Saturday, August 22, 2020

The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict (2019

 The Only Woman in the Room: A Novel


Hedy Lamarr was so much more than a famous actress.  She was also a brilliant, self-educated scientist who no one took seriously.  Hedy began life in Austria as Hedy Kiesler and married a Nazi arms dealer.  After her escape to America, she not only became a film star, she co-invented a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes. The technology was hidden away by the military until it became the backbone for today’s Bluetooth technology. Hedy and her partner, who never benefited from the invention as the patent had expired, were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

If you enjoyed reading and learning about Hedy, you might want to check out Marie Benedict's only novels about Benedict's women.  The Eastpointe library does not have all of Benedict's book but one of the reference librarians will be happy to request it for you from an area library.

3.76 stars on Goodreads, 4.4 on Amazon



In Five Years by Rebecca Serle (2020)

 In Five Years: A Novel


Lawyer Dannie Cohan has a five-year plan for her life, and she is right on track to achieve it.  On the night her boyfriend proposes, she goes to sleep and wakes up, in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. The date on the TV news is December 15, 2025, five years in the future.   Dannie wakes again and is back in 2020 in her own apartment.  The dream feels like more than a dream, but Dannie doesn’t believe in visions. That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when Dannie meets the man from her long-ago vision. Reviews called this a book to read in one setting and I did just that.

3.87 stars on Goodreads, 4.3 on Amazon