Women’s Fiction

The English Heart

The English Heart
Title: The English Heart
ASIN: B077BCKKX2
Publisher:
Author:
Author's Twitter: @helenahalme
A stylish 1980’s Cold War love story based on true events. Young Finnish student Kaisa falls head over heals in love with Peter, a dashing newly qualified naval officer. Kaisa realised she’d never felt like this before. This was love. The stuff she’d read about in books since she was a teenager; the films she’d watched. This was how Ryan O’Neal felt about Ali MacGraw in Love Story, and Barbra Streisand about Robert Redford in The Way We Were. Kaisa grinned. She’d wanted to pose the same question to the Englishman that Katie had to Hubbell, ‘Do you smile ALL the time?’ ” When a young Finnish student, Kaisa, is invited to the British Embassy cocktail party in Helsinki to celebrate a Royal Navy visit to Finland, she’s not looking for romance. After all, her future has been carefully planned: she’s to complete her degree, marry her respectable, well-to-do Finnish fiancé Matti, and live happily ever after. Enter the dashing Peter, a newly qualified naval officer. Like a moth to a flame, Kaisa falls head over heels in love. Kaisa and Peter embark on a long-distance relationship, but at the height of the Cold War, while the Englishman chases Russian submarines, Kaisa is stuck in Finland, a country friendly with the Soviet Union. Can they trust each other? Can their love go the distance? A stylish 1980s Nordic love story based on true events.

Assessed for Awesome Indies (Previous title: The Englishman)

 

 

 

Walking with Elephants

Walking with Elephants
Title: Walking with Elephants
ASIN: B006BG7G90
Publisher:
Published: November 17, 2011
Bridget Jones meet Erma Bombeck — Walking with Elephants, a lighthearted slice-of- life story, brings to the table the serious work/family issues facing women today.   Suze Hall is at a crossroads. Her nemesis at work, Wanda, has been promoted and now will be her boss. Her husband, Bob, is leaving her and the three kids for a six-month sabbatical down under. To top it off, her best friend, Marcia, is missing in action–playing footsie with some new boyfriend!   Adding to this disaster stew, David, the gorgeous hunk who broke her young-girl’s heart has coincidentally popped back into her life and has something she desperately needs to keep her job. Walking with Elephants, a lighthearted slice-of- life story, brings to the table the serious work/family issues facing women today. It explores the modern dichotomy of a workplace that is filled with homemakers who still must cook, clean, carpool on nights and weekends, shop for prom dresses, and “create” the holidays–such as Suze. But it also is filled with women who have the same drive as men, have no family responsibilities, and will do what ever it takes to get ahead. So step into the shoes of Suze Hall and commiserate over workplace politics, titillate your sexual fantasies, ride the wave of a working mother, and fall-down laughing.

Assessed for Awesome Indies

Clad in Armour of Radiant White

Clad in Armour of Radiant White
Title: Clad in Armour of Radiant White
ASIN: B00YFAGM8U
Published: May 27, 2015
Author's Twitter: @RosalineARiley
This is a coming-of-age novel set in the 1950s and 60s in Lancashire. Its point-of-view protagonist is Ellen, a working class girl who becomes friends with middle class Erica when she goes to the convent school in the neighbouring town. Focussing on both Ellen’s home life and her school life (which she tries to keep separate), the novel explores the gains and the losses that education and religion provide over the course of her school years.   Thematically, it’s a novel about friendship, love, loss, and death. Social class is also dealt with lightly. There are dark passages in the novel, but also much humour. Each chapter is a month of the year – beginning with September to reflect the structure of the school year. This framework also allows for treatment of the seasons and the liturgical year. The months are sequential but the years are not. Between September 1959 and September 1966 the years go back and forth (with some flashbacks to earlier years).

Assessed for Awesome Indies

One Night at the Jacaranda

One Night at the Jacaranda
Title: One Night at the Jacaranda
ASIN: B01EZ6S4D4
Publisher:
Published: April 28, 2016
Author:
Author's Twitter: @DrCarolCooper
The lives of a disparate group of Londoners intersect one night as they each search for someone special. Dan is trying to conceal a stretch in jail, while time is running out for cancer-stricken Sanjay. Geoff is a stressed doctor with erectile trouble, and Michael is the kind of man best avoided. Lawyer Laure is desperate to rewrite her abusive past but, for single mother Karen, sex is a distant memory she hopes to relive. Undercover journalist Harriet doesn’t have an agenda, other than writing articles to repay her debt to her live-in lover. She’s only there on assignment, but soon she has to choose between the comfortable life she knows and a bumpy road that could lead to happiness. As they all discover, finding happiness with someone special means finding yourself as well.

Assessed 

Sail Upon the Land

Sail Upon the Land
Title: Sail Upon the Land
ASIN: B00OVJIUOY
Publisher:
Published: December 1, 2014
Author:
Author's Twitter: @JosaYoung
A tale of love and loss told through four generations of English women, Sail Upon the Land traces 80 years of social turmoil. The story of an English family is told through the experiences of its mothers and children over the last eighty years. The book opens with Damson being raped in India during her Gap Year in the 1980s. She runs away, goes up to Cambridge to train as a medical student and discovers she is pregnant. The plot then goes back to Sarah in 1938. Desperately bored by her mother’s snobbish inertia she learns to cook and then becomes a VAD, falling in love with a doctor who treats wounded soldiers in her requisitioned family home. They have a fragile daughter, Melissa, who emerges into womanhood during the 1960s, marries a lonely and unhappy young man as shy as herself, and in turn produces another daughter – Damson. One after another, these mothers and daughters fail to understand and help each other until the third, Damson, is given a second chance.

Assessed 

A Beautiful Family

A Beautiful Family
Title: A Beautiful Family
ASIN: B00KM4VA1W
Published: May 27, 2014
Author's Twitter: @MarilynCohendeV
When Johannesburg socialite Brenda Silverman dies in mysterious circumstance in her palatial, well secured home, questions are inevitable. Did she commit suicide? Was it an accidental drug overdose? Or did her death have something to do with her husband? Alan Silverman is a handsome, charming businessman with impeccable credentials: a former political activist who fled South Africa in the 1980s and returned to help build the new democracy; a loving husband and devoted father; a pillar of Johannesburg’s orthodox Jewish community; and an intimate of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress elite. He is also a man hiding a terrible secret. Tracy Jacobs, a young journalist, is assigned to cover the story but as her investigations start to uncover cracks in the beautiful Silverman family facade, she finds herself in conflict with her own community. Will Brenda’s inquest finally reveal the truth? Spanning nearly forty years and three continents, A Beautiful Family confirms a horrible reality: that “things like that” can and do happen to people just like us.

Assessed 

Click Date Repeat

Click Date Repeat
Title: Click Date Repeat
Published: August 21, 2014
Author's Twitter: @KJFarnham
These days, finding love online is as commonplace as ordering that coveted sweater. But back in 2003, the whole concept of internet dating was still quite new, with a stigma attached to it that meant those who were willing to test the waters faced a fair amount of skepticism from friends and family. Such is the case for Chloe Thompson, a restless 20-something tired of the typical dating scene and curious about what she might find inside her parents’ computer. With two serious but failed relationships behind her, Chloe isn’t even entirely sure what she’s looking for. She just knows that whatever it is, she wants to find it. Based loosely on author K. J. Farnham’s real-life online dating experiences, Chloe’s foray into online dating involves a head-first dive into a world of matches, ice breakers and the occasional offer of dick pics, all while Chloe strives to shake herself of the ex who just refuses to disappear. Will she simultaneously find herself and “the one” online, or will the ever-growing pile of humorous and downright disastrous dates only prove her friends and family right? There’s only one way to find out… Click. Date. Repeat.

Assessed 

The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire

The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire
Title: The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire
ASIN: B00NZDOYP6
Published: December 9, 2014
Author's Twitter: @sheerhubris
Will they or won’t they? Should they or shouldn’t they? It’s the summer of 1977 in a small college town, and physics professor David Asken has just lost his young family in a plane crash he somehow survived. Sixteen-year-old neighbor Molly Carmichael used to be the babysitter, but now will be keeping house for him while he recuperates. David’s quietly planning to end his life just as soon as he can drive again. Molly’s trying to cope with being known as Tampon Girl, thanks to a sculpture by her notorious artist mother, but she will have to deal with much worse after a drunken teenage party. In this engrossing coming-of-age novel by the author of The Awful Mess, both man and girl must grow up the hard way, and it’s their unexpectedly tender connection, fraught with potential scandal, that may just help them do it. This provocative novel asks: Is there ever a time when doing the wrong thing might be exactly right? Warning: Offers adult themes, bad language, violence, and a blistering feminist critique of how men always leave that crap in the bottom of the sink. May also keep you reading way too late into the night.

Assessed for 

 

 

The Ghosts of Eden

The Ghosts of Eden
Title: The Ghosts of Eden
ASIN: B0055HM3EO
Published: June 10, 2011
Author's Twitter: @AndrewJHSharp
Zachye Katura, tending cattle in the grasslands of Kaaro Karungi, and Michael Lacey, the child of missionaries, are happy in their childhood idyll. But the world around them is changing, propelling them towards tragedy.

Assessed