<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Rose Auburn]]></title><description><![CDATA[RoseAuburn.com]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/reviews</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 04 Sep 2026 10:06:59 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.roseauburn.com/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[Pacific Dream: Mari Mango and the Accidental Orphanage]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Chet Nairene Rating: *** When twenty-three-year-old Marielle Margaux's life unravels, she impulsively decides to leave Chicago behind and books a flight to Bangkok. A chance encounter with a young, pregnant, and abused Thai woman, Chloe, sparks the creation of the myth of “Sister Mari Mango,” as Marielle comes to be known. From sheltering Chloe and her newborn baby, Mari’s altruism extends to other Thai women, victims of the sex trade, who find themselves pregnant. The “Merry Mango - Home...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/pacific-dream-mari-mango-and-the-accidental-orphanage</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a9a781ef0d4752585077d9a</guid><category><![CDATA[2026]]></category><category><![CDATA[Three Star]]></category><pubDate>Fri, 04 Sep 2026 07:56:24 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_95ea84911eaf4151813735f6486490d3~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_320,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Straw Shoes]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Mathias B. Freese Rating: ***** In his final work, set in the nineteenth century, Freese tells the story of Ah Ling, a thirty-year-old Chinese farmer from Taishan province in China.  Existentially restless, Ah wants to experience the full texture of his life before it is too late. Embracing fate's vagaries, he leaves the soil behind, takes passage to San Francisco, and decides to carve out his own destiny as a coolie, hewing rock for railroads, a fraught, perilous reality that forces Ah to...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/straw-shoes</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a797cdf421979b2d97948f9</guid><category><![CDATA[2026]]></category><category><![CDATA[Five Star]]></category><pubDate>Mon, 10 Aug 2026 07:36:46 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_731152ccded549dfa33a0429a52ccfb2~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_324,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[From the Ashes of Saint-Domingue]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Karrah Cheruiyot Rating: ***** From the Ashes of Saint-Domingue unfolds the Haitian heritage of Alexandre Dumas, inspired by one of his most famous works, The Count of Monte Cristo.  Spanning thirty years from 1762 and moving between France and Saint-Domingue, Cheruiyot focuses on the extraordinary story of Alexandre Dumas’ father, Thomas-Alexandre, and the equally astonishing life of his grandmother, Marie-Cessette, among others. The story opens at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/from-the-ashes-of-saint-domingue</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a5cfe7129f476e5f31b812d</guid><category><![CDATA[2026]]></category><category><![CDATA[Five Star]]></category><pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:33:32 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_5cd3af11a28d4cffbaf9f0201764dd9d~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_309,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[ALETHEIA]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Michael Karlsen-Williksen Rating: **** When a Norwegian LOFAR (low-frequency array) operator working a night shift in 2042 captures the pulsing signal -273.15, the temperature of absolute zero and the death of all thermal motion, from the Luyten b sector deep among the stars, the world is thrown into panic. Is it a response, a warning, or something worse? A mission to silence Earth’s probes and intercept the message using the starship ALETHEIA, piloted by the highly advanced AI program...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/aletheia</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a44e3c43c06bdad542bcb5e</guid><category><![CDATA[2026]]></category><category><![CDATA[Four Star]]></category><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 10:03:37 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_15fdec2739274a6fbbaaa2a721cf9340~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_314,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Of Chaos and Doom (Shattered Empire - Book Two)]]></title><description><![CDATA[by P. C. Darkcliff Rating: ***** In this second installment of Darkcliff’s exhilarating Shattered Empire series*, the next generation of New Thorstormers face the destruction of their home village on the night of the Blood Moon two months hence, at the hands of evil mage Lanfareth, who now wields the magic battleax Tarroth. Derrik and friends, currently in the far northeast of the kingdom in Dar Kahar, must reach New Thorstorm, far away in Western Gaaltor, before the Blood Moon. But is...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/of-chaos-and-doom-shattered-empire-book-two</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a3b8c82c4b4b7e8f563a355</guid><category><![CDATA[2026]]></category><category><![CDATA[Five Star]]></category><pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2026 07:57:28 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_2f447e9faa2042a6a9b81fdf26877337~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_320,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Only Breath &#38; Shadow]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Andrew Tweeddale Rating: ***** Badly scarred and blinded in WWI, aristocratic Englishman Christian Drewe now lives an ordered life in Vienna, attended by his staunchly loyal housekeeper, Frau Huber.  However, his routine existence is thrown into turmoil when he meets American nightclub singer Claire Astor, and even more so when the Nazis occupy Vienna and his Jewish friends, the Friedmanns, are arrested, leaving their four children hiding in Christian’s flat. Frau Huber, Claire, and...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/only-breath-shadow</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a1d3a6161de78e3b21454ef</guid><category><![CDATA[2026]]></category><category><![CDATA[Five Star]]></category><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 07:58:30 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_012897b032474f12af1bb181d5f4d0cd~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_313,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The End]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Adam Cosco Rating: **** In an effort to reset their relationship, thirty-four-year-old AI developer Eli and his girlfriend, Selene, decide to spend some time outside of Los Angeles at a remote cabin, but barely a few hours into their break, Eli finds Selene dead in haunting circumstances.  Broken by grief, seeking answers, and immersing himself in the AI program he and Selene created, Eli discovers that Selene was involved with a shadowy cult tied to her past, one that promises life after...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/the-end</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69feea1857c1b4d98769217e</guid><category><![CDATA[2026]]></category><category><![CDATA[Four Star]]></category><pubDate>Sat, 09 May 2026 08:08:10 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_1e6b85e1d20e42748e8b51749935d89c~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_324,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Collioure Coincidence (The Glennison Darkisle Cases Book 6)]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Mark N. Drake Rating: ***** The sixth installment *  in Drake’s Glennison Darkisle series begins in Spring 1925, and Jack and Josine’s relationship is strained after events in the Grainger Case. Josine briefly returns to America to visit family, and Jack is invited to join a university archaeological dig on Ben Cattrick Hill back on Darkisle in July.  While waiting, he decides to investigate a niggling connection between a painting in Charles Deverby’s art collection and the southern...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/the-collioure-coincidence-the-glennison-darkisle-cases-book-6</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69d8d78431c98b8990c705f5</guid><category><![CDATA[2026]]></category><category><![CDATA[Five Star]]></category><pubDate>Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:40:01 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_ecc8076c4fdb415c9728df74205bf84d~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Napoleon of Africa]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Phil Smart Rating: **** In April 1815, former Royal Navy Commander Stephen Cowen chooses to start a new life in India with his wife, Elspeth, and their three children. When a powerful storm hits their boat, The Cumberland, the Cowen children—sixteen-year-old Nathaniel, fourteen-year-old Andrew, and twelve-year-old Beatrice—are swept overboard, believed to have drowned. However, safely inside The Cumberland’s longboat, the children wash ashore on the East African coast, where a young Zulu...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/the-napoleon-of-africa</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69b02387709b661fe632fdd0</guid><category><![CDATA[2026]]></category><category><![CDATA[Four Star]]></category><pubDate>Tue, 10 Mar 2026 14:04:49 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_277f0d00349d45d5bdc700ddea4b105f~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_333,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Heart]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Jonathan Chalstrey Rating: *** Heart  follows the adventures of Hernando Bustamante, a sixteenth-century surgeon. Apprenticed at sixteen to the renowned Doctor Bartolo in Seville, he is forced to flee to Italy by the Spanish Inquisition, where he becomes a professor of medicine at Bologna University. But when Hernando falls in love with Euphemia, a nun, he is expelled from Bologna and takes up a position as an assistant surgeon in Padua. Yet fate conspires again, and Bustamante finds...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/heart</link><guid isPermaLink="false">699737daaab309115cb47386</guid><category><![CDATA[2026]]></category><category><![CDATA[Three Star]]></category><pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2026 11:46:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_614c33e814574a58b77118dba02b98b1~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[There Was a Garden Once]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Nino Gugunishvili Rating: **** There Was a Garden Once  is a concise collection of twenty-four autobiographical musings and essays, some just a couple of pages long. Interwoven with humorous reflections on everyday life are deeper meditations on grief and aging. Gugunishvili’s latest compilation *  is a little book of delights, leaving the reader smiling despite the plaintive tone of several narratives. Gugunishvili writes with a natural, chatty intimacy that never feels forced. Her words...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/there-was-a-garden-once</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6986190a7004b379055205e0</guid><category><![CDATA[2026]]></category><category><![CDATA[Four Star]]></category><pubDate>Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:45:01 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_30f271fb203b42a08bf4a7d4a072e5b5~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Winding Road (Stone Shed Series #2) ]]></title><description><![CDATA[by John A. Heldt Rating: ***** The Winding Road  continues the Maclean Brothers' time-traveling saga from the first installment, The Patriots * . Despite the entreaties of his fiancée, Abigail Ward, Noah rides out to enlist in the Continental Army, ready for war in the late eighteenth century, yet armed with a secret cache of modern weaponry. Jake stays behind with the Wards, helping however he can while growing inseparable from their younger daughter, Rachel, Abby’s sister. But, ‘ best-laid...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/the-winding-road-stone-shed-series-2</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69734bde4c5d7ca6b9ba31d0</guid><category><![CDATA[2026]]></category><category><![CDATA[Five Star]]></category><pubDate>Mon, 26 Jan 2026 10:47:49 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_491355bd79d84cf39750597b98842fae~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_333,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Poinsettia Girl: The Story of Agata della Pietà ]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Jennifer Wizbowski Rating: ***** Set in early eighteenth-century Venice, Poinsettia Girl  unfolds the story of Agata della Pietà, who, at age ten, was placed by her dying Nonna , Guilelma, at the Ospedale de la Pietà , an orphanage that placed emphasis on nurturing musical talent and housed its own prestigious and mysterious conservatoire, the Figlie del Coro , for whom Vivaldi was a teacher and composer. Agata is supremely gifted, not only as a soprano but also as a copyist, composer, and...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/poinsettia-girl-the-story-of-agata-della-piet%C3%A0</link><guid isPermaLink="false">695aac76b5397a67af48aeef</guid><category><![CDATA[2026]]></category><category><![CDATA[Five Star]]></category><pubDate>Mon, 05 Jan 2026 11:35:51 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_412dbf0ed2794239ab3b97fcd17a92fb~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_324,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Defectives (Creekside Chronicles 1)]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Jim Bates Rating: **** Science fiction/dystopian mash-up The Defectives  is set in the 27 th  century. Cockroach-esque creatures, the Tracliodytes conquered Earth in the 22 nd  Century, and humans were driven underground to live in cities deep beneath the Earth’s surface. Over the next five hundred years, they segregated into the “ Rich and Powerful ” and the “ Defectives ”, and life for the latter is brutal under the diktats of the Supreme Commander, Reginald Botta. When eleven-year-old...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/the-defectives-creekside-chronicles-1</link><guid isPermaLink="false">693830460b27bc7cafc67fdc</guid><category><![CDATA[2025]]></category><category><![CDATA[Four Star]]></category><pubDate>Tue, 09 Dec 2025 14:28:15 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_cf25dbd1483846978c702f18e3a3aa24~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_324,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Love You Take]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Robert Wilson Rating: **** Told in four parts over the course of the 1970s, The Love You Take  is a late coming-of-age novel focusing primarily on Andy Watson, from small-town Strasburg in Virginia as he matures from college student to married father. Surrounded by a select group of eclectic friends, all of whom have their vulnerabilities and moments of self-reckoning, Andy navigates the decade of Nixon, Vietnam, and socio-political unrest while wrestling with the responsibilities of...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/the-love-you-take</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6925795c164262f22a66417f</guid><category><![CDATA[2025]]></category><category><![CDATA[Four Star]]></category><pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2025 09:44:35 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_9456afc6695b4257b8fb2dddb810d5c9~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_324,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Don't Study at University]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Lagnard Benz Rating: **** Don’t Study at University is a self-help book with a difference, offering much more than the title suggests, covering extensive, often esoteric ground. Benz essentially lays out a manifesto, backed by personal experience and thorough research, that scrutinizes traditional educational methods and, consequently, expected career/life trajectories. He rigorously questions and, in many cases, debunks prescribed belief systems, urging the reader to do likewise, offering...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/don-t-study-at-university</link><guid isPermaLink="false">69145c7e744f3eeb16211566</guid><category><![CDATA[2025]]></category><category><![CDATA[Four Star]]></category><pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2025 10:14:18 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_e6645ffb8a004011a86c610a94bfc6df~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_313,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Little Brother]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Adam Cosco Rating: **** Twelve-year-old Leslie Adams feels something is wrong with her, inside, but her dad insists she’s just sleepwalking. But she isn’t sleepwalking when Leslie slashes Tommy Spence to death at his own birthday party, although she cannot remember the attack. Six years later, Leslie tries to make a new beginning, enrolling at college to study investigative journalism, although Tommy’s murder haunts her.  When she starts to experience disturbing incidents and blackouts,...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/little-brother</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6901ee1515073ecb94329179</guid><category><![CDATA[2025]]></category><category><![CDATA[Four Star]]></category><pubDate>Wed, 29 Oct 2025 13:08:40 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_b17110bfc9f64948929732e549ddc3a6~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_323,h_522,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Beneath Beauford Grove]]></title><description><![CDATA[by E. Denise Billups Rating: ***** When Evangeline “Eva” Beauford was sent away at the age of ten by her mother without explanation from the family's olive plantation in Alabama, Beauford Grove, to live with her cousin in Boston, she felt abandoned and confused. Eighteen years later, Eva is a successful hematologist, studying the vagaries of human blood, and her own is yielding more questions than science can answer. When she receives a mysterious posthumous letter from her sister, Solange,...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/beneath-beauford-grove</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68f502c5a6f2484f3c992ea1</guid><category><![CDATA[2025]]></category><category><![CDATA[Five Star]]></category><pubDate>Sun, 19 Oct 2025 17:34:26 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_61c1619be2d74280afdb69a912584f6a~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[PopeLeo.ai and The God You Trained]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Julio Fernandez Rating: **** Beginning in 2012 but rapidly taking the reader up to the present day, PopeLeo.ai and The God You Trained  delivers an uncomfortable sermon on the rise of AI, chiefly through the lens of Gabriel Menas, an AI engineer who had studied to become a priest but left the seminary shortly before ordination. The novel is also inspired by the cautionary remarks concerning artificial intelligence made by Pope Leo XIV, which were included in a Vatican press packet...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/popeleo-ai-and-the-god-you-trained</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68e4f438ff64b90438036fbe</guid><category><![CDATA[2025]]></category><category><![CDATA[Four Star]]></category><pubDate>Tue, 07 Oct 2025 11:34:22 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_b6eeeeb239264e33a39ad45f3696a77e~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_314,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Unholy Silence: A True Account of a Haunted Idaho Home]]></title><description><![CDATA[by Doug Owen Rating: **** In 2007, after several challenging months, Doug Owen, his wife Claudia, and their young daughters, Beth and Allison, moved to an ordinary, 1950s-style white ranch house in Nampa, Idaho, hopeful the relocation would signal a fresh start for the family. It does herald a new beginning, but not the one Doug was envisaging. The Unholy Silence  is his disturbing chronicle of exactly what occurred within that house, the manifestations, malignancy,  and demonic possessions...]]></description><link>https://www.roseauburn.com/post/the-unholy-silence-a-true-account-of-a-haunted-idaho-home</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68da426ee3cbf48a9870e28a</guid><category><![CDATA[2025]]></category><category><![CDATA[Four Star]]></category><pubDate>Mon, 29 Sep 2025 08:30:54 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d47f37_7e35f7f96fa94fbbb2db4e9a81017af0~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_376,h_500,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Rose Auburn</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>