The Reading Radar

Spotted on GR Giveaways. A Light in the Wilderness by Jane Kirkpatrick.

Letitia holds nothing more dear than the papers that prove she is no longer a slave. They may not cause white folks to treat her like a human being, but at least they show she is free. She trusts in those words she cannot read–as she is beginning to trust in Davey Carson, an Irish immigrant cattleman who wants her to come west with him.

Nancy Hawkins is loathe to leave her settled life for the treacherous journey by wagon train, but she is so deeply in love with her husband that she knows she will follow him anywhere–even when the trek exacts a terrible cost.

Betsy is a Kalapuya Indian, the last remnant of a once proud tribe in the Willamette Valley in Oregon territory. She spends her time trying to impart the wisdom and ways of her people to her grandson. But she will soon have another person to care for.

As season turns to season, suspicion turns to friendship, and fear turns to courage, three spirited women will discover what it means to be truly free in a land that makes promises it cannot fulfill.

Based on a true story.

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Spotted on Edelweiss and a must read for me... Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman.

From "a top-notch emerging writer with a crisp and often poetic voice and wily, intelligent humor" (The Boston Globe): a collection of stories that explores the lives of talented, gutsy women throughout history.

The fascinating lives of the characters in Almost Famous Women have mostly been forgotten, but their stories are burning to be told. Now Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise, resurrects these women, lets them live in the reader's imagination, so we can explore their difficult choices. Nearly every story in this dazzling collection is based on a woman who attained some celebrity—she raced speed boats or was a conjoined twin in show business; a reclusive painter of renown; a member of the first all-female, integrated swing band. We see Lord Byron's illegitimate daughter, Allegra; Oscar Wilde's troubled niece, Dolly; West With the Night author Beryl Markham; Edna St. Vincent Millay's sister, Norma. These extraordinary stories travel the world, explore the past (and delve into the future), and portray fiercely independent women defined by their acts of bravery, creative impulses, and sometimes reckless decisions.

The world hasn't always been kind to unusual women, but through Megan Mayhew Bergman's alluring depictions they finally receive the attention they deserve. Almost Famous Women is a gorgeous collection from an "accomplished writer of short fiction"

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Spotted on my favorite blog, Reading the Past, Sisters of Shiloh has come to my attention. It's penned about two sisters BY two sisters. (Also check out her post to see a list of other books that has a similar theme.)

A best-selling novelist enlists her own sister to bring us the story of two Southern sisters, disguised as men, who join the Confederate Army—one seeking vengeance on the battlefield, the other finding love.

In a war that pitted brother against brother, two sisters choose their own battle.

Joseph and Thomas are fresh recruits for the Confederate Army, daring to join the wild fray that has become the seemingly endless Civil War, sharing everything with their fellow soldiers—except the secret that would mean their undoing: they are sisters.

Before the war, Joseph and Thomas were Josephine and Libby. But that bloodiest battle, Antietam, leaves Libby to find her husband, Arden, dead. She vows vengeance, dons Arden’s clothes, and sneaks off to enlist with the Stonewall Brigade, swearing to kill one Yankee for every year of his too-short life. Desperate to protect her grief-crazed sister, Josephine insists on joining her. Surrounded by flying bullets, deprivation, and illness, the sisters are found by other dangers: Libby is hurtling toward madness, haunted and urged on by her husband’s ghost; Josephine is falling in love with a fellow soldier. She lives in fear both of revealing their disguise and of losing her first love before she can make her heart known to him.

In her trademark “vibrant” (Washington Post Book World) and “luscious” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) prose, Kathy Hepinstall joins with her sister Becky to show us the hopes of love and war, the impossible-to-sever bonds of sisterhood, and how what matters most can both hurt us and heal us.

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How this released in 2009 and I never heard of it 'til now, I'll never know, but after seeing book four is coming out on Amazon soon, I went looking for book one and this hit the wishlist. Alaska Virgin Air by Izzy Ballard.

Fairbanks, Alaska? Adventure. 40 below zero. Bears, moose . . . husband-school dropout of an ex. Yikes! Abigail Vertuccio has three goals in life. One. Don't let people find out about her infuriating habit of seeing the future. Two. Stop seeing the future. Three. Get as far away from Fairbanks, Alaska as she can. She thought she'd succeeded when she hopped in her ancient motor home, Big Ellie, and hit the road. Only now she's back - Grandma's orders - to help run the family rural air service, Alaska Virgin Air. Home only a week, Abbey stumbled onto a plot to destroy the family business. Never one to leave matters to the experts, she and two of her zanier friends orchestrate a counter-attack of stakeouts and spying that has even the Alaska State Troopers rolling in the aisles. Despite all her efforts, she's batting zero on the spy front. Someone's trying to kill her. As if that isn't bad enough, things with her ex are alternately heating up and scaring the hell out of her. At this point, she has only one question. What are the chances she'll end up in someone's bed, married again, or just plain dead? Okay. Two questions. What the hell good is being clairvoyant if it never seems to work when she really, really wants it to?

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To Find a Mountain by Dani Amore was spotted on NG.

Benedetta Carlessimo is no stranger to hardship. Ever since her mother died, the sixteen-year-old Italian girl has cared for her rambunctious younger siblings without complaint. Then World War II arrives on her doorstep, leaving her face-to-face with the most terrible evil she has ever witnessed.

With the Germans and Americans fighting furiously to control a strategic swath of Italy, Nazi forces seize Benedetta's village, turning her home into a command center?and forcing her beloved father to choose between fleeing or fighting on the front lines.

In the midst of great deprivation, Benedetta struggles to feed both her family and the Nazis, all the while keeping her father's whereabouts secret. Yet her blossoming love for a handsome young Italian man hiding in the mountains brings a sliver of joy to her life. But with the Americans advancing and the Germans growing increasingly desperate and cruel, Benedetta knows that one misstep could bring horrible repercussions?and only an extraordinary act of courage can save her family.