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Last One Home by Debbie Macomber

Debbie Macomber, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Blossom Street and Cedar Cove series, will win readers’ hearts with her utterly fresh and poignant new stand-alone novel.

In Last One Home, three sisters who couldn’t be more different try to repair old wounds—and discover that, through all the ups and downs of life, they remain family and can depend one another.



About The Author 

Debbie Macomber is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and one of today’s most popular writers with more than 170 million copies of her books in print worldwide. In her novels, Macomber brings to life compelling relationships that embrace family and enduring friendships, uplifting her readers with stories of connection and hope. Macomber's novels have spent over 750 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Eight of these novels hit the number one spot.
In 2015, Macomber's all-new hardcover publications will include Last One Home (March), Silver Linings (August) and Dashing Through The Snow (October) and paperback editions of Blossom Street Brides (March) and her Christmas novel, Mr. Miracle (October).
In addition to fiction Macomber has also published two bestselling cookbooks; numerous inspirational and nonfiction works; and two acclaimed children’s books.
Macomber's beloved and bestselling Cedar Cove Series became Hallmark Channel’s first dramatic scripted television series, Debbie Macomber's Cedar Cove, which was ranked as the top program on cable when it debuted in summer 2013. Hallmark is now filming a second season of Debbie Macomber's Cedar Cove which will premiere this July 19.  In addition, Macomber’s upcoming Christmas novel, Mr. Miracle, will be made into an original movie premiering on Hallmark Channel in fall 2014. Previously, Hallmark Channel has produced three successful Christmas movies based on Macomber's bestselling Christmas novels, Mrs. Miracle, Call Me Mrs. Miracle and Trading Christmas.
Macomber owns her own tea room, Victorian Rose Tea Room & yarn store, A Good Yarn, named after the shop featured in her popular Blossom Street novels. She and her husband, Wayne, serve on the Guideposts National Advisory Cabinet, and she is World Vision’s international spokesperson for their Knit for Kids charity initiative.
A devoted grandmother, Debbie and her husband Wayne live in Port Orchard, Washington (the town on which her Cedar Cove novels are based) and winter in Florida.

My Review


Last One Home deals with the tough subject of spousal abuse, at its worse. A young woman falls in love with the wrong man, defies her family and runs away and gets married. Only she really has married the wrong man, one who takes all contact of her family from her, allows her no friends, and beats her for everything that goes wrong.
Cassie made really bad choices as she graduated high school and is waiting to enter college in the fall. That never happens, and she is at risk of loosing her life, in more ways than one. When the story opens she is now back from Florida and living in Seattle Washington, working and counseling woman who are in the same abusive relationships that she has finally escaped. She is trying to make a loving home for her twelve-year-old daughter Aimee, and just found out that Homes for Humanity are going to help her.
She meets Steven as she first goes to volunteer and he seems to take an instant dislike of her. We later learn that he is still grieving the death of his wife, and of course Cassie, has so many hurts.
One good thing she receives a letter from her sister, and a door opens to maybe healing a family? Can Cassie ever open her heart and forgive everyone, and maybe have her own family again? Is it possible for a person who has been so beaten down, and felt so worthless, and responsible for everything that has ever gone wrong, to really begin anew? Come along and enjoy Cassie’s rather roller coaster life, and root her on, and find her smiling again.
Another great book from Debbie Macomber. Enjoy!

I received this book through Edelweiss and the Publisher Ballantine Books, and was not required to give a positive review.

 

Pump Up Your Book Presents Czar Nicholas, The Toad, and Duck Soup Virtual Book Publicity Tour

Title: Czar Nicholas, The Toad, and Duck Soup
Author: Elisabeth Amaral
Publisher: iUniverse
Pages: 324
Genre: Memoir
Format: Paperback/Kindle

The mid-1960s through the mid-1970s was a heady, turbulent time. There was a lot going on back then, and author Elisabeth Amaral was in the middle of it all: the fights for women’s rights, racial equality, a music revolution, be-ins, love-ins, riots in the streets, the rage against the Vietnam War, and sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It was an amazing time to be young.

In Czar Nicholas, The Toad, and Duck Soup, Amaral shares her recollections of those times. She and her husband gave up their jobs in New York City, relocated to Boston with their infant son because of mime, unexpectedly started a children’s boutique, and opened a popular restaurant in Harvard Square. Most of all it is a coming-of-age story about herself and her husband as they embarked on an improbable and moving journey of self-discovery.

With sincerity and humor, Czar Nicholas, The Toad, and Duck Soup offers a personal and revealing account that reaches out to those who find themselves striving to make a relationship work that, by its very nature, may be doomed. But this story is also one of friendship—and of finding the courage to move on.

For More Information

• Czar Nicholas, The Toad, and Duck Soup is available at Amazon.
• Pick up your copy at Barnes & Noble.
• Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.

About the Author

A native New Yorker, I have lived in the city for much of my life. My first jobs after graduating from NYU were jewelry design and case worker for the Departments of Welfare of New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was followed by co-ownership of a children’s boutique (Czar Nicholas and the Toad) and a restaurant (Duck Soup) in Cambridge near Harvard Square. I then worked as an industrial purchasing agent in New Jersey, and for the last 25 years have been a real estate broker in Manhattan, accumulating stories of the wonder and madness that is this city. I published a book of short stories (When Any Kind of Love Will Do), wrote two children’s books and a memoir (Czar Nicholas, The Toad, and Duck Soup), and am currently working on a novel.

For More Information

• Visit Elisabeth Amaral’s website.
• Connect with Elisabeth on Facebook.
• Find out more about Elisabeth at Goodreads.
• Visit Elisabeth’s blog.
• Contact Elisabeth.

Excerpt:

We shared everything, even our friends. But wait. What about those friends of his? Kind, gentlemen. Always womanless. Don’t even start to go there. Just don’t. It was easier to be in the immediate present, a member of our generation who shared the sentiments of the era, the sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll era. The civil-rights and women’s- rights and anti-war and race-riot era. It was a thrilling time for youth. Along with our frustrations and fury at the government, we also shared an enormous sense of freedom and adventure, of this being our time. And if it was our time, that made it my time. My time to grab an afternoon lover, come home to nights of gentle affection, hug our kid, make supper, smoke some pot, and live happily. With luck, that might include ever after. Piece of cake, and it was no one’s fault.

Thoughts whizzed by. I grabbed onto some, because I knew I would need reminders.

This is my life, not a bad one at all. A very good one, in fact.

That was one thought. Here’s another: Look at me. Look at me! A sensual, sexual, twenty-something woman. A Scorpio. Married happily much of the time, except nighttime, the right time.

"A truly wonderful memoir that reads like great fiction.  The characters come alive on the page."  – Elizabeth Brundage, author of The Doctor's Wife and A Stranger Like You.

“The story of how Liz Amaral and her husband became successful at the epicenter of counterculture businesses near Harvard Square / Cambridge from 1967-1975 with their boutique and restaurant is told with humor and insight. Swirling around them are all of the entrapments of the era, the drugs and free love and betrayal, as well as the politics that defined the times.

With a fierce dedication to her son and husband, Liz Amaral triumphs in this stunning memoir where she discovers that, while love isn’t always what we think it is, it remains, in all its multi-faceted transformations, the driving force of who we are and how we live our lives.”  – P.B. O’Sullivan, writer and mathematician

“In her intimate and humorous memoir, Liz Amaral reveals the challenges of a young family establishing a home in Cambridge amid the tumult of the late 1960s. You will discover the disconcerting truth about her marriage and the painful path she takes to find herself again. A true adventure of the heart.” – Kathrin Seitz, writer, producer, and coach

Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule by Jennifer Chiaverini

The New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker and Mrs. Lincoln's Rival imagines the inner life of Julia Grant, beloved as a Civil War general’s wife and the First Lady, yet who grappled with a profound and complex relationship with the slave who was her namesake—until she forged a proud identity of her own.

In 1844, Missouri belle Julia Dent met dazzling horseman Lieutenant Ulysses S Grant. Four years passed before their parents permitted them to wed, and the groom’s abolitionist family refused to attend the ceremony.

Since childhood, Julia owned as a slave another Julia, known as Jule. Jule guarded her mistress’s closely held twin secrets: She had perilously poor vision but was gifted with prophetic sight. So it was that Jule became Julia’s eyes to the world.
And what a world it was, marked by gathering clouds of war. The Grants vowed never to be separated, but as Ulysses rose through the ranks—becoming general in chief of the Union Army—so did the stakes of their pact. During the war, Julia would travel, often in the company of Jule and the four Grant children, facing unreliable transportation and certain danger to be at her husband’s side.

Yet Julia and Jule saw two different wars. While Julia spoke out for women—Union and Confederate—she continued to hold Jule as a slave behind Union lines. Upon the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Jule claimed her freedom and rose to prominence as a businesswoman in her own right, taking the honorary title Madame. The two women’s paths continued to cross throughout the Grants’ White House years in Washington, DC, and later in New York City, the site of Grant’s Tomb.

Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule is the first novel to chronicle this singular relationship, bound by sight and shadow.

About The Author 

Jennifer Chiaverini is the New York Times bestselling author of several acclaimed historical novels and the beloved Elm Creek Quilts series, as well as six collections of quilt patterns inspired by her books. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago, she lives with her husband and two sons in Madison, Wisconsin. About her historical fiction, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes, "In addition to simply being fascinating stories, these novels go a long way in capturing the texture of life for women, rich and poor, black and white, in those perilous years."


My Review 

What a predicament being a slave owner and married to Ulysses S Grant, and living through the Civil War. The book starts as Julia is given her slave and friend Julia; she then changes her name to Jule to end the confusion. A contradiction to be sure, and Julia walks a tight rope of explanation, where she tries to justify slavery and her husband’s career.
I loved the interaction between Ulys and Julia, right from the start he never say her disabilities, her cross-eyes, and only saw her heart. We are with them in their courtship, their marrying, and having their family, and trials. We continue through their life, and it sure isn’t a dull one, action around every corner.
While the story is fiction, as the author notes tell that not much is know about the life of Julia Grant, the rest of the story is fact, we live the Civil War battle to battle. We are Julia and follow her as the wife of the great General and President of the US.
One part that touched my heart was what Mark Twain did for the General, I had known this, but it brought it alive for me, and it had such an impact on the story. I loved this read, what a beautiful story the author has written.

I received this book through the Publisher Dutton, and was not required to give a positive review.

Spy of Richmond (Heroines Behind the Lines #4) by Jocelyn Green

Trust None. Risk all.

Richmond, Virginia, 1863. Compelled to atone for the sins of her slaveholding father, Union loyalist Sophie Kent risks everything to help end the war from within the Confederate capital and abolish slavery forever. But she can't do it alone.

Former slave Bella Jamison sacrifices her freedom to come to Richmond, where her Union soldier husband is imprisoned, and her twin sister still lives in bondage in Sophie's home. Though it may cost them their lives, they work with Sophie to betray Rebel authorities. Harrison Caldwell, a Northern freelance journalist who escorts Bella to Richmond, infiltrates the War Department as a clerk-but is conscripted to defend the city's fortifications.

As Sophie's spy network grows, she walks a tightrope of deception, using her father's position as newspaper editor and a suitor's position in the ordnance bureau for the advantage of the Union. One misstep could land her in prison, or worse. Suspicion hounds her until she barely even trusts herself. When her espionage endangers the people she loves, she makes a life-and-death gamble.

Will she follow her convictions even though it costs her everything-and everyone-she holds dear.



About The Author

Jocelyn Green is the award-winning author of ten books, including fiction and nonfiction. A former military wife herself, she offers encouragement and hope to military wives worldwide through her Faith Deployed books and The 5 Love Languages Military Edition, which she co-authored with best-selling author Dr. Gary Chapman. Her Heroines Behind the Lines Civil War novels, inspired by real heroines on America’s home front, are marked by their historical integrity and gritty inspiration.
Jocelyn graduated from Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, with a B.A. in English, concentration in writing. She is an active member of the Christian Authors Network, the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, American Christian Fiction Writers, and the Military Writers Society of America.
She loves Mexican food, Broadway musicals, Toblerone chocolate bars, the color red, and reading on her patio. Jocelyn lives with her husband Rob and two small children in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Visit her at www.jocelyngreen.com

Purchase

My Review

As you open the pages of this book you are being transported to living in Richmond Virginia and landing right in the Civil War. You are about to spend some time in the infamous Libby Prison and we will learn first hand about the horrible conditions there.
We spend most of our time in the shoes of Sophia Kent and her goal to become a reporter, being a woman, almost impossible. She abhors slavery, and although a southerner, her sympathies lie with the north. Being a southern lady and a slaveholder, not by choice, she makes a life changing decision to become a spy.
We also end up as a prisoner at Libby, and are there digging the tunnel, and barely breathing with the horrible smell. We feel our building shaking and smell the fires that are burning in Richmond, and all the while wondering who will survive the chaos and insanity of this war?
Although this is a terrible time in American History, the story telling is awesome and brings the story alive. Whether we are at the slave markets or market place or sending secrets, there is danger around each corner.
There is a bit of romance, and you will wonder whom Sophie will end up with. Also the prodigal daughter returns and is she really repentant, or is she out for Susan? I for one judged her, and didn’t like her at all.
I loved this story and hated it to end, of course I wanted to the war to be gone, and to my delight there is an epilogue at the end and wonderful updates. Enjoy!

I received this book through Net Galley and the publisher Moody, and was not required to give a positive review.

Mercy's Rain by Cindy K. Sproles

When your life is built around a father's wrath, how can you trust in the love of Father God?

Mercy Roller knows her name is a lie: there has never been any mercy in her young life. Raised by a twisted and abusive father who called himself the Pastor, she was abandoned by the church community that should have stood together to protect her from his evil. Her mother, consumed by her own fear and hate, won't stand her ground to save Mercy either.

The Pastor has robbed Mercy of innocence and love, a husband and her child. Not a single person seems capable of standing up to the Pastor's unrestrained evil. So Mercy takes matters into her own hands.

Her heart was hardened to love long before she took on the role of judge, jury, and executioner of the Pastor. She just didn't realize the retribution she thought would save her, might turn her into the very thing she hated most.

Sent away by her angry and grieving mother, Mercy's path is unclear until she meets a young preacher headed to counsel a pregnant couple. Sure that her calling is to protect the family, Mercy is drawn into a different life on the other side of the mountain where she slowly discovers true righteousness has nothing evil about it--and that there might be room for her own stained and shattered soul to find shelter. . . and even love.

Mercy's Rain is a remarkable historical novel set in 19th century Appalachia that traces the thorny path from bitterness to forgiveness and reveals the victory and strength that comes from simple faith.


About The Author 

Cindy K. Sproles is an author and a speaker, whose dream is do nothing more than craft words that speak from the heart. God's plan seems to be for me to write email devotionals but we're expanding our horizons. We'll see how He uses me. In the mean time...I write and speak. I'm a mountain gal, born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains where life is simple, words have a deep southern drawl, and colloquialisms like, "well slap my knee and call me corn pone" seem to take precedence over proper speech. Apple Butter, coal mining, the river, pink sunrises and golden sunsets help you settle into a porch swing and relax. Family, the love of God and strong morals are embedded into my life in the mountains. Teaching writers, spinning fiction tales about life in the mountains, history and down home ideas find their way into all I do. I love to write devotions, to seek after the deeper side of Christ and to share the lessons He teaches me from life in the hills of East Tennessee. I am a writer. A speaker. A lover of God's Word and friend to all. 


My Review

Mercy’s Rain is a hard to read book, not the wording, but the abuse that is done in the name of the Lord. I know that people like the Pastor really do exist, and are working with the hand of Satan, and not Christ.
The setting is rural Tennessee in the Appalachian foothills in the 1890’s, and as the story opens Mercy’s father, the Pastor, is baptizing a crippled man in the river. What happens next is a horror story, and the story begins to unfold. Have a box of tissues handy; what happens to this young girl in the name of God is horrific.
You will feel that God has forsaken Mercy, and as we travel and the flashbacks continue to happen, we find people of Christ being put in her path. In fact, I was a bit surprised how some of these individuals ended up being at the same place at the same time, but was it a coincidence, I think not.
The road to healing and redemption is long, but the God’s hand is on Mercy’s shoulder. We meet the people God has chosen to put in her path, and she is made to give of herself, and in the end find what we all are looking for.
The author Cindy Sproles has done an amazing job of putting this story together, it will make you think, cry, and will definitely linger with you for a long time.

I received this book through the Publisher Kregel, and was not required to give a positive review.

The Reluctant Midwife: A Hope River Novel (Hope River #2) by Patricia Harman

The USA Today bestselling author of The Midwife of Hope River returns with a heartfelt sequel, a novel teeming with life and full of humor and warmth, one that celebrates the human spirit

The Great Depression has hit West Virginia hard. Men are out of work; women struggle to feed hungry children. Luckily, Nurse Becky Myers has returned to care for them. While she can handle most situations, Becky is still uneasy helping women deliver their babies. For these mothers-to-be, she relies on an experienced midwife, her dear friend Patience Murphy.

Though she is happy to be back in Hope River, time and experience have tempered Becky’s cheerfulness-as tragedy has destroyed the vibrant spirit of her former employer Dr Isaac Blum, who has accompanied her. Patience too has changed. Married and expecting a baby herself, she is relying on Becky to keep the mothers of Hope River safe.

But becoming a midwife and ushering precious new life into the world is not Becky’s only challenge. Her skills and courage will be tested when a calamitous forest fire blazes through a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. And she must find a way to bring Isaac back to life and rediscover the hope they both need to go on.

Full of humor and compassion, The Reluctant Midwife is a moving tribute to the power of optimism and love to overcome the most trying circumstances and times, and is sure to please fans of the poignant Call the Midwife series.

About The Author

Patricia Harman has spent over thirty years caring for women as a midwife, first as a lay-midwife, delivering babies in cabins and on communal farms in West Virginia, and later as a nurse-midwife in teaching hospitals and in a community hospital birthing center.
She spent over a decade in the sixties and seventies in her wild youth living in rural communes in Washington (Tolstoy Farm), Connecticut (The Committee for Non-Violent Action) and Minnesota (Free Folk). During the Vietnam years, she and her husband, Tom Harman, traveled the country, often hitch-hiking, as they looked for a place to settle. In 1974 they purchased a farm with a group of like-minded friends on top of a ridge in Roane County, West Virginia. Here on the commune, they built log houses, dug a pond, grew and preserved their own food and started the Growing Tree Natural Foods Cooperative.
It was during this time that Patsy attended her first home birth, more or less by accident. "Some people are destined," she has written. "I was staying at a woman friend's commune when she went into labor and I ended up delivering my first baby." Soon after, Harman traveled to Austin, Texas to train with a collective of home-birth midwives. When she returned, she became one of the founding members of The West Virginia Cooperative of Midwives. Her passion for caring for women and babies led her to become an RN as the first step in getting licensed as certified nurse midwife. In 1985, with her children, a yowling cat and her husband she traveled north, pulling a broken down trailer to begin her training at the University of Minnesota where she received her MSN in Nurse-Midwifery.
For the past twenty years, Ms. Harman has been a nurse-midwife on the faculty of The Ohio State University, Case Western Reserve University and most recently West Virginia University. In 1998 she went into private practice with her husband, Tom, an OB/Gyn, in Morgantown, West Virginia. Here they devoted their lives to caring for women and bringing babies into the world in a gentle way.
When, in 2003, the cost of liability insurance for Obstetrics sky-rocketed from $70,000 a year to $110,000, the Harman's decided to give up deliveries. Though many loyal patients grieved the loss of their favorite mid-wife/physician team, the change in life style gave the author time to begin writing her first book, The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife's Memoir.
Patricia Harman still lives and works with her husband, Ob/Gyn Thomas Harman, in Morgantown, West Virginia at their clinic, Partners in Women's Health Care. Though she no longer attends births, she provides care for women in early pregnancy and through-out the life span. She brings to this work the same dedication and compassion she brought to obstetrics."

My Review

This is a book that once you turn the first page, you will not be able to put down. We are transported the 1930’s in American, and back to West Virginia, the Great Depression. West Virginia is at 80% unemployment, and nurse Becky Meyers finds herself homeless and also the caretaker of her former boss Dr. Isaac Blum.
I felt myself walking in Becky’s shoes, looking at the bread lines, and having feelings of doubt as a baby is about to come into the world. I was holding to tooth brush as we brushed Dr. Blum’s teeth. I had a lot of admiration for this woman, and what a hard lot in life she had been given, but she rolled with the punches, and came out a winner.
We also walk in Dr. Blum’s shoes, and sometimes, we wish we didn’t, such pain he kept locked up in his silence. What a blessing Hestor is to him, and even if he is stoic he seems to respond silently to help.
I feel blessed to have never lived during the Great Depression, but the author has painted a picture of that time that will linger a long time with you. This is a book not to be missed!
I received this book through Edelweiss and William Morrow Paperbacks, and was not required to give a positive review.