Review -- The Newsmakers by Lis Wiehl

 When Erica Sparks lands a dream job as a reporter for Global News Network in New York City, she’s ecstatic. It’s a chance for her to turn her life around, make a success out of an almost-scuttled career and perhaps even get shared custody of her daughter Jenny.

Ready to make her mark in the cable news game, Erica is on her first assignment for GNN when a horrific ferry accident occurs. Erica’s skills are highlighted as she reports live from the scene, scooping every other news service. Another incident occurs when she’s interviewing a top political candidate live on-air. Once more, Erica is spotlighted and she’s soon offered her own show­­­—a real coup in the cable news business.

But is it coincidence that these things have happened, or is there a sinister plot afoot to create the news…and a news star?

From humble beginnings to the top of the cable news business, Erica Sparks has the brains, beauty and talent to succeed. But can she get beyond her own past and how it haunts her? Can she discover the truth behind her biggest news stories? Can she survive the journey? Will she find love with Greg Underwood, the handsome former war photographer, now her on-air producer?

Author Lis Wiehl ratchets up the tension and suspense page by page as Erica Sparks digs in with her outstanding investigative reporter instincts to find out what the real story is.

An addictive read! Five stars. 

Review -- Last Prophecy of Rome

Last Prophecy of Rome

by Iain King

Publisher: Bookouture

When Oxford military history lecturer Myles Munro and his cable news reporter girlfriend Helen Bridle are vacationing in Rome, Myles is pulled into a potential terror threat to bring down the United States of America. With the clue that the US will fall for the same reason the Roman Empire did, Myles is soon on the track of a former love turned terrorist, Placidia, and her African warlord husband, Juma. Throw in a powerful US senator, his son who thwarts a bomb attack on Wall Street, poison, an ancient plague, and plenty of locales from New York to western Iraq, and you have all the elements needed for a story that will keep you turning pages quickly.

Will Myles and Helen solve this puzzle in time to stop the devastation of a modern superpower or will they be too late to stop a catastrophe like the one that brought an ancient empire to its knees?

It is clear author Iain King is familiar with the geography of the Middle East and zips the reader along desert roads to ancient Roman ruins in Iraq, as well as into Turkey, to the heart of New York City and into the centre of modern Rome and its ancient ruins.

The reader of this thriller will be racing with Myles Munro to try to figure out what the terrorists have planned. What brought down the powerful ancient Roman Empire—can the same thing happen, or be forced upon, the modern United States?

An engaging read!

Review -- The Forgotten Room

The Forgotten Room

by Karen White, Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig

Penguin Group Berkley, NAL/Signet Romance, DAW

 Three women, one mansion, a tangled history. The Forgotten Room traces three generations of women in a family, the secrets they’ve concealed and what has been hidden from them through the decades. From 1892 to 1944, the secrets are slowly revealed through the stories of these women linked to a mansion on East Sixty-ninth Street in New York City.

The architect who designed the house couldn’t know his daughter Olive Van Alen would end up working as a maid in the the Gilded Age mansion he created. The choices Olive made, what she’s hidden, would drive her daughter Lucy Young to travel to Manhattan from her home in Brooklyn in search of answers to questions about her past. Lucy’s daughter Kate Schuyler would work as a doctor in a private hospital in the converted home during World War II, caring for a mysterious, critically wounded patient to whom she is inexplicably drawn.

Why does Kate’s patient Captain Ravenal have a miniature portrait of a woman who resembles Kate? And why does it appear she is wearing a pendant that belongs to Kate, handed down to her by her mother?  How does this tie into the lives of Olive and Lucy?

Combine romance, misunderstandings and the secrets of a forgotten room at the top of a New York City mansion and you, too, will be drawn into the narratives of Olive, Lucy and Kate. Moving back and forth from one era to another over five decades, the reader gets to know these fascinating women and their mysteries. Richly layered with complex characters and their intriguing tales, The Forgotten Room is an addictive read.