Book Review for THE NINETY-NINTH REUNION by Dene Hellman

Title: The Ninety-Ninth Reunion
Author: Dene Hellman
Publisher: Second Wind Publishing
Genre: Mainstream
ISBN: 978 1938101922

Ninety-Ninth Reunion

by Dene Hellman

Book review by Maribeth Shanley

I totally enjoyed this book!  I found Maggie’s quirkiness and sarcasm endearing.  Lee, a former victim of bullying before it was called that, turned out to be a formidable woman who knew what she wanted and had earned being happy.  Ben, a very decent Midwesterner, was very unassuming.  Then there’s Caroline!  My husband was born and raised in Iowa.  Fortunately, we never spent much time going back to his hometown.  Now that I’ve read The Ninety-Ninth Reunion, I’m glad we didn’t.  This book gave me the willies on what I may have encountered.  I’m also now very thankful I’ve never made the effort to go to a high-school reunion.  Those were never my favorite years; and, now, I’ll gladly let that sleeping dog lie.  The Ninety-Ninth Reunion…good to the last drop!

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Maribeth Shanley lives in Myrtle Beach, SC with her husband Bob Bibb.  They have three furry and three feathered children.  Maribeth is now retired from McCormick and Co., Inc. of the famous spice brand.  Once retired she decided to try her hand at writing.  “I’ve always loved to write and dreamed of becoming a writer.  Never did I imagine, however, it would actually happen.” Shanley is the author of the novel Crack in the World, which is based on her own experiences as a sexually abused child.

 

 

Book Review for THE NINETY-NINTH REUNION by Dene Hellman

Title: The Ninety-Ninth Reunion
Author: Dene Hellman
Publisher: Second Wind Publishing
Genre: Mainstream
ISBN: 978 1938101922

Ninety-Ninth Reunion

by Dene Hellman

Book review by Carrie Jane Knowles

Great read! Dene Hellman keeps you on the edge of your seat in The Ninety-Ninth Reunion as you turn the pages and begin to understand just how dangerous it might be to go back to your high school reunion to kick up the dust of the past!”

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Carrie Jane Knowles has been a freelance writer for the past forty years. She has published widely in both fiction and non-fiction and has won a number of prestigious writing awards, including: Midland Authors Poetry Award, the American Heart and Torch Award for Creative Journalism, and Glimmer Train’s Very-Short Fiction Contest. She is the author of Apricots in a Turkish Garden.

Carrie and her husband, Jeff Leiter, live in Raleigh, North Carolina. They have three children.

 

Book Review for APRICOTS IN A TURKISH GARDEN by Carrie Jane Knowles

Title: Apricots in a Turkish Garden
Author: Carrie Jane Knowles
Publisher: Second Wind Publishing, LLC
Genre: Short Stories
ISBN: 978-1630661090

Apricots in a Turkish Garden

by Carrie Jane Knowles

Book review by Dene Hellman

The ten stories told in Apricots in a Turkish Garden are penetrating explorations of sensitive relationships that try the souls of their participants. Carrie Knowles writes each with a perceptive voice that takes no prisoners. Mothers and daughters cope with Alzheimer’s; a daughter grows up adjusting and readjusting to her father’s blindness; a woman dismays her relatives with her determination to find family ties to Clint Eastwood. It isn’t a stretch to think we must have met all of Knowles’ characters at one time or another and that we now know them for who they are.

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A native of Iowa, Dene Hellman has lived in North Carolina since the ‘80s. She is a graduate of The University of Wisconsin Green Bay and has written professionally in numerous genres, including corporate publications, executive speeches, newspaper feature writing, commercial videos, and two books of poetry with Annie O’Dell. She is the author of The Ninety-Ninth Reunion and The People Under the House. She currently lives and writes in Winston-Salem, NC. Dene has four daughters and six grandsons.