Summer Read, 2025!

One of my summer pleasures is skinny-dipping (swimming naked). One of my favorite pastimes while enjoying the aquatic environment is reading. Using the spare moments to enjoy the books that often I failed to read while my university is in full session throughout the year. Strictly pleasure reading (fiction) for my excursions to outdoor bodies of water (natural or a pool). The subjects aren’t as intense or serious as professional reading or for research!

David Baldacci is one among my favourite contemporary authors and I was very shocked to discover that he had a novel published earlier this summer that I knew nothing about. Several local booksellers that I subscribe to always alert me whenever my designated authors have a release to enable me to order. I had received no information on Baldacci’s newest, Strangers in Time!

It was never featured in my local bookseller (part of a national franchise) that has always promoted this particular author. When I stopped one of the management team as Aaron, my spouse, and I were in the location, they researched the title and were equally unaware of the publishing.

I was very fortunate and lucky to have discovered a copy of this book. Published in April 2025, Baldacci’s latest novel takes place in London, UK, in 1944 during the final days of the Blitz (German bombing). It is the documentation of the friendship that grows between 14-year-old Charlie Matters, orphaned by the bombings of the city and the ravages of World War II, and Molly Wakefield, a 15-year-old evacuee from London in 1939 who is returning to the unrecognizable city from which she fled.

They encounter Ignatius Oliver, a widowed bookseller attempting to heal from his recent loss of his wife. The three join together in friendship, dependence, and support in a dangerous and perilous time. Disaster and doom strike, yet they somehow manage to survive until the peace approaches, when fatality falls upon them.

A World War II historical fiction novel unlike any written by the author previously and presents a very impressionable and memorable story that is captivating, entertaining and refreshing as to the rewards of life.

When I first began university, my major area of study was history. David Baldacci’s Stranger in Time closely aligns fiction, history and suspense into a true work of an inspired mind!

Naked hugs!

Roger Poladopoulos/ReNude Pride: Guys Without Boxers

Author’s Note: The next post entry here is planned for Friday, August 15, 2025, and the proposed topic is: “Tenth Anniversary Today!”