Welcome to Feathered Quill Book Reviews, a place for readers to find their next treasure. Along with reviews of many well-known titles, this site also searches out unique books from small, independent presses.

Feathered Quill Book Reviews prides itself on giving the reader an honest, unbiased critique of each and every book on its website. So slip off your shoes, pour yourself a cup of coffee, explore our pages, and discover many wonderful gems in the world of books.

Spotlight Reviews

Grace Among Thieves (A Manor House Mystery)

By: Julie Hyzy
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: June 2012
ISBN: 978-0425251393
Reviewed by: Deb Fowler
Review Date: May 16, 2012

Emberstowne’s Marshfield Manor was once again quiet, exuding a more stylish and elegant aura. Grace Wheaton was back on the job as curator and manager of the estate, preparing to help Corbin Shaw produce a DVD touting the finer points of the North Carolina mountain manor. Advertisement was good for business, but corpses simply were not. Grace’s predecessor, Abe Vargas, and Zachary Kincade had been murdered in the manse and the last thing she needed to do was dwell on it. Detectives Flynn and Rodriguez, two of the worst bumbling officers the Carolinas had to offer, could manage without her assistance.

Bennett Marshfield, owner of the Manor, was quite fond of Grace, or Gracie as he preferred to call her. His demeanor was as elegant and appealing as his home, which in part served as a museum. A polite way to put it was that he was a “very upscale hoarder,” something that served the public well. The one thing that didn’t serve him well was his stepdaughter, Hillary, who used him for an ATM machine and a man-magnet. Whenever her toadies found out she wasn’t actually an heiress they hoofed it off like Secretariat at the Kentucky Derby. One horse’s patoot Grace was glad to get rid of was her former beau, Jack Embers. Least ways she pretended to be.

Grace had little time for “her highness” and her inane desire to be a movie star because John Kitts had a late-day tour arriving. Another thorn in her side was the mysterious disappearance of valuable artifacts from both the Kane and Marshfield manors. Grace would soon encounter yet another when Lenore Honore, an OCD member of the tour, decided to play touchy feely with Marshfield’s personal belongings...that is before someone decided to snap her neck and toss her down the stairwell. Apparently, it just wasn’t going to be her day. Frances, Grace’s decidedly disagreeable assistant calmly probed, “How come we never had any murders at Marshfield before you got here?” She couldn’t answer that one, but when she received a note claiming, “You’re dead. You just don’t know it yet,” she knew there might just be another murder at the Manor...hers!

Murder and mayhem at the Marshfield Manor is once again on Grace Wheaton’s to-do list. Murder, a deep dark secret, and a new romance turns this “Manor House Mystery” into a recipe for a decadently scrumptious southern special. The mystery had just the right touch of sophistication that fans of the series have come to expect with Bennett Marshfield and Grace on board. Hillary Singletary, Grace’s “nosy assistant,” Frances, Ronny Tooney, and the two Keystone Kops, Flynn and Rodriguez gave a nice, lightly humorous balance to the tale. The action cracked in all the right places with a little bit of romance to glue it all together.

Quill says: If you like your mysteries served up with a sweet southern style twist, amateur detective, Ms. Grace Wheaton, will gladly take you on a tour!

I Hardly Ever Wash My Hands: The Other Side of OCD

By: J.J. Keeler
Publisher: Paragon House
Publication Date: February 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55778-892-4
Reviewed by: Amy Lignor
Review Date: May 5, 2012

The human brain is a conundrum. No matter what new advances in technology suddenly ‘come to the table,’ it remains a fact that - during our lifetimes, at least - the brain will remain the one thing that can not be defined. This is our epicenter - our ground control; it makes us act oddly and allows each one of us to see life in our own special way. The brain can create the most extraordinary dreams and the most vicious nightmares all at the same time. And this is the truth behind this incredibly powerful book.

Because this book is so unbelievably personal, I felt the review should be as well, in order to do the author justice. I, like many, have always seen OCD as a ‘light-hearted’ disease, such as the OCD teacher on Glee who can’t eat her grapes at lunch until she polishes them and removes all germs. But after reading this truly touching, yet extremely hysterical book, I can tell you the title is absolutely dead-on. There is another side to OCD that goes far beyond the compulsion to be clean, and Keeler brings it to the forefront in an extremely caring, and at times frightening, way.

This is an author who tells you of her trials as a child. The OCD at that particular time was more a case of angst that every single one of us on the planet suffers from. In her younger days she heard about AIDS on the news and was convinced she’d contracted it on several occasions. Another thought that was ingrained in her mind from the always depressing news about war, led her to believe that there was a bomb stashed in her teddy bear. And one of the most poignant things she says is that her teenage years were the easiest because there was so much angst - obsessing over good grades, boys, etc. - that her slightly darker and odder obsessions took a backseat. A majority of us will always maintain that the teen years were the worst because that WAS the time that held the most angst and worry, showing exactly how Keeler’s OCD played out - by being different from the ‘norm.’

This is a person whose OCD has nothing to do with being a hypochondriac or a crazed germaphobe. She doesn’t wash her hands constantly - doesn’t even worry about the mouse living under the stove. In fact, there are things that do not affect her at all, even though they would be placed in the OCD category. When OCD hit her square between the eyes she was in her twenties - and small obsessions or odd thoughts became obsessions of terror. She was afraid of killing - herself, strangers, children - it didn’t matter, and she felt as if there was a serial killer resting somewhere deep inside.

As this look on life moves on, offering humor, pain, fear, and every other emotion on the human scale, readers will truly begin to feel something, and that ‘something’ I would have to call knowledge. A huge percentage of us are completely ignorant about OCD and the various ‘types’ that can stem from this particular ‘illness.’ What this author does - and quite well - is she defines the truth about life, what we look at as ‘crazy’ versus ‘sane’ and how a person can, with full understanding and help, learn how to live with OCD and live happily.

It’s odd because a book review is a judgment of sorts, and after reading J.J. Keeler’s story, learning the facts and statistics and feeling the emotions that she expresses about her own trials, makes me see that having any judgment about OCD is simply wrong. We can not make an informed opinion, nor can we help others who suffer from this illness any better without knowledge - and Keeler provides it in spades!

Quill Says: A hard, yet warm-hearted introspection about a life plagued by fears that, thankfully, turned out to be a life of happiness and love. A must-read!

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To Kill the Duke

By: Sam Moffie
Publisher: CreateSpace
Publication Date: March 2012
ISBN: 978-1-461-14706-0
Reviewed By: Cory Bickel
Reviewed On: May 1, 2012

Laugh in the faces of Communist oppression and nuclear warfare in this irreverent historical novel where neither golden Hollywood icons nor brutal totalitarian dictators are immune to mockery. To Kill the Duke tells the story of an outrageous murder plot gone awry. As the story begins, comrade Ivan Viznapu works in a Soviet government office as a lowly mailman. When offered a job as a movie projectionist at a party for “Uncle Joe” Stalin, he jumps at the chance of a promotion despite the risk of execution should things go wrong. Although he is well-briefed by the man for whom he is filling in, his first night as a projectionist is more bizarre than he could ever have been prepared for. After befriending security guard Alexei Aleksandra and chef Boris Gila and witnessing the strange proclivities of the Soviet big shots, Ivan and his new friends find themselves dealing with the aftermath of Stalin’s sudden death in his private screening chamber. When the terrifying secret police chief Mr. Zavert comes to investigate the death, he enlists the three men to head a mission designed to destroy the morale of Americans and put the Soviets ahead in the Cold War: assassinate John Wayne.

While Ivan and Alexi head to Hollywood to set up a movie production company that serves as a front for their mission, movie producer Dick Powell is busy trying to arrange the filming of The Conqueror, a movie about Genghis Khan starring John Wayne himself. Funded by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, the movie is set to be filmed in the red deserts of Utah on land which the government has leased to him for one dollar. After lining up the actors, extras, and suppliers, Dick begins filming the movie but faces difficulties as frequent windstorms blow red sand into the works. Hughes eventually discovers the reason why the land was leased so cheaply, and realizes that it’s not only sand being carried in on the fierce desert winds. Boris, Alexei, and Ivan find that their mission may be obsolete, as the American government is already doing their job for them through a horrifying experiment conducted on its own citizens.

To Kill the Duke is an unusual historical novel that brings 1950s Hollywood and Soviet Russia to life, as well as shedding light on the atrocities committed by the Soviet and American governments during the Cold War. Moffie shows no sympathy for the powers that be as he turns fascism into farce and democracy into duplicity in this political satire. The cast of classic movie stars add glamour to the story and the intricacies of movie production are worked fluidly into the plot. Howard Hughes is a fascinating character with his many quirks, and Dick Powell is immensely likeable as the lone man of integrity in the superficial and immoral world of Hollywood. The Russian characters offer comic relief with their peculiar expressions and love of puns, and the plot takes many unexpected twists as the story unfolds and the real villains are revealed. Despite some punctuation and spelling errors, the novel is very readable, and although it comes off as a bit odd altogether, its uniqueness certainly makes it stand out from the average historical novel.

Quill Says: With an offbeat sense of humor and a star-studded cast, To Kill the Duke offers a fresh and twisted take on the Cold War and the Golden Age of Hollywood.

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To learn more about To Kill the Duke, please visit the book's website at: www.tokilltheduke.com

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