Castles in the Air by Alison Ripley Cubitt

Description

An eight-year-old child witnesses her mother's secret and knows that from that moment life will never be the same.

After Molly, her mother dies, Alison uses her legacy to make a film about Molly's relationship with a man she had known since she was a teenager. What hold did this man have over her mother? And what other secrets was her mother hiding?

Castles in the Air follows the life of Molly Ripley through the eyes of her daughter Alison. From Molly’s childhood in colonial Hong Kong and Malaya; wartime adventures as a rookie office girl in the far east outpost of Bletchley Park then as a young nurse in the city; tangled romance and marriage… to her challenging middle-age when demons from the past seem set to overwhelm her.

The writer in Alison can't stop until she reveals the story of Molly's past. But as a daughter, does she have the courage to face up to the uncomfortable truths of Molly's seemingly ordinary life?

As she unravels the private self that Molly kept secret, Alison realizes that she is trying to find herself through her mother's story. By trying to make sense of the past, can she move on with her future?

Honest yet unsentimental and told with abundant love and compassion, this is a profoundly moving portrait of a woman’s life, hopes and dreams. We learn not only about Molly, but about mothers and daughters, secrets and love. A story for readers struggling to come to terms with the trauma of losing loved ones. 

 

 The description intrigued me. I love both fiction and non fiction from this time period so I read through this memoir in a single night.  After a young girl witnesses what was meant to be a private moment she begins to question how much she really knows about her mother Molly.
The story of Molly's life is told partly through letters and diaries, and a ship's log type journal. It was a bit disjointed at times but worth a read.

 

I received a complimentary copy for review.

The Picture Frame by Iain Rob Wright

 

Description
An SG Horror Release
--Latest Novel by bestselling horror and suspense author, Iain Rob Wright
--Includes 2 bonus short stories by UK author, Matt Shaw

SOMETIMES THE PAST IS DEADLY
Blake Price is the most celebrated mystery writer since Agatha Christie, but violent tragedy has yanked him from his life and sent him retreating to a secluded cottage in the countryside, dragging his family with him.

Trying to connect with his spirited ten-year old son and despondent wife is difficult, but Blake tries to hold the strands of his life together as best he can. But that becomes impossible when an old picture frame finds its way into his life. A picture frame that curses anybody unlucky enough to have their picture placed inside of it. Unfortunately, Blake’s wife thinks the frame is just perfect for a family photo...

THE PICTURE FRAME
SOME MEMORIES SHOULD STAY BURIED…

Blake and his wife have had some rocky times but are doing their best to raise their young son and forget the past in a rural cottage in the country.
One day While Blake and Ricky are having some father son time together they find an old picture frame buried on the property. Ricky wants to keep it and soon has it cleaned up and looking good as new. However unfortunate incidents begin to occur immediately afterwards.
This was a short and spooky read and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a horror story without excessive gore. Even if it did irk me a bit that nobody would consider getting medical attention or rabies shots after being bitten by a wild animal. I suppose horror doesn't always have to make perfect sense.

I received a complimentary copy for review

Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves

 

Description

In this astonishingly accomplished, morally complicated, “exceptional and starkly beautiful debut” (Kevin Powers, National Book Award–nominated author of The Yellow Birds), a prideful electrician in 1920s rural Alabama struggles to overcome past sins and find peace after being sent to prison for manslaughter.

Roscoe T Martin set his sights on a new type of power spreading at the start of the twentieth century: electricity. It became his training, his life’s work. But when his wife, Marie, inherits her father’s failing farm, Roscoe has to give up his livelihood, with great cost to his sense of self, his marriage, and his family. Realizing he might lose them all if he doesn’t do something, he begins to use his skills as an electrician to siphon energy from the state, ushering in a period of bounty and happiness. Even the love of Marie and their child seem back within Roscoe’s grasp.

Then a young man working for the state power company stumbles on Roscoe’s illegal lines and is electrocuted, and everything changes: Roscoe is arrested; the farm once more starts to deteriorate; and Marie abandons her husband, leaving him to face his twenty-year sentence alone. Now an unmoored Roscoe must carve out a place at Kilby Prison. Climbing the ranks of the incarcerated from dairy hand to librarian to “dog boy,” an inmate who helps the guards track down escapees, he is ultimately forced to ask himself once more if his work is just that, or if the price of his crimes—for him and his family—is greater than he ever let himself believe.

Gorgeously spare and brilliantly insightful, Work Like Any Other is “a striking debut about love and redemption, the heavy burdens of family and guilt, and learning how to escape them…Virginia Reeves is a major new talent” (Philipp Meyer, New York Times bestselling author of The Son).

This is a work of historical fiction, set in the south in the mid 1920s Before the story has begun we are already aware there will be a death on this land and that Roscoe Martin will be jailed for it. The story flashes back and forth between the time leading up to that death and jail sentence, to the time Roscoe is currently serving out his sentence and then continues past his eventual release. He and his wife Marie were not exactly the happiest married couple you will ever encounter though they did both try to make things work in their own way up until his jail time when Marie totally abandoned him. Roscoe had never actually wanted to be a farmer and his resentment of that was often felt by his wife and son. This was a tragic story of the breakdown of not only a marriage but ultimately a family.
I enjoyed the story but I could have done without the excessive descriptions of wires, coils transformers and how electricity works.

I received an advance copy for review

Evicted by Matthew Desmond

Description

From Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond, a landmark work of scholarship and reportage that will forever change the way we look at poverty in America
 
In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the $20 a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of debt. Vanetta participates in a botched stick up after her hours are cut. All are spending almost everything they have on rent, and all have fallen behind.

The fate of these families is in the hands of two landlords: Sherrena Tarver, a former school teacher turned inner-city entrepreneur, and Tobin Charney, who runs the worst trailer park in the fourth poorest city in the country. They loathe some of their tenants and are fond of others, but as Sherrena puts it, “Love don't pay the bills.” She moves to evict Arleen and her boys a few days before Christmas.

Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. But today, most poor renting families are spending over half of their income on housing, and eviction has become ordinary, especially for single mothers. In vivid, intimate prose, Desmond provides a ground-level view of one of the most urgent issues facing America today. As we see families forced into shelters, squalid apartments, or more dangerous neighborhoods, we bear witness to the human cost of America's vast inequality—and to people's determination and intelligence in the face of hardship.

Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data, this masterful book transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation, while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.

 

This is a work of non fiction, the story of 8 families and their struggle to make ends meet, and their often times less than sympathetic slum lords.
I would say it is an unbiased look, showing both sides from the perspective of tenants and their landlords but in a matter of fact way.

The reason I wanted to read this book was because we struggled ourselves to make it through the recession and I was curious what it was like for these other families. However our own situation was quite different in that we were never on welfare or SSI and we were never criminals or drug users or from families with a long history of broken homes and unwanted pregnancies. Our financial collapse was due to my husband's employer living large and committing tax fraud, and deducting social security from everyone's pay while not actually paying social security. When the company went into receivership and then out of business owing everyone 2 weeks pay we were already falling behind in our bills. So that additional month that it took from the time they closed to the time the first too small unemployment check arrived was brutal and the closest we have ever come to being homeless. We were not at all prepared to go 6 weeks with 0 income, and that coupled with the fact that there just plain were no jobs made for the most difficult year of our lives.

Anyway back to the book, this was a well written and well researched look at poverty in America and the landlords who make their living off the poverty stricken.

 

I received an advance copy for review