Cheryl's Book Nook

Book Details: Book Title: Velvalee Dickinson: The "Doll Woman" Spy by Barbara Casey Category: Adult Non-Fiction, 184 pages Genre: True Crime / Historical / Biography Publisher: Strategic Media Books Release date: April 2019 Tour dates: May 27 to June 7, 2019 Content Rating: PG - Velvalee Dickinson is appropriate for all ages. Book Description: Velvalee Dickinson was born in Sacramento, California, graduated from Stanford University, married three times, and then in the early 1930s moved to New York City where she eventually opened her own exclusive doll shop on the prestigious Madison Avenue. It was there that she built her reputation as an expert in rare, antique, and foreign dolls. She traveled extensively around the country lecturing and exhibiting her dolls while building a wealthy clientele that included Hollywood stars, members of high society, politicians, and other collectors. ​When medical bills started to accumulate because of her husband’s ...

Book Details: Book Title: The Clock Flower by Barbara Casey (Book 3 of The F.I.G. Mysteries) Category: YA Fiction, 208 pages Genre: Mystery / Fantasy Publisher: Gauthier Publications, The Hungry Goat Press Imprint Release date: February 2018 Tour dates: Feb 26 to March 30, 2017 Content Rating: PG-13 (There is light profanity and some threat of violence.) Book Description: Dara Roux, abandoned when she was seven years old by her mother. Exceptionally gifted in foreign languages. Orphan. Accepted to Yale University. Mackenzie Yarborough, no record of her parents or where she was born. Exceptionally gifted in math and problem-solving. Orphan. Accepted to MIT. Jennifer Torres, both parents killed in an automobile accident when she was sixteen. Exceptionally gifted in music and art. Orphan. Accepted to Juilliard. The three FIGs—Females of Intellectual Genius—as they are called, have graduated from Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women after returnin...

Book Details: Book Title: The Wish Rider (Book 2 of The F.I.G. Mysteries) by Barbara Casey Category: YA Fiction, 160 pages Genre: Literary / Mystery Publisher: Gauthier Publications Release date: May 10, 2016 Content Rating: PG-13 Book Description: Seventeen-year-old Dara Roux and her two best friends, Mackenzie Yarborough and Jennifer Torres, the three collectively referred to as the F.I.G.'s (Females of Intellectual Genius) because each has an intelligence quotient in the genius range, have just returned from Frascati, Italy. It was there that their much-loved teacher and mentor, Carolina Lovel, discovered that her birth parents were gypsies and that she had a connection to the Voynich Manuscript, the most mysterious document in the world. Now, with graduation from Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women behind them, Dara asks her friends to help her locate her birth mother when she learns that she might be living in New York City. Relying on Dara’s gif...

Book Details: Book Title: The Cadence of Gypsies (Book 1 of The F.I.G. Mysteries) by Barbara Casey Category: YA fiction, 272 pages Genre: Literary/Mystery Publisher: Gauthier Publications/Hungry Goat Press Release date: April 2015 (e-Book) Content Rating: PG-13 (A few expletives, mild sexual innuendo) Book Description: On her 18th birthday, Carolina Lovel learned that she was adopted and was given a letter written by her birth mother in an unknown language. After years of research she travels to Italy on a mission to find the truth about her past. Carolina is accompanied by three extremely gifted but mischievous students the FIGs from Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women. In an effort to help their favorite teacher, the FIGs will have to use their special abilities to decipher the Voynich Manuscript, the most mysterious document in the world, and the one thing that is strangely similar to what Carolina was given. Their search will take them into the mystical w...

In May 1973, Assata Olugbala Shakur was involved in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in which she was accused of killing New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster and assaulting Trooper James Harper. This resulted in her indictment of first-degree murder of Foerster and seven other felonies related to the shootout. A member of the Black Panther Party, she became a prime target of the Federal Bureau of Investigations Counterintelligence Program. When she joined the Black Liberation Army and went into hiding, between 1973 and 1977, she was placed on the FBIs Most Wanted List for three bank robberies, the kidnapping and murder of two drug dealers, and the attempted murder of two New Jersey police officers. In March 1977 Assata Shakur was convicted of murdering state trooper Werner Forrester and was imprisoned. Two years later she broke out of the maximum-security wing of Clinton Correctional Facility in New Jersey, pistol in hand, as she and three cohorts sped out of the prison gr...