable of such an act. Still, she is unable to shake her instinctive sense that Calder is lying about something. The police are far less inclined to believe his innocence, and Calder is arrested for Daisy's murder. But Francesca's heart is not easily swayed
until a life-altering secret is exposed that could destroy their future together. Views: 9
