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Erika Robuck gave me a fly on the wall look not only into the great novelist Ernest Hemingway’s personal life in Key West, but the relationships he made and broke, the ruined economy of post WWI Key West and the multi-cultural residents who populated the area. With simple easy to read dialogue she painted a real picture of the area, the time and it’s people that was both informative and imaginative. Her protagonist Mariella Bennet was a fascinating specimen of fortitude, attitude and humility and she will long be remembered in this reader’s mind and along with her multitude of wonderful eclectic characters made this novel a definite keeper as she educated and entertained me. It’s a hard to put down read so make sure your chores are finished before you pick this one up. Know that this journey was more than worth it’s time and I’m anxious for the next place this incredible storyteller wants to take me. It’s 1961 Key West Florida and after a day of deep sea fishing with her son Mariella learns of Papa Hemingway’s death. The news sends her back in time to 1930s Key West where the living was anything but easy, where left over depression still lingered in the Keys, in the shanty homes and the gaunt hopeless faces of it’s residents, to the year she met Papa, where only months before her own father had died. She was almost 20 the first time she met him, bigger than life and full of himself and he left an impression that never would or could die. She remembers that tumultuous year of her life and the role Hemingway and others played in it, she remembers falling in love, she remembers joy and sadness. She remembers the best and worst of times, she remembers just what Papa meant to her and she to him.

In this romantic comedy Mary Carter introduced me to a couple that I laughed with and at, cried with and wanted to throw things at too, why because she made them so real and along with her other memorable characters led me down her merry path. Her storyline is a delicate mix of comedy, tragedy and everyday living that she expertly molds into her tale giving it just the right slice of authenticity. Her narrative brings the scenic views from the Lighthouse, the Hudson river and the surrounding vistas to life told in a dialogue that’s easy to read and understand. This is not my first trip with Mary Carter and I know it’ll not be my last either. If you’re looking for a beach read, a novel to take your mind off your own troubles or just a good read this one fits the bill. Bailey and Brad Jordan have been in love since they were ten and grew up to stay in love and marry. During their marriage Bailey has followed Brad throughout Europe, through owning many mom and pop business gone bust and would willingly go through Hades and back. The only thing that would make the union better in Bailey’s eyes would be a child, but Brad will have none of that and is always making excuses why they should wait. After Brad’s near fatal accident which sent him spiraling toward the light of afterlife Bailey follows him one more time, this time to ownership of a Lighthouse in upstate New York that he plans on turning into a B&B. Now in their late thirties Bailey hopes that this time he’ll settle down enough so they can have a baby before her biological clock becomes a ticking time bomb. What follows is a series of events that will forever change their lives, will it be for the better. Let’s check into the B&B and see.

Caroline Evans life has been in stasis ever since she and her daughter left their home and lives in Singapore and went back to England. She knew she couldn’t stay any longer knowing her marriage was a lie, knowing about her husband’s betrayal. The move however has many difficulties, money that she doesn’t have anymore, child-support that never seems to arrive but the most troubling is her fifteen year old daughter, Izzy’s unhappiness at leaving behind her friends, her home but most of all the father she adored. And on a rainy weekend get-a-way to the Cotswolds Izzy’s unhappiness is about to increase when Caroline spots a for sale sign on a run down barn that calls to her and she suddenly has a place in the country she didn’t even know she wanted. With the support of newfound yet staunch friends and the help of their new community Caroline and Izzy are starting to settle in when Caroline gets some disturbing news about her ex’s business dealings then fixing up a run down property becomes all of a sudden the least of her worries and her world keeps spiraling when the bad news doesn’t stop and Caroline and Izzy are thrown into a seemingly unsolvable mystery. In the midst of all this it seems the fates are having a grand time with Caroline when they decided to throw romance into the mix as well. Elizabeth Adler has taken me to the most beautiful places on earth, San Tropez, Malibu, Amalfi, and Barcelona so I was surprised to be in rainy England, in a small village in the Cotswolds. I should have known the surprise would be on me because inside the rundown spider infested barn she brought me another unforgettable tale and like many times she added a spectacular mystery twist or two, plus it didn’t stop at the shores of the Thames but she took me to Hong Kong and Singapore as well. She brings it with her remarkable eloquent narrative that’s not only easy to read but also vivid in detail so much so that I could feel the rain on the windows and the scents of the flowers and the food, oh yes it’s always about the food with her too and it’s spectacular in it’s simplicity and comfort. It’s also about her characters who I knew each intimately by the end, some of which I wish I hadn’t and some of which I want more of. And as usual it’s about love, this time the love spreads from romance to friendship and family but it’s no less intense in the telling. All in all it’s a beautiful story about faith in oneself and in those closest to us, it’s about starting over, it’s about looking forward without forgetting to look back as well and most important is that it will resonate with fans from multiple genres and leave all of them satisfied. Ms. Adler thank you for this journey and I just have to wonder what stamp my passport will show with our next one, which I can’t wait to take.

Helen and her husband Tim own a successful DC eatery, they’re a couple that seem to have it all until you look below the surface. Helen has survived her childhood, her fear of rejection and inadequacy, her mother’s death from Ovarian Cancer and her father’s desertion only by the steady hand of her older sister Claire. But even Claire has managed to get the one thing that Helen so desperately wants, a child of her own. As Helen struggles with infertility drugs and cycles, adoption is mentioned more than once, but Helen can’t seem to get her head around not having her own. But the more she examines the brochures about all the abandoned girls in China, some left on roads only days old she feels her heart begin to melt and after a last failed attempt at pregnancy she and Tim set out on a journey to bring home a daughter not of their blood but of their heart. Helen is in for all kinds of surprises when she returns home with her new little girl and some of them won’t be easy to take, will she be able to handle the good with the bad, or will the ghosts of her past haunt her future as well. Jennifer Handford’s debut novel Daughters for a Time is a poignant, beautiful and at times heartbreaking read. Her plot could be any town, any house USA where the inhabitants battle their infertility and what to do about it, but she gave me a little more as well as she brings to light the real problem of Chinese girl children being abandoned, in fact up to a million children are abandoned in China each year and the majority of them are healthy baby girls. Her dialogue is easy to read and I found it hard to put the novel down. Her characters are at times funny, at times sad and at times frustratingly bullheaded but they all seemed very real to me. There are a couple of things that set this novel apart from being just a piece of fiction, the moral is very real and the relationship between the sisters is spot-on. This novel will appeal to a multitude of readers, from romance lovers, family drama fans, to literary fiction enthusiasts. And if they’re like me they’ll all come away with the satisfaction of having read something that spoke to their heart. Ms. Handford I look forward to our next journey together as this one was exceptional

Is it true that love spans ages, that it’s timeless. It’s a question Kate Wilson Wall Street analyst never asked herself until the fateful day she fell down the rabbit hole, the day Julian Laurence, Hedge Fund creator/billionaire walked into her life. After a rocky beginning at a first attempted personal relationship Julian literally crashes back into her life one night while running in Central Park and after only a very short while Kate is uncomfortable with not only the slightly cosmic feelings she has for Julian but especially his almost preternatural trust in the love he professes to her. It’s not until Julian reveals a secret that Kate feels the rabbit hole shrinking and it forces her to look at a truth that should not be possible that will alter her life even more, a secret that’s unbelievable and yet she has no choice but believe him. It seems Julian Laurence Ashford WWI British war hero and poet did not die on a lonely field in France but found himself falling down his own rabbit hole that brought him straight to the 21st century. Even as Julian peals away the layers of himself to Kate she knows there are things he’s not telling her, things that could lead to disaster, things that could alter the very deep love they’ve only recently found with each other, things that she feels she needs to know. Beatriz Williams is a brilliant literary genius and as her words brought me from the bloody trenches of France in 1916 to the towers and glass of Manhattan today she transported me body and soul, flung me through the ether to worlds I rarely reach with mere words. Her narrative is a flowing prose filled mix of cultures and eras that kept me hypnotically entranced as she spun her improbable yet believable tale. Her dialogue is a mixed bag of English lords with the graphic and often sordid contemporary speak we’re so used to today. And as much as her words transcended me it was her characters that made me see the scenes through their eyes and their hearts, these miraculous fictional people became so real to me and became friends, rivals, villains and lovers and culminated in an experience that I will not forget. I could feel her extensive historical research shine through and not only in her main body of work but also during her interludes in the past where she shows me a foreign and different time. This is the best book I’ve read this year and if it doesn’t make the top spot on my best of list in 2012 then the world is really up for some amazing fiction as the year progresses. Ms Williams it was my immense pleasure to experience this work of amazing literary fiction and I can not wait to see where you take me to on our next journey together.

As a small girl of five Nora’s life changed forever when her mother disappeared and her father took her away from the only home she ever knew on Burke’s Island and the Cottage at Glass Beach. Now she finds herself running back to avoid the publicity from the scandal that rocked her world and her marriage and to find sanctuary and refuge for her and her two daughters at least for the summer. As Nora reconnects with family and friends from her past she’s also aware that her mother’s ghost is never far away and her being here is stirring up memories long forgotten, she’s also aware the Island hasn’t changed much since those Irish immigrants, with her ancestors aboard first landed with their legends and myths and as she takes her sentimental journey of discovery she feels those myths and legends alive in her bones and on the Island as well. But Nora’s not alone on her Island and as she makes decisions and changed in her life her daughters are making discoveries of their own and some of them could be very costly indeed. Heather Barbieri took me on a trip of a lifetime with this intuitive, imaginative and beautifully narrated novel. Not only did she give me a family drama but I felt I was in an adult fairy tale as well and in between the power plays of her characters and as her seals barked and her ghosts moaned and her seas crashed into the rocks I was taken away by her words to her world. Her characters were amazing and while some were real flesh and blood she made me wonder if others stepped out of the sea and out of an Irish legend. The main thing the novel made me want was to see where else this talented storyteller could take me. Thank you Ms. Barbieri for a beautiful journey.

Jac L’Etoile comes from a long line of perfumers, she can personally trace the ancestry back centuries and there’s even a myth that they go back longer still. But she gave up the dream of creating scents with the death of her mother. She’d always been plagued by fragments of past lives but the episodes since bordered on psychotic, the treatments she was subjected to were more like torture and without the help of Malachi Samuels of the famed Phoenix Society she might have gone mad. Her brother Robbie is the perfumer, holding the fragile business together by mere threads and her idea of selling their signature scents to pay off debtors is not going over well. Robbie has ideas of his own and they don’t include selling anything except perhaps a family legend, he’s found some ancient pot shards and is hoping that revealing the hieroglyphics will show him the formula his ancestor is said to have brought back from Egypt, to help him he asks long time friend and Jac’s ex-lover Griffin North who’s an expert in the field. Robbie and the artifacts have turned up missing with a dead man in the lab which brings Jac rushing to Paris to find him. But being in Paris brings troubles of it’s own for Jac who’s visions are returning and who finds herself allied with two men from her past, one her savior Malachi and one ex-love Griffin who it seems has never left her heart or her thoughts. And more troubling than that there are forces against them that’s still a mystery to Jac and everyone else as well. As always the work of M.J. Rose is exceptional, she takes a bit of mystery, a piece of legend and slice of reality and turns it into a finished product that’s both contemporary and literary with a portion that’s macabre and paranormal. Her storyline is one she’s revisited with each previous novel dealing with reincarnation but she gives each one a different set of realities. Her narrative is a symphony of chimera and realism where her research is evident in every sentence I read. She presented me with characters some that I came to know as friends and others who were on the fence, but each one she gave a three dimensional visage that made them all the more real. Her protagonist Jac is complex and fragile yet with tensile strength and her supporting characters all compliment Jac and each other and become an essential piece in this puzzle of a mystery that kept me reading til the wee hours. Combining the edge of your seat of a thriller with the flow of a drama and the heart of a love story I know I’ll return to read this over and over again, in fact it’s one of those novels where a re-read is beneficial and the nuances you miss the first time will become more relevant with each renewed look. This is the perfect novel for your permanent shelf and is perfect for gift giving as well. The glossary in the back is reason enough to buy the book as it gives details on the authors research and is ripe with pictures from her journeys. Thank you Ms. Rose for an energizing adventure and I look forward to my next one with you.