Sophia Rose Reviews-Jane Austen’s Cousin: The Outlandish Countess de Feuillide by Geri Walton

Today on the blog my partner in crime Sophia Rose is reviewing a biography of a cousin of one of Sophia's all time favorite authors,  Jane Austen’s Cousin: The Outlandish Countess de Feuillide by Geri Walton.
See what she thinks about this one.
Enjoy!

Jane Austen’s Cousin: The Outlandish Countess de Feuillide by Geri Walton

Biography

Publisher:  Pen and Sword History

Published:  5.30.21

ISBN:  152673463X

Pages:  152

Rating: 3.5 stars

Format: eARC

Source:  Net Galley

Sellers:  Amazon

ADD TO: GoodReads 

GoodReads Blurb:

Eliza de Feuillide seemed fascinating and outlandish to her cousins in rural eighteen century England. When she visited their village, her appearance was electrifying. She was an attractive, accomplished French countess with a vivacious personality who inspired their imaginations and regaled them with stories of life in London and Paris where she hobnobbed with French nobility and wore the latest fashions. One of these impressionable younger cousins would find Eliza's stories so fascinating that she would incorporate elements of Eliza's life into some of the most famous novels in English literature. This cousin was Jane Austen.

Yet Eliza's life was not as glamorous as Jane or her Austen cousins might have thought. She faced many tragedies in her life that wealth and social class could not protect her against. She was also forced to adapt and re-examine her priorities in a way that would dramatically change her life choices and result in a more sedate lifestyle.

Read about the perseverance and courage of the real person behind several fictional characters in Jane Austen's writings and novels and the deeper connection Eliza had to the Austen family.

Macmillan Audio review of The Lincoln Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer with John Mensch Narrated by Scott Brick

I was so excited when Macmillan Audio offered me an advanced audio copy of a biography about a plot to kill Abraham Lincoln before he took office that I never heard about written by fave thriller author Brad Meltzer and narrated by Scott Brick and I'm so happy to share my review with all of you
Enjoy!

ASIN: B082VMTSHP

Publisher: Macmillan Audio


Release Date: 05-05-2020


Length:
 10 hrs: 43mins

Source:
 Publisher for Review

Buy It: Audible

ADD TO: GOODREADS

Overview:

"[Narrator Scott Brick]...makes the pages come alive. He varies his volume during dramatic moments, at times almost whispering. He also varies his tone, enhancing the drama but never overpowering it...This work is an excellent example of the perfect melding of text and narrator." — AudioFile Magazine on The First Conspiracy, Earphones Award Winner

The bestselling authors of The First Conspiracy, which covers the secret plot against George Washington, now turn their attention to a little-known, but true story about a failed assassination attempt on President Lincoln

Everyone knows the story of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, but few are aware of the original conspiracy to kill him four years earlier in 1861, literally on his way to Washington, D.C., for his first inauguration. The conspirators were part of a pro-Southern secret society that didn’t want an antislavery President in the White House. They planned an elaborate scheme to assassinate the brand new President in Baltimore as Lincoln’s inauguration train passed through en route to the Capitol. The plot was investigated by famed detective Allan Pinkerton, who infiltrated the group with undercover agents, including one of the first female private detectives in America. Had the assassination succeeded, there would have been no Lincoln Presidency, and the course of the Civil War and American history would have forever been altered.

Sophia Rose Reviews Lost Treasures V2 by Louis and Beau L'Amour

It's always fun when Sophia Rose puts on her chaps and and cowboy hat and reviews one of the king of the west's classic titles. Today she's reviewing Lost Treasures Volume Two.
Enjoy!

Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures Volume Two by Louis and Beau L’Amour

Historical Fiction, Non-Fiction

Publisher:  Bantam

Published:  11.19.19

Pages:  576

ISBN:  0425284921

Rating: 4

Format: eARC

Source:  Net Galley

Sellers:  Amazon- Barnes & Noble

Add To: GoodReads

Blurb:

More unpublished works from the archives of Louis L'Amour: complete short stories, partial novels, treatments, and notes that will transport readers from the Western frontier to India, China, and even the future.

Exploring the creative process of an American original, the Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures series will uncover the hidden history behind the author's best known novels . . . and his most mysterious and ambitious unfinished works.

In this second volume, Beau L'Amour examines how his father made the transition from struggling pulp writer to successful novelist and uses his father's notes, journal entries, and correspondence to continue the process of seeking out how and why many of these never-before-seen manuscripts were written as well as speculating about the ways they might have ended.

These selections include the beginnings of a post-apocalyptic science fiction tale, a proposal for a nonfiction project based on the life of Renaissance era traveler Ibn Batuta, and two chapters of a historical novel set in India about the origin of L'Amour's well-known Talon family.

At the other end of the spectrum are classic adventures, such as "In the Measure of Time," a chance encounter set on the high seas, and a science fiction film treatment set in Mexico, as well as seventeen chapters of a novel that reappears throughout Louis's journals and letters and speaks to his fascination with post-revolutionary 1950s China, leading him so far as to correspond with the Dalai Lama.

With rare photographs and commentary, this book further maps the journey L'Amour embarked upon to become one of our greatest storytellers and the diverse realms to which his imagination traveled, making him a true American pioneer.

#GIVEAWAY Review of (Must Read) Junkie Love: A Story of Recovery and Redemption Interview with author Joe Clifford

I've had the pleasure of welcoming award winning author Joe Clifford (Jay Porter series) to the blog in the past but today we get up close and personal exploring his memoir about his time as an addict.
A big shout out to Joe's Publicist Author/Guide for supplying me with the review copy plus offering an author signed copy for a #Giveaway here. Details below!
The interview and the book is not for the feint hearted but should be a mandatory read for every student from middle school to high school.
Learn and enjoy!

ISBN-13: 978-1946050113
Publisher: Vagabondage Press LLC; 2nd ed. edition
Release Date: 9-26-2018
Length: 266PP
Source: Publicist/author for review
Buy It: Amazon/Kobo/B&N

ADD TO: GOODREADS

Overview:

Joe Clifford didn't start drinking beer until he was almost twenty years old. By the time he turned twenty-two, he was addicted to methamphetamine; and the heroin wasn't far behind. Soon he'd lose his wife, his job, his home.
Junkie Love follows the roughly ten years Clifford spent wandering the streets of San Francisco and beyond, first as a wannabe rock star, and then as another homeless junkie with his head lost in the stars.
In between are the harrowing events and close calls, the shady characters and the enduring friendships, the redemption and restitution that led Fix Magazine to call Junkie Love "one of top four recovery memoirs" of all time.

Joe and his publicist Author/Guide are sponsoring this giveaway of

One author signed print copy of Junkie Love US ONLY

Please use Rafflecopter form to enter

Good Luck

July #LibraryLoveChallenge - Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

Welcome to the July #LobraryLoveChallenge. The Library Love Challenge is hosted by Angel’s Guilty Pleasures & Brooke Blogs. This month was a non-fiction, a memoir about the decline of the Appalachian culture. 

Enjoy!

ISBN-13: 978-0062300546
Publisher: Harper
Release Date: 6-28-2016
Length: 272pp

ADD TO: GOODREADS

Overview:
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.
But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

Macmillan Audio Review: A Higher Loyalty- Truth, Lies and Leadership by James Comey

A Higher Loyalty was an eye opening experience, it was NOT what I expected and was more than I could have hoped for. I think everyone should read this book.
Enjoy!

ISBN-13: 9781427298287
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Release Date: 4-17-2018
Length: 9 hours - 5 minutes
Source: Macmillan Audio
Buy It: Audible/Kobo

ADD TO: GOODREADS

"Comey's conversational tone instantly connects with the listener, and hearing him deliver the book's highly charged contents in his own voice brings authenticity and immediacy to the presentation...This greatly anticipated, revelatory memoir needs to be heard." — AudioFile Magazine
In his audiobook, A Higher Loyalty, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like, and how it drives sound decisions. His journey provides an unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in what makes an effective leader.

Mr. Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017, appointed to the post by President Barack Obama. He previously served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. deputy attorney general in the administration of President George W. Bush. From prosecuting the Mafia and Martha Stewart to helping change the Bush administration's policies on torture and electronic surveillance, overseeing the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation as well as ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Comey has been involved in some of the most consequential cases and policies of recent history.