Today Under My Apple Tree is featured on Scene of the Blog, a weekly event at Kittling: Books that spotlights the creative spaces of book bloggers around the world.
Stop by for a tour and some photos of my workspace, bookshelves, my favorite outdoor reading spot and even a picture of the apple tree that inspired the name of my blog.
The Hat
by Babette Hughes
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Sunstone Press
Publish Date: March 31st 2011
Format: Hardcover, 198 pages
Rating: 4 of 5
It is June, 1932. Someone wants Ben Gold, head of a bootlegging organization, dead. The killer strikes quickly and disappears without a trace.
Flashback two years. Smart, pretty Kate Brady is thrilled to find out she has received a scholarship to Ohio State where she hopes to study to be a writer. Now all she has to do is find enough money for room, board and books and she will be on her way to realizing her goals. Her family does not have the money to pay for her education; she must earn it herself. Her father left when she was young and her mother wages a constant battle with alcoholism.
Sadly, Kate’s dreams are smashed when she is fired from her job at Shapiro’s Bakery. It is the beginning of the Great Depression and business is slow. While she worked at the bakery she met one of the customers, the handsome Ben Gold, a man with money and charm who was very attracted to her. After a whirlwind courtship she agrees to marry him even though she barely knows him. A friend warns her about Ben but she won’t listen. With no hope of a job or future and a miserable home life, Ben is the answer to all her problems.
Soon Kate realizes that life with Ben is not what she expected. His business dealings, which she soon finds out are illegal activities and bootlegging, take priority. She begins spending time with Bobby, Ben’s bookkeeper, and as she gets to know him she realizes he is the type of man she really wanted and marrying Ben was a big mistake.
I like the use of the flashback technique. Knowing that Ben will die sets us up with a mystery. As the story progresses the suspense builds while we wonder who is responsible for the murder. The author shifts suspicion among several possibilities as Ben becomes an even more unlikable character. As I flew through the pages towards the ending I was pretty sure I knew who the murder was but this just kept me turning the pages faster to find out if I was right.
And what about the hat referred to in the title? The hat plays a key role in a story with a very satisfying ending that left me wanting more. At just under 200 pages this well-written, fast-paced novel was just the right length even though when I reached the end I wasn’t ready to put the book down.
Recommended, especially for those that enjoy books set during The Great Depression and the prohibition era.
About The Author
From the author’s webpage:
The Hat has its roots in personal history. What lends this novel its authenticity is that its author, Babette Hughes, is the daughter of a bootlegger who was murdered by the Mafia when she was an infant. Hughes (née Rosen) spent years piecing together her father’s bootlegging career and murder, despite her mother’s attempt to hide the truth. The Hat draws directly on the drama of Hughes’ search for the truth, as told in her acclaimed memoir, Lost And Found.
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Source: Review copy provided by the publicist.
Mailbox Monday was created by The Printed Page. It is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their home last week.
Mailbox Monday is currently on tour, hosted by a different blog each month. This month’s host is Mari @ Mari Reads.
Last week I received three books for review and one win.
From Penguin Group for review:
Very Bad Men
by Harry Dolan
Anthony Lark has a list of names-Terry Dawtrey, Sutton Bell, Henry Kormoran. To his eyes, the names glow red on the page. They move. They breathe. The people on the list have little in common except that seventeen years ago they were involved in a notorious robbery. And now Anthony Lark is hunting them down, and he won’t stop until every one of them is dead.
From Nan A. Talese/Doubleday for review:
The Upright Piano Player
by David Abbott
Henry Cage seems to have it all: a successful career, money, a beautiful home, and a reputation for being a just and principled man. But public virtues can conceal private failings, and as Henry faces retirement, his well-ordered life begins to unravel. His ex-wife is ill, his relationship with his son is strained to the point of estrangement, and on the eve of the new millennium he is the victim of a random violent act which soon escalates into a prolonged harassment.
A win from Random House:
The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted
by Elizabeth Berg
Every now and then, right in the middle of an ordinary day, a woman kicks up her heels and commits a small act of liberation. What would you do if you could shed the “shoulds” and do, say—and eat—whatever you really desired? Go AWOL from Weight Watchers and spend an entire day eating every single thing you want? Start a dating service for people over fifty to reclaim the razzle-dazzle in your life—or your marriage? Seek comfort in the face of aging, look for love in the midst of loss, find friendship in the most surprising of places?
From HarperAudio for review:
Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?
by Steven Tyler
Tyler tells what it’s like to be a living legend and the frontman of one of the world’s most revered and infamous bands—the debauchery, the money, the notoriety, the fights, the motels and hotels, the elevators, limos, buses and jets, the rehab. He reveals the spiritual side that “gets lost behind the stereotype of the Sex Guy, the Drug Guy, the Demon of Screamin’, the Terror of the Tropicana.”
Shanghai Girls
by Lisa See
Read by: Janet Song
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Random House Audio
Publish Date: May 2009
Format: Audio CD | 13 Hours and 30 min
Rating: 4½ of 5
Pearl and May Chin were born into a family of wealth and prosperity in 1930’s Shanghai. They are beautiful girls and live a carefree, glamorous life. They love to shop, consider themselves modern, spend lavishly on beautiful silk dresses and often spend their days modeling for local artists.
One day their world comes crashing down on them. Their father has gambled away his rickshaw business and is heavily in debt. To save himself he sells his daughters to an American who wants brides for his sons. The sisters are devastated and have no intention of complying. Before they can make other plans, war with Japan breaks out and amid the atrocities and brutality of the invading soldiers, their only escape is to make their way to America and the safety of their new husbands.
Lisa See captured the essence of what it was like to be a stranger, a foreigner, in a new country. I felt the pain along with the sisters of having their world turned upside down, to go from a privileged life to that of an outsider, the need to learn new customs, new language and to tolerate the discrimination against the Chinese that was so prevalent in America. Ultimately this is a story about sisters and their relationships. Pearl and May are so very different and yet at the same time complimentary. I doubt either could be happy without the other.
I enjoy historical novels especially when they are so beautifully written. The wonderful descriptive prose made the story come alive. I listened to the audio version and Janet Song’s narration was a pleasure to listen to. I was captivated by the sisters story and eagerly listened for hours at a time stopping only to change the batteries on my mini mp3 player.
I missed reading this book when it came out a few years ago. I read it now because I want to read the just published Dreams of Joy, Lisa See’s newest novel and the sequel to Shanghai Girls. Highly recommended.
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Source: Audio borrowed from the library.
The American Robin doesn’t seem to mind humans and will happily build their nests in our yards and near our homes. A few years ago a pair built this nest in a shrub right outside my front window near the door. They were very sneaky because I didn’t see them until they had completed the nest and produced four bright blue eggs.
This photo was taken shortly after hatching. I came home from work one day and the eggs were gone and in their place were these wiggly little naked birds. When I would open the door they would think food was coming and stick their heads up with mouths open.
They grew quickly. The photo below was day eight. They already look look like little birds. Robins typically spend 12 to 14 days in the nest before fledging.
Interesting Facts:
- The female chooses the nesting site and then builds the nest from the inside out forming a cup of grass, twigs, moss and roots and then reinforcing it with soft mud.
- An American Robin can produce three successful broods in one year.
- On average, only 40 percent of nests successfully produce young and only 25 percent of those fledged young survive to November.
- About half of the robins alive in any year will make it to the next.
- A lucky robin can live to be 14 years old.
I link up my bird photos on Saturday Snapshot hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books. Visit her blog to see more great photos or add your own.
Today is the day of the Book Blogger Convention, so in conjunction with that event Armchair BEA will also put the focus on the “blog” portion of “book blog.”
I was going to write about design in WordPress but once I started writing I realized a few things….
First of all, there are a lot of good tutorials already available and I’m not one to reinvent the wheel. The point of my post is that you are not stuck using only the design features your template dictates. There is no perfect template. But with a few modification it can be twisted into shape. WordPress does not allow us to modify the CSS code of our theme unless we pay an annual fee but we can still make changes using HTML. I am more familiar with WordPress, but most of this also applies to Blogger.
You don’t need to be a programmer to do this. I am not an expert by any means. But you may have to leave the visual editor and move to the html tab. It’s a good learning experience and by playing around with it I have taught myself basic html. Really, it’s not that difficult. And the visual editor doesn’t always cooperate so it’s good to know a little about the html tab.
For example:
Would you like to remove that border from a picture you just posted? Or dislike the default border? In some themes it’s as easy as adding “border=0” to the string of html code. But my theme ignores the border code. I have to use a style code: style=”background: 0 0; border: 0;” Want to add a color border or change the color or width of your default border? Again that’s done with the style code: style=”background:0;border:solid 4px #9C7B10;” This one can be done in the visual editor but I did it in the html tab.
The first image is the default, the second has the border removed and on the third I replaced it with a complimentary color border. You can also make a dotted, dashed, doubled, grooved, ridged, inset or outset border. Not all themes react the same way. Sometimes takes a little experimenting.
If you want to learn more about HTML, w3schools has some great, free tutorials. One of my favorite places for picking up tips for WordPress is a blog called wordpress tips. They have excellent, easy to follow tutorials. They also explain how to embed flash and video, some of which WordPress does not allow unless you change it to gigya code.
Do you modify your template? Of just leave well-enough alone? Or have you found that perfect, well-behaved template that does everything right?
The Russian Affair
by Michael Wallner
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publisher: Doubleday
Publish Date: April 12, 2011
Format: Hardcover | 400 pages
Thanks to Liz at Doubleday Books I have two copies of The Russian Affair to give away to my readers.
I have just received my book and haven’t had a chance to read and review it yet. It looks to be a thought provoking story on the choices people make and the consequences of their actions set in Moscow during the Cold War era.
Description from the publisher:
Twenty-nine-year-old Anna Viktorovna lives in Moscow with her young son and her father, a once popular and respected poet who has fallen into disgrace because of his dissident views. Her husband, a junior officer in the Red Army, is on active duty and living seven time zones away. Anna struggles gamely through her difficult existence, doing the best she can amidst the long lines, bureaucratic inferno, and corruption and incompetence of the police state. When she meets and makes an impression on a powerful Soviet official—Alexey Bulgyakov—her life begins to look a little brighter. Alexey is married and nearly twice her age, but he turns out to be a man of infinite patience and forbearance, and gradually a strange but solid bond grows between them. Though Anna still loves her mostly absent husband and harbors no illusions about the future, she and Alexey become lovers.
Soon Anna and Alexey’s burgeoning romance is irrevocably threatened when a KGB colonel forces Anna to spy on Alexey, who is suspected of disloyalty to the state. Though Anna loathes the notion of double-crossing the man she has come to love, when her family is threatened she must comply. But Anna isn’t the only character playing a double game.
About The Author
Michael Wallner is an actor and screenwriter. He divides his time between Berlin and the Black Forest.
Giveaway Information
[Contest Now Closed. Winners are Melanie and Betty]
Contest is open to US addresses only, no PO Boxes. The book will be shipped by the publisher.
To enter fill out the Entry Form. Comments are always welcome but you need to fill out the form to enter the drawing.- For a bonus entry, be a follower. Email, RSS, Facebook, Twitter.
The deadline for entry is June 5th, midnight, central time. I will draw 2 winners using random.org. Winners will be contacted by email and have 48 hours to respond with a mailing address.
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Under My Apple Tree 