The Heretic's Daughter By Kathleen Kent

The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent








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From the second I picked this book up I was hooked. It is a powerful story of a mother's love for her children and a family's ability to stay together through terrible adversity. I found myself so involved with the characters that I cried at their losses and smiled at their small triumphs. This is a must read for lovers of historical fiction.

The Amulet of Samarkand: The Bartimaeus Trilogy Book 1

This is an amazing read that I discovered by chance when my little sister was reading it aloud on the beach. Though I only listened briefly I was hooked and I decided at that moment I had to seek out the book and read it for myself.

The book itself is a tale of intrigue, magic and deception in what seems to be a turn of the century London. The story is told from two points of view one of the young magician's apprentice Nathaniel, and the other from the djinni Bartimaeus. I don't want to give to much away but the plot in brief is:

Nathaniel is the talented apprentice to a second rate magician named Arthur Underwood. Arthur Underwood is a pompous magician with little talent and is so wrapped up in his own self importance to notice the great skill of his apprentice Nathaniel. When Nathaniel summons the djinni Bartimaeus to steal the amulet of Samarkand from the magician Simon Lovelace he opens a can of worm that could cost him everything.

I can not say enough about this book other than the fact that I have already moved on to the second one "The Golem's Eye."  I laughed out loud, I was in suspense but at the end of the day I couldn't put it down.

Weird Florida

How curious and wonderful life can be. I am new to the Sunshine State and if I was to be perfectly honest I came here with certain reservations. To put it bluntly I thought Florida was nothing but a mix between Spring Breaker's, Disney, old people and alligators. I have never been so happy to admit that I was wrong, not only did I fall in love with Florida I am fascinated by it's colorful and often mysterious history.
How did this start? Did I stumble upon some really cool book or landmark? The answer is the TV. It was a dark and boring night with nothing especially good to watch on the tube when all of the sudden while watching the guide channel (yes it was that bad of a TV night) I came across a listing for Weird Florida on PBS. Well it caught my eye and so I flipped to the channel and was hooked.
Weird Florida is hosted by Charlie Carlson a native of Florida and currently a resident of my town and his adorable boxer named Miss Scarlet. Now after watching this television special I was hooked on exploring the locals mentioned. Needless to say I didn't exactly get to all the exploring however I did manage to make it to my local library. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mr. Carlson was an author of many books. I checked them all out and read them within days (it would've been hours but with kids just not possible)
So the lessons of this overly drawn out tale are:

• Don't discount TV, you could learn something

• Explore the places around you the are interesting things everywhere

• Nothing beats a library when you are bored or researching an adventure

Ok if you are interested in reading some of Mr. Carlson's great books here is a list of titles:

• Strangle Florida there are two volumes in this series

• Weird Florida