Family Claims (Pinnacle Peak Series) by Twist Phelan

Paperback:  Hannah Dain, a skilled business lawyer, is on the verge of leaving her family's law firm for a better job.  But her plan is derailed when a real estate deal she's put together suddenly goes bad.
Two million dollars of investors' money have disappeared.  If the mistake was Hannah's, her firm is on the hook for the whole amount.

Career on the line, Hannah decides to investigate, despite a disapproving father and antagonistic older sister.  Having long ago abandoned efforts to heal the family rift, Hannah now enjoys her separate existence, whether drafting a complex IPO or bicycling miles through the hot Arizona desert.

Although she exonerates the firm, a car bomb and two murders thwart the police's identification of the culprit behind the scheme.

At work on a new deal, Hannah is assisted by Cooper Smith, the firm's computer consultant and her former lover.  Compelled to dig deep for key information, Hannah uncovers a greater threat all too close to home.  Only be exposing long-buried family secrets can she save her reputation, her law firm - and her life.

Family Claims (2016) - a book about family - is the first book in the Pinnacle Peak series set in a fictitious town (Pinnacle Peak), somewhere in the desert north of Scottsdale, Arizona.  There are four books in this series.

About the author:  Thriller Award-winning author Twist Phelan is a modern nomad, a world traveller and endurance athlete, telling stories as she travels the world.

Twist has always been a storyteller.  Growing up in a half-Irish family meant coming to dinner with “an interesting story to tell.”  While at Stanford earning her undergraduate and law degrees, she wrote for the student paper.  As a plaintiff’s trial lawyer suing middle-aged white guys who stole other people’s money, she wove evidence into compelling narratives that persuaded juries.  Now, as a writer, she creates characters who enlighten, entertain, and endure long after the tale is finished.  Her work has won awards, been featured in “Best Of” compilations, and been praised by Michael Connelly, Sue Grafton, Margaret Maron, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist.

She is also a peripatetic world traveler.  After retiring from a successful law career, Twist bought a boat and circumnavigated the globe (with her Norwegian Forest cat) for ten years.  She also earned her private pilot’s wings.

Twist continues to explore the world while combining her passion for storytelling and travel in her books, including the Finn Teller Corporate Spy mystery series.  Her blog chronicles her journeys as she continues to fight crime in fiction and reign as the Queen of Living Out of a Suitcase, packing everything from cycling togs for Australia to gowns for the Italian opera in one carry-on.  During the past decade, she has competed in Ironman triathlons, skate-skied in Scandinavia, team-roped in the American West, paddled outrigger canoe in Australia, rock-climbed in South America, and bicycled from the Pacific to the Atlantic Coast in less than four weeks.

Rating:  4/5

Fake (Finn Teller Mystery) by Twist Phelan

Paperback:  Have you ever thought about buying a counterfeit product?

Maybe a watch or a handbag for fun?

After you read Fake (2016), the first book in the series featuring Finn Teller, corporate spy, you will think again.

From Thriller Award-winning author Twist Phelan comes “a new and capable heroine you’ll want to see again” (Jan Burke, Edgar® Award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author).  Fake, the first book in Phelan’s new series featuring corporate spy Finn Teller, shines a light on the netherworld of counterfeit goods.

A routine undercover assignment at a Milan fashion house for MorCo, the corporate behemoth whose owner has political aspirations, turns into something else for Finn Teller, corporate spy, when MorCo's CEO hires her to investigate a train wreck in Croatia - scene of her most tragic professional failure and home to terrorists who are still out for revenge.

Finn's boss assures her she will be in and out of the country before her old enemies know she is there.  But things at MorCo are not as they seem, and before long the train crash is the least of her worries as Finn must win a face against the clock to stop the spread of a deadly African pandemic and escape with her life.

Fake is a page-turning mystery that will keep you guessing up to the end.  Michael Connelly described it as "full of character and good storytelling."  Currently, there are five books in the Finn Teller Mystery series.

About the author:  Thriller Award-winning author Twist Phelan is a modern nomad, a world traveller and endurance athlete, telling stories as she travels the world.

Twist has always been a storyteller.  Growing up in a half-Irish family meant coming to dinner with “an interesting story to tell.”  While at Stanford earning her undergraduate and law degrees, she wrote for the student paper.  As a plaintiff’s trial lawyer suing middle-aged white guys who stole other people’s money, she wove evidence into compelling narratives that persuaded juries.  Now, as a writer, she creates characters who enlighten, entertain, and endure long after the tale is finished.  Her work has won awards, been featured in “Best Of” compilations, and been praised by Michael Connelly, Sue Grafton, Margaret Maron, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist.

She is also a peripatetic world traveler.  After retiring from a successful law career, Twist bought a boat and circumnavigated the globe (with her Norwegian Forest cat) for ten years.  She also earned her private pilot’s wings.

Twist continues to explore the world while combining her passion for storytelling and travel in her books, including the Finn Teller Corporate Spy mystery series.  Her blog chronicles her journeys as she continues to fight crime in fiction and reign as the Queen of Living Out of a Suitcase, packing everything from cycling togs for Australia to gowns for the Italian opera in one carry-on.  During the past decade, she has competed in Ironman triathlons, skate-skied in Scandinavia, team-roped in the American West, paddled outrigger canoe in Australia, rock-climbed in South America, and bicycled from the Pacific to the Atlantic Coast in less than four weeks.

Rating:  4/5

Questioning Authority (Be It The President, The Prime Minister, Et Alia)

Happy Sunday

They Have Made Me

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), American Poet

Definition: Printrovert

Love Reading

Silent Sunday

The Forgiveness Project: Stories For A Vengeful Age by Marina Cantacuzino

Paperback:  "A story told at the right time in someone's life can shine a light sufficiently bright to illuminate the way ahead on the map of life." - The Therapeutic Use of Stories (1997), edited by Kedar Nath Dwivedi

What is forgiveness?

Are some acts unforgivable?

Can forgiveness take the place of revenge?

The Forgiveness Project (2015) contains powerful real-life stories from survivors and perpetrators of crime and violence and reveals the true impact of forgiveness on ordinary people worldwide.

It explores forgiveness as an alternative to resentment or retaliation.  The storytellers give honest, moving accounts of their experiences and what part forgiveness has played in their lives.  Despite extreme circumstances, their stories open the door to a society without revenge.

"The Forgiveness Project has a real transformative power.  It is a significant document of the human spirit.  It is an important and memorable statement of hope.  To read it is like standing in the light of a gentle, healing sun.  It is another reason to feel hopeful at a time when people seem to be turning against one another and we are in danger of facing a bleak future of religious and social confrontation.  Every one of these accounts is the clearest and most convincing of refutations of those messages of conflict and hatred, the best answer we can give to them.  Marina Cantacuzino points out that forgiveness is neither black nor white, but is, she feels, grey.  She is right - but what a warming, vivid grey it is." - Alexander McCall Smith, Foreword, January 2015.

All royalties from the sale of this book go to The Forgiveness Project charity.  This book is dedicated to all those people who have shared their stories with the author over the years and provided the source and inspiration for everything she knows about forgiveness.

About the author:  Marina Cantacuzino's background is in journalism.  Her work has appeared in most mainstream publications in the UK, including The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Times, The Observer, plus many magazines both home and abroad, and most recently in a regular blog for The Huffington Post.  She has collaborated with NGOs on overseas campaignb stoires and in 2001, co-created the One in Four exhibition as part of the Department of Health's Mind out for Mental Health campaign.

In 2003, in response to escalating global conflict, Marina embarked on a very personal project collecting stories in words and pictures from people who had lived through violence, tragedy or injustice and sought forgiveness or reconciliation rather than retaliation or revenge.  From this, along with photographer Brian Moody, she created 'The F Word' exhibition:  a collection of images and personal narratives from around the world exploring forgiveness and understanding in the face of atrocity.  The success of the exhibition, which launched in London in 2004, led to Marina founding The Forgiveness Project.

In September 2015, Marina was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Dalai Lama Centre for Compassion.  Marina is married and lives in London.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Bohemian-Austrian Poet and Novelist

More Bitter Than Death (Siri Bergman Series) by Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff

Paperback:  In the chilling follow-up to Some Kind of Peace (2012), Siri Bergman returns to investigate a brutal murder case centered in the dark world of domestic abuse.  It is a rainy evening in a Stockholm suburb, and five-year-old Tilde is hiding under the kitchen table playing with her crayons, when a man enters and beats her mother to death in cold blood.  Tilde cannot quite see the murderer, but she is the only witness.

Across town, psychologist Siri Bergman and her friend Aina are meeting with their old friend Vijay, who wants them to host a self-help group for victims of domestic abuse.  Over the course of several evenings, five very different women share their stories of impossible love, violence, and humiliation. At the same time, Siri finds herself at a crossroads - she is carrying her boyfriend’s child, but is still beset by doubts and fears.

Swedish sisters Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff weave all these threads together so that the search for healing and the ability to love again are soon transformed into a hunt for Tilde’s mother’s killer. Everyone is a suspect:  the many men in the victim’s life, her own son, even some of the women in the self-help group.

Grebe and Träff combine the chills of first-rate crime novels with palpable emotion and personal experience as More Bitter Than Death (2013) builds to a shocking conclusion.

Some Kind of Peace is translated from the Swedish by Paul Norlen.  Paul Norlen translates fiction from Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.  In 2004 he was awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize.  He lives with his family in Seattle, Washington.

P/S  There are only two books - Some Kind of Peace and More Bitter Than Death - in the Siri Bergman series.

About the authors:  Camilla Grebe is a graduate of the Stockholm School of Economics and has had several entrepreneurial successes.  She was a cofounder of Storyside, a Swedish audiobook publisher, where she was both CEO and publisher during the early 2000s.  She lives in Stockholm, Sweden.

Åsa Träff is a psychologist specializing in cognitive behavioural therapy.  She runs a private practice with her husband, also a psychologist.  She primarily diagnoses and treats neuropsychiatric disorders and anxiety disorders.  She lives in Älvsjö, Sweden.

Both Camilla and Åsa are sisters!

Rating:  5/5

Some Kind Of Peace (Siri Bergman Series) by Camille Grebe and Åsa Träff

Paperback:  A blockbuster international bestseller, this gripping literary crime novel tells the story of a young, recently widowed psychologist who is irrationally afraid of the dark and whose past comes to haunt her as she tries to solve a series of crimes, beginning with the brutal murder of one of her patients.

It seems so idyllic.  But something is out of place.  In the neatly raked gravel parking area is a dazzlingly clean black Jeep.  The paint of the Jeep reflects a clematis with large pure white blossoms climbing up a knotted old apple tree.  Someone is lying under the low trunk and crooked branches of the tree.  A young woman, a girl.

Siri Bergman is a thirty-four-year-old psychologist who works in central Stockholm and lives alone in an isolated cottage out of the city.  She has a troublesome secret in her past and has been trying to move on with her life.  Terrified of the dark, she leaves all the lights on when she goes to bed - having a few glasses of wine each night to calm her nerves - but she can’t shake the feeling that someone is watching her through the blackened windows at night.

When the lifeless body of Sara Matteus - a young patient of Siri’s with a history of drug addiction and sexual abuse - is found floating in the water near the cottage, Siri can no longer deny that someone is out there, watching her and waiting.  When her beloved cat goes missing and she receives a photo of herself from a stalker, it becomes clear that Siri is next.  Luckily, she can rely on Markus, the young policeman investigating Sara’s death;  Vijay, an old friend and psychology professor;  and Aina, her best friend.  Together, they set about profiling Siri’s aspiring murderer, hoping to catch him before he kills again.

But as their investigation unfolds, Siri’s past and present start to merge and disintegrate so that virtually everyone in her inner circle becomes a potential suspect.  With the suspense building toward a dramatic conclusion as surprising as it is horrifying, Siri is forced to relive and reexamine her anguished past, and finally to achieve some kind of peace.

Some Kind of Peace (2012) is the first book in the compelling Siri Bergman psychological crime thriller series.  "Using unique insights and experiences from their own professional backgrounds, they tell a smooth-paced yet utterly intriguing story about man's inability to let go of the past." (Kristina Ohlsson)

Some Kind of Peace is translated from the Swedish by Paul Norlen.  Paul Norlen translates fiction from Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.  In 2004 he was awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize.  He lives with his family in Seattle, Washington.

About the authors:  Camilla Grebe is a graduate of the Stockholm School of Economics and has had several entrepreneurial successes.  She was a cofounder of Storyside, a Swedish audiobook publisher, where she was both CEO and publisher during the early 2000s.  She lives in Stockholm, Sweden.

Åsa Träff is a psychologist specializing in cognitive behavioural therapy.  She runs a private practice with her husband, also a psychologist.  She primarily diagnoses and treats neuropsychiatric disorders and anxiety disorders.  She lives in Älvsjö, Sweden.

Both Camilla and Åsa are sisters!

Rating:  5/5

I Have Learned From Novels