This BBC series is set in the mid-1950s in a poverty stricken area of East London.  Nurse midwives work alongside an Anglican order of nuns to deliver most babies at home, as was the custom at the time.  The characters are all very likable or at least interesting, which adds to the viewer's enjoyment.  The key midwife is young nurse Jennie Lee, although the viewer comes to love ALL the nurses and the nuns that work together.  Smoking was very pervasive at that time and so the series stays true to the period.  For the squeamish, many of the birth scenes are very realistic, but the viewer also is elated to see a baby delivered successfully.   Sometimes there is tragedy, but overall, this compelling series leaves us wanting to view the next year in the series.  The plot lines of the episodes keep progressing in the lives of the nurses and nuns, so if possible watch this series beginning with Season One. 

Daughter of the warrior queen, Isabella. Infanta of Spain. Queen of England.

To many, Katherine is known as Henry VIII's first wife, the Queen who was pushed off her throne by Anne Boleyn. In Philippa Gregory's bestselling novel, though, readers will be shown that there was far more to Katherine's story than just her marriage to one of England's most notoriuos monarchs. From almost day one, Catalina of Spain was raised knowing that she would one day be Queen of England. At the young age of fifteen, she set out to fulfill her God-given destiny, leaving her family, her home, and even her name behind in order to rule a country that did not welcome foreigners. Not even a year into her marriage, tragedy struck: overnight, Katherine was stripped of her husband, her throne, and her livelihood. Where many would have given up, though, Katherine fought on. Against all opposition, she refused to accept her newly given title of Queen Regent and settle into a life of widowhood. She continued to believe in her destiny and put all of her efforts into making it come true. Efforts that would, after many years, win her the hearts of all of England...

FBI special agent Kate O'Hare has made it her mission to nail international con artist Nicolas Fox. When she discovers his plot to plunder a venture capitalist's twentieth-story Chicago penthouse of all its cash and treasures while the self-proclaimed "King of Hostile Takeovers" is getting married, Kate is 85 percent--okay maybe 92 percent--sure that she's finally going to bag Nick Fox.

 Problem is, first Kate has to convince her boss, building security, and maybe even herself, that wedding planner Merrill Stubing is actually Nicolas Fox. Second, she has to figure out how to corner and capture him without disrupting the event of the year. And third, what's going to happen once O'Hare finally gets her hands on Fox? It's going take a pro to catch a con before the fireworks over Lake Michigan go off.

 I am a longtime fan of Janet Evanovich’s novels. Readers will be entertained by the quick wit of her characters and the fast-paced action. This new series reminds me of the TV show “White Collar” with the addition of sexual tension between the FBI and the fugitive. Excited to continue on with the characters in the full length novels The Chase & The Heist!

In Such a Pretty Fat, Jen Lancaster learned how to come to terms with her body. In My Fair Lazy, she expanded her mind. Now the New York Times bestselling author gives herself—and her generation—a kick in the X, by facing her greatest challenge to date: acting her age.
Jen is finally ready to put away childish things (except her Barbie Styling Head, of course) and embrace the investment-making, mortgage-carrying, life-insurance-having adult she’s become. From getting a mammogram to volunteering at a halfway house, she tackles the grown-up activities she’s resisted for years, and with each rite of passage she completes, she’ll uncover a valuable—and probably humiliating—life lesson that will ease her path to full-fledged, if reluctant, adulthood.

This is Jen Lancaster's fifth memoir. I have to say that I am in love with Jen Lancaster's humorous view of her own life. "Jeneration X" made me laugh more than anything I've read this year. My favorite technique of hers is her use of footnotes to add in hillarity, irony, and self-depricating humor. It also made me want to look up her other books. Very enjoyable and I highly recommend reading this book and check out her other memiors!  

What would it be like if the deceased suddenly reappeared just as they were when they died.  A long dead child returns to aging parents.  A parent returns to their now grown children.  A family that was murdered and the killer was never found.  What would people do?  How would they react?  This is what happens in the book "The Returned".  People who have died appear alive all over the world.  Many questions are raised such as; how did this happen, who are they really, where did they come from and what do they want?  People react in various ways.  Some people accept them as who they appear to be and are happy to have their loved ones back with them.  Some people accept them but do not believe they are actually the people they knew.  Others do not accept them and are angry and fearful.  As more and more "returned" come back the problem of what to do with them arises.  This is a fascinating book.  I could hardly put it down.  Even the author's note was interesting.  This book is the basis for the new TV series "Resurrection".

A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. He is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet sitting by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean), the unremembered past comes flooding back.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A brilliantly imaginative and poignant fairy tale from the modern master of wonder and terror, Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a groundbreaking work told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human. Gaiman masterfully shows the power that stories possess to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out.

It’s been ten years since Alanna of Trebond made it possible for both males and females to train as knights. Despite this, no other girl has been brave enough to try. Not, at least, until Keladry “Kel” of Mindelan decides that she is up to the challenge and steps forward.

Knighthood training may have been tough for Alanna, but things are far worse for Kel. In addition to the traditional hazing and grueling schedule that all knights-in-training must deal with, Kel must also face the challenges that come with everyone knowing her true identity. Unlike her predecessor, Kel does not disguise herself as a boy. Everyone knows that Kel is a girl, and not everybody is happy with that fact. Many still think that girls should not be knights, and some of them are willing to act on that belief. Unfortunately for Kel, this includes her training master, Lord Wyldon.

Lord Wyldon is a traditionalist and is absolutely against girls becoming knights. To stop Kel from becoming a knight, he makes her life a living nightmare by putting her through an intensely grueling probationary period that no other knight-in-training has ever had to endure. Further set apart from her fellow trainees, Kel's path to knighthood is now that much harder. But she is determined to try. To say the least, Kel is not to be underestimated, as everyone is about to discover....

When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder -- much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing―not even a smear of blood―to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?

This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother?

Exotic and gritty, exhilarating and utterly gripping, Cassandra Clare's ferociously entertaining fantasy takes readers on a wild ride that they will never want to end.