Kindle First

[Wearever]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

I chose "The Man Who Could Be King", though "The Man of Legends" sorely tempted me. but in the end I decided I was in the mood for some historical fiction. The choices were a nice change from the monochromatic options of the last few months.

The Man Who Could Be King, was a close second choice for me, I hope to pick it up on either, Prime Reading or Lending Library. I agree it was a nice change in the selections this month. More than one I wanted to read.

[Dngrsone]

Looks like I'm going to skip again...

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Wearever

Me too I love the stories written in the WW2 & WW1 time period.My favorite historical fiction \ non fiction genre. Hope you enjoy the audio book. I've read the reviews now, and decided to go with Stillhouse Lake. The good thing about these books is they are usually offered later on Prime Reading or the Lending Library, and of course Kindle Unlimited. So I'll be able to read the others that interested me as well.

Have you read The Fire by Night, by Teresa Messineo? It's a wonderful book about two nurses in WWII.

[darryl]

I went for Stillhouse Lake.

[GA Russell]

I went with Soho Dead.

[Wearever]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Have you read The Fire by Night, by Teresa Messineo? It's a wonderful book about two nurses in WWII.

I haven't read Fire by Night yet, but it looks good. Thank's for the recommendation, I'll add it to my reading list.

[ATDrake]

Just a reminder that this will probably be the last day to pick up one of this month's selections, if you haven't already.

[Manabi]

This month's Kindle First selections are out, they are:

The Sky Below: A True Story of Summits, Space, and Speed [Kindle in Motion] by Scott Parazynski (Author), Susy Flory (Author) [Genre: Memoir]

“Scott Parazynski’s drive, curiosity, inventiveness, and great humor shine through the pages of The Sky Below and will certainly inspire future generations to pursue their dreams with every fiber in their being.” —John Glenn, NASA astronaut

An epic memoir from a man whose life is defined by exploration and innovation, The Sky Below re-creates some of the most unforgettable adventures of our time. From dramatic, high-risk spacewalks to author Scott Parazynski’s death-defying quest to summit Mount Everest—his body ravaged by a career in space—readers will experience the life of an elite athlete, physician, and explorer.

This intimate, compelling account offers a rare portrait of space exploration from the inside. A global nomad raised in the shadow of NASA’s Apollo missions, Parazynski never lost sight of his childhood dream to one day don a spacesuit and float outside the airlock. With deep passion, unbridled creativity, resilience, humility, and self-deprecation, Parazynski chases his dream of the ultimate adventure experience, again and again and again. In an era that transitioned from moon shots to the Space Shuttle, space station, and Mars research, Parazynski flies with John Glenn, tests jet packs, trains in Russia to become a cosmonaut, and flies five missions to outer space (including seven spacewalks) in his seventeen-year NASA career.

An unparalleled, visceral opportunity to understand what it’s like to train for—and deploy to—a home in zero gravity, The Sky Below also portrays an astronaut’s engagement with the challenges of his life on Earth, including raising a beautiful autistic daughter and finding true love.

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

Here is a memoir that blows your hair back—the true story of Scott Parazynski’s boundless life, a thrill-seeking Denver General ER resident turned NASA recruit who would one day make emergency repairs to the International Space Station (which he helped build over the course of several missions to space, and where Parazynski also served as John Glenn’s personal space physician).

The Sky Below is the first book I’ve had the pleasure of seeing developed with Kindle in Motion functionality, and it is spectacular: full-bleed images, maps, animated graphics, videos of space exploration shot from an astronaut’s point of view. The result is a transportive adventure narrative that does more than describe the life of a modern spaceman and intercontinental explorer—it puts you right in the middle of the action. In the present tense, we experience the development of a national hero as he takes us into the training simulators at NASA, the cockpits of fighter jets, the top of Everest, the inside of an Andean volcano. You get the idea. Stop reading this, and start reading The Sky Below. Feel what it’s like to challenge the bounds of a planet.

- Barry Harbaugh, Editor

Little Boy Lost by J. D. Trafford [Genre: Thriller]

In a city divided and broken, this revelation will set it on fire…

Attorney Justin Glass’s practice, housed in a shabby office on the north side of Saint Louis, isn’t doing so well that he can afford to work for free. But when eight-year-old Tanisha Walker offers him a jar full of change to find her missing brother, he doesn’t have the heart to turn her away.

Justin had hoped to find the boy alive and well. But all that was found of Devon Walker was his brutally murdered body—and the bodies of twelve other African American teenagers, all discarded like trash in a mass grave. Each had been reported missing. And none had been investigated.

As simmering racial tensions explode into violence, Justin finds himself caught in the tide. And as he gives voice to the discontent plaguing the city’s forgotten and ignored, he vows to search for the killer who preys upon them.

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

When I was eight years old, I gathered and saved coins around the house to buy my very own camera. But eight-year-old Tanisha Walker’s life is starkly different from mine. There’s no extra money to be scavenged. Instead, Tanisha uses every last quarter in Grandma’s swear jar to hire lawyer Justin Glass in hopes of finding her missing brother, Devon.

As Justin investigates the disappearance, he soon discovers that Devon Walker isn’t the only boy who has gone missing from their St. Louis community. There are others. Many others.

In Little Boy Lost, author J.D. Trafford sheds light on the two worlds that make up St. Louis, Missouri. There’s the world where Justin grew up: money, affluence, and options. And then there’s the world where Devon and others like him live: one where no one bothers to investigate the disappearance of underprivileged boys.

The events sound shocking and unbelievable, but Trafford based his novel on newspaper stories in his community and across the country. As such, the characters in this book jump off the page and give voice to real-life issues through a compelling mystery you won’t want to stop reading.

- Jessica Tribble, Editor

Secondborn (Secondborn Series Book 1) by Amy A. Bartol [Genre: Science Fiction]

Firstborns rule society. Secondborns are the property of the government. Thirdborns are not tolerated. Long live the Fates Republic.

On Transition Day, the second child in every family is taken by the government and forced into servitude. Roselle St. Sismode’s eighteenth birthday arrives with harsh realizations: she’s to become a soldier for the Fate of Swords military arm of the Republic during the bloodiest rebellion in history, and her elite firstborn mother is happy to see her go.

Televised since her early childhood, Roselle’s privileged upbringing has earned her the resentment of her secondborn peers. Now her decision to spare an enemy on the battlefield marks her as a traitor to the state.

But Roselle finds an ally—and more—in fellow secondborn conscript Hawthorne Trugrave. As the consequences of her actions ripple throughout the Fates Republic, can Roselle create a destiny of her own? Or will her Fate override everything she fights for—even love?

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

“It’s agony and relief to watch my life end.” So begins Amy A. Bartol’s inventive and captivating new dystopian novel. From that opening sentence to the final page, Secondborn’s intriguing contradictions move in a gorgeous dance—a vivid, transfixing romp through a lushly imagined speculative world.

Of course, it’s not all pretty. Our heroine and narrator, Roselle St. Sismode, has long known that her eighteenth birthday will mark the end of her opulent upbringing in the Palace of the Sword, most of it televised for as long as she can remember. Born into the Fates Republic, a society in which only the firstborn enjoy the rights and freedoms of full citizenship, secondborn Roselle is destined for a short and brutal life in the military. But Amy equips her characters with an array of lavishly distinctive clothing, futuristic vehicles, extraordinary weapons, and whimsical vocabulary that are as fun as the culture of the novel is horrifying—thirdborns are flat-out forbidden, for example—and the result is a mesmerizing juxtaposition of beauty and terror.

Punctuated by pulse-pounding action scenes, the book balances the cold elegance of the Republic’s inflexible structure with the roiling passion between Roselle and her forbidden lover, Hawthorne Trugrave. With romance, action, and cinematic science fiction in equal measure, Secondborn offers a one-of-a-kind, genre-straddling escape into a dystopian world that’s as surprisingly sumptuous as it is alarming. And with a heroine like Roselle at the helm, you won’t soon forget it.

- Jason Kirk, Editor

A Beautiful Poison by Lydia Kang [Genre: Historical Mystery]

Just beyond the Gilded Age, in the mist-covered streets of New York, the deadly Spanish influenza ripples through the city. But with so many victims in her close circle, young socialite Allene questions if the flu is really to blame. All appear to have been poisoned—and every death was accompanied by a mysterious note.

Desperate for answers and dreading her own engagement to a wealthy gentleman, Allene returns to her passion for scientific discovery and recruits her long-lost friends, Jasper and Birdie, for help. The investigation brings her closer to Jasper, an apprentice medical examiner at Bellevue Hospital who still holds her heart, and offers the delicate Birdie a last-ditch chance to find a safe haven before her fragile health fails.

As more of their friends and family die, alliances shift, lives become entangled, and the three begin to suspect everyone—even each other. As they race to find the culprit, Allene, Birdie, and Jasper must once again trust each other, before one of them becomes the next victim.

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

Writing a historical novel is no easy feat—especially one with a mystery at its heart. But Lydia Kang makes it seem effortless. I could taste the champagne flowing at New York society parties, see the glow of radium from the factories, and feel the dank chill of the morgues along the river.

Just where does a writer come up with this stuff? Kang didn’t have to look far to find inspiration. It turns out she spent her days as a medical student, resident, and attending physician at New York’s Bellevue Hospital, one of the oldest hospitals in the United States and home to the city’s first office of the chief medical examiner. There she became rather obsessed with poisons and pandemics and wars, and it wasn’t long before she hatched the characters of Allene, Birdie, and Jasper in the tumultuous year of 1918, walking the hallowed halls of Bellevue and gritty streets of New York City, investigating murders in their own lives, while New York stood on the knife’s edge between World War I and the Roaring Twenties.

Add a murder plot complicated by the Spanish flu, which is killing both innocents and suspects alike, and we have a story line unlike anything I’ve ever come across. I was so immersed in the setting and so taken with the characters that I didn’t see the end coming. And wow, what an ending! I won’t give anything away, but I will say that it’s absolutely brilliant and absolutely unforgettable.

- Jodi Warshaw, Editor

Mrs. Saint and the Defectives by Julie Lawson Timmer [Genre: Contemporary Fiction]

Critically acclaimed author Julie Lawson Timmer returns with a tale of how community can heal the brokenness in all of us.

Markie, a fortysomething divorcée who has suffered a humiliating and very public fall from marital, financial, and professional grace, moves, along with her teenage son, Jesse, to a new town, hoping to lick her wounds in private. But Markie and Jesse are unable to escape the attention of their new neighbor Mrs. Saint, an irascible, elderly New European woman who takes it upon herself, along with her ragtag group of “defectives,” to identify and fix the flaws in those around her, whether they want her to or not.

What Markie doesn’t realize is that Mrs. Saint has big plans for the divorcée’s broken spirit. Soon, the quirky yet endearing woman recruits Markie to join her eccentric community, a world where both hidden truths and hope unite them. But when Mrs. Saint’s own secrets threaten to unravel their fragile web of healing, it’s up to Markie to mend these wounds and usher in a new era for the “defectives”—one full of second chances and happiness.

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

It’s funny how some of the best times of our lives are born out of adversity. That is the central premise of Julie Lawson Timmer’s vibrant, soulful, and profoundly human story that explores the power of new beginnings.

At a crossroads, Markie’s life is turned upside down by an all-around unreliable ex-husband. Forced to confront her situation, she and her petulant teenage son, Jesse, rent a modest home in a new neighborhood where she intends to lick her wounds and embrace isolation. Add a meddling next-door neighbor, Mrs. Saint, and a cast of misfit “defectives” that hang around said neighbor’s house, and you have a recipe for life-changing transformations—forgiveness, connection, hope—that neither Markie nor her son could have ever predicted.

I’ll admit that I both laughed out loud and cried in embarrassing situations while reading this novel—while serving jury duty, on the bus, in a laundromat. Mrs. Saint’s initially unwelcome and unconventional wisdom, the secrets that are revealed on both sides, and Markie’s journey to become whole again captivated and touched me as the story unfolded. I felt I really knew these characters as I turned each page, and I felt the lessons learned as deeply as Markie and her son by the end. I hope you will, too.

- Danielle Marshall, Editor

Kings of Broken Things by Theodore Wheeler [Genre: Literary Fiction]

With characters depicted in precise detail and wide panorama—a kept-woman’s parlor, a contentious interracial baseball game on the Fourth of July, and the tragic true events of the Omaha Race Riot of 1919—Kings of Broken Things reveals the folly of human nature in an era of astonishing ambition.

During the waning days of World War I, three lost souls find themselves adrift in Omaha, Nebraska, at a time of unprecedented nationalism, xenophobia, and political corruption. Adolescent European refugee Karel Miihlstein’s life is transformed after neighborhood boys discover his prodigious natural talent for baseball. Jake Strauss, a young man with a violent past and desperate for a second chance, is drawn into a criminal underworld. Evie Chambers, a kept woman, is trying to make ends meet and looking every which way to escape her cheerless existence.

As wounded soldiers return from the front and black migrant workers move north in search of economic opportunity, the immigrant wards of Omaha become a tinderbox of racial resentment stoked by unscrupulous politicians. Punctuated by an unspeakable act of mob violence, the fates of Karel, Jake, and Evie will become inexorably entangled with the schemes of a ruthless political boss whose will to power knows no bounds.

Written in the tradition of Don DeLillo and Colum McCann, with a great debt to Ralph Ellison, Theodore Wheeler’s debut novel Kings of Broken Things is a panoramic view of a city on the brink of implosion during the course of this summer of strife.

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

What does it mean to be an American? To have ownership of your own body? To have society dictate right and wrong when it’s actually more complicated? What I love about Kings of Broken Things, the unflinching debut historical literary novel by Theodore Wheeler, are the questions it dares to ask.

It is 1917 and Omaha is home to a diverse array of refugees and immigrants from war-torn European countries. Jake, Karel, and Evie are coming of age in a time of increasing nationalism, xenophobia, and political corruption. And with wounded soldiers returning from war but finding their jobs have been filled by black migrants from the south, Omaha now looks to be a tinderbox of racial resentment, gleefully stoked by the corrupt, moneyed politicians running the town.

Wheeler masterfully creates multiple layers and hidden depths in these characters and the worlds they inhabit in restrained, yet powerful language. Intertwining scenes of the annual Interrace baseball game, a town navigating a false accusation that leads to the real-life lynch mob that burns down parts of Omaha in what is now called the Red Summer of 1919, and the characters’ acts of love and survival in all their complicated forms, Kings of Broken Things is heavy, yes, but will stay with you for a very long time. To quote PEN/Faulkner finalist Julie Iromuanya, “This book’s relevance, in the context of today’s concerns, cannot be overstated.”

- Vivian Lee, Editor

[GlenBarrington]

I selected "Kings of Broken Things". As much as I like science fiction, "Secondborn" just didn't seem a plot I could get into.

[Catlady]

I'm undecided between Little Boy Lost and A Beautiful Poison, probably will go with the latter.

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

I selected "Kings of Broken Things". As much as I like science fiction, "Secondborn" just didn't seem a plot I could get into.

I agree, I like science fiction but all these dystopian novels of late are getting old. How about some worlds where reality overall is positive? It reminds me of Gentry Lee's extension of Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama. He took a wonderfully positive future where humanity had outposts on most of the planets (even Mercury!) and destroyed it all, including the Vatican being nuked by extremists. And it got worse from there over the course of three books.

So I passed on Secondborn as well, and went with The Sky Below.

[Alohamora]

The Sky Below or A Beautiful Poison? Both sound good.

[Wearever]

I'm leaning towards " King of Broken Things " it seems similar to me of a book I just read " City of Scoundrels by Gary Krist " only that was set in Chicago 1919. A series of disasters and civil unrest.

[ATDrake]

Just a reminder that this will probably be the last day to pick up one of the monthly selections, if you haven't already.

[GlenBarrington]

Man! All of August's selections sound GREAT! This is killing me!