Fiction

Title: Hollywood Buzz: A Pucci Lewis Mystery
Author: Margit Liesche
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Reviewer: Claudia Pemberton

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1590585798

Pucci Lewis was used to ferrying fighter planes and undercover work. But it's the dark hours of WWII, and Hollywood's biggest stars, studio moguls, and Washington bureaucrats are working hand-in-glove to merge entertainment and propaganda. Pucci has been dispatched to the First Motion Picture Unit, where a make-or-break documentary on the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) is underway.

Pucci is stepping in for a sister-WASP, now hospitalized in critical condition after an all-too-deliberate plane crash. But who's the saboteur? Why the cover-up? Pucci is drawn into a high-profile homicide. A big-name director has been murdered, possibly by Nazi operatives. Military intelligence wants Pucci to learn what she can from her inside position.

Bela Lugosi is a frequent visitor to the Beverly Hills mansion where Pucci is temporarily billeted. His "niece," a rising starlet and also the housekeeper, has a history with the Hungarian resistance. But Pucci doesn't trust the girl.

Can Pucci steadfastly maneuver through movie land and its narcissistic denizens, finally unraveling the uncertainties to prove she has the right stuff?

Title: The Final Salute: Together We Live On
Author: Kathleen Rodgers
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Reviewer: Bill McDonald

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): ISBN / EAN

At a small air base in Louisiana, family man and seasoned fighter pilot, Tuck Westerfield's life could literally crash down around him. In this business of flying fighter jets, the odds of staying alive are stacked against him.

Haunted by the memories of dead friends killed in air mishaps, this Vietnam vet and father of three must deal with a devious commander, an animal-crazed neighbor, whose husband hates pilots, a beautiful, but suspicious wife and a rebellious teenage daughter. The last thing he needs is another war.

But when Iraq invades Kuwait in the middle of a muggy Louisiana summer, duty calls. Tuck and the other pilots in his squadron head to the Middle East.

Back in Louisiana, Gina Westerfield and other military wives learn that war is hell on the home front, too.

Later, when tragedy strikes, everyone at Beauregard Air Force Base must pull together and live on or forever be consumed with grief.

Title: True Colors
Author: Erin Rainwater
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Reviewer: Joyce Faulkner

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0741430746

Cassie Golden feels called to leave her safe but lonely Pennsylvania farm to tend the Union wounded in Alexandria, Virginia. Love and conspiratorial intrigue enter her life there, both arriving in the form of an intelligence officer, Major Michael Byron. When duty sends him away, Cassie becomes unwittingly enmeshed in a mosaic of espionage, kidnapping, imprisonment and murder. Their unanticipated reunion only creates a chasm between them as sweeping as the one dividing the nation. Only the truth can bridge such a chasm. And truth is in short supply.

Title: Honor Defended
Author: D. H. Brown
Genre: Fiction, Thriller
Reviewer: Rob Ballister

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0979874467

Major Westfall is back, in another non-stop action adventure. On a freezing cold winter morning he is awakened before dawn by a frantic call from an old friend and War Brother. He is being called out to hunt for the killers who burned down a woman's house on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, abducted her, and left behind the beheaded body of her Marine Corps husband. On the beach behind the Holbech place, he finds signs that someone came ashore on the last high tide. Tracks lead to a pile of driftwood where Black Dog noses out the family's wounded dog. Putting his ear to the Hoko grapevine, he hears of a break-in at the local gravel quarry, where explosives and detonators were taken. A neighbor's grandchild mentions a missing school janitor, and the name her classmates gave him, Aladdin. When the Major takes a sneak and peek he unearths a terrorist sleeper. Calling in the troops, he prepares to do battle deep in the Olympic Peninsula wilderness where a cadre of evil souls have gathered, intent on creating havoc with the Washington State's ferries. HONOR DEFENDED occurs over one 24 hour period of heart-pounding action in which old friends are met, new ones made, the young must grow up fast as lives are broken, and the honor of a War Brother is defended.

Title: The Sandman
Author: David Lucero
Genre: Fiction, Thriller
Reviewer: Pat McGrath Avery

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1438937946

The countdown to nuclear disaster begins when the saboteur code name: SANDMAN strikes a devastating blow to Iran. He has infiltrated the Bushehr Nuclear Research Facility and created a fire that threatens a reactor core meltdown. All the Iranians have to do to save their reactor is to get the Emergency Core-Coolant System back online. But the situation turns from bad to worse when they learn the saboteur has barricaded himself in the alternate secondary control room that accesses the coolant. Now a high-ranking Iranian officer takes charge to battle the SANDMAN in what becomes a match of wits as each tries to outmaneuver the other in the dark corridors of the underground complex. While deadly gunfights between the SANDMAN and Iranian soldiers ensue the work crews desperately attempt to put out the fire in the electrical control room to regain access to the coolant. But with each passing second the temperature in the reactor core quickly rises...bringing them closer to nuclear disaster!