Last Christmas Marcie Sullivan said a final goodbye to her husband, Bobby. This Christmas she's come to Virgin River to find the man who saved his life and gave her three more years to love him.Fellow marine Ian Buchanan dragged Bobby's shattered body onto a medical transport in Fallujah four years ago, then disappeared as soon as their unit arrived stateside. Since then, Marcie's letters to Ian have gone unanswered.
Marcie tracks Ian to the tiny mountain town of Virgin River and finds a man as wounded emotionally as Bobby was physically. But she is not easily scared off. As Marcie pushes her way into his rugged and reclusive life, she discovers a sweet but damaged soul beneath a rough exterior.
Ian doesn't know what to make of the determined young widow who forces him to look into the painful past and, what's worse, the uncertain future. But it is, after all, a season of miracles and maybe, just maybe, it's time to banish the ghosts and open his heart. Views: 66
Rosie Ewing returns in an edge-of-your-seat espionage adventureFrance, August 1945. When two agents are arrested in Paris, SOE agent Rosie Ewing is sent to rescue them. Also in Paris is a woman called Jacqueline, already known to Rosie and now the mistress of a highly-placed SD officer. Rosie's brief is to find Jacqueline, and through her discover where the two agents are being held, then get them out before they either talk or die. But how? She needs help from the French Resistance. But both Gaullist and Communist groups are stirring – and at each other's throats. There are also several exceptionally vicious pro-Nazi groups out there... Rosie is going in, solo and virtually blind. Views: 66
Based on a true story, Arthur Japin’s new novel is a tale of consuming love and artistic creation that reimagines the last romance of the legendary filmmaker Federico Fellini.In Director’s Cut we enter the mind of Snaporaz, the lion of Italian cinema, as he slips into a coma in his final days. Having always drawn inspiration from the world of his dreams, he welcomes the chance to take account of his life and, in particular, his most recent love affair, with a beautiful but tempestuous young actress called Gala. Here is the story as Snaporaz tells it.Lured by the glamour of Rome, Gala and her boyfriend, Maxim, an actor as well, are hoping to be discovered when they manage the impossible: entrée to the studio of the great master. Despite an age difference of four decades, Gala soon becomes Snaporaz’s mistress, leaving Maxim, guardian of her secrets and her fragile health, to be an anxious and helpless observer of her physical and spiritual decline. As Gala becomes increasingly dependent on Snaporaz’s attentions, her desperation never to disappoint him leads her down a reckless path to anorexia and prostitution before the one true bond in her life is restored.Snaporaz’s intoxicatingly baroque—Felliniesque—account of the affair slyly challenges us again and again to ask what is dream and what is reality, and to conclude that the difference is irrelevant when such a genius immerses himself in his most natural element: the imagination. A dazzling tale from one of Europe’s most celebrated writers.From the Hardcover edition.From Publishers WeeklyThis story of romance between a young Dutch actress and a slightly fictionalized Federico Fellini flounders on poor plotting and overwrought prose. After being reared by a demanding father, Gala and an ambiguous male companion named Maxim travel to Rome in the 1970s to find their fortune as movie stars. There, the beautiful and epileptic Gala eventually attracts the ardor of Fellini stand-in Snaporaz. Told partially in the third-person and partially as Snaporaz's elegiac reminiscences, this potentially interesting story is hampered by clumsy prose; Snaporaz's frequent pronouncements often come off as banal or pretentious (I gather strange butterflies. My white is made up of so many colors). Plot momentum might have made such stylistic lapses easier to overlook, but Japin chooses to let his aspiring actors simmer in Italy with little to do for so long that Snaporaz's and Gala's eventual romance feels anticlimactic and belated. Though Japin, author of the widely praised In Lucia's Eyes, brings together a number of promising elements, this book comes up short. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistA Dutch actor and actress travel to 1970s Rome in hopes of finding their big break in this latest offering from Dutch novelist Japin (In Lucia’s Eyes, 2007). Gala and Maxim have been companions for years; each is overjoyed when the other finds work. But when Gala comes under the spell of the celebrated Italian director Snaporaz (a thinly disguised Fellini), Maxim is besieged by worry. Beautiful Gala is an epileptic, and her seizures seem to occur with greater frequency in times of emotional distress. Gala pins all her hopes on a role in Snaporaz’s latest movie, but the waiting game she must play after their initial meeting nearly drives her mad. Meanwhile, she earns money as a female escort, while Maxim lands a solid film role. Snaporaz’s lust for Gala is undeniable, and the fling between them is both inevitable—and anticlimactic. Based on a true story, Japin’s novel is overlong, and the characters are lackluster. Still, there are some vivid depictions of life in Rome, and the Fellini connection may interest cinema buffs. --Allison Block Views: 66
On the last day of summer, some years ago, a young college graduate moves to Chicago and rents a small apartment on the north side of the city, by the vast and muscular lake. This is the story of the five seasons he lives there, during which he meets gangsters, gamblers, policemen, a brave and garrulous bus driver, a cricket player, a librettist, his first girlfriend, a shy apartment manager, and many other riveting souls, not to mention a wise and personable dog of indeterminate breed. A love letter to Chicago, the Great American City, and a wry account of a young man's coming-of-age during the one summer in White Sox history when they had the best outfield in baseball, Brian Doyle's Chicago is a novel that will plunge you into a city you will never forget, and may well wish to visit for the rest of your days. Views: 66
Former CIA Agent Greg Nielsen thought he had escaped his shadowy past. He was wrong. Someone has found him and is blackmailing him to enter the dangerous game of international espionage once again. But there's one deadly difference: this time, the target is his own country. Views: 66
From the author of the acclaimed The Girl with a Clock for a Heart—hailed by the Washington Post as crime fiction's best first novel of 2014"—a devious tale of psychological suspense involving sex, deception, and an accidental encounter that leads to murder that is a modern reimagining of Patricia Highsmith's classic Strangers on a Train.On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing very intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his marriage that's going stale and his wife Miranda, who he's sure is cheating on him. Ted and his wife were a mismatch from the start—he the rich businessman, she the artistic free spirit—a contrast that once inflamed their passion, but has now become a cliché.But their game turns a little darker when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what she's done.... Views: 66
