BlueInk Review

For Vera Leinvebers, a concert pianist and music teacher now living in Canada, childhood memories of war, loss and dislocation are so painful and traumatic she is forced to create a fictional self Lara to retell them, even from a safe distance.

When her family flees her childhood home in Riga, Latvia, toward the end of World War II, Lara embarks on the journey that, by its end, robs her of her brother, her beloved animals, her education, her music, even her voice; in short, the war “had stolen my childhood from me.” Interrupted with very rare episodes of kindness, […]

Some women get pregnant with little effort. Others, however, struggle with infertility issues and need an outlet for both their educational needs and to bond with others in a similar situation. Author Krissi Marie McVicker never imagined that in her 20s she would have trouble conceiving, especially because her twin sister did not. She connected with an online infertility message board for help and was guided toward in vitro fertilization (IVF).

McVicker soon learned that IVF, while offering hope, is no picnic, but a “terrifying, anxiety-ridden, alternate reality.” It involved complicated dosing schedules, numerous drug interventions, blood draws, and painful […]

This well-crafted British war novel set during the London Blitz of 1940-1941 resurrects elements that have enlivened the genre for seven decades. Alan J. Summers gives us derring-do aloft: his hero is a dashing, 19-year-old Spitfire pilot named Mark Brabham, downed over the Channel in the act of destroying two German aircraft in a fiery smashup. There’s plenty of Stiff Upper Lip on the ground, too: a plucky and beautiful Welsh “land girl,” Elizabeth Fforest (yes, two “fs”), moves on from her milk-hauling duties on a remote farm to become an Allied spy in occupied Paris — but not before […]

The title of this unremittingly dark espionage thriller is fitting; although the storyline is impressively labyrinthine and adeptly narrated, it’s the incredibly complex – and utterly heartrending – character of Laura Denfer that makes this such a powerful read.

The story begins in shocking style: thirty-six-year-old Laura Denfer, who is half Korean and half French, has been incarcerated for almost two years in a North Korean prison, where she has endured unspeakable tortures. One of the military leaders of the prison is a hardcore sadomasochist, and after physically abusing her, he oftentimes sexually assaults her as well. When British Marines […]

Author Martine Racine is a Jungian psychoanalyst and ordained minister. In The God Within, she describes how the divine lives in all of us.

Racine posits that our center of power, creativity, and morality doesn’t come from extrinsic sources. Rather, they reside in our being and are tapped into when we feel from our hearts. All of the destruction in the world, according to Racine, comes from the unhealthy imbalance of putting too much emphasis on the mind. The mind is a tool that should be used only through the guidance of heart because our heart is what is […]

A man, a woman, and a talking Martian plant walk into a bar…

OK, that doesn’t exactly happen in Falling into History—among other things, the plant doesn’t walk; it glides. However, Peter Fleming’s time-traveling tale is about a sentient, super-powered plant transporting itself and two human companions through time and space, and an eighteenth-century London pub is one of the stops in the book.

The story is a sequel to Fleming’s Falling to Destiny. The plant, named Hymoliga Eight, travels with Kim Hawthorne, a “space ethicist” from the near future, and narrator Ishmael Starbuck, an oft-befuddled, amnesiac Australian […]

The plot, if that is the word, of Peter Menting’s Elvis Cream is quickly told: Ali Hasheeshee, a wealthy fundamentalist sheik in the Emirate of Quais, wants to go to the United States to convert its population to Islam, but unfortunately he is a dead-ringer for America’s most hated terrorist enemy, Osama Al Osama. Meanwhile, a nearly bankrupt company in Muleshoe, Texas, run by a family of 1950s-‘60s music aficionados needs an infusion of capital. When a New York advertising executive tries to improve the sheik’s U.S. image by making him resemble Elvis Presley and then introduces him and his […]