Best of the Best 2019 Part 3: New Book Alert

Best of the Best 2019 Part 3: New Book Alert

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Now we come to my most popular category, New Book Alert.

I am proud to say that this year, I have seen a tremendous explosion in new book reviews. Because there were so many, I am doing a Top 20 countdown rather than Top 10.

A tremendous clientele have wanted to see their books read and reviewed.  I hope that I have done my part to give these authors and their works the attention that they deserve.

I would like to extend a hearty thank you to all of the authors, publishers, websites, social media platforms, and literary groups that have brought these books to my attention. You are what makes this blog great.

If you have or know of a book that you would love for me to review in the next year, do not hesitate to contact me at

Email: juliesaraporter@gmail.com

Twitter: @JulieSaraPorte1

Facebook

LinkedIn:

Now without any further introduction, on with the countdown:

 

20. Meditations on Discipline and Failure: Stoic Exercises for Mental Fitness/A Life Worth Living: God, Death, and Stoicism by William Ferraiolo

Ferraiolo's books take a modern look on how Readers can implement the philosophy of Stoicism in our daily lives. Meditations on Discipline and Failure offers quick suggestions and witticisms that cover various topics such as death, acceptance, relationships, success, and failure.

A Life Worth Living is a more in-depth coverage on bigger concepts like the existence of God and acceptance of death. These books give us advice on what we can learn and do to make our existence on Earth worth while. We can do it with a reserve that acknowledges loss and failure and moves on.

19. Shadows of the Raven (Sons of Kings) by Millie Thom

This is the first of many historical fiction novels on this list and begins with a hard, dark, violent look. In Anglo-Saxon England, Eadulf, a young Mercian prince is kidnapped from his family and sold into slavery to Vikings. The book is mesmerizing as Eadulf adapts to their ways by taking on a more violent persona, worshipping the warrior-like Norse gods, and participating in village raids with his masters.

18. The Bipolar Addict: Drinks, Drugs, Delirium, and Why Sober is the New Cool by Connor Bezane

Bezane's memoir about drug addiction and mental illness succeeds as a personal story and a more external outlook at the drug crisis in general. Bezane writes about his addictions with drugs including heroin, meth, and opioids as well as struggles with bipolar disorder in a way that is both witty and moving. He then turns the focus to five other people who had similar struggles. This book explores the hardships of addiction and illness and shows that recovery is possible.

17. For the Love of Wolves by D.J. Swykert

The third book in Swykert’s series about animal lover, Maggie Elizabeth Harrington is the best. In old age, Maggie lives alone with her memories of friends and lovers who have long died or left. She feels a deep connection to a white wolf that she believes still roams the woods long after his death. The book is filled with beautiful descriptions and a strong deep connection to nature that transcends beyond life and death. It shows that for some people, their love for animals can be greater than their love for fellow humans.

16. Zodiac States by William Stalker

A sharp and funny satirical novel about an island which is separated into twelve states that represents the signs of the Zodiac. Five newcomers experience each area that is brilliantly characterized from the gun-toting Cancers, to the feminist Virgos, to the meditative Pisces, to the hippy Aquarius. Stalker uses this bizarre premise to send up everything from international dependency, politics, economics, gender roles, war, fashion, technology, personality testing and everything else in between.

15. Gumshoe Blues (The Peter Ord Yarns) by Paul D. Brazill

The Hard-boiled detective genre has never looked more Millennial. British detective, Peter Ord investigates several cases involving missing persons and dealing with the local toughs. Ord's first person narration is what makes this anthology as he mocks the dark sinister world around him with a dry cynicism and references to popular culture.

14. Shiri by D.S. Taylor

This is a strong emotional novel about a woman sold into slavery in Ancient Egypt and being forced to work in the household of a man posing as an Egyptian nobleman. There are some very tense situations involving physical and sexual abuse and some drama involving Shiri’s loved ones who are on the opposite side between the slave-master dynamic. But Shiri is a strong admirable lead as she maintains her strength and faith throughout her captivity.

13. Sapphire and Planet Zero by Christina Blake

This is the start of a hopefully great YA Science Fiction/Fantasy series. Sapphire, a typical middle schooler, discovers that she is descended from a race of alien beings called the squilan and that she must return to her family's home planet to save her native race from a sinister dark wizard. Blake creates a unique world with unique characters. The squilan race are brilliantly created with violet eyes, crystal running through their veins, and unusual abilities like telekinesis and controlling the elements.

This journey becomes a rite of maturity as Sapphire learns to use her hidden powers and strength to fight her adversaries.

12. Confessions of A Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

Bythell's memoirs are a treat for anyone who makes a living by selling, writing, making, or reading books. Bythell recounts a year in which he ran the Book Shop in Wigtown, Scotland. He writes about eccentric customers, wacky co-workers, and his involvement in various activities including the Wigtown Festival, social media contests, and a shop where people can temporarily operate a book store. Bythell's reminisces are humorous, heartfelt, and fun.

11. The Book Charmer by Karen Hawkins

Hawkins’s book is a lovely charming novel about life in a sweet, magical, small town. Sara Dove is the town librarian of Dove Pond, South Carolina and she hears books talk to her-literally. Her efforts to rescue her fading town involve friends, family, and a business-like newcomer. This book is filled with charming little touches like flowers that change colors and sweet subplots of friendship and romance. This is the type of book that ends happily but it warms your heart when it does.

10. Unbalanced by Courtney Shepherd

This is a brilliant fantasy about four separated sisters who learn that they control the elements-Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. The fantastic elements are intriguing as the sisters learn about the dangers that their abilities possess. What really stands out are the four protagonists. Little details such as their hobbies, interests, and locations make them individuals. However, it is when they work together that balances their powers and makes them a formidable team.

9. Crossing the Hall: Exposing an American Divide by Lori Wojtowicz

Wojtowicz’s book not only takes an unflinching look at racism in the American classrooms but asks some intentionally uncomfortable questions of the Reader. Wojtowicz writes about her time teaching Honors English and African-American Literature classes and how the student body differed in terms of racial demographics, economic disparity, and family structures. The book identifies several forms of racism that people can fall into. It also discusses the way people can recognize those forms and change their outlook and behaviors. Sometimes the greatest changes can come from within.

8. Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies I Told Myself by Erin Khar

Khar’s autobiography is an intense look at her struggles with opioid addiction and mental illness. Khar's troubled life before her addiction including divorce and sexual abuse is not glossed over and neither are the difficulties that she encountered during her recovery. This book gives us the full account of addiction and illness and how they affect that person before, during, and afterwards.

7. The Last Collection: A Novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel by Jeanne Mackin

This is a stylish, glamorous, and savage historical fiction novel about the two noted fashion icons, Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel. A young widow works for Schiaparelli's fashion house and gets caught up in the rivalry between the two fashion titans. The book explores the differences between the duo in their styles, personalities, and politics and how they swept everyone along in their one on one war.

6. Glossolalia (Agents of the Nevermind) by Tantra Bensko

Glossolalia is a strange, bizarre, and unforgettable suspense novel set in an Alternate Universe United States where magic runs free. Two women and a young girl are caught up in the machinations of the Nevermind, a secret organization that runs the country. There are intense moments of mind control, psychic phenomena, drug therapy and other means that the Nevermind uses to control the populace. The plot brims with betrayal and odd connections as the protagonists discovers the unusual connection that they share.

5. Sand and Smoke (Dragon's Destiny) by Carl Cotas-Robles

This book transcends genres in bringing the Readers a combination Western-Steampunk Science Fiction-Fantasy. Al Hardin AKA The Silver Bandana and Maya Samoralt, a Dragonrider work together to stop a superweapon and bring down a corrupt government. Cotas-Robles brings this odd genre mixture to life by making them seem like a natural fit. In this world, cowboys and outlaws exist alongside sorcerers and dragons in an even almost anticlimactic way that accepts these circumstances. The best tropes of the genres combine to bring this brilliant novel to life.

4. Elizabeth Craven: Writer, Feminist, European by Julia Gasper

This biography tells the story of an overlooked but amazing woman who challenged 18th-early 19th century views of womanhood. Gasper brings Craven to life recounting her scandalous divorce, her travels through Europe and Asia, and her writing career which questioned the role of women in society. With this treatment, Elizabeth Craven deserves to be put in the spotlight and recognized for her contributions to Feminism.

3. L’Agent Double by Kit Sergeant

Sergeant has written a series of novels about female spies on the war front. This one is an exciting look at three women taking part in espionage during WWII: Mata Hari, Marthe Cnockeart, and Alouette Richer. The three are analyzed in their personalities and means of spying, making them memorable characters that are caught up in times that take tremendous courage and sacrifice.

2. Ashes by Sharon Gloger Friedman

The best historical novel of the year covers various topics like immigration rights, labor activism, women's suffrage, and Anti-Semitism. Miriam, a Russian Jewish immigrant, finds work to help support her impoverished family. Her work at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory is filled with details that describe the hardships of working in such a factory with long hours, inhuman regulations, and foremen that don't keep their hands and lecherous thoughts to themselves. The plot climaxes in the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911 which many organizations cited to make enormous changes in society.

1. The Unseen Blossom by Zlaikha Y. Samad and L'Mere Younossi

The best book from this year is a beautiful allegorical fantasy about Zuli,an Afghan princess and Lamar, a commoner that go on a magical journey to find a fig blossom. The book is filled with enchanting chapters in which Zuli and Lamar travel to lands where flowers sing, birds and fish talk, and magical creatures dispense wisdom that aids the two on their trip.

Above all, The Unseen Blossom is a strong allegory of self-actualization. Zuli and Lamar harness their knowledge, strengths, limitations, and abilities to move beyond their roles as princess and commoner and to bring great change to their world.

Honorable Mention: The Meadows (Legacy of Darkness) by London Clarke, 8 Seconds to Midnight (Commander John Hart) by John Leifer, A Prison in the Sun (Canary Islands Mysteries) by Isobel Blackthorn, Seance on a Summer's Night by Josh Lanyon, Corruption Behind Bars: Stories of Crime and Corruption in America's Prisons by Gary York, Stories We Never Told by Sonia Yeorg, The Lost Power (Van Ops) by Avanti Centrae, Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work by Rupert Sheldrake, Magic Sleep by Cherie Smith, Saving Grace (Fox River Romance Book 4) by Jess B. Moore

Happy Reading!

New Book Alert: L’Agent Double: Spies and Martyrs in the Great War (Women Spies Book 3) by Kit Sergeant; Suspenseful Character Driven Historical Novel About Real-Life WWI Female Spies By Julie Sara Porter Bookworm Reviews

New Book Alert: L’Agent Double: Spies and Martyrs in the Great War (Women Spies Book 3) by Kit Sergeant; Suspenseful Character Driven Historical Novel About Real-Life WWI Female Spies

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Spies are some of the most interesting colorful figures in history, literature, and popular culture. They have to be on the inside of one place, giving information to another, . By definition, they have to be charismatic and charming, so they can be trusted with secrets. They always have to carry on a duplicitous nature that is capable of deceit and subterfuge, even more so when they are a double agent and work both sides. They also have to be resourceful, sharp, and always have to watch their backs because they could be caught and their lives could end at any time.

Kit Sergeant has written a series of novels about spies in different points in history. 355: The Women of Washington's Spy Ring was about female spies in the Revolutionary War and Underground: Traitors and Spies During Lincoln's War covers the Civil War. Her latest, L’Agent Double tells an intense brilliant story about three real-life women thrust into the WWI spy game.

The three women are: Alouette Richer, a French aviator who is recruited after her husband's death, Marthe Cnockeart, a Belgian nurse who is also a courier against the occupying Germans, and Margaretha Zelle-MacLeod known by her famous stage name, Mata Hari, a Dutch dancer who uses her noted charms to seduce secrets out of her lovers.

These women are brilliantly characterized as individuals who have different stories about their recruitments, their spy processes, and their personalities. They are all three memorable protagonist who are caught up in tense situations and use everything at their disposal from wit, to charm, to loyal connections to find their way out. The stories don't intersect much except for a few scattered incidents abs hearing about the occasional news report. This approach gives the three women chances to stand out on their own as key players on the larger stage of World War I.

Mata Hari, called M’greet throughout the book, is certainly the most famous of the trio if not the most famous female spy of all time. In Sergeant's book, she is a vain cunning woman who is well aware of her um talents and attributes and uses them to get material possessions. She spies not out of any patriotism or loyalty to the countries but for the financial gain that she receives from her handlers.

 M’greet passes information from her various lovers to the governments using the code name, H-21. Since it's pointless to use a pseudonym because of her fame, she cleverly uses it as passage into the homes of various lovers. She is invited to swank parties where she observes plans and notes, or listens to gossip and conversations

and reports to superiors. Sometimes, she passes useless information to confuse them. 

However, Seargent doesn't write M’greet as a completely hard hearted woman or a stereotypical femme fatale. She is still hurting from a messy divorce and separation from her beloved daughter. Late in the book, she has a genuine romance with a younger soldier and considers renouncing her fame, notoriety, and lavish lifestyle for love. Unfortunately, the relationship ends and she is left alone once again. 

Alouette Richer is a different person from M’greet. She was happily married, while M’greet was miserably married and divorced. 

She was also brasher and feistier than the at times showy and materialistic M’greet. She becomes a spy, partly out of revenge for her husband's death but there are hints that she wants to live a life of excitement and significance. It is implied that she settled into a comfortable wealthy marriage to escape her former life as a courtesan.

 During her marriage, she flies airplanes something, rarely done by women in her day. She loves her husband, but wants to do something for herself. After his death, she actually writes a letter to the French government for her services in any way possible.

It is almost a series of errors and missteps in Alouette’s first spying assignment in Switzerland. She uses the cover story that she is looking for her fiance and drops the name of a former acquaintance without checking to see if he had married. She makes a friend with a German tourist but then learns, oops, that she is a spy and imprisons her. Luckily, Alouette's feistiness and impetuous nature which gets her in trouble also allows her to escape from her anatgonists. (Ironically, Gerda the spy, who almost captured Alouette, becomes M’greet’s spy trainer later.)

Alouette has better luck in Spain where she becomes more patient and self-assured than in her last assignment. Unlike M’greet who hopped from lover to lover, Alouette finds one specific German official to find information from, Baron Hans Von Krohn. She uses her former training as a courtesan to become Von Krohn's lover and to pass information using codes and invisible ink.

Alouette becomes an expert at concealing her real feelings. She whispers all the right romantic phrases while fully aware that she is in the home of an enemy. She plays the Spy Game so well that it's almost refreshing when she reveals her real emotions. While spying on Von Krohn, Alouette has a playful flirtation with Zozo, a fellow aviator and spy that develops into a potential real romance. When her assignment comes to an end, she calls out Von Krohn in a great moment of self-awareness. She also calls out her former handler when she learns that he was involved in betraying both her and M’greet.

Marthe Cnockeart doesn't have the seductive nature of M’greet or the forceful determination of Alouette, but she is no less dedicated to her work. She starts out as a nurse and a sweet naive girl with a family that loves but shelters her. When the German Army occupies her Belgian village, Marthe is filled with rage and despair and wants to do something. Her aunt provides her with a key to help the Belgians.

While she is treating patients, Marthe works as a courier. She listens to information from medical supervisors and wounded soldiers about upcoming battles and air raids and passes it along in notes to fellow spies. She is also monitored and advised by a secret group called “The Safety-Pin Men” (so-called because they were diagnal pins on their lapels) who tell her of important information that could affect her spying.

Of the three stories, Marthe's is probably the most emotional. She has to reconcile her spying with her medical career and the guilt she feels sending young men that she once healed to their deaths. She also has a sweet romance with a wounded soldier that does not end well.

There are plenty of suspenseful moments in this novel. Characters who the women trust prove to be traitors. Both M’greet and Alouette receive offers to become double agents further muddying their already tangled allegiances. One of Marthe's contacts is shot right in front of her and another is in a building when a bomb hits. All three women are at the point of near death, having their covers blown, and face possible arrest or execution several times. When M’greet is finally arrested and eventually executed, the shock waves of her fate are felt by Alouette and Marthe, causing both to question their loyalties and careers. 

Mata Hari 's maxim (said to be her final words) was “Life is an illusion,” meaning life is what you tell people and what you make them believe. All three women lived their lives in that way by carrying on subterfuge and revealing important information in war. They had to play specific roles in front of their enemies so others can go about their business. It was a tense and dangerous life, but never boring. It was always exciting and so is the book about them.

Kit Sergeant is writing a book about female spies in the Second World War. If it is anything like its predecessors it should be suspenseful, filled with strong leads, and completely unforgettable.