[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟 1/2 “In victory you deserve champagne. In defeat, you need it.” (Napoleon) An engrossing and illuminating look at one of the most fascinating female entrepreneurs to grace the pages of history - Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot - who in the early eighteen hundreds, went on to build Veuve-Clicquot…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟 This twisty, puzzling, intense read is so rich with detail, characters, red-herrings, nuance and mystery that, if you are anything like this reader, you will quickly find yourself, moody and muttering, questioning every “fact” presented by every narrative witness, - willing yourself to settle down, put the…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 + An absolutely beautiful read, this book resonated so powerfully with me that it was difficult to see it end. Deeply evocative, the author captures perfectly the heady rush that comes with being eighteen, on the cusp of adulthood - a time so jumbled up with innocence,…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟1/2 A contemporary romance set in the beautiful sun, sand, and surf of Queensland’s Bellbird Bay. Ailsa McNeil, 52 years old, has just learned that her twenty-five year marriage to her husband Bob, (suddenly and somewhat mysteriously behaving like a “surly loner”, distancing himself in all forms of…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟 A gentle look at love, as it ages, batted about and corrupted by the passage of time, as long-held fears, insecurities and secrets, do their dirty work in darkness - leaving us to wonder, is it ever too late to start again? Prickly and somewhat unlikable, Meena…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟+ By Jove, this is one terrific book! Jacob Jollimore is thirteen years old, an adopted Vietnamese boy who is something of a science geek (self-proclaimed), at an awkward age and time in his life. As his parents, facing financial collapse, harness all their remaining resources to renovate…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 This adorable picture-book touched me. With its simple rhyming prose, gentle watercolor images, and lovely message, reading this book (with a child, or as an adult with the child-in-you listening ) is like wading into a serene and calming lake - losing yourself to something eternal, something…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2 A feast for lovers of contemporary crime fiction, this stellar collection of 25 stories, all written by members of CWA and embracing a theme of music, is both a must read and a rare and captivating treat. With stories reaching broadly across the crime genre, including procedural…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟+ For this reader, a long-time fan of both Rachel and all the Marion Keyes books, visiting with Rachel again, (along with the entire Walsh family), is a visit with old and treasured friends, - so much so that re-opening the door, to step back into their world,…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟 A tragic, and yet ultimately hopeful memoir, about love and loss and finding a way to move forward, - a tug at the heart-strings and gentle reminder that out of collapse comes growth and new beginnings. Donna is a middle-aged mother, with a high-powered corporate sales career,…