Catherine Raynes: Summer Island and Red Star Down

Summer Island by Kristin Hannah  

Years ago, Nora Bridge walked out on her marriage and left her daughters behind. She has since become a famous radio talkshow host and newspaper columnist beloved for her moral advice. Her youngest daughter, Ruby, is a struggling comedienne who uses her famous mother as fuel for her bitter, cynical humour.  

When the tabloids unearth a scandalous secret from Nora's past, their estrangement suddenly becomes dramatic. Nora is injured in an accident and a glossy magazine offers Ruby a fortune to write a tell-all about her mother. Under false pretences, Ruby returns home to take care of the woman she hasn't spoken to for almost a decade. Nora insists they retreat to Summer Island, to the lovely old house on the water where Ruby grew up, a place filled with childhood memories of love and joy and belonging. There Ruby is also reunited with her first love and his brother. Once, the three of them had been best friends, inseparable. Until the summer that Nora had left and everyone's hearts had been broken... 

  

Red Star Down by DB John  

A family man is poisoned at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. A Russian intelligence officer is assassinated in a Washington hotel. And a real-estate mogul and reality-TV star has just become the 45th President of the United States.  

A terrible conspiracy is about to unravel and three people find themselves caught in the crosshairs... A CIA agent whose past missions refuse to stay buried. A student in Moscow who dares to challenge the Russian president on live TV. And a North Korea spy embedded in the White House who secretly admires the man he is working to undermine. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Teams podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
There'd be twenty one to twelve on Newstalks. There'd be
Katherine Rains as our book reviewer. She gives us two
top recommendations every weekend, and she's with us. Now.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Hey Catherine, good morning Jack.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Let's start off with your first book for this week.
Tell us about Summer Island by Kristin Hannah.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
So this is the story of Nora and her thirty
four year old daughter Ruby, and they're really at odds
with each other. Nora left her husband years before and
her teenage daughters as they were then, Ruby and Caroline,
and she's now this famous talk show host who gives
lots of advice to others. And Ruby herself is now
a comedian and she deeply resents her mother, and a

(00:48):
lot of her humor as a comedian is around her
mum and those things that went on with her. And
then all of a sudden, Laura gets caught in this
public scandal, and Ruby's given the opportunity to write this
tallel book about her mother that will really almost guarantee
to launch her career, and so she heads home to
spend some time with Nora at their family summer home

(01:09):
and they start to revisit old memories, and then she
actually really starts to understand her mother's choices and more
broadly understand some of the choices that she's made in life.
And the book mainly focuses on their character of Ruby,
and she's quite feisty and very vocal and occasionally completely
wrong in her assumptions, and she kind of slowly finds
herself listening to her mother's real history and what happened

(01:32):
in their lives and start to manage to find a
connection with her mum and start to hew their relationship
a little and let go of her resentment. And it's
lots of messages about family and love and forgiveness and
redemption and kind of shows how easy it is to
judge someone else's choices until you know the complete story. Yeah,
good afternoon, Sunday afternoon.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Readyah, very good. There's Summer Island by Kristin Hannah. You've
also read Red Star Down by Dbie John.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
So this is a really gripping thriller and heads into
the world of politics and espionage and deception and is
on actually a period in very recent history, so it's
loosely bet set around real events, and so it starts
in twenty seventeen when President Trump first rose to power,
and there's three protagonists involved. So there's Jenna, who's a

(02:21):
CIA officer, Losher who's a Moscow student who has the
audacity to confront Vladimir Putin on live TV and completely
incensors the Russian leader. And then there's Eric who's a
North Korean spy spy and he has the era of
President Trump almost he's the Special Advisor on East Asia,

(02:42):
and he's a very dangerous individual. And the story kicks
off with a series of explosive global events. A Korean
man is poisoned in Malaysia, a Russian intelligence officer is
assassinated in Washington, and a real estate mogul becomes the
forty fifth US president, And these kind of incidents set
this stage for this conspiracy and global stability, and it

(03:02):
has this very believable plot line and lots of different
places and countries, and this portrayal of world leaders who've
got their own agendas and self serving, lots of great
characters that are completely complex and believable, particularly those operatives
navigating some very moral, great areas, and there's some great
moments in the story and lots of suspense to this

(03:23):
at tension and just really wants to make you know
what happened next. And so if you're a fan of
spy and espinage strillage, then I highly recommend this one.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Fantastic. That really does sound like a bit of me.
Did you see is it? I think earlier this week
or last week? Did you ever like Martin Cruz Smith's Box? Yes, yeah,
I was sad to I think he lived a pretty
good life. I think he was in his late eighties,
but I was. I got kind of hooked on the
Arcadi Renko stories years ago, speaking of you know, thrillers

(03:53):
and mysteries set in Russia. You know I love those. Yeah,
you know Gawky Park and the myriad books that followed
thereafter that he penned. So yeah, that was that was
sad news. But this sounds like a bit of me
as well. So that's read Start Down by dB John.
Summer Island by Kristin Hannah was Catherine's first book. Katherine,
please don't talk to anyone else today. Go and get

(04:14):
yourself five or six good lemons, get yourself some nice
Manuka honey, brew yourself a nice wee hot drink, and
curl up on the couch and we will catch again
very soon. Those books will be on the News Talks website.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live
to News Talks ed B from nine am Saturday, or
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