Book Link

From Amazon:

This book is a personal summary of the fears and frustrations of a young female with a disability while going through treatment for breast cancer. The author is now a first-time breast cancer survivor who tells of the faith, family, friends and fun that carried her through the ordeal. The author uses her faith, humor, honesty, and vulnerability to “have the conversation” with her readers about a topic that is uncomfortable for many in a way that is comfortable and conversational. She seeks to honor the memories of those that did not win their battles with cancer while here on Earth and remind her readers that life is beautiful!

My Review:

Mary Schmidt

5.0 out of 5 stars Life is beautiful

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2025

Life is beautiful. Literally. No doubt about it. First of all, I’m a registered nurse for decades, worked with cancer patients, those with chronic wound vac needs, and the entire everything one can do in nursing. I’ve had family with cancer. My youngest son had cancer and passed at age five years. Each cancer patient is unique! I mean that. No two cancer patients are the same. Two patients can have the exact same cancer and staging, receive the same treatment, but they are still unique. Our bodies are unique. How each body reacts is unique. Our strengths and weaknesses are unique. Hence, no two cancer patients are the same. I’ve heard others question why they lived, but their friend did not. We are unique. Melody writes from her heart. This memoir is from the heart. Her story is inspiring and also educational for others. I highly recommend this book. Life is beautiful is the perfect mantra.

Author Name: Sandro Martini

Book Title: Ciao, Amore, Ciao

Series: Alex Lago Book #1

Publication Date: March 26, 2025

Publisher: Black Rose Writing

Pages: 426 (kindle); 385 (paperback)

Genre: Historical Fiction

Any Triggers: War

Twitter Handle: @MartiniAlex @cathiedunn @marylschmidt

Instagram Handle: @lxmartini @thecoffeepotbookclub

Hashtags: #CiaoAmoreCiao #HistoricalFiction #WWII #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

Tour Schedule Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2025/07/blog-tour-ciao-amore-ciao-by-sandro-martini.html

Book Title and Author Name:

Ciao, Amore, Ciao

Sandro Martini

Blurb:

An enthralling dual-timeline WWII family mystery, based on the heartbreaking true story of the massacre in a small town in Italy in July of 1945, from award-winning, bestselling novelist Sandro Martini.

“A gripping saga that roots excruciating betrayals in a nation’s tragic history.” –Kirkus Reviews

In the winter of 1942, an Italian army of young men vanishes in the icefields of the Eastern Front. In the summer of 1945, a massacre in Schio, northeastern Italy, where families grieve the dead, makes international headlines.

In present-day Veneto, an ordinary man is about to stumble onto a horrifying secret.

Alex Lago is a jaded journalist whose career is fading as fast as his marriage. When he discovers an aged World War II photo in his dying father’s home, and innocently posts it to a Facebook group, he gets an urgent message: Take it down. NOW.

Alex finds himself digging into a past that needs to stay hidden. What he’s about to uncover is a secret that can topple a political dynasty buried under seventy years of rubble. Suddenly entangled in a deadly legacy, he encounters the one person who can offer him redemption, for an unimaginable price.

Told from three alternating points of view, Martini’s World War II tale of intrigue, war, and heartbreak pulls the Iron Curtain back to reveal a country nursing its wounds after horrific defeat, an army of boys forever frozen at the gates of Stalingrad, British spies scheming to reshape Italy’s future, and the stinging unsolved murder of a partisan hero.

Ciao, Amore, Ciao is a gripping story of the most heroic, untold battle of the Second World War, and a brilliantly woven novel that brings the deceits of the past and the reckoning of the present together.

“Balances action, suspense, and emotional depth to deliver a truly immersive, thought-provoking read with an unflinching look at the sins of the past and the lengths to which the powerful will go to keep them buried.” ~ Sublime Book Review

EXCERPT 2:

We order two cappuccinos outside the Bounty Bar and sit on cold wicker chairs. No blankets here—this isn’t Zürich, even if there’s a resemblance. It’s cold in the shadows of those brutalist palazzi that surround us, but we can smoke out here on the sidewalk under the apartment buildings that swallow the warmth, all those lives behind the yellow-lit windows.

“That was quite a coincidence,” she says. “Right?”

“No,” I reply, “it seriously was.” I watch the waitress place two capuccios on the table. I do up the top button of my coat, raise my collar and sink into its warmth. She looks at me with those eyes of hers and I ask, “Why were you there?”

“Where?”

“At—” I sip my cappuccino and watch my breath turn to mist. “We playing games again?”

“You first.”

“I don’t think I need to explain.”

She looks down at her steaming cappuccino. “I’m sorry,” she says.

I shrug. But I don’t trust myself to speak. Not for a long while. “Your turn.”

Cigarette between her fingers and a thumbnail between her teeth, she gazes at me as if searching for something that I know she’ll never find. It’s a strange sensation, to be seen. Then she crushes the cigarette into the ashtray, and I watch the smoke rise nervously into the cold. “Do you believe in destiny?” she asks me.

“Maybe, yes,” I tell her. “Maybe now more than ever.”

“Why?”

“Because I need it to make sense,” I reply before I can self-censor and glance down at the ring on her finger. “You’re married.”

“Yes,” she glances down at her wedding band and then my naked fingers. “Happily married. You?”

“Married,” I reply, but my mind is distracted by a thought that has just occurred to me. I’m about to ask when she says, “Come. Let’s take a walk,” and standing, she slips a five euro note under the ashtray and leads me up toward the Duomo casting its pompous shadow over the ornate Piazza Rossi. She turns left, down the hill past the Benetton store and the Palladio- designed façade of the Palazzo Schio. The shadows here, between the buildings, are dense, and the cold penetrates my coat.

“I was hoping you’d call,” I tell her.

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“I was going to send you a message tomorrow, actually.”

“Really?”

“Really, yes.”

“About?”

“The confession.”

“Yours?”

She smiles. I can almost picture my father as a young man walking these streets. He was born in the house down there on the left, just past the Due Spade. Nothing has changed much since back then; even the house, he’d told me once, still has the same front door. “Il freddo,” my father would say, as if it were a monster, “the cold, Sandro, always the cold.” Just there by the Due Spade, he told me, before the Nazis had left that April morning in 1945, he’d come across a dead German soldier in an alley with a set of binoculars around his neck and he’d had the desire to steal them.

I can’t understand why he’d come back here.

Sofia slows in front of a tiny piazza laid-out before a red stucco building. “The library,” she says. “This is where it happened.”

It takes me a moment. “Wait, this was—this was the jail?”

“Once a hospital, then a jail, and now a library,” she says. “Life compressed, no?”

There’s a tree that stands sentry before the building, a lone tree that rises in a stump from a vague round hole cut into the cobbles of the piazzetta. Circling the tree are two concentric, curved metal benches aiming at one another but never quite meeting. The tree stands fragile and cold, custodian to voices that have shared forgotten secrets on those benches, but I suspect that’s not our destiny, Sofia’s and mine.

“Come on.” Sofia leads me through a narrow door and into the yellow-lit library and down a long hallway flanked on one side by broad windows beyond which is a murky courtyard. I think of my father in Malo. I should be with him now, not here, not doing this. Whatever this is.

“Here and upstairs,” she says, “is where the shooting happened. Offices now.” There’s a reading room to our right, and behind the long communal tables, kids flick through pages under lights invisible in the sun, and people shuffle about in the silence of heavy carpets. There’s no link with this place and the past. It’s just bricks. And a place where things have always come to die—people first and now their words. History is memory and objects deflect memory. Who’d told me that?

Buy Link:

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/4A6R10

This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.

Author Bio:

Sandro Martini has worked as a word monkey on three continents. He’s the author of Tracks: Racing the Sun, an award-winning historical novel.

Sandro grew up in Africa to immigrant parents, studied law in Italy, chased literary dreams in London, hustled American dollars in New York City, and is now hiding out in Switzerland, where he moonlights as a Comms guy and tries hard not to speak German.

You can find him either uber-driving his daughter, chasing faster cars on the autobahn, or swimming in Lake Zurich with a cockapoo named Tintin.

His latest historical suspense novel, Ciao, Amore, Ciao, is now available.

Author Links:

Website: https://www.sandro-martini-writes.com/

Twitter / X: https://x.com/MartiniAlex

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SandroMartiniWrites/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lxmartini/

Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/sandro-martini  

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/SANDRO-MARTINI/author/B00JOBZR2C

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/55190776.Sandro_Martini

Book Link

From Amazon:

It is the year 2538 in the Democratic Union of Planets. While many promising young men aspire to join the Intergalactic Navy and explore the universe, Bill Stiltson, son of the inventor of the artificially intelligent android, just wants to run a microbrewery on the moon. This is why he illegally buys an abandoned android, whom he dubs Cassandra, and covertly puts her to work behind the bar. However, Bill is thrown into a mystery when his old commander flies his ship into the sun, killing everyone on board, and Bill becomes a part of the investigation. Bill and Cassandra, along with Bill’s adopted android brother, Isaac, get drawn into a Luddite conspiracy.

My Review:

I knew what this book was about, yet I never saw what the novel read as anything remotely what I’d thought in my poor little human brain. The novel is entertaining. Just as it’s also scary. Who knows who or what and where humanoid robots have already taken over planet Earth? Think about it. We have robots that perform high tech surgery on people and much more. Who can say that they know for a fact that they haven’t come across any robot in their lives? Sure, not everyone has dined at places with robot food servers, but I have more than once. Humans are becoming obsolete.

Book Link

From Amazon:

People tend to do crazy things under weird circumstances. Imagine a major hurricane threatening the shore during the July Fourth holiday – will those without souls betray their friends? Or will the tenderhearted prevail during Mother Nature’s wrath?

Two softhearted sisters throw caution to the wind and rescue a stranded hitchhiker during a mandatory evacuation. Add a homeless veterinarian for good measure and learn the secret of how all four weather the elements during an unexpected hurricane – especially behind closed doors when they face the passionate storms brewing in their hearts.

My Review:

Hurricanes are scary. We’ll stocked on supplies is a must. It is in the worst of times, that we can have the best of times. Hurricane is bad, but love with the right one can be found amid the storm. Two couples did just that.

Book Title: The Herb Knot  

Series:  n/a

Author Name: Jane Loftus 

Publication Date: May 8^th, 2025 

Publisher: HQ Digital 

Pages: 336 

Genre: Medieval Historical Fiction 

Any Triggers: Domestic abuse / violence (not much, but two short depictions), implied sexual assault, attempted murder, actual murder.

Twitter Handle: @cathiedunn @marylschmidt

Instagram Handles: @janeloftusauthor @thecoffeepotbookclub

Hashtags: #HistoricalFiction #medieval #Winchester #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

Tour Schedule Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2025/07/blog-tour-the-herb-knot-by-jane-loftus.html

Book Title and Author Name: 

The Herb Knot

By Jane Loftus

Audiobook Narrator: Matt Addis 

Blurb:  

The Hundred Years’ War comes to life in this spellbinding tale of love, betrayal and conspiracy … 

A quest born on the battlefield will change a young boy’s destiny… 

Rafi Dubois is five years old when his mother is murdered after the Battle of Crecy in 1346. Alone and lost, Rafi is given a token by the dying Englishman who tried to save his mother’s life: a half-broken family seal which he urges Rafi to return one day to Winchester. 

Years later, when Rafi saves a wealthy merchant’s wife from a brutal robbery, he is rewarded with the chance to travel to England, taking the seal with him. 

But when he reaches Winchester, Rafi finds himself in a turbulent world full of long-held allegiances, secrets and treachery. His path is fraught with danger and with powerful enemies working against him, Rafi falls in love with Edith, a market apothecary. But in doing so, Rafi unleashes a deadly chain of events which threatens to overwhelm them both… 

The Herb Knot is a sweeping and passionate novel set in one of the most tumultuous times in English history, from a powerful new voice.

Wot, no monarchs?

If, like me, you grew up on Jean Plaidy novels in the 70s, you’ll remember that she did a book for virtually every King and Queen of England, with a few extras thrown in. They seem very dated now although they did ignite that spark of interest in history which has never gone away.

Things have moved on, although there is still a focus on the main, high ranking characters in The Wars of the Roses, and of course, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn remain perennial favourites, and rightly so.

I had heard that publishers prefer a bit of name recognition if you’re positioned in the medieval era. It did give me pause for thought when I decided to write a novel without a single monarch or prince or princess in it (other than a very brief reference to an Earl, one I expect hardly anyone had any gossip on). But there are enough historical novels about ordinary people which are popular – the works of Karen Maitland, Carolyn Hughes – which convinced me to stick to my guns. I’d chosen ordinary people doing, on the whole, ordinary things and I didn’t want to change that and I was grateful that the book got taken up despite the lack of fancy characters.

Even so, novels about ordinary medieval life are still scarcer than Tudor or even Stuart ones and I realised I was taking a commercial risk. But since that was never the motivation for writing in the first place I decided not to care.

Why did I stick to the medieval era, despite having an academic background in Renaissance and Tudor / Stuart history? Well, it was a case of write what you love regardless (not that I don’t love Tudor and Renaissance novels, or Stuarts, or 18^th Century, or ALL OF THE HISTORY, because I do!). Also, since I’d never studied the medieval period, I really wanted to learn something new and for that reason alone it was worth the effort. Even if the book had never seen the light of day, the research and the study, at my great age, was really fun. Yes, you heard that right from the woman who used to virtually live in the political history department as a student. Social history suddenly turned out to be, much to my surprise, fun.

I’d assumed that all the stereotypes presented in films and the more flowery novels of ye olden dayes must have a basis in truth. Poor hygiene, everyone drunk because they couldn’t consume water, dull, drab colours, yet none of this was the case. Schoolgirl error. I think the thing which most took me by surprise was the sheer amount of colour people threw on their walls. Obviously not if they were extremely poor, but a merchant or a trader with a few coins to spare would be flinging all sorts of crazy at the interiors of their living space, not to mention places of worship. I then spent far too much time peering at the sparse evidence of colour in churches and medieval houses whenever I got the chance, looking for any sign of red or green or yellow. I never got thrown out, thankfully.

The effort made to make soap, too. I spent hours watching videos of scientists turning ashes into lye and then into soap, amazed at how they’d worked it out. Whilst I’d also known a little about herbalism, and that some herbal remedies have since lent themselves to the pharmaceuticals of the modern age, I had no idea as to the extent of it.

Suddenly I began to haunt medieval fairs, talking to virtually every single person at Evesham, for instance, feeling their clothing (they didn’t seem to mind) and fully intend to keep doing so.

I think what this means is that I’m going to keep reading novels of a more political history slant. I very much enjoy them, there are some great writers out there and I devour historical novels of all periods and hope never to stop. But I’m not sure I’ll be writing them, unless it’s about someone very obscure.

But next time I pick up that novel about Edward IV and watch him ride off to Tewkesbury, I’ll be wondering if he’d washed behind his ears with lye soap that morning.

Buy Link: 

Universal Buy Link:  https://books2read.com/u/bzN6Z2

Author Bio: 

Jane Loftus gained a degree in 16th Century European and British history from Surrey before taking a postgraduate degree in modern political history. As a lone parent, she worked in Winchester Waterstones before returning to IT once her son was older.

Hugely passionate about the Middle Ages, she drew inspiration for this novel from the medieval layout of Winchester which has been painstakingly documented.

Jane is originally from London but has lived in Winchester for over twenty years. When not writing, she is usually out walking or watching costume dramas on Netflix – the more medieval the better. She also plays far too many rpgs.

Author Links: 

Website: https://janeloftus.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61577760507961

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janeloftusauthor/  

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/janeloftus.bsky.social

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B0F3Q52X9Y

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/29357528.Jane_Loftus

Name: Carolyn Niethammer

Book Title: Everything We Thought We Knew

Series: n/a

Publication Date: May 1^st, 2025

Publisher: Booklocker

Pages: 254

Genre: Historical Fiction

Any Triggers: n/a

Twitter Handle: @cathiedunn @marylschmidt

Instagram Handles: @carolynniethammer @thecoffeepotbookclub

Hashtags: #HistoricalFiction #1970s #PoliticalProtest #Peace #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

Tour Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2025/08/blog-tour-everything-we-thought-we-knew-by-carolyn-niethammer.html

Book Title and Author Name:

Everything We Thought We Knew

by Carolyn Niethammer

Blurb:

In 1970, Christie left behind the comforts of L.A. and joined a New Age commune in rural Arizona. With the Vietnam War raging and the counterculture movement in full swing, she hoped to find a community to create a better society. But building a new culture is no easy task, especially when free love, psychedelics, and a war protest gone horribly wrong are thrown into the mix. Important secrets follow them beyond the commune.

Put on your tie-dyed shirt and come to Bella Vida as the friends try to change the rules of modern society, then face the repercussions of when middle age sets in.

Buy Link:

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/3GZ6ra

Author Bio: 

In the 1970s Carolyn Niethammer visited communes throughout the West and settled in an Arizona artists’ community for many years. Those years were important to who she became as she learned to gather wild foods and wrote several cookbooks centered on edible plants.

In “Everything We Thought We Knew” she hopes to shed light on an important part of American history where young people were advocating for peace in Vietnam War protests and fled to communes, seeking a lifestyle apart from the commercialism and isolation that had overtaken society.

Author Links:

Website: www.cniethammer.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carolyn.niethammer  / https://www.facebook.com/CarolynNiethammerAuthor 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolynniethammer/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tucsoncarolyn.bsky.social

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Carolyn-J.-Niethammer/author/B001H9XDNE

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/265163.Carolyn_Niethammer

Book Title: The Winding Dirt Road

Series: n/a

Author: Jiu Da

Publication Date: May 2025

Publisher: Historium Press

Pages: 391

Genre: Historical Fiction

Any Triggers: n/a

Twitter Handles: @JiudaLog @cathiedunn @marylschmidt

Instagram Handles: @jiuda99 @thecoffeepotbookclub

Hashtags: #TheWindingDirtRoad #HistoricalChineseFiction #PoliticalFiction #HistoricalFiction #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

Tour Schedule Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2025/07/blog-tour-the-winding-dirt-road-by-jiu-da.html

Book Title and Author Name:

The Winding Dirt Road

Jiu Da

Blurb:

Written as an antithesis to all first-hand and second-hand propaganda written by both Chinese and foreign writers for China in the good part of the 20th century in a fictional form, this collection, through different times and lands, gives insights into how human docile nature and characteristics are manipulated and brought about cultural and social corrosion over the century. The outcome thus sees “a monumental loss breathtakingly massive than any period that preceded it.” Subsequently, it foreshadows a system that “would bring out not the best but the worst in people, against people, any people.” (Event Horizon)

The first story is written as an introduction in addition to the prologue. From there, the collection proceeds with interrelated subjects or topics, building up causes and factors. At every turn, it gathers momentum and convenes halfway through the book to form the major components of critical perspectives at a juncture.

Hoarded in the depth of memories of the past decades, this has been a work long overdue.

Excerpt 1:

“[The follower] stated that what made a club function depended not entirely on its thick end but on the shaft that formed the handle. This nation’s tasks or ideology was the main element that formed the thick end, but it would need the handle to wield that power effectively. It required bruteness, loudness, and grip to make the club applicable.”

~ Ashes Of Aggravation

Buy Link:

Universal Buy Link: https://geni.us/VwB3xZ

Author Bio:

For years, Jiu Da has been intrigued by the question of whether the environment makes us who we are or whether we are the ones that shape our environment. For the good parts of early years, he stubbornly believed that motivation, talent, and effort could change the outcomes. It did not.

It was not until the virus hit while finding himself perching at home that he came to accept that the environment is indeed the hand that shapes human behavior.

It was during this time that he began his first work, drawing from his love in literature, history and a lifetime of seemingly useless yet fascinating knowledge hoarded in the depth of his mind.

Author Links:

Author Page on Publisher’s Website: https://www.historiumpress.com/jiu-da

Twitter / X: https://x.com/JiudaLog

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jiuda99/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jiuda.bsky.social

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jiu-Da/author/B0F63SL22K

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/55530207.Jiu_Da

Wow! Time flies!