Her roles as daughter, sister, wife and mother coupled with her nursing career have provided Victoria with a plethora of experiences and observations around which to weave her stories. Beatrice Fed the Ducks is a poignant story of aging and memory failure, which is sure to pierce even the hardest heart. White Shoes and A Weather Eye bring memories of fellow nurses who influenced Victoria’s attitudes to work and life, while Code of Denial draws on her knowledge of drugs and their dangers.
Author:
A review of Phoning Home: Essays by Jacob M. Appel
Subject matter for these often humorous, always provocative compositions show-case the writer’s New York City childhood, his often whimsical family, his Jewish culture, life in general and more. There is something in Phoning Home: Essays for every reader. The tales portray the writer’s inimitable voice, a merging of nostalgia and insights, mitigated through his education including degrees in ethics, law and medicine. Appel is a man who questions, learns and seeks more answers.
A review of Seals, Sea Gulls and other Sounds by Dolly K. Elligson
Seals, Sea Gulls and other Sounds covers do not do justice to the original work. Sometimes the old books we have in Osage County First Grade are some of the most favored by the six year old set. Dolly K. Elligson’s marvelous work is as pertinent today as it was back in 1966 when it was printed.
A review of Faulkner and Friends by Vicki Salloum
Like Faulkner, Salloum writes impressionistically and uses stream-of-consciousness narration, demanding that the reader do some work to put together the strands of the characters’ stories. While his main themes are race, and the Southern heritage while hers is poverty. In some respects, Salloum’s novel resembles John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row in its celebration of people on society’s fringes.
A review of Timepieces Masterpieces of Chronometry by David Christianson
I found this work to be abundantly filled with scientific information presented in a straight forward, effortlessly read manner. I enjoyed reading the book, and envisioning the evolution of time pieces from earliest days to the present.
A review of One Plus One by Jojo Moyes
Moyes’s novel reminded me of The Middle Ground, a 1980 work of fiction by Margaret Drabble, which centres upon a single mother and shows the disparity between the comfortable classes and the struggling ones. Moyes’s plot is also akin to that of Jane Eyre, in centring on an intelligent woman with a strong sense of fairness, who meets a rich man. Like Mr. Rochester, Ed must be humbled by misfortune before he can fully appreciate Jess – though there is no madwoman in the attic and no fire in One Plus One.
A review of Monday Morning Motivation by David Cottrell
Right from the dust jacket protecting the cover and continuing through the pages of the copy, David Cottrell’s Monday Morning Motivation provides the reader with much to contemplate about leadership and how to encourage optimistic energy as is found in the most effective organizations
A Conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert
The author of The Signature of All Things talks about her return to the novel, about shifting genre gears, about the impact of popularity and notions of success, the book’s epigraph, on achieving authenticity, her characters, on the spiritual aspects of her book, and lots more.
We have a copy of The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert to giveaway. To win, just sign up for our Free Newsletter.
The winner will be drawn on the first of August 2014 from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
A review of Lost & Found by Brooke Davis
Millie’s plight alone should have had me in tears by page two, but Davis has drawn this character so skilfully that at no point did I pity her. Yes, I wanted to give her mother a slap for leaving her daughter in a shopping centre—but at the same time I understood why she did what she did. And that is the magic of this story: Everyone who has ever been torn asunder by loss will relate to these broken people.