River Readers

In The Language of Fire, Stephanie Hemphill has"reimagined" Joan of Arc's tale and told it not only in verse but in Joan's own voice. She elects to refer to Joan as Jehanne, which is how Joan referred to herself in documentation of the time.

There was so much about Joan of Arc I didn't know and this book really enlightened me as to her journey, how she became a soldier and led the French Army and of her downfall and ultimate execution. It is not light reading but well worth the time to read.
 

Thirteen years ago, Bennie Rosato took on Jason Lefkavick, a twelve-year-old boy who was sent to a juvenile detention center after fighting a class bully. Bennie couldn't free Jason, and to this day it's the case that haunts her. Jason has grown up in and out of juvenile prison, and his adulthood hasn't been any easier. Bennie no longer represents those accused of murder, but when Jason is indicted for killing the same bully he fought with as a kid, she sees no choice but to represent him.

Addie is waiting for normal.

But Addie's mom has an all-or-nothing approach to life: a food fiesta or an empty pantry, jubilation or gloom, her way or no way.

All or nothing never adds up to normal.

All or nothing can't bring you all to home, which is exactly where Addie longs to be, with her half sisters, every day.

In spite of life's twists and turns, Addie remains optimistic. Someday, maybe, she'll find normal. -Fantastic Fiction

The friendship between Jillian Lawton and Lesley Adamski begins in the postwar era of the 1950s. As they grow up, their circumstances, their choices -- and their mistakes -- take them invirtually opposite directions. Lesley gets pregnant and marries young, living a cramped life defined by the demands of small children, not enough money, an unfaithful husband. Jillian lives those years on a college campus shaken by the Vietnam War and then as an idealistic young lawyer in New York City.

In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It's a decision that will alter her destiny...and it's a lie that will remain buried until the next century.

Pacifist, Myranda has been shunned for not supporting the ongoing everlasting war by her country folk. As she is starving and freezing to death, she stumbles upon a sword that might change her marginal existence.

Hepworth (The Family Next Door, 2018) turns up the tension in her latest Australian-set domestic-suspense novel. Lucy's ties with her husband's mother, Diana, have always been fraught with tension, especially disappointing because Lucy had delighted at the prospect of a mother figure in her life after her own passed away. Lucy and Diana were never on the same page, and so it's with mixed feelings that Lucy receives the news of Diana's sudden death.

After a late night raid on their encampment, Drest is the only one left in her family war-band. Drest must try to rescue her father and brothers from Faintree Castle where in just four days they will hang. During the raid, Drest witnesses one of the enemy knights try to kill a fellow knight. Unable to allow the injured knight to die at the bottom of the ravine, Drest rescues him and plans to use him in a trade, one knight for one of her family members.

The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years.

In the tradition of The Paris Wife and Mrs. Poe, The Other Einstein offers us a window into a brilliant, fascinating woman whose light was lost in Einstein's enormous shadow. This is the story of Einstein's wife, a brilliant physicist in her own right, whose contribution to the special theory of relativity is hotly debated and may have been inspired by her own profound and very personal insight.

It is the summer of 1964. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the town of Elvis's birth, tensions are mounting over civil-rights demonstrations occurring ever more frequently-and violently-across the state. But in Paige Dunn's small, ramshackle house, there are more immediate concerns. Challenged by the effects of the polio she contracted during her last month of pregnancy, Paige is nonetheless determined to live as normal a life as possible and to raise her daughter, Diana, in the way she sees fit-with the support of her tough-talking black caregiver, Peacie.

As the Great War continues to take its toll, headstrong twenty-one-year-old Emily Bryce is determined to contribute to the war effort. She is convinced by a cheeky and handsome Australian pilot that she can do more, and it is not long before she falls in love with him and accepts his proposal of marriage.

We Were Witches, at its heart, is about a single mother in the 1980’s trying to make it in the world despite all the obstacles in her way. But it is so, so much more. It is such an anomaly that I can’t explain it or put it into a genre. It is a feminist manifesto, it is a history lesson in the suppression of women. It is mystery and magic and yes, witches. It is brilliant and I loved every minute of it.

While Felicity has escaped going to a finishing school she winds up working in a bakery with a sweet man who proposed to her - not what she wants to do with her life. She attempts to inveigle herself into her ex-best friends wedding, her old friend is marrying a scientist doctor and Felicity hopes to train under him. Sexism and piracy get in her way.

I liked the depiction of Felicity being asexual not into romance, neither girls nor guys. While the dialogue wasn't quite as good as in the prequel, the novel was a good adventurous romp.

It is 1914, and the world has been on the brink of war so often, many New Yorkers treat the subject with only passing interest. Eliza Ferriday is thrilled to be traveling to St. Petersburg with Sofya Streshnayva, a cousin of the Romanovs. The two met years ago one summer in Paris and became close confidantes. Now, Eliza embarks on the trip of a lifetime, home with Sofya to see the splendors of Russia: the church with the interior covered in jeweled mosaics, the Rembrandts at the tsar's Winter Palace, the famous ballet.