Two new book reviews - awesome books!

I've got two new books to recommend to you today. Reviews for them have just posted to Curled Up With a Good Book.

One is a history book, a World War II book. The other is another modern day thriller from Lisa Gardener. Both of them are excellent books.

The first is War Stories of the Battle of the Bulge, edited by Michael Green and James D. Brown. This is the story of the Battle of the Bulge, as told by those who lived it. The editors took entries from the Bulge Bugle (the newsletter of the organization of Bulge veterans) as well as personal stories from soldiers who responded to their request (also put in that newsletter).

Some of the stories show a lighter side to the horrors of war, while others show the devastation, surprise, and valor of these men. All of them are interesting.

From the review:

"Most of the stories are told in a straightforward, easy-to-read fashion, however. What’s more, they’re interesting because they suck you in to the frozen wastes of 1944 Belgium, either feeling the horror of your fellow soldiers being overrun or maybe some funny little incident that makes you smile even as you’re reading some other terrible story. The entries that mention the German massacre of American soldiers at Malmedy are especially harsh, as there are no charitable feelings toward the Germans after that point."

A great book for those who like to read about World War II.

The second one is Live to Tell, another thriller by Lisa Gardener. I had lukewarm feelings toward her last book, The Neighbor, but I had a good feeling about this book for some reason.

This one is the story of family annihilations and kids who are mentally unstable, a really sad topic, actually.

Boston detective D.D. Warren returns, and this time she's not as much of a cipher as she was in the previous book. Of course, the added dimension is that she's extremely sexually frustrated, but I guess that's a dimension at least!

From the review:

"Danielle is the survivor of a mass murder in which her entire family was killed by her father. She has no idea why, but he shot himself in her bedroom doorway rather than kill her as well. Racked with survivor’s guilt, she works as a nurse in a care facility for mentally ill children. Victoria is the mother of a troubled child prone to fits of violent rage, a boy who has sworn to kill her at some point, yet she won’t abandon him, even if her husband has taken their daughter because Victoria refuses to institutionalize the boy. D.D. Warren is a Boston homicide detective tasked with solving one, and then two, family annihilations, where it looks like the father massacred the family before killing himself. How do these three stories tie together? Whatever the answer, it could result in an even more brutal murder."

Gardener excels at telling the rest of the story, and the climax itself is riveting.

Check out the reviews, and let me know what you think!