The British Booksellers ~ Available Now

 Kristy Cambron's The British Booksellers is Now Available

Inspired by real accounts of the Forgotten Blitz bombings, The British Booksellers highlights the courage of those whose lives were forever changed by war—and the stories that bind us in the fight for what matters most.

 

A tenant farmer’s son had no business daring to dream of a future with an earl’s daughter, but that couldn’t keep Amos Darby from his secret friendship with Charlotte Terrington…until the reality of the Great War sobered youthful dreams. Now decades later, he bears the brutal scars of battles fought in the trenches and their futures that were stolen away. His return home doesn’t come with tender reunions, but with the hollow fulfillment of opening a bookshop on his own and retreating as a recluse within its walls.

 

When the future Earl of Harcourt chose Charlotte to be his wife, she knew she was destined for a loveless match. Though her heart had chosen another long ago, she pledges her future even as her husband goes to war. Twenty-five years later, Charlotte remains a war widow who divides her days between her late husband’s declining estate and operating a quaint Coventry bookshop—Eden Books, lovingly named after her grown daughter. And Amos is nothing more than the rival bookseller across the lane.

As war with Hitler looms, Eden is determined to preserve her father’s legacy. So when an American solicitor arrives threatening a lawsuit that could destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to preserve, mother and daughter prepare to fight back. But with devastation wrought by the Luftwaffe’s local blitz terrorizing the skies, battling bookshops—and lost loves, Amos and Charlotte—must put aside their differences and fight together to help Coventry survive.

 

From deep in the trenches of the Great War to the storied English countryside and the devastating Coventry Blitz of World War II, The British Booksellers explores the unbreakable bonds that unite us through love, loss, and the enduring solace that can be found between the pages of a book.

 

AUTHOR BIO

 

Kristy Cambron is an award-winning author of historical fiction, including her bestselling debut The Butterfly and the Violin, and an author of nonfiction, including the Verse Mapping Series Bibles and Bible studies. Kristy's work has been named to Publishers Weekly Religion & Spirituality TOP 10, Library Journal Reviews’ Best Books, RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards, received 2015 and 2017 INSPY Award nominations, and has been featured at CBN, Lifeway Women, Jesus Calling, Country Woman Magazine, MICI Magazine, Faithwire, Declare, (in)Courage, and Bible Gateway. She holds a degree in Art History/Research Writing and lives in Indiana with her husband and three sons, where she can probably be bribed with a peppermint mocha latte and a good read. 

You can connect with her at: kristycambron.com and versemapping.com.

Hidden Yellow Star ~ Review

Hidden Yellow Star

By Rebecca Connolly

What would you do if those around you were facing persecution merely because of their heritage? This is the question that Andrée Geulen faced when the students in her classroom of Jewish heritage were forced to wear a yellow star - a yellow Star of David marking them as lesser beings in the eyes of Nazis. 

When her Jewish heritage causes her to lose her job, Ida Sterno joins the Committee for the Defense of Jews in Belgium. This resistance movement is helping to hide Jewish children from the very people who seek to destroy them. This connection and concern brings Ida and Andrée together in their fight. 

The very nature of their efforts if discovered is sure to be a death sentence, even if it is while in a camp. And asking people, children to deny who they are was a danger that threatened all involved. And the threat of betrayal was all too real.

This is a story of bravery and risk. A story of love and sacrifice. A story of standing up for what is right. This story will touch your heart as mothers give up their children, in hopes of a life away from the very real danger they daily faced. The efforts of those who do all that they can out of love. Hidden Yellow Stars will move you. 

The characters heartbreak, their despair, their feelings of injustice, their righteous anger, and their fear resonated with me as I worked my way through the book. The historical aspects come alive. One phrase really struck me: He who saves one life saves all of humanity. These people saved many lives, knowing what they risked doing so. One has to wonder what one would do in a similar situation. I highly recommend this book for anyone who reads WW2 Fiction.

I was provided a complimentary copy of this book with no expectations but that I provide my honest opinion. All thoughts expressed are my own.

About the Book:

Based on the true story of two World War II heroines who risked everything

to save Jewish children from the Gestapo by hiding them throughout Belgium.

Belgium, 1942

Young schoolteacher Andrée Geulen secretly defies the Nazis in Belgium, who are forcing Jews to wear a yellow Star of David. Andrée is not Jewish, but she feels a maternal connection to her students, who are living in constant fear, and decides to take action. No child should have to suffer under such persecution. But what can one woman do against an entire army?

Ida Sterno is a Jewish woman who works with the Committee for the Defense of Jews in Belgium, a clandestine resistance group tasked with hiding children from the Gestapo. She wants to recruit Andrée because her Aryan appearance can provide crucial security measures for their efforts. Andrée agrees to join and begins work immediately by adopting a code name: Claude Fournier.

Together, Andrée and Ida, and their undercover operatives, work around the clock to move Jewish children from their families and smuggle them to safety through the secret channels established by the resistance. As each child is hidden, Andrée commits to memory their true name and history. Someday, she vows, she will help reunite as many of these families as she can.

But with the Gestapo closing in and the traitorous Fat Jacques who has turned from ally to enemy and is threatening to identify and expose any Jew he meets, Andrée and Ida must work even harder against increasingly impossible odds to save as many children as possible and keep them safely hidden—even if it might cost them their own lives.

About the Author:

Rebecca Connolly is the author of more than two dozen novels. She calls herself a Midwest girl, having lived in Ohio and Indiana. She's always been a bookworm, and her grandma would send her books almost every month so she would never run out. Book Fairs were her carnival, and libraries are her happy place. She received a master's degree from West Virginia University.

While doing research for this book, she discovered information about her own family history, including the fates of several unknown family members who perished in the concentration camps of World War II.

The Berlin Letters ~ Review

The Berlin Letters

By Katherine Reay

Luisa Voekler is good at what she does - breaking codes that have been encrypted. While the rest of the code breakers in her secret CIA division have moved on to the Cold War, her work is during WW2 and will stay there for the foreseeable future, if not longer. But when a colleague reaches out for help, Luisa notices something from her own past. Something that could change everything she thought she knew about herself.  Worse, she begins to question what she knew about the grandparents who raised her.   

This book is told in an alternating fashion from Luisa's viewpoint and that of her father, Haris Voekler, a man she has long believed dead. We are given a glimpse into the nightmare that divided friends, families, and neighbors overnight when the Eastern sector was cut off from the Western. Overnight, lives were destroyed while the rest of the world did nothing. A handful of people wasn't worth risking another war over.

The Berlin Letters offers an interesting look at a world that many, myself included, know little about. This is an interesting bit of history that is often overlooked or just given a brief mention.  Enter into a world of spies, codes, and a war fought not with weapons but with policy, propaganda, and words. This book spans nearly 30 years (1961 - 1989), is set in Berlin and Washington, D.C., and covers nearly as many emotions as years.   

I was provided a complimentary copy of this book with no expectations but that I provide my honest opinion. All thoughts expressed are my own.

                                                                                                                                                                       About the Book:

Bestselling author Katherine Reay returns with an unforgettable tale of the Cold War and a CIA code-breaker who risks everything to free her father from an East German prison.

From the time she was a young girl, Luisa Voekler has loved solving puzzles and cracking codes. Brilliant and logical, she’s expected to quickly climb the career ladder at the CIA. But while her coworkers have moved on to thrilling Cold War assignments—especially in the exhilarating era of the late 1980s—Luisa’s work remains stuck in the past, decoding messages from World War II.

Journalist Haris Voekler grew up a proud East Berliner. But as his eyes open to the realities of postwar East Germany, he realizes that the Soviet promises of a better future are not coming to fruition. After the Berlin Wall goes up, Haris finds himself separated from his young daughter and all alone after his wife dies. There’s only one way to reach his family—by sending coded letters to his father-in-law, who lives on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

When Luisa Voekler discovers a secret cache of letters written by the father she has long presumed dead, she learns the truth about her grandfather’s work, her father’s identity, and why she has never progressed in her career. With little more than a rudimentary plan and hope, she journeys to Berlin and risks everything to free her father and get him out of East Berlin alive.

As Luisa and Haris take turns telling their stories, events speed toward one of the twentieth century’s most dramatic moments—the fall of the Berlin Wall and that night’s promise of freedom, truth, and reconciliation for those who lived for twenty-eight years, behind the bleak shadow of the Iron Curtain’s most iconic symbol.

About the Author:

Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author who has enjoyed a lifelong affair with books. She publishes both fiction and nonfiction, holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University, and currently lives outside Chicago, Illinois, with her husband and three children. 

You can meet her at katherinereay.com.

or on SOCIAL MEDIA 
X: @Katherine_Reay     Instagram: @katherinereay 

A Lady's Guide to Marvels and Misadventure ~ Review

A Lady's Guide to Marvels and Misadventure
by Angela Bell

Miss Clara Marie Stanton is determined to save her family from her villainous ex-fiancé, who is equally determined to see them ruined and thrown into an insane asylum. And Clara is sure that Arthur, her Grandfather Drosselmeyer's new apprentice, is a spy hired to help her family into ruin.

Her family sees things differently, and when her Grand decides to use his flying machine to visit Europe, Clara is left scrambling to follow the clues he's leaving for her. Can she save those she loves? Or will her attempts fall short, leaving her behind a cold hard wall of her own making?

This was a delightful read; it had little threads throughout that brought to mind The Nutcracker. And I loved the Steampunk feel that was a subtle underlying, yet important, pivotal driving force behind Clara's search. Clara's search takes her from Victorian London to various locations throughout Europe. Dreams, crushed hopes, broken hearts, and unexpected adventures. This is a story of family and love.                              

I was provided a complimentary copy of this book with no expectations but that I provide my honest opinion. All thoughts expressed are my own.

Miss Clara Marie Stanton's family may be eccentric, but they certainly aren't insane.

London, England, 1860
When Clara's ex-fiancé begins to spread rumors that her family suffers from hereditary insanity, it's all she can do to protect them from his desperate schemes, society's prejudice, and a lifetime in an asylum. Then Clara's Grandfather Drosselmeyer brings on an apprentice with a mechanical leg, and all pretense of normalcy takes wing.

Theodore Kingsley, a shame-chased vagabond haunted by the war, wants a fresh start far from Kingsley Court and the disappointed father who declared him dead. Upon returning to England, Theodore meets clockmaker Drosselmeyer, who hires him as an apprentice, much to Clara's dismay. When Drosselmeyer spontaneously disappears in his secret flying owl machine, he leaves behind a note for Clara, beseeching her to make her dreams of adventure a reality by joining him on a merry scavenger hunt across Europe. Together, Clara and Theodore set off to follow Drosselmeyer's trail of clues, but they will have to stay one step ahead of a villain who wants the flying machine for himself--at any cost.

"Utterly charming! What an original and adorable story. Angela Bell's debut is a book I can, without hesitation, highly recommend."--JEN TURANO, USA Today bestselling author

"Bell's voice will draw you immediately into her world, and her characters will hold you there. A must-read!"--ROSEANNA M. WHITE, Christy Award-winning author

The Seamstress of Acadie ~ Review

The Seamstress of Acadie

By Laura Frantz

The Acadians' history is a tragic one that finds them caught in a war between the British and the French. And it is in the midst of this conflict that The Seamstress of Acadie is set. Sylvie Galant works as a seamstress for the French fort, sewing shirts for the French soldiers. But all too soon her skills are no longer used as the British threat to Acadians becomes more with each passing day. 

When her brother warns that soon all they hold will be seized becomes the truth, Sylvie's life is forever altered. But through it all she uses her needle to forge a new life with what little remains of the old.

The Seamstress of Acadie is a tragic story of lives torn apart because of hate and prejudice. The Acadians French ties have them caught in the middle of a conflict between the British and the French. And though they pledge no loyalty to either, claiming neutrality, they are accused treachery and revolution. The British lies soon drive them forcibly from their homes. Families are torn apart and the conditions aboard the ships a cruelty. Loss of life is extreme before events force them into a new existence in Virginia. But this new land views them with distrust, offering hate, fear, and ridicule while they suffer from the losses they cannot easily forgot, not that they want to. 

But there are moments of hope for the future and it is to this promise that Sylvie eventually ties all her hopes and dreams. Laura Frantz creates characters who draw one into their story. One feels Sylvie's pain. One hopes with Major Blackburn that he will succeed in providing a home for the displaced Acadians. Set in Pre-Revolutionary America this a perfect read for those who enjoy Historical Fiction set in the New World. And one fun tidbit for those who've read Laura Frantz's works before if you've read A Heart Adrift you just may see a familiar name or two. If you haven't read the author before this book is a standalone title so you can easily pick it and dive right in and read with no issues.

I was provided a complimentary copy of this book with no expectations but that I provide my honest opinion. All thoughts expressed are my own.

QUICK FACTS

 Title: The Seamstress of Acadie

 Author: Laura Frantz

 Genre: Historical Fiction, Inspirational Fiction

 Publisher: Revell (January 9, 2024)

 Length: (416) pages

 Format: Hardcover, Trade Paperback, eBook, & Audiobook 

 ISBN: 978-0800740689‎

 Book Tour Dates: January 8 – 22, 2024

About the Book:

As 1754 is drawing to a close, tensions between the French and the British on Canada's Acadian shore are reaching a fever pitch. Seamstress Sylvie Galant and her family--French-speaking Acadians wishing to remain neutral--are caught in the middle, their land positioned between two forts flying rival flags. Amid preparations for the celebration of Noël, the talk is of unrest, coming war, and William Blackburn, the British Army Ranger raising havoc across North America's borderlands.

As summer takes hold in 1755 and British ships appear on the horizon, Sylvie encounters Blackburn, who warns her of the coming invasion. Rather than participate in the forced removal of the Acadians from their land, he resigns his commission. But that cannot save Sylvie or her kin. Relocated on a ramshackle ship to Virginia, Sylvie struggles to pick up the pieces of her life. When her path crosses once more with William's, they must work through the complex tangle of their shared, shattered past to

navigate the present and forge an enduring future.

PRAISE FOR THE SEAMSTRESS OF ACADIE

 “Frantz’s atmospheric writing is easy to sink into, from the grimness of the

disease-riddled voyage to the ethereal Acadian landscape. While William and

Sylvie’s romance is a slow burn, there’s a rewarding payoff to this tale of second

chances born from tragedy. Frantz’s fans won’t be disappointed.”— Publisher’s

Weekly

 “This book is undoubtedly one of the best books I've ever read. I loved the faith

thread, I loved the light in the darkness theme, I loved the characters, I loved the

hope brimming from almost every page. I loved the growth (through every

struggle and triumph), and I loved the history embedded into each detail.”—

Tasha, The Clean Read Book Club

 “Fantastic story! The beautiful writing engages the reader from the beginning...

Laura Frantz's books are exceptional because they evoke an abundance of

emotions beyond the typical novel. I highly recommend this book to all historical

fiction readers.”— Milena Bookish, Goodreads

PURCHASE LINKS

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | PUBLISHER | BOOKSHOP | BOOKBUB |

GOODREADS

About the Author:

Bestselling, award-winning author Laura Frantz has been writing stories since age seven. She is passionate about all things historical, particularly the 18th century, and her novels often incorporate Scottish themes that reflect her family heritage. She is a direct descendant of George Hume, Wedderburn Castle, Berwickshire, Scotland, who was

exiled to the American colonies for his role in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715, settled in Virginia, and is credited with teaching George Washington surveying in the years 1748-1750. Proud of her heritage, she is also a Daughter of the American Revolution. Though she will always consider Kentucky home, she and her husband live in Washington State.

According to Publishers Weekly, "Frantz has done her historical homework." With her signature attention to historical detail and emotional depth, she is represented by Janet Kobobel Grant, Literary Agent & Founder, Books & Such Literary Agency of Santa Rosa, California. Foreign language editions include French, Dutch, Spanish, Slovakian, German & Polish.

WEBSITE | X (Formerly Twitter) | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | GOODREADS