A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

Editorial Review

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom's protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens.
Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; and a determined woman undertakes the most treacherous of journeys. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.
"From the Paperback edition."

About the Author

George R. R. Martin is the author of fourteen novels, including five volumes of A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, several collections of short stories and numerous screen plays for television drama and feature films. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. George Martin website

Pope Joan by Donna Cross hosted by Kate

 

From the Inside Flap of Novel

There are few historical heroines as fascinating and controversial as Pope Joan, a woman whose hunger for knowledge and independent nature led her to pass as a man and ultimately to attain the high seat in Rome. Pope Joan is a spellbinding tale of a woman who gave up everything, even her very name, for the sake of knowledge. --Amazon

 

Pope Joan

• BIRTH DATE: c. 853
• AKA: John Anglicus
• AKA: John of Mainz

is a Medieval religious leader believed by some to have been a female pontiff who reigned over the Roman Catholic Church, who dismisses her as myth. She allegedly assumed the name John Anglicus, disguising herself as a man and eventually becoming pope. It is believed that her story was discovered when she gave birth to her child, which led to her immediate execution.

About the Author

DONNA WOOLFOLK CROSS lives in upstate, New York. Pope Joan is her first novel.  She is now at work on a new novel set in 17th century France. Visit her online at PopeJoan.com.

Watch the Pope Joan movie trailer !

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand hosted by Erin

Growing up in California in the 1920s, Louie was a hellraiser, stealing everything edible that he could carry, staging elaborate pranks, getting in fistfights, and bedeviling the local police. But as a teenager, he emerged as one of the greatest runners America had ever seen, competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he put on a sensational performance, crossed paths with Hitler, and stole a German flag right off the Reich Chancellery. He was preparing for the 1940 Olympics, and closing in on the fabled four-minute mile, when World War II began. Louie joined the Army Air Corps, becoming a bombardier. Stationed on Oahu, he survived harrowing combat, including an epic air battle that ended when his plane crash-landed, some six hundred holes in its fuselage and half the crew seriously wounded.
On a May afternoon in 1943, Louie took off on a search mission for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the engines on his bomber failed. The plane plummeted into the sea, leaving Louie and two other men stranded on a tiny raft. Drifting for weeks and thousands of miles, they endured starvation and desperate thirst, sharks that leapt aboard the raft, trying to drag them off, a machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon with waves some forty feet high. At last, they spotted an island. As they rowed toward it, unbeknownst to them, a Japanese military boat was lurking nearby. Louie’s journey had only just begun. ~www.amazon.com


Zamperini Timeline
Jan 26, 1917 - Louis Silvie was born in Olean, New York, on January 26, 1917, the son of Italian immigrants Anthony and Louise Zamperini. The family moved to Torrance, California, when Louis was two. By the time he was 14 he was heading for serious trouble. An accomplished burglar he often stole food and booze, got into fights that left his victims bruised, bleeding and occasionally unconscious and had little respect for the law.
1936 - A relatively trouble child who stole everything in sight, he grows up to become one of the greatest track stars of his time, shattering the national high school record in the mile and becoming one of the youngest members of the US Olympic team in 1936. Many felt that Zamperini would become the first person to break the four minute mile.
1943 - Louis Zamperini became a bombardier whose plane disappeared in the Pacific Ocean in 1943. He survived sharks, starvation and strafing only to be rescued by a Japanese boat. He spent the rest of the war in prison camps and endured cruelty so profound, it's painful to repeat.
1998 - In 1998, the Olympic Winter Games were held in Nagano, Japan, just outside the town where Louis had been held captive. The people of Nagano asked Louis to carry the Olympic flame as part of the torch relay, and the host broadcaster (CBS) created a 45-minute feature about Louis’ life, that aired during the telecast of the Closing Ceremony. ~keynotespeakers

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay hosted by Tiffany

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode. ~publishers website

Vel' d'Hiv Round-up
The greatest mass-arrest of Jews ever carried out on French soil is known as the Vél’ d’hiv’ Round-up. It involved 13,000 victims from Paris and its suburbs. Over slightly more than two days, the Round-up involved nearly a third of the 42,000 Jews deported to Polish death camps in 1942. The statistics for this terrible year account for over half of the total 76,000 Jewish deportations from France. ~a case study

"The French have tended to confront their record under Nazi occupation with a mixture of denial, silence and myth. The second world war was not on the school curriculum until 1962. Textbooks scarcely mentioned the Holocaust. No French leader from de Gaulle to Mitterrand acknowledged the state's part in deporting Jews to Nazi death camps. It was not until Jacques Chirac became president in 1995 that the French state accepted its official complicity, prompting much soul-searching over collaboration, memory and guilt." ~The Indian Express

Sarah's Key (Elle s’appelait Sarah)
The Movie
A woman from the present becomes obsessed with tracking down a young woman from the past – for reasons even she can’t quite articulate – in Sarah’s Key, a staid but stubbornly involving drama. Though ostensibly yet another film about the horrors of the Holocaust, director Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s adaptation of Tatiana de Rosnay’s novel uses the atrocity as a treatise on personal survival and new beginnings that is eloquently delivered by star Kristin Scott Thomas. ~screen daily
Remembering the Vel d'Hiv A another new film suggests France is finally coming to terms with its wartime history. “La Rafle” recreates the French police’s round-up in 1942 of 13,000 Paris Jews, including 4,000 children, and the families’ transfer to the capital’s Vélodrome d’Hiver, en route to the death camps. It unfolds through the eyes of Jo Weismann, an 11-year-old who later escaped from an internment camp near Orléans after his parents were sent to Poland. ~the economist
About the AuthorTATIANA DE ROSNAY was born in the suburbs of Paris and is of English, French and Russian descent. She is the author of nine French novels. She also writes for French ELLE, and is a literary critic for Psychologies magazine. Tatiana de Rosnay is married and has two children. SARAH'S KEY is her first novel written in her mother tongue, English.