Month: February 2020

#BlogTour Inexpressible Island by Paullina Simons @InexpressiblePS

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Today I’m closing out the blog tour for Inexpressible Island by Paullina Simons. Thanks to Martina at Midas PR for inviting me to take part.

Inexpressible Island is the third and final book in Paullina Simons’ End of Forever saga that started with The Tiger Catcher and continued in A Beggar’s Kingdom. Turning traditional publishing on its head – after all, this is the era of box sets and binge-watching – all three books in the End of Forever saga were published in 2019: The Tiger Catcher on 30th May, A Beggar’s Kingdom on 8th August and Inexpressible Island on 1st December.

You can find out more about Inexpressible Island, including purchase links,  below

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Book 3 An Inexpressible IslandAbout the Book

Julian has lost everything he ever loved and is almost out of time. His life-and-death struggle against fate offers him one last chance to do the impossible and save the woman to whom he is inextricably bound.

Together, Julian and Josephine must wage war against a relentless dark force that threatens to destroy them. The fight will take everything they are and everything they have, as they try once more to give each other back their unfinished lives.

As the end nears for the star-crossed lovers, Julian learns that fate has one final cruel trick in store for them – and that even a man who has lost everything still has something left to lose.

Purchase links*
Amazon.co.uk | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

PaullinaSimons_AuthorPhoto_SMAbout the Author

Paullina Simons is the author of thirteen novels (including the runaway international bestseller, The Bronze Horseman), a memoir, a cookbook and two children’s books.

Born and raised in the Soviet Union, she immigrated to the United States in the mid-seventies. She graduated from the University of Kansas and wrote her first novel, Tully, at twenty-nine.

She has lived in Rome, London, and Dallas, and now lives in New York with her husband and half of her children.

Connect with Paullina
Website | Twitter | Facebook

Inexpressible Island Blog Tour, 27.01 - 04.02

 

#BookReview Burning Cold (Cara Walden Mystery 2) by Lisa Lieberman

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Burning ColdAbout the Book

Budapest: 1956. Newlywed Cara Walden’s brother Zoltán has disappeared in the middle of the Hungarian revolution, harboring a deadly wartime secret. Will Cara or the Soviets find him first?

Cutting short her honeymoon in Paris to rescue a sibling she’s never met was not Cara’s idea, but her husband Jakub has a reckless streak, and she is too much in love to question his judgment. Together with her older brother Gray, they venture behind the Iron Curtain, seeking clues to Zoltán’s whereabouts among his circle of fellow dissidents, all victims of the recently overthrown Communist regime. One of them betrayed him, and Cara realizes that the investigation has put every person they’ve met at risk. Inadvertently, they’ve also unmasked a Russian spy, who is now tailing them in the hope that they will lead him to Zoltán.

Format: ebook (169 pages)                    Publisher: Passport Press
Publication date:  6th October 2019   Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

Find Burning Cold (Cara Walden Mystery #2) on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

My Review

According to the book description, the film version of Graham Greene’s The Third Man was the inspiration for this historical thriller. Set mainly in post-war Budapest, it certainly has the intrigue and noir feel of The Third Man but I struggled to find many other connections although I admit it’s many years since I watched the film or read the book. What this does mean is lack of familiarity with The Third Man needn’t mar your enjoyment of Burning Cold.

Burning Cold is the second book featuring Cara Walden and there are references to events in the first book. However, I’m pleased to say Burning Cold works perfectly well as a standalone read. In fact, it’s made me keen to read the first book in the series, All the Wrong Places.

I knew little about this period in Hungary’s history before reading the book. The events which unfold in Burning Cold  rectified that omission without ever feeling like a history lesson because of the twists and turns of the plot. The atmosphere of paranoia amongst the population of a city with informers everywhere and who live in fear of the secret police is vividly conjured up. The author also creates an interesting dynamic between Cara, her husband Jakub and her brother, Gray.

Burning Cold is an enjoyable, well-crafted historical mystery that explores the legacy of conflict on families as well as nations.  My thanks to the author for my copy of the book – and her patience in waiting for it to reach the top of my review pile!

In three words: Well-researched, assured, dramatic

Try something similar: The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer

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lisa-lieberman-web-7745About the Author

Lisa Lieberman writes the Cara Walden series of historical mysteries based on old movies and featuring blacklisted Hollywood people on the lam in dangerous international locales.

Trained as a modern European cultural and intellectual historian, Lieberman abandoned a perfectly respectable academic career for the life of a vicarious adventurer through perilous times. She has written extensively on post-war Europe.  Her most recent essay on the failed 1956 Hungarian revolution, “Stalin’s Boots” was the inspiration for Burning Cold, set in Budapest just as the Soviet tanks roll back in, evoking Carol Reed’s classic film of intrigue and betrayal, The Third Man, based on a treatment by Graham Greene. Keeping with the Graham Greene theme, her new Cara Walden mystery, The Glass Forest, takes place in Saigon in 1957, during the filming of The Quiet American.

Lieberman taught history for many years at Dickinson College and directed their Center in Bologna, Italy. She has held visiting fellowships at Ohio State and the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England and was the recipient of a Bourse Chateaubriand for research in Paris. In her spare time, Lieberman lectures on post-war efforts to come to terms with the trauma of the Holocaust in film and literature. On the lighter side, she gives talks on cruise ships.

She has published essays, translations, and short stories in Noir City, Gettysburg Review, Raritan, Michigan Quarterly, Mystery Scene and elsewhere and writes film criticism for 3 Quarks Daily. She is Vice President of the New England chapter of Sisters in Crime and a member of Mystery Writers of America. (Bio and photo credit: author website)

Connect with Lisa

Website | Facebook