Wednesday Spotlight | HONEST SID by Ronald Probstein

About the book:

If you're going to live outside the law, you'd better be honest. This seeming paradox was the operating principle of Sid Probstein's life. Guileless and endlessly optimistic, he was known as Honest Sid around his stomping ground of New York's Broadway. Sid wasn't a tough guy or even a bad guy. He just never had the patience for the "straight" life, grinding out a living at some monotonous desk job. He was the quintessential American dreamer, always sure that the good life was just one big score away, a man who never stopped believing in his own good luck, even when the evidence said otherwise. He had all the tools, he was charming, good- looking, quick-witted, and decent, but he had an obsession he couldn't escape. Honest Sid is the story of an American archetype as seen through the eyes of his son, Ronald, who loved him, and who almost lost him. It follows Sid's adventures in the world of bookies and bettors, fighters and fixers, players and suckers set against the often- romanticized backdrop of Depression-era New York. It is also the passionate tale of the great and tempestuous love between Sid and his wife Sally, and of his son Ronald whom he idolized.

About the author:

One of America’s foremost engineering scientists, Ronald Probstein is Ford Professor of Engineering, Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His undergraduate training was at New York University’s night school and his graduate works in aeronautical engineering and physics at Princeton. He has played a principal role in some of the most important scientific and technical achievements in the post World War II era, involving spacecraft and ballistic missile reentry physics, hypersonic flight theory, comet astrophysics, desalination, synthetic fuels, and the electrokinetic remediation of soil. For these achievements, he has been honored as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, International Academy of Astronautics, and awarded an honorary doctorate from Brown University. Author, editor, lecturer, inventor, Professor Probstein has ten critically acclaimed scientific and technical books to his credit. Born in New York City in 1928, he lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with his wife, Irène. He has one son, Sidney, and three grandchildren.

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Wednesday Spotlight | DAUGHTER OF THE WINDS by Jo Bunt

About the book:

When the Turkish invade Cyprus in 1974 Pru, a young British Army wife has her life turned upside down. Two weeks later she flees the country with a baby who isn't hers. 

Over thirty years later that baby, now a grown woman called Leni, returns to the island of her birth to find out about the chain of events that led her to be brought up as Pru's child. She discovers the true cost of war, how the hurt still continues through the generations, and what being a family really means.

In this story of love and loss, Leni will lay ghosts to rest in more ways than one.

About the author:

Jo Bunt was born in Cyprus to British parents. It made sense to her that her first novel should be based there.

Following the family's return to England, Jo went to school in Nottingham, the university in Hull, and then worked in London as a Recruitment Consultant for PwC for many years. Following a family illness, Jo moved to Derbyshire where she now lives with her husband and her twin sons. This has enabled her to focus on her two great loves in life; her family and her writing.

She remembers writing her first 'novel' when she was seven but spent her angst-ridden teenage years writing miserable and dark poetry. She mostly writes mainstream fiction but is also working on a series of children's adventure books, largely guided by her own children. When she is not writing or looking after the children Jo is an avid reader and self-confessed food snob. If she can combine the two she is a very happy lady indeed.

Daughter of the Winds, a novel by Jo Bunt will be available on a discounted price of $0.99 in the US, and £0.99 in the UK, from February 14 to February 20, via Amazon.

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