Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris

The resilience of the human spirit.

From Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz/Birkenau to Gulag Vorkuta and back to Czechoslovakia Cilka is beautiful and she is a survivor. Her body may be taken, used, and abused but her soul and memories cannot be touched. 

Starting at age 16, Cilka's journey through pain, terror, death, friendship, betrayal, and finally love is gently traversed through flashbacks. The plot is carefully constructed and, in the end, the parts are greater than the whole. Morris’ careful research and interviews of Lale Sokolov creates a historical novel that plumbs the depths of systems that oppress and compromise the human spirit. Characters are so real the reader will remember them as people who lived and died under circumstances hard to imagine, yet clearly drawn. The cover draws one into the journey and dismemberment that comes through years of survival in concentration camps and gulags. Although this is a continuance of Morris’ novel Tattooist of Auschwitz, it is a stand-alone novel.

This book will be released 10/1/2019

The Crane Diaries: Dirty Blood by Apryl Baker

Deep in the swamps of the Louisiana bayou, a horrifying secret lies waiting to be discovered: a chilling legendary a beast born from a curse…the Rougarou. Emma Rose Crane lets hunter Cass Willow convince her to help him on a ghost hunt, she never imagined she’d be trudging through the swamps, let alone stumbling upon a mess of mangled bodies—or running into the creature responsible for the rotting remains. When the creature attacks, it infects them with the same curse which drove it mad. There is only one hope—kill the beast to cure the infection before they succumb to the hunger eating them alive.

The cover is intriguing with an offer of seeing through a thin veil into the paranormal world beyond – legendary creatures, curses, demon, angels and of course Louisiana voodoo. The title takes the reader more deeply into the series The Crane Diaries and the complicated and complex members of the Crane family, especially the protagonist. All the characters are three dimensional and well developed. The plot flows, except the extended passages referring to previous books, creating the feeling the reader needs to read the whole series in order to understand this book. It could otherwise easily stand-alone since all the plot elements are there. Some careful content editing could eliminate this problem. The dialogue is genuine and moves the storyline forward as do the chapters. The copyediting was spot on.

Readers of previous books in the series should note that Baker is moving Emma from a strictly young adult genre to a college-age romance and thus into more sexual settings. There is an abundance of kisses and very warm hugs and a lot of lap sitting. Although the last scene leads us into a bedroom scene, the act itself is beyond the pages of the book. Following titles may well move into more adult situations.

Baker grew up in the mountains of West Virginia where she now lives. She loves scary movies, books, writing books, and entertaining people with her “silly stories.”