*THE DRESS LODGER* by Sheri Holman

Industrial Age Europe was a hothouse for disease -- cholera, bubonic plague, and typhoid epidemics were common and as deadly as war. In 1831, a particularly virulent outbreak of cholera decimated cities on the Continent and in the British Isles. Spread by the "traveling salesmen" of the great mercantile fleets, the disease took up residence in dank, miasmic neighborhoods and preyed upon the young, the old, and the very poor. In her Dickensian second novel, The Dress Lodger, Sheri Holman shows what happens when cholera invades the riverside city of Sunderland, England.
It is on Sunderland's mucky, airless streets that we meet the story's "dress lodger," a 16-year-old single mother named Gustine, whose baby has been born with a bizarre anatomical deformity. To keep the boy alive, Gustine works as a prostitute. After a full day's work at a potter's factory, Gustine dons an expensive blue gown loaned out by her sleazy, libertine landlord, Whilky Robinson. To ensure the dress's safety, Whilky also assigns a shadow to Gustine -- a deformed crone appropriately known as The Eye -- to watch Gustine's every move and goad her to keep looking for clients. The dress does attract upscale clients, but it hardly affords Gustine treatment befitting a lady. When Gustine's admirers realize that she is a whore, they roughly take her in squalid alleys, dimly lit parks, or in the upstairs room at an East End pub called The Labour in Vain.
There she meets Dr. Henry Chiver, a young, effete teacher of anatomy. Chiver came to Sunderland in 1830 fleeing disgrace and outrage in Edinburgh, where he was implicated in the procurement of bodies for medicine's higher purpose. In addition to his legitimate need for cadavers, there is a darker side to Chiver's lust for the dead. He is a collector of specimens, and his study is lined not by books but with jars containing organs and freaks of nature preserved in formaldehyde. When Gustine learns of Chiver's morbid hobby, she offers to troll the piers and alleyways of Sunderland for corpses. For this, she will of course pocket a shilling or two. Her real motive, however, is to ingratiate herself with a doctor who can prolong the life of her son.
When cholera begins to overwhelm the city, Henry's supply of bodies is interrupted by a grieving, suspicious populace that has begun to mistrust all men of medicine. As a result, he must resort to his old ways, robbing graves and the lodging houses of the recent dead. Such disappearances further raise the ire of the city's poor, who are convinced that the disease has been created by the government to weed them out of society. Henry and his Uncle Clanny, a much more principled doctor, are outraged at the ignorance of the city's poor, who cling to the poisoned vestments and remains of their loved ones and thereby spread the infection. A popular melodrama called "Cholera Morbus" further stokes the heat between the poor and the rich, the doctors and the patients, turning the quarantined city into a theater of superstition.
At the same time, Henry has become dangerously preoccupied with Gustine's son, an obsession that disturbs the fine balance he maintains between fetish and Hippocratic duty. Sensing Henry's tenuous grip on sanity, Gustine backs out of an arrangement to have her son live with him. But nothing will stop Henry -- not even cholera's blue stranglehold on Sunderland, or the ravages a mob inflicts upon his elegant townhouse. When she seems bereft of hope, Gustine makes amends and joins forces with a most unlikely partner.


This is a book that was highly recommended by many on my reading boards. I tried my best to read about Gustine, the young prostitute, but I had to put the book down 2/3 into it. She is involved with a young doctor harvesting bodies for autopsy learning. Life is just too short to read something one doesn't like.

*WE ARE ALL WELCOME HERE* by Elizabeth Berg

It is the summer of 1964. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the town of Elvis's birth, tensions are mounting over civil-rights demonstrations occurring ever more frequently - and violently - across the state. But in Paige Dunn's small, ramshackle house, there are more immediate concerns. Challenged by the effects of the polio she contracted during her last month of pregnancy, Paige is nonetheless determined to live as normal a life as possible and to raise her daughter, Diana, in the way she sees fit - with the support of her tough-talking black caregiver, Peacie.Diana is trying in her own fashion to live a normal life. As a fourteen-year-old, she wants to make money for clothes and magazines, to slough off the authority of her mother and Peacie, to figure out the puzzle that is boys, and to escape the oppressiveness she sees everywhere in her small town. What she can never escape, however, is the way her life is markedly different from others'. Nor can she escape her ongoing responsibility to assist in caring for her mother. Paige Dunn is attractive, charming, intelligent, and lively, but her needs are great - and relentless. As the summer unfolds, hate and adversity will visit this modest home. Despite the difficulties thrust upon them, each of the women will find her own path to independence, understanding, and peace. And Diana's mother, so mightily compromised, will end up giving her daughter an extraordinary gift few parents could match.


Rate: 5 out of 5. I am such a big fan of Elizabeth Berg, this was her best book by far for me. Read it in 2 sittings because I had to leave, go to work, come home and finish it and I love books that are that readable. One of the finer books on human kindness, toughness and determination that I have read. Truly a wonderful story that Ms. Berg based on someone's life, someone that she had received a letter about from the daughter. Initially, she would never have written this type of book because she is so adept at telling her own stories, not others. I am so glad that she did decide to tell it though, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

*HONEYMOON* by James Patterson

How does it feel to be desired by every man and envied by every woman? Wonderful. This is the life Nora Sinclair has dreamed about, the life she's worked hard for, the life she will never give up. Meet Nora Sinclair.
When FBI agent John O'Hara first sees her, she seems perfect. She has the looks. The career. The clothes. The wit. The sophistication. The tantalizing sex appeal. The whole extraordinary package - and men fall in line to court her. She doesn't just attract men, she enthralls them. If you dare.
So why is the FBI so interested in Nora Sinclair? Mysterious things keep happening to people around her, especially the men. And there is something dangerous about Nora when Agent O'Hara looks closer - something that lures him at the same time that it fills him with fear. Is there something dark hidden among the unexplained gaps in her past? And as he spends more and more time getting to know her, is he pursuing justice? Or his own fatal obsession?


Rated 3.5 out of 5. Easy reading, but I expected more from James Patterson. I like his books with Lucas Davenport, the detective series, much better.

*CRACKED* by Dr. Drew Pinsky

Dr. Drew Pinsky is best known as cohost of the long-running advice program Loveline. But he is also the medical director of an addiction rehab clinic in Southern California, treating the severest cases of drug dependency and psychiatric breakdown. Now, in this emotionally arresting narrative, Pinsky takes readers into the hospital with him, sharing the stories behind his struggle to help the patients he calls "the disconnected" regain control of their lives.
It is a struggle that feels triumphant one moment, catastrophic the next. The patients Pinsky treats come from every walk and stage of life -- from a young graphic artist to an elderly onetime socialite, from a music-industry talent scout to a BMW-driving soccer mom. Their nemeses include alcohol and marijuana; ecstasy, GHB, and heroin; speed, cocaine, Klonopin, and Vicodin. Yet their trials are eerily similar: Pinsky's patients are all fighting a disease that seizes control of mind and body alike, shattering their lives and depriving them of the very thing they need to survive -- the ability to maintain lasting connections with other people. Each of these patients is rendered with a doctor's compassion and an eye for telling detail. Some we encounter on the promising road to recovery, others are aggressive, subversive, and actively damaging to those around them. Yet the most indelible portraits are those of victims teetering uneasily between recovery and oblivion -- patients like Earle, whose capacity for human connection has been eroded by a lifetime of crack cocaine, and the dynamic, heartbreaking Amber, whose harrowing struggle with opiate addiction tests Pinsky's patience, self-control, and faith.
And at the quietheart of the book is Pinsky himself, his voice urgent, intimate, vulnerable, and utterly compelling. As he struggles to manage his own compulsions, we witness the extraordinary human toll addiction and other behavioral and psychological dysfunctions can take on patient and doctor alike -- and also the life-affirming magic that each can find on the road to recovery.


Another 4.5 out of 5. I loved this book. As a nurse, it was wonderful and refreshing to see a doctor that cared for his patients as nurses do, with compassion and caring, not as a disease. I have never read anything by this author before, but I loved this one.

*INSIDE THE MIND OF SCOTT PETERSON* by Dr. Keith Ablow, MD

The highly publicized Scott Peterson murder case captivated a public hungry for the answer to one question: Why would a man with no known history of violent crime or mental illness and with a pretty wife about to give birth brutally murder her and his unborn son? Forensic psychiatrist Keith Ablow's national media appearances, including a groundbreaking interview on Oprah, resulted in enormous public response, saying that his theories about the spawning of a killer inside Peterson were the first that made sense to them. Members of Scott's and Laci's families have also stated that his comments were the first that helped them understand what might have happened inside Scott's mind. Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson takes readers into the psyche of a killer, exploring:How Scott Peterson's empathy for others was shattered by a three-generation "bloodline" of childhood loss and abandonmentWhy an addiction to sex took root in Peterson's psycheWhy Peterson's meeting Amber Frey while his wife was pregnant triggered the "perfect" psychological stormClues to Peterson's guilt in his interviews with Gloria Gomez and Diane SawyerWhat Peterson was probably thinking as he listened to testimony in court and received his death sentenceWhy Peterson could kill again, if released Using contacts at the FBI, and hiring private investigators and researchers, Keith Ablow delves deeply into Scott Peterson's life story to answer the question: How did an all-American boy turn into a ruthless killer?


Rated: 4.5 out of 5 Quite an interesting book! I couldn't hardly believe the coldness and the aloofness of Mr. Peterson during his trial and subsequent conviction until I read this book. A true sociopath and narcissist described very thoroughly by this author.

*A MILLION LITTLE PIECES* by James Frey

James Frey's memoir of drug addition and recovery was a bestseller even before Oprah Winfrey picked it for her book club in 2005, but the subsequent revelations about discrepancies between the story and the author’s real life touched off a national debate about the line between fact and fiction. Filled with graphic scenes of epic substance abuse and the torments of withdrawal, A Million Little Pieces was widely heralded upon its publication as a harrowing, self-lacerating, and courageously confessional autobiography. It received many admiring critical reviews, carried cover endorsements from noted literati, and was selected by Barnes & Noble as a 2003 Discover pick. (Our reviewer called Frey “prodigiously talented,” “poetic,” and “unflinchingly honest”). In January 2006, the author acknowledged the truth of charges that many details in the book were embellished or fabricated. In a note to readers that was prepared for subsequent printings, he apologized to those who felt they had been misled and explained why he wrote the book the way he did. Reactions to these revelations included soul-searching by publishers about their responsibilities for ensuring accuracy, ruminations by critics on the line between fact and fiction in modern culture, and spirited defenses of the author by readers who maintained that the book's inspirational message was of primary importance. One thing seems certain: A Million Little Pieces is a book that promises to have a long-lasting impact.

Rated this as a 5 out of 5. I love James Frey and feel that he was literally 'crucified' by Oprah Winfrey. Having much experience in the field of addiction as a parent and also as a nurse, Mr. Frey has captured the mindset and the thinking and rationalizing better than anyone I have ever read in the past. In spite of all of the controversy vis-a-vis Ms. Oprah, this is a book that I highly recommend and shame on you, Ms. Oprah!

*THE YEAR OF PLEASURES* by Elizabeth Berg

Betta Nolan moves to a small town after the death of her husband to try to begin life anew. Though still dealing with her sorrow, Betta nonetheless is determined to find pleasure in her simple daily routines. Among those who help her in both expected and unexpected ways are the ten-year-old boy next door, three wild women friends from her college days with whom she reconnects, a young man who is struggling to find his place in the world, and a handsome widower who is ready for love.Elizabeth Berg's The Year of Pleasures is about acknowledging the solace found in ordinary things: a warm bath, good food, the beauty of nature, music, and art. Above all, The Year of Pleasures is about the various kindnesses people can - and do - provide one another. Betta's journey from grief to joy is a meaningful reminder of what is available to us all, regardless of what fate has in store. This exquisite book suggests that no matter what we lose, life is ready to give bountifully to those who will receive.

Rated this as a 4.5 out of 5. I love Elizabeth Berg and I loved this book, however, the score is not 5 because I have read other books by her that I loved better.