5 REASONS TO WATCH BERLIN STATION

What it is about

It's a 10-part spy series which follows Daniel Miller (Richard Armitage) just arrived at the CIA foreign station in Berlin, Germany. Miller has a clandestine mission: to uncover the source of a leak who has supplied information to a now-famous whistleblower named Thomas Shaw. After  ten years spent as a CIA analyst, Daniel goes back to the rough-and-tumble world of the field agent guided by veteran Hector DeJean (Rhys Ifans).

BOOK REVIEW - LUCA DI FULVIO, THE BOY WHO GRANTED DREAMS

The Boy Who Granted Dreams

New York, 1909: Fifteen-year-old Cetta arrives on a freighter with nothing but her infant son Natale: strikingly blond, dark-eyed, and precocious. They've fled the furthest reaches of southern Italy with the dream of a better life in America. 

But even in the "Land of the Free," the merciless laws of gangs rule the miserable, poverty-stricken, and crime-filled Lower East Side. Only those with enough strength and conviction survive. As young Natale grows up in the Roaring Twenties, he takes a page from his crippled mother's book and finds he possesses a certain charisma that enables him to charm the dangerous people around him ... 

Weaving Natale's unusual life and quest for his one true love against the gritty backdrop of New York's underbelly, Di Fulvio proves yet again that he is a master storyteller as he constructs enticing characters ravaged by circumstance, driven by dreams, and awakened by destiny.  (Book Blurb)

AUTHOR GUEST POST - SIDDHI PALANDE, THIS HAPPENS ONLY IN INDIA

India is a country of age-old traditions and customs. We have an auspicious day every day of every week, 365 days. We have set limits for everything. No brochures are issued but we know how a man ought to behave and how a woman ought to react. There are one too many curfews imposed. Our social setup is as much stifling as it is welcoming.  However, when it comes to marriages we are tad too strict.

BOOK BLAST & GIVEAWAY: JAMIE BROOK THOMPSON, A REAL LIFE FAIRYTALE

   

Ready for a new book blast + giveaway? Real life fairy-tales by Jamie Brook Thompson!

MOVIE REVIEW - A CURE FOR WELLNESS

        

A cure for wellness sounds rather contradictory. Nevertheless, it does exist. At least in a movie by Gore Verbinski,  which this article is going to be about.

It is the story of a young and ambitious worker of a New York company who is given an important mission to visit a forsaken health center in Swiss Alps in order to get his boss back out of the prolonged vacation. He warned everyone that he is not going to be back by means of a strange letter. It makes it to where everyone worries in the company and which is why a man was sent there to solve this problem. There are rich and powerful people having a rest, stressed due to hectic life for a treatment with a water with curative powers.

On arriving and spending some time within its walls, he realizes that miracle-working procedures of spa-saloon are not what they seem to be. While the main character begins to unwrap scary secrets of the place, his sound mind undergoes a checkout for stiffness. Despite all the attempts, Lockhart is not allowed to meet his boss due to some reasons.

Failed to accomplish the mission, he is going to go back to New York but it looks like now he suffers from the same weird illness, which is the reason why all the rest guests of the center are there wishing to get their dose of the cure. With each new day, hopes of Lockhart to be cured and returned home are fading away. Instead, he has thrilling hallucinations and borderland between fact and fiction disappears.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS 2018 - INTERVIEW WITH PAUL ERYK ATLAS: BECOMING HEATHCLIFF

Shao'ri Morris and Paul Eryk Atlas in a scene from Wuthering Heights

Though he may apparently look quite the brooding Romantic hero, he shares very little with the protagonist of Wuthering Heights. He is no Heathcliff at all.  Paul Eryk Atlas loves smiling, is the least vengeful creature in the world and has such a joyful disposition that he had fun even answering my teacher-mode questions and made this interview such fun to read! 

I can't wait to see Paul on screen when the new Wuthering Heights will be out in 2018 to celebrate Emily Bronte 200th birthday anniversary!    

SHANNON WINSLOW PRESENTS LEAP OF FAITH FROM HER NEW CROSSROADS COLLECTION

Leap of Faith: Write What You Know

Who hasn’t wondered at least once how life would have changed by making an alternate choice at some crucial moment in the past? Where would you be today if you’d turned right instead of left at an important crossroads or been able to sidestep a particular misfortune? Or perhaps you’ve daydreamed about a different life altogether, in a different place and time.

That’s what the stories of my new Crossroads Collection are all about: turning points, possibilities, and second chances. Each book features a new hero/heroine who’s given the extraordinary gift of a second chance at life, the chance to answer for themselves the intriguing question “what if?” The first two books feature Ben Lewis (a struggling minor-league baseball player) and Hope O’Neil (a Jane Austen-obsessed college student). Their unique personalities and choices take them on radically different adventures. 

Maria Grazia has graciously offered to host both these new novels on blog tour today – Leapof Faith here, and Leap of Hope over at My Jane Austen Book Club..

BOOK UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT: KEEPING KINLEY BY ANNETTE K. LARSEN

Keeping Kinley by Annette K. Larsen 

  He's noble. She's common. It's complicated. Kinley is content with her common life until a chance meeting with an old friend—a noble—brings the possibility of love. Though Rylan pursues her with a charming carelessness, she doesn’t dare hope that their relationship will be accepted. When Kinley’s livelihood is threatened, she is thrust into his world as a servant, but the Rylan she encounters there isn’t the quirky friend she thought she knew. Can she trust him, or will she be forced to accept that her dreams are only that—dreams?  

WUTHERING HEIGHTS 2018: THE TRAILER IS OUT! + INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR NINA ELISAVETA ABRAHALL

Last week I posted the first installment in my Wuthering Heights 2017 series: my interview with Shao'ri Morris, the actress starring as Catherine Earnshaw in the upcoming movie. Today I've got not one but two absolute exclusive features: the fist trailer and an interview with director and screenplay writer, Nina Elisaveta Abrahall. She kindly answered all my questions, even the most insidious ones, with generosity and open-mindedness. You know, I even dared ask whether we truly needed a new version of Emily Bronte's novel after so many had been already made. I think she has a point there! Discover more reading through the interview and enjoy the trailer at the end of the post! By the way, my next interview is with Heathcliff, that is Paul Eryk Atlas.  Stay tuned!

I'VE SEEN MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

Lee Chandler is a brooding, irritable loner who works as a handyman for a Boston apartment block. One damp winter day he gets a call summoning him to his hometown, north of the city. His brother's heart has given out suddenly, and he's been named guardian to his 16-year-old nephew. As if losing his only sibling and his doubts about raising a teenager weren't enough, his return to the past re-opens an unspeakable tragedy . Throughout the movie Lee relives past memories  and the viewer discovers what caused him to leave Manchester and distance himself from everyone there (from imdb). 

With six Oscar nominations and several Baftas and Golden Globes received, Manchester by the sea has been acclaimed as one of the best 2016 movies. I agree, of course. Especially after being disappointed by pluri-awarded La la Land, I can't say the same for Kenneth Lonergan' s small-budget movie.