Author Archives: Catherine Yardley

How to Get the Quality Health Care You Deserve: Insider Tips Straight From a Medical Professional

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Although I am lucky enough to live in the UK I have always been fascinated by the American healthcare system. Not good fascinated, but WTF fascinated. It blows my mind that a country like America has people who are too poor to receive proper medical care. In the UK the National Health Service is free at the point of use. It’s free to see a doctor, have an operation, whatever you need. All you pay for is dental care. Which is probably why other countries think British people have bad teeth, some people can’t afford dental care. I digress, this book really spoke to me. I have family in America and I have always had a love for the country.

That is why I love this book. It puts the power back into the hands of the people. It saves both money and lives. I commend Dr. David Wilcox for writing it. It is comprehensive and full of knowledge. I recommend this book to my American cousins. It is an essential to navigate America’s complicated, health care system.

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Everyone needs health care at some point in their lives. Understanding the risks and benefits of procedures, making sense of medical bills, and interacting with insurance companies are all lessons we have to learn on the fly — and often when we’re already shouldering the stress of battling an illness ourselves or helping a loved one.

After 28 years in the health care field, Dr. David Wilcox has seen enough to realize that proactive patient education can actually have a life or death impact.

 

“Entering the American healthcare system, one has to have a basic knowledge of it to be safe,” he said during a recent interview. “Medical errors are the third leading cause of death. Not a lot of people know that.”

 

In his new book, How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Healthcare System: A Patient’s Handbook for Survival, Dr. Wilcox offers information, facts and tips that can help patients and family members navigate through the morass.

 

“I have seen some alarming situations that nursing school never prepared me for,” Dr. Wilcox said. “Not being prepared and knowledgeable means you will have little control over the health care you receive.”

 

His goal in writing this book was to level the playing field, enabling consumers of health care to understand how to avoid getting caught in the systemic net.

 

In his own words, Dr. Wilcox’s book explores “what to do if you have to go to a hospital, how to handle an insurance company’s claim denial, how to find an alternative to high-priced prescriptions and why the current pay-for-fee system is inadequate. You will also discover the direction the healthcare system needs to move in, to holistically care for you, the patient … information that the health care entities would prefer you didn’t know.”

 

Dr. David Wilcox is an Amazon international bestselling author and health care professional who believes proactive patient education enables those accessing the healthcare system to be better partners in their health care. He also believes that everyone has the right to access the American Healthcare System safely. A Doctorate-prepared nurse who also holds a Master’s in Health Administration and is Board Certified in Nursing Informatics, Dr. Wilcox has nearly three decades of health care experience as a bedside nurse, hospital administrator and in health care information technology, which has helped him to develop his unique perspective on the American Healthcare System. For more information, please visit https://drdavidwilcox.com/.

 

How to Avoid Being a Victim of the American Healthcare System: A Patient’s Handbook for Survival

Publisher: Here for You Publishing

ISBN-10: ‎ 0578878364

ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0578878362

Available now at https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578878364

 

Top Books To Read Now

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The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

This is one of my favourite romance novels EVER now. It’s funny and sad, heartbreaking and heartwarming. A definite five-star read. 

Florence Day is a ghost-writer with one big problem. She’s supposed to be penning swoon-worthy novels for a famous romance author but, after a bad break-up, Florence no longer believes in love. And when her strict (but undeniably hot) new editor, Benji Andor, won’t give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye.

Although when tragedy strikes and Florence has to head home, the last thing she expects to see is a ghost at her front door. Not just any ghost, however, but the stern form of her still very hot – yet now unquestionably dead – new editor.

As sparks start to fly between them, Florence tells herself she can’t be falling for a ghost – even an infuriatingly sexy one. But can Benji help Florence to realise love isn’t dead, after all?

If you fell in love with Beach Read, The Love Hypothesis and The Hating Game, this laugh-out-loud romance packed with sizzling chemistry will give you all the feels!

The Serial Killer’s Daughter by Alice Hunter

A sequel to one of my favourite books of 2021, The Serial Killer’s Wife. This is just as good, twisty, compelling and full of depth. It’s impossible to put down. 

Is murder in the blood?

In a sleepy Devon village, a woman is taken from the streets. Local vet Jenny is horrified. This kind of thing doesn’t happen here.

But it’s not the first time she’s been so close to a crime scene. The daughter of a prolific serial killer, she’s spent her whole life running from who she really is.

And the crime is harrowingly similar to those her father committed all those years ago…

But she’s not her father’s daughter.

Is she?

All That’s Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien

A beautifully written and evocative debut. It’s original and shows that Tracey Lien is truly one to watch. 

They claim they saw nothing. She knows they’re lying.

1996 – Cabramatta, Sydney

‘Just let him go.’

Those are words Ky Tran will forever regret. The words she spoke when her parents called to ask if they should let her younger brother Denny out to celebrate his high school graduation with friends. That night, Denny – optimistic, guileless Denny – is brutally murdered inside a busy restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta, a refugee enclave facing violent crime, and an indifferent police force.

Returning home for the funeral, Ky learns that the police are stumped by her brother’s case. Even though several people were present at Denny’s murder, each bystander claims to have seen nothing, and they are all staying silent.

Determined to uncover the truth, Ky tracks down and questions the witnesses herself. But what she learns goes beyond what happened that fateful night. The silence has always been there, threaded through the generations, and Ky begins to expose the complex traumas weighing on those present the night Denny died. As she peels back the layers of the place that shaped her, she must confront more than the reasons her brother is dead. And once those truths have finally been spoken, how can any of them move on?

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

Written with fierce brilliance, this is a story you won’t forget.

The Marriage Portrait is a dazzling evocation of the Italian Renaissance in all its beauty and brutality.

Winter, 1561. Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, is taken on an unexpected visit to a country villa by her husband, Alfonso. As they sit down to dinner it occurs to Lucrezia that Alfonso has a sinister purpose in bringing her here. He intends to kill her.

Lucrezia is sixteen years old, and has led a sheltered life locked away inside Florence’s grandest palazzo. Here, in this remote villa, she is entirely at the mercy of her increasingly erratic husband.

What is Lucrezia to do with this sudden knowledge? What chance does she have against Alfonso, ruler of a province, and a trained soldier? How can she ensure her survival.

The Marriage Portrait is an unforgettable reimagining of the life of a young woman whose proximity to power places her in mortal danger.

Before I Do by Sophie Cousens

Another outstanding novel from Sophie Cousens, who is turning into the romance writer of our generation. She can’t put a foot wrong and this is another stunner. A must read. 

What would you do if the one that got away turned up the night before your wedding?

Audrey is marrying Josh; steady, dependable Josh, the love of her life. They share a flat and a bank account, and it’s the only relationship that Audrey’s ever had that feels like something she can put her trust in. But romance should be full of fireworks, and as the big day approaches, Audrey’s found herself wondering if Josh really is ‘the one’.

So, when Josh’s sister Miranda arrives at their rehearsal dinner with Fred – Audrey’s ‘What If?’ guy, the man she met six years ago and had one amazing day with but never saw again – Audrey can’t help but see it as a sign.

Surely Fred’s appearance the night before Audrey is due to get married can’t be a coincidence. And when everything that could go wrong with the wedding starts to go wrong, Audrey has to wonder: could fate be trying to stop her from making a huge mistake?

The Winter Garden by Alexandra Bell

Beautiful and full of wonder. 

Welcome to the Winter Garden. Open only at 13 o’clock.

You are invited to enter an unusual competition.

I am looking for the most magical, spectacular, remarkable pleasure garden this world has to offer.

On the night her mother dies, 8-year-old Beatrice receives an invitation to the mysterious Winter Garden. A place of wonder and magic, filled with all manner of strange and spectacular flora and fauna, the garden is her solace every night for seven days. But when the garden disappears, and no one believes her story, Beatrice is left to wonder if it were truly real.

Eighteen years later, on the eve of her wedding to a man her late father approved of but she does not love, Beatrice makes the decision to throw off the expectations of Victorian English society and search for the garden. But when both she and her closest friend, Rosa, receive invitations to compete to create spectacular pleasure gardens – with the prize being one wish from the last of the Winter Garden’s magic – she realises she may be closer to finding it than she ever imagined.

Now all she has to do is win.

Coming in November…

Desert Star by Michael Connelly

Everyone knows I am a huge fan of Michael Connelly. I have never been disappointed in one of his books and I love his Bosch series. And…this one is my favourite Bosch book ever. He just keeps getting better and better. The prose, the story, the brilliant characters. Can Michael just give me an ounce of his talent please? He has plenty to spare. Utter perfection. Preorder now. 

SOME CRIMES YOU CAN’T FORGET.
Detective Renée Ballard is given the chance of a lifetime: revive the LAPD’s cold case unit and find justice for the families of the forgotten.
The only catch is they must first crack the unsolved murder of the sister of the city councilman who is sponsoring the department – or lose everything…

OTHERS YOU CAN’T FORGIVE.
Harry Bosch is top of the list of investigators Ballard wants to recruit. The former homicide detective is a living legend – but for how long?
Because Bosch has his own agenda: a crime that has haunted him for years – the murder of a whole family, buried out in the desert – which he vowed to close.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU KNEW WHO DID IT?
With the killer still out there and evidence elusive – Bosch is on a collision course with a choice he hoped never to make…

 

What are you reading?

A Question of Standing: The History of the CIA by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

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Like many people I have always had an interest in the history of intelligence. Espionage has always fascinated me, never mind the CIA itself. So I jumped at the chance to review A Question of Standing: The History of the CIA. I was not disappointed. 

This is a comprehensive and thoroughly researched history of the CIA. It is engaging, fair and thoughtful. This was released in time for the 75th anniversary of the CIA and it covers not everything, but enough to get the whole picture, right up to the present day. This book is an impressively enjoyable read. Few people could take this subject and write a book that is so easy to read. I loved this book and I will certainly be keeping it on my bookshelf for future reference. As a serial declutterer, there is no higher honour I can bestow.

A Question of Standing: The History of the CIA by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones (August) – A Question of Standing deals with events that have shaped the history of the first 75 years of the CIA. Unsparing in its accounts of dirty tricks and their consequences, it values the agency’s intelligence and analysis work to offer balanced judgements that avoid both celebration and condemnation of the CIA.

A Question of Standing: The History of the CIA is available here.

My Writing Process Tetyana Denford

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I remember when my mother called me, because the weather had been mild and the air smelled of the coming Spring. It was 2015, and we were living in the UK, so the 5 hour time difference meant that it was already late in New York when I heard her voice on the phone. Her tone was tender, and not a little bit numb and distant, and I would soon understand why: a family secret.

I had grown up in a relatively standard Ukrainian family: I was raised within the language, the traditions, and as I was an only child, my parents would make sure Ukrainian was the world that I knew and flourished within. We lived with my maternal grandmother, Yulia, and whilst her stories of wartime Ukraine were harrowing, nothing was ever out of the ordinary.

And then, we all learned something about her past that seemed more like a movie script than anything we’d ever imagined in real life. For me, my status as an only child, and a writer, meant that it was up to me to write the story down, for the family, for myself, and for my children to know our family story in detail. But could I do it justice? The impostor syndrome was very real, as most writers can attest to on their best days.

The first thing that I learned about writing a book is that the first few drafts are always the story, not the ‘book’; chronological, sometimes painful, but always the purest form. Once I started researching Ukraine, World War II, passenger lists on post-war ships heading to Australia, and New York in the 1960s… the book started coming to life. I’ll admit it felt like it took a solid two years to finish the first few drafts because at the time, my three children were all under eight years old, and my husband was travelling for work constantly, so I had very little time to write apart from very early in the morning or very late at night. It wasn’t easy, but I knew in my bones that this story was an important one to memorialize, because if I didn’t, it would disappear with the passage of time, like so many other family stories.

My grandmother was still alive and still had a semblance of memories stitching her life together in her mind whilst I was writing this, so old photographs and conversations were priceless for me to be able to place myself in her mindset when she was living through all of these painful periods in her life, and what fascinates me now, looking back, is that the current newsreel detailing the war in Ukraine runs in stark parallel to what she and generations of her family had lived through and fought against in the early 1900s and all through the second world war. And we are reminded now that history has a long pattern of repeating itself, because no one seems to remember how hard people fought for their sovereignty.

And now, now I feel proud of knowing that as a younger generation Ukrainian, I have written a story, a whole book, of what people are discovering about Ukraine and its people: their pride, their loyalty to the country that made them, their generosity in standing up for any people who are marginalized and forgotten, their fierce love for their family and friends, and their stubborn refusal to ever back down in their music, their art, their willingness to hope.

I am not an anomaly: there are so many Ukrainian writers and authors and translators who are now taking up the fight and using their voices as a war effort, when they are living all across the world worrying about their friends and their families in danger. We are the future, our stories begin with emotional phone calls, our writings are stitched together with anger and hope, and our platforms are flooded with calls to action from not only Ukrainians but anyone who chooses to stand on the right side of humanity and amplify the stories that make us who we are.

Our words are the weapons we choose to affect the hearts and minds of the entire world, not just to support Ukraine but to remember that all of our family stories are the threads that bind us and remind us to wish for a better future. 

Author Bio

Tetyana Denford grew up in a small town in New York, and is a Ukrainian-American author, translator, and freelance writer. She grew up with her Ukrainian heritage at the forefront of her childhood, and it led to her being fascinated with how storytellers in various cultures passed down their lives to future generations; life stories are where we learn about ourselves, each other, and are the things that matter most, in a world where things move so quickly.

Her debut novel, Motherland was self-published in March 2020 to critical success and longlisted for The Readers Digest Self Published Book Awards. It was based on an incredible family secret that was revealed by her maternal grandmother, Julia, only recently, and has been described by people as ‘haunting’, ‘powerful and devastating’, and ‘a fragile and hopeful story of an immigrant family’. In March 2022, Tetyana signed a 2-book deal with Bookcouture, an imprint of Hachette, and Motherland will be re-released in July 2022 with a new title and cover.

She also works with Frontline News as a translator, has been featured in The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Flock Magazine and Mother Tongue Magazine, and speaks several languages. She also hosts a YouTube show called ‘The Craft and Business of Books’ that helps writers understand both the creative side and the business side of the book world. Her series of ‘conversation books’, collections of poetry and prose about Grief, Motherhood, and Love, were published in 2021.

Tetyana currently lives in New York with her husband and three children.

About the Book

Ukraine, 1940. She cups her daughter’s face with her trembling hands, imprinting it on her mind. ‘I love you. Be brave, ’she whispers through her tears, her heart breaking into a thousand pieces. Sending her child away is the only way to keep her safe. But will she ever see her again?

When war rips their country apart, Julia is sent away by her tearful parents in the dead of night, clutching her mother’s necklace and longing for one last embrace. But soon she is captured by Nazi soldiers and forced into a German labour camp, where behind a tall fence topped with cruel barbed wire, she has never felt more alone.

Just as she begins to give up on all hope, Julia meets Henry, a young man from her village who shares her heart full of dreams. And when she feels a fluttering in her belly that grows and grows, she longs to escape the camp and begin a new life with their child. But then Julia is forced to make a terrible choice. A choice no mother should have to make.

New York, 2011. With her heart shattered and her life changed forever by the shadows of war, as the years go by Julia thinks she will never be whole again. For decades she has been carrying a terrible secret with her, her every moment tainted by tragedy and loss since those dark days of the war.

But when she receives a phone call in the middle of the night, far away from the home and family she lost in the war, will Julia finally be reunited with the missing piece of her heart? Or is it too late for her wounds to heal?

Based on the incredible true story of the author’s grandparents, The Child of Ukraine is a breathtakingly powerful tale of love, loss and family secrets, perfect for fans of The Four Winds, The Last Green Valley, and The Nightingale.

 
This novel was previously published under the name Motherland.

The Bay by Allie Reynolds Book Review

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The Bay by Allie Reynolds is the second novel from the author of the widely acclaimed chiller thriller, Shiver. I LOVED her first novel and was so excited to receive The Bay. Thankfully I wasn’t disappointed. Allie Reynolds has a way of writing a pacy, sporty thriller like no one else. This is a tense and absorbing story about what happens when Type A sporty athletes get thrown together. The Bay is paradise to them, the ultimate surfing spot and they will do anything to protect it.

You are never sure who to trust or what is going to happen. The Bay will have you by the throat until the very last page. I am not sure how Allie Reynolds does it, but I’m glad she does. Her high-octant sporty thrillers are as brilliant as they are unique. Truly stunning. Get a copy now.

 
The Bay, Allie Reynolds, Book review

The Bay is an addictive summer thriller where the waves are to die for at the wild and beautiful Sorrow Bay, a remote surfing spot paradise that a mysterious group of people will do anything to keep a secret.

 

Allie has a trademark ability to pair isolated and dangerous natural landscapes with high-stakes, extreme sports to rewrite the popular locked-room mystery with an elegant, high-octane twist. She has received wide praise from the world of crime writing, including Peter James (‘sensational’), Harriet Tyce (‘a knife-sharp locked room mystery’) and Sarah Pearse (‘nail-bitingly tense’).

 

Ideal for slipping in holiday beach bags, The Bay is filled with sun, sea, suspense and a sinister cast of characters driven by obsession and perfection.