45. When the Emperor Was Devine

Julie Otsuka
Rated: 4 Stars
From:  Library

A very interesting story and a shameful part of our nation's history.  But sad, very sad.  Our government succumbed to public hysterics' after Pearl Harbor and . . .  dare I even say it, then to greed.  I seriously doubt if any of the U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry were ever reimbursed by as much as one penny on the dollar of what was robbed from them.  I blush to think of it.

Myself, I am of thirty one thirty seconds German ancestry and no one messed with my family during WW2.  Because we didn't look different.  Racism is not just a recent phenomena

Publisher Summary The story is told from five different points of view--a mother receiving the evacuation order, her daughter on the train ride to the camp, the son in the desert internment camp, the family's return home, and the final release of the father after years in captivity--chronicles the experiences of Japanese Americans caught up in the nightmare of the World War II internment camps.

43. Only Time Will Tell

By Jeffrey Archer
Rated 3 Stars
From Library

For some reason this book didn't pull me in very far.  It was an OK book but the relationship between Harry and his Father did't come off as real.  The Father's antipathy towards Harry was over the top as far as I was concerned and since that relationship was what the entire story was built around the whole story felt flat to me.

Publisher Summary 1

"From the popular author of Kane and Abel and A Prisoner of Birth comes the story of one family across generations, across oceans, from heartbreak to triumph. The epic tale of Harry Clifton's life begins in 1920, with the words, "I was told that my father was killed in the war." A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from his uncle who expects Harry to join him at the shipyard once he's left school. But then his unexpected gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys' school, and his life will never be the same again. As he enters into adulthood, Harry finally learns how his father really died, but the awful truth only leads him to question who was his father? Is he the son of Arthur Clifton, a stevedore who spent his whole life on the docks, or the first-born son of a scion of West Country society, whose family owns a shipping line? This introductory novel in The Clifton Chronicles includes a cast of colorful characters and takes us from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take up a place at Oxford or join the navy and go to war with Hitler's Germany. From the docks of working-class England to the bustling streets of 1940 New York City, Only Time Will Tell takes readers on a journey through to future volumes, which will bring to life one hundred years of recent history to reveal a family story that neither the reader nor Harry Clifton himself could ever have imagined"--

42. The Leftovers

By:  Tom Perrotta
Rated 4 Stars
From:  Library

I've been trying to give my reading a totally different direction .  This book was highly recommended to me which is usually a kiss of death.  But I have been having such a hard time lately with books I figured what the heck I'd give it a try.  To my complete amazement I am really liking it.  This is also in spite of it being a post rapture kind of theme, another sure fire kiss of death for me. The book makes no judgements about what happened or why it happened.  It just tells a good story about how those "left behind" deal with the situation. 


Publisher Summary 2 

 What if—whoosh, right now, with no explanation—a number of us simply vanished?  Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down? That’s what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out. Because nothing has been the same since it happened—not marriages, not friendships, not even the relationships between parents and children.

Kevin Garvey, Mapleton’s new mayor, wants to speed up the healing process, to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized community. Kevin’s own family has fallen apart in the wake of the disaster: his wife, Laurie, has left to join the Guilty Remnant, a homegrown cult whose members take a vow of silence; his son, Tom, is gone, too, dropping out of college to follow a sketchy prophet named Holy Wayne.  Only Kevin’s teenaged daughter, Jill, remains, and she’s definitely not the sweet “A” student she used to be.  Kevin wants to help her, but he’s distracted by his growing relationship with Nora Durst, a woman who lost her entire family on October 14th and is still reeling from the tragedy, even as she struggles to move beyond it and make a new start.

41. The Devil Himself

By Eric Dezenhall
Rated: 5 Stars
From: Library

Product Description:

In late 1982, a spike in terrorism has the Reagan Administration considering covert action to neutralize the menace before it reaches the United States. There are big risks to waging a secret war against America's enemies---but there is one little-known precedent. Forty years earlier, German U-boats had been prowling the Atlantic, sinking hundreds of U.S. ships along the east coast, including the largest cruise ship in the world, Normandie, destroyed at a Manhattan pier after Pearl Harbor.

Nazi agents even landed on Long Island with explosives and maps of railways, bridges, and defense plants. Desperate to secure the coast, the Navy turned to Meyer Lansky, the Jewish Mob boss. A newly naturalized American whose fellow Eastern European Jews were being annihilated by Hitler, Lansky headed an unlikely fellowship of mobsters Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, Frank Costello, and naval intelligence officers.

 Young Reagan White House aide Jonah Eastman, grandson of Atlantic City gangster Mickey Price, is approached by the president's top advisor with an assignment: Discreetly interview his grandfather's old friend Lansky about his wartime activities. There just might be something to learn from that secret operation. The notoriously tight-lipped gangster, dying of cancer, is finally ready to talk. Jonah gets a riveting---and darkly comic---history lesson. The Mob caught Nazi agents, planted propaganda with the help of columnist Walter Winchell, and found Mafia spies to plot the invasion of Sicily, where General Patton was poised to strike at the soft underbelly of the Axis. Lansky's men stopped at nothing to sabotage Hitler's push toward American shores.

 Based on real events, The Devil Himself is a high-energy novel of military espionage and Mafia justice.

40. Midway

The Battle That Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story

By:  Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya
Rated: 4 Stars
Audiobook

Publisher's Summary

This landmark study was first published in English by the Naval Institute in 1955. Widely acknowledged for its valuable Japanese insights into the battle that turned the tide of war in the Pacific, the book has made a great impact on American readers over the years. Two Japanese naval aviators who participated in the operation provide an unsparing analysis of what caused Japan's staggering defeat.

Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the first air strike on Pearl Harbor, commanded the Akagi carrier air group and later made a study of the battle at the Japanese Naval War College. Masatake Okumiya, one of Japan's first dive-bomber pilots, was aboard the light carrier Ryujo and later served as a staff officer in a carrier division. Armed with knowledge of top-secret documents destroyed by the Japanese and access to private papers, they show the operation to be ill-conceived and poorly planned and executed, and fault their flag officers for lacking initiative, leadership, and clear thinking. With an introduction by an author known for his study of the battle from the American perspective, the work continues to make a significant contribution to World War II literature.

39. A Year in the Merde

By:  Stephen Clarke
Rated 4 Stars
From:  Library
Audiobook




Publisher's Description:


A Year In The Merde is the story of Paul West, a 27-year-old Brit who is brought to Paris by a French company to open a chain of British "tea rooms." He soon becomes immersed in the contradictions of French culture: the French are not all cheese-eating surrender monkeys, though they do eat a lot of smelly cheese; they are still in shock at being stupid enough to sell Louisiana, thus losing the chance to make French the global language, while going on strike is the second national participation sport after ptanque. He also illuminates how to get the best out of the grumpiest Parisian waiter, how to survive a French business meeting, and how not to buy a house in the French countryside.

38. A House by the Fjord

By Rosalind Laker
Rated 3.5 Stars
From:  Library
Book


This is not a very well written book.  I could swear I have read this author before but when I looked at her bibliography I did not recognize anything. If I was rating this book on writing style alone I would have only given this book 2 stars.  However I learned a lot of interesting stuff about Norway that I didn't know before.  It's a shame this author is not a better writer because this could have been a 5 star read for me.  Oh well . . . .


Publisher's Description:


When Anna Harvik travels to Norway in 1946 in order to visit the family of her late husband, the country is only just recovering from five cruel years of Nazi occupation. So it is with surprise that she finds in this cold and bitter country the capacity for new love and perhaps even a new home.

36. Last Letter from your Lover

By JoJo Moyes
Rated 4 Stars
From; Library
Format:  Book

I have been in a deep reading slump lately.  But I decided to try something that was a total change of pace from what I had been trying to read and it worked.

This is a very well written and poignant love story with a bittersweet ending. I enjoyed it and recommend it highly as a beach read.  If it' not too hot at the beach that is. :)

Product Description

A sophisticated, page-turning double love story spanning forty years-an unforgettable Brief Encounter for our times. 


It is 1960. When Jennifer Stirling wakes up in the hospital, she can remember nothing-not the tragic car accident that put her there, not her husband, not even who she is. She feels like a stranger in her own life until she stumbles upon an impassioned letter, signed simply "B", asking her to leave her husband.


Years later, in 2003, a journalist named Ellie discovers the same enigmatic letter in a forgotten file in her newspaper's archives. She becomes obsessed by the story and hopeful that it can resurrect her faltering career. Perhaps if these lovers had a happy ending she will find one to her own complicated love life, too. Ellie's search will rewrite history and help her see the truth about her own modern romance.  

37. Escape

By Barbara Delinsky
Rated 3 Stars
From:  Library
Audio Book


I really liked the premise of this book because I have been there myself.  Who hasn't?  But I did have problems with Emily's whining and thought that she wasn't entirely fair to James.  She should have given the poor guy a little warning that she was so unhappy.  And that ex-boyfriend, what a loser!!!  I am going to rate it a C.  But still, it kept my interest and since I have been having so much trouble with books lately that's saying something. :)


Publisher's Description:


In her luminous new novel, Barbara Delinsky explores every woman’s desire to abandon the endless obligations of work and marriage—and the idea that the most passionate romance can be found with the person you know best.

Emily Aulenbach is thirty, a lawyer married to a lawyer, working in Manhattan. An idealist, she had once dreamed of representing victims of corporate abuse, but she spends her days in a cubicle talking on the phone with vic­tims of tainted bottled water—and she is on the bottler’s side.

And it isn’t only work. It’s her sister, her friends, even her husband, Tim, with whom she doesn’t connect the way she used to. She doesn’t connect to much in her life, period, with the exception of three things—her computer, her BlackBerry, and her watch.

Acting on impulse, Emily leaves work early one day, goes home, packs her bag, and takes off. Groping toward the future, uncharacteristically following her gut rather than her mind, she heads north toward a New Hampshire town tucked between mountains. She knows this town. During her college years, she spent a watershed summer here. Painful as it is to return, she knows that if she is to right her life, she has to start here.

35. Martha; the life of Martha Mitchell

By:  Winzola McLendon

Rated:

From Library

Format:  Hardcover

I've been in a terrible reading slump but I'm going to give reading another shot.  I have here before me:

Martha, The life of Martha Mitchell, an example of an Uppity Woman who was quite a character .  I found this review and it's lengthy but I found it very interesting.  I wish this mail program had block quote boxes.  Politics is a dirty, dirty business.  After spending darn near a month reading this book off and on I am firmly of the opinion that a) she was right all along, b) she was surrounded by very bad people and c) she fought back in the only way she knew how.  Her husband was a scum bag!

"Martha is the startling, behind-the-scenes story of one of the most famous and controversial woman in American politics -- of what motivated Martha Mitchell and what really happened to her after the Watergate scandal broke -- as told by the journalist who was her close friend and confidante in her last years."

"Here are those legendary middle-of-the-night phone calls; the television appearance when she revealed that her husband, Attorney General John Mitchell, said he'd like to trade some of the liberals in this country for Russian Communists; the time she ordered the Arkansas Gazette to "crucify" Senator J. William Fulbright; declaring "the Vietnam War stinks!" when Nixon desperately trying to justify it; calling for Nixon's resignation before the nation was ready to hear of it."

"Her husband labeled her his "unguided missile," creating the impression that he was an unfortunate but compassionate man saddled with a slightly flaky wife whom he adored too much to suppress. But here Martha reveals that John, with White House backing, put her up to almost all her early outbursts. And a former Nixon aide confirms that Martha was deliberately used by the White House to represent an outspoken view from the right, but one for which the Attorney General and the White House would not be held accountable."

"Most dramatic of all is the story of what happened to Martha after Watergate: how she was manhandled, and sedated to keep her from talking. And when it became necessary to discredit Martha, the White House confidentially "leaked" that she had gone "bonkers." Word was also passed that Martha didn't know anything, anyway, although Administration insiders knew that Martha was an incurable eavesdropper who listened in on John's telephone conversations and on his talks with people who came for meetings at the Watergate apartment. They knew, too, that after John went to sleep, she rummaged through his briefcase, reading secret papers. That these efforts to quiet and discredit Martha were a failure is evident from the message on a floral wreath sent anonymously to her funeral: MARTHA WAS RIGHT. "

"Martha reveals, for the first time, the full impact drinking combined with drugs had on Martha's life, and the poignant story of her love for her husband: though she died penniless and almost alone, Martha never ceased wanting John Mitchell to return to her."

34. Strange Images of Death

By:  Barbara Cleverly
Rated: 4.5 Stars
From:  Library
Format:  Hard Cover Book

I have been following this author ever since her first novel The Last Kashmiri Rose hooked me in 2008.  While this is not, in my opinion, one of her best, it's still an engaging mystery with some delightful secondary characters from previous  mysteries making an appearance.  Witty dialogue is this author's forte along with interesting settings that are of course, set in a period that I particularly enjoy.

Publisher's Summary:

Since Scotland Yard detective Joe Sandilands was going to drive down to the French Riviera for a vacation, he agreed to drop his niece off at a chateau along the way for a visit with her father. But when the pair arrive at the chateau, they find recent vandalism has caused an uneasy atmosphere among the guests. A troubling crime committed just before their arrival leaves a clear message that more violence is to come. To allay panic, Joe agrees to stay on and root out the guilty person. But, despite Joe’s vigilance, a child goes missing and an artist’s beautiful young model is murdered in circumstances eerily recreating a six hundred-year-old crime of passion.

Helped and hindered by a rising star of the French Police Judiciaire, Joe must delve into a horror story from the castle’s past before he can tear the mask from the diseased soul responsible for these contemporary crimes.

35. The Big Burn

By:  Timothy Egan
Rated:
From:  Library
Format:  Hard Cover Book


Publisher's Summary:

In THE WORST HARD TIME, Timothy Egan put the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl at the center of a rich history, told through characters he brought to indelible life. Now he performs the same alchemy with the Big Burn, the largest-ever forest fire in America and the tragedy that cemented Teddy Roosevelt's legacy in the land.

On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in an eyeblink. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men -- college boys, day-workers, immigrants from mining camps -- to fight the fires. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them.

Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force, through the eyes of the people who lived it. Equally dramatic, though, is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen. The robber barons fought him and the rangers charged with protecting the reserves, but even as TR's national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by those same rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service with consequences felt in the fires of today.

THE BIG BURN tells an epic story, paints a moving portrait of the people who lived it, and offers a critical cautionary tale for our time.