Code Breaker and Spy...

 Maggie Hope is assigned to MI5 on a manhunt for a killer who is recreating Jack the Ripper. But this time the girls are SOE Trainees who have come into London for an interview. Several of them were trained by Maggie and that makes it personal. As the body count rises so does the tension in each page.

The grey of London penetrates our main story set in fog and war, built around an evil, sadistic predator who loves torturing and killing women at a time when England is fighting for its very survival. The Book opens with a chilly night scene. An elderly ARP Warden is walking the streets to find any chink of light that might lead the enemy toward a point to bomb. She comes across a young woman neatly laid out but is struck in horror as she sees the organs cut from her body.

The landscape of London, burnt out and shelled, during a blackout is beautifully recreated and the chill is enough to make your teeth chatter. There is a wonderful intertwining of SOE Agents and a second story about Maggie's half-sister who is in a German Camp and has been tortured to the point of death. She is on the run after being picked up for deliverance. There is also help in the form of the Queen of England who owes our heroine a favor. Several characters are revisited from former Books but this story will stand alone.

Susan Elia MacNeal is a New York Times best selling Author who won the Barry Award and was nominated for the Edgar among others.  She does a wonderful job in her descriptions of the characters, with all their failings and death defying bravery, during the harsh times of War. One in which Women took on many of the roles including working in the SOE.  I found the book fascinating and I read it in one sitting. I could not put it down until I finished the last page.

A Memory of Muskets by Kathleen Ernst.

Kathleen Ernst writes a multi-layered story of different members of a family, over a hundred years apart, and those they are connected to in love and work. There are two mysteries occurring in the book.

Chloe Ellefson is a Curator at Old World Wisconsin planning a big Civil War event. She is a professional at work, while mentoring and working with staff, despite her Boss being a pain. At least her love life was fine until she felt bad energy about the Cabin that her boyfriend wants to make into her private space. Roelke had bought the family farm and Chloe is slowly moving her things in... as she finds out things about his Ancestors who built it. Things she may not want to tell him. But while she debates all this... they find the body of a reenactor and death suddenly seems very close. Add to that the shooting of another and all kinds of strange things start happening.

The Book is strong on the language and flavor of reenacting as it is also on the daily workings of a historic site. The Staff who work with collections, as well as events, are well developed. Ernst builds strength into the personalities and types of people who love history and participate in these type of recreation events. The Book moves slow but layers the different time frames well.

But to me the heart of the book is the love story set right before the Civil War. I found the German settlers, who entered this country at a time of Civil War, making life and death decisions about themselves... fascinating. Their loyalties gave a slant to history I had never thought about. Marriage was often built on practical reasons alone... not love. I found the ancestor research by Chloe added a lot of emotion to the story and had a strong mystery of its own.


   

Author Cindy Brown and her new book,"Oliver Twisted."

Author Cindy Brown

Agatha Award Nominated Series.

"I should have known Uncle Bob would be the one to blow our cover."

Olive... er, Ivy, or uh Nancy is hired by her P.I. Uncle to help him catch a gang of thieves while undercover on the S.S. David Copperfield. She is enticed by her finances and by the chance to play Nancy in the musical version of Oliver Twist, all while sailing to Hawaii. Her contract forgot to mention aerial duties that left her dangling forty feet above the stage in which there would be no mat. Nor did she expect to find a dead body her first day at sea. All in a day's work for this fast paced mystery.


From the very first page this Author hooks you into a very witty, compact mystery. The Dickens references are a joy as are the thieves and murderous characters. Sail on S.S. David Copperfield... in the meantime this is a perfect read for both theater lovers and mystery buffs. I highly recommend.

About the Author:

Cindy Brown has been a theater geek (musician, actor, director, producer, and playwright) since her first professional gig at age 14. Now a full-time writer, she’s lucky enough to have garnered an Agatha Award nomination for best debut novel (MACDEATH), a scholarship to the Squaw Valley Writers Workshop, and several awards for her fiction, playwriting and screenwriting work.

Though Cindy and her husband now live in Portland, Oregon, she made her home in Phoenix, Arizona, for more than 25 years and knows all the good places to hide dead bodies in both cities.

Interview With Author Sheila Dalton

                                                                     
Author Sheila Dalton was born in London, England and emigrated to Canada when she was six. She began writing early in life and when she found a talent for English, she "went for it." In High School she won a prize from the Daughters of the British Empire and was lucky enough to win another prize in a playwriting competition at the University of Toronto in Canada.






Hello Sheila! Tell us a little about your novel, Stolen.

Stolen is the story of a young woman, Lizbet Warren, who comes home to find her village ravaged, and her parents abducted by Barbary Corsairs. She sets off for London with the only other survivor of the raid, Elinor, from the Workhouse for Abandoned and Unwanted Children. As women alone, they are both in  danger.

In what way?

In all the usual ways, but complicated by the situation in Britain at that time. My novel begins in 1633. The population of England had doubled from 1520 to 1630. There simply was not enough work or food to go round; consequently, there was a huge increase in poverty and vagrancy. Slums were spreading in the cities and, in some areas, as much as half the population lived on or below the poverty line. At the same time, British colonies in the Caribbean and North America were in desperate need of labourers. This combination of factors meant that any person perceived as a beggar, vagrant or petty criminal was in real danger of being transported across the sea as an indentured servant - a position as bad as, or even worse than, slavery. Slaves were a life investment; bonded servants were not as valuable, and were treated accordingly. Many died in transit; many more died of their labours once they arrived.  As women alone, Lizbet and Elinor were prime targets for transport.

How does your main character, Lizbet, survive?

With great difficulty! She is soon separated from Elinor, picked up as a vagrant, thrown into the New Prison, and sentenced to a public whipping. What saves her is intervention by a Frenchman, a privateer for the English monarch. He is a rather strange character who not only desires Lizbet, but intends to keep her under lock and key.  She is later taken captive by a British pirate, who sails her to the court of the Moroccan sultan, where she believes her mother has been taken.

There seem to be a lot of references to captivity and slavery of various kinds in your book.

That’s true. Slavery was endemic to the times. During the seventeenth century, the Barbary pirates carried off many European Christians and sold them as slaves. The women sometimes ended up in the harems of the wealthy - a fair woman was seen as treasure to them; the men often helped build the temples and palaces of Morocco. Meanwhile, the trade in slaves from Africa was growing apace, though white indentured servants (not enslaved Africans) comprised the main source of labour in the tobacco fields for the entire century.

What prompted you to write Stolen?

I had visited both Morocco and Devon, had seen the dungeons where the white slaves were kept in Meknes, and the caves and coves where the British pirates operated in Newton Abbot. I was intrigued by the idea of how a young woman would survive after losing those she loved in a pirate raid. I wanted to tell the story of someone who had to fight against the prejudices and attitudes of the time to find her own way.

Stolen is available as an ebook or print for the Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iTunes. On sale today at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Sheila-Dalton-ebook/dp/B00SXBLCTQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1423444988&sr=1-1&keywords=stolen+dalton

	Kobo-ebooks-Stolen Devon, England 1633: Lisbet Warren's parents are captured by Barbary Corsairs and carried off to the slave markets in Morocco. https://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/stolen-70

Read a sample or download Stolen by Sheila Dalton with iBooks

.https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/stolen/id962804120?mt=11

Sheila Dalton
Author of The Girl in the Box, Trial by Fire, Doggerel, and others.
http://www.sheila-anne-dalton.com



                                                                                  

The Sheik, 1921.

                                             

 

I  had promised myself one Valentines Day I would watch The Sheik, to celebrate one of  Hollywood's boldest romantic figures of the 1920's, Rudolph Valentino. He became a silent film star and it's greatest Lover with a series of films guaranteed to promote that image, but was tragically dead by thirty-one of peritonitis.

He was also many a girl's first crush of that Era including my main Character, Clemmie MacAnalley. I write historical mysteries and while researching came across his name many times as a great symbol of the Silent Film Era. Even if we don't understand the sexual allure today I have been assured it was there and every bit as real to the movie goer then as now. When she spoke of him my Grandmother had a twinkle in her eyes. Her Mother had been a huge fan. After all it was before the Media blitz of today in which so many Stars are shown to have feet of clay. The Studios controlled their images and did a  great job at protecting them.
 
He was born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina D'Antonguolla in Castellaneta Apullia in Italy. A sickly, coddled Child he grew up to take an agriculture degree but came to New York at the age of eighteen.

Valentino bused tables, he drove a cab and eventually he befriended a Chilean Heiress but due to the subsequent scandal of her divorce and his arrest he left and joined an Operetta Company. He eventually met Norman Kerry who thought he should try his hand at the Film Industry. At first he was cast as a series of heavies but got his break in 1921 in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It was a film that made $1,000,000, an enormous sum in that day.

His image was solidly made though in The Sheik which cast him as the "Latin Lover." His legacy was one destined to last to thousands of Women. His films became the epitome of Romance to those fans. When he became ill an information booth was set up to answer the hundreds of inquiries at Polyclinic Hospital. On the eighth day a Priest pressed a Crucifix to his lips. He died two hours later. At his death, Women  had hysterics. Huge Crowds estimated up to 100,000 people, gathered to pay their last respects. Songs were written about him and several books.

The Woman in Black carried a red rose and was seen mourning at Valentino's grave every August 23. It was thought at first it was a publicity stunt but if so there have been several copycat mourners. At present the Woman in Black is a Tour Guide at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery named Karie Bible.

"Bible dons a period costume to evoke Hollywood's iconic Lady in Black, who mourned at the silent film star's crypt, but she considers herself more of a "Historian in Black."

In his short time as a Hollywood star of the screen, the handsome Rudolph Valentino left a sensuous mark on the history of Hollywood. He was a product of his time in that lavish, flamboyant decade.








Ref: "Cemetery tour guide loves her dead-end job." Los Angeles Times 26 Nov. 2012

The Way Home...

Looking for the way home
after you have been a Traveler isn't easy
outside of events,
how smoke and dreams
your pursuit of a Walt Disney life seems













 

Maybe the Past stands alone...


"Many dreams I have dreamed
That are all now gone.
The world, mirrored in a dark pool,
How unearthly it shone!"

And now home is a wishing gate
winding its magic around our heart
with hope and memories
we never stray far from
an image of our fate..








Ref: Binyon, The Way Home Para. 1      
Image: English Home

In Search of Beauty...

"Of blest and unblest?"

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow             sharper.        
W.B. Yeats.            

                  

Look upward..

Beauty can be a quiet meditation.

 

It can lie in the stillness

of our heart.

growing...

"I wouldn’t follow my wildest dreams,
but I couldn’t say the misuse was improbable.
To the next phase in my elegant maneuver."

  

"What are those of the known but to ascend and enter the unknown?" 

It can lie in the words we arrange for ourselves...

In the things we wonder about.

our dreams...

Are these not like Portals?

"The shadows of us fall away,
 Opening portals within ourselves,
 The joy of us, the song,
 Fills us together."

References for Poems..

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Guss E.
John Ashbery
Rachael Burch