Month: February 2022

The Siren of Sussex

Mary Berkley, Historical Romance, Mimi Matthews, NetGalley

The Siren of Sussex by Mimi Matthews

Belles of London #1

Published:  January 11, 2022 – Berkley

Review copy from the publisher and NetGalley

Description:

Evelyn Maltravers understands exactly how little she’s worth on the marriage mart. As an incurable bluestocking from a family tumbling swiftly toward ruin, she knows she’ll never make a match in a ballroom. Her only hope is to distinguish herself by making the biggest splash in the one sphere she excels: on horseback. In haute couture. But to truly capture London’s attention she’ll need a habit-maker who’s not afraid to take risks with his designs—and with his heart.

Half-Indian tailor Ahmad Malik has always had a talent for making women beautiful, inching his way toward recognition by designing riding habits for Rotten Row’s infamous Pretty Horsebreakers—but no one compares to Evelyn. Her unbridled spirit enchants him, awakening a depth of feeling he never thought possible.

But pushing boundaries comes at a cost and not everyone is pleased to welcome Evelyn and Ahmad into fashionable society. With obstacles spanning between them, the indomitable pair must decide which hurdles they can jump and what matters most: making their mark or following their hearts? (publisher)

My take:

One year after her older sister’s season ended in scandal Evelyn is in London to save her family’s reputation and insure that her younger sisters will eventually stand a chance of making suitable matches. Evelyn meets a gifted tailor, Ahmad, who sews the most amazing riding habits as well as gorgeous gowns. As they get to know each other a friendship grows to stronger feelings that will pose challenges, to be sure. This HR addresses differences in race, culture and class. I was drawn into the story by the slow burn romance that Mimi Matthews developed between the main characters. I loved revisiting characters from a previous novel by Matthews (A Modest Independence). It was lovely to see Ahmad take center stage. Recommended to fans of the HR genre. I look forward to the next book in the series due out in October 2022.

Note: I also purchased the audiobook which I recommend. The narrators did a superb job and bumped my rating up!

4.5 stars rounded up

 

Release Day Spotlight/Review: An Impossible Impostor

Mary Berkley, Deanna Raybourn, Historical Mystery, Spotlight

Content provided by the publisher

Description

While investigating a man claiming to be the long-lost heir to a noble family, Veronica Speedwell gets the surprise of her life in this new adventure from the New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award–nominated author Deanna Raybourn.

London, 1889. Veronica Speedwell and her natural historian beau Stoker are summoned by Sir Hugo Montgomerie, head of Special Branch. He has a personal request on behalf of his goddaughter, Euphemia Hathaway. After years of traveling the world, her eldest brother, Jonathan, heir to Hathaway Hall, was believed to have been killed in the catastrophic eruption of Krakatoa a few years before.

But now a man matching Jonathan’s description and carrying his possessions has arrived at Hathaway Hall with no memory of his identity or where he has been. Could this man truly be Jonathan, back from the dead? Or is he a devious impostor, determined to gain ownership over the family’s most valuable possessions—a legendary parure of priceless Rajasthani jewels? It’s a delicate situation, and Veronica is Sir Hugo’s only hope.

Veronica and Stoker agree to go to Hathaway Hall to covertly investigate the mysterious amnesiac. Veronica is soon shocked to find herself face-to-face with a ghost from her past. To help Sir Hugo discover the truth, she must open doors to her own history that she long believed to be shut for good.

My take:  Let me just say An Impossible Impostor could be my favorite of the Veronica Speedwell series. That’s notable because it’s the 7th book! I’m not going to say more about the book than what’s revealed in the synopsis except that readers will learn a huge secret at 30% in. I loved that.

I also love the relationship of Veronica and Stoker. They are unique in their own ways yet seem cut from the same cloth where intellect and sensibilities are concerned. They are admirable  individuals and a perfect couple. I can’t wait to see what they get up to next.

About the author:
New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist Deanna Raybourn is a 6th-generation native Texan. She graduated with a double major in English and history from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Married to her college sweetheart and the mother of one, Raybourn makes her home in Virginia. Her novels have been nominated for numerous awards including two RT Reviewers’ Choice awards, the Agatha, two Dilys Winns, a Last Laugh, three du Mauriers, and most recently the 2019 Edgar Award for Best Novel. She launched a new Victorian mystery series with the 2015 release of A CURIOUS BEGINNING, featuring intrepid butterfly-hunter and amateur sleuth, Veronica Speedwell. Veronica returned in 2017’s A Perilous Undertaking, and A Treacherous Curse, 2018. A Dangerous Collaboration was released in 2019, and book five, A Murderous Relation, was a March 2020 release. An Unexpected Peril, Veronica’s sixth adventure, published in March 2021. In addition to further Veronica books, Deanna is writing a contemporary novel about four female assassins on the cusp of retirement.

Photo credit: Sigmon Taylor Photography

 

Spotlight: CRISPR’d by Judy Foreman

Mary Blankenship PR, Fiction, Judy Foreman, Skyhorse Publishing, Spotlight

Congratulations to author Judy Foreman. Her debut novel will publish tomorrow, Feb. 15, 2022. 

In her debut novel, CRISPR’d: A Medial Thriller (February 15, 2022; Skyhorse Publishing hardcover; ISBN 978-1-51076-993-9; $26.99; 264 pages), Judy Foreman uses her decades of writing medical columns and science stories for The Boston Globe to take readers on a wild, all-too-plausible-ride into the future.

Dr. Saul Kramer is on the cutting edge of genetic disease research. Revered among clients at his IVF clinic, he harbors a dark secret. In addition to helping infertile couples conceive healthy babies, Dr. Kramer is obsessed, for his own dark reasons, with an alternate mission as well. In certain patients, he uses the gene editing technology CRISPR to tamper with embryos, not to improve the health of the embryos, but to replace a healthy gene with a deadly mutation.

Star reporter Samantha Fuller at one of Boston’s biggest papers begins to suspect what he has done when three infants conceived at his clinic die mysteriously, all at about one year old. She and her molecular biologist husband work secretly in his MIT lab to look for genetic defects in the deceased children. Together, they make a chilling discovery. Thanks to Sammie’s blockbuster stories, which go viral, Dr. Kramer is charged with murder and winds up in court.

In the subsequent dramatic court scenes, his feisty defense lawyer stuns the world with her defense. Set in this uneasy time of genetic engineering with CRISPR technology, Foreman, spins a compelling tale of love, revenge, and murder.

Foreman author photo CREDIT Andy Dolph

Photo credit: Andy Dolph

JUDY FOREMAN is a former Boston Globe health columnist and the author of three works of nonfiction (A Nation in Pain, The Global Pain Crisis, and Exercise Is Medicine). She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College. She spent three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Brazil and has a Masters from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She was a Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Fellow in Medical Ethics, also at Harvard Medical School, and a Knight Science Fellow at MIT. She was a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. She has won more than 50 journalism awards including a George Foster Peabody Award and a Science in Society award from the National Association of Science Writers. She swims competitively with U.S. Masters and sings with Boston’s Back Bay Chorale. CRISPR’d is her first novel.

Advance praise:

“Judy Foreman’s debut novel, CRISPR’d, is a must-read. A former science writer and health columnist for The Boston Globe, Foreman has written a page-turner—a medical thriller cum cautionary tale—that will not just have you on the edge of your seat but will enlighten you about the power, and potential dangers, of the new gene-editing technology, CRISPR. Foreman has a unique, concise style, like a scalpel. Her novel builds to an exciting, and unexpected, finale that will leave you breathless, and thoughtful.”
— International bestselling author, Robin Cook

“Perhaps you haven’t been ‘CRISPR’d’ yet, but regardless, you should read Judy Foreman’s novel (which is also ‘novel’ as in ‘cutting-edge’ and thought-provoking). Her mastery of non-fiction in previous books shines through and combines with a well-paced cautionary tale. It joins other exciting narratives like ‘Jurassic Park’ 1990 and ‘Regenesis’ 2012 in having a full page of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts. An intriguing and very welcome view point.”
—George M. Church, Professor at Harvard Medical School and MIT, and
author of Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves

“CRISPR [technology] holds the key to discovering the horrors unleashed by a vengeful IVF physician. A satisfying and well-paced genetics detective story.”
—George Annas, Professor of Health Law, Boston University, and author of Worst Case Bioethics.

“Want to take an incredibly exciting journey to the cutting edge of genetic engineering, the law and crime? This is the book for you. In the expert hands of Judy Foreman, a cast of credible characters in an engaging tale shows how today’s emerging techniques for altering humans might become the stuff of courtroom drama and ethical contention in the very near future.”
—Arthur Caplan, Mitty Professor of Bioethics, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

“Fans of Jodi Picoult will love this first novel from former Boston Globe science and medicine reporter Judy Foreman. With the care that she brought to her news reporting and scientific books and with an incredible ability to make science understandable for all of us, Foreman weaves a powerful story around new genetic technologies and ancient social and ethical issues: When is killing murder and when is it not? Is vengeance ever justified? I could hardly put down this book and resented every interruption in my reading! For anyone who cares about bioethics, this is a ‘must-read’: deftly crafted, balancing humor and pathos, and combining courtroom drama with the needed twists and turns of a mystery story. May this be the first of many novels from this skilled author.”
—Karen Lebacqz, former member of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research and Bioethicist in Residence at Yale University, chair of the Advisory Council of the Center for Christian Bioethics at Loma Linda University, co-author of Sacred Cells: Why Christians Should Support Stem Cell Research, and co-editor of
The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate