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PETTY MAGIC

BEING THE MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF MISS EVELYN HARBINGER, TEMPTRESS AND TROUBLEMAKER

Sure, the plot could stand some pruning, but DeAngelis (Mary Modern, 2007) cleverly conjures up a parallel—and...

Elderly witch who uses her powers to seduce young men falls hard for a chap who bears an uncanny resemblance to a long-lost love.

A spritely 149 years young, Eve Harbinger certainly believes in getting the most out of her golden years. A grand dame from a venerable family of beldames, she lives among her own kind in a secret warren in New York City and spends her evenings on the prowl. Using magic to transform herself into the dewy beauty she once was, she preys on the struggling actors and frat boys she finds in Manhattan nightspots—making sure to leave her bewildered, satiated playthings before dawn. She also spends a fair amount of time in her ancestral town of Blackabbey, N.J., surrounded by her clan. It is in Blackabbey that she first spies Justin, an agreeable recent college grad working at the family antique store. He’s cute and a dead ringer for Jonah, the great love of her life who she met when they were both spies in Europe during World War II. Jonah knew who and what Eve was, and her special skills helped them get out of many a tight spot during the war. But sadly not all. Against the advice of her family, she starts a relationship with Justin, using all her strength to stay young in his presence. He’s smitten, while she wonders if he really is a reincarnation of Jonah and a second chance at happiness. Meanwhile, there is a crisis in her coven as her sister Helena is accused of a decades-old crime. The Harbinger gals band together to protect one of their own, even as the truth finds a way of asserting itself.

Sure, the plot could stand some pruning, but DeAngelis (Mary Modern, 2007) cleverly conjures up a parallel—and fun!—supernatural world within our own, making Eve a memorable, imperfect heroine.

Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-307-45423-2

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony

Review Posted Online: June 22, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2010

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THE NIGHTINGALE

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

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ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.

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Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.

In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.

Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.

Pub Date: May 6, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014

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