Briar Patch Books

Category: Women’s Fiction

  • A mother’s love, a mother’s war

    This fine first novel by a North Carolina author has its official debut this week. Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson MEASURE OF DEVOTION. By Nell Joslin. Regal House Publishing. 254 pages. $20.95, hardcover. Susannah Shelburne has more than her share of worries when we meet her in late October of 1863. The deprivations of the…

  • A family saga, set in a coastal Eden

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson WHERE THE RIVERS MERGE. By Mary Alice Monroe. William Morrow. 352 pages. $30, hardcover. This is a lovely book, a well-written novel that spans 80 years of a remarkable woman’s life in the South Carolina Low Country. We first meet Eliza Rivers when she’s eight years old, in 1908, and…

  • The dancing woman speaks to us all

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson DANCING WOMAN. By Elaine Neill Orr. Blair/Carolina Wren Press. 291 pages. $28.95, hardcover. Elaine Neill Orr is a gifted writer whose works are inspired and enriched by her creative temperament and her unusual perspective on the world. In her third novel, Dancing Woman, she is perhaps at the height of…

  • She got by with a little help from her corgi

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson THE QUEEN’S FAITHFUL COMPANION. By Eliza Knight. William Morrow. 368 pages. $18.99, trade paperback. I was between books, looking for something engaging and not too heavy, when the mail lady delivered an advance proof of The Queen’s Faithful Companion. The subtitle read: “A Novel of Queen Elizabeth II and her…

  • When murder and fiction collide

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS. By David Bell. Berkley. 416 pages. $27 hardcover. David Bell’s latest thriller has all the ingredients for a great summer read. The fast-moving plot is gripping, with plenty of twists and turns, and more than a few surprises. It’s set in academia, at a fictitious Kentucky…