Hell Above Earth : The Incredible True Story Of An American WWII  Bomber Commander And The Copilot Ordered To Kill Him
by Stephen Frater

Both the title and subtitle are enough to make you want to dive right into this book. The first couple of chapters were quite interesting and then it turned sour.
During World War II, two men flew a B-17 together in Nazi territory. The pilot was an American named Werner Goering who had nerves of steel. His co-pilot was Jack Rencher. The two of them became great friends. There was only one catch. Goering was the nephew (supposedly) of the head of the Luftwaffe, Reich Marshal Herman Goering and the FBI wanted Werner killed if he surrendered to the Nazis. Rencher was chosen to shoot him.
Unfortunately, the suspense just hung in the air. The book is not riveting as the publisher notes it is. It's actually quite boring, repetitious and diverts, most of the time, from the subject. There's way too much filler about other events and flyers and this could easily have been a magazine article. But, the most annoying thing about the book was the poor editing (it jumped around all over the place) and the amount of missing words, duplication of words in the same sentence, typos, and inverted question marks was a chore to plow through.
I wrote to the author after having read thirty pages to alert him about the numerous errors. He wrote back saying that he knew about it, that it was very frustrating because it was totally out of his control. The publisher was in such a rush to get this book out and it's quite a sloppy mess.
Not recommended.

Paris In Love : A Memoir
by Eloisa James

In 2009, Eloisa James, a Shakespeare professor at Fordham University, her husband, Alessandro, an Italian who also teaches, and their two children, Anna and Luca, went to Paris for one year. James who is from a family of writers (her father was poet Robert Bly) is actually known more as an author of romance novels. She definitely knows how to tweak words to make the text more appealing but this book is a disappointment. All it is are snippets of events that happened to the family: Anna and Luca's behavior problems in the French schools; having to go on a diet because chocolate keeps rearing its ugly head; Alessandro's weight loss; French culture; etc. James posted her observations on Facebook and then these thoughts and essays were combined to produce a book. After a while, who cares? It is not enough to keep one's interest and mine certainly lagged halfway through. There is no substance; only light fluff.
Not recommended.

Gypsy Boy : My Life In The Secret World Of The Romany Gypsies
by Mikey Walsh

I cannot understand the amount of glowing reviews for this absolutely horrible book. One of the professional journals said that Gypsy Boy is better written than Augusten Burrough's Running With Scissors. That reviewer needs to have his head examined.
Mikey Walsh taught himself to read and write and it shows. Just read the Acknowledgements before the book even begins and there's problems with incorrect usage of punctuation. The amount of physical abuse from his father and sexual abuse from his uncle was just too disturbing and I had to stop reading. Walsh barely gives much information about Gypsies so you don't really glean anything new. It's basically a diatribe of his miserable childhood.
Not recommended.

The First Lady Of Fleet Street : The Life Of Rachel Beer : Crusading Heiress And Newspaper Pioneer
by Eilat Negev and Yehuda Koren

During the Victorian era, there were two prominent Jewish families: the Sassoons and the Beers. Rachel Sassoon married Frederick Beer who was the heir to a huge newspaper enterprise.
As I only reached page 100, I don't know all of the details. The authors spent the first part of the book writing about the history and background of the two families (Rachel was only mentioned as a child). The Sassoons were from Iraq and the Beers from Germany. That was the most interesting part of the story. I found the prose to be boring, plodding, and flat.
Not recommended.

The Man Without A Face : The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin
by Masha Gessen

If you are looking for an in-depth portrait of Vladimir Putin, you won't find it within this book. He's definitely an enigma and paints himself as being a thug. It's supposed to be a biography of him but most of what is written is about political events that happened in Russia while he was around but not doing much of anything.
The writing is quite poor and boring. Gessen is more of a journalist than an author because everything that is presented is factual and there's not much substance. I got halfway through and had enough.
Not recommended.

The Lady In Gold : The Extraordinary Tale Of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait Of Adele Bloch-Bauer
by Anne-Marie O'Connor

Adele Bloch-Bauer was one of the reigning Jewish society figures in Vienna. Her husband was a sugar-beet baron and the two of them were art patrons. Gustav Klimt painted her portrait after making one hundred sketches and it sat in the Bauers' palace until the Nazis confiscated it.
Alas, I didn't get too far with this book (thirty-eight pages). The writing is plodding there's too many names constantly thrown at you. It is not riveting and suspenseful as the front flap says. I found it dull and irritating.
Not recommended.

The Tender Hour Of Twilight
By Richard Seaver

Richard Seaver was a magazine/literary editor for Grove Press and he would be responsible for demolishing U.S. censorship laws. He and his partner introduced Lady Chatterly's Lover, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and others to the American public.
Before all of this began, though, Seaver went to Paris in the 1950s and started up a magazine. He introduced Samuel Beckett (then an unknown writer) to thousands of readers, Eugene Ionesco, William Burroughs, and many more.
The book started out promising. I had never heard of Seaver (he's well-known in the publishing field) and it was really interesting reading about Paris in those days and what went on behind the scenes in creating a magazine and promoting authors. Halfway through, I quit reading it. The whole thing just fizzled out for me. Some of the details just were not that fascinating; in fact, they were boring.
Nothing to get excited about here.
Not recommended.