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Second Helpings at the Serve You Right Café

A charming story for those who enjoy a quick, action-packed, romantic fairy tale.

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A quirky romantic novella about a reformed ex-con and the enterprising young woman who helps him rediscover his self-worth.

In her second full-length work of fiction (Wrong Place, Wrong Time, 2013), Jacobs tells a sweet tale of love and redemption. The book opens as Emet First confides to his employer, Eden Rose, that he has asked a woman on a date for the first time in almost a decade. The reader quickly learns that nine years earlier, Emet was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence in the Massachusetts correctional system. The narrator makes clear that despite his criminal record, Emet is a stand-up guy who simply fell victim to the accumulation of several unfortunate events. Unfortunately, Emet’s confidence has plummeted as a result of his prison time, and he needs Eden Rose to continually remind him of his self-worth. He worries that as soon as he reveals his past to Mercey Finch, his prospective date, she will run for the hills. With Eden Rose’s encouragement, Emet attempts to properly woo Mercey. It soon becomes apparent that she has some skeletons of her own, including a drug-addicted brother who seems determined to make trouble for his sister and anyone in her life. Emet realizes that he may be in a position to help Mercey and that perhaps he isn’t beyond personal salvation after all. The author manages to cram all of the book’s main action into a three-day period without overwhelming the plot or stalling the pace. Although the story takes place in Massachusetts, Jacobs includes very few details that ground the reader in a specific place and instead seems to purposefully create Anytown, USA. Through the inclusion of many whimsical and quirky details, like a homeless magician and his doting wife who act as taste testers for the cafe’s new desserts, Jacobs creates an enchanting world.

A charming story for those who enjoy a quick, action-packed, romantic fairy tale.

Pub Date: April 1, 2015

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Linden Tree Press

Review Posted Online: March 19, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

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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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