Novelas Romanticas Gratis

I was looking over my post from 2015 on Ellen Herrick's first novel The Sparrow Sisters ,   and saw that I ended my review with a wish that Sorrel's story was told in a future book. My wish was granted.  I'll start out by saying you should read The Sparrow Sisters  first before you read The Forbidden Garden .  Having Sorrel's background, and understanding where she comes from and the talents of the Sparrow sisters will give this novel more clarity.  Granted, you could read this without reading the first novel, but then I imagine you'd spend a lot of time wondering about Nettie and Patience, and just what the heck happened in The Sparrow Sisters.  Save yourself some frustration! So.  Sorrel Sparrow is asked to travel to England by Sir Graham Kirkwood to re-create a Shakespeare garden on his family's estate, Kirkwood Hall.  This garden has been lying dormant for hundreds of years, thanks to a curse placed on it by Graham's ancestor (and complete nas...

Oh July. The gateway to August, back to school, and that short skip into the holidays.  Yes. I said it.  👻💀 Another summer galloping by and my book stacks remain teetering with no inroads made.  Yes, I've been reading.  Library books and ARCs and not actually anything I own!  Funny how that happens.   I thought I'd combine a whole bunch of book business into one post.  It's helping me clear my head and create some space for new reads. One glaring omission in my reading pattern lately: science fiction/fantasy.  I'm missing it terribly, so I hope to dip into a few titles in a few weeks to relax and reconnect to a genre I really do enjoy. Onto business!  First, a couple of DNF's: A novel about a young woman who sees the deceased, and an unsolved murder that puts her in danger?  Sign me up!  But I checked it out of the library, started reading it, and lost interest.  Subject matter is just a bit too dark ...

1952 New York City must have been a pretty cool place.  Certainly it was a lure to those who wanted to make it on their own, or make it big.  It was a place for young women to escape their hometowns and experience freedom, within the confines of 1950's ideals, of course.   The Dollhouse was certainly a refreshing break from my usual historical fiction.  Yes, this is a dual-history novel; it takes place in 1952 and 2016.  I usually don't read much about mid-twentieth century history; it's just not a time that appeals to me.  But I was intrigued by the idea of a women's hotel in 1952, and I'm glad I read this novel. I had no idea where the story would take me, and it definitely surprised me. Darby McLaughlin is a young woman from Ohio, sent to New York City by her mother to live at the Barbizon Hotel, a place where young women stayed while attending modeling school, secretarial school, or other suitable educational avenues for a young woman in 1952. Of ...

My unceasing interest in women living through the Civil War continues with The Heroines of Mercy Street.  This history book focuses mostly on the experiences of a few women living and working as nurses in the North during the American Civil War of 1861-1865.  Many people may be familiar with the PBS series  Mercy Street .  It created such interest in the characters that this book was written to look a bit closer at the women who worked under miserable circumstances and conditions to treat the wounded from both the Yankee and Confederate sides.  Dorothea Dix was a feisty middle-aged spinster who inherited her grandparent's wealth, and that made possible her endeavors to bring reform to sanitariums, jails, poorhouses, and the treatment of mentally ill prisoners.  She was a woman on a mission, and when the Civil War began with the firing on Fort Sumter in April, 1861 she was ready to help gather supplies that would be needed to care for the wounded soldiers th...

My plans to read like hell over my long 4th of July weekend were completely dashed by last minute opportunities to spend time having fun outside in the sun and an unexpected (but happy!) home project. But this was  a good thing, as it gave me time to think about this novel after I finished it. It's one that you need to read and digest slowly.  I'll begin by saying I read this book with very little knowledge regarding the world of comic books and comic book conventions, so there were probably many things that I missed just through lack of knowledge.  But, I worked in a bookstore for many, many years, and have friends who are comic book fans, so I completely get the fandom that surrounds series, superheroes, authors and illustrators.   There is a large cast of characters, with Valerie Torrey and her nine year old son, Alex, in the center of the plot. Valerie was once Bethany Frazer, the female lead on a wildly popular sci-fi tv show, Anomaly.   Valerie and the mal...

Wow. This book blew me away. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I requested it from the library; I have a vague recollection of knowing it was about an archaeologist and a neanderthal, and that was it.  It was so much more that I am declaring it to be one of my favorite books of 2017.   Two stories, thousands of years apart, yet entwined together.  Rose is an archaeologist working in France in a cave where she has recently made a ground-breaking discovery: the skeletal remains of a Neanderthal and the remains of a "modern" human, buried together facing each other.  This find will turn the idea of Neanderthals going extinct through extermination by modern humans completely around.  Many will doubt the clear evidence, as they are happy to continue to believe Neanderthals were, well, neanderthal-ish in their lifestyle and behavior, and were incapable of intersecting and living with modern humans.  This will make Rose's career. The other story is told by Gi...

My attempts to get the names down of people and places in this adventure tale pretty much failed. That's the downside of audio books! So, to give you a brief overview of this historical tale I turn to Kirkus Reviews : KIRKUS REVIEW The 26th U.S. president, failing re-election, has an adventure that nearly kills him. In an admirable debut, historian Millard records Theodore Roosevelt’s exploration of a hitherto uncharted river in the heart of the Mato Grosso. A confluence of circumstances, including a South American speaking tour and the eagerness of others to investigate the Amazonian headwaters, brought Teddy, aged 55 and still bold and plucky, to Brazil, then largely unmapped and unknown. When the opportunity came to change a planned route to follow the uncharted course of the ominously named River of Doubt, the former chief executive seized it eagerly. And so, with devoted son Kermit and truly intrepid Brazilian co-commander Cândido Rondon, along with a band of hardy recruits, t...