Review of Paris in Stride: An Insider's Walking Guide

Authors: Jessie Kanelos Weiner and Sarah Moroz

Release date: March 27, 2018

Publisher: Rizzoli Books

Pages: 176

Buy from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Paris-Stride-Insiders-Walking-Guide/dp/0847861252/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522427790&sr=8-1&keywords=Paris+in+stride&dpID=61lMhZPIkSL&preST=_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

It is hard to go wrong in Paris, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Paris in Stride: An Insiders Walking Guide is an attractively illustrated and easy to follow guided stroll to all of the important locations within the City of Light.

Jessie Kanelos Weiner is an American illustrator, author, and food stylist based in Paris. She creates watercolor imagery for many international companies and her illustrations have appeared in numerous publications. She is the author of several books that include Edible Paradise: A Coloring Book of Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables (2016) and pens a popular blog about her life called thefranofly.com. Sarah Moroz is a Paris-based journalist, writer, and translator. This is her first foray into published travel writing. 

“Paris is a ceaselessly mythologized city. Many wistfully extoll the beauty, the history, the architecture, and the gastronomy of the French capital; it is only natural that visitors come with the ambitious aim of extracting the very best of its sights and tastes.”

Divided into ten compact and comprehensive walking tours, the authors have woven the “must see” locations with a plethora of quirky and lessor known destinations. Each section has a map and key with carefully selected locations with tiny descriptions. The authors encourage “an adventurous approach” to seeing the city. The reader can follow their preplanned walks or explore the city indiscriminately.

“Paris in Stride is intended to be helpful both in terms of cultural decoding and in terms of ease in circulation.”

This useful and handy guide transports the reader to the Paris that only locals know. With unique and compelling narratives on culture and history, the authors have created an authentic glimpse into Parisian life. The attention to detail, originality, conciseness, and readability will most certainly delight the casual and veteran traveler.

Review first appeared at the New York Journal of Books on March 30, 2018 - https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/paris-stride

Review of Speed the Dawn by Philip Donlay

Author: Philip Donlay

Release date: March 6, 2018

Publisher: Oceanview Publishing

Pages: 336

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https://www.amazon.com/Speed-Dawn-Donovan-Nash-Thriller/dp/1608092305/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520442974&sr=8-1&keywords=speed+the+dawn

Hundreds of white-hot meteor fragments plunge toward earth near Monterey Bay, California. Huge fires ignite—dry landscape and, the sun sets, the power grid collapses and the fires grow, illuminating a nightmare created in hell itself. Donovan Nash realizes he is trapped.

Injured and growing desperate, his options dwindling, Donovan fights to keep himself and a small band of survivors alive until dawn, when they can make one last attempt to escape the inferno. Meanwhile, Donovan’s wife, Dr. Lauren McKenna, working with the Pentagon as well as the Forest Service, envisions a bold approach to stop the fire from spreading all the way to the Bay Area and the seven million residents living there. She’s terrified that, if not executed perfectly, her plan could cause the death of thousands of people—including Donovan.

With Speed the Dawn: A Donovan Nash Novel, Philip Donlay has delivered another superb suspense thriller. The eighth installment in the extremely popular Donovan Nash series, the author has created a new adventure that’s bursting with peril and mayhem. Writing from the basis of his own experience as a professional pilot, Donlay doesn’t hold back as the white-knuckle edge of your seat action starts on the first page as this novel.

“Lauren squinted as another burning object fragmented under the tremendous forces of high speed and friction, creating hundreds, if not thousands of small separate hazards racing downwards. The noise came all at once, like a sudden hailstorm. Instantly, hundreds of small pinholes opened in the ceiling. Lauren gripped the seat as the Gulfstream shuddered.”

Speed the Dawn continues in the same pattern of Donlay’s other novels with the tense, exciting, and action-packed thrills that puts wealthy environmentalist Donovan Nash right in the middle of a natural disaster. Fraught with danger and terrifying realities, Donlay effortlessly manages to bring new layers and situations to his multidimensional characters with each new installment.

Whether it’s by air, sea, or land, his writing style keeps the reader captivated. The plot is a twist on an old and effective theme, but Donlay succeeds in making it seem fresh and his own.

In an effort to retain tension, he adds chaos and a touch of hopelessness to the wild-ride narrative. The fear of being trapped and trying to find our loved ones during a disaster is palpable and heartfelt. Fast paced, spellbinding, and packed with exhilarating thrills and chills, Speed the Dawn is a well-written and electrifying novel. An outstanding addition to the Donovan Nash collection and quite possibly the best yet, the suspense will keep the reader glued to the edge of their seat until the very end.

Michael Thomas Barry's most recent book is In the Company of Evil: Thirty Years of California Crime, 1950–1980. He is the author of six other nonfiction books and is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com

Review first appeared at the New York Journal of Books on March 6, 2018 - https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/speed-dawn

Review of Time Pieces: A Dublin Memior by John Banville

Author: John Banville

Release date: February 27, 2018

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Pages: 224

Buy from Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Time-Pieces-Dublin-John-Banville/dp/1524732834/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520021922&sr=8-1&keywords=time+pieces

“Certain moments in certain places, apparently insignificant, imprint themselves on the memory with improbable vividness and clarity…so vivid are they, the suspicion arises that one’s fancy must have made them up: that one must, in a word, have imagined the.”

Born and bred in Wexford, a train ride away from Dublin, John Banville as a child saw the city as a place of enchantment. It was first a birthday treat, the world his beloved, eccentric aunt inhabited. When he came of age and took up residence there, the city was a frequent backdrop for his dissatisfactions as a young writer. When he lived outside Ireland, the city remained alive and indelible in his memory. In a once grand but now dilapidated flat in Upper Mount Street, he wrote and dreamed and hoped. Returning to live in Ireland, he found Dublin to be as fascinating – albeit for different reasons – as it had been to his seven-year-old self. 

“Dublin was for me what Moscow was for Irina in Chekhov’s Three Sisters, a place of magical promise towards which my starved young soul endlessly yearned. That the city itself, the real Dublin, was in those poverty-stricken 1950s, mostly a grey and graceless place did not mar my dream of it…”

Banville is an award winning Irish novelist and screenwriter. He has penned sixteen novels that include The Book of Evidence (1989) and The Sea (2005), which won the Man Booker Prize. In Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir, he turns introspective and reflects on his cherished memories of his adopted hometown. In it he alternates between monologues of his own past, and present-day historical explorations of the city. 

“O time, O tempora, what places we have been to – where will you take me yet?”

One of the great but elusive metaphysical questions of history has been the nature and substance of time. In the very first chapter, Banville writes, “…the past is where we live, while the past is where we dream. Yet if it is a dream, it is substantial, and sustaining. The past buoys us up, a tethered and ever-expanding hot-air balloon.” This provides, in many ways, the rhetorical theme of the book that combines memoir and guidebook, with social observation. As a result, Banville takes us on a swift journey through his life and Dublin both, providing just enough detail to make it enlightening, but not so much that it gets tedious and dull. The writing itself is amusing and entertaining with plenty of colorful references to other Irish writers and poets: “For good or ill, as a writer I am and always have been most concerned not with what people do – that, as Joyce might say, with typical Joycean disdain, can be left to the journalists – but with what they are.”

Overall, Time Pieces is a quick and well-written read that pays tribute to a humbler and more influential place and time for the writer. Fascinating and atmospheric, the narrative is complimented with beautifully illustrated images by award winning photographer Paul Joyce. For anyone who loves Dublin, every page of this memoir will be a delight and for those not acquainted with the city, it will bring better understanding into what makes it so charming and distinctive.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of seven nonfiction books that includes Literary Legends of the British Isles and America’s Literary Legends.

Review of Bone Music by Christopher Rice

Author: Christopher Rice

Release date: March 1, 2018

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Pages: 450

Buy from Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Bone-Music-Burning-Girl-Christopher/dp/1542048303/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519924357&sr=8-1&keywords=bone+music

Charlotte Rowe spent the first seven years of her life in the hands of the only parents she knew – a pair of serial killers who murdered her mother and tried to shape Charlotte in their own twisted image. If only the nightmare had ended when she was rescued. Instead, her real father exploited her tabloid-ready story for fame and profit – until Charlotte finally broke free from her ghoulish past and fled. Just when she thinks she has buried her personal hell forever. Charlotte is swept into a frightening new ordeal. Secretly dosed with an experimental drug – but pursued by a treacherous corporation desperate to control her. Except from now on, if anybody is going to control Charlotte, it’s going to be Charlotte herself. She’s determined to use the extraordinary ability she now possesses to fight the kind of evil that shattered her life – by drawing a serial killer out from the shadows to face the righteous fury of a victim turned avenger.

Bone Music by Christopher Rice is a fabulously entertaining genre bending new thriller. Rice is the critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of four novels and is an executive producer for The Vampire Lestat, a TV show based on the novels penned by his mother, Anne Rice. In this new page-turner, Rice attempts to reinvent the superhero origin story with a tale of female empowerment while opening a thought provoking dialogue into what survivors of evil have to endure.  

This novel is an excellent start to the new “A Burning Girl Thriller” series. The plot is fast-paced and engaging with firm character development. At its core, Bone Music is about the human need for socialization and our ability to face the fears that often hold us back from our potential. Rice has masterfully woven elements of a coming of age love story with tons of mystery, suspense, and thrills. A roller-coaster ride of adventures that’s filled with kick-butt superhero excitement that doesn’t let up from page one.

Michael Thomas Barry's most recent book is In the Company of Evil: Thirty Years of California Crime, 1950–1980. He is the author of six other nonfiction books and is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com.