Review: The Sisterhood - Helen Bryan

The Sisterhood is a story that covers many centuries. Not only is it in present time. You also get glimpses of the 1980’s as well as the 16th century.

Menina has always known she is adopted. She was found as an orphan after a terrible storm in South America in the 1980’s and brought to a convent. After a while she got adopted by a couple in the USA. The convent made sure Menina’s parents would give a medal that Menina was found wearing around her neck, and an old book written in Spanish and Latin, to Menina when she was old enough.

Menina is planning her wedding to a young man called Theo. But when the engagement is broken shortly before the wedding, Menina is very sad and wants to get away from everything. For school she is going to write a paper about an old Spanish painter and she gets an opportunity to travel to Spain to find out more about the painter and how his works are connected to her medal.

Her trip in Spain doesn’t start well when her money and her mobile phone among other things get stolen and she misses her bus to Madrid. She ends up at an old convent and there her work begins.

Parallell to the story of Menina is the story from the 16th century. It’s about how the book that Menina got was written and how it and the medal had to be sent to South America in order to save it. It’s about what happened at the convent in the 16th century and what happened to the book when it got to South America. The book was hidden for centuries but found shortly after Menina had been brought to the convent in the 1980’s.

It’s a very thrilling book, interesting to read. I really enjoyed it. I would recommend it to those who are interested in reading about 16th century convents and anyone who loves a mystery.

I give the book 4/5.

Fiction/historical fiction

Paperback, 402 pages

Published April 30th 2013 by Amazon Publishing

For review

Review: The tale of raw head and bloody bones - Jack Wolf

This is a story about Tristan Hart, set in the 1700’s England. But in this story, there are not only humans, but also gypsies, goblins and things like that. He grows up, living with his father, his little sister Jane and spends his days with his best friend Nathaniel Ravenscroft. Tristan is a brilliant young man who, when he becomes a young man, spends a lot of time reading books about philosophy and other subjects. His father gets him private tutors. 

Other people look at Tristan and see a young man with a troubled mind. They think he is mad. Tristan hears very loud drumming in his head, something the others can’t hear. They give him medicine and orders him to rest. He has several epidodes where he tries to attack people.

Tristan has a passion for the human body. He wants to understand how the body works, what mind and soul really is. He is also fascinated about pain, what causes it and how to remove the pain.  And he is obsessed with causing pain to others. In his own little laboratory he studies dead animals, cuts them open and carefully document what he is looking at. He preserves them in special liquids and has a large collection of dead animals in jars.

He gets a chance to travel to London to study to become a doctor. Dr. Hunter is his teacher and he has several other students who he teaches. Hunter even let them perform authopsies on real human bodies and later Tristan assists Hunter in a surgery to remove a cancer tumor. 

Tristan works very hard and he is stressed. He spends time on a whorehouse, where he beats up girls, fascinated about the scars he create. He also tries to understand why he can not remember his mother at all. And where did his friend Nathaniel go? Tristan also spends time wondering what Raw Head and Bloody Bones actually means. Both he and his little sister Jane end up getting married. Once he sees a baby with little wings on his back and Tristan can’t help wondering whether that baby is his own. 

It’s a very interesting story. I do recommend it to other people. The only thing I was bothered about, was the language. As it is set in the 1700´s the author uses old school English, with certain words that I could not understand. He also uses a different kind of spelling for many of the words (for example Sunne, which is the sun), and chooses to begin lots of words, inside sentences, with a capital letter. So he writes about searching the ”Keys to the wine Cellar” and ”emerging with a Bottle of port Wine in each Hand”, just to give a few examples. It took a while to get used to the capital letters.  

I give the novel, which is the author’s first novel, a strong 3,5 out of 5. What brought the marks down was the language that I described earlier. 

Paperback, 560 pages
Published March 26th 2013 by Penguin Books (first published January 1st 2013)
Historical fiction, thriller
For review

Review: Orders from Berlin - Simon Tolkien

Orders from Berlin is the fourth novel by Tolkien. The story takes place during World War II, in 1940. William Trave, known from some of his previous books, and his boss John Quaid investigates the murder of Albert Morrison, former chief of the mysterious MI6. At the same time, in Germany, Adolf Hitler wants to get Winston Churchill out of the picture, once and for all. The head of the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst, Reinhard Heydrich, thinks he has the solution for that problem. But he needs help from London. 

Trave doesn’t always agree with Quaid how to run the investigation. While Quaid is certain he knows the identity of the killer, Trave is not so sure of it and goes against the will of Quaid as he tries to solve the murder mystery. And how is Hitler’s wish to kill Churchill related to the death of Albert Morrison? What about the mysterious little notes that Trave and Quaid find during their investigation? At the same time, bombs are falling over London. The Germans have started Operation Sea Lion, their code name for the invasion of England.

Everything is not as it first appears in this story. Even readers might be led into believing they know who the killer of Albert Morrison is, only to learn that they have been thinking about the wrong person.

The killer presents himself to the readers halfway through the book, which might disappoint some readers who whished to play alongside Trave and Quaid and for themselves figure out the truth. But despite that, the second part of the book is filled with action. Will they be able to stop the assassination of prime minister Winston Churchill?

I have not read the previous novels by Tolkien, so I can not compare this novel to the other novels. I found the novel a bit slow in the beginning, but it got better as the book progressed. And in the end it was even better. There are some intense moments, especially when a bomb falls over London, almost killing Trave and Alec Thorn, who is one of the suspects. 

The scenes are very well described and you clearly get a picture of what it was like in London during 1940. I do recommend the book for readers interested in that era of the history as well as for fans of murder histories.

(Read by Anna who stops in once or twice a year. I also tried to make her a new button)

Review: Chill Run - Russell Brooks

Review by Anna

Genre: Thriller

Pages: 242

Published: December 2011

Eddie Barrow wants to be an author, but has problems finding a publisher who is willing to publish Eddie’s books. So he must sell them online himself, but doesn’t make a lot of money on that. He is the black sheep of his family, the only one who failed. He has a perfect sister and even his parents doesn’t hesitate to tell him how much he has failed in everything. 

He thinks that he need a publicity stunt, so the publisher will know his name. It doesn’t matter what kind of publicity stunt it is. He is willing to do anything. So with the help of his friends Corey and Jordyn, he gets himself a little work that is sure to give him publicity.

Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned, and Eddie soon finds out he is wanted for murder, all over Canada. His friend Corey is supposedly his partner-in-crime. What’s even worse, Eddie and Corey is accused of kidnapping Jordyn.

”Chill Run” is a good thriller, pretty short, but intense. I liked the book, although it did have some elements that I didn’t quite like. One of them being the language. The characters in the thriller use quite a foul language. Also, some of the characters speak with a very heavy French-Canadian accent. Just a little example. ”I want to see your hidee”. It took a while before I understood that the word ”hidee” means ID (identification card). In several places of the book, some characters speak French. I can not understand many word of French, so it was difficult to read those parts. The author did, however, translate the French sentences to English, which was good.

But, as I wrote earlier, it’s a good thriller and well worth reading. 

Review: Deal with the devil - J. Gunnar Grey + One for the money trailer

Book 1+ 2
Genre: Historical murder mystery
Pages: 286, ebook
Published: May and June 2011
Review by Anna

Wehrmacht Major Faust has a dangerous secret: he likes England. But it's May 1940 and his Panzers are blasting the British Army off Dunkirk's beach, so he keeps his mouth shut. When the Waffen SS try to murder their English prisoners of war, Faust helps the POWs escape. Now it's treason, with his neck on the line. Then a friend gets him drunk, straps him into a parachute, and throws him out over Oxford during a bombing run. He's quickly caught. Because he helped type the battle plan for the invasion of England, Faust cannot allow himself to be broken in interrogation. Two German armies depend on it. But every time he escapes, someone rapes and murders a woman and the English are looking for someone to hang. He's risking disaster if he stays, someone else's life if he runs, and execution by the Gestapo if he makes it home. Major Stoner, professor turned British intelligence officer, sees three possibilities. Faust perhaps was joyriding in that bomber, as he claims. Or he's on a reconnaissance mission for the German invasion. Or he's a spy. Stoner must break Faust to learn the truth. Their battlefield is confined to a desktop. Only one of them can win. Someone must break. Someone must make a Deal with the Devil.

---------------

“Deal With the Devil” is a historical murder mystery, set during the World War II. Hans-Joachim Faust, a German, finds himself in trouble. He wakes up in the night, not knowing where he is and what’s happened. Soon he realizes that he has fallen out of a plane with his parachute and is currently somewhere in England. But why is he in England and how will he find the way back to Germany? He finds his way to a farm, but unfortunately he is pretty soon captured and brought into custody. What he doesn’t know is that a young woman from the farm is missing and he is obviously a suspect. 

Things only get worse for Faust when he learns that the missing girl is found dead. He is now a suspect in a murder case. And that’s not all. Stoner and the other investigators at Margeaux Hall also suspects he might be a spy. Faust does not do much to clear his name by running away several times from the people who is supposed to guard him. The freedom is short lived, as he always finds himself back at Margeaux Hall, back in his cell.

When the second young woman is found dead, the Scotland Yard joins to investigate. Could it be that Faust is innocent? Stoner certainly doesn’t think so. But Stoner might be wrong. Arnussen and Hackney from the Scotland Yard more and more starts to suspect that it is one of the investigators that is the killer. The question is whether Scotland Yard is on the right track or if they need to look somewhere else for the killer.

The book was released in two parts, with the second part being a bit shorter than the first part. The second part begins where the first part ends, with no summary. This means you have to read part 1 in order to understand what is going on in part 2. Personally I don’t really understand the need in separating the two parts. Why not release the story as one book?

J. Gunnar Grey writes novels that are mysterious, adventurous and romantically suspenseful, as stated in the “About the Author” section of the book. “Deal With the Devil” is certainly mysterious and adventurous, with a little bit of romance. She has a degree (MA) in Writing Popular Fiction. She has been a secretary, a legal assistant, a Starfleet lieutenant commander, a stable manager, among other things. She uses the knowledge she has gained from being all those things, in the book.

I liked the second part of the book better than the first part. It took me a while to get into the story and to understand it. The end is really full of action, which is quite good. I do recommend the book for those who like historical murder mysteries.

---------------------

And something from me. I love the Steph Plum books (and hate them for dragging out), and I am sure excited about  the movie

GuestReview: Reunion - Jeff Bennington

Genre: Supernatural thriller
Pages: 336
Published: April 15th
Review by Anna

David Ray killed eight students and then turned the gun on himself. He thought the shooting and suicide would fix his world. It didn't. The massacre threw Tanner Khan and the other survivors into chaos.

Twenty years later, Tanner and his fellow classmates reluctantly agree to hold a reunion to lay the past to rest. Although they suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, they come back to their hometown and reunite in the defunct school building. Old flames are rekindled, fears are ignited, and their lives are about to explode in a whirlwind of memories, haunted by the spirit of David Ray.

Once they're inside the school, they discover that a dark entity has joined them. It has come to collect a debt, long overdue, and someone has to pay. Will Tanner and his classmates overcome their fears, putting the pieces of their lives back together, or will they be consumed by their worst nightmare?

----------

"Reunion” (by Jeff Bennington) is fictional, and not based on anything that has happened in real life. It is the author’s third story, with more on the way.

Reunion” can be described as a paranormal thriller, but as the author writes in the foreword, it is also a mixture of “supernormal, horror, romance, suspense, and dark fiction”.

The story starts with a school shooting in Crescent Falls, a small fictional town in Idaho. A young man, David Ray, opens fire in his high school cafeteria, killing several students and seriously injuring others. The shooting occurs only days before the summer holidays.

The story then jumps 20 years into the future, and follows a number of survivors that were graduating in the year of the shooting. The survivors all have one thing in common; they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They all, however, deal with the PTSD in different ways, whether it is writing books, drinking or treating other people with PTSD.

Maria Vasquez, the Valedictorian in the graduating year who is now treating other people with PTSD, feels that the only way to put the shooting behind them, is to go back to Crescent Falls and have a reunion. And what would be better than to have the reunion 20 years after the tragedy? She contacts old school mates and some of them reluctantly agree to return to the town, which they have avoided for two decades, although some of the survivors remained in Crescent Falls the years after the shooting.

The survivors return to Crescent Falls well in time for the reunion, as there need to be a lot of preparations done. The high school has been closed ever since the shootings, and it is decided that the old school building shall be renovated before the big day. As the reunion day draws closer, the tension grows and the survivors continues to have flashbacks from the event 20 years earlier.

But there is something terrible going on in the school and the sheriff’s department is unwilling to tell the real truth to the survivors. Will they be able to have the reunion in the school after all? The sheriff Larry Richards is determined to find out what is really happening in the old high school and to solve the mystery before it is too late.

“Reunion” is hard to put down, once you have started to read it. You just have to find out what happens next. The different characters are all very well described in the book.

But “Reunion” also makes you think. Is David Ray such an evil monster, knowing what happened to him in the childhood? Could the society do something to prevent school shooters from comitting such horrible crimes? Do they deserve to die, the school shooters, or should they be put in jail for the rest of their lives? In the foreword, Jeff Bennington lists ten of the worst school shootings in the US history. When one hears and reads about school shooting one will of course feel sorry for the victims’ families and friends, but one should also remember the survivors. 

 I highly recommend “Reunion” to everyone. I think it is a very important book to read. It is very thrilling, with a little bit of romance and mystique. I give the book top marks, 5/5.

Guest Review: Pandora's Succession - Russell Brooks

Genre: Thriller, suspense action
Pages: 299, e-book
Published: 2010
Review by Anna The BookWorm

Where would you hide if you learned the CDC and a major pharmaceutical company unleashed a hyperdeadly microbe on the human race?

CIA operative, Ridley Fox, never stopped hunting his fiancé’s killers — a weapons consortium called The Arms of Ares. When an informant leads him to an old bunker outside of Groznyy, Chechnya, Fox is captured and left for dead. When the informant rescues him, Fox learns that his capture was no coincidence: someone had set him up—possibly another government agent. Fox barely escapes after learning that Ares has acquired a hyperdeadly microbe—called Pandora—that is believed to have wiped out ancient civilizations. The trail leads Fox to Tokyo where he discovers that other forces —including agents within Japanese Intelligence—want Pandora for themselves. The only ally Fox turns to is a woman from his past who he nearly got killed.

-------------------

Pandora’s Succession, by Russell Brooks, is the story of an extremely dangerous virus called Pandora. The virus has existed for hundreds of years, but only in recent years an organization called The Arms of Ares has modified the virus in order to sell it to terrorists and other groups, to be used as a biological weapon.

Ridley Fox, who works for CIA, must stop Ares from releasing the virus onto the black market. Fox finds himself in a lot of dangerous situations as he has more than one enemy who want to see him dead. Luckily Fox is an excellent agent, and he is not afraid to use various firearms and different tricks to get out of the situations alive.

In Tokyo the CEO of a medical company, Hexagon Pharmaceuticals, Hideaki Hashimoto, is also the leader of a cult called The Promise. It is the Promise’s intention to release the Pandora virus and kill all the people of the planet. Only the cult members will be saved as they shall live in a bunker while Pandora takes care of the rest of the population. After the Pandora has done its job, the cult members will live a wonderful life together on the “new” planet.

As Ridley Fox finds out, it is not easy to know who is a friend and who is an enemy. Who can he trust? Or can he trust anyone at all? Personally I found it a little difficult to follow all the double agents and moles in the story. People you thought were on Fox’s side turned out to be bad people and vice versa.

Another thing that was difficult for me with the book was the many different names of weapons and helicopters. For example, one of the bad people had a “Px4 Storm Type F Sub-compact Beretta”. That doesn’t tell me anything, except that I know a Beretta is a type of gun. Neither do I know what an AK-74 or an M-11 is.

But what it does tell me is that the author has great knowledge about firearms and weapons. The author also has a BS in Biology and it does show in the book. It all seems so realistic.


I think Pandora’s Succession is a very good book. Well written and with a high speed and a lot of action. I never got bored reading the book. It was difficult to stop reading once you started. All you wanted to do was to read a few more pages and then a few more pages after that to find out whether Fox would survive the dangerous situation or not.

I highly recommend the book for readers who love thrillers and as me, novels about biological weapons, diseases and similar. But at last I need to put in a word of caution: The book contains some very graphic description of what happens to the human body when it is attacked by the virus and how the body looks afterwards. So sensitive readers might want to be prepared for that.

 

Thank you Anna!

She also added that she would give this book a 4 :)

Edit:

This book is only out in e-book format now but hopefully this spring in paper too.

And Russell mentioned in the comments that if you want to then ask him questions since he is checking them.