Award-winning journalist and talk show host Anne Holliday interviews some of the most popular authors of the day, including Mary Higgins Clark, Joseph Finder, C.J. Box, Jeffery Deaver, Delia Ephron, Liane Moriarty, Linda Fairstein, Lisa Gardner, Steve Berry, David Baldacci, Gregory Maguire, and many more.
Besides bringing back characters from the last book, she introduces us to new residents of the area, and to Mallory who comes back because of a, lets's just say, family matter. While she's dealing with that, she must also contend with a teenage daughter (she's a single mom) and Kevin, the man whose heart she broke many years ago.
To hear Coble talk about the book you can go to . Scroll down to "LiveLine" for January 7, 2016.
Vianne hopes to be as normal as possible while raising her daughter and waiting for her husband to return from the war. That hope is dashed when a Nazi soldier moves into her home.
Isabelle wants to do something -- anything -- to contribute to the war effort. She offers to drive an ambulance, roll bandages ... anything. She ends up being one of the bravest people -- man or woman -- in Occupied France and contributing to the effort in ways she's couldn't have imagined when it started.
Even Vianne ends up doing things she never imagined -- heroic, brave, necessary.
When I interviewed Kristin Hannah she said she wanted to not only show that women played an important part in the war, but to make readers feel what they felt.
She succeeded.
You can hear my interview with Kristin Hannah at WESB.com/on-demand.
As for my review of the book ...
All books are meant to be read. Some are meant to be savored. "All the Light We Cannot See" is one of those rare books that I didn't want to rush through, although I loved the main characters and wanted to find out what happened to them. I wanted to enjoy every phrase, every metaphor, every brilliant description. This book is a masterpiece in the way it's written and researched, and also for putting the reader directly into the action, whether it be in occupied France, a German orphan's home, a museum in Paris or a training school for Hitler Youth.
Morris knows he can’t sell the notebooks – including a new Jimmy Gold story! – right away so, after a series of events that become extremely important later in the story, he buries the notebooks and money under a tree trunk near his childhood home. Shortly after that, he’s sent to prison for an unrelated crime.
Enter Pete Saubers, the boy who lives with his parents and little sister in Bellamy’s old house. He also finds the money and notebooks and does something rather altruistic with the money, although it helps him as well. But when the money runs out, he decides to try to sell the notebooks.
Shortly after that he crosses paths with Bellamy – who has been released from prison after 30-some years and is furious to discover the money and notebooks are gone.
The scenes where Bellamy is trying to find out who has the notebooks, and then when he does find out, are some of the most intense I’ve ever read – by King or anyone. It’s pulse-pounding action, for sure. The final Bellamy/Pete scene is one of the eeriest King has ever written.
Add to all of this Hodges, Holly and Jerome from “Mr. Mercedes, who have no idea what they’re getting into when Pete’s little sister asks for help because her brother is acting strange.
Hodges is also obsessed with “Mr. Mercedes” – aka Brady Hartsfield – who is catatonic in a nursing home after the incident when he tried to blow up a building holding a rock conert.
Or is he catatonic? Hodges doesn’t think so.
In short, another winner from Stephen King.
Sound like delicious fun?
Williams makes you root for Tiny as she comes into her own and realizes she may not want to be part of the Hardcastle dream after all. The chapters go back and forth from 1964 (pre-marriage) to "present day" 1966, when Tiny's husband Frank is running for Congress.
We were briefly introduced to Tiny in last summer's "The Secret Life of Violent Grant," which center on Tiny's sister Vivian. But you don't have to read that to follow this one (although I highly recommend TSLVG because it's so good).
I'm hoping Williams keeps the Schuyler Sisters alive with at least one more book. But, if we're lucky, she'll give us several more
You can hear my interview with Beatriz Williams here.
