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ANCIENT EGYPT
THE POISONER OF PTAH
Paul Doherty, Headline, 2007, £19.99, hb, 308pp, 9780755328857
Thebes, 1479 BC. Hatusu is the Pharaoh Queen of Egypt. In the Hall of Two Truths, and with great ceremonial, a peace treaty is about to be signed, presided over by Amerotke, the Chief Judge. The Treaty Rolls are placed on the sacred table. Three representatives from Libya and three from Egypt come forward to drink the sacred wine from a bowl of turquoise faience threaded with gold. Within minutes, the three Egyptians are dead. Not far away, a merchant and his wife are found floating, face downwards, in their lotus pool. Were the two incidents connected or totally unrelated?
It is given to Amerotke to provide the answers which, of course, he does, against a colourful background of ancient Egypt alive in historical detail. The reader can see each scene, smell the stench of the streets or the flowers in the wellwatered gardens of the rich, and feel at one with the characters. The clues are all provided; a word here, a sentence there, but it was beyond me to unravel it until I read the last chapter and then, of course, it was so obvious. Highly recommended.
Marilyn Sherlock
duplicate. Through it all, the indefatigable Falco and the charming and surprising Helena Justina manage to solve the numerous riddles while simultaneously displaying the characteristics of a couple who have been together long enough to tolerate the other’s behavior. Neither Falco nor Davis will disappoint.
John R. Vallely
THE FIGHT FOR ROME
James Duffy, McBooks, 2007, $23.95/C$29.95, hb, 408pp, 1590131126
In 68 AD, the period known as the “Year of the Four Emperors,” Quintus Honorius Romanus, aka Taurus the gladiator, is forced to fight for one of the contenders to the Roman throne. In this second in the Gladiators of the Empire series, Quintus, along with his two accomplices—Amazon, the gladiatrix, and Lindani, the beast hunter from Africa—gets caught up in the Roman civil war. Lucius Calidus, his former slave and sworn enemy, is devious and power-hungry, stopping at nothing to destroy him.
This is a well-written story of ancient Rome, comparable to novels written by Simon Scarrow and Michael Curtis Ford. The author portrays gladiatorial combat in an exciting manner. My only reservation is that Mr. Duffy describes the gladiators as if the combatants were wrestlers in the World Wrestling Federation; I’m not sure if the ancient gladiators considered their life to be quite that glamorous. Still the series is a fun read as you follow the mighty Taurus both in the arena and on the battlefield. If you’re looking for a little escapism, this novel is a quick read, well crafted with characters that are faced with conflict after conflict.
If you like the Claudia series you will also enjoy this book, as there are similarities galore—rather too many in some respects. But fortunately one of them is the easy-to-read style. Ms Todd has no problem with pacing and fills up the pages with adventures, wit and a lively plot. Another appeal is the sheer novelty of reading about Spartans, helots, exotic rituals, Syracuse and the Krypteia. I hope that this is the start of a new series, but if it is going to be as good as it can be, some of the similarities between this and the Claudia series need to be ironed out, or at least rendered different.
Rachel A Hyde
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2ND CENTURY
A COIN FOR THE FERRYMAN
Rosemary Rowe, Headline/Trafalgar Square, 2007, £18.99/$24.95, hb, 336pp, 9780755327430
Gloucester, 189 AD. Celtic traditions, settlements and languages remain in the countryside, but in the towns Roman ways prevail, and all is peaceful. Until a mysterious body is found half buried in a ditch. Even odder, the body, dressed in female clothing, turns out to be male.
Worse, the time is approaching the Lemuria, the second Roman Festival of the Dead when the ghosts of those who had not received a proper funeral were said to prowl—a very bad portent indeed. Marcus, the local Magistrate, is anxious to get the matter cleared up before the festival begins, so he calls in Libertus, a pavement maker, who has undertaken tasks for him in the past.
CLASSICAL
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SATURNALIA
Lindsey Davis, Minotaur, 2007, $23.95, hb, 324pp, 19780361297 / Century, 2007, £11.99, pb, 352pp, 1846051754
Saturnalia was a Roman holiday that can best be compared to Las Vegas at its most riotous. That most famous of all Roman “private eyes,” Marcus Didius Falco, finds his Saturnalia plans pushed aside when he is charged with discovering the whereabouts of Veleda, a Germanic priestess captured by Rome but now mysteriously on the run. As an enemy of the state, Veleda must be recaptured and then executed. Veleda’s escape from custody is complicated by the murder of a wealthy and prominent citizen.
Falco’s cases are never simple and straightforward, and this one is as compelling as the seventeen (17!!!) others that Lindsey Davis has allowed us to observe. Players introduced include a lovesick Roman, a wife seeking revenge, bumbling legionnaires, the always interesting Chief Spy Anacrites, and a delightful quartet of medical practitioners (quacks) who represent Roman tendencies to adopt the latest fads in a way few classical scholars can
Jeff Westerhoff
BLIND EYE
Marilyn Todd, Severn House, 2007, £18.99/$28.95, hb, 217pp, 9780727865564
Is this the 14th tale about Marilyn Todd’s wonderfully bitchy and feisty detective Claudia? No, this is the first tale about her forthright and more compassionate (but equally feisty) detective Iliona. The fact that somebody has finally written a novel set in the world of classical Greece that does not contain Alexander the Great is worth the price of admission alone, and since it is not about Greeks but about Spartans, so much the better. Iliona is the high priestess of the river god Eurotas, but when the icily efficient Lysander catches her aiding “deserters” he blackmails her into helping his Krypteia, the feared Spartan secret police. She has to masquerade as the high priestess of Alphaeus and try to clear Sparta’s name following a recent massacre, where the Spartans had been set up to look like the guilty party. This necessitates a trip to Syracuse, but somebody in the Krypteia is a traitor, and people keep being murdered. The locals say that the hills hide a Cyclops…
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Rosemary Rowe’s knowledge of 2nd-century Britain is thorough. Her books are full of little details of life and customs of the day, which she filters into the story with such good effect that the reader is hardly aware of them. They all join to form a well-told tale with characters you can believe in. I have read several novels in Rowe’s series by now, and this latest is as enjoyable as the first.
Marilyn Sherlock
3rd CENTURY
DARK NORTH
Gillian Bradshaw, Severn House, 2007, £18.99/$27.95, hb, 315pp, 9780727865243
Were there Africans in the Roman Army? The Historia Augusta describes an Ethiopian soldier presenting Emperor Septimius Severus with an omen of death near Hadrian’s Wall during his campaign against a troublesome barbarian confederation. An inscription from the Wall fort of Aballava (Burgh-by-Sands) mentions a regiment of Aurelian Moors stationed there in the 3rd century AD. From these snippets Gillian Bradshaw has created a story of danger, intrigue and backfiring practical jokes set in 208 AD.
Memnon is her Ethiopian, a likeable cove who saves the lives of the Emperor’s chamberlain
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and his lover, the Empress’s secretary. From them, he discovers that Severus’s sons Geta and Caracalla, whom the emperor has brought on campaign to teach them a few lessons, are engaged in a vicious power struggle. Inevitably, Memnon finds himself embroiled.
Bradshaw writes fluently on her favourite theme of outsiders in Roman culture, but this novel seems too long for its story, sagging in the middle before picking up again toward the end.
Sarah Cuthbertson
10th CENTURY
THE BOOK OF LOSS
Judith Jedamus, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007, $13.95, 295pp, pb, 9780312349080 / Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005, £12.99, 256pp, hb, 9780297847731
This novel is presented in diary format, making it reminiscent of historical works such as Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book. Set during the Japanese Heian Period (794 to 1185 AD), it centers around a poet who is also lady-inwaiting to the empress. The unnamed narrator’s lover, Kanesuke, has been exiled for seducing the teenaged Vestal of Ise, daughter of the emperor. This is not the narrator’s only rival for Kanesuke’s affections; he is also engaged in an affair with Izumi, another lady-in-waiting and poet, and former friend of the narrator. Using the only weapon they have at their disposal— venomous words—the two women vent their jealousy by engaging in a vicious rumor war whose unforeseeable consequences ruin lives and topple governments.
This evocative novel is an engrossing study in jealousy, love, loss, and sacrifice. For a multitude of reasons, we are all unreliable narrators when it comes to the tale of our lives, and The Book of Loss’s narrator is no different: events are always reflected through the distorted bronze of her damaged mirror. The culture she invites us into, with its complex social rules, hierarchies, storytelling, and mysticism, is captivating. The prose can occasionally be over-extravagant, but it is convincing for the voice of the character from which it comes; transportive and sensuous, it easily conveys Japanese aestheticism, where everything from the scent and shade of paper to the unfurling of a cherry blossom is imbued with deeper meaning. The preoccupation with darkness and the claustrophobic setting of the women’s quarters at court give the novel a somewhat gothic feel, and though none of the characters are truly sympathetic, their lives and interactions are engrossing. Since the cultural references can be confusing to the uninitiated, a helpful cast of characters and glossary are included. Recommended.
Bethany Latham
11th CENTURY
WIFE TO THE BASTARD
$12.50/£6.99, pb, 333pp, 9780752439457
Originally published in 1967, this is one of those oldies but goodies, but its age, sadly, shows a bit around the edges.
Beautiful, diminutive, passionate Mathilda of Flanders suffers through a broken engagement and an unwanted pregnancy. She must marry but is averse to marrying just anyone. Her father chooses for her William of Normandy, who many title “The Bastard.” Mathilda is not thrilled with the choice, but must demur.
The couple’s life together is marked by the birth of many children, many battles fought by one of the great soldiers of all time, and numerous challenges, both political and emotional. For her it is all ambition—for him, for her children, and perhaps a bit for herself. For much of their marriage, Mathilda is William’s most respected advisor, his comrade in planning for a kingdom and the mother of his ever growing brood.
What drives them apart is the lack of respect and love William gives his oldest son, his lack of concern about his female children and his willingness to overlook the cruelty and distorted vision of power which marks their son, Rufus, from his earliest childhood. Ambitious, yes, but Mathilda is first and foremost a mother. She worries about William constantly, but she is sickened—figuratively and then literally—by his abuse of Robert, their eldest.
Although we recognize that Mathilda never loved William, the question remains at the end of the book: Did William love Mathilda?
We all know the history, but Lewis’s focus is on the impact upon women of the medieval conventions of royalty and marriage. Where Isabel of Lewis’ Harlot Queen takes matters into her own hands, the earlier Mathilda, seemingly feisty when we first meet her, has her strength
Y ISLAND OF EXILES
wrested from her by her husband. A bit dry in places, but chock full of historical fact and interesting characterizations.
Ilysa Magnus
12th CENTURY
HEART OF ICE
Alys Clare, Hodder & Stoughton, 2007, £6.99, pb, 353pp, 9780340831168
In Kent in the winter of 1194, King Richard I is still a prisoner in Europe, and England is being ruled by his brother John in his absence. A mysterious sickness arrives on these shores, three people are murdered, and two more are in fear of their lives because of some secret intelligence which has come into their possession. Then the sickness reaches Hawkenlye Abbey. Intermingled with the work of the nuns at Hawkenlye are the people living deep in the forest and still adhering to the old pagan ways. There is Joanna, the healer, learning to be one of the Great Ones, and her small child, Meggie. The mystery deepens.
Heart of Ice is the sixth book in the Hawkenlye Mysteries and, like the others, involves the Abbess Helewise, Sir Josse d’Acquin and the local sheriff, Gervase de Gifford. As with all these books, the reader is transported into the heart of medieval England and is immediately caught up in the action. The characters have life and depth, and the way of life in the 12th century is vividly described.
I have read most of this series and always enjoy them.
Marilyn Sherlock
EDITORS’ CHOICE
I. J. Parker, Penguin, 2007, $14.00, pb, 398pp, 9780143112594
In this latest entry to Parker’s mystery series set in 11th-century Japan, Sugawara Akitada, a middle-ranking government administrator, is forced to leave his wife and infant son when he’s ordered to investigate the murder of exiled Prince Okisada, who had been sent to Sado Island penal colony after trying to usurp the Japanese throne. Akitada goes undercover as an exiled prisoner to solve the crime and, in the process, almost loses his own life under horrifying circumstances.
The reader is taken effortlessly into medieval Japan, into the lives of common criminals as well as those of Japanese nobility. The ease with which the author puts her 21stcentury reader in that world is a tribute to her meticulous research and skillful writing. Akitada is a very sympathetic protagonist, a loving husband and father who grapples with daily domestic matters and a very inadequate income. His quest to find the prince’s murderer and still save his own life depends in the end on the arrival of his longtime friend and assistant, Tora. The book is filled with interesting details of the period and its beliefs, all woven expertly into the narrative. A mystery writer of exceptional skill, Parker keeps the action and the clues coming, throwing ample red herrings into her riveting plot. This is an exciting, wellwritten read that rises above the crowded genre of historical mysteries. Parker’s series deserves a wide readership.
Pamela F. Ortega N n N n N n
Hilda Lewis, Tempus, 2007 (c1967),
ELEANOR THE QUEEN
Norah Lofts, Tempus, 2007 (c1955), $12.50/ C$16.95/£6.99, pb, 240pp, 9780752439440
Eleanor the Queen is a vivid account of the life of one of the world’s most famous queens, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Beautiful, freethinking, and strong-willed, Eleanor was not the typical woman of the 12th century. The novel is divided into four parts, each one focusing on a different period of Eleanor’s long life, beginning with the time when it was dangerous to be the unmarried heiress to the richest and largest provinces of France, Aquitaine and Poitou. Following her arranged marriage to King Louis VII of France, Eleanor embarks on crusade with Louis, and readers are immersed in the long, arduous journey of the Second Crusade. She exhibits bravery and strength, risking her life on the religious journey.
When her marriage to Louis VII ends in annulment, Henry Plantagenet asks for her hand in marriage. Their union produces two future kings of England, Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland. Internationally bestselling author Norah Lofts does an excellent job of portraying the rivalries that exist between the sons and Henry II. In France, England, and the Holy Land, readers are transported to a world of intrigue, double dealings, and complex relationships. Most revealing is the time that Eleanor spends in captivity in England. Lofts recreates the struggle that Eleanor goes through during her years of imprisonment and the feelings of being separated from her children, with little to do but think about the past and hope for the best for the future.
Eleanor the Queen originally published in 1955 and now reissued, is a story filled with love, pain, betrayal, and politics of the 12th century. Lofts paints a rich portrait of the times, giving readers a compelling novel that should not be missed.
Troy Reed
DAUGHTER OF THE SUN
Barbara Wood, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007, $13.95/C$16.95, pb, 464pp, 0312363680
In pre-Columbian New Mexico, Hoshi’tiwa, a 17-year-old young woman, is a gifted potter of rain jars. The daughter of a corn-grower, she is deeply in love with and betrothed to Ahote, son of the village storyteller.
Center Place, a wealthy town ruled by the violent Toltec tribe, is suffering through a severe drought. Their leader, the powerful and violent Lord Jakal, learns of her skill in creating beautiful jars that bring rain from the sky and orders her captured and brought to him. In this strange new town of incredible riches, Hoshi’tiwa must learn to adapt to a new way of living while harboring the memories of her clan and lover. She garners the attention of Lord Jakal, who becomes strongly attracted to her; meanwhile, a rich young woman named Lady White Orchid, who wants to marry Jakal herself, plots to harm her.
Xikli, captain of the elite Jaguar military
unit, will do anything to gain power and usurp Lord Jakal. He sets his eyes on Lady White Orchid because if he marries her, it will bring him political alliances and power enough to achieve his coup. Xikli disapproves of Jakal’s preferential treatment of Hoshi’tiwa and seeks to have her killed. As Hoshi’tiwa grows into womanhood, she rises to power all on her own merit and skill and becomes a leader.
Barbara Wood weaves a wonderfully complex tale with plot twists that kept me reading. This novel has it all: adventure, murder, and unrequited love at a time of pagan gods and human sacrifices. It is a story of struggle, survival, and a woman’s power to overcome obstacles. I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to read about an exotic period of history.
Mirella Patzer
She also volunteers the assistance of Brother Thomas, coincidentally visiting from Tyndal Abbey. What Beatrice and Eleanor don’t know is that Thomas, sent by his spymaster, has an assignment of his own—one that cannot be revealed to his monastic superiors.
As they track the ghostly killer, Eleanor and Thomas are drawn into the lives of the village people. And here the author is at her best. Her characters have a depth and dimension that sets this medieval mystery head and shoulders above others. Her rich understanding of human emotions and relationships turns up on page after page.
13th CENTURY
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RIVALS FOR THE CROWN
Kathleen Givens, Pocket, 2007, $14.00/C$16.99, pb, 432pp, 9781416509929
In 1290 London, childhood friends Isabel de Burke and Rachel of Anjou are abruptly parted when King Edward I expels the Jews from England. As Rachel and her family make their way to Scotland, where they start life anew as innkeepers, Isabel becomes a lady-in-waiting to Queen Eleanor of Castile. When tension between England and Scotland mounts, Isabel and Rachel find themselves caught in the middle—and attracted to two handsome Highlanders, cousins Rory MacGannon and Kieran MacDonald. Givens’ romantic historical is plotted deftly, with likeable main characters, plenty of intrigue and narrow escapes, and truly dastardly English villains in the Braveheart tradition, including the always reliably nasty Edward I (offstage) and his lecherous sidekick, Bishop Walter Langton. The book was marred for me, though, by the distinctly modern attitudes sometimes displayed by the sympathetic characters: for instance, in an age not noted for its religious tolerance, the only people opposed to the romance between Rachel and Kieran are Rachel’s father and Rachel’s Jewish fiancé (who as a butcher doesn’t stand a chance against a handsome Highlander). Readers who can suspend their disbelief more readily, however, will likely enjoy this book.
Susan Higginbotham
JUSTICE FOR THE DAMNED
Priscilla Royal, Poisoned Pen Press, 2007, $24.95/C$29.95, hb, 220pp, 1590583302
In the spring of 1272, Eleanor, the 22year-old prioress of Tyndal Abbey, travels to Amesbury Priory to recover from a winter illness. Her aunt, Sister Beatrice, is the acting prioress there. Having raised Eleanor as an orphan, she takes on the role of wise and caring guide. To rouse Eleanor’s spirits she sets her the task of unmasking the ghostly specter whose haunting soon turns to gruesome murder.
But this is a medieval mystery. There is enough historical detail to satisfy the history buff, and it is woven easily into the narrative. The mystery is a good one with enough complexity to hold the reader’s attention, though if you rule out supernatural intervention— which the medieval characters could not—there aren’t very many plausible culprits. It’s not hard to figure out whodunit. Recommended as a worthwhile addition to your collection of medieval mysteries.
Lucille Cormier
DEATH AND THE DEVIL
Frank Schatzing (trans. Mike Mitchell), Morrow, 2007, $25.95/C$32.95, hb, 400pp, 9780061349485
Set against the backdrop of the building of one of the world’s largest cathedrals and the power struggles between the merchant ruling class and Cologne’s archbishop in 13th century Germany, Death and the Devil offers a glimpse into a rarely-explored era. This historical thriller, which debuted in Europe in 1995 and became a bestseller, is now available in English for the first time.
Schatzing weaves an improbable but engaging tale around the historically documented death of architect Gerard Morart, who fell from the scaffolding of the very cathedral he designed. His cast of fictional and real-life characters includes a wily red-haired thief who witnesses the architect’s plunge; a lovely dyer’s daughter, her learned uncle, and drunkard father; various scheming merchants; and a callous killer.
Through these points of view, Schatzing delivers a multifaceted portrait of life in medieval Cologne, from the lowest class to the highest. It is both the novel’s strength and disadvantage that this choice, while panoramic, tends to dilute the mystery at the story’s core. Nevertheless, the thief’s relationships with the learned uncle—who’s given to bouts of fierce philosophical debate—and with the tormented murderer intent on destroying him give the novel its heart.
C.W. Gortner
14th CENTURY
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THE BETRAYED: A Novel of the Gifted
Lisa T. Bergren, Berkley Praise, 2007, $23.95,
EDITORS’ CHOICE Y CRUSADE
Robyn Young, Dutton, 2007, $25.95/C$32.50, hb, 493pp, 9780525950165 / Hodder & Stoughton, 2007, £12.99, hb, 544pp, 9780340839720
Crusade is an epic tale of war, political intrigue, religious fervor, greed, and passion set in Acre of 1274. It captures the color and bustle of that vigorous trading port where Venetians, Genoese, Arabs, Jews, Franks, and English live and work in their respective sectors but where trade and matters of governance and defense force them into tenuous and shifting alliances.
Not everyone in Acre is happy with the truce between Mamelukes and Christians. Peacetime is bad for certain businesses. A cabal of merchants collaborates with the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, who uses them in turn to further his own agenda. Together they concoct a scheme that would set the Near East ablaze in unstoppable jihad. Templar knight Will Campbell is ordered to execute his Grand Master’s plan—but he is also pledged to the Brethren, a clandestine group within the Temple whose mission is to maintain peace in the Holy Land. The web tangles hopelessly as his efforts at peacekeeping are betrayed—as is his love of Elwen, illicit though it was for the should-be celibate Templar.
I will not spoil the story by telling whether Will was successful in foiling the scheme, but will finish by saying that the story ends with the battle for Acre in 1291. It’s impossible to put the book down at this point. I was impressed that the author included details like the Frankish horseman getting tangled in the guy ropes of Arab tents and a knight being thrown from his horse into a latrine. Both events are recorded in Gabrieli’s Arab Historians of the Crusades
Crusade sweeps you from the ramparts and markets of Acre to Cairo’s palace and walled harem, to the hills of Syria, the holy mosques of Mecca, and a hundred points in between. The story is outstanding—a winner from start to finish. Lucille Cormier
hb, 394pp, 9780425217085
Daria d’Angelo has several devoted followers, including a few who share her Godgiven gifts of healing and foresight. Ministering to lepers and others experiencing debilitating illness, Daria is also aware that she is hunted by the diabolic lord Abramo Amidei. Staying what seems like one step ahead of Amidei and those he commands, Daria travels, heals and prays her way through early 14th-century Venice and its outlying cities and islands. Cardinal Boeri and the Doge of Venice want to share Daria’s powers for different reasons of personal gain. In the process of this journey, Daria and her friends seek pieces of a particular fresco containing a peacock and dragon, which the Gifted believe will reveal their task and destiny. Until the novel’s end, Daria never loses her reverence for the sacred. Will there be a future novel about Daria and the Avignon-Rome battle for papal authority? You be the judge as you approach the conclusion of this exciting, mysterious, adventurous and inspiring historical novel.
Viviane Crystal
THE POISON MAIDEN
Paul Doherty, Headline, 2007, £19.99, hb, 294pp, 9780755328765
This second book in the Mathilde of Westminster series takes us to the court of Edward II in 1308. England is on the brink of civil war. Incensed by the king’s relationship with his favourite, Gaveston, Duke of Cornwall,
the lords of the realm demand that the king surrender Gaveston to have him tried for treason. Meanwhile the Poison Maiden, a mysterious assassin and spy in the employ of Philip IV of France, is on the prowl and threatens not only to murder Gaveston but bring down the king himself. After discovering two garroted bodies on palace grounds, Mathilde, physician and handmaiden to Queen Isabella, goes on a quest to unmask the Poison Maiden. Our heroine unveils a wealth of intrigue, corruption, and dirty deeds.
Although rich in atmosphere and historical detail, this novel suffers in comparison to The Cup of Ghosts, the dazzling first novel in the series. By the end of the second chapter, I had figured out who the killer was. Also, I did not find Mathilde quite as convincing a character as I did in the previous book.
Mary Sharratt
HARLOT QUEEN
Hilda Lewis, Tempus, 2007 (c1970), $12.50/£6.99, pb, 384pp, 9780752439471
Originally published in 1970, this is another Lewis “oldie but goodie.”
The story of the She-Wolf, Isabel of France, who is married as a star-struck young teen to Edward II, is one of legend. How Isabel evolves from the lovely young girl to the methodical, perverse and scheming Isabel who loses the love of her English citizenry and becomes the bane of English existence is fascinating.
Were we to believe Lewis, Isabel innocently and patiently remains focused on trying to be a good wife to Edward, whose only interest is his boy toys: first Piers Gaveston, later Hugh Despenser. She goes through—literally— years of being sexually rejected by Edward and of being tormented, demeaned and belittled by Gaveston. When Gaveston becomes a father, he realizes his folly, but it is too late. He has angered too many, taken too much and has destroyed any possibility that Edward would beget an heir. Isabel, still the innocent, lovely young thing, forgives him before his death.
What happens with the Despensers is even more vicious, and Isabel is driven to thoughts of great destruction. She becomes the obsessed lover of Mortimer, great warrior with no conscience, and together they orchestrate Despenser’s death, Edward’s imprisonment and demise, and the kingship of Edward III. By the end of the book, it is difficult not to hate Isabel for her stupidity and cupidity.
There is an interesting twist in Lewis’s version of this story. She takes the position that Edward II was not murdered and that he became a cleric. The ending is really quite lovely, with Isabel and Edward finding each other and making amends.
Sometimes a bit dry, but otherwise, Lewis captures the time, the characters and the politics to a tee.
Ilysa Magnus
THE GUILT OF INNOCENTS
Candace Robb, Heinemann, 2007, £11.99, pb, 282pp, 978043401567
It has been a long wait for the new Owen Archer mystery, and fans will be keenly anticipating this, his ninth outing. It is the winter of 1372 in York, and Owen’s wife Lucie is expecting her third child. A boatman dies in a scuffle with the boisterous students of St Peter’s school, and Owen is called in to investigate. A scrip (purse) goes missing, and a birthing cross and ring are stolen. Then another man is killed, and the scene is set for a medieval murder mystery.
Robb has clearly researched her background thoroughly. The book is steeped in medieval institutions, whether it be craft guilds, the church or schools. Also, actual historical figures are included in the story to lend authority. The tale is cleanly written, but sometimes characterisation is minimal. The interplay between Owen and his family and servants is well drawn, however, and adds welcome warmth to the proceedings.
S Garside-Neville
BRIDE FOR A KNIGHT
Sue-Ellen Welfonder, Warner, 2007, $6.99/ C$9.99, pb, 384pp, 044661730X
Jamie MacPherson is the youngest of ten brothers, and the only one left alive after a terrible tragedy. To strengthen what’s left of his family, Jamie agrees to an arranged marriage with Aveline Matheson, the younger daughter of
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a rival lord. Fortunately for the young betrothed, they fall in love with each other at first sight; but in the Scotland of 1325 things are not always what they seem, and the new couple’s happiness is threatened before it begins—by family secrets, dark intrigues, plots of revenge, and perhaps even the intervention of the dead.
Welfonder’s love for her setting and time period fills her prose with lush descriptions of a misty Highland scene perfect for mysterious events, eerie visions, and windswept romance. The medieval setting lends atmosphere and feeling rather than important historical plot elements. Though the dialogue can be jargonheavy at times, the refreshing take on plot (the hero and heroine fall in love at the beginning and spend the story trying to stay together) and sensuality flavored with the supernatural provide for an engaging and enjoyable read. Fans of Scottish romance will find much to savor.
Heather Domin
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THE HOUSE OF LANYON
Valerie Anand, MIRA, 2007, $24.95/C$29.95, hb, 586pp, 9780778325024
In her afterword, Valerie Anand mentions it was her dream to pen a novel set on Exmoor, the rolling countryside and woodlands around Somerset. She combines a wonderful sense of place with an engrossing family saga set between 1458 and 1504, with the Wars of the Roses as a mostly distant backdrop.
The Lanyons are tenant farmers on land belonging to the Sweetwaters, minor gentry living on Exmoor. Relations between them have always been frosty, but true enmity sparks when two Sweetwater sons disrupt the funeral procession of family patriarch George Lanyon. Richard, George’s middle-aged son, swears to improve his family’s station in life henceforth. He begins by arranging his son Peter’s marriage to Liza Weaver, the well-dowered daughter of a neighboring family in the wool trade. After much heartache, both Peter and Liza abandon hopes of marrying their lovers and agree to wed one another. And Richard, for all his pride and bluster, closely guards a secret from his own past that could destroy everything he’s built.
Liza and Peter develop a strong marital bond, raising a family and suffering Richard’s ambition to rebuild Allerbrook Farm as a manor house that will put the Sweetwater residence to shame. They deal with business disputes, family squabbles, and personal losses as best they can, with outside events rarely intruding until Lancaster and York force everyone to take sides.
With its descriptions of local trades, customs, and family life, The House of Lanyon is a fascinating social history of the medieval West Country as seen through the eyes of sympathetic characters. Though nearly the entire book takes place on a small plot of land, I was never bored. The sort of novel you can comfortably wallow
in for days, it’s a gift to readers who, like me, loved Anand’s Bridges over Time series and wanted more.
Sarah Johnson
THE EDICT: A Novel from the Beginnings of Golf
Bob Cupp, Knopf, 2007, $24.95, hb, 240pp, 9780307266453
Penned by golf architect Bob Cupp, The Edict is his hymn to the game’s development from its probable beginnings in the shepherd’s fields of Scotland to the 1457 edict passed by King James II banning “futball and golfe.” Unfortunately, it isn’t a novel at all, but a miscellany wrapped in the cloak of fiction. The story opens in 1448 with the introduction of the main character, young shepherd Caeril Patersone, just after his father has been killed in battle, then moves into the first of the author’s numerous nonfiction theories regarding the game’s genesis. The history presented is evocative, as Cupp describes the land off the eastern coast of Scotland, the sheep grazing the turf to a smooth “playing” surface, and the construction of St. Andrew’s Cathedral. Cupp believes the game had to begin in Scotland given the nature of the Scots themselves: a “bucolic but ingenious, quiet but steely race.”
Jump forward to 1456 and Caeril, now eighteen, a shepherd and a competition golfer. And continue jumping genres as Caeril struggles to win the championship golf title at St. Andrew’s. Throughout, Cupp gives readers numerous asides, some presented as tales told over cups of single-malt whisky, and shameless anachronisms, as when the author leaps onto the page to describe how players had assistants, or clubmen, not yet known as “caddies,” since that term initially “referred to cadets who served as pages for Mary, Queen of Scots, but Mary would not appear in Scotland for another sixty years...”
Cupp’s affection for golf is evident, his pen fluid and his tone light, and so it seems churlish to criticize the book as a whole. Still, given the subtitle’s (deliberately?) misleading claim, The Edict is bound to disappoint readers who accept it at its word and expect to read a solid historical novel from a major publisher about, well, the beginnings of golf.
Alana White
A PLAY OF LORDS
Margaret Frazer, Berkley Prime Crime, 2007, $7.99, pb, 292pp, 9780425216682
As Parliament meets in autumn 1435, London offers diversions aplenty to the lords, both temporal and spiritual. When actor-playwright Joliffe and his company of itinerant players perform for their patron’s grand banquet, their acting skills catch the eye of the powerful Bishop Beaufort. Beaufort is a player in more dangerous games, jockeying for lucrative trade deals and for influence over young King Henry VI. Much to the players’ profit, Joliffe is commissioned to
write a drama for their performances, one that will mock the politically unpopular French king and his Burgundian allies.
Eventually Beaufort recruits Joliffe to join his network of spies. After the murder of another of the Bishop’s spies, the players must seek the killer before they too become victims of the nobility’s political games. In the end the thick fog of political intrigue overwhelms the rather slight mystery. But as always in this series, Frazer creates a rich tapestry of medieval life with a complex historical background. Her characters are warm and engaging, conveying the spirit of life on the edge as experienced by the itinerant players. Fourth in series.
Nina de Angeli
IT DREAMS IN ME
Kathleen O’Neal Gear, Forge, 2007, $12.95, pb, 288pp, 9780765311672
This is the third book in the trilogy of a Native American tribe located in Florida around 1400 AD. A young woman named Sora, the High Priestess of the Black Falcon people, searches for her lost soul. Her husband Flint and a young priest named Strongheart try to cure her of her mental anguish and the cause of her illness, which results in epileptic type seizures. She has no memory of murders that others accuse her of having committed.
This book is different from the First North Americans Series the author co-wrote with her husband, W. Michael Gear. The Gears are archaeologists specializing in Native American studies and locations. It Dreams in Me is much more erotic than the original series, is more fantasy-focused and deals more with the supernatural lives of the tribes.
I have read all the books in this series and, although they were well written, there was too much detail about the characters’ sexual encounters. I felt little compassion for Sora, her mental problems, and her attempts to locate her soul. It all sounded a bit far-fetched to me. I enjoyed the First North American Series, but felt let down by the emphasis on sex in these stories. Although the sexual encounters were important to the story and used as a remedy for Sora’s illness, I feel Kathleen Gear wrote this novel with titillation in mind.
Jeff Westerhoff
16th CENTURY
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THE QUEEN’S HANDMAIDEN
Jennifer Ashley, Berkley, 2007, $14.00/C$17.50, pb, 320pp, 9780425217320
Unwanted by her new stepfather, Eloise Rousell ends up in the care of her relation Kat Ashley, governess to Elizabeth Tudor. Growing up alongside her royal mistress, Eloise discovers that she has talents not only for dressmaking, but for intrigue—skills that Eloise will use to Elizabeth’s advantage as the future queen is threatened from all sides.
Spanning the period from Edward VI’s reign
to the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, from scandal with Thomas Seymour to scandal with Robert Dudley, this is a diverting tale narrated by the resourceful, loyal Eloise in an engaging, lively fashion. A love story involving Eloise, though not so prominent as to intrude upon the main story, adds a nice touch.
Perhaps because so many events were packed into a relatively short space, however, I found that this novel was somewhat lacking in depth and focus—it was difficult to get a sense as to some of the characters’ personalities and motivations. That being said, I found the characters here to be refreshingly true to their time, not the modern beings in fancy dress that have marred some Tudor fiction, and the novel to be well researched. I look forward to future forays into historical fiction by Ashley.
Susan Higginbotham
FACE DOWN O’ER THE BORDER
Kathy Lynn Emerson, Perseverance Press, 2007, $14.95, pb, 236pp, 9781880284919
In this 10th novel in the Face Down mystery series, Susanna Appleton, Elizabethan gentlewoman and sleuth, travels to Scotland to aid her friend, Catherine Glenelg, who is accused of murdering her mother-inlaw. Catherine has lost her memory and can remember nothing of the incidents surrounding the death. She is persuaded by another friend, Annabel MacReynolds, to flee for her safety. However, Catherine will not leave Scotland without her son, who is living at the royal palace as one of the schoolfellows of the eleven-yearold King James; and Annabel is a notorious, though retired, spy who has a plan. As Lady Appleton investigates what appears to be a domestic incident, she finds herself caught up in the political intrigue surrounding the Scottish throne.
I had not read any of the previous novels, but the obviously well-developed characters and relationships soon eased me into the plot. The depth of historical detail was impressive, if at times a little obtrusive, but the mystery and the ongoing background story made for a satisfyingly complex narrative, and all of the suspects were sufficiently credible to leave me guessing for a good part of the novel. Historical mystery fans should find this a pleasurable read.
Susan Cook
YOUNG BESS
Margaret Irwin, Allison & Busby, 2007 (c1944), £7.99, pb, 393pp, 0749080213
Princess Elizabeth’s early life is tainted by the death of her mother and the political intrigues that typified the Tudor court. The death of Henry VIII removes his protection, such as it was, leaving the young girl reliant on the goodwill of her half-brother, Edward, and the guidance of her stepmother Katherine Parr.
When Thomas Seymour marries Henry’s young widow, the adolescent Elizabeth finds
herself dangerously attracted to the flirtatious and scheming courtier. One slip and her position, even her life, will be in danger.
So far, so familiar, but Young Bess is part of a welcome reissue of the 1944 trilogy. Although perhaps slower paced than many modern novels, Margaret Irwin’s prose has lost none of its freshness or authenticity. Beautifully and evocatively written, this is historical writing at its best. I first read this as a child and was delighted to be offered the chance to re-read it as an adult. It has definitely stood the test of time and should be high up on any Tudor enthusiast’s reading list.
Sara Wilson
BLOOD ROCK
John Jackson, John Murray, 2007, £11.99, pb, 369pp, 9780719569838
Summer 1565. The Knights of St John are under siege on the small island of Malta, facing the full might of the Ottoman Empire. Suleiman the Magnificent has let the Knights escape once before; now he seeks a final solution. And not only are the Knights few in number, there is discord among them. In their highest echelons lurks a traitor, who not only passes vital information to the besiegers, but poisons Grand Master Jean de la Valette with arsenic.
The Great Siege of Malta provides a superb setting for a historical novel, comparable with the Spanish Armada as an epic tale, and with the bonus of a great deal more fighting. But Mr Jackson fails to pull it off. Maybe, having spent three years of my childhood in Malta and having the Great Siege as part of my heritage, the standard I set is just too high. But clichés abound, and the characters are two-dimensional. The hero, Christian Hardy, is superman, but do we really care what happens to him, or to his aristocratic Maltese girlfriend, Maria? Or whether the Grand Master really is being poisoned? I’m afraid not. And there is no real sense of the Knights as fighters for their faith. That said, the battle scenes are well done, and those who like their historical fiction with plenty of gore will surely find enough to satisfy them.
Ann Lyon
THE CONCUBINE
Norah Lofts, Tempus, 2007, $12.50/ C$16.95/£6.99, pb, 358pp, 9780752439433
The popularity of historical fiction about historical women in general and Boleyn women in particular has resulted in the republication of this masterful work by a giant in the field. Anne Boleyn, a pawn in the private battle between her ambitious father and his great enemy Cardinal Wolsey, is summarily dismissed from Queen Katherine’s household. They have prevented her love match to Lord Henry Percy. No sooner is the troublesome wench safely out of the way than Wolsey’s friend the King hastens to her side.
His desires follow three parallel tracks—to seduce Anne, to set aside his marriage, to sire
a son and heir—but soon all three converge. When he plights his troth to Anne and she to him, they never imagine it will lead to religious and political upheaval across a peaceful England and a warring Europe.
Trapped in her gilded cage, hated by the people, regarded by her waiting woman as the shining hope of a new religious movement, Anne welcomes Wolsey’s downfall but knows she must capitulate to Henry or lose her chance at marriage. Disappointed to find her no different in bed than other women, Henry becomes impatient and tyrannical. Her pregnancy hardens his resolve to make her his queen and break with Rome, even as his cruelty increases and his eye wanders towards Jane Seymour. During her trial, confronted by death, Anne redeems herself by her courage and resignation to her fate.
Lofts takes us into the mind and heart of the doomed Wolsey, the discarded Katherine, the disheartened Henry Percy, Anne’s courtiers, and most significantly her waiting-woman, Emma Arnett. The corridors of power and intrigue in Tudor times, in all its many complexities, are made vividly real and potent. Lofts displays a true gift for human drama, populating the novel with impeccably crafted characters, and filling it with fact and detail.
Margaret Barr
THE KING’S PLEASURE
Norah Lofts, Tempus, 2007 (c1969), $12.50/ C$16.95/£6.99, pb, 334pp, 9780752439464
Originally published in 1969, this reissued novel by one of the grande dames of 20thcentury historical fiction tells the familiar story of Katharine of Aragon, spanning her childhood in Spain to her death as the cast-off wife of Henry VIII. Katharine’s tale is told by a third-person narrator not only from her own perspective, but from those of other players in the drama of Henry’s reign.
This is a novel that has held up remarkably well over time. Though it is slow moving on occasion, its leisurely pace allows us to savor the impressive gallery of characters. Lofts gives us information about the backgrounds of even the minor ones, so that they become much more than mere props supporting the lead protagonists, but interesting people in their own right. Henry, always a challenge for historical novelists, is not a cardboard villain but a complex man of many qualities. Katharine is admirable but maddeningly stubborn, taking the hard path where the easier one might have been better for all concerned. The interactions between all of these people feel absolutely authentic and natural, as in the scene toward the end of the novel where two of Katharine’s attendants bicker as Katharine lies dying in the next room. And although the novel ends with Katharine’s death, Lofts occasionally provides us glimpses into the future, adding to the book’s richness.
This is a classic of the genre that should appeal both to those revisiting old favorites
Y THE WITCH’S TRINITY
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Erika Mailman, Crown, 2007, $23.95/C$29.95, hb, 288pp, 9780307351524 / Hodder & Stoughton, 2007, £16.99, hb, 316pp, 9780340962190
Mailman’s second historical novel, set in the small German town of Tierkinddorf between 1507 and 1510, explores the horror of superstition, the inexplicable fear of witchcraft, and the hysterical mentality of the mob.
Tierkinddorf is plagued by a famine of monumental proportions. There is nothing to eat: the animals have all been consumed, the earth is unproductive and the mill is no longer operating. Why should a good Christian community be suffering such deprivation when communities in other parts of Germany are not? The only explanation is that the town has been cursed by witchcraft.
Güde is an old woman who lives with her son, Jost, his wife, Irmeltrud, and their two young children. As deprivation increases, Irmeltrud makes clear that Güde has outlived her usefulness. Already struggling with memory lapses, Güde believes she has signed the devil’s book in the woods after Irmeltrud throws her out into the snow.
After the town herbalist, Künne, Güde’s oldest and best friend, is accused of being a witch and burned at the stake, Irmeltrud accuses Güde of witchcraft. Events deteriorate and ultimately, no one is safe from accusation—not even Güde’s little granddaughter, Alke.
Written in simple, sleek prose, Mailman captures the corruption of fear in a small town to a tee. With a Massachusetts “witch” for an ancestor, Mailman’s interest in the subject of witchcraft hysteria gives her bona fides on a topic to which she brings considerable skill in character development and plot design. The complex, unnerving portrait of Güde is masterful and leaves much to interpretation. The cold, snowy German winter, the pangs of starvation, the abuses of the Church and the resiliency of the people are all palpable images, beautifully executed to maximum impact. Though by no means a “fun read,” this concise novel is a recommended one.
and to those just discovering the masters of the past.
Susan Higginbotham
MADEMOISELLE BOLEYN
Robin Maxwell, New American Library, 2007, $14.00, pb, 368pp, 9780451222091
Robin Maxwell returns to the subject of her debut (The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn) in this colorful and imaginative novel. Anne Boleyn’s youth in France has hardly been addressed in fiction, compared to her later career as Henry VIII’s most famous and ultimately tragic wife. Nevertheless, many historians believe it was during her stay at the court of François I where Anne, and to a lesser extent her sister, Mary, learned about the perils and power of becoming a royal mistress. Maxwell capitalizes on the ongoing fascination with the Boleyn sisters by plunging us into the licentious, corrupt world of Henry VIII’s French rival—a world where women are treated as little more than chattel to be used for titles and favors most often enjoyed by the men in their lives. As a young girl, Anne is spared the degradations her elder sister endures, as Mary is forced by their own father to seduce François in order to discover the king’s political secrets.
It is here where the novel’s main drawback emerges. While Anne’s voice is clever and clear-headed, in tune with the woman she’ll later become, the sexual abuse visited on Mary
challenges the reader to look beyond the graphic language for a hint of that most tempting of Renaissance aphrodisiacs: the quest for status. Though the motive espoused by their father is to spy on the French king, neither sister does much of it. Mary spends her time cruelly sublimated, while Anne befriends the king’s erudite sister Marguerite, and more fancifully, an elderly Leonardo da Vinci, who teaches her the importance of observation and imparts advice on how she might save herself from François’s satiric advances. However, in the end the novel proves compulsive reading as Anne comes to realize she needn’t become a man’s victim in order to triumph.
C.W. Gortner
THE MUSCOVY CHAIN
John Pilkington, Severn House, 2007, £18.99/$27.95, hb, 203pp, 9780727865432
Can the modern genre of the detective story be transposed to cultural settings where there is no police force, no forensic science and completely different concepts of justice and law enforcement? Surely the result must be a total anachronism.
Yet why not? Does anybody really believe in Hercule Poirot or Inspector Morse? Do their adventures have anything serious to say about crime and law enforcement in the 20th and 21st centuries? They are primarily intellectual games, literary crossword puzzles. So why not set your
master sleuth and his mystery in ancient Egypt, the Aztec Empire or Nazi Germany?
John Pilkington sets his ‘intelligencer’, Thomas the Falconer, in Elizabethan England. The Muscovy Chain is the seventh novel in the series. The plot is very Agatha Christie. Sir Robert Vicary, Thomas’s employer, is entertaining the Russian ambassador at his country house when the bejewelled chain which was to be presented to the ambassador goes missing. The culprit is clearly one of the house guests, and he is unmasked by Thomas in Sir Robert’s study towards the end of the story, leaving the murderous sub-plot to be resolved in a final act of violence. It is very neat and entertaining.
What does the story tell us about Tudor England? We learn that 1596 had a terrible summer, with almost continuous rain. Nearly all the action takes place in a downpour. Luckily Sir Robert’s country seat was on the Berkshire Downs, thus escaping the catastrophic floods in the Severn Valley which inundated Tewkesbury and Gloucester. And not even Thomas could blame global warming.
Edward James
17th CENTURY
Ilysa Magnus N n N n
CORSAIR: The Adventures of Hector Lynch Tim Severin, Macmillan, 2007, £12.99, hb, 346pp, 9781405088886
The unfortunate Hector Lynch certainly gets his fair share of adventures in this novel and is still only eighteen years of age by the end of the tale. Snatched by Barbary corsairs from their quiet village on the south coast of Ireland, Hector and his sister are whisked away to lands unknown. Hector is separated from his sister, Elizabeth, and held prisoner on a ship sailing south to a destiny which would have horrified people with more experience of life in the 17th century.
Hector’s sale in the slave market and incarceration within the slave barracks at Algiers has a fortunate outcome in his forming a friendship with fellow captive, Dan, a Miskito Indian from the Caribbean. Their subsequent conversion to Islam, a passage not for the squeamish, allows the two friends to be together, even though their adventurous life is far from serene.
His quest to locate the whereabouts of his sister leaves Hector feeling bereaved when he discovers she will never be released from her position, voluntarily or otherwise. Severin writes a tale of adventure which will appeal to the reader whose questioning of the plausibility of the storyline does not delve too deep and who is ripe for piratical happenings without considering the falseness of the journeying.
Cathy Kemp
18th CENTURY
THE BLACKSMITH’S DAUGHTER
Suzanne Adair, Dram Tree Books, 2007, $19.95, pb, 354pp, 9780978526535
Betsy Sheridan is struggling to maintain her neutrality in a very dangerous Southland of 1780. She discovers that her husband is a spy for the patriot cause, and also her father’s real identity. He and her mother are in hiding with Indians in South Carolina. Betsy decides to find the fugitives even while pregnant with her first child and being pursued by the nefarious British lieutenant Dunstan Fairfax.
The body count mounts as lying and brutality on all sides cut a swath through the Southern frontier. The story ends at the Battle of Camden and its aftermath, where mother and daughter are finally reunited.
The tone of The Blacksmith’s Daughter jumps from serious to tongue-in-cheek, from ribald to gothic, unfortunate distractions from the story. The heroine and her “pregnant nose” and “flip-flopping” stomach endure more perils than Pauline. She entangles herself in her own lies and engages in wild speculation that makes her seem more silly than smart. Add wooden supporting characters and anachronisms like “strip-searched” and “I see how this has stressed you,” and this novel may be an exasperating reading experience.
Eileen Charbonneau
LIEUTENANT FURY
G. S. Beard, Century, 2007, £18.99, hb, 400pp, 9780091796020
1793. In France, the Royalists are clinging to power in Toulon, but the Republicans are gaining ground. Lieutenant Fury, returning from India, finds that Britain is at war with France when a French frigate attacks his ship. A bloody sea battle ensues.
From then on the pace doesn’t falter. Fury is promoted and soon finds plenty of action: he’s landed ashore to take out a Republican battery (lots of explosions); told to capture a lugger (terrific chase and more fighting); and put in charge of a floating battery (tremendous cannon and mortar fire). Then he is sent to Fort Pomet on the outskirts of Toulon, now being besieged by French Republicans. How long can he hold off the enemy? As the situation worsens, Fury has another concern: will he be able to rescue the lovely Sophie and her father, the Comte de Chabeuil?…
If you like plenty of action with a nautical flavour, you’ll love this. ‘Halliards were overhauled, bringing the yards down onto the cap while the clew lines, buntlines and leech lines were hauled on to bring the sail up to the yards.’ What the hell does it mean? Who cares? It’s a gripping read. I particularly liked the authentically formal way Fury relates to his men. ‘How long have you been in the service, Mr Francis?’ he asks the youngest midshipman, who can scarcely be in his teens.
Unfortunately, there is a disappointing lapse in the author’s historical accuracy when
it comes to Fury’s beloved. Within five minutes, he’s calling her ‘Sophie’, which in 18th century terms indicates that she is either a servant or a loose woman. I was expecting the Comte to horsewhip him for insulting his daughter’s reputation. Come on, Fury! England expects her officers to behave like gentlemen!
Elizabeth Hawksley
THE CRIMSON CAVALIER
Mary Andrea Clarke, Crème de la Crime, 2007, £7.99, pb, 288pp, 9780955158957
Pre-Regency London is the setting for this debut novel by Mary Andrea Clarke. Sir Robert Foster, whose reputation is far from unblemished, is murdered. Suspicion falls on the Crimson Cavalier, but Georgina Grey, a young lady of independent means and her own establishment, knows otherwise. She is determined to investigate, which she does with the connivance of her loyal maid Emily and Max Lakesby, guardian of Louise, one of the Cavalier’s victims. Georgina’s determination leads her into personal danger and even uncovers a side to her pompous brother Edward’s life that she would never have imagined possible. This is a delightful and entertaining novel with an engrossing plot. It is written in a style that flows for the reader, but takes a lot of effort on the part of the writer to achieve. The author has also created an interesting collection of characters. Georgina is a heroine who is willing to step outside the confines of her role as an 18th century woman to become a female investigator, but who is also very much aware of the conventions of her day with its round morning calls and evening parties. No doubt even Georgette Heyer would have given her stamp of approval to Miss Knatchbull, the
Y MOZART’S SISTER
poor relative foisted on Georgina to act as her chaperone, the pretty, empty-headed Louisa, and the youthful Tom, with his aspirations to become a highwayman. Regency fans will be clamouring at the publisher’s door for the next one.
Myfanwy Cook
THE SECRET LIFE OF JOSEPHINE
Carolly Erickson, St. Martin’s Press, 2007, $24.95/C$31.00/£17.99, hb, 336pp, 9780312367350
Lovely Rose of Martinique is sent to prerevolutionary France to marry Viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais, but her arrogant new husband neglects her to spend time with his mistress. Rose gives him two children and finds happiness with a lover. After the revolution tears Paris apart, Rose is imprisoned for being an aristocrat’s wife. Alexandre is guillotined, but Rose is spared. Caught up in the debauched life after the Terror, she is now an influential man’s mistress. Through him she meets a rising young general who begs to marry her.
To secure the future of her children, Rose marries General Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte renames her Josephine and leaves to command the army in Italy; Josephine continues with her lovers. When Bonaparte discovers her infidelity, he takes a mistress and treats her with cruelty. Josephine is contacted by a spy network that convinces her to stop Bonaparte before he destroys France.
Erickson admits freely that this is a work of fiction blended with fact. Josephine has a lover who pops up in almost comic fashion everywhere she travels. The author goes out of her way to make Napoleon repulsive. She imbues Josephine with the same loathing, so
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Rita Charbonnier (trans. Ann Goldstein), Crown, 2007, $23.95/C$29.95, hb, 336pp, 9780307346780
Nannerl Mozart, a brilliant musician in her own right, has been close to her brother, Wolfgang, since his birth. Then her father announces that he and Wolfgang are to go to Italy, leaving Nannerl behind to support their ambitions by giving music lessons to the talentless young gentry of Salzburg. Bitter over her lot, Nannerl gives up her music and retreats into a shell until she meets Victoria, a gifted harpsichordist—and Victoria’s widowed father. The ensuing romance has far-reaching consequences for Nannerl’s fraught relationship with her brother and ultimately for Nannerl herself.
Told through letters from Nannerl to her suitor and through a third-person narrator, Mozart’s Sister takes a bit of getting used to as the narrative flips back and forth in time and between narrative devices and points of view. The result, however, is well worth it. Charbonnier’s dialogue in this debut novel is lively, while her narrative voice is wonderfully droll at times, moving at others. Her characters, ranging from a baron who spouts bad poetry to the mercurial Mozart, are vivid. Nannerl herself is a beautifully realized heroine who grows from a sullen, angry girlhood into a graceful yet formidable old age and who at last is able to embrace her brother’s musical legacy. Her journey is one that will entrance both lovers of music and lovers of historical fiction.
Susan Higginbotham
their marriage never makes sense on any level. Still, the novel is a beautifully written, guilty pleasure.
Diane Scott Lewis
LORD JOHN AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE BLADE
Diana Gabaldon, Delacorte, 2007, $25.00, hb, 512pp, 9780385337496 / Century, 2007, £18.99, hb, 512pp, 9781844132003
Anyone wondering how to produce authentic fictional characters should pick up Diana Gabaldon’s novels and study closely. One of the most complex characters she has developed is Lord John Grey, nemesis of Jamie Fraser in her Outlander series, and protagonist of her mysteries.
In this, her second novel devoted to Lord John, the plot revolves about his father’s death, nearly seventeen years past in 1758. What is John’s mother not telling him? How much does his brother know? And who is leaving pages of his father’s journal in strategic locations?
The mystery is absorbing, but it was to discover what would happen to John next that compelled me to read on. Gabaldon plunges the reader into the action and recreates 18th-century London with her trademark skill. As John embarks on a new love affair, escapes death in battle and treachery at home, and turns to Jamie for insider knowledge of the Jacobite Rebellion, the reader is left wanting far more than 512 pages—and hoping there will be another installment in the life of Lord John soon.
Claire Morris
LORD JOHN AND THE HAND OF DEVILS
Diana Gabaldon, Delacorte, 2007, $25.00, hb, 320pp, 9780385311397 / Century, 2008, £18.99, hb, 320pp, 9780712679886
Three novellas line up in good, better, best order as master storyteller Diana Gabaldon explores the mid-18th century life of Lord John Grey, a character she introduced in her wildly popular Outlander series of novels.
In Lord John and the Hellfire Club, our hero is plunged into a murder mystery and inducted into a notorious and sadistic society. This one’s tone owes a tip of the quill to early gothic novels like The Monk, and seems a bit breathless.
Next comes Lord John and the Succubus, set in wartime. Major Grey intercedes in a fight between a soldier and a gypsy that mushrooms into supernatural intrigue as well as a romantic triangle with a princess and her suitor. Lord John’s servant Tom Byrd proves a witty and resourceful companion who helps keep spirits high as his master fights the evidence of the supernatural with his rational training.
Lord John and the Haunted Soldier sees the major at his most vulnerable while recovering from battle wounds. Lord John struggles with his own and his brother’s possible complicity as he explores the cause of exploding cannon gun barrels that have led to deaths of crewmen. Lord
John reasons away through self doubts while a sliver of the exploded gun is still inside him and perilously close to his heart. In his heightened and precarious state he confesses his love of the Outlander Scot Jamie Fraser in a letter he promptly commits to the fire, adding poignancy to this final (ahem) outing of an enjoyable collection.
Eileen Charbonneau
THE SCANDAL OF THE SEASON
Sophie Gee, Scribner, 2007, $25.00, hb, 352pp, 1416540563 / Chatto & Windus, 2007, £12.99, hb, 304pp, 9780701181161
In 1711, the English monarchy was far from secure. Queen Anne had failed to provide an heir, and the Jacobites, who favored putting the exiled, Catholic Pretender on the throne, were busy hatching plots to mount an invasion from France.
Amidst all this, the golden age of Augustan poetry is about to begin, with Alexander Pope a young man and, although his fame is spreading, still a comparative unknown. Gee’s novel centers around a particular London season when Alexander and several of his Catholic friends— most notably Theresa and Martha Blount— spend a few months in London, where they are all caught up in the affairs of the beautiful Arabella Fermor.
In this time before Victorian prudery, the unmarried Miss Fermor conducts an illicit affair with a Catholic peer, assuming that he fully intends to make a proposal at the end of the season. But his secrets catch up with him and the course of true love is diverted. Gee draws together the various threads of the story to result in the genesis of Pope’s most famous poem, “The Rape of the Lock.”
As Assistant Professor of English at Princeton, Sophie Gee’s credentials are impeccable. As a novelist, however, she still has much to learn. Much of the most potentially dramatic action takes place off the page, and the characters— particularly Arabella and Alexander—seem to exist on separate planes rather than be interwoven with one another. It’s difficult to discern the primary thrust of the story, as well as to tell who truly is the main character. But Gee’s prose is readable, her descriptions evocative, and although the plot—based on a true story though it is—feels a little contrived, those with an interest in the era will probably want to read The Scandal of the Season.
Susanne Dunlap
THE SYLPH
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (ed. Jonathan Gross), Northwestern Univ. Press, 2007, $18.95, pb, 256pp, 0810122294
The Sylph was published anonymously in 1779, four years after Georgiana Spencer married the fifth Duke of Devonshire and thus became one of the most fêted women of her generation. Because Georgiana’s publisher encouraged the belief that The Sylph was written
by Fanny Burney, the author of Evelina, the delicious irony that society was being critiqued by one of its most scandalous members was lost on its original readers. The plot unfolds in its entirety through a series of letters, a storytelling technique that fortuitously provides not only a first-person commentary on the mores of the upper class in the late 18th century but also some insight into the struggles the author endured during the first years of her own marriage.
Georgiana’s heroine, Julia Grenville, is an innocent country girl who marries Lord Stanley, a London rake. Julia’s frustration with the shocking dissipation of the ton is both humorous (“ such is the construction [of hair] nowadays that a head might burn for an hour without damaging the genuine part of it”) and perceptive (“I am far from being an enemy to pleasure––but… let it be the amusement, not the business of life”) Desperate for a mentor to guide her through the morass of societal depravity, Julia relies on a man who, claiming to be her “sylph” (an aerial being who knows her every thought and deed), sends her letters warning her against the lures of the city.
Edited to modern usage by Jonathan Gross, who also contributes a useful and interesting introduction, The Sylph is a very readable novel of historical and literary worth. That its author is a woman who was a sponsor of Charles James Fox, a friend of Marie Antoinette, and an ancestress of Princess Diana is a circumstance that only adds to the novel’s appeal.
Nancy J. Attwell
A MATTER OF HONOR
William C. Hammond III, Cumberland House, 2007, $26.95, hb, 416pp, 9781581826098
This nautical adventure, the first in a series, takes place during the American Revolution as Richard Cutler, a young rebel, signs on as a midshipman aboard the Ranger, a Continental navy sloop-of-war captained by John Paul Jones. Cutler wants independence for his country, and revenge for his older brother, Will, flogged to death by the Royal Navy. Serving alongside Jones on the Ranger and later the Bonhomme Richard, Cutler fights in spectacular sea battles, and through his travels, meets many of the key characters in the Revolution including Ben Franklin, the Marquis de Lafayette and John Adams.
This adventure story is deeply researched and vividly and eloquently told. Readers gain insight into how an infantile country fought for its independence, the struggles families faced with relations on both sides of the Atlantic, and the daily hardships of life at sea. Hammond traces Cutler’s adventures from 1774 all the way through the end of the war, providing readers with everything from romance, passion, war, and strife. A powerful maritime tale, A Matter of Honor is sure to entertain anyone looking for a dramatic look at the American Revolution through the eyes of a young seaman intensely embroiled in the fight for independence.
Rebecca Roberts
Y AN ACCOMPLISHED WOMAN
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Jude Morgan, Headline, 2007, £19.99, hb, 407 pp, 9780755307685
Jude Morgan follows up his tragic and haunting novel Symphony with this witty, Jane-Austen-inspired comedy of errors.
Ten years ago Lydia Templeton spurned Lewis Durrant, the most eligible bachelor in Norfolk. Now thirty, the vastly accomplished Lydia is enjoying her spinsterhood and intellectual pursuits. Her idyll ends when a family friend strong-arms her into chaperoning the naïve orphan Phoebe Rae, heiress to £50,000. Lovely Miss Rae is torn between two suitors: the dignified Mr. Allardyce who has a promising career in diplomatic service and the overwrought Mr. Beck who pens tortured poetry concerning milkmaids and their ‘lacteous buckets.’ Seeking to counter Phoebe’s sensibility with her own good sense, Lydia accompanies her young charge to Bath. Also in Bath, Lydia’s old flame Lewis Durrant is determined to find a bride and produce an heir, which will allow him to disinherit his feckless, spendthrift dandy of a nephew. Lydia and Durrant strike a bet, wagering £50 to whomever will succeed first in their mission. Will Lydia see Phoebe happily betrothed to a worthy man who truly cherishes the young woman and not just her fortune? Will misanthropic, middle-aged Durrant find love at last? Is Lydia as impervious to romance as she claims?
(c1970), £7.99, hb, 403pp, 9780007255832 / Norton, 2003, $14.95, pb, 412pp, 0393325172
What can a reviewer say about Patrick O’Brian? He is a classic, or at least his Aubrey & Maturin series is, as is now proved by the fact that Harper Perennial are republishing the whole series of 21 books seven years after his death, starting with the first of the series, Master & Commander. I would have thought that everybody with the faintest interest in sea stories who can read English (or any of the other languages into which they have been translated) has already read the series and probably has them on his or her bookshelf, but Harper clearly feel that there are new readers out there. No doubt they have been encouraged by the enormous success of the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World in 2003.
The plot bristles with reversals, hilarity and pathos, before wrapping up in a tender and satisfying finish. The characters, flawed yet endearing, are convincingly human. Light without being lightweight, this is a smart, stylish novel for discerning readers who wouldn’t normally read ‘romance.’ An Accomplished Woman is what the Jane Austen Book Club will be reading next.
THE BLOODING OF JACK ABSOLUTE
C. C. Humphreys, St. Martin’s Press, 2007, $24.95, hb, 320pp, 9780312358235 / Orion, 2005, £6.99, pb, 400pp, 0752865277
The Blooding of Jack Absolute, a prequel to the previously-published Jack Absolute, chronicles the bawdy and eventful youth of the inexhaustible main character, a British soldier fighting in Canada during the mid-18th century. Jack is a much-abused bastard in his uncle’s house when a series of events leaves him with a family, a name, and the promise of a wealthy estate. Sent off to boarding school in London, Jack does his best to seduce courtesans, win at cricket, fight bullies, and drink as much ale as he can. Trouble follows, and soon Jack is fighting a duel against his own cousin. His father—who recognizes Jack as a chip off the old block— intervenes, and ships him away from any nasty consequences: to Canada, where he’ll serve as a lesser officer of the 16th Light Dragoons. But Jack’s adventures are only beginning. He arrives just in time for the Battle of Quebec. During the fighting, French Indian allies try to kill him, but he survives only to become their slave. With help from an Iroquois brave, he escapes, but their timing is terrible—now they must survive a winter in the Canadian wild.
Eventually, Jack returns to civilization a changed man. He’s part British, part Iroquois, wiser, smarter, and harder—and faced with a critical decision: Which life should he lead?
C.C. Humphreys has written another raucous page-turner, rich in historical detail, full of action, freewheeling and yet utterly believable. Like Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey, Jack Absolute is
Mary Sharratt
a character strong enough to fascinate through many, many sequels. This reader looks forward to his continuing adventures.
Lisa Ann Verge
DESPERATE DUCHESSES
Eloisa James, Avon, 2007, $6.99/C$9.99, pb, 384pp, 9780060781934 / Hodder & Stoughton, 2008, £19.99, hb, 320pp, 9780340961032
Lady Roberta is determined to escape her unconventional life with her father and his mistress by marrying the Duke of Villiers. To that end she journeys to London to visit her distant cousin, in the hope she will bring her into Society. Jemma, a lady of scandal only recently returned from France, agrees. But it is her brother Damon who takes the most interest in Roberta, with predictable results.
A Shakespearean scholar in her other life, Eloisa James is an accomplished and witty novelist with a keen sense of character, pacing and romance. Roberta is no simpering miss, while dashing Damon is delightfully direct in pursuit of his love, even as she insists she loves another. The secondary characters are equally unique, yet don’t seem out of time for the period, which is depicted in all its decadence. A subplot about chess is well integrated into the main story.
Though Roberta’s devotion to the cold, pompous Villiers grated, there was little else to detract from pure enjoyment in this sparkling tale of love set in Georgian London.
Teresa Basinski Eckford
MASTER & COMMANDER
Patrick O’Brian, Harper Perennial, 2007
Not that O’Brian is always easy reading. His novels were not an instant success, and fame and fortune did not come to him until late in his long life. For much of his career he earned his living largely as a translator, notably of Papillon, surely the best escape story ever written. The magic of the Aubrey and Maturin books is cumulative (for the uninitiated, Aubrey is the captain of the ship and Maturin is the ship’s surgeon). Different readers find different beauties. The technical detail beloved of the maritime history buffs I find tedious. I put up with it because it is important to the characters and the characters are important to me.
Edward James
WHITE ROSE REBEL
Janet Paisley, Viking, 2007, £12.99, hb, 400pp, 9780670917181 / Overlook, March 2008, $25.95, hb, 400pp, 9781585679591 Scotland, 1745. Bonnie Prince Charles lands to attempt to regain the throne and establish, once again, Scotland’s independence from the hated Union with England. The call goes to the clans to rise, but in one of them there is trouble. Aeneas, Chief of Clan McIntosh, is on the side of the Union but his wife, the Lady Anne, is most definitely not and leads the clan herself. The story of the rebellion unfolds—and the rest, as they say, is history.
Anne Farquarson, Lady McIntosh as she became, was the White Rose Rebel. Herself the daughter of a Highland chief, she led her countrymen throughout the rising, survived the defeat of the Scots at Culloden and on the death of her husband moved to Leith and is buried in St Ninian’s churchyard on Coburg Street. A white rose, the white rose of Scotland, the Jacobite rose, grows beside her grave.
This is the story of the ’45 told from Scotland’s viewpoint. It graphically tells of the events and the suffering caused to the Highland Scots by the Act of Union with England, something that I had not really appreciated before. The characters live and breathe through the pages, and although the eventual outcome cannot be in doubt, I found myself wishing that there had been a different ending.
A book to relish.
Marilyn Sherlock
EDITORS’ CHOICE Y VIVALDI’S VIRGINS
Barbara Quick, HarperCollins, 2007, $24.95/C$31.00, hb, 284pp, 9780060890520
Anna Maria dal Violin, abandoned as a baby, now lives as an orphan in the foundling home and cloisters of the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. From an early age, she was taught to play the violin and became part of an elite orchestra of orphan girls. Antonio Vivaldi, the “Red Priest,” composed many of his pieces for them.
Anna Maria longs to learn who her parents are. Sister Laura instructs Anna Maria to share her innermost thoughts and aspirations in letters to the mother she has never known. She soon rises to become Vivaldi’s favorite pupil, and he composes challenging pieces for her to play. But Anna Maria longs to learn who she is and to see Venice. On more than one occasion, she manages to escape from the orphanage, but each time she is caught and punished. A small golden locket and chain are presented to her by a Jewish seamstress. Anna Maria knows it holds the secret of her parentage. Eventually, Anna Maria does learn the truth about herself and some of the other characters.
THE GENERALS
Simon Scarrow, Headline, 2007, £12.99, hb, 533pp, 9780755324354
The Generals is the second in Simon Scarrow’s quartet of novels focusing on Wellington and Napoleon. The book opens in 1796 with both men beginning to make their mark. Arthur Wellesley as commander of the 33rd Regiment of Foot is sent to India, where his skill and bravery make a deep impression on his political and military superiors. Napoleon likewise seizes his opportunities for advancement as Commander of the Army of Italy, and then the Army of Egypt, before returning to France to engineer his rise to power as the leader of his country.
As with all Mr Scarrow’s books, this novel is well researched, although the author admits that he has had to “bend the history and tweak time” in order to satisfy the needs of the novel. It has to be said this has not detracted from the quality of the story. Both Wellington and Napoleon are extraordinary historical characters, and this book continues to tell their story in a way which is engrossing and enjoyable. I look forward to reading the third in the series. Recommended.
Mike Ashworth
Behind the masks of Carnevale and the musical scores of Vivaldi, 18th-century Venice comes brilliantly to life in this passionate novel. The plot takes several twists and turns that will enthrall the reader. The details of history are well researched and the imagery sensational. The prose is lyrical and mesmerizing at times. Quick has included a glossary at the end to help the reader with Italian words and phrases. At the end, she describes what is historical fact and what she created from her imagination. This is a complex tale that will appeal to lovers of Italian history as well as to fans of Vivaldi and his music. Barbara Quick has written a truly enduring coming-of-age story. Mirella Patzer N n
19th CENTURY
REMEMBERED
Tamera Alexander, Bethany House, 2007, $13.99, pb, 381pp, 0764201107
Véronique Girard’s mother has recently died, and it transpires that Lord Marchand, both her and her mother’s employer, has arranged for Véronique to travel to the United States. He
is honoring a wish by her late mother that she have a chance to find her father, who had left Paris many years before to earn enough to settle his young family in the New World. The last she and her mother had heard, he was going to find work as a miner near Willow Springs, in the Colorado Territory. Véronique needs to find a way to get to the many rough mining settlements in the area. Jack Brennan has also arrived in Willow Springs, planning to settle down after many years of guiding families west. Jack is the perfect gentleman, unlike most who respond to Véronique’s ad for a guide, and once she buys Jack’s new goods transport wagon out from under him, his fate is sealed, despite his best protests.
The contrasts between life in Paris and in the Colorado Territory in 1870 are seen vividly through Véronique’s eyes. Readers get a good sense of conditions in a frontier town, and the rough passages into the Rocky Mountains. The book is engagingly written, and may well be enjoyed by those who tend to avoid inspirational novels.
Trudi E. Jacobson
OUTLAW HEARTS
Diane Amos, Five Star, 2007, $26.95, hb, 284pp, 9781594145704
Outlaw Hearts suffers from what I’d like to term the Coincidence Plot (akin to movie critic Roger Ebert’s Idiot Plot, wherein conflict or problems would not occur had all the characters not been idiots). Coincidence number one: British Rebekah Benson, after years of possessing half a gold medallion, decides to go to 19th-century
New England to see if she can find the other half, possibly left by her missionary parents when they tended to Abenaki Indians in Maine. Rather than going straight to Maine or to Manchester, New Hampshire, where her brother lives, she stops instead in Londonderry, New Hampshire. Coincidence number two: in Londonderry, she goes to the trial of Zachariah Thompson, who ends up being condemned to death. Around his neck, she sees the other half of her medallion. Who would have thunk it?
Naturally, it is mutually beneficial to both of them that Zachariah not be hanged, but they both think they deserve the whole medallion. And, of course, their tussle over the gold only masks an attraction they try to repress. Although these coincidences abound and the formula announces itself from a mile away, this was a fast, harmless read. Bekah and Zach do possess chemistry, and, joined by their faithful hound dog and loveable orphan Jimmy, they achieve (surprise!) a happy ending.
Ellen Keith
DIAMOND IN THE SKY
Margaret Bailey, Five Star, 2007, $26.95, hb, 321pp, 9781594145667
Thadeus McElwain came to Leadville, Colorado, shortly after the Silver Panic of 1893. All he wanted was to leave behind a scarred past and start anew with a small store in a town that was once prosperous and flourishing. Leadville is gradually losing most of its middle-class residents and seems to be going bust. But little does Thad know how his life is about to change with the arrival of his brother, Zeb, and two new arrivals, Lettie and Larry. Noah Ralston is as besotted with Lettie as Thad is, and has more money to influence her affection. Zeb is out to destroy Thad because of a past accident in which he lost the use of one arm. Meanwhile, the town has plans to revive its failing economy by building a spectacular Ice Palace that will draw people to a new Winter Carnival.
It’s very clear who the supportive and opposing characters are, but soon the plot thickens into a fire, murder, immediate arrest, false confession, and unexpected conclusion. Whatever you do, don’t read the jacket blurb (it’s a spoiler)! This is a nicely plotted story with thinly defined characters, and more of a crime/romance than a historical novel. As a side note, there really was a famous Ice Palace in Colorado, which came to represent wealth and opportunities that rescued many people from a financial crash similar to the one that hit the entire nation thirty years later. The Ice Palace herein meets quite a different fate!
Viviane Crystal
WEB OF LOVE
Mary Balogh, Dell, 2007 (c1990), $6.99/C$8.99, pb, 420pp, 978044024305
The Battle of Waterloo prominently features in this tale of grief and love as young Ellen Simpson helps her husband’s dearest friend
recover from his wounds, while coping with the loss of her beloved Charlie, killed in the same battle. To Lord Dominic Eden, Ellen has always been tantalizingly out of reach—until she is widowed by the war, and he is nursed back to health by her sensitive hands. Despite Ellen’s attempt to remain devoted to her husband’s memory, their friendship soon flames into something deeper, and finding herself suddenly pursued by the dangerously handsome nobleman, Ellen is stunned by the depth of attraction she feels for him.
This second novel in the Amberley family series, originally published in 1990, is a beautiful tale of war, heartache, friendship, and devotion. As with all her stories, Balogh has impeccably blended history with memorable and lively characters to create a delightfully satisfying wartime love story. While not as strong or intriguing as some of her later books, such as the Bedwyn Series, this remains a classic Regency romance.
Rebecca Roberts
LADY OF LINCOLN
Ann Barker, Hale, 2007, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709082972
Lady of Lincoln revolves around life in the close of Lincoln Cathedral, and although I could find no specific date, it would appear to be set in the Regency period. Emily Whittaker, the daughter and granddaughter of cathedral clergy, lives a very humdrum life with plenty of good works to keep her occupied—until newcomers arrive in the form of Canon and Mrs. Trimmer with their two sons, Oliver and James. It is not long before Mrs. Trimmer’s brother, Sir Gareth Blades, also arrives on the scene. Sir Gareth is titled, wealthy, handsome and unmarried, and, at forty, his sister considers this to be letting the family down somewhat.
This book is typical of the genre, and there are the usual misunderstandings and confusions before the final page is turned. There are some very good Regency romances, but I regret that I did not particularly enjoy this one. The characters were two-dimensional, the style of writing a little stilted and wordy, and the plot rather too transparent. I have no doubt that it will appeal to aficionados of this genre, but it will not be taking a permanent place in my bookcase.
Marilyn Sherlock
family tree including murderers, rapists and the insane, he remains on society’s fringes, despite inheriting the title Viscount Darien. Still, Darien is determined to restore honor to the family name. He has a strong military record but needs a reputable woman to champion his crusade. He chooses Lady Thea Debenham, sister of a Rogue. Thea is beautiful, intelligent, and rigidly well-behaved. As she helps him gain acceptance, he helps her push against society’s boundaries. The alliance appears to benefit them both. Of course, sparks fly. However, not everyone wants to see Darien succeed, and an attempt to ruin his reputation once and for all may be dangerous not only to Thea’s reputation but to her life. Cameo appearances by many Rogues make this an enjoyable read for fans of the series.
Sue Asher
OLD FRIENDS AND NEW FANCIES
Sybil J. Brinton, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2007 (c1914), $14.95/£7.99, pb, 384pp, 9781402208881
Subtitled An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen, this book does exactly what it says on the cover: it continues the stories of all six of the completed Austen novels (excluding Lady Susan) and at the same time interweaves their continuing stories and characters into one. The premise is that most happily married couples desire equally happy marriages for their friends. Thus we have characters such as Georgiana Darcy, Kitty Bennet, James Morland, Mary Crawford, William Price, Colonel Fitzwilliam and so on taking centre stage in a jolly round of matchmaking. Complications, misunderstandings and interferences abound before characters old and new can end happily. Although written in 1914, Old Friends and New Fancies is a fresh and sparkling read in the style of the original novels. Both dialogue and narrative are pleasingly authentic and, thankfully, Sybil Brinton has managed to retain much of the sharp wit so characteristic of Jane Austen. Inevitably the success of such a novel does rely on the reader having at least a passing knowledge of the Austen originals.
Perhaps it is a little predictable and repetitious in places, but nonetheless it will be enjoyable for Jane Austen fanatics everywhere, and it is great fun guessing which unlikely couples will end up together.
Sara Wilson
Antonia. Twice widowed, and suspected of murdering the last Duke, Antonia lives with her own demons from the past. These two damaged souls begin to find solace in each other, but can suspicions over the old Duke’s death and Gareth’s role in a childhood tragedy be overcome?
Gareth Lloyd is a terrific character, and I wished that he had a female counterpart worthy of his complexities. Antonia is, however, not as well-realized, and inconsistent in her behaviour. She often refers to Gareth by a different name, and though there may have been a thematic purpose to this, it seemed too random to make sense. If you’re in the mood for sensual scenes and not bothered by the rapidity with which Gareth and Antonia become familiar, this is an undemanding romance. An appearance by the mysterious, yet satisfyingly competent Mr. Kemble (a recurring Carlyle character) also lends some joy and wit to this late Regency-era story.
L.K. Mason
NOT QUITE A LADY
Loretta Chase, Avon, 2007, $6.99/C$9.99, pb, 372pp, 9780061231230 / Piatkus, 2007, £6.99, pb, 320pp, 9780749937959
In girlhood, bearing a child in secret was the price Lady Charlotte Hayward paid for her seduction by an unscrupulous suitor. Knowing the hidden stain upon her family’s honor, she vows never to marry and lives in contented seclusion at her father’s country estate. The sudden acquisition of a new neighbor, a nobleman’s son, interests her not at all. Darius Carsington is an experience-hardened rake with a reputation as a progressive scholar. By his father’s decree, he can preserve his bachelorhood only by turning a derelict country estate profitable. If he fails to do so within a year, he must take a rich wife.
Charlotte is drawn into Carsington’s orbit when her stepmother advises him on household management. Through regular encounters, the couple comes to rely on one another for honesty, amusement, and eventually passionate stimulation. Just as Darius discovers he’s found the one and only female to whom he can commit, he learns that Charlotte will not marry. Together they must also withstand the jealous and potentially disastrous machinations on the part of her jealous, determined suitor.
LADY BEWARE
Jo Beverley, Signet, 2007, $7.99/C$10.99, pb, 413pp, 9780451221490
The Company of Rogues began when twelve schoolboys banded together for mutual protection. They grew up to fight Napoleon and then, in Jo Beverley’s popular Regency romance series, faced the even more daunting challenge of courtship amongst the ton. Now, there is an anti-Rogue. Horatio Cave was a social outcast at school who grew up with a grudge against the cliquish group. As an adult, saddled with a
NEVER DECEIVE A DUKE
Liz Carlyle, Pocket, 2007, $7.50/C$9.99, pb, 416pp, 141652715X
Never Deceive a Duke is Carlyle’s second Neville family novel. Gareth Lloyd, part-owner of Neville Shipping, finds himself saddled with the title of Duke of Warneham—an event both surprising and entirely unwelcome. Gareth’s memories of the old Duke are not happy ones, and he reluctantly returns to the country estate, uncertain of what to expect. He certainly isn’t prepared to deal with the Duke’s young widow,
Chase’s lovers are captivating; they possess depth and flaws. Her skillful plotting ensures a lively pace, and she explores Regency-era English country life and ways in a reliable fashion, adding interest to a standard but quality historical romance.
Margaret Barr
OUT OF SHADOWS
Gloria Cook, Severn House, 2007, £18.99/$27.95, hb, 217pp, 9780727865311
This is the second novel in the Meryen series following Keeping Echoes. Intrigue, lust and passion run through this story set in the isolated
Cornish village of Meryen. The plot intertwines the fortunes of Sarah Kivell, the young widow of the violent Tempest Kivell.
Tara Nankervis is doomed to an unhappy and unfulfilling marriage to Joshua, with Kit Woodburne an outsider with a shadowy past. Kit is determined to make the Kivell family pay for his loveless childhood and intends to show no mercy in his quest for revenge.
The declining tin mining industry and the obsession of the Cornish landed gentry with transforming their gardens into botanical wonders provide contrasting backdrops for the characters to act out their parts in this dark family story. Alongside the main characters are a cast of smaller, but vivid ones, such as the jealous and vengeful Dinah, and Laketon Kivell, whose sadistic and chilling personality alters the lives of all those with whom he comes into contact, in particular, Tara’s weak husband Joshua, who falls completely under Laketon’s spell.
Gloria Cook’s loyal readers will be queuing up at the library to borrow this fast-paced, often violent tapestry of human emotions.
Myfanwy Cook
THE COURTESAN’S DAUGHTER
Claudia Dain, Berkley Sensation, 2007, $14.00/ C$17.50, pb, 336pp, 9780425217207
Caroline Trevelyan, daughter of Sophia, Countess of Dalby, finds fitting into London society in 1802 difficult at best. Much of this difficulty arises from the fact that her mother, before she became a countess, was an infamous courtesan. It seems all of society believes the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. When her mother decides to take matters in her own hands and purchase a husband for Caroline, she is outraged! Caroline decides instead that she will be a courtesan just like her mother. When she meets Lord Ashdon, the man intended to be her intended, she decides he will be her first patron. Caroline knows exactly who can teach her to seduce Lord Ashdon. Her mother!
The Courtesan’s Daughter is the first in a series of books about the matchmaking Lady
Y THE KEEPER OF SECRETS
Sophia Dalby. Lady Sophia, wise to the ways of men and women, subtly manipulates those around her until everyone is, quite unknowingly, dancing to her tune. Award-winning author Claudia Dain has crafted a sensual, lighthearted romp of a novel full of interesting characters and entertaining circumstances.
Nan Curnutt
LETTERS FROM PEMBERLEY: The First Year
Jane Dawkins, Sourcebooks, 2007, $13.95/ C$17.95/£7.99, pb, 213pp, 9781402209062
Having married Fitzwilliam Darcy and settled on his estate of Pemberley, a slightly homesick Elizabeth Bennet begins writing letters to her older sister, the newlywed Jane. With new acquaintances, Mr. Darcy’s plans to remodel Pemberley (a task he takes on with much more sensitivity than Mr. Rushworth), and Georgiana’s baffling onset of low spirits, Elizabeth finds herself with a great deal to write about.
Dawkins deliberately incorporates language, renamed characters, and situations from Austen’s life and novels into Elizabeth’s letters, providing some fun in recognition for sharpeyed Janeites. Contemporary details, such as the fashions Elizabeth wears and the books she reads, are also worked in nicely. Otherwise, Letters is rather short in substance, Elizabeth settling into her roles as wife and mistress of Pemberley almost a little too easily. I found myself wishing at times that Mrs. Bennet would pay an extended visit just to stir up some trouble. All in all, though, Letters makes for a charming, quick read, especially for Jane Austen fans who need something to tide them over while waiting to re-read the originals.
Susan Higginbotham
TIPPERARY
Frank Delaney, Random House, 2007, $26.95, hb, 431pp, 9781400065233
Born into an Anglo-Irish family, Charles O’Brien loves Ireland with a fierce passion;
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Judith Cutler, Allison & Busby, 2007, £19.99, hb, 343pp, 0749080264
This is certainly much more than a run-of-the-mill historical crime novel. A young and idealistic clergyman, the Reverend Tobias Campion, arrives in his new parish, a Warwickshire village. His first act is to save a servant girl from rape by a drunken aristocrat. But that is by no means the end of the affair. Murders follow, and the mystery deepens. It turns out that there is much more to this servant girl than appears on the surface. Both the period and characters are well realized, and there is an interesting and illuminating description of the treatment of mental illness at this time. The story takes unexpected twists and turns, and the ending took me completely by surprise.
This is a standalone novel, rather than the first in a series. Yet by the end I found myself wanting to read more about this engaging young clergyman.
Neville Firman
this sentiment is wonderfully conveyed in his personal journal, which covers Irish history from the late 1800s to the 1920s. Trained as a natural herbalist and healer, O’Brien travels locally and overseas to treat both the ordinary and famous. His compassion and career are shaped by the wrongs and sufferings of the landless Irish population at the hands of their English overlords. O’Brien, satisfied by his choice of career, achieves gradual fame, and he recounts his conversations with Oscar Wilde, Yeats, and George Bernard Shaw. Through it all, he falls in love with April Burke, daughter of a famous actress and the owner of the famous Tipperary Castle. The castle is beautiful but also strategically placed for the strategies of Michael Collins and his fellow soldiers.
April Burke’s words point to the passion behind Charles O’Brien’s life and literary journal. As Tipperary Castle comes to the forefront during the battle for Irish independence, April emphasizes how Irish forbears built the turret and were given work on the estate beyond the present for the rebels’ children.
This literary masterpiece celebrates Irish history, drama, poetry, politics, architecture, and agriculture in a way that emanates from the author’s very personal love of the land. Tipperary is an engaging, fine historical novel that you will want to share but also keep as a cherished favorite.
Viviane Crystal
THE PRINCE KIDNAPS A BRIDE
Christina Dodd, Avon, 2006, $7.99/C$10.99, pb, 362pp, 0060561181
Exiled and hiding from revolutionaries in a Scottish convent for ten years, the winter of 1810 finds Crown Princess Sorcha determined to return to her small kingdom in the Pyrenees and take up her royal duties once again. With assassins out to stop her, Sorcha must rely on a simple fisherman as her companion and guide. Of course, unbeknownst to Sorcha, the dullwitted fisherman is really the arrogant young prince to whom she was betrothed at birth.
After years of imprisonment by a cruel usurper, Prince Rainger is determined to win back his kingdom and take Princess Sorcha for his wife. Exploiting Sorcha’s innocence, he convinces her to marry him to protect herself from assassins. Although Sorcha willingly marries her beloved simple fisherman, marrying an arrogant prince is another thing, and Rainger is in for a bit of trouble when she finds out who he really is.
Passions flare, danger lurks, and the plot builds swiftly toward Rainger’s final confrontation with his nemesis in this page-turning historical romance. Despite its preposterous title and silly love scenes, this final book in Dodd’s Lost Princesses trilogy is sure to entertain.
Rebecca Roberts
QUEEN OF SWORDS
Sara Donati, HarperFiction, 2007, £7.99, pb,
580pp, 9780007108329 / Bantam, 2007, $7.50, pb, 720pp, 9780553582789
The fifth title in Donati’s bestselling ‘Wilderness’ series, Queen of Swords opens in the French Antilles in August 1814 and finds Kit Wyndham and Luke Scott plotting to free Scott’s wife, Jennet. Assisting them is Luke’s half-sister, Hannah Bonner. Although they successfully rescue Jennet, the Scotts’ infant son is still held captive by Honoré Poiterin, a corrupt Creole merchant from New Orleans.
The entourage sets off in pursuit of Poiterin and soon finds themselves pulled apart and forced to hide their true identities in order to rescue the baby. They arrive in New Orleans as the city is preparing for Andrew Jackson’s famous attack during the War of 1812. Each struggles with prejudice and fear as they work together to save their family.
This book is compellingly written, which definitely makes it easy to keep turning the pages. The way Donati examines social attitudes concerning Native Americans, slaves and foreigners adds an extra dimension to the book as evidenced in the character of Hannah Bonner. Bonner, in addition to being half Mohawk, is a well-trained doctor who struggles with prejudice among New Orleans’ Creole elite even as they turn to her for her talent.
The combination of well-developed plot and intriguing characters makes this a book worth reading. Given that it’s the fifth in a series proves that Donati is a skilled writer; however, as is sometimes the case when jumping into a series midway, it feels like the reader can’t quite catch up. Some titles in a series have a standalone feel to them, but this isn’t one of them. What does that mean in terms of this book? It means readers should start at the beginning of the series so that Queen of Swords can be fully enjoyed the way it deserves to be.
Dana Cohlmeyer
THE KINGDOM OF BONES
Stephen Gallagher, Shaye Areheart, 2007, $24.95/C$32.00, hb, 366pp, 9780307382801
Tom Sayers, a former boxer and a member of a British theater troupe, is accused of the serial murders of several children in the late 19th century. Detective Inspector Sebastian Becker is soon on his trail. Set up by the killer, Sayers eventually learns his identity and attempts to stop the murders to clear his name. With the help of his friend Bram Stoker, he enters a world of the supernatural and the occult.
With the murderer still eluding capture after several years, the manhunt continues in the United States as Sayers’s former theater troupe travels from town to town. Then he learns that the killer has exchanged its soul for eternal life. Becker eventually captures Sayers, but then joins forces with him in trying to stop the killer.
I found this novel to be a well-written thriller and a page-turner. Gallagher did a marvelous job creating believable characters while keeping me on the edge of my seat. Known for his suspense
Y FIRE BELL IN THE NIGHT
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Geoffrey S. Edwards, Touchstone, 2007, $15.00, pb, 464pp, 9781416564249
New York Tribune reporter John Sharp arrives in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1850 to cover a trial that will prove pivotal in Southern history. Darcy Nance Calhoun is a white man accused of harboring an escaped slave. The die is seemingly cast, as everyone expects a guilty verdict followed by execution. To this simple plot, Geoffrey Edwards adds the complexity of controversial North-South attitudes, which might have swayed history a different way. Enter the plantation world, where one slave boy’s cruel, incomprehensible death becomes the reactive force forever known as the Habersham County Rebellion. Meet Tyler Breckinridge, who befriends Sharp, and introduces him to plantation life and owners whose opinions on slavery and secession run the gamut from fierce support to quiet opposition.
But something is not quite right in this lazy but dynamic city. Fires are mysteriously breaking out daily, too many different militia troops appear to be training for something larger than a local hanging, and secret groups of South Carolina’s leading citizens are secretly meeting under the cover of darkness. Edwards presents related earlier events—the northern Astor Place riots, the Wilmot Proviso compromise, and the Denmark Vesey uprising—in a fresh, controlled, and pertinent manner. John Sharp has an unparalleled opportunity to interview and become friends with the accused criminal, Darcy, who is so much more than the simple-minded character he appears to be.
Fire Bell in the Night is a fresh, unique presentation of pre-Civil war history that is riveting, adventurous, poignant, and one of the finest historical novels this reviewer has read in years!
stories, directing and screenwriting, Gallagher will lead you on a merry chase with a surprise ending. If you enjoy a combination of mystery, horror and suspense, this novel will definitely keep you awake at night.
Jeff Westerhoff
THE MAN OF PROPERTY
John Galsworthy, Headline Review, 2007 (c1906), £4.99, pb, 364pp, 9780755340859
This is the first book in The Forsyte Saga, a series of nine novels and some short stories, which chronicle the affairs of the eponymous family. The opening story is set in the late 1880s and was written in 1906, so it can be considered a historical novel for both then and now.
The Forsytes are a large and wealthy London family, and are truly representative of the Victorian growth of the mercantile, upwardlymobile classes characterised by the acquisition of riches and influence through hard-nosed, ruthless and inflexible ambition. The plot centres on the marital problems between Soames and Irene Forsyte, and Irene’s scandalous affair with Philip Bosinney, an architect who is engaged to Soames’ cousin, June Forsyte. The disturbance this causes to the family and the threats to Forsytean stability and propriety are chronicled by John Galsworthy in prose that is a kind of light-Trollopian in style, with the omniscient and dry-humoured narrator observing the stiffnecked foibles of the Forsyte eminence. There is a family tree included in the book, which is certainly a necessity for the opening chapters, when a veritable cascade of Forsytes, with ten ageing brothers and sisters and their respective
families and their relationships, can drown the less than fully attentive reader.
Doug Kemp
COURTING TROUBLE
Deeanne Gist, Bethany House, 2007, $13.99, pb, 332pp, 9780764202254
Outgoing, good-natured, and fond of elaborate hats and bicycle riding, Essie Spreckelmeyer is well-liked in her hometown but seriously short on suitors, an unwelcome state of affairs for a 30-year-old woman in 1890s Corsicana, Texas. In her usual forthright manner, the unconventional Essie decides to remedy the situation by picking a likely husband. Having assessed each candidate’s good and bad points in writing, all that is left is to get her prospective spouse to agree to the arrangement.
Featuring a bust enhancer that doubles as a mouse catcher, a runaway snake, and Essie’s adventures on the new “wheeled feet” her friend the peddler brings to town, Courting Trouble is delightfully humorous at times. There’s a dark side to this novel too, however, as we see when a moment of recklessness threatens disaster for Essie and when Essie is on the verge of entering into a relationship that would stifle her individuality. Gist expertly blends these disparate elements and creates likeable yet flawed characters, resulting in a novel that’s both highly entertaining and thought-provoking. I’m looking forward to seeing the sequel.
Susan Higginbotham
THE PRAYER CHEST
August Gold and Joel Fotinos, Doubleday, 2007,
Viviane Crystal
Y THE MAPMAKER’S OPERA
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Béa Gonzalez, St. Martin’s Press, 2007, $24.95, hb, 288pp, 9780312364663 / HarperCollins, 2006, £6.99, pb, 320pp, 0007207794
Praise for Béa Gonzalez’ The Mapmaker’s Opera abounds, with many critics and other reviewers comparing the author’s work to that of such notable writers as Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Márquez. This, I thought when I opened the book, had better be good. And it is excellent.
Set in late 19th-century Spain and early 20th-century prerevolutionary Mexico, Gonzalez’s rich, multi-layered story centers on bird lover Diego Clemente who, fascinated by the hand-colored birds he discovers in John James Audubon’s Birds of America, travels from Seville to the Yucatán to work alongside real-life American scientist Edward Nelson. In Mexico, young Diego, who is a gifted artist, not only experiences thwarted love, treachery and the stirrings of revolution, but also confronts his tortured past.
An unusual story and unusually wonderful writing carry The Mapmaker’s Opera on wings above and beyond the norm. Presenting the narrative as a tale told by an old grandmother, Gonzalez seamlessly weaves the past and future while painting word-pictures of both the exotic and mundane, whether addressing us boldly from time to time to pull us into the story, deftly changing point of view, or making us laugh with her gentle sense of humor. Presented as an opera in three acts with a map as the score, the structure, too, is mightily impressive, as the author employs recurring images, particularly that of mapmaking—describing a beautifully drawn illustration, showing us a character scratch a design in the dirt with a stick—to propel her story forward.
generations to pass on its secrets.
This small novel packs a powerful punch. Its simple prose offers gentle inspiration on how to enrich one’s family and life through prayer. The characters are both believable and likeable while the story is both heartbreaking and heartwarming.
Mirella Patzer
DAYS OF ATONEMENT
Michael Gregorio, Faber & Faber, 2007, £12.99, pb, 445pp, 9780571229307
Days of Atonement is a follow-up to Critique of Criminal Reason, also by the husband and wife team who write as Michael Gregorio. Like the previous book, it is set in the bleak marches of eastern Prussia during the first years of the 19th century. It has the same hero, the taciturn, dogged municipal procurator Hanno Stiffeniis, who is still deeply in love with his comely and fertile wife, Helena. Once again the narrative is enlivened with a contribution—from beyond the grave this time—by the sage of Königsberg, Hanno’s old teacher, Immanuel Kant, whose lessons in methodical and unprejudiced reasoning the earnest procurator tries to follow as he goes about his investigations.
While I groaned at the novel’s ending—exactly, of course, as I was meant to do—I found the story engaging, compelling and above all, complete. Moreover, I’ll never look at a bird with the same indifference again. Highly recommended.
$15.95/C$21.00, hb, 160pp, 0385523521
Joseph Hutchinson and his wife, Miriam, are poor farmers scraping out a living on Long Island during the late 1800s. Unlike Miriam, Joseph has never been very religious, but in the attic of his small home, Joseph finds solace and a sanctuary and where he goes to pray.
Miriam labors to deliver their first child, but it is not an easy delivery and Joseph becomes fearful. Desperate to do something, he flees to
Y CAPTAIN WENTWORTH’S DIARY
Alana White
the attic. Despite Joseph’s prayers, Miriam dies of pneumonia, and Joseph is left alone to raise their small daughter. In his grief, he repudiates prayer and drifts away from spirituality.
One day, he returns to the attic and after knocking out a small panel of wood, he discovers a small dusty chest. When he opens it, he finds an ancient notebook and some yellowed papers. As he starts reading, he learns that the chest and contents have been handed down through
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Amanda Grange, Hale, 2007, £18.99, hb, 223pp, 9780709082811
In 1806 the young Frederick Wentworth visits Somerset and meets the young Anne Elliot. It is a meeting of minds and hearts, but there is no happy ending for the lovers. Anne is persuaded by her godmother, Lady Russell, that marriage to a poor naval officer would be disastrous and they part on bad terms.
Eight years later, his fortune made, Captain Wentworth returns to Somerset and finds Anne a spinster still, downtrodden and faded. Initially he looks elsewhere for a young, pretty bride, but soon realises that his feelings for Anne are as strong as ever. She in turn has lived to regret her repudiation of the man she still loves.
In this retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Captain Wentworth’s thoughts take centre stage, and very revealing they are too. His love, rejection, bitterness and ultimate constancy are laid bare, but never in a way that compromises the original.
Amanda Grange has taken on the challenge of reworking a much loved romance and succeeds brilliantly.
Sara Wilson
Some things have changed, though. The earlier book was set at a time when the Prussian State still maintained at least a façade of great power status. Days of Atonement occupies the much more difficult period that resulted from Napoleon’s overwhelming victory at Jena in 1806 and the installation of an occupying force which completed the humiliation of the Prussians.
These French occupiers are portrayed here as rather like Americans of today—individually rather charming and sympathetic, collectively inclined to arrogance and ignorance or contempt for other people’s ways. One of these intruders, a Paris criminologist called Serge Lavedrine, is wished on Hanno. Separately and together they investigate the brutal massacre of three children in the woods not far from the Stiffeniis house and the disappearance of their mother. The unravelling of this mystery and the occasional comic by-play between Hanno and Lavedrine, particularly when the latter deploys his native powers of seduction on Frau Stiffeniis, make for an energetic, involving and well-researched story.
Peter Prince
TO SCOTLAND, WITH LOVE
Karen Hawkins, Pocket, 2007, $6.99/C$7.99, pb, 357pp, 1416525041
Lord Gregor MacLean and Venetia Oglivie have been best friends since they were children, so when Venetia gets kidnapped by a fortune hunter, Gregor doesn’t hesitate to rescue her. The only sensible member of her family, Venetia is sure she can fix any problem, even when it comes to saving her reputation after this botched kidnapping attempt. When Gregor catches up with her, arrogantly expecting a
hero’s welcome, sparks fly as Venetia remains determined to fix things herself.
An unexpected snowstorm traps them at an inn, and competition from an unlikely suitor creates additional turmoil as Gregor discovers he is in love with Venetia. He finds himself trying to convince an unbelieving Venetia that his motive for marriage isn’t duty, but desire.
The plights Venetia and Gregor find themselves in are delightful and amusing. With a bevy of minor characters making entertaining appearances throughout the tale, this saucy and passionate Scottish romance has enough wit and fun to delight Hawkins and Regency fans alike.
Rebecca Roberts
A MATTER OF DUTY
Sandra Heath, Hale, 2007, £18.99, hb, 223pp, 9780709080886
Louisa Cherington’s brother dies in a duel but not before urging his friend, Lord Christopher Highclare, and impecunious sister to marry. Somewhat reluctantly they agree, only to find themselves at odds with each other as soon as their vows are exchanged.
Louisa’s temper and Kit’s jealousy threaten to tear them apart, but what started as a marriage of duty soon turns into a love match. Typically the path to love is littered with misunderstandings, mischievous mistresses and villainous rakes.
A Matter of Duty is another great romance from Sandra Heath, full lively characters, fun plot twists and the reassurance of a happy ending. Perfect for whiling away wet, autumnal afternoons.
Sara Wilson
LESSONS OF DESIRE
Madeline Hunter, Bantam, 2007, $6.99/C$9.99, pb, 416pp, 9780440243946
Phaedra Blair is the beautiful, eccentric heroine of this Regency romp. The illegitimate offspring of a woman whose philosophy espoused free love and a Parliamentary politician, Phaedra lives an independent life according to her own rules. Garbed in her usual free-flowing black habit, she would resemble a nun except for her undressed hip-length red hair. On his deathbed, her father charged Phaedra to publish his memoirs, a request that sets the ton on its ear. Enter Elliot Rothwell, assigned by his oldest brother, Marquess of Easterbrook, to stop publication no matter what the cost as the memoirs accuse their father of murder. Elliot pursues Phaedra to Naples, Positano, Pompeii and back, and despite the fact that they’ve married along the way, he has his work cut out to win her love and trust.
Madeline Hunter needs no introduction to readers of Regency-era historical romances. She never fails to offer an interesting plot with a touch of mystery and erotic love scenes. Lessons of Desire lives up to expectations.
Audrey Braver
PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE
Eloisa James, Avon, 2006, $6.99/C$9.99, pb,
406pp, 980060781927
Josie, the last of the four Essex sisters, is worried. All of her sisters are beautiful. She feels that she is the ugly duckling of the family. At her London debut in 1818, Josie is named the “Scottish Sausage” by the friend of a rejected suitor. That nickname, combined with Josie’s insecurity about her full figure, rob her of much of the pleasure of being in society. Garret Langham, the sensual, experienced, engaged Earl of Mayne, is a friend of the family. Mayne decides to teach Josie how to love her own body. In one corset-freeing lesson he introduces Josie to the art of seduction, and this lesson leaves her panting for more.
This is Eloisa James’ final installment in a quartet of novels about the Essex sisters. The descriptions of provocative pleasures are interrupted occasionally by a plot and a few historical details, but not enough to interrupt the flow of passion from one bedroom, or garden, or horse barn, to another. Ms. James’s witty prose and well-developed characters combine to make what would otherwise be an overly sensual historical novel enjoyable.
Nan Curnutt
THE
SISTER: A Novel of Emily Dickinson Paola Kaufmann (trans. William Rowlandson), Rookery Press, 2007, $24.95/C$31.00, hb, 272pp, 1585679518 / Alma, 2006, £14.99, hb, 300pp, 1846880173
So little is known about Emily Dickinson that studies of her poetry provide the major insight into the recluse of Amherst, Massachusetts. Such interpretation is often subjective, but Kaufmann’s notable novel, written from the perspective of Emily’s sister, brings valuable information to the puzzle, drawing from authentic documents, papers and journals of the Dickinson family. Lavinia, a devoted yet conflicted admirer of her sister and her work, lived in Emily’s shadow and that of her brother, Austin, who was educated and out in the world;
Y A MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN
he even provoked a scandal. As Emily grew more detached, her poetry being her world, Lavinia was the more outgoing sister, wearing nice clothes and even falling in love—until she was betrayed by the lover of her youth. When Emily loved, it was from afar, with much more impossible suitors, and in longing rather than through personal encounters.
Emily’s energy was spent, purple pencil in hand, scribbling on bits of paper well into the night, while “Vinnie” took care of running the house. Visitors invited to tea were treated to Emily’s gingerbread, but not Emily herself. Personal encounters terrified her; she even avoided Ralph Waldo Emerson on his single visit to Amherst. He never returned. Writing as the sole family survivor, Lavinia winds many long threads into the Dickinson story, weaving one strand of time with another and back again. Though at times resentful of the burden of being “the sister,” overall there can be no doubt of her love for Emily and her legacy.
Tess Allegra
ROGUE OFFICER
Garry Douglas Kilworth, Severn House, 2007, £18.99/$27.95, hb, 214pp, 9780727865359
This is the fifth book in the ‘Fancy Jack’ Crossman series, following the adventures of a British soldier through the various imperial wars of the Victorian era. There are obvious similarities with Harry Flashman and Richard Sharpe. With such a huge variety of exotic settings to sample, each loaded in legend, the attraction is obvious.
Fancy Jack is of aristocratic birth, clearly officer material even though he joins the army as a private after a quarrel with his father. In Rogue Officer he has finally made it to commissioned rank, fighting in the last phases of the Indian Mutiny, the mopping-up operations we did not learn about at school. Not that we have any details of the ruthless repression that followed the Mutiny. The story mainly concerns a
EDITORS’ CHOICE
L. M. Jackson, Heinemann, 2007, £14.99, hb, 376pp, 9780434015528 London, 1852. Mrs Sarah Tanner, a woman with a dubious past, opens her Dining and Coffee Rooms in Leather Lane. On witnessing the brutal murder of an old friend by a policeman, she decides to find out why it happened and what she can do about it. On the way, she acquires two helpers: aged Ralph Grundy, and young Norah Smallwood, who meets the murderous copper and has to be rescued by Sarah. Between them, with Sarah very much the brains of the operation, they solve the mystery, but not before encountering London low life and much danger.
Jackson has a meticulous knowledge of Victorian life, which pervades the story seamlessly. Slowly, details about Sarah’s previous life leak out, which all helps keep the reader intrigued. This is the first in the Victorian Lady Detective series, so doubtless more aspects of Sarah’s story will be revealed. The story has everything: a rich heiress, dastardly criminals, a mysterious lead character and deep, dark action. An absorbing read. S Garside-Neville
vendetta between two army officers, involving the aristocratic code of honour and practice of duelling. Jack is not the ‘rogue officer’; that is his rival, who has his comeuppance at the end of the book, although not quite as one might expect.
This is not a tongue-in-cheek satire like the Flashman series. The absurd code of honour is accepted without comment, as the framework for a straight adventure story.
Edward James
BEYOND SEDUCTION
Stephanie Laurens, Avon, 2007, $7.99/C$10.99, pb, 462pp, 0060839252
The 6th Earl of Crowhurst, Gervase Tregarth, has problems. There have been a series of strange incidents at Crowhurst Castle, near Falmouth, each requiring his immediate attention and a hurried trip from London. His three young halfsisters appear to be responsible for them all. Furthermore, he is in need of an heir to ensure that his estate doesn’t revert to the Crown at his death.
Madeline Gascoigne, guardian of her three half-brothers since their father’s death eight years earlier, is the de facto head of Treleaver Park. In this capacity, she has earned a level of esteem and trust rarely shown to women in the year 1816. She hardly knows Crowhurst, due to his years spent working undercover in France during the war, but is close to his half-sisters and step-mother. She takes her responsibilities seriously and has never thought of marriage.
This sixth novel in the Bastion Club series has everything that readers of Laurens’ Regency romances expect, including lively dialogue, well-meshed, intriguing subplots, and likeable main characters. Characters from previous novels reappear in supporting roles. Naturally, there is a generous amount of steamy sex.
Alice Logsdon
TEMPTED TIGRESS
Jade Lee, Leisure, 2007, $6.99/C$8.99, pb, 346pp, 0843956909
This sixth book in Ms. Lee’s series of historical romances explores the Taoist sex cult of 19th-century China. Anna Thompson is an orphan stranded in China with no one else to turn to except her adoptive father, who forces Anna to unwittingly become his finest opium runner and eventually a slave to opium herself. Anna tries to free herself, but the Emperor’s Enforcer Zhi-Gang, from whom she is desperately attempting to escape, catches her. Instead of killing her, he makes her his prisoner and concubine. Zhi-Gang is also on a personal mission to rescue his sister from the traffickers who abducted her. This personal quest consumes his life and fuels his passionate hatred of drug and human traffickers. However, Anna makes him reconsider the direction of his life. She reciprocates his deepest feelings and tries to end her addiction. Although he does not trust her because she is an opium user, they fall in
love while embarking on Zhi-Gang’s quest of killing traffickers who peddle young girls to the brothels.
Tempted Tigress is an exciting, sensual adventure-romance. The flawed and troubled nature of both the hero and heroine adds to the dramatic tension of the plot and gives this story a welcome complexity. I also felt that the setting, encompassing the opium trade in 19thcentury China, and Anna’s personal history, which is revealed in journal entries at the end of each chapter, added a thought-provoking dimension to the story. Anyone who enjoys a complex adventure-romance should delight in this novel.
Andrea Connell
THE PERILS OF PURSUING A PRINCE
Julia London, Pocket Star, 2007, $6.99/C$8.99, pb, 370pp, 1416516166
The year is 1820. Greer Fairchild has left her cousins in London to go to Wales to collect her inheritance that is being held in trust by the Welsh Prince of Powys. To reach Wales, the impoverished Greer has hired on as the traveling companion of an older woman. Unfortunately, Greer’s employer dies en route. Determined to continue her journey, Greer accepts the dubious protection of another traveler, Mr. Percy, who is related to the Welsh Prince. When they reach their destination, the Prince offers his hospitality despite the bad history between himself and Percy who departs leaving Greer an apparent prisoner of the Prince. Although a mutual physical attraction exists between Greer and the Prince, neither trusts the other. The plot takes a Gothic twist, there is mystery as well as mysticism and good old-fashioned superstition to be overcome by the star-crossed lovers before the inevitable resolution.
This is the second book in Ms. London’s trilogy, The Desperate Debutantes. The action takes place concurrently with the first, The Hazards of Hunting a Duke. This sequel is equal to the first book in its erotic appeal.
Audrey Braver
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
Gabriel García Márquez (trans. Edith Grossman), Penguin, 2007 (c1985), £7.99, pb, 348pp, 9780141032429 / Vintage, 2004, $14.95, pb, 368pp, 140003468X
Florentino Ariza fell in love with Fermina Daza the first time he saw her when he delivered a telegram to her father. She was only thirteen years old and closely chaperoned by a maiden aunt, but true love will always find a way and the pair manages to correspond by letter. Fermina’s father discovers their secret, and, furious, he takes his daughter away from the clutches of the telegraph operator who can only be interested in her fortune. Fermina marries Dr Juvenal Urbino but, although Florentino takes other women, he continues to love Fermina from afar. Fiftyone years, nine months and four days later, Dr Urbino dies after falling out of a mango tree
trying to retrieve his parrot, and Florentino’s hopes are raised once again—Fermina is a free woman.
Set in a Caribbean seaport between 1880 and 1930, this is a magnificent story of undying love, a love against all odds, and questions about whether passion can be rekindled in the winter of life. Marquez explores the many aspects of love, life and death in the most intimate moments as each character’s story is skilfully intertwined. It is sad, amusing and utterly compelling.
Ann Oughton
GOD OF LUCK
Ruthanne Lum McCunn, Soho, 2007, $23.00, hb, 239pp, 1569474662
God of Luck is a historical novel set against the backdrop of the trade in Chinese laborers, kidnapped and sold to the guano mines off the shores of Peru in the 19th century. Ah Lung struggles to survive on a slave ship and in the mines, while, back home in China, his beloved wife, Bo See, desperately seeks a way to find and free him. The author pulls no punches in depicting the treatment of slave laborers whose lives were completely expendable. A prospective reader might recoil at the prospect of learning about yet another historical instance of man’s inhumanity to man, and one that, though little known, surely ranks with the worst, since guano miners typically survived for only three years. However, the tale of Ah Lung and Bo See has an affirmative message. Told from both the husband and the wife’s points of view, it’s a story of ordinary people discovering extraordinary inner resources of mind and heart in the face of savage adversity. It is impossible not to empathize with these characters and hope for their reunion, as they keep faith with each other though circumstances conspire to part them, perhaps forever.
The clear, simple prose style may remind the reader of Pearl S. Buck. But McCunn’s vision of 19th-century China is original and based on her own wide-ranging research. The familiar landscape has a way of suddenly turning surprising, for example, when the author delves into the traditional role of independent spinsters in Chinese society. In God of Luck, McCunn creates a world, distant from us in both space and time, which seems absolutely authentic, and characters who are heartbreakingly real in their universal humanity.
Phyllis T. Smith
A REASON TO BELIEVE
Maureen McKade, Berkley Sensation, 2007, $6.99/C$7.99, pb, 293pp, 9780425216620
McKade delivers another excellent historical romance. In 1867, drifter and ex-soldier Rye Forrester had intended to unburden his conscience by apologizing to Dulcie McDaniel for his part in her husband’s death, and then move on. But he arrives in Locust, Texas, to find she has just buried her father, who was lynched by the townspeople when he was accused of
murder. Rather than add to her troubles by confessing about her husband, he stays on as a hired hand to help get the crops in. Perhaps if he also helps Dulcie to clear her father’s name, she will forgive him when he reveals what he knows about her husband’s death.
Like a prior McKade book which I reviewed in these pages (To Find You Again, Feb ’05), Reason presents plot situations that give her characters plausible motives. Conflict flows naturally, unlike some other historical romances which resort to contrived situations to get the characters interacting. The author is also deft at prolonging the sexual tension between the main characters in the first part of the book, so that the later consummation scene is non-gratuitous. McKade’s historical romances are a cut above the rest.
B.J. Sedlock
LORD THURSTON’S CHALLENGE
Fenella-Jane Miller, Hale, 2007, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709083382
When Charlotte Carstairs is orphaned, along with her young brother and sister, she takes them to live with her maternal grandfather, unaware that he has died and his fortune lost. Arriving at Thurston Hall, she finds Major Jack Griffin has inherited the title and neglected estate.
Disfigured in battle and spurned by his fiancée, Jack is in no mood to take in three dependents, but he offers Charlotte a challenge. If she can improve the estate she can stay. Neither had expected they would also have to take on a murderous gang acting on the orders of a mysterious foe. But then neither had expected to fall in love with each other either.
A sparky heroine, a damaged hero, and a wicked enemy make for a delightful passionate adventure story, with plenty of thrilling action and tender romance to keep the reader enchanted until the end.
Sara Wilson
GONE WITH THE WIND
Margaret Mitchell, Scribner, 2007 (c1936), $17/C$21, pb, 959pp, 1416548890 / Pan, 1991, £8.99, pb, 1024pp, 0330323490
With this reissue of Gone with the Wind, I decided that it was time for me to finally read this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic and see what all the fuss was about. I hadn’t seen the movie either, so this was going to be a clean slate affair for me.
Well, I am thankful that I read it. This book earns its reputation as one of America’s all time classics. This was the most multilayered, touching, and haunting depiction of war I have ever read. But it is not only about war and loss; it is about love, loyalty, bravery, and survival, and discovering too late what is really important in life.
This is an epic novel about the Confederacy. As a born and bred Northerner, I never understood the Southern point of view of the Civil War. Now, I do. I will always be grateful
to this book for engaging my interest in the Civil War and opening my eyes to the Southern states’ suffering and their loss of an era.
On a literary level, Mitchell’s characters are fresh and alive, especially the detestable rogue turned doting father, Rhett Butler, the selfabsorbed and determined Scarlett O’Hara, the loyal, sensitive, and saintly Melly Hamilton, and the stern yet loving Mammy. It was hard to find anything likeable about Scarlett, a feeling I struggled with throughout the book. The same thought applied to Rhett, up until a certain point. There were enough likeable characters, on the other hand, to make up for that discomfort. But being forced to accept the characters as they truly are was one of the highlights of the novel. The book is HUGE (over 950 pages) and, for the most part, “unputdownable.” The book seems to have been well researched (at least from the Confederate viewpoint), and there are many descriptive details of battles, the burning of Atlanta and of the Georgian plantations, the plights of both slavery and emancipation, and the Reconstruction Era. I highly recommend this book, both for reading pleasure and for a poignant lesson in Civil War history.
Andrea Connell
TOM WASP AND THE MURDERED STUNNER
Amy Myers, Five Star, 2007, $25.95, hb, 255pp, 9781594145933
Tom Wasp is one of the most engaging characters I’ve encountered in years. A Victorian chimney sweep and not ashamed to be so, he finds himself posing for painter Valentine Drake, a member of a painting group known as the Angels (not to be confused with the PreRaphaelites, whom the Angels acknowledge). Drake enlists Tom to be in a painting with model Bessie Barton, with whom Drake, as well as the other Angels, is in love. Tom and Bessie become matey, and so he is devastated to find her body washed up on the banks of the Thames. With the help of his apprentice Ned, an eleven-yearold pickpocket, Tom makes it his mission to find Bessie’s murderer.
Myers illuminates the world of flower sellers, milliners’ assistants, and chimney sweeps, but the mystery itself is rather creaky. All of the Angels fall under suspicion, and, with the exception of Drake, they’re nasty pieces of work for all their high-mindedness about art. Plus, there’s the usual gathering of all the suspects in one place to meet a possible witness who then ends up dead. All of these clichés are forgiven, though, when told in Tom’s voice. He brings his world to life with a very clear-sighted vision of who he is, what he does, and his place in society.
Ellen Keith
the title refers to carvings of the North, South and East winds mounted on three of the outside walls of the house known as Fourwinds, owned by Mr Farrow. With him are his two daughters, Juliana and Marianne plus Charlotte Agnew, governess to the girls since his wife died, and Samuel Godwin, an artist employed to teach them to draw and paint. It soon becomes clear that all is not as it should be. Juliana is clearly disturbed while Marianne has very strange moods. It is apparent that there are a number of questions which need answering, including what happened to the carving of the West wind.
Written in the first person, the chapters alternate in their ‘voice’ between Charlotte and Samuel. Linda Newbery has written several books for children and young adults, which may be why I found it an interesting tale but foresaw what was happening long before it was explained. I also found the pseudo-Victorian style of writing somewhat irritating.
Marilyn Sherlock
GREGORIUS
Bengt Ohlsson (trans. Silvester Mazzarella), Portobello, 2007 (c1905), £12.99, pb, 422pp, 9781846270161
In 1905 Hjalmar Soderberg’s Dr Glas was published—a fictionalised journal of the murder of an obese clergyman in late 19thcentury Stockholm by the eponymous diarist. The novel was both highly regarded and a notorious work of literature. Bengt Ohlsson’s book narrates the story from the perspective of the unfortunate Pastor Gregorius, his overly uxorious relationship with his young and pretty wife Helga, her adultery and their subsequent marital problems. It is a wonderful work of art, providing a new and more sympathetic examination of Gregorius, his life and motives, as well as examining some of the essential truths and complexities underlying human relationships.
The historical context is authentic, with the first person narrative voice of Gregorius placing the reader firmly in late 1800s Sweden. To fully appreciate and understand the novel, however, the reader should ideally read Dr Glas first (which is available new or used) otherwise a significant element of this excellent novel will not be fully appreciated.
Doug Kemp
REFINING EMMA
Delia Parr, Bethany House, 2007, $12.99, 2007, pb, 319pp, 0764200879
SET IN STONE
Linda Newbery, Black Swan, 2007, £6.99, pb, 368pp, 9780552774017 / David Fickling, 2006, $16.95, hb, 368pp, 0385751028
Set near Chichester in Victorian England,
When tragedy strikes the town of Candlewood, New York, in 1842, no one in town is surprised when boardinghouse owner Emma Garrett offers room free of charge to those affected by the fire. Emma has a natural kindhearted zeal for helping others, but she is also coping with legal troubles involving the ownership of Hill House which complicates her usual cheerful demeanor. Adding to her woes is her lawyer, Zachary Breckenwith, who makes an unexpected and
disconcerting announcement. Emma must rely on her faith to find a way to solve her troubles, and those of her townspeople.
This gentle, humorous story is big in heart, and takes readers back to a time where community meant everything, and the people lived simply. Inspirational, uplifting, and filled with memorable characters, this second installment in the Candlewood Trilogy will delight readers looking for a warm, cozy read.
Rebecca Roberts
BACHELOR’S PUZZLE
Judith Pella, Bethany House, 2007, $13.99, pb, 349pp, 0764201336
Zach Hartley has been on the run ever since he fled an abusive stepfather at the age of twelve, but now (1882) that he has angered a gangster in Portland, Oregon, his life is truly in danger. Fleeing south in search of safety, Zach seizes the opportunity to pose as the new circuit minister that the congregation in Maintown is expecting. When he is welcomed into the community with the gift of a quilt—pieced together by all the unmarried girls—Zach realizes that his deception may bring him more trouble than he can handle.
The two Newcomb sisters are as different as silk and denim: Ellie loves the challenge of creating an intricate piece of needlework, but Maggie would rather slop pigs than sew a seam. In the same manner, readers of Bachelor’s Puzzle will react to this story according to their own fondness for handicrafts: Some will relish the detailed descriptions of cloth selection; others will find them tedious. As would be expected in a novel by Pella, this is an inspiring story about a man who learns that the Master Quilter is forming the ragged pieces of his own life into a beautiful work of art.
Nancy J. Attwell
THE RIDDLE OF THE RIVER
Catherine Shaw, Allison & Busby, 2007, £18.99/$25.95, hb, 365pp, 0749080116
1898. Cambridge. In this, the fifth of the Vanessa Weatherburn mysteries, a beautiful young girl is discovered floating in the river Cam. Vanessa doesn’t know where to start. Who is she? And was it suicide or murder? Gradually, facts begin to emerge: the girl was pregnant, she wore an unusual bracelet, and she might possibly have been an actress.
The trail leads Vanessa to explore the theatre world, the late 19th century craze for séances, the Marconi revolution which will lead to the invention of the telegraph—and to one of Cambridge’s most respected families, where all is not what it seems. In her search for the truth, Vanessa nearly forgets that she may be putting herself in danger…
Catherine Shaw, as always, has produced a well-written and intelligent book. She is good at illuminating her chosen period and excellent at getting across that difficult thing, the zeitgeist of the time. I particularly liked the Darwins’ dinner
party, inspired by Gwen (Darwin) Raverat’s Period Piece, an account of her late Victorian Cambridge childhood, and one of my favourite books I enjoyed Gwen’s cameo appearance.
However, I was concerned about the number of visible dollops of research. The tension sagged as Vanessa and her friends discussed the playwright Pinero’s views on society’s hypocrisy with regard to sexual mores, at length. I would have enjoyed Ms Shaw’s pertinent comments on ‘that interesting play The Second Mrs Tanqueray’ in my MA Victorian theatre seminars, but not in a novel. I would say the same about the episode discussing Sir Oliver Lodge’s views on telepathy and communicating with the afterlife, which also held up the action and allowed the tension to drop.
Having said that, this is certainly a good read and, if you enjoy richly-detailed research, this is the book for you.
Elizabeth Hawksley
DELSIE
Joan Smith, Hale, 2007, £18.99, hb, 223pp, 9780709079217
Delsie Sommers reluctantly agrees to marry a dying man at the request of his family. In exchange for a home and income she will become the guardian of his young daughter. What she doesn’t anticipate is the interference of her new brother-in-law, Lord deVigne, or the presence of a gang of smugglers in her orchard. Her temper is awoken, but so is her heart. If only she could rid her land of the miscreants maybe she would be happy, but deVigne seems to be thwarting her at every turn. Somehow she can’t accept that it is all for her own good. One
of them will have to back down, but with two such stubborn characters a truce looks unlikely. Delsie is a fun romp, with an unconventional heroine and a suitably worthy hero. There is plenty of action and a few surprises along the way before—as with all these delightful Robert Hale romances—a happy ending ensues.
Sara Wilson
THE ADMIRAL’S DAUGHTER
Julian Stockwin, McBooks, 2007, $24.00, hb, 357pp, 9781590131435 / Pub. in the UK as Kydd: The Admiral’s Daughter, Hodder & Stoughton, 2007, £17.99, hb, 352pp, 9780340898598
It is 1803, and Commander Thomas Kydd’s mission is to patrol home waters in order to suppress the smuggling trade. His friend Renzi joins him as captain’s clerk, also guiding Kydd’s steps in social situations when ashore. His coaching works well enough that Kydd attracts the interest of an admiral’s daughter, Persephone. The relationship develops to the degree that society assumes they will shortly become engaged. Then Kydd’s ship Teazer is damaged, and the ship must remain in an isolated Cornish cove for repairs. Kydd and Renzi lodge with the local squire, who unfortunately has a lovely, shy daughter, Rosalynd, and Kydd is again smitten. Word of his unfaithfulness reaches the admiral, who vows to bring about social and professional ruin for the man who has tarnished his family’s honor.
Fans of fast-paced adventure will get their fill with this book: there are at least four major plot threads. I enjoyed learning about naval lore, some of which this landlubber didn’t “get” when reading sea stories by other authors.
Y THE JOURNAL OF DORA DAMAGE
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Belinda Starling, Bloomsbury USA, 2007, $24.95, hb, 464pp, 9781596913363 / Bloomsbury, 2007, £12.99, hb, 464pp, 9780747585220
Dora Damage has a name straight from Dickens, and in fact her tale would not be out of place in that author’s works, although perhaps written on the distaff side. Dora is the wife of Peter Damage, a bookbinder, and theirs is not a love match. Their daughter Lucinda was conceived on one of the rare times they were intimate (Damage having made Dora scrub herself with bleach before he touched her), and she was born with epilepsy. Damage himself suffers from crippling rheumatoid arthritis that is interfering with his livelihood. Dora cannily plays to his ego while surreptitiously taking over the business herself.
In 1860, a woman bookbinder is unheard of, so Dora must pretend to the outside world that her husband is running the business while she tries to drum up additional work. When one of her clients sees through her ruse, the price he extracts is that she bind pornography for a group of dilettantes. Starling walks a fine line between displaying Dora’s repulsion and her reluctant fascination by a world that is denied her by her husband. The poverty in which her family lives and even the smell of the bookbinding materials are so tangible as to be worthy of Dickens.
Starling has written an engrossing and unsettling book, which serves to remind the reader how few rights women had in Victorian London. Dora achieves her modest rebellions, but always with the sense of looking over her shoulder; the effort it took to keep her family safe, clothed, and fed made me ache for her. Ellen Keith
There is a nice scene in which a sailor from the Teazer, working undercover to catch the smugglers, learns how difficult a fisherman’s life can be. One example of Stockwin’s humor is particularly appealing: “Commander Kydd, lord of sixteen guns and suzerain of near a hundred men, agreed meekly and followed his sister.”
I have not read other volumes in the series, and felt the lack. A recent tragedy in Renzi’s life is only hinted at, and undoubtedly the back story would have made his and Kydd’s relationship clearer. I was annoyed by the two main characters’ manner of speech: Stockwin renders Kydd’s lower class origins as a profusion of dropped word endings and apostrophes, while the educated Renzi’s conversation borders on the bombastic. Their dialogue got to be a bit tiresome.
B.J. Sedlock
EVERY PAST THING
Pamela Thompson, Unbridled, 2007, $24.95, 336pp, hb, 9781932961393
When Pamela Thompson saw Edwin Romanzo Elmer’s painting, Mourning Picture, she saw “worlds that want telling.” This book is her vision of those worlds, based on the picture and further research on the Elmer family, and it provides fascinating insights into the lives of a family dealing with love, loss, disillusion, and hope.
Effie Elmer, beloved daughter of Edwin and Mary Elmer, died in 1890 at nine years of age in rural Massachusetts. Nine years later, the parents have yet to recover from their grief, so they travel to New York City to visit Edwin’s brother Samuel and his new wife, Alice. Samuel is paying for Edwin, a renowned but currently unproductive painter, to study at the Academy, in an effort to renew his career and to tighten the family bond which has loosened over the years. Mary, an avid reader of Emerson and the Transcendentalists, finds herself in the center of New York at a time of great change for both women and the disenfranchised. Unbeknownst to Edwin, she spends her days at Justus Schwab’s saloon, a gathering place for rabble-rousers like Emma Goldman. She hopes to meet Jimmy Roberts, a young man she met when she and Edwin let rooms in their house to summer guests; Jimmy captured a part of her heart, and Mary aches for the kind of emotional connection Edwin simply cannot provide. Instead, she is befriended by the young journalist Frank Tannenbaum and his sister Susana. For his part, Edwin is not interested in auditioning for the Academy, but his painting is unexpectedly jump-started when he begins to paint Alice’s portrait.
Thompson interweaves thoughts and stories from the past as the narrative unfolds, creating a haunting story of a family, and a nation, undergoing great change.
Helene Williams
MURDER IN CHINATOWN: A Gaslight Mystery
Victoria Thompson, Berkley Prime Crime, 2007, $23.95, hc, 305pp, 9780425215319
In late 1890s New York, the murder of a lovely young Chinese-Irish-American girl from an affluent Chinatown family, shortly after her elopement with a handsome Irish-American youth from the slums, inflames ethnic hatreds. Both the Chinese and the Irish families are furious about the marriage. Could the murderer be a blood relative? The tangled family relationships in this case shed light on cruel anti-Chinese immigration laws that allowed only Chinese men to enter the U.S. in the hope that Chinese workers would not settle down as Americans but return to China.
NYPD Detective Malloy and his friend, midwife Sarah Brandt, struggle to help both families and solve the murder. The author gives sanitized glimpses of brutal police methods used at the time, as the relatively ethical detective resists taking bribes and tries to deal evenhandedly with families of all classes and ethnicities. After a slow start, the police work eventually pays off. As usual in this series, solid research in 1890s ethnic and family life creates a satisfying context for the mystery plot. Ninth in series.
Nina de Angeli
THE PLEASURE TRAP
Elizabeth Thornton, Bantam, 2007, $6.99/ C$8.99, pb, 385pp, 9780553589573
From childhood, Eve Dearing has been haunted by her mother’s death. She and her mother shared the gift of “sight,” but Eve has always tried to hide it. Eve grows up to become an accomplished writer of gothic novels in Regency England. Ash Dennison, once an officer for Wellington, wants peace in his life. When a newspaper publishes stories stating his brother’s accidental drowning was actually murder, Ash rushes to reveal the author. At a writer’s symposium Ash meets Eve and suspects her of penning this and more accusations of local “accidents” that aren’t what they seem. Eve is innocent, but through her sight she begins to read the real killer’s thoughts and discovers her own mother was murdered. She and Ash are drawn together in love and the quest to stop this furious maniac, who is tied to both their pasts and out for revenge.
The romance starts out contrived but gets better. The mystery is interesting, and most won’t know who the killer is until near the end. A good escapist read.
Diane Scott Lewis
SHADOWS IN THE WHITE CITY
Robert W. Walker, Harper, 2007, $6.99/C$9.99, 339pp, pb, 9780060739966
Second in the Inspector Ransom series, set in Chicago during the 1893 World’s Fair, this novel is part mystery, part horror story. There are in fact three plots going on. One concerns bombings at Haymarket Square but is only hinted at and unsolved. Another plot deals with
a serial killer, the Phantom of the Fair, which began in the first book and is possibly solved in the middle of this one. Finally, a second serial killer is introduced—the Leather Aprons murderer.
Walker’s Chicago is a place to avoid. The good guys are as evil as the bad ones. The characters, including Inspector Ransom, are immoral, obsessed or fraudulent and the society utterly corrupt. There are long portions of tedious pontifications followed by gruesome scenes in which the author seems to revel. I never felt I was really in that time and place despite thorough research and a listing of objects and facts: a case of being told and not shown. If you are squeamish, prefer stories that flow smoothly, or want to read about likeable characters, you might want to avoid this novel. If you enjoy horror and unbelievable plots and action, I suggest beginning with the first installment, City for Ransom, as this title doesn’t stand well on its own.
Nicole Leclerc
TURPENTINE
Spring Warren, Grove/Black Cat, 2007, $14.00, 432pp, pb, 9780802170361
Edward Bayard Turrentine III comes to Nebraska for his health in the 1870s. (Was the air in Nebraska salubrious? His mother, who dispatched him there, apparently didn’t ask.) When Edward arrives there is no sanatorium in which to recuperate, and his money soon runs out. His mother doesn’t answer his letters. He wants to go back to Connecticut and find out what has happened to her, but he can’t because he’s broke. As the story opens, he is sullying his soft hands ineptly skinning buffalo and hoping to stay alive. The locals mock him as “Turpentine.”
The book is two-thirds of a Western, for the middle is set in New Haven, where the hero finds himself framed for a bombing he didn’t commit. Poor “Turpentine” lives in a world he didn’t make and can barely understand. In the picaresque tradition, he is befriended and beset by thieves, liars, and con artists of every stripe.
Turpentine reminded me of John Barth’s SotWeed Factor, although it is not quite literary fiction. I was grateful for the upbeat ending, even though I didn’t quite believe it. Until that final chapter, however, black humor reigns. There is chicanery and fraud in the East. The West is as it no doubt was: violent, lawless and dirty. Turpentine helped me endure—with a grin—a six-hour delay in the Atlanta airport.
Juliet Waldron
LOST IN AUSTEN
Emma Campbell Webster, Riverhead, 2007, $14.00/C$17.50, pb, 345pp, 9781594482588
This book, the latest attempt to capitalize on Jane Austen’s recent popularity, is an interactive novel where you, the reader, as Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Pride and Prejudice, must make choices that will lead to a happy marriage to a rich gentleman. If you make the
wrong choice, it can be disastrous, or it can lead Elizabeth into the plots of Austen’s other novels and encounters with such characters as Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility, Mr. Knightley from Emma, and Captain Wentworth from Persuasion. Along the way, you gain or lose points for confidence, intelligence, and fortune and compile lists of accomplishments, failures, and connections.
As a long-time admirer of Austen (and someone who enjoyed the Choose Your Own Adventure books as a child), I wanted to like this book. The idea of an interactive book that combines the plots of Austen’s novels is certainly a clever one, and it could have been very enjoyable. But it was not well done, in my opinion: most of the alternative endings, which I’m sure were meant to be funny, were silly, violent, and melodramatic, and not in the spirit of Jane Austen. So, unfortunately, I cannot recommend the book.
Vicki Kondelik
THE DIAMOND FRONTIER
John Wilcox, Trafalgar Square/Headline, 2007, $24.95/£19.99, hb, 320pp, 0755309863
In 1880, in the South African province of the Transvaal, Simon Fonthill and his sidekick “352” Jenkins are on a mission to save the kidnapped daughter of an old friend. A former British officer, Simon is occasionally hired by the British army to scout enemy territory. In this turbulent region, the British face opposition from the Boer farmers, diamond smugglers and the bePedi tribe, a local tribe trying to fight British rule. Not only must Simon fight the enemies of the British Empire, he faces problems with Colonel Covington, a well-respected English officer who hates him and is trying to destroy his career. Meanwhile, Simon falls in love with Alice, a young girl from back home who has promised to marry Colonel Covington. Alice is reporting on the British military activity in South Africa for an English newspaper.
This is the third book in the series. In the previous volumes, Simon fought the Zulu tribe in Africa and warlike factions in Afghanistan. The author does a believable job mixing actual historical events with his fictional characters.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading all the books in this series. Fonthill rivals Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe series in military action and characterization. I can’t wait to read the next installment.
Jeff Westerhoff
ENDURING PASSIONS
David Wiltshire, Hale, 2007, £18.99, hb, 256pp, 9780709082980
Set just before and during the Second World War, Enduring Passions is the tale of two lovers, Tom and Fay, reaching out to each other across the yawning class divide of England in 1939. Fay is the daughter of Lord Rossiter, a minister in the Chamberlain government, Tom the son of a washer-woman and an unemployed ex-soldier, gassed in the First War. Tom lives with his parents and Gran in a small mid-terrace cottage, whilst Fay resides at Codrington Hall waited on by a populous staff of servants, and indulged
by her devoted parents—and altogether it’s no wonder that everyone except the two of them is aghast at their romance.
But this is a doughty pair and ready to deal with all obstacles. A chink in the class wall opens when Tom learns to fly, a skill that will become very significant and valuable as the war begins. No longer a humble worker for the Great Western Railway, but a dare-devil fighter ace, he begins to look better and better to Fay’s snobbish parents. Meanwhile, Fay, separated from her Tom by the war, has to endure a much harder fate.
Clearly the story has ingredients that are familiar, perhaps over-familiar, and includes what might be called almost a stock company of minor actors: her bufferish parents, his saltof the earth Mum, Dad and Gran, and a chorus of Fay’s snobby friends, led by the extremely caddish Jeremy. But Wiltshire tells the tale with great sincerity, and with occasional unexpected turns in the plot, so that one is made a believer by the end, and finds oneself really caring what will happen to the star-crossed lovers. Incidentally it would probably make a pleasing hour on television, of the nature of ‘Foyle’s War’ and other TV excursions into the near past.
Peter Prince
THE COAL GATHERER
Janet Woods, Severn House, 2007, £18.99/$27.95, hb, 216pp, 9780727865465
Callie is one of many children born to Mary and Ebeneezer Ingram, fisher-folk who scratch a precarious and impoverished living on the north-east coast of England. Every day she goes to the shore to collect coal that washes up with each high tide. One day she meets middle-class Patricia Lazarus and her brother James which changes her life forever, creating friction, jealousy, heartache and ultimately happiness. On the surface this would seem a typical ‘poor but honest girl makes good’ novel. And so it is in some ways, but several aspects lift it above the mundane. The writing is more stylish than most novels of this genre, and the social history that underpins it is well-researched and fascinating.
Sally Zigmond
NO REGRETS
Michèle Ann Young, Sourcebooks, 2007, $6.99/ C$8.99/£3.99, pb, 384pp, 1402210167
Carolyn Torrington has had a crush on Lucas, Lord Foxhaven, since childhood. Nevertheless she turns down his proposal, knowing it’s a condition his father imposed on him to get his inheritance. Like Lochinvar, Lucas rides his horse into a ballroom and kidnaps Carolyn, determined to ruin her reputation if necessary to get her to marry him. As added inducement, Lucas suggests a sexless “marriage of convenience” to be terminated by annulment at either party’s request with “no regrets” once he gets his money. Knowing he cannot possibly love a woman as large and unattractive as she, Caro, whose fortune was recently lost during France’s Reign of Terror, agrees. Of course, Lucas does love Caro, but believing she couldn’t love a scoundrel like himself, he never tells her. This “will they, won’t they” premise drags
on too long. Otherwise, Ms. Young has written an entertaining novel with interesting, strong characters.
Audrey Braver
20th CENTURY
THE AIR WE BREATHE
Andrea Barrett, Norton, 2007, $24.95, hb, 320pp, 9780393061086
The First World War looms in the background of this intimate novel, which borrows slightly in themes and setting from Mann’s The Magic Mountain, though with a distinctly American point of view. The inmates of Tamarack State Sanatorium for the Treatment of Tuberculosis in New York cope with the demands of their condition, and the rigors of overcoming it. And yet at the same time, like a patient who must remain still to keep the tubercular bacteria at bay, America maintains an uneasy and uncertain neutrality while Europe’s civilization commits suicide on the battlefield.
The novel’s characters represent some of that civilization, transplanted into the Adirondacks. Leo Marburg, for example, brings his scientific knowledge and memories of Russia. Barrett weaves these strains into the overall story deftly, as well as the minutiae of treating tuberculosis. Care for these patients is often, strangely enough, stifling. This creates a startling, antiseptic atmosphere, so that when one character muses “how empty it is here,” she is not only commenting on the place but the disconnected lives of the patients and those around them.
A weekly discussion group gives some solace and hope, new information for people impatient for knowledge of any kind. But like the collapsing world around them, hopes for a new world in these talks are scorched by plumes of smoke and encroaching reality. What matters in this novel are the casual bonds formed by people thrown together by fear and tragedy, and how tightly drawn and how lasting those bonds can be.
William Thornton
ZUGZWANG
Ronan Bennett, Bloomsbury USA, 2007, $24.95, hb, 277pp, 9781596912533 / Bloomsbury, 2007, £14.99, hb, 288pp, 9780747587118
Zugzwang: a position in chess in which a player is obliged to move, though every move makes his position worse, resulting in helplessness. This applies perfectly to the political situation in 1914 St. Petersburg. Pulled apart on the brink of World War I between the pro-Germans and the pro-French, it is also divided internally between Tsarists and Bolsheviks, Jews and “proper” Russians.
Difficult, then, for a high profile Jewish psychoanalyst to remain neutral when his calling card is found on the unidentified body of a murdered man. When he is arrested along with his daughter, he must find out the truth behind these events to save their lives, not a safe endeavour in this period of bombings, acid throwing, conspiracies and betrayals. Who can he trust among his colorful and secretive friends,
Y THE THEORY OF CLOUDS
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Stéphane Audeguy (trans. Timothy Bent), Harcourt, 2007, $24.00, hb, 272pp, 9780151014286
“All children become sad in the late afternoon, for they begin to comprehend the passage of time. The light starts to change. Soon they will have to head home, and to behave, and to pretend.” Thus begins an inimitable piece of writing, the first novel of French historian Stéphane Audeguy, awarded the 2005 prize Maurice Genevoix of the French Academy.
Akira Kumo, Japanese couturier, is an eccentric collector with an unclear past. He can’t remember the year he was born, although he thinks it was after World War II. He hates all things Japanese, and has an obsession for clouds. To catalogue his library, dedicated to cloud lore and the history of meteorology, he hires young Virginie Latour, and he tells her stories. There is the tale of the Quaker Luke Howard, a contemporary of Goethe, who named the clouds, and of Carmichael (based on John Constable), a painter who spent the summer of 1812 obsessively painting clouds. Kumo also explains how Napoleon’s disdain for the incipient science of meteorology led to the disaster at Waterloo. Soon, Virginie realizes that these stories are not entirely factual, but she is hooked. Then, just as Kumo begins to put the pieces together of his early years, he sends Virginie to England to purchase the mysterious Abercrombie Protocol, the seminal work of a 19th-century photographer on the skies and weather of all latitudes, a work nobody has actually seen.
the owner’s son, William. Cordelia finds work on a flower stall and becomes enamoured with the married stallholder, Joe.
Both girls face many obstacles in the way of happiness, and when war breaks out their lives are set to change forever. Cordelia is so obsessed with Joe that she almost misses finding love from a very different quarter. Whereas Lexa is sure William’s love will last forever, until he is badly injured and a cruel misunderstanding sets the lovers apart.
Sweethearts is another entertaining Scottish saga from the prolific and popular pen of Emma Blair. Typical of her novels, attention to detail means that 1930s Glasgow is authentically brought to life, as is the changing society of the war years. The parallel love stories are nicely worked and the action is never less than entertaining.
Sara Wilson
THE PIRATE’S DAUGHTER
Margaret Cezair-Thompson, Unbridled, 2007, $24.95, hb, 352pp, 9781932961409
Errol Flynn’s unexpected appearance in Jamaica is a dream come true for thirteen-yearold Ida Joseph, but three years pass before she finally becomes his lover. When she discovers she’s pregnant, she expects he will divorce his wife and marry her, but real life rarely turns out as expected. Although she feels betrayed and gets on with her life, she also comes to realize that Flynn will always haunt her.
Adelaida Lower
Audeguy captivates with the effortless elegance of his style. The Theory of Clouds, however, is anything but simple. As the novel progresses, the distinctive theme reverberates in its spiraling downwards structure. The voice gets sadder. Clouds are quasi-religious. Clouds are beautiful. Clouds are dangerous and destructive. Audeguy’s intense lyricism, so very poignant under the surface, reminds you of Anaïs Nin and Proust. His prose is intimate, ironic, evocative, and powerfully erotic. It can also be coarse. The reader shudders, grimaces, and keeps on reading, mesmerized, expecting some hint, some mournful key to the human condition. Ultimately Audeguy delivers it. Don’t miss this one. Truly incomparable.
his patients, and the various police and political factions, all playing him to their advantage?
This is a lively, albeit gloomy story realistically set in turbulent yet interesting times. Russia is in “zugzwang,” but so are the lives of the well-defined characters. Readers will be captivated by this complex private and social story of deceit. Chess lovers have a bonus treat in the unfolding of a game, but the plot flows easily for those without knowledge of chess.
Nicole Leclerc
TOMORROW THE WORLD
John Biggins, McBooks, 2007, $16.95/C$21.95, pb, 374pp, 9781590131107
I’d heard raves about John Biggins’s novels set in the last fifty years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Now I understand why. If you enjoy an author who writes with authority (like Michael Pearce, and with the same depth of knowledge and dry wit), and who has the outsider’s eye for noticing and observing, then Biggins is for you.
Tomorrow the World shows young Otto Prohaska becoming Cadet Prohaska, in what is left of the Hapsburg Empire’s navy. The joy of the book is that it is not a young man’s voice retelling his adventures, but Otto, the old man, waiting to die in the strange Welsh retirement home for Polish refugees, run by Polish nuns. He records his stories, with comments and critical asides added by the older Otto’s hindsight and
later analysis. The result is often hilarious, always devastatingly acute. One despairs and wonders, as he does, if humans will ever learn from past mistakes. As a record of what happened to turn Germany into the bigot of white supremacy that resulted in Auschwitz, it is horrifying.
The sailing details of S.M.S. Windischgratz, the descriptions of people and places, are so vivid you come to believe you are indeed reading memoirs. I stand in awe, not only of Biggins’s research, but also his ability to turn it into something so tangible. His skills as a writer are one of the pleasures of this novel.
If Otto has a creed, it is “Lord, what fools these mortals be,” and the novel gives us both comic and pathetic examples as a hapless Cadet Otto sails on the weird and wonderful voyage from Pola (now Pula, Croatia) ostensibly to the South Atlantic, but eventually to Africa, New Silesia and across the Indian Ocean to Pola again. Enjoy it. It’s a book to cherish and reread.
Patrika Salmon
SWEETHEARTS
Emma Blair, Sphere, 2007, £18.99, hb, 314pp, 9781847440082
Cordelia and Lexa are heartbroken when they lose the family greengrocery, but soon find work and love in very different places. Lexa takes a job with a wine merchant and falls for
The lack of work on Jamaica forces Ida to leave her daughter, May, and go to New York to find a job. While there, she meets Errol’s Austrian friend, Karl, and they wed. Eventually, Ida and Karl return to Jamaica, but many years have passed and Ida’s relationship with her daughter is strained. May knows who her father is, but he remains an enigma to her. When he visits the island one last time, the little girl contrives to meet him, but he is a stranger soon gone forever. As she grows, she forms a relationship of sorts with Karl, and when the Jamaican revolution and drug use in the seventies intrude into their tranquil lives, May must choose between Ida and Karl, while coming to terms with family secrets kept hidden for years.
Rather than a tale of a waning film star, this is the story of two women and how they come to terms with each other, the men in their lives, and themselves. While intriguing, the author tends to keep the reader at arm’s length from the action, and her unexpected point-of-view switches within scenes disrupt the story’s flow. Readers enamored with the Errol Flynn who played Captain Blood will probably not like him here, although the author depicts him as he truly was in later life. This story will haunt the reader long after it ends.
Cindy Vallar
WAR BRIDES
Helen Bryan, Penguin, 2007, £7.99, pb, 466pp, 9780141027128
War Brides is the story of five young women who come together in a small Sussex village in 1939. From divergent backgrounds they will face pain, hardship, passion and danger, forming
EDITORS’ CHOICE Y AWAY
Amy Bloom, Random House, 2007, $23.95, hb, 236pp, 9781400063567 / Granta, 2007, £10.99, pb, 240pp, 9781862079700
In July of 1924, Lillian Leyb stands in line with hundreds of other women, waiting to interview for a job as a seamstress that has opened up at the Goldfadn Theater, located on New York City’s Lower East Side. A recent immigrant from Turov, Russia, Lillian speaks little English, but manages to impress the owner of the theater, Reuben Burstein. Subsequent developments lead to an improvement of her circumstances. Things are never what they seem, however. When startling news from home reaches her, there is nothing so important in her new life to keep her from embarking on a cross-country trek, her ultimate goal being to reach Siberia.
pb, 418pp, 9780515143348
Fictional renditions of the peril faced by World War II submariners play a central role in historical novels of naval action in the 19391945 period. Surprisingly few readers are aware that US Navy underwater forces in the Pacific fought the only successful submarine campaign in either world conflict of the 20th century. A contributing reason to the astonishing American record was the absolutely dreadful antisubmarine forces assembled by the Imperial Navy. It was, without a doubt, the worst of any navy in World War II.
This is a breathtaking jewel of a novel. The narrative draws the reader down to the gritty streets of New York City, its lights, sounds and smells, the multitudes constantly moving and striving for a higher rung on the ladder. Then you are off to Chicago and across the plains, where you land in the hardcore and corrupt world of Seattle’s Skid Row. Finally, there is Alaska, the vast, frozen wilderness, home to outcasts, the detached, and those whose dreams have somehow gone awry. Along the way, Lillian interacts with an array of memorable characters, from Yaakov Shimmelman to Gumdrop and Chinky Chang, each of whom adds his or her own form of wisdom and, sometimes, humor to the story. I highly recommend this novel.
Alice Logsdon
Author Amy Bloom’s father was a journalist. ‘There’s a story about a woman who… tried to walk to Siberia,’ he announced one evening. ‘Why would anyone do that?’ Like uncut gems, the words lay in front of his daughter. The result is Away.
Following the murder of her family in Russia and the disappearance of her three-yearold daughter, Lillian Leyb flees to America with her cousin’s New York address pinned to her blouse. In the summer of 1924, the Lower East Side is heaving with 500,000 Jews. After a month in her cousin’s sweatshop, Lillian, her hands stained with blue dye, has perfected three answers to questions from prospective employers: ‘Very well, thank you’ if the question seems to be about her health; ‘I am a seamstress – my father was a tailor’ if the question contains the words ‘sew’, ‘costume’, or ‘work’; ‘I attend night classes’ said with a dazzling smile, in response to any question she doesn’t understand.
Thus equipped, she is hired as a seamstress by impresario Reuben Burstein and his matinee-idol son Meyer, and later finds her way into their beds. However, when another cousin arrives in New York with news of Sophie, Lillian’s daughter, Lillian embarks on an odyssey epic in sweep yet intimate in detail: vignettes, cameo portraits of a gallery of characters who help or hinder Lillian. These include a black prostitute and her pimp, a constable, three motherless children, gold prospectors, oriental prisoners, drifters and immigrants with an eye to the main chance or just hoping for the best.
Infused with insight and humanity, the writing is vivid, earthy, hilarious, yet poignant, tender, Lillian’s love for Sophie and the lengths to which she will go expressed in exquisite prose—leaving an ache of empathy and longing in this reader’s chest until after the last page was turned.
a friendship that will last through their lives.
Helen Bryan has created bold and witty characters with strong personalities who narrate, through their individual lives, the story of the Second World War as seen from the home front in England. It begins with the evacuation, continues with the frequent bombing raids as Germany musters on the French coast to launch the anticipated invasion, and follows with the Battle for Britain and the horror and indiscriminate death of civilians, men, women and children. Her description of the aftermath of the devastating Luftwaffe bombing of London is impressive, the atmosphere all too tangible and very harrowing at times.
There is really only one traditional wedding,
Cooke, a USN submariner in today’s nuclear fleet, turns history on its head by introducing the Shigure. This Japanese destroyer is equipped with the latest anti-submarine weapons and technology and is commanded by a brilliant officer (who, oddly enough, is never brought into the story). Shigure sinks the Seatrout at novel’s start and this sets her previous commander, Jack Tremain, off on a campaign to seek vengeance for his old ship. The setting is the war zone from Australia to the Philippines, and the time frame is the pivotal year of 1943. Tremain takes the USS Whitefin out on a series of patrols to both attack Japanese shipping as well as to land commando forces behind enemy lines. Supporting characters include the ever resourceful seaman Fabriano, SAS Major Farquhar of what the author terms the “Royal Army” (note to all historical novelists: There is a Royal Navy. There is a Royal Air Force. There is NO Royal Army), a cantankerous Admiral Ireland, an Executive Officer on the Whitefin haunted by his past, and a beautiful Admiral’s aide.
The story follows fairly predictable lines, and you would not lose money if you bet the Shigure would end up on the bottom of the sea and Tremain would find romance. Still, Cooke does a serviceable job, but watching Das Boot might be a better use of your time.
John R. Vallely
SHADOWS & LIES
Marjorie Eccles, Minotaur, 2007, $24.95, hb, 333pp, 0312368968 / Allison & Busby, 2006, £6.99, pb, 288pp, 0749082399
Janet Hancock
the preparations for which show the initiative and companionship of sacrifice. Coupons from everyone’s ration books are pooled to ensure enough sugar and butter can be obtained to make the cake and provide all the trimmings. Even the wedding dress is borrowed and the bouquets of bride and maids are of wild flowers, free and bountiful and, more importantly, not rationed. The honeymoon comprises three days on the south coast behind a barbed wire beach.
Absorbing and moving by turns, War Brides is a novel well balanced and skilfully told.
Gwen Sly
SINK THE SHIGURE
R. Cameron Cooke, Jove, 2007, $7.99/C$10.99,
This mystery begins in 1909 when a woman called Hannah Smith is badly injured in a London omnibus accident and suffers a loss of memory extending back several years. As an exercise to regain her memory, she writes her autobiography beginning as far back as she can remember. As she moves forward with the record of her life, there is a chance she will remember everything. Six months later, the body of an unknown woman is discovered on the estate of Sir Henry Chetwynd in Shropshire.
The story seesaws between 1909 and flashbacks to 1894 when a young Hannah leaves her Yorkshire home to visit a friend in Africa. While there Hannah meets and marries an army officer, Hugh Osborne, who lives in Mafeking. During the Boer War, while Mafeking is under siege and her neglectful husband is with the army, Hannah begins an affair with a war correspondent, Harry Chetwynd, that sets in motion events leading up to the murder in
Shropshire.
Ms. Eccles, best known for her mystery series featuring Gil Mayo, a village police detective, is a master of the convoluted plot. Her descriptions are so realistic one can almost taste the dust and smell the gunpowder.
Audrey Braver
THE KINGDOM OF ASHES
Robert Edric, Doubleday, 2007, £16.99, hb, 400pp, 9780385612562
Set in the fictional town of Rehstadt, near Hanover in the British Zone of Occupation in 1946, this is a bleak examination of Germany in the immediate post-World War II period. Englishman Captain Alex Foster is part of a team interrogating suspected minor Nazis and others involved in war crimes. He has a love affair with a local German interpreter, Eva, and the novel centres on relations and tensions with German civilians and the British and US forces.
It is a story of stereotypes—the British are either decent chaps or nasty bastards while the Germans are manipulative and devious, survivors of the foul Nazi regime, or essentially good folk who were caught up in the national maelstrom and are trying just to survive. And the Americans are there to boorishly achieve their own aims at the expense of both the British and Germans. Alex is oddly naïve as the novel’s central figure. He can be frustratingly simple with human relationships, yet has the difficult job of trying to unravel the truth in the thread of obfuscation and denial from the suspected Germans.
There is very little authorial narration—the story unfolds mostly through dialogue and bare description of events. This did not help the novel establish and sustain substance or an authentic sense of historical background. However, this is a capable historical novel with a rather depressingly gloomy perspective on mankind and human behaviour.
Doug Kemp
THE LAST NIGHTINGALE
Anthony Flacco, Ballantine, 2007, $12.95, pb, 272pp, 9780812977578
Think film noir with a twist of Stephen King and you have Anthony Flacco’s tale of a twelve-year-old boy’s hellish survival of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Shane Nightingale struggles through the nightmare of surviving alone after his world is literally destroyed. Drifting through the chaos of shattered buildings, dust, fog, and the smoke of spreading fire, he finds shelter and a job of sorts in the cemetery of the Mission Dolores—an apt reflection of the story’s tone.
But surviving the earthquake is not what makes this dark story a thriller. It was not the natural disaster that killed Shane’s family but a crazed psychopath, a serial killer who now stalks Shane to complete his obliteration of the Nightingale family. Police are already hunting the killer. Sergeant Randall Blackburn leads the investigation. Blackburn’s path crosses Shane’s when Shane, having read about a society murder in the newspaper, gives Blackburn the insight he needs to break the case. Blackburn takes Shane
under his wing and moves into a deadly chess game with the killer. It ends in the shadow of Golden Gate Bridge, in the dead of night, to the sound of crashing waves and howling winds.
Great disasters bring out the best and the worst in humankind. This is an underlying theme of the story but aside from Randall Blackburn there is little representation of the “best.” There may be too much “Little Nell” drama for the taste of some, and the ending is hopelessly clichéd. Still, the story is well written and fast paced. It holds the reader’s interest to the end. Recommended for a realistic look at the aftermath of natural disaster and the sorry side of human nature.
Lucille Cormier
THE HEARTS OF HORSES
Molly Gloss, Houghton Mifflin, 2007, $24.00, hb, 290pp, 9780618799909
The ranchers of 1917 Elwha County, Oregon, might have expected a female stranger to be a “land girl,” a city-dweller come to play cowgirl while the male ranch hands are off to war. But Martha Lessen is a real cowgirl, looking for work breaking in horses. To spite her broncobusting father, cruel to his children as well as animals, she trains horses gently—an early “horse whisperer.” Ranchers George and Louise Bliss allow her to bunk in their barn while she does a circle ride, giving green horses experience under saddle and bridle as she rides them from ranch to ranch.
In the course of her travels, loner Martha must interact with the other inhabitants of the valley. She helps rescue a wagon and team gone down an embankment, aids a family stricken with food poisoning, and rather reluctantly participates in social events like dances and skating parties. When Henry Frazer, foreman on another ranch, shows interest in her, she has mixed feelings about his attentions. She doesn’t want to end up like her mother, made sour by having six children in quick succession. Can a young woman in the early 20th-century West maintain her independence while including a man in the picture?
While dramatic events like death, illness, and cruelty figure in the plot, characterization and imagery are the most memorable facets. Chapter 25, depicting a rancher on his deathbed, is particularly touching without being maudlin. Gloss’s descriptive passages evoke vivid images without being affectedly poetic: “It had been foggy along the valley bottom but now the sun broke white and glittery in a dark blue sky. The snow here was deeper, and the limbs of the trees sagged under heavy cloaks.” Despite a leisurely pace, gripping characters and imagery propel the reader onward.
B.J. Sedlock
BARGAIN BRIDE
Iris Gower, Bantam, 2007, £17.99, hb, 300pp, 9780593056028
Charlotte Mortimer loves her job teaching at the local school, but she is not so sure about her love for her fiancé Luke, headmaster at the school. When there is an explosion at the Red Rock copper works, the main source of employment for the town’s folk, lives are changed forever. It
means the closing of Charlotte’s beloved school, but a rich businessman offers her marriage and money. To save the school she must forsake true love and become a ‘bargain bride’.
This is typical Iris Gower, Wales’s favourite storyteller. The story is predictable, the characters stereotypical; nevertheless, it is an enjoyable read and one that her many fans will welcome.
Ann Oughton
PLAYING WITH THE MOON
Eliza Graham, Macmillan New Writing, 2007, £14.99, hb, 276 pp, 9780230528871
Their small son having been killed in a road accident, Tom and Minna Byrne rent a house in an isolated village on the Dorset coast to try to come to terms with their loss. Down on the beach, Tom discovers human bones half buried in the sand along with an identity tag which names them as an American GI who drowned in 1944. Up in Yorkshire, Felix, who grew up in the same village sixty years earlier, reads an account of the find in a newspaper. She travels back to the house she hasn’t seen since the whole village was requisitioned by the Military for D-Day landing practices during World War II. The two women meet and gradually the story behind those events comes to light.
This is another book where the two central characters relate their own experiences, and the story alternates between the present day and 1944. Eliza Graham tells a powerful tale, and her characters are well drawn and believable. I enjoyed this book very much.
Marilyn Sherlock
THEY ALSO SERVE
Hilary Green, Hodder & Stoughton, 2007, £19.99, hb, 341pp, 9780340898987
This is the second instalment of an epic war time saga which began with Now is the Hour It picks up where the other one finished and reading the first book enables you to engage with the characters a lot more. It continues the story of the men and women of the Fairbourne Follies, a group of stage people torn apart by the Second World War. The author’s knowledge of her period is detailed and well integrated into the story line without being too overwhelming with facts. Each of her characters has to come to terms with some agonising choices, and reading them in sequence helps to explain how they have come to the decisions they made. We go through wartime hardships and the shattering of dreams at a steady pace. This accelerates in the final chapters as you are left to wonder how it will all turn out, only to get to the end and realise that the story is by no means finished. It leaves you holding your breath for the next instalment. Some of the toughest fights take place off the battlefield, and this story of wartime sacrifices and life-changing decisions manages to grip your attention throughout. An exciting read.
Karen Wintle
DIZZY CITY
Nicholas Griffin, Steerforth, 2007, $24.95/$32.00, hb, 371pp, 9781586421328
Benedict Cramb is a young Londoner born
into poverty who learned to use his cunning and wits to claw his way forward from day to day. Without a family to fall back on, he survived with his mates in a city and country which cared little for him. The coming of war in 1914 changed all of this. Forced to enlist by a judge, Ben and his mates end up serving in the Western Front trenches in 1916. The endless violence of World War I trench fighting transforms Ben’s life as he is accidentally treated as an officer after being wounded.
The same engagement which sends him to hospital kills all of his friends. Realizing that his acting as an officer will inevitably result in severe punishment, Ben stows away on a steamship bound for America. The British Army deserter adapts to New York City by again calling on the quick thinking that enabled him to survive London. Ben’s changing circumstances bring him in contact with an American con artist who quickly educates his eager student in new ways of making quick money.
At this point the story changes; you will find several competing scams run by highly sophisticated con artists to be as challenging as any you’ve ever encountered. Giving away the plot would be a crime in itself, so I will avoid that misstep in favor of warning you to bring your best game with you when you approach Nicholas Griffin’s Ben and his peers. Never assume you are keeping abreast, let alone ahead, of the action. Remember, cons are called “artists” for a reason.
John R. Vallely
THE WAR AGAINST MISS WINTER
Kathryn Miller Haines, Harper, 2007, $13.95/ C$17.50, pb, 318pp, 9780061139789
In 1943, even in New York City, the heart of American theatre, acting jobs are scarce, so struggling actress Rose Winter works for private detective Jim McCain to pay the rent. However, under the terms of her Stage Door-like boarding house, unless she gets an acting job within a week, she’s out on the streets. To make matters worse, she stops receiving her salary from the detective agency when she finds Jim hanging from a noose in the office closet. Rosie doesn’t believe Jim killed himself, and when one of Jim’s clients asks her to continue working for him, she finds herself in the midst of a mystery that combines both of her worlds.
Aided by her roommate Jayne, a musical comedy actress, Rosie searches for an elusive lost work by playwright Raymond Fielding, while sparring with her acting rival and fellow boarding house inhabitant, Ruby Priest. Haines, an actress and playwright herself, excels at a sense of place and characterization. I shivered along with Rosie in the cold New York City of World War II and agreed with her that Jayne was the best sidekick a gal could have. Mobsters with suspiciously tender hearts, gold-digging actresses, and wealthy society dames round out the cast of characters. The mystery itself is a bit too convoluted for its own good, but Rosie is just swell. If this is the first in a series, sign me up for number two.
Ellen Keith
SING FOR YOUR SUPPER
Rosie Harris, Arrow, 2007, £5.99, pb, 440pp, 9780099502975
Tudor Morgan refuses to go down the mine; his ambition is to make a name as a singer. When he and Karen and their baby Delia move to Cardiff in search of better opportunities, Karen has to find a job while Tudor cares for Delia by day and sings in clubs at night.
Tudor pretends to be an out-of-work miner (it is 1926) and busks, sending little Delia round with a hat. Karen has to cope while he is in prison, and forgives him when he returns. He has not, however, changed his ways and things get worse.
Karen’s love for Tudor is all-forgiving, despite the problems he causes. She is warm, steadfast, and determined that they will all survive. From a naive young girl she matures into a strong woman, and she keeps the family together and never completely loses faith in Tudor. This saga of life in 1920s Cardiff will satisfy all Rosie Harris’s fans.
Marina Oliver
STORM OVER BURRACOMBE
Lilian Harry, Orion, 2007, £12.99, hb, 312pp, 9780752867229
This well-crafted, heartwarming, pageturning story is a light rustic romance, set in the Devon of 1952. Interwoven sub-plots of three or four coincident love stories cleverly weave a masterly picture of village life as women gain their rightful position in the work place. Characters are well shaped, of all ages and classes. Some use dialect in a charming way, calling females my maid, my bird or my pretty.
The storm of the title is the one which caused the Lynton and Lynmouth disaster. There are other reminiscences of 1952—rationing and shortages, John Wayne films and the army in Germany. I remember it well so I doubt coffee would have been drunk in a farmhouse kitchen.
Hilary Napier runs her father’s large estate. When he brings in a manager she feels resentful. Her conflict with Travis Kellaway then pervades the book. The pantomime run by the curate and his developing love for the schoolteacher further bind the story. There is a remarkable and touching friendship between an older man and a woman who could have been his daughter. Masterly description of a poaching drama at night, which results in the sad injury to a child, who has an important part in the pantomime, adds pathos.
Sensitive and elegant writing gives excellent geographical detail of Devon towns as Lilian Harry captures the warmth and everyday drama of a village in this, the third of her Burracombe novels.
This is the third of this author’s books I have been pleased to review.
Geoffrey Harfield
drawn to visit a former Greek leper colony. This storyline, however, is merely the wrapper for the intricate tale of the Petrakis family, Alexis’s ancestors. Alexis feels that understanding her aloof mother’s background would help her determine the direction her own life should take. But her mother refuses to speak of her past. Instead, she encourages Alexis to contact an old friend, Fortini, who resides in Plaka, a coastal town on the island of Crete. Fortini’s story reveals a history of secrecy and guilt that provides closure for Alexis’s mother and a better perspective for Alexis regarding her mother’s behavior.
Prior to the 1960s, those diagnosed with Hansen’s Disease, commonly called leprosy, were banished to secluded colonies, often on remote islands. Until the development of a cure, which was delayed by World War II, no one with leprosy was allowed to mingle with the general population. Spinalonga, situated off the shore from Plaka, provided a home for Greece’s afflicted. Alexis’s great-grandfather, Georgiou, serviced the islands by boat, making deliveries and ferrying doctors, and various women from the family eventually call Spinalonga their home.
The combination of leprosy, Greece, and World War II provides a fascinating historical backdrop to a story that explores relationships and the disruptions that happen to all families to some extent. The difference is that this family’s problems could not be kept closeted away, and they affected all participants in ways much less subtle than the actual disfigurements of the disease’s victims.
Originally printed in the UK in 2005, this first US edition is engaging, educational, and provides ample fodder for further thoughts, making it a perfect book club choice.
Suzanne J. Sprague
LOVING FRANK
Nancy Horan, Ballantine, 2007, $23.95/ C$29.95, pb, 362pp, 9780345494993
This debut novel explores the little-known romance between the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the wife of one of his early clients, the pre-suffrage feminist Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Although in 1909 both are married with young children, they fall in love and eventually run away to Europe, destroying their respective families and scandalizing Chicago in the process. Although the couple eventually returns to the architect’s Wisconsin homeland to begin work on one of his most revered treasures, much is lost in the process, and a heavy price remains to be paid.
THE ISLAND
Victoria Hislop, Harper, 2007, $14.95, pb, 384pp, 9780061429262 / Headline Review, 2006, £7.99, pb, 480pp, 0755309510
As London-born Alexis Fielding, a modernday college graduate, explores her past, she is
Although the story is told well and apparently accurately from the viewpoint of Mamah, the novel is strangely lacking in feeling. Just why the affair occurs, and what keep it going, remains difficult to understand. The motivations of both parties in devastating their own families seem inadequately explored, leaving one the impression that an overwhelming sexual attraction is the major, and perhaps only, cause. The author does seek to make a tortured link to the main character’s incipient feminism, which as an explanation for her behavior seems tenuous
and incredibly self-serving at best. As for Frank, it suffices that great men, or more likely great egos, are not subject to ordinary constraints.
The book stands as an interesting exploration into the private life of a great artist, but ultimately fails in providing insight into a complex and disturbing human relationship.
Ken Kreckel
THE 47th SAMURAI
Stephen Hunter, Simon & Schuster, 2007, $26.00/C$32.00, hb, 372pp, 0743238095
Two characters with the quintessentially American names of Earl and Bob Lee Swagger occupy center stage in this latest view of the father and son adventure series. This one begins in the unlikely setting of battle-ravaged Iwo Jima in the hellish fighting of 1945. Marine First Sergeant Earl Swagger leads his unit against a Japanese strongpoint ably commanded by Captain Hideki Yano. The two men engage in a fight to the death, and the American emerges with Yano’s samurai sword as a souvenir of this duel. The sword appears again when Earl’s son, a retired Marine reconstructing his life as a middle-aged civilian, is visited by Yano’s son in his quest to locate his father’s sword. Bob Lee Swagger manages to find this long forgotten connection between the two families and returns with it to Japan to formally present it to Captain Yano’s family.
Once the story moves to Japan, the account changes in suspense as the true meaning of the blade and the central role this particular sword plays in Japanese culture brings in characters as diverse as a Japanese pornography kingpin, Yakuza gangsters, a beautiful and cunning Japanese-American CIA agent, and paratroopers from the Japanese Self Defense Forces (what would be termed the Army in any other country). While the reader may be a bit doubtful that a middle-aged foreigner could have so much success operating as an action hero in a cultural setting so radically different from his own, the writer manages to sway you over to his thinking as only a talented veteran writer is able. Stephen Hunter’s grasp of Japanese traditions and the continuing relevance of Japan’s past to its present and future make this a novel suitable for devotees of historical fiction. Those unfamiliar with the saga of the 47 Ronin will certainly find this an arresting introduction to how Japan defines honor, family, and tradition.
John R. Vallely
TREE OF SMOKE
Denis Johnson, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007, $27.00, hb, 614pp, 9780374279127 / Picador, 2007, £16.99, hb, 624pp, 9780330449205
William “Skip” Sands is training for his CIA job as a spy in Psychological Operations against the Viet Cong in 1960s South Vietnam. His present mission is to create a second, more concise catalogue of Vietnamese culture for his uncle, Colonel Francis Sands, using his entire card catalog system about Vietnam: nineteen thousand entries in chronological order. According to the Colonel, intelligence comes from the songs, stories and legends of the people themselves. So Skip experiences, throughout
this alternately languid, surrealistic and frenetic wartime reality, South Vietnam’s inability to master the Viet Cong’s singular focus and willingness to act in “unthinkable sacrifice.”
In between, we get a sense of Skip’s dysfunctional family background through his interaction with his brother James, a connection that eerily parallels the military and psychological battle between North and South Vietnam. Eventually, he learns that Operation Tree of Smoke is about using a double agent and Skip to deliver misinformation about American military strategy and activities to the North, using “the tunnels, Project Labyrinth, the curling catacombs of the human ear.” Skip also falls in love with a compassionate Canadian nurse, someone alive enough to really care and, he thinks, who has a practical, tangible job that makes a difference.
Through Skip and his military colleagues, we get a sense of the global and personal reactions to JFK’s assassination, the Tet offensive, and the fall of Saigon and others’ perspective about this war right up to the 1980s. For those who were there or wish they were, this is an fresh, interesting look at a pivotal period in American and Vietnamese history, a panoramic presentation with a tragic ending for too many Americans.
Viviane Crystal
SECRET SINS
Jeannie Johnson, Severn House, 2007, £18.99/$28.95, hb, 278pp, 139780727865540
In war-torn 1940s Bristol, England, Mary Anne’s pawnshop home is burnt down while her son and daughter are in the forces. She leaves her rotter of a husband to live with Michael, the pawnshop’s new owner. From then on this book is concerned with the problems and heartaches of adultery, illicit love, pregnancy and adoption.
An enigmatic character wanders in and out to puzzle the reader. His presence is only explained at the end, but it’s worth it. The long denouement is handled very well. Five disparate and welldrawn characters argue and fight outside a Red Cross shop after a long lost child appears. Very ‘Coronation Street’!
On the down side, I was worried by the lack of careful editing and holes in the story. There were many anachronisms, too. One must remember this is set firmly in 1941. For example, the Salvation Army would not be called a ‘registered charity’ nor its admirable home shown as a stereotypical, dreary, uncaring institution. The WRVS was also mentioned. The Women’s Voluntary Service only became ‘Royal’ after the war, honouring it for services given. The story is pervaded by lovemaking, but there is a total lack of any concept of marital love or fidelity. If romance is about love, it is about married love also.
On the plus side, a most perceptive observation of characters is evident; they are well drawn and believable, some even forgiving and loyal. There are excellent wartime scenes of the gritty devastation and personal tragedies of war. The ending is a satisfying rounding-up of all the issues.
Geoffrey Harfield
FILMING, A Love Story
Tabish Khair, Picador, 2007, £16.99, hb, 398pp, 9780330419222
In 1947 the subcontinent of India gained independence from Great Britain and religious freedom, resulting in the partition of the Hindu Indian state and Muslim Pakistan.
Filming is the story of an Indian who had written his graduate thesis on the Bombay films of that period. It is now the sixtieth anniversary of Independence, and he narrates a series of stories relating the details of the lives of other people who, in their various ways, had become involved in the making of those films. The teller of these tales, however, is elusive, giving little of himself away.
Set primarily in India and spanning the 20th century, this is a modern book but a chronology of true events and facts scattered through the pages does not make it an historical novel. The colloquialisms used in the dialogue would benefit from a glossary, and the interweaving stories become confusing, even when delineated by different typefaces.
Gwen Sly
THE VENUS DEAL
Ken Kuhlken, Poisoned Pen Press, 2007, $14.95, pb, 291pp, 9781590584088
As World War II home front San Diego deals with blackouts and shortages, 37-year-old excop Tom Hickey is moonlighting as half-owner of Rudy’s Hacienda, thanks to a wife with a taste for jewelry and high society, a teenage daughter in private school, and his own dream of replacing his rowboat with a more substantial craft. But his ticket to the good life, star band singer Cynthia Moon, goes missing, plunging Tom into a wild ride up and down the California coast and into a toxic family, a cult religion, a hit murder attempt, and more mob connections that even his world-weary gaze can see.
Tom is as hard-boiled as detectives come, but self-delusional about his own home and the sanctuary he imagines there—a nice paradox. He battles memories of his creepy-religious upbringing while trying to solve the riddle that is Cynthia. Period details set the scenes well in time and place. The writing style, although sometimes drawing too much attention to itself, at other times soars, as in describing the sounds a mental hospital’s inmate makes as “like a caveman giving orders to the moon.” The novel’s ending is precarious and open-ended enough to haunt.
Eileen Charbonneau
THE INDIAN CLERK
David Leavitt, Bloomsbury USA, 2007, $24.95, hb, 496pp, 1596910402 / Bloomsbury, 2008, £16.99, hb, 496pp, 9780747581680
The first issue a historical fiction writer needs to solve is how much research to include. Too little and the work lacks foundation; too much and it sinks under its weight. It is a difficult balance, a balance David Leavitt does not achieve in his 12th novel, The Indian Clerk. Past legal troubles with an earlier work (While England Sleeps) may have contributed to the dilemma. To be sued, lose in court, and have to
edit an already published novel must be hard to forget. Regrettably, this novel shows it.
In the winter of 1915, Cambridge University mathematician G.H. Hardy receives an extraordinary letter from Srinivasa Ramanujan, a clerk in India. In spite of Ramanujan’s lack of formal education, the tidbits of the work he sends make Hardy believe the Indian is a genius. Intrigued, Hardy decides to bring him to England. But when Ramanujan is finally convinced to make the journey, their only connection is mathematics. Hardy is “a man of habit,” a self-regarding atheist, and a repressed homosexual. The handsome Ramanujan is an orthodox high-caste Hindu, a married man, and a devotee of the goddess Namagiri.
Leavitt sets this historical collaboration against a background of colonialism, prejudices, and sexual identity. He works with fascinating material. The Cambridge Apostles, the secret intellectual society to which Hardy belongs, has members such as John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, and Rupert Brooke. World War I brings strains, challenges, and disruption. There are appearances by D. H. Lawrence and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Throughout, Leavitt stays very close to his sources. He allows himself few flights of fancy and very little literary license. The result is a scholarly novel with little color and a sluggish pace.
Adelaida Lower
THE WANDERING GHOST
Martin Limon, Soho, 2007, $24.00, hb, 320pp, 9781569474815
Corporal Jill Matthewson, the first woman ever assigned to 2nd Division Military Police in the demilitarized zone of mid-1970s South Korea, has disappeared. George Sueno and Ernie Bascom, agents of the 8th United States Army Criminal Investigation Division, have arrived from Seoul to help investigate her unresolved status. In this fifth of a series of military crime novels featuring Sueno and Bascom, they encounter overt hostility by 2nd Division officers and apathetic resistance from every soldier they question. Initially they also discover something shady about the supposed suicide of a Private Druwood, an embarrassing occurrence in addition to the mystery about the Corporal. Verbally warned to stay away from the Druwood death, the investigators begin to prowl the back streets of bars, prostitutes, and Korean “hooches.”
Who is the wandering ghost whose violent death must be resolved for Matthewson’s spirit to rest in peace? The discoveries of oppression, rape, black marketeering, and murder fill these pages with a riveting, complex plot that should satisfy every mystery fan. But more than the unexpected investigative development, Korean daily life, superstitions, and pride so vividly portrayed, the reader can taste, touch and even feel the Korean spirit surviving, accepting and enduring every temporal and spiritual challenge by both friend and foe.
Viviane Crystal
$24.95/C$32.00, 368pp, hb, 9781400062607
It’s New York in the early 1970s, and freshfaced (though freakishly white-haired) Cherry Marshall from Arkansas has arrived with a few pictures and dreams of becoming a model. Armed with a tenuous link to fellow Arkansan and ex-top-model-turned-agency-owner Suzan Hartman, she soon finds herself plunged into the exciting, surreal fashion scene famous for weird, wacky excess and thrown together with fellow newcomer and sexy male model, Lale Hardcastle. As Cherry’s star rises, back in Arkansas her friend, Cassie, finds herself alone and pregnant after her fiancé runs away before the wedding. What follows is an outrageous, humorous, name-dropping and, at times, touching tale.
Having drawn on her own experience as a model, Norris Church Mailer (wife of writer Norman Mailer) has created a vibrant story set in the glamorous yet slightly seedy vision of New York that belongs to our collective consciousness. The plot shifts effortlessly from decadent tales of debauchery to touching vignettes of selfdiscovery. Some of her characters have a largerthan-life quality that makes them engaging and unforgettable. Others? Not so much. But, still, that contrast works well within the confines of fashion stereotypes.
Cheap Diamonds is almost like that one inevitable article tinged with real depth that can be found buried deep in almost every glossy fashion magazine—the one you never expect to stumble across but end up being glad you did because it sticks with you. Overall, Mailer’s second novel is worth reading, if only for the colorful, decadent memories she might bring back to those who remember the ΄70s!
Dana Cohlmeyer
RED ROVER
Deirdre McNamer, Viking, 2007, $24.95/ C$31.00, hb, 224pp, 0670063509
The novel opens in 1927 with two of the main characters, Neil and Aidan Tierney (nine and thirteen, respectively), riding horseback on the open plains of Montana. The story then moves to the time shortly after the end of World War II. During the war, Neil had become a bomber pilot while Aidan joined the FBI with his close friend Roland Taliaferro. When Aidan returns to Montana, he is sick from a mysterious illness contracted while serving hazardous duty in Argentina. Shortly after, he is found dead of a gunshot wound, an apparent suicide. Neil believes that there is a government cover-up, but he and his family can prove nothing, and the promised explanation of Aidan’s illness never comes from the FBI.
G-Man during the World War II years. McNamer has created a compelling story that weaves through time and her characters. Throughout the novel, she skillfully reveals and tightens the relationships of family, friends, and community. The emotional and psychological bonds are drawn to a stunning conclusion that leaves the reader enlightened about the complexities and incongruities of life.
Gerald T. Burke
A MAN OF NO MOON
Jenny McPhee, Basic Books, 2007, $24.00/ C$29.00, 288pp, hb, 9781582433752
In McPhee’s entrancing tale of post-war Italy, Dante Omero Sabato is a famous poet, novelist, and translator with two obsessions: suicide and sex. As the narrator of the story, Dante is open about these competing forces and the effect they have upon his every movement. His current love interests are two American actresses, sisters who have come to Rome to be a part of Italy’s booming cinematic industry. Gladys and Prudence Godfrey, while not classically beautiful, are nonetheless intensely alluring, Gladys in her unbounded lust for life and experience, Prudence with her seeming reticence of the same. Dante falls for, and beds, both, creating a complex yet oddly satisfying relationship for all involved.
Interspersed with the current action of the women’s movie careers are flashbacks to defining moments in Dante’s life, helping the reader understand his conflicting desires for life and self-destruction, and his inability to commit himself to one person, one career, one anything. McPhee provides Dante with a good deal of self-knowledge, but makes him an unreliable narrator, which effectively reels in the reader as a participant and questioner of the action. The settings—from the cafes of Rome to the Aeolian Islands to the beach behind Dante’s villa at Castiglioncello—are vivid characters of the novel as well. McPhee has created a world which we know cannot be sustained, but which also cannot be ignored; this is a riveting, sadly beautiful read.
Helene Williams
A TEXAS LEGACY CHRISTMAS
DiAnn Mills, Barbour, 2007, $9.97, pb, 288pp, 9781597898225
CHEAP DIAMONDS
Norris Church Mailer, Random House, 2007,
The narrative shifts smoothly back and forth between the postwar era and 2003, mainly in Missoula, Montana. It creates a mixture of relationships not only between the principle characters of the drama, Neil, Aidan, and Roland, but also between a host of other individuals whose lives and actions are central to the story. For example: Opal Mix, the slightly deranged nurse turned coroner, and flamboyant Wendell Whitcomb, Missoula’s homegrown star reporter who began his snooping career as a young Junior
The formerly incorrigible Zach Kahler is all grown up in this sequel to Lightning and Lace It’s 1911, and Zach is about to leave New York to return to Kahlerville, Texas, where he’ll take over as publisher of the local newspaper. But his careful plans are disrupted when a couple of street children pick his pocket. A talk with a persuasive nun at the orphanage results in Zach’s taking the twins home with him. Chloe Weaver, a former schoolmate of Zach’s, helps mind the children when she isn’t working in the town’s boardinghouse. Can the pair of them keep the twins out of trouble long enough for Zach to finalize their adoption?
There really isn’t much suspense in the love story—it’s apparent almost from the beginning that Zach and Chloe will make a match of it. Subplots such as a second rival for Chloe’s hand,
and the fate of the bully who had tormented her in school, are minor diversions. For readers who like a cozy, low-conflict children/church/kitchen type of excursion into the past, this Christian novel will please. Despite “Christmas” in the title, the holiday is not the main emphasis of the storyline.
B.J. Sedlock
TOKYO YEAR ZERO
David Peace, Knopf, 2007, $24.00, hb, 355pp, 97803077263742 / Faber & Faber, 2007, £16.99, hb, 368pp, 0571236456
Tokyo, August 1946: one year after Japan’s surrender and the extensive bombings of its capital. The murdered bodies of two women are found in a park. Thus begins Inspector Minami’s investigation, one which will lead to a serial killer and stir up old memories of war for the policeman.
The story is powerful and haunting mostly through the author’s ability to transport us to this post-war devastated city. He masterfully renders the atmosphere of a defeated nation at odds with the occupying victors, lacking the basic necessities, where survival is the only priority, where purges and corruption reign. It is also the realm of displaced people, looking for missing loved ones or grabbing the opportunity to create a new life by forging a new identity. “No one is who they say they are” is a leitmotif of the novel. Parallel to the criminal investigation and at the core of the book is the internal journey of the main character. The novel is written in firstperson present tense and always reflects what Minami does and what he thinks. This style, while placing the reader squarely inside the main character, leads to a lot of trivial information (“I itch. I scratch”) and numerous repetitions. They do help to set the mood but soon become rather boring.
The plot is well-structured, however, and the other characters are as intriguing and shifting as Minami. This makes for a very complex and depressing book made difficult to read by the author’s striving for a ‘literary’ tone. This book will remain with me for a very long time but it was an arduous journey, one definitely not for everyone.
Nicole Leclerc
THE LAST GOODBYE
Margaret Pemberton, Severn House, 2007, £18.99/$28.95, hb, 299pp, 9780727864505
This novel is the sequel to A Time to Remember. It is a love story set during the Second World War in Hong Kong and Singapore and begins with the period leading up to the Japanese invasion, its occupation and the consequences for those who had chosen or were unable to leave Hong Kong.
Elizabeth Kingsley, a budding young concert pianist, and Adam, her devoted older husband, have left Europe to escape the war. Instead Elizabeth finds herself involved in a more far-reaching personal battle. Her passionate involvement with Raefe Elliot, her brotherly feelings towards her husband, and her love of music, which bind her to Roman Rakowski, a conductor with an international reputation,
combine to make a highly charged mixture.
Margaret Pemberton has given her readers a taste of the expatriate community and their pre-war lifestyle in Hong Kong. She has also introduced them to the social taboos of the period, which precluded a marriage between Tom and his Chinese girlfriend Lamoon. The most intriguing character for me was Julienne, whose appetite for affairs with attractive men and her love of life made her stand out.
This novel captures the transitory, fleeting and intense nature of love and friendship in a time of war. It has a considerable number of detailed sex scenes, which may not suit the reader searching for a gentle romantic read.
Myfanwy Cook
CAPOTE IN KANSAS: A Ghost Story
Kim Powers, Carroll & Graf, 2007, $25.00, hb, 256pp, 9780786720330
Truman Capote and Nelle Harper Lee, two illustrious Southern authors: one flamboyant, brazen and pretentious, the other seemingly sensible and resolute, once firm friends who haven’t spoken in decades—or have they? Did Capote really pen To Kill a Mockingbird? Why are the spirits of the Clutters (the murdered family from Capote’s In Cold Blood) haunting Nelle and Capote? Who is sending Nelle strange, upsetting packages?
In the last year of his life, Capote calls Lee one final time, rambling drunk (or scared stiff?) to declare in his tinny voice that he’s being haunted by the Clutter family. Annoyed, yet still seized by Truman’s sudden startling news and intrusion into her life, Nelle is unbelieving until Bonnie Clutter pays a visit late one evening. What follows is a brutal, touching analogy
of a friendship mysteriously gone astray only to be discovered amongst ghosts, memories and parcels. Set in 1984, 1959 and during their Depression-era childhood, Capote and Lee’s past and present are blended brilliantly by the visitations and Powers’ commanding imagery of words. Capote’s life, an upheaval of drugs and booze, drags the mundane into high-flying drama at times both poignantly pitiful and delightfully funny. While Nelle’s years are a study of a stale existence, still it is her side of this story which is most moving.
Powers has fashioned an original, touching story of friendship and what might have been. An imaginative fabrication of ghosts and troubled souls, this story lingers long after the last page has been read.
Wendy Zollo
THE SPANISH BOW
Andromeda Romano-Lax, Harcourt, 2007, $25.00, hb, 560pp, 0151015422 / William Heinemann, 2008, £16.99, hb, 560pp, 0434016276
Can art save us from ourselves? In her elegant debut, Ms. Romano-Lax ponders this timeless question through the ambitious tale of Feliu Delargo, a gifted cellist born in turn-of-thecentury Spain who receives the unexpected gift of a bow from his dead father and sets himself on a resolute path to mastering his craft. His journey takes him from performing in rebellious Barcelona to Madrid and the confidences of the queen. His tumultuous partnership with flamboyant pianist Justo Al-Cerraz introduces Feliu to the rigors and joys of life as an itinerant musician as well as the eventual deception of fame. As civil war decimates his homeland
Y THE LAST SUMMER OF THE WORLD
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Emily Mitchell, Norton, 2007, $24.95/C$31.00, hb, 390pp, 9780393064872
Rarely does a book present the delicate balance of the relationship between a man and a woman as well as this one. Within its pages, the misplaced hopes, primal fears and unrealized dreams of both parties wreak havoc on love and commitment. When the burgeoning weight of the First World War is added to the mix, the results are a tragedy almost beyond the ability of either to understand, let alone control.
This book is based on the young adult years in the life of Edward Steichen, the great and enigmatic pioneering photographer. It examines the pivotal years of his artistic life in France in the early 20th century, which coincided with his first marriage. Beginning with an alienation of affection lawsuit brought by his wife against her best friend, the artist Marion Beckett, the author weaves a tale of how it might have come about, and the forces which ultimately decide the outcome. It is told against the background of Steichen’s artistic life, which includes his mentor Auguste Rodin, as well as his romantic interludes with such notables as Isadora Duncan and the British sculptor Kathleen Bruce. The menace of World War I provides the ever-present historic structure.
The result is an absorbing, highly readable story which satisfies on many levels. The author is a gifted writer who combines a well researched, highly detailed factual account with an artistic, almost poetic tale of great emotional complexity. She seems equally at home with the horrors of the trenches as she is in the mind of a young husband. Her tale is first experienced, and then contemplated long after reading.
This remarkable book should not be missed.
Ken Kreckel
and fascism spreads across Europe, Feliu finds himself increasingly conflicted over the relevance of music in a crumbling world—until he meets Aviva, an Italian violinist whose inexorable quest to redeem her past plunges Feliu into destructive rivalry and ultimate sacrifice.
From the hypocrisies of the courts of Madrid to the terror of Nazi-occupied Paris, Romano-Lax weaves the upheavals of the first half of the 20th century into an elegy to the simultaneous power and impotency of art, and the contradictions of the human spirit.
C.W. Gortner
KISS ME GOOD-BYE: Finding Love Among the Ashes of the Civil War
Bonny Barry Sanders, Burd Street, 2007, $17.95, pb, 147pp, 9781572493865
In 1861, the author’s great-grandfather, James McCormick, is an Irish Catholic immigrant who lives in Potsdam, New York. He is a bright, mechanically-inclined young man who works for a carriage manufacturer. He falls in love with the boss’s daughter, Sarah Ann Cutting. Her father does not approve of James as a suitor, but strikes a deal with him. James agrees to serve in the War Between the States in Mr. Cutting’s place, in return for which Mr. Cutting agrees to let James marry Sarah Ann upon his return.
The letters in this book are what the author imagines they might have written to each other during the course of the war. She has based many of the military events and other details of the story on a history of James’s regiment, the 60th regiment of New York State Volunteers, written by the regiment’s chaplain. Sarah Ann’s letters reveal her concern for James’s safety, her worry that her father will not keep his promise, and her preparations for marriage. James’s letters are full of descriptions of military life, the battles in which he has fought (Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Lookout Mountain), his love for Sarah Ann and his desire to return home to her.
Jane Kessler
THE SUMMER GARDEN
Paullina Simons, Harper, 2007, £7.99, pb, 742pp, 9780007162499
Set at the end of the Second World War, this is the conclusion to a saga that was set in motion in the two earlier books, The Bronze Horseman and Tatiana and Alexander, when Tatiana fell in love with her Red Army officer, Alexander Belov, in wartime Leningrad in 1941.
After years of separation they are miraculously reunited in the United States, the land of their dreams. They have a beautiful son, Anthony. However, in the climate of fear and distrust of the Cold War, their future as a family is threatened. They are forced to continually move around the U.S. to avoid discovery and investigation by the State Department into Alexander’s background as a potential Communist sympathiser.
As their family grows, the ghosts of their past life continue to haunt them; Anthony graduates from West Point and joins the American forces in Vietnam. He is reported missing and when Alexander sets out to find him he discovers that his son has been captured and ill treated
by the Vietcong. His mutilation is horrifyingly descriptive.
The book is written with a depth of power and emotion and paints a vivid portrait of family relationships, highlighted by explicit love scenes. The frequent flash-backs to the family’s previous life in the USSR are of real interest even though they tend to break up the main theme of the story. An enjoyable, romantic 20th-century saga that spans three continents.
Jane Hill
STREAM OF DEATH
Bill Stackhouse, Poisoned Pen Press, 2007 (c2001), $14.95/C$17.95/£9.95, pb, 226pp, 1890208930
This is the first paperback edition of Stream of Death. The story is set in bucolic Peekamoose Heights, a village tucked somewhere in the Catskills, where former Detroit police captain, Ed McAvoy, is chief of the local police department. The village’s slow pace and miniscule crime rate are ideal for McAvoy, who was lamed by a Detroit bullet.
The story opens with a brief flashback to the Nazi occupation of Sicily. Members of the local Resistance are gunned down by a Nazi officer who pockets a fabulous diamond pendant: the Isabela Pendant. Switch to 21st-century New York. Middle-aged Harvey Dumont and his very sexy young wife have relocated to Peekamoose from Detroit for the peace, quiet, and excellent fly fishing. The Dumonts’ idyll is shattered after the Isabela Pendant is found on their property and Harvey is shot to death soon after. McAvoy follows the trail to an elderly Mafia don with family ties to Sicily. Could the murder be a Mafia vendetta? A trap is set that lures the killer to the surface. It’s not at all certain that McAvoy is going to land this fish until the last exciting moment.
“Peekamoose Heights” is a good metaphor for the story. It’s quaint, quiet, friendly, and
Y RANDOM ACTS OF HEROIC LOVE
entertains in the way that fly fishing does. The characters are predictable—the Peekamoose locals are all nice folks and the bad guys, all from Detroit, are nasty. The story’s pace is even, and there are enough twists to hold the reader to the end. If you aren’t standing in a trout stream sporting an Orvis Bighorn Special with a Battenkill reel, then stretching out in a lawn chair with Stream of Death is a great way to spend a summer afternoon.
Lucille Cormier
FIRST, THERE IS A RIVER
Kathy Steffen, Medallion, 2007, $14.99/ C$18.99, pb, 356pp, 9781932815931
This tale is set in 1900 on an Ohio River paddlewheeler. Emma Perkins is married to a violent husband who delights in beating her when she doesn’t please him. After Jared sends their two children away to work for a farmer, Emma hopes that they’ll be safe there, and escapes to her uncle Quentin’s riverboat. She is given the job of cook on the Spirit, winning over the passengers and crew with her culinary prowess. Emma is soon drawn into riverboat life: learning about river navigation, experiencing a race with the rival Ironwood, and being courted by both Gage, the disfigured engineer, and Briggs, the captain. Then Jared comes stalking Emma, and will stop at nothing to make her pay for her desertion.
Steffen’s website says the book was inspired by photos of her great-grandmother’s riverboat days. The river lore is interesting, such as the tactic of suddenly abandoning poor “deck” passengers on the bank when more lucrative cargo became available. Emma and Gage’s romance blows hot and cold, because both fear themselves unworthy: she because Jared’s belittling gibes have undermined her self-esteem, and he because of his physical appearance (the result of a boiler explosion) and lack of education. Some of the other characterizations
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Danny Scheinmann, Doubleday, 2007, £12.99, pb, 388pp, 9780385612616
In 1992, Leo Deakin awakens in a hospital in South America to the shocking news of the death of his girlfriend, Eleni. Although he doesn’t remember any details of the accident that killed Eleni, Leo is tortured with guilt. In 1917, Moritz Daniecki, captured on the Russian front and sent to a Siberian POW camp, escapes and begins the 500km trek home to find the woman whose memory has sustained him through the horror and deprivation of war. These two men draw their inner strength from their memories of love. This is ultimately their reason for hope and their salvation.
Throughout the book the two stories are told in parallel, seemingly unconnected until the final chapters draw them together, and the links are finally revealed.
In simple terms, this is a triumphant story concerning the power of love. It is by turns dramatic and powerful, romantic and tender. On the face of it, Daniecki’s story would seem to be the more powerful and compelling, but by the end, Leo’s search for understanding becomes equally dominant and moving.
As the layers of the different stories unfold, the lives and hearts of the two men are laid bare, and by the end, the reader is likely to be emotionally wrung out. This makes a novel well worth the effort and one destined to stay in the mind for a long, long time after the final page is turned. Sara Wilson
Y A PIGEON AND A BOY
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Meir Shalev (trans. Evan Fallenberg), Schocken, 2007, $25.00/C$32.00, hb, 320pp, 9780805242515
It is always a pleasure to read a good translation of a well-regarded book by one of another country’s premier writers. Meir Shalev has been translated into twenty languages, and has won numerous international awards; it’s frustrating not to be able to read him in English within months of a novel’s publication. Most recently, his 2006 Brenner Prize-winning novel, an international bestseller, has been translated as A Pigeon and a Boy.
The story sounds simple. A middle-aged man, Yair Mendelsohn, discovers the truth about his mother and the man she loved back in 1948, during Israel’s War of Independence. At another level, the novel is about loss and grieving: Yair’s mother has recently died. Yet again it is about truth, and finding one’s own truths. A satisfying read, this book is a multi-level, thoughtful examination of human relationships written in beautiful prose. Is it an amazing love story about Yair’s mother and the Boy? A Jacob and Esau story involving Yair and his brother Benjamin? As one reads the 1948 entries and then the modern entries, as one sees Yair grow as he discovers what truly happened, the novel also becomes a celebration of human determination in near-impossible circumstances. And if you knew nothing about homing pigeons before you read this book, you will finish it a great deal wiser, and full of wonder. This is a novel which book groups could enjoy, discussing it at length and at all levels. But regardless of your taste for book groups, this novel is a stunning read that should be at the top of your wish list.
need more work. Despite Steffen’s giving Jared a troubled background as his motive, I found his unrelentingly evil actions over the top. Other than that, it’s an agreeable mainstream historical with an uncommon setting.
B.J. Sedlock
LONG SHADOWS
Rowena Summers, Severn House, 2007, £18.99/$27.95, hb, 218 pp., 0727865380
Alice Chase, once a Londoner and now, in 1939, the wife of Walter, a sawmill worker in Somerset, contends with the lives and careers of her three older children as well as her threeyear-old son, Bobby, and her London friend, Tilly. Alice also supports and is supported by her sister-in-law, Helen, wife of Walter’s brother, Mick, who was also enamoured of Alice in her youth. The question in Alice’s mind is whether or not there is still an attraction between her and Mick. When Tilly comes to Somerset to stay, some old and new dilemmas arise. Unfortunately, the dilemma of the Mick/Alice attraction (or not) crops up on every second page and seems to go pretty much nowhere. By the end of the book, there is no resolution. Mind you, given the choice between a cardboard cut-out husband and his equally flat brother, it is a wonder that Alice could even be bothered wondering about her choice. Add to that a plodding narrative and stilted, banal dialogue that is squirm-inducing, it is a wonder that Alice is still awake at the end of it all. And did women in 1939 talk about having a “mothering moment”? There is probably a sequel in the offing, so this book is best left for the stout-hearted saga reader.
Geraldine Perriam
THE STREET OF A THOUSAND BLOSSOMS
Gail Tsukiyama, St. Martin’s Press, 2007, $24.95/ C$31.00/£17.99, hb, 342pp, 978031227482
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms is a family saga set in a suburb of Tokyo which begins in the turbulent 1930s and ends in the 1960s, as Japanese culture reinvents itself after the horrors and deprivations of war. Two families— a total of seven characters—tell the story. In one, a father must raise his daughters after their mother dies in the infamous Tokyo firestorm. In the other, brothers, whose parents have drowned, are raised by loving grandparents. We experience the desperation, hunger and fear of the war years, and the growing sense of betrayal and anguish felt by ordinary citizens. Defeat and occupation is followed by renewal, as Japan is reborn upon the strong bedrock of tradition. The children mature and begin to explore their own lives. One brother becomes a great sumo, the other a great artist. One sister becomes an independent, university-educated modern woman, while the other struggles simply to live. The chapters are broken into small segments by point-of-view shifts, the literary version of a perfectly presented plate of sushi—various, jewel-like and delicious. Sensitively written, compelling.
Juliet Waldron
“lucky” enough to enter Japanese-occupied China at the start of World War II, and how the single city of Shanghai reflected the multiple governments, economies, belief systems, evils, and hopes of the larger world and war.
Theodore Weissberg is a noted violinist; his wife, Elizabeth is a non-German Jew and a world-famous singer who willingly accompanies him to Hongku, the ghetto section of Shanghai where the Jewish refugees are forced to eke out their existence. Hilde Braun, a German actress, lands in a much different Shanghai, where rich expatriates live in opulence and the veneer of civility barely disguises the fact that all is not as it seems. Vladek, a journalist (or perhaps spy?) of uncertain origin, moves between countries and settings with seemingly carefree ease.
These are just a few of the memorable characters who draw the reader into a story of many levels. The vivid descriptions of the fetid living conditions in Hongku and the atrocities of Germans, Chinese, and Japanese alike are offset by the narrative, which reveals unlikely heroes in a world gone mad. Based on real people and terrifyingly true events, Wagenstein’s gripping tale (and its excellent translation into English) exposes the less-discussed but just as horrific history of the Nazi regime in China.
Helene Williams
Patrika Salmon N n
FAREWELL, SHANGHAI
Angel Wagenstein (trans. Elizabeth Frank and Deliana Simeonova), Other Press, 2007, $24.95, 404pp, hb, 9781590512548
In the late 1930s, Jews were fleeing Germany and other European countries; in response to both propaganda and local politics, more destinations began closing their borders to this flood of refugees, until the last port open to them was Shanghai. This is the story of some of those
THE DRAGON’S TAIL
Adam Williams, Hodder & Stoughton, 2007, £16.00, hb, 537pp, 9780340899106
Harry Airton is recruited by British Intelligence to become a double agent, working against the Chinese government. In the early 1960s he is sent to China with orders to allow himself to be seduced by a “honey trap,” and then persuaded to spy for the Chinese government. He meets and allows himself to be seduced by Peng Zwei, who has been ordered to compromise him. However, neither the British or Chinese spymasters are prepared for Harry and Peng to fall in love. The plot is revealed and Airton is sent home in ignominy and disgrace, while Peng Zwei is sent to a labour camp. The second half of the novel deals with Peng’s life in the labour camp and her eventual release, before culminating with events at Tiananmen Square. I found the plot in the first half of the book formulaic and almost clichéd, in marked contrast to the second half of the book which was vibrant and exciting. Written as a romantic spy thriller, this book falls between both stools, providing not enough romance and insufficient thrills. Undoubtedly well written, but ultimately disappointing.
Mike Ashworth
MULTI-PERIOD
THE LANDLORD’S BLACK-EYED DAUGHTER
Mary Ellen Dennis, Five Star, 2007, $26.95, hb, 419pp, 9781594145759
John Randolph Remington leads a double life, one as a nobleman and one as a “Knight of the Road,” a notorious brand of highwayman known for ruthless robberies but who always shares the proceeds amongst the less fortunate
of society. While in London, Randolph meets gothic romance writer Elizabeth Wyndham, a woman he swears he has met before. Elizabeth Wyndham believes she has met the mysterious Remington before, too. Neither can recall the circumstances.
Randolph and Elizabeth share a strong fascination with a 13th-century legend. Randolph is exactly like the hero in her latest romance, a medieval knight who died in combat. In fact, she comes to believe they are almost one and the same. Separately, Elizabeth and Randolph search to uncover the truth about the legend and why they both harbor such a fascination with that era.
Alfred Noyes’s famous poem, “The Highwayman,” captured the author’s interest during her childhood, and she recreates its plot in this novel. The characters are likeable, though predictable, and I enjoyed how well they interacted with each other. The storyline of this Georgian-set novel is fast-paced and includes a romance blended with a gothic twist that links back to medieval times.
Mirella Patzer
A WIDOW’S
CURSE
Philip DePoy, Minotaur, 2007, $23.95/C$29.95, hb, 272 pp, 9780312362027
Fourth in a series of Fever Devilin mysteries, A Widow’s Curse may be enjoyed as a standalone. Set in rural Georgia, with a brief foray into Atlanta, the mystery begins when a man called Shultz calls Fever, a folklore specialist, about an unusual silver coin which has come into his possession. Fever is an ex-academic, but he still has a few professorial friends in the Big City. One of these, an amusing Brit, gives Shultz a ride north for a consultation. Fever is unnerved when initial inquiries about the coin lead him in the direction of his own past and some unpleasant family secrets.
From troubling memories of his magician father and wayward mother, Fever uncovers a crime-filled history for the puzzling coin, one which originates in 18th-century Wales. His research is complicated when there is a murder and someone tries to frame him. Complete with ghosts, down-home cooking, Cherokee Shaman, malevolent attorneys, and plenty of North Georgia color, A Widow’s Curse makes for a lively read with an inventive historical back story.
Juliet Waldron
sail on Captain Cook’s ship Endeavor to Tahiti. Eventually the ship reaches the great southern continent of Australia. Three long years later Jonathan returns—a week after Susan has succumbed to social pressure and married the local vicar. Unable to keep himself away from his beloved, he and Susan embark on an affair, which prompts Susan’s husband to move the family to the new convict settlement in New South Wales where Susan’s brother, a smuggler, has been transported. Even as Susan seeks to find meaning in her new life of hardship and service to the community, the secrets of her past threaten to undo her.
Despite the strong early chapters, the storyline is steeped in melodrama at the expense of character development, with too many gratuitous-rape-scenes-as-plot-devices. Also the dialogue often feels forced and incongruous to the historical setting.
Mary Sharratt
THE ASSASSIN’S SONG
M.G. Vassanji, Knopf, 2007, $25, hb, 272pp, 1400042178
On the evening of his eleventh birthday, Karsan Dargawalla’s father, “a great and divine presence in their village,” takes his son for a stroll. The father reminds the son of his duties as lord and guardian of Pirbaag. Like his grandfather and all their forbears before them, someday Karsan will become the Saheb of Pirbaag, the shrine and burial site of Nur Fazal, a 13th-century Muslim Sufi holy man and mystic. Karsan is terrified. When he grows older, Pirbaag confuses him. Neither Hindu nor
Y INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES
Muslim, the shrine encompasses both traditions. Karsan wants to be ordinary. He wants to study and travel. The rift between father and son seems final when Karsan leaves India to study at Harvard.
What happens the next thirty years Vassanji, two-time winner of the Giller Prize, explains evocatively, seamlessly switching between time periods not only in Karsan’s lifetime, but going back to the origins of Pirbaag. Karsan’s world is depicted imaginatively, and the characters are lovingly drawn. Vassanji engages the reader’s sympathies as the family’s problems deepen, and Mansoor, Karsan’s younger brother, becomes a militant Muslim, and, perhaps, a terrorist. With Karsan and his family, India struggles. “We are too complex a nation, too raw a people,” the author writes. The Assassin’s Song is much more than a journey of self-discovery. Karsan tells his story “to defy the destroyers.” The melancholic exploration of the meaning and worth of religious traditions and of the futility of sectarian violence is a cry against brutality and dogmatism, and a reminder of what is worth preserving.
Adelaida Lower
LANDS BEYOND THE SEA
Tamara McKinley, Hodder, 2007, £6.99, pb, 384 pp, 9780340924679
This multi-generational saga of the clash of cultures in Australia begins 50,000 years ago, exploring the lives of the indigenous huntergatherers, richly detailing their life in all its complexity, in later chapters even addressing such issues as tribal warfare and infanticide, never stooping to noble savage clichés.
The author then fast-forwards to 18th-century England, bringing us back to familiar saga territory. Young Jonathan Cadwallader, an earl, says goodbye to his low-born sweetheart, Susan, a Cornish fisherman’s daughter, and sets
TIME-SLIP
N n
MY DIRTY LITTLE BOOK OF STOLEN TIME
Liz Jensen, Bloomsbury, 2007, £7.99, pb, 305pp, 9780747585930
Charlotte is a whore in Copenhagen. It is 1897, and business is bad, so she and Fru Schleswig, an older woman who has accompanied her from
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Jennifer Lee Carrell, Dutton, 2007, $25.95/C$32.50, hb, 416pp, 9780525949701
Did Shakespeare really write what we think he did? Or did someone else? That long-fought argument is the basis for Interred with Their Bones. The book, set in modern times, opens with Kate Stanley, Shakespearean-expertturned-theatre-director, standing on London’s Hampstead Heath holding a box gifted to her by her former mentor, Roz Howard. As she ponders its contents, she notices something on fire across the Thames. Looking closely, she realizes it’s the Globe Theatre where she’s currently directing a new production of Hamlet. Upon the discovery of Howard’s body in the charred remains of the theatre, Kate finds herself at the center of a murder investigation. She travels across America and England to try and solve the tantalizing mystery of the true authorship of Shakespeare’s writing while fighting to stay alive as those around her are murdered.
If this book was only an average, typical mystery, it would be a good read. But mix in the contentious argument that Shakespeare didn’t write what we think he did, and this book becomes fantastic. As Kate struggles to solve the mystery, readers are privy to occasional chapters set in Shakespearean England that brilliantly dole out hints and clues to what has to be one of the most oft-argued debates in literature.
Carrell’s skill at combining plot and character development has created a page-turner worthy of (though I am reluctant to actually say it for fear of turning some readers away…) The Da Vinci Code. It has the pace, plot and intrigue necessary to become a bestseller. For those who shy away from such novels, it also has intelligent research worthy of its own book. So, without being trite, Interred with Their Bones has something for everyone and comes very highly recommended. Dana Cohlmeyer
the orphanage, take jobs as cleaners in the house of the widow Krak. She is planning to remarry, but has her husband the Professor really died or just disappeared?
Charlotte discovers a strange machine in a locked basement room. It transports her, Fru Schleswig and the Professor to London in the 21st century where Charlotte discovers true love. But, of course, it does not run smoothly as they move between centuries and struggle to get to when and where they want to be.
Narrated by Charlotte, this novel is quirky in style as well as content. There are some amusing references to current society, but it is rather scanty in the historical detail. The plot is light, the characters exaggerated verging on caricature. The use of the ampersand instead of spelling out ‘and’ is distracting and unnecessary. Was the author or editor trying to emulate texting to attract young readers? I hope this is not a trend that will be adopted by others.
Marina Oliver
CONFESSIONS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT
Laurie Viera Rigler, Dutton, 2007, $24.95/ C$31.00, hb, 304pp, 9780525950400
Contemporary single Courtney Stone has an unfaithful fiancé and hides her despair by reading Jane Austen novels. One morning she wakes up in a strange room and can’t remember how she got there. At first convinced she’s dropped into her favorite author’s world through a dream, Courtney finds herself trapped in the year 1814 in the body of a woman named Jane. Jane has an overbearing mother, a distant father, and a suitor with a dark secret.
Forced to submit to the trials of the era— restrictive dress, lack of hygiene, parental suffocation—Courtney is fascinated to walk the streets of Austen’s Bath and London. She even manages to run into the great author herself. But soon the limitations of a woman of this time wear on her and she wonders how to return to her life in the 21st century. Now she’s having Jane’s thoughts and past visions, and her ‘suitor’ is pressing her to marry him—along with her ruthless mother. At a fair a fortune teller informs her that she must ‘be satisfied’ where she is. But can she, with an undesirable marriage—to a man her sensual urges react to—looming? Will she ever escape to the future?
Courtney is a witty character trapped in Jane’s life. Her modern asides made me laugh. I would have loved more detail about everyday life in the 19th century, but this was a terrific escapist read.
Diane Scott Lewis
THE REINCARNATIONIST
M.J. Rose, MIRA, 2007, $24.95/C$29.95, hb, 451pp. 9780778324201 / MIRA UK, 2008, £6.99, pb, 464pp, 9780778301974
While visiting Rome sixteen months ago, Josh Ryder barely survived a minor terrorist incident. Ever since, he’s had traumatic flashbacks to a previous life as Julius, a pagan priest forced to defend his beliefs and his love for a vestal virgin in a newly-Christian Roman Empire, circa 391 AD. Now Josh works for the Phoenix
Foundation, an organization that counsels children who experience past life regressions. His group’s quest to locate ancient memory stones, tools that will completely restore people’s past-life memories, takes him back to Rome, and to a previously unexplored underground tomb. In the presence of a 1600-year-old female corpse, Josh’s visions of Julius and Sabina, the priestess he loved, completely overpower him. All too soon it becomes clear that his group has competition for the stones—perhaps defenders of Church doctrine? This sends Josh and a fellow researcher, Yale archaeologist Gabriella Chase, on a hunt to find them first.
As someone who counts Anya Seton’s Green Darkness and Barbara Erskine’s Kingdom of Shadows among her favorites, I felt this novel suffered in comparison initially; it seemed well-plotted but average, and in the Roman sections, the historical detail felt sketchy. Yet about halfway through, as multiple plot threads coalesced and additional characters dropped into place, pacing picked up, creating a page-turner that culminated in an explosive, unpredictable finale. Another Da Vinci Code knockoff, you might think, yet despite the multiple time-shifts (which are handled extremely deftly) and other supernatural aspects, The Reincarnationist carves out different territory and feels much more believable. If there’s a sequel forthcoming, I’ll clear a weekend to read it.
Sarah Johnson
ALTERNATE HISTORY
Y THE SHADOW CATCHER
CONQUEROR
Stephen Baxter, Ace, 2007, $24.95, hb, 302pp, 9780441014965 / Gollancz, 2007, £7.99, pb, 320pp, 9780575081659
This second book in Stephen Baxter’s Time Tapestry series, an alternative history epic, spans the history of England from 453 to 1066 AD. The story begins when the Saxon, Wuffa, and the Norseman, Ulf, are invited to join the quest for an ancient prophecy known as the Menologium. This prophecy, sent from the future by The Weaver, claims that if its every particular is fulfilled, a mighty hero will win a battle and form a great Aryan empire. A quarrel between Wuffa and Ulf leads to historical repercussions as their warring descendants seek to use the prophecy for their own purposes.
The plot is intriguing, but the historical information is given with a heavy hand (“…this small chapel [in York] was surely the seed of grander minsters to rise up in the future”), the writing is choppy (“This is Lunden. What of it? Who cares?”), and the characterization is weak. Baxter does successfully portray the various Germanic and Scandinavian invaders who, blended together over the centuries, become the Englishmen who stand with King Harold at the Battle of Hastings. Unfortunately, this accomplishment does not diminish the overall tedium of the book.
Nancy J. Attwell
HISTORICAL FANTASY
THE LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU AND OTHER STORIES
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Marianne Wiggins, Simon & Schuster, 2007, $25.00/C$29.99, hb, 323pp, 0743265203
The story opens in present-day Los Angeles. The fictional writer of a novel about Edward Curtis is meeting with Hollywood executives who are interested in buying rights to produce a movie based on the book. Because Curtis is famous as a photographer of Native Americans, they want to give the film a decidedly upbeat Western spin and present Curtis as a selfless folk hero. The novel then begins to oscillate between two distinct yet parallel narratives: one focused on the present, and one focused on Curtis during his own time (1868-1952).
In the present-day narrative, Marianne Wiggins (the fictional author has the same name as the actual author) goes on a search for her presumed long-dead father after receiving a phone call from a Las Vegas hospital saying that he was dying there and she was listed as next of kin. In the Curtis narrative, Wiggins (the actual author) creates a detailed portrait of his erratic and often contradictory life. Apparently both Curtis and the fictional Wiggins’s father suffered from the compelling need to unexpectedly wander from their families for long periods of time.
Wiggins (the real author) fashions the two narratives into a coherent story of families lost and then found again. Through a series of discoveries uncovered by tenacious research, Wiggins (the character) manages to bring the past history of her father to bear on the present in a way that is illuminating and satisfying. Wiggins (the real author) amplifies her story by incorporating selective images in the manner of W. G. Sebald, and fashions a fictional study of Curtis that reveals a complex, creative, charismatic yet contradictory individual. This is an extraordinary novel that exemplifies the best of historical fiction. Gerald T. Burke N n N n
Historical Fantasy-Children & YA
Susanna Clarke, Bloomsbury, 2007, £7.99, pb, 300pp, 9780747592402 / Bloomsbury USA, 2007, $13.95, pb, 256pp, 9781596913837
From the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell comes this collection of short tales of magic and mayhem. When Strange visits the sleepy village of Grace Adieu, he advises a seemingly innocent young lady thus: ‘Magic, madam, is like wine and, if you are not used to it, it will make you drunk.’ This young lady is capable of reducing men to mice and devouring them for breakfast. On Lickerish Hill is a remodelling of the Rumpelstiltskin fable and Mary Queen of Scots suffers Antickes and Frets as she languishes, imprisoned by her cruel cousin Elizabeth I, whom she plans to overthrow by stitching curses into silks and satins she prepares as gifts. Queen Mabb appears simply as Mrs Mabb, outsmarted by a lovelorn Venetia fighting to win back her stolen beau, Captain Fox.
Magic and Faeries flit through the pages of this beautifully written book, transporting the reader through that transient gateway to a land that previously existed only in the imagination. It is, unashamedly, a collection of fairy stories for grown-ups and I am only sorry that I have reached the final page.
Ann Oughton
HEAVEN’S NET IS WIDE: The First Tale of the Otori Lian Hearn, Riverhead, 2007, $26.95/C$33.50, hb, 484pp, 9781594489532 / Macmillan, 2007, £12.99, hb, 578pp, 9780230013971
In this gripping prequel to the Otori novels set in an alternate feudal Japan, Hearn delves into the back story of the man—Otori Shigeru, mentor, adoptive father, and uncle to warrior hero/clan leader Takeo—whose presence loomed large throughout the series. The previous four volumes referred to events later mythologized into Otori history, but here they’re seen front and center: the origin of Shigeru’s long-standing rivalry with Tohan leader Iida Sadamu; the Otori’s devastating loss against the Tohan on the plains of Yaegahara, a battle where ten thousand warriors died; Shigeru’s star-crossed romance with Lady Maruyama, the land’s only female ruler; and his subtle plan to regain power, which in the end involves Takeo, the bastard half-Otori nephew no one else knows exists.
As young Shigeru trains for leadership of the most powerful clan in the Three Countries, he quickly learns that duplicity lurks not only within rival clans, but also within his own family. Hearn writes movingly of his loves and losses, setting them against the backdrop of a warrior culture based in feudalism and family loyalty. Her light yet powerful prose conveys the elegance and cruelty of a land where secret lovers communicate in cryptic, symbolic poetry, yet where a stonemason who builds a magnificent bridge is encased alive in his creation since his ambition may offend a river god.
Knowing how it will end—in a seamless joining with the opening scene of Across the Nightingale Floor—doesn’t diminish the pleasure of getting there, and there are some surprises to be found throughout, too. After five
volumes it’s unfair to state a desire for more of the Otori’s world, but there you have it.
Sarah Johnson
THE WELL OF SHADES
Juliet Marillier, Tor, 2007, $26.95/C$34.95, hb, 512pp, 0765309971 / Tor UK, 2007, £17.99, hb, 560pp, 9781405041096
When I finished The Well of Shades (which I assumed was the last book of the Bridei Chronicles), I thought to myself that there were just too many loose ends for this to be the finale. I was not satisfied. Then I checked the author’s website and discovered to my delight that there will indeed be a Book Four (although there is no completion date yet). Now I am impatiently awaiting the next installment of this captivating fantasy series.
In the sixth year of Bridei’s kingship, he sends his chief assassin and spy, Faolan, back home to Ireland to investigate reports of a powerful Christian cleric whose charismatic leadership may prove a threat to the stability of Bridei’s pagan kingdom of Fortriu. Returning to his homeland, Faolan is forced to confront his past and his family, which was torn apart by the action of a cruel chieftain who caused the young Faolan to deal them a shattering blow. During his journey, he meets the young, battered, and strong willed Eile and her daughter, Saraid, who give him the strength to confront his own demons. Back at court, Bridei is up against a possible defection which could cost him his kingdom; and a new hostage, the sister of Anna of the Light Isles, brings evil doings to the court.
In this book, as with other series Marillier has written, the author picks up the original characters, dusts them off, and transforms them with the help of complex and compelling new characters. Fates become intertwined, momentous events occur, and the result is an absorbing and gratifying read.
Andrea Connell
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY’S RAVENS OF AVALON
Diana L. Paxson, Viking, 2007, $25.95/C$32.50, hb, 394pp, 9780670038701
Boudica, a Briton princess, arrives on the Isle of Mona to study the old ways with other children of chieftains and talented youth. After several years, Boudica, like the others, is given the option to stay on Mona or return home. Lhiannon, a young priestess who befriends her, also has a difficult choice—should she follow her heart or strive to strengthen her visions, thereby better serving the Britons, by remaining pure?
As much as Boudica cherishes Lhiannon’s friendship, she realizes that her fate is to further her family’s alliances through marriage. Meanwhile, the Roman army is intent on conquering Britannia, and Lhiannon uses her magic to assist the Celts as they fight a losing battle for their land. After surrendering to Rome, the Iceni have a short period of peace before the Romans begin to inflict indignities that cannot be ignored. The Druids call upon Morrigan, the battle goddess, for assistance—which affects
Boudica, now Queen of the Iceni, and eager to defy the Romans.
Paxson’s continuation of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Avalon series compares favorably with the books written by Bradley alone. A prequel to The Forest House, this novel was envisioned by Bradley and Paxson as they cowrote one of Bradley’s final works. Included are many Druid rituals, no matter how brutal, and a well-researched history of the Queen of the Iceni, whose actions shaped history during the middle of the first century AD.
Nestled chronologically between Ancestors of Avalon and The Forest House, Ravens of Avalon can easily be enjoyed without prior exposure to the series. As feminist fiction, this novel will appeal to anyone interested in women’s perspectives of epic battles as well as spirituality prior to Christianity’s dominance.
Suzanne J. Sprague
N nCHILDREN & YOUNG ADULT
THE TRAITORS’
GATE
Avi, Atheneum, 2007, $17.99/C$19.99, hb, 354pp, 9780689853357
Charles Dickens is alive and well. Well, sort of; at least his spirit lives on in bestselling author Avi’s latest book, The Traitors’ Gate. It opens on a foggy night in Victorian London on the Thames with a secret meeting hinting at treason and treachery, and soon has readers knee-deep in the life of 14-year-old John Huffam as he struggles to clear his father’s name. His father, employed at the Naval Ordinance Office, has been sent to debtor’s prison yet firmly denies being responsible for the £300 debt to Mr. O’Doul. John soon finds himself living in prison with his family and trying to find out the truth behind his father’s relationship to Mr. O’Doul. What follows is classic Dickensian drama complete with disguised strangers, street urchins, and one scary old woman, and locations ranging from swanky West End townhouses to the slums of Seven Dials. Having used the seminal event in Charles John Huffam Dickens’ young life (yes, that’s what the main character’s name came from)—his father’s incarceration in debtor’s prison—as the main plot point for the book, Avi has created a vivid, evocative and slightly scary world where things are rarely what they seem. Both plot and characters are masterfully fleshed out and keep readers entranced.
Although intended for children ages 11-14, The Traitors’ Gate is a delight to anyone of any age. Even those readers who might cringe at the childhood memory of being forced to read Dickens will find something delicious in this book!
Dana Cohlmeyer
THE LACEMAKER AND THE PRINCESS
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, Margaret K. McElderry, 2007, $16.99/C$19.99, hb, 199pp, 978141691209
In 1788, the 11-year-old lacemaker Isabelle Bonnard lives in the town near the palace of Versailles with her sickly mother and stern
grandmother, while her older brother works as a stableboy to the Marquis de Lafayette. When Isabelle goes to deliver lace to the palace, Queen Marie Antoinette rescues her from being trampled by a mob of courtiers. She introduces Isabelle to her daughter, Princess Therese, and the two girls soon become friends. Although Therese is surrounded by servants and courtiers, Isabelle soon realizes that the princess is just as lonely as she is. Soon, Isabelle becomes Therese’s companion and official lacemaker, and is given a fashionable nickname and fancy dresses. But she cannot ignore the growing rumors of revolution. On a visit to Paris with her brother, Isabelle sees how the people are starving, and she realizes that they hate the king and queen for living a life of luxury while doing nothing to help them. She also knows that, without Therese’s support, she and her mother might have starved, too. When revolution comes and her brother joins the National Guard to defend the people of Paris, Isabelle is torn between both sides: the king and queen have always been kind to her, but she also sympathizes with the people. Will Isabelle stay with the royal family, or will she choose to side with the revolutionaries, as her brother did?
The Lacemaker and the Princess is a sensitive, touching portrait of life just before the French Revolution, and the author does an excellent job of portraying both sides sympathetically, and making the reader feel for Isabelle, who is torn between two different worlds. She also brings the court of Versailles magnificently to life: we experience the fancy balls and elaborate ceremonies along with the heroine. Ages 8-12. Vicki Kondelik
NATHAN FOX: Dangerous Times
L. Brittney, Macmillan Children’s Books, 2007, £5.99, pb, 307pp, 97803304411622
1587. England is on the brink of war. Philip of Spain has vowed to kill Elizabeth and restore Catholicism under his own rule. Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s Spymaster General, has built up a network of secret agents to counteract the threat. His newest recruit is 13year-old actor, Nathan Fox. Nathan is good at languages, athletic and an acrobat, exactly the skills Walsingham is looking for. He is sent to Robey’s School of Defence to learn the survival skills he will need.
Here, he meets his mentor, John Pearce. Walsingham has a job for them—in Venice. Together with Marie, Nathan’s sister, and disguised as Italian-speaking envoys, they must broker a treaty with Venice against the might of Spain.
But the Doge of Venice has his own agenda, and soon John, Marie and Nathan find themselves accompanying General Othello to Crete to fight the Turks. With them go Othello’s bride, Desdemona, and his trusted officer, Iago. But is Iago all he seems? The more Nathan learns about him, the less he trusts him—and soon he suspects that John and Marie may be in danger as well. The double-dealing and danger will test Nathan’s new skills to the utmost.
This is the first book in L. Brittney’s Nathan Fox adventures. The dangerous underbelly of
Elizabethan London is well-drawn and I enjoyed Robey’s school of swordsmanship, dirty tricks and 16th-century spying skills, such as ciphers and cipher-breaking. Shakespeare fans will recognize snippets of Henry IV, Richard II, The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet, as well as the story of Othello, which is the main strand of the second half of the book.
Not only would this book make a lively introduction to the political complexities of Elizabethan England, young readers will also end up knowing the plot of Othello. For 11 plus.
Elizabeth Hawksley
This book is mainly adventure and action, something I normally wouldn’t be interested in, but it kept me wanting to read on. The characters like General Othello and Desdemona are detailed and manage to be both surprising and interesting. There is lots of description of weapons and ships but it is not usually unnecessary and doesn’t go on for long. The plot moves pretty fast with quickly changing scenes. There is lots of historical detail and it is an insight into life in Shakespeare’s time. Shakespeare himself is one of the characters, but I think he could have been better characterised. But Shakespeare, Othello, Desdemona and the other characters all fit together very well, and this is one of the things that makes the story good.
I think ages 8 to 12 would enjoy this book. It is good and I would recommend it.
Ella McNulty, age 12
STAR-CROSSED
Linda Collison, Knopf, 2006, $16.95/C$22.95, hb, 416pp, 9780375833632
Set in the 1750s, Star-Crossed is the story of Patricia, born illegitimate in the West Indies. Initially, she is a fortunate out-of-wedlock child, for she has an indulgent father who sends her to a British girls’ school. The story begins as the 17-year-old heroine learns her father has died, leaving her nothing. Being a strong-minded, athletic girl, she decides to stow away on board a merchantman bound for Barbados and claim her promised inheritance: a sugar plantation. How she manages to get aboard—and, after her inevitable discovery, how she manages to remain—is a tribute to a combination of knowing when to give in and steely willpower.
The picture of life on a sailing vessel is packed with fascinating detail because the author is an experienced sailor. I particularly enjoyed her descriptions of the voyage, and the landfalls at various Caribbean islands. The characters are well-drawn and the dialogue rings true. Patricia is an engaging heroine, and the non-genre ending will give her young readers a lot to think and argue about. Her transition to adulthood and the path she takes to personal freedom are the stuff of seafaring legend.
Juliet Waldron
THE LAND OF THE SILVER APPLES
Nancy Farmer, Simon & Schuster, 2007, $18.99, hb, 512pp, 9781416907350 / Simon & Schuster, 2007, £6.99, pb, 512pp, 9781416904663
This sequel to Newbery Honor author Nancy
Farmer’s The Sea of Trolls finds the children of that book going underground after the Lady of the Lake steals bard-in-training Jack’s sister Lucy. Farmer’s 790 AD Britain is richly imagined and alive with magic of old gods as well as practitioners of the new Christianity. There’s adventure galore for Jack as he’s joined by old friend berserker Thorgil and a new girl in his life, Pega, a slave. Of mysterious parentage, Pega is as beautiful in character as she is uncomely to look upon, and the quality of her singing exceeds Jack’s own, a source of envy. In their journey through a mushroom-rich underground, the Hobgoblin King Bugaboo falls into deep love and wants to make Pega his queen.
Lucy is found to be a changeling Elf with no desire to return with Jack. Elves in this universe are heartless fallen angels who dazzle all with the force of their “Glamour.” Jack’s actual sibling is called Hazel and is being raised quite happily as a cheerful hobgoblin. What’s boy wizard to do, except return with a half-elf who wants to be a nun and help a descendant of Lancelot regain his kingdom from an evil halfkelpie usurper? One gets the feeling that only a brief rest is in store for all before it’s on to Island of the Blessed in 2009.
Real characters with recognizable quirks and faults help keep the reader grounded in the exotic locales of this questing adventure. Although Jack’s petulance and sometimes willful ignorance can be hard to take, other characters take up the slack with grace, humor and courage to make this journey through mad monks, memory charms, changelings, elves and yarthkins a delight. Ages 10 and up.
Eileen Charbonneau
VOYAGE
Adèle Geras, Harcourt, 2007 (c1983), $6.95, pb, 145pp, 9780152061005 / Barn Owl Books, 2000, £4.99, pb, 128pp, 1903015006
This young adult novel, first published in 1983, follows the lives of a number of mostly Jewish immigrants who are sailing on the SS Danzig to the promised land of America. The year is 1904, and conditions in Eastern Europe are not good for Jews. While each character, young or old, has his or her own reason for coming to America, all see it as a place of hope, though they realize the streets are not truly paved with gold. We meet Mina, who travels with her mother and her brother to be reunited with her father. The bully Yankel will also be reunited with his father, but this is not a reason for celebration. There is Golda and her new baby—Golda manages to keep neat despite the terrible conditions in steerage, but can’t keep her baby from hunger when her milk dries up. Then there is Rachel, whose true love has been murdered back home—will she have another chance at happiness? And everyone wonders what it will really be like for them in this new country. Will their relatives be waiting? Will they find jobs?
Geras has written a moving story that provides enough detail to explain why all these people would undertake this frightening voyage in dreadful conditions. However, hope takes
precedence, and I longed to find out just how each of these deftly portrayed characters coped with their new lives. Highly recommended. Ages 12 and up.
Trudi E. Jacobson
THE LUXE
Anna Godbersen, HarperCollins, 2007, $17.99, hb, 448pp, 9780061345661
Well, it had to happen. Edith Wharton meets chick lit. It’s 1899 in Manhattan, and glam girls vie for irresistible boys while guarding scandalous secrets not quite hidden from jealous servants.
After a promising opening at a funeral, this plot-driven story quickly becomes as insipid and predictable as its characters. Stereotypes like “bad girl,” “rake, “little sister” of “good girl” inhabit set pieces at a costume ball, a racetrack, and countless pocket-doored drawing rooms. Elizabeth is in love with Will the stable hand, but must marry heir-to-fortune Henry to save her suddenly impoverished widowed mother and sister. But Elizabeth’s best friend Penelope is Henry’s mistress and wants to be his wife, while Henry is falling fast for his fiancée’s little sister. Worry not, at 448 pages, a scorecard is unnecessary. A whole chapter is devoted to capturing a fly-away bonnet.
Multiple viewpoints fail to distract from wooden dialogue asked “leadingly” and said “warningly” by faces “hung with anger,” who realize they should “snap out of it.” But wait, there’s more: the see-it-from-a-mile-away ending is all set up for a sequel. For ages 14 and up, but kids, skip this and go straight to Aunt Edith and the real deal.
Eileen Charbonneau
BLAZE OF SILVER
K. M. Grant, Puffin, 2007, £4.99, pb, 249pp, 9780141319513 / Walker, 2007, $16.95, hb, 261pp, 9780802796257
This is the final part of a trilogy set at the time of the Crusades, and is a gripping and colourful read that deals with big themes such as courage, betrayal and redemption. Saladin has died and his country is in danger of being taken over by the leader of the Assassins, known as the Old Man of the Mountains—a wonderfully evil character reminiscent of a James Bond villain. Richard the Lionheart is in prison in Germany and Will de Granville, our hero, is raising a ransom and preparing to set off and free him. Also at Will’s home, Hartslove, are Ellie, the girl he loves, Marissa, who loves Will and is determined to travel with him, and Kamil, a young Saracen. The story begins when an old Arab, Amal, a spy employed by the Old Man of the Mountains, arrives at Hartslove with the gift of a beautiful silver horse. Amal has been sent to deceive and betray Will and Kamil, but the young people are convinced by him, and they take in both him and the silver horse, Shihab. The plotting is complex, and the characters strong and appealing. All show heroism of different kinds, and each person has to work out his or her own destiny. There are also some beautiful and courageous horses—characters in their own right. Will’s blood-red horse Hosanna
has almost magical powers of perception that stay just within the bounds of reality. Vivid writing carries this exciting story forward to a dramatic and satisfying conclusion. I did feel, however, that I would have enjoyed it even more if I had read the first two books, and would recommend that the trilogy be read in the right order, starting with Blood Red Horse.
Ann Turnbull
ORPHAN OF THE SUN
Gill Harvey, Bloomsbury, 2007, £5.99, pb, 313pp, 9780747579458
This story is set in the village of the tomb builders in the Valley of the Kings in Ancient Egypt, and centres on the daily lives of these skilled and privileged workers. Meryt-Re is an orphan, and at thirteen years old she is faced with family troubles, an arranged marriage she does not want, and the fear that the boy she does like may not feel the same about her. Around these personal concerns is woven a story of intrigue and theft which for the people of Set Maat is complicated by their belief in magic. Theirs was a world in which gods, deified pharaohs and ancestor spirits, wielded power over people’s lives, and in which spirits must be appeased and offerings made. Ordinary life could be a minefield, with danger at every turn.
It is always risky for a novelist to make ancient people talk in a modern way, but Gill Harvey has pulled it off brilliantly, and as a result the reader feels both the familiarity and the strangeness of their lives. They are like and yet utterly unlike us. She has clearly done a huge amount of research, most of it well integrated into the story. Not only do we learn about the cooking and domestic arrangements, but also about the subtle nuances of status and social class, which are particularly well conveyed.
Well-paced, with a straightforward writing style and an appealing heroine, this is a story that paints a lively and accessible picture of everyday life as it might really have been lived in ancient Egypt.
Ann Turnbull
RED THUNDER
John P. Hunter, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2007, $7.95, pb, 240pp, 9780879352318
After British dragoons led by the notorious Colonel Banastre Tarleton destroyed his family’s farm, stole all their cows, and wounded his parents, young Nate Chandler is determined to get revenge. He sets off with his devoted dog Rex to join the army and fight the British for American independence. Along the way he helps a slave named James, and the two become friends. James is also on his way to join the revolutionaries with the permission of his master, the plantation owner and patriot William Armistead.
Nate is somewhat disappointed when he is not allowed to fight with the army. Instead, he is assigned to be a courier, carrying information between the field and the General Lafayette’s headquarters. James, who has a photographic memory, is assigned to spy on Lord Cornwallis and obtains a position in his household. Rex
plays a role, too, becoming a good luck symbol for the revolutionary troops. Nate and James are instrumental in helping General Lafayette win the battle of Yorktown, and they witness the British surrender. Great fun for young people interested in the Revolutionary War.
Jane Kessler
THE RED QUEEN’S DAUGHTER
Jacqueline Kolosov, Hyperion, 2007, $16.99, hb, 416pp, 1423107977
Often a cover initially draws us to a book, but as we all know you “can’t judge a book by its cover”. Well, in this case you actually can. The red-haired girl’s gaze draws you to open the book, and after you begin Jacqueline Kolosov’s text you’ll be completely snared.
Mary Seymour was the only daughter of Thomas Seymour and Catherine Parr, widow of King Henry VIII. Catherine Parr died from complications of the birth, and Thomas Seymour was executed a year later. Mary’s life disappears from the historical record after 1550, but Kolosov has picked it up and imagined an intriguing life for Mary within the court of Queen Elizabeth, her mother’s own stepdaughter.
Mary is warmly received by the Queen, but soon finds court life dangerous. Her mission is to become a white magician and secure the success of Elizabeth’s reign, but finds her biggest threat is her attractive cousin, the black magician, Edmund Seymour. Mary comes to realize that light cannot exist without dark and finds her beliefs tested.
With a nod to Shakespeare’s King Lear, Kolosov artfully crafts a spellbinding tale. Fans of Philippa Gregory and Libba Bray will devour The Red Queen’s Daughter and add the book to their list of favorites. Ages 12 and up.
Nancy Castaldo
THE SLAVE-GIRL FROM JERUSALEM
Caroline Lawrence, Orion, 2007, £8.99, hb, 224pp, 9781842551882
AD 80. In this, the thirteenth Roman Mystery, the four friends, Flavia, Nubia, Jonathan and Lupus are in the port of Ostia. Jonathan’s sister Miriam is desperately worried about her friend Hephzibah, who has a tragic history. As a child, she survived the Roman destruction of Masada and became a slave to the wealthy Dives. He later freed her, but died soon afterwards, and she has no proof that she is a freewoman. Worse, she is accused of a triple murder and thrown into prison. Unless the four friends can find proof of her manumission and discover the true murderer, Hephzibah faces not only torture, but a horrible death by crucifixion.
The four children need a highly trained orator, but who will take on the unpopular task of defending a Jewish ex-slave? The only possible person is a young friend, Flaccus, whose first case it is. Flaccus swiftly realizes that someone is intent on corrupting the trial, not only by bribery, but also by defaming the characters of Hephzibah and the four friends. Will Flaccus be able to rise above his inexperience?
I enjoyed this book. The main theme is how the Roman justice system operated—a subject which could be as dry as dust—but the author
EDITORS’ CHOICE Y UPRISING
Margaret Peterson Haddix, Simon & Schuster, 2007, $16.99/C$21.00, hb, 352pp, 9781416911715
Set in New York City in 1910-1911, Uprising tells the story of three young women from different walks of life whose lives become connected through the shirtwaist workers’ strike. Yetta is a Russian immigrant who moved to America and works at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in order to earn money to send back to her homeland. Bella is a recently arrived Italian immigrant who is overwhelmed in America and feels like a stranger. She is eager to learn and works at the factory as well. Jane is an unhappy rich society girl who longs for something different in her life but is uncertain about what she can do to break free from the cage in which she feels trapped.
The hundreds of workers at the factory put up with low wages and unsafe working conditions until one day a strike is organized. Yetta feels passionate about their cause and quickly becomes one of the strike’s leaders, attending meetings and marching in the picket lines. Soon both Bella and Jane join her, and the girls quickly become friends. Haddix does a superb job of portraying the different aspects of the girls’ lives, from their involvement in the strike to the conditions of working in the factory and their daily survival.
Chapters alternate between each of the girls, allowing readers to experience three different perspectives of the events that unfold. Not only is Uprising the story of the strike and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that changed American labor forever, it is also a story of friendship, family, choices, and the social classes and rules of society that existed in America in the early 1900s. This book is an excellent read that makes history come alive through all of the well-crafted characters. Ages 12 and up. Troy Reed
brings it vividly to life and has us on the edges of our seats. This book would make a useful introduction to a discussion of what Justice is.
The status of slaves is also important—if Nubia (whose status is also in doubt) is legally a slave, she would be automatically tortured if questioned about a crime. In the subplot, there is sadness as well as joy for Jonathan and Hephzibah. Lastly, there is an interesting look at the emergence of the early Christian church.
Recommended for 10 plus.
Elizabeth Hawksley
This book is full of mystery, and adventure with a hint of romance—a perfect combination. It was easy to read because it had a very interesting plotline. I was anxious to find out what would happen to Hephzibah. The new characters were described well, but if you haven’t read the previous books in the series you might not be able to get a good picture of what the older characters are like.
I am only going to make two criticisms. Firstly it refers to earlier books, some of which I haven’t yet read, so it was a bit confusing. Secondly, the names of some of the characters are very long and then she shortens them, so it was difficult to keep up.
On the whole I thought the book was very good. I think both boys and girls would enjoy it. The age range is from 10 to 13 years.
Rachel Beggs, age 12
LOUISIANA’S SONG
Kerry Madden, Viking, 2007, $16.99/C$21.00, hb, 278pp, 9780670061532
In the spring of 1963, 12-year-old Livy Two
This complex story is set in 15th-century England and shows human nature at its best and worst. Anna’s father is away fighting in the war, leaving her and her mother to defend their castle against a tyrant and his group of outlaws. Anna is beautiful in looks and character and has had a life filled with love. Hawk Jankin is a man driven by the need for revenge to reclaim his family’s castle. He is brutal and unforgiving, in stark contrast to Anna, whom he wants as his bride. She agrees to this, thinking it would save her people and home from his cruelty. She is wrong.
The period is realistically portrayed as this complex tale is told. The book offers the reader far more than a straight conflict between good and evil. The characters are taken beyond hatred and pain to a place of peace. It is a book which is very touching, particularly when Jankin stares the results of his previously destructive lifestyle in the face and is deeply moved by what he sees.
The author has illustrated how collectively people can behave as a mob when fuelled with sufficient hatred driven by ignorance, fear and jealousy. Later, they are able to justify their own part in their previous inhumane behaviour. I found the novel offered not only an engaging story but offered illustrations of the many facets of forgiveness—especially to those who find the hardest person to forgive is oneself.
Val Loh
and her nine siblings eagerly await their father’s return to the home they share in North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains. But the Tom Weems who comes home from the hospital, where he has been recovering from a head injury received in a car accident, is not the man he used to be. He doesn’t know that JFK is President, and although he hears music in his head, he can’t remember that he himself is a musician—a gift he has passed down to Livy Two.
With Tom prone to wandering off, money getting tight, and Grandma Horace talking about moving the family off their beloved mountain to a nearby factory town, the Weems family is in need of all the help it can get. Livy tries to do her part, persuading her artistic but shy sister Louise (the “Louisiana” of the title) to draw portraits in nearby Waynesboro and barraging a Nashville music company with her songs.
The second book in a series of three, Louisiana’s Song is narrated by Livy, an endearing, indomitable heroine, whose narrative voice is conversational and folksy without ever sounding contrived or artificial. The novel teems with wonderful, vivid characters, from the Weems family members to the bookmobile lady to Mathew the Mennonite. Even the family dog, Uncle Hazard, has a personality all of his own. Don’t let the somewhat hackneyed title scare you off—Louisiana’s Song is an original. Lively, funny, and moving, it’s a novel that adults as well as young readers should enjoy.
Susan Higginbotham
HIGH CRAG LINN
Margaret McAllister, Lion Hudson, 2007, £5.99, pb, 222pp, 9780745960623
MISSISSIPPI JACK
L. A. Meyer, Harcourt, 2007, $17.00/£11.99, hb, 624 pp, 9780152060039
Jacky Faber, the irrepressible Napoleonicera street-urchin-turned-ship’s-boy-turned-finelady-turned-pirate, is once again in the thick of trouble in this fifth installment of the Bloody Jack Adventures.
Jacky, having been rescued from certain death in the Atlantic Ocean (see In the Belly of the Bloodhound), is soon recognized by her naval heroes as the notorious pirate upon whose head the Crown has placed a generous bounty. She is saved from hanging only by the cleverness of her friends. She escapes to the safety of the frontier, with her fiancé, Jaimy, in hot pursuit. So begins parallel stories, of Jacky getting her hands on a boat, following the waterways to the Mississippi, earning her bread by dancing and fiddling, and picking up new friends and enemies along the way; and Jaimy, the proud British naval officer, learning some painful lessons about the American frontier. Jacky has grown up; she is no longer a scrappy urchin. In this installment, Jaimy becomes the character struggling to survive—by the seat of his pants— in a dangerous world. Not until New Orleans do these long-suffering lovers finally reunite… in the most awkward and uncomfortable way possible.
This series is so brilliantly plotted that in the denouement, several plot threads from the previous volumes converge into one of the most hilarious scenes in the entire series. Mississippi Jack is another winner from L.A. Meyer—long live Jacky Faber! Ages 12 and up.
Lisa Ann
Verge
Y THE FALCONER’S KNOT
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Mary Hoffman, Bloomsbury, 2007, £12.99, hb, 304pp, 9780747582755 / Bloomsbury USA, 2007, $16.95, hb, 297pp, 9781599900568
Silvano’s dagger is found in the body of a man whose wife he had been serenading. He seeks sanctuary with the Franciscans in a friary near Assisi. In the adjacent convent of Poor Clares is Chiara, sent there by a brother who cannot afford a dowry. They both work making pigments for the artists then decorating the walls of St. Francis’s Church. More murders in the friary throw renewed suspicion on Silvano. He must find the real culprit before he can return home to Perugia.
This is a closely plotted book with engaging characters, not just the two young people thrust into the monastic life against their will, but also the various nuns and friars, the merchants and nobility outside and the painters. There is a wealth of fascinating detail about the origins of the various pigments used for the frescoes and the stories they relate. Fourteenth-century Italy comes alive, and Mary Hoffman controls her populous cast with great skill. Painters as well as historians will enjoy this book.
Marina Oliver Umbria, Italy, 1316. This is the age of Courtly Love, when young men sighed over unattainable ladies. Sixteen-year-old Silvano, handsome and rich, is in love with the wife of a rich sheep-farmer, Tommaso. Then comes news that Tommaso has been found murdered—with Silvano’s missing dagger. There is a warrant out for his arrest. He flees for sanctuary to a Franciscan friary.
Here he learns from Anselmo, the Colour Master, how to grind the pigments to make paints to decorate the new basilica of St Francis in Assisi. He also meets 15-year-old Chiara, an unwilling novice in the Poor Clares, a sister nunnery of the same Franciscan friary. She, too, is learning to make paints.
Both long to escape: Silvano to have the arrest warrant lifted and Chiara to live an ordinary life in the world outside. Then the friary is struck by a series of grisly murders and, once again, Silvano is under suspicion. So, too, is Anselmo, who has a painful secret in his past. Isabella, a rich merchant’s wife, also has a secret, and when her husband is murdered on a visit to the friary, events take a dangerous turn for Anselmo. Silvano and Chiara, whose own futures are at stake, desperately need to find the murderer before more people are killed.
I enjoyed this book. The back cover says, ‘Think The Name of the Rose for teenagers’, and that about sums it up. It’s a real page-turner, and I loved learning about the art and skill of fresco painting and how to grind the precious rocks to make the brilliant colours, as well as the glimpses into monastic life. The various story strands, including a romantic element, interweave beautifully, allowing a series of mini cliff-hangers.
Recommended for 11 plus. Girls will probably enjoy it more than boys.
Elizabeth Hawksley
This book is a murder mystery set in medieval Italy, and it is very good. I know who Mary Hoffman is from the Stravaganza series but this book is very different from them. It is very gripping, especially towards the end, and you always want to read on and find out more. The plot is narrated by different characters, jumping to a different one in each chapter. This mainly makes the plot more interesting, getting different insights into characters, but it can also be frustrating when it gets to a crucial point with one character and then it jumps to another character.
The characters, like Isabella and Chiara, are convincing and you really get worried and hope things will be OK for them. The plot has big unexpected twists. It is a very good book, and I would recommend it for ages 10 to 13.
MISS SPITFIRE: Reaching Helen Keller
Sarah Miller, Atheneum, 2007, $16.99, hb, 208pp, 9781416925422
“But words, Mrs. Keller, words bridge the gaps between two minds. Words are a miracle.” Comforting Helen Keller’s mother, Anne Sullivan reveals the force that enables her to endure the steadfast frustrations, perilous physical and mental combative scenes, and
Ella McNulty, age 12
impossible tasks she faces as Helen’s teacher in the late 1800s. On first meeting Helen, Anne recognizes a kindred lone soul, a “shadow of my own child-soul.” Although she never has children, that initial meeting elicits a startling maternal instinct she never loses. One begins to experience Helen’s experience of spelling out words into the hand as mimicry without comprehension. Helen’s compulsive rage
and misbehavior are portrayed as part of the incomprehensible reaction of one intelligent enough to grasp what senses experience but cannot connect in any meaningful way.
Captain and Mrs. Keller continually try to block Anne’s efforts at punishing improper behavior and what seems to be unwillingness to learn. Too many tears and fiery scenes repeatedly occur as Anne’s determination grows. Her reasoning to these loving parents finally succeeds as Anne begins to attain the simple yet profound goal of communication for and with Helen Keller. Anne’s failed engagement and battle with her own physical ailments add a depth of understanding as to what this woman sacrificed to teach this confused young girl and woman. Sarah Miller has done an excellent job at portraying the teacher’s day-to-day experience of shaping the skills and personality of this woman whose legacy to the blind continues today. Fascinating! Ages 10-12.
Viviane Crystal
THE HIGHWAYMAN’S FOOTSTEPS
Nicola Morgan, Walker, 2006, £6.99, pb, 360pp, 1406303119 / Candlewick, 2007, $16.99, 368pp, 9780763634728
Inspired by the famous poem by Alfred Noyes, ‘The Highwayman’, this novel is about a young upper-class boy, William de Lacey, who runs away from his vindictive father and brother. Fleeing from the militia after stealing a purse, he is nearly captured by someone he thinks to be a highwayman—one who is hiding a deep secret. The story charts the adventures that William and his new companion depart on, and the yearning both have for someone they can truly trust. For William it is a journey in which he learns the true ruthlessness of his father; his blood-ties nearly cost him his life.
Poignant in places, fast-paced in others, The Highwayman’s Footsteps is a gripping novel that gives insight into the true danger of the Redcoats and the moors in 18th-century England.
Charlotte Kemp
HUSH: An Irish Princess Tale
Donna Jo Napoli, Atheneum, 2007, $16.99, hb, 320pp, 0689861761
Hush: An Irish Princess Tale is the next title in Donna Jo Napoli’s growing list of young adult retellings. Many of her previous retellings offered complex stories of many well-known fairy/ folktales, such as Zel, a retelling of Rapunzel; Spinners, a retelling of Rumplestiltskin; Beast, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast; Bound, a retelling of Cinderella; and Breath, a retelling of The Tale of the Pied Piper, but this one is much less familiar. Napoli has taken the seed of this story from the Icelandic Saga of the People of Laxardal. In the Saga there is mention of a woman named Melkorka, who is bought from a Russian slave merchant. Since Melkorka doesn’t speak, her new master knows nothing of her past until he hears her speaking in Gaelic to her two-year-old son. She explains to her master that she was an Irish princess captured by a slave trader.
Donna Jo Napoli once again offers a complex story, combining actual history with
folktale elements to describe Melkorka’s plight as she is kidnapped and learns to live among people she once considered savage and inhuman. Even without the dialog of her main character, Napoli has crafted a relatable, rich protagonist. Melkorka’s vow of silence wins her an indescribable power among her captors. This power, even slight, lets Melkorka believe she can make a difference in her world. Fans of Donna Jo Napoli will happily count this tale among their favorites. Ages 12 and up.
Nancy Castaldo
AT ELLIS ISLAND: A History In Many Voices
Louise Peacock, illus. Walter Lyon Krudop, Atheneum, 2007, $18.99, hb, 44pp, 0689830262
This is a wonderful picture book to add to a collection of immigration tales. Louise Peacock has done a marvelous job weaving snippets of actual accounts from individuals who immigrated to the United States as children into her text, creating a quilt of voices sharing one experience. In addition she tells the imagined story of Sera, one girl representing so many who arrived at Ellis Island. Illustrations by Walter Lyon Krudop are interspersed with actual photographs throughout the book. Children might be confused by all the voices in the text as they read, and may find two readings beneficial—reading through Sera’s story first, then reading it again focusing on the sidebars of the actual accounts. Either way, they will feel they have shared the experiences of many other children of long ago. Ages 7-10.
Nancy Castaldo
THE EVER-AFTER BIRD
Ann Rinaldi, Harcourt, 2007 (UK 2008), $17/£10.99, hb, 240pp, 9780152026202
At the recent HNS Conference, my suspicions were confirmed that the term “young adult” is now a pseudonym for “anything goes” in children’s literature, sometimes a concern for parents of precocious readers. You might wish to peruse this book to check its appropriateness for your younger reader, but be warned: you may well find yourself settling down to read it from start to finish. This is a coming of age story, set mainly in the 1850s South. After the death of her abusive, abolitionist father, thirteen year-old CeCe finds herself under the wardship of her uncle, a doctor and ornithologist. In the company of his African-American assistant, Earline, who masquerades as a slave, Uncle Alex takes CeCe on an expedition to Georgia in search of the rare scarlet ibis—and to help slaves begin the journey to freedom on the Underground Railroad, an activity CeCe wants no part of. However, as they travel across Georgia’s plantations, CeCe’s experiences force her to reevaluate her perceptions—not only of slavery, but of relationships between one human being and another.
As a teacher as well as a parent, I was impressed with the sensitivity and appropriateness of Rinaldi’s approach to her subject. She juxtaposes CeCe’s gradual understanding of the horrors of slavery with her discovery of the
tenderness that can exist in a father-daughter relationship. The recurring imagery of birds as symbols of freedom, while conventional, also works well at this level; even young readers will appreciate the irony of Uncle Alex’s caging and shooting birds while pointing slaves to freedom. Although several minor Southern characters are somewhat stereotyped, the main characters are complex and challenge the typical racial and moral images of this era. A book at once compelling and tender, highly recommended for mature younger readers to adults.
Susan Cook
I enjoyed The Ever-After Bird very much. It taught me a lot about lifestyles in the South that I did not know before, although some of the circumstances were disturbing. My favorite character is CeCe. She must have been very brave to bear the belief that she had (in a way) killed her mother when she was born. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone searching for a slightly romantic tale with a good storyline.
Magdalen Dobson, age 10
DRAGONS FROM THE SEA
Judson Roberts, HarperCollins, 2007, $16.99/ C$21.50, hb, 346pp, 9780060813000
This is the second book in a series (the Strongbow Saga) about a young Viking warrior, Halfdan Hroriksson, who lives at the time of the Viking expansion into Europe in the late 9th century. Halfdan’s story is woven through the known history about several Viking heroes and leaders, but the book is more than a history lesson. Halfdan’s story makes good reading. It’s definitely young adult fiction and a young man’s book, for it’s a good, solid adventure story about a young man.
In the first book, Viking Warrior, Halfdan is a slave, his mother a captured Irish princess, his father the chieftain Hrorik. Now he is a freeman and wants to become a warrior. First Halfdan has to find a ship’s captain willing to take him as crew. After that he has to persuade the other men he’s not just a mere youth, and also keep himself out of trouble. There’s a cliffhanger ending to lead into the next book, and male readers will surely enjoy Halfdan’s struggles to prove he’s a man.
My one beef, a female reader’s one, is that there are many times when we get a bald statement about Halfdan where I would have enjoyed a little more of his inner thoughts.
Patrika Salmon
GOOD
MASTERS! SWEET LADIES! Voices from a Medieval Village
Laura Amy Schlitz, illus. Robert Byrd, Candlewick, $19.99/C$25.00, hb, 85pp, 9780763615789
This is a lovely book of miniature plays and monologues the author wrote for her students to better facilitate their understanding of the Middle Ages and pass on her fascination with history. In an English village in 1255, Schlitz vividly brings to life Thomas, the doctor’s son, who explains the four humors, his caring touch, whilst demanding payment. Otho, the miller’s
son, is despised by many and speaks of want, cheating, starvation, and daily life. And Jack the half-wit—is he harebrained or misjudged?
The author has cleverly intertwined together an entire medieval village with illustrations by Robert Byrd. The result equally balances pictures with words that express the depth of young life in this era. Schlitz graces her book with humor, tragedy and touches of the gruesome.
The addition of quirky sidebars and footnotes enhances the joy in reading this remarkable and intelligent vision. Ages 10-15.
Wendy Zollo
MY SWORDHAND IS SINGING
Marcus Sedgwick, Random House, 2007, $15.99, pb, 208pp, 9780375946899 / Orion, 2007, £6.99, pb, 224pp, 9781842555583
Sedgwick, a multi-published children’s book author, gives us a new twist on the popular genre of teen vampire fiction in this horror novel set in Eastern Europe in the 17th century.
During a fierce winter, young Peter and his father Tomas, itinerant woodcutters, settle in the forest outside the tiny village of Chust. Strange doings have disturbed the sleepy town: mutilated cattle, bloodied sheep, and unexplained deaths. The villagers react in superstitious ways Peter doesn’t fully understand: They paint their doors with tar, smear their windowsills with garlic, sing a nonsensical folksong at funerals, and perform weddings between young maidens and the recently dead. As the murders multiply, Peter begins to realize that his own father—tormented by a past he will not share with his son—is one of the few who fully understand what is happening. Furthermore, Tomas may hold the key to stopping the horrors, if only he can find the courage to fight.
Based on original vampire lore, My Swordhand Is Singing reads less like a vampire book (the word “vampire” is never used) than an ancient tale from the Brothers Grimm. Set in a deep-forest, Germanic world, this slim volume is lean on historical detail, but the clarity of its prose, and the arrow-straight drive of the storyline, gives the book a classic charm.
Lisa Ann Verge
THE CASE AGAINST MY BROTHER
Libby Sternberg, Bancroft, 2007, $19.95, hb, 205pp, 1890862517
In this compelling mystery, 15-year-old Carl Matuski and his older brother Adam, recently orphaned, move from Baltimore to Portland, Oregon in 1922, when Adam becomes the prime suspect in the theft of jewelry from his wealthy girlfriend’s home. As Adam goes on the run, Carl is determined to clear his name, because he believes that he has been accused only because he is a Polish Catholic, and Portland has become a hotbed of anti-Catholic bigotry as its citizens are about to vote on the Oregon School Question, which would outlaw parochial schools. With the help of newspaper reporter Vincent Briggs, Carl searches for the real thief, even when confronted by the Ku Klux Klan, a bigoted police officer, and a vicious gambling ring.
The Case Against My Brother is a beautifully written mystery and coming of age story. The
Y HERE LIES ARTHUR
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Philip Reeve, Scholastic, 2007, £12.99, hb, 289pp, 9780439955331
South-west Britain, c. 500 AD. The Roman legions have left and Britain has splintered into warring factions. Saxons, arriving from the continent, are raiding ever further westward. The country needs a strong man to unite Britain against the invaders.
Enter Myrddin, a skilled teller of tales and one who understands the political value of appearance. His aim is to turn Arthur into the country’s saviour. When Myrddin rescues ten-year-old Gwyna, fleeing from Arthur’s murderous war-band, he notes her ability to swim underwater. She is the tool he needs to strengthen Arthur’s position by some ‘supernatural’ endorsement: Gwyna’s first job is to play the part of the Lady of the Lake and give a credulous Arthur the sword Caliburn. She becomes ‘Gwyn’, Myrddin’s boy and, later, resumes her female identity as maid to Gwenhwyfar, Arthur’s neglected wife. Myrddin’s ‘spin’ may turn Arthur’s raids into the stuff of legend, but, for Gwyna, it cannot disguise the war-lord’s brutality, greed and betrayal of trust. How can an insignificant girl survive in such a dangerous and unpredictable world? And it becomes a whole lot more dangerous once she finds out Gwenhwyfar’s adulterous secret…
I really enjoyed this book. It’s a modern and very believable take on the Arthurian legend. The first person narrative gives it immediacy and, having the low-born Gwyn/Gwena as narrator, gives us a worm’s eye view of this blood-thirsty age and an understanding of how ordinary people of both sexes suffer in times of strife.
But spin-doctoring is nothing new, and this is also a book about myth-making. As Gwyna says, ‘The real Arthur had been just a little tyrant in an age of tyrants. What mattered about him was the stories.’ Philip Reeve’s skill and way with words illuminates this dark corner of history brilliantly. For 13 plus.
Elizabeth Hawksley
Reeves weaves an enchanting and convincing tale, woven much like one of his chief character’s stories. He takes you right back to late 5th/early 6th-century Britain, drawing you immediately into a whirlwind adventure where truth lies forgotten and nothing is quite as it seems.
WHERE SOLDIERS LIE
John Wilson, Key Porter, 2006, $12.95/C$15.95, hb, 221pp, 9781552637906
In this coming-of-age novel set during the Mutiny of 1857, John Wilson gives the reader an unblinking look at a very bloody period in the history of British India.
Jack O’Hara, son of a British father and an Indian mother, tries to fit into the rule-driven world of his English relatives even as he is attracted to Indian culture. He has friends on both sides. When Indian sepoys threaten to mutiny, the entire British community of Cawnpore is summoned to the military barracks where they can be better protected. There, they suffer a three-week siege, their fort barraged with musket fire and cannonballs, as their food, medicine, and hope run low. Jack, despite his age, learns to be a soldier. But the situation seems hopeless; hundreds of people die while waiting in vain for reinforcements. When the rebel commander finally offers safe passage, the survivors have no choice but to accept it. But they are deceived: A terrible massacre follows. Jack survives only through the intervention of an old friend.
Young readers be warned: The novel is full of gruesome deaths and reveals the darker side of human nature. Readers of a stronger constitution, however, will thrill to this gritty, fast-paced, and well-constructed story.
Lisa Ann Verge
NONFICTION
N n
THE FIRST TOTAL WAR: Napoleon’s Europe & the Birth of Modern Warfare
David A. Bell, Bloomsbury, 2007, £20.00, hb, 420pp, 9780747577195 / Houghton Mifflin, 2007, $27.00, hb, 432pp, 9780618349654
Rachel Chetwynd -Stapylton, age 14
Philip Reeves has created a fun and action-packed book that provides an insight into the life of both boys and girls in Arthur’s time. Somehow he has managed to make the story both educational and, dare I say it, fun! The book is a refreshing break from the usual trash lined up for our age group, and I feel it would be best suited to the 12-14 age range, but it is not the best book for readers in search of a challenge. This said, Here Lies Arthur is one of those delightful books that you appear to just glide through and is thoroughly enjoyable.
reader sympathizes with Carl as he discovers that the older brother who had always taken care of him is not the hero he had always believed him to be, and that now their roles are reversed: Carl has to protect Adam and confront the forces of bigotry and hatred that he never knew existed. Ages 12 and up.
Vicki Kondelik
THE LION HUNTER: The Mark of Solomon, Book One
Elizabeth E. Wein, Viking, 2007, $16.99/ C$21.00, hb, 228pp, 9780670061631
This novel for young adult readers is the fourth in Wein’s ongoing Arthurian/Aksumite cycle, which began with The Winter Prince (1993). In 6th-century Aksum (Ethiopia), Telemakos, the twelve-year-old half-Ethiopian grandson of Artos, King of Britain, struggles to survive the dangers that lurk behind the friendly facades presented by animals and humans, both.
In an attempt to protect him from the sinister
threats upon his life, his father, Medraut, and his aunt Goewin (Artos’s daughter), both of whom now serve the Aksumite Emperor, send him and his baby sister across the Red Sea to stay with kindred in the kingdom of Himyar in southern Arabia. This, however, places him in even greater danger by the conclusion of the novel. The second book in the sequence, The Empty Kingdom, should provide a resolution to his predicament.
Wein writes elegantly, and she generates suspense by viewing events from the perspective of her young protagonist, anxious and vulnerable in a world where, despite individual acts of kindness and generosity, the adults behave ruthlessly out of what they perceive to be political necessity. Against this harshness, the fierce devotion that exists between Telemakos and his sister Athena seems like a fragile desert flower threatened with destruction by a rising sandstorm.
Ray Thompson
World War I was not, according to David Bell, the first total war. During the age of Napoleon wars devastated Europe for twenty years, and nearly every aspect of modern warfare took root during that period: conscription, unconditional surrender, guerrilla warfare and the paradoxical notion that wars were fought in the name of peace.
In 1914, exactly a century after Napoleon’s first abdication, total war returned to Europe with the war that was supposed to end all wars. Ensuing conflicts until 9/11 and the present day the process of war continues apace with familiar parallels with the past.
David A. Bell writes with a refreshing clarity and offers convincing arguments.
Ann Oughton
A SLAVE NO MORE: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation
David W. Blight, Harcourt, 2007, $25.00, hb, 299pp, 0151012329
John Washington, a 24-year-old Virginia slave, escaped to Union army lines in 1862. Seventeenyear-old Wallace Turnage ran away five times from an Alabama plantation, eventually finding safe harbor with the Union navy in 1864. Both men left us handwritten narratives of their flights to freedom, which were fortuitously
preserved and eventually came to the attention of Yale historian David W. Blight. One-third of this book consists of Washington and Turnage’s writings, setting bare both their sufferings and their enormous courage. In the remaining twothirds, Blight recounts their stories and places them in historical context, drawing insights into the way slaves became emancipated during the Civil War. He also investigates the men’s postslavery lives, and provides photographs and maps which illuminate the text.
Washington and Turnage’s narratives would have been more fitting if they had opened rather than ended the book. Their actual words deserve to be read as more than addenda to Blight’s retelling of their lives. This quibble aside, this highly readable book tells two fascinating and profoundly moving stories.
Phyllis T. Smith
THE CAPETIANS: Kings of France 9871328
Jim Bradbury, Hambledon Continuum, 2007, $39.95/£30.00, hb, 352pp, 1852855282
This is a lively, highly readable history of France’s transformation from a cluster of warring clans to a unified nation. Jim Bradbury traces the dynasty of Hugh Capet as it creates, through force and diplomacy, much of France as we know it today.
The author first provides a good introduction to the rise of the Capetians then discusses facets of each reign. Those chapters are generally broken into sections on the king’s accession, expansion the demesne, relationship to the Church and other countries, and administrative developments. The closing chapter summarizes military and political achievements as well as cultural and administrative accomplishments. The book includes extensive notes, bibliography, maps, genealogical charts and illustrations.
Bradbury is thoroughly at home with the chroniclers of the period. His candid reflections about their abilities and motivations are entertaining as well as instructive. His narrative is conversational, peppered with gossipy detail that medieval chroniclers thought worthy of recording. The tone throughout is positive as the author makes an excellent case for thinking about the Capetians as leaders in transformation rather than as weak kings unable to control their countrymen. The Capetians is a significant contribution to medieval scholarship—definitely a text to add to your library.
Lucille Cormier
THE FAR TRAVELER: Voyages of a Viking Woman
Nancy Marie Brown, Harcourt, 2007, $25.00, hb, 320pp, 9780151014408
Sometime in the late 10th century, a woman journeyed far into the West, beyond the known horizon. She settled for a few years in Vinland—in Canada—and her son was born there. This book is the tale, as nearly as Brown could reconstruct it, of that woman, Gudrid the Far-traveler, famed in the Icelandic sagas for her strength and courage. And a far-traveler Gudrid certainly was: the book’s map shows her journeys, and she traveled from Iceland to
Canada, to Norway, and to Rome.
Fascinated by the glimpses of Gudrid shown in the sagas, Brown began a study that took her on a journey as fascinating as any Gudrid undertook. Eagerly assisting in an archaeological dig on the site of what may have been Gudrid’s home in Iceland and examining the sagas against history’s backdrop, Brown brings not only Gudrid but the tumultuous world she inhabited to brilliant life. (Let me put it this way: this book made me yearn to sail across the North Atlantic in a Viking longship, and trust me, I know better!!)
This is an entrancing book; vivid and strong as the world it describes. Brown’s enthusiasm for her subject enthralls the reader (I stayed up until two a.m. to finish it in one go); rarely has learning about a new subject been so enjoyable. Highly recommended.
India Edghill
THE HOUSE THE ROCKEFELLERS
BUILT: A Tale of Money, Taste and Power in Twentieth-Century America
Robert F. Dalzell and Lee Baldwin Dalzell, Holt, 2007, $30.00, hb, 352pp, 0805075445
Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller Sr. became rich through hard work, simple living and vigorous acquisition of failing companies that were in no position to bargain. Living by strict Baptist principles, the Rockefellers saw no conflict in Senior’s ruthless business methods and Junior’s “Christianity in Business” talks at the YMCA. Eventually, magazine exposés, a government anti-trust suit, and the loss of the family home by fire soon led to changes, one of which became Kykuit, the new Rockefeller home overlooking the Hudson River. Junior wanted “his father’s house” to befit his standing. Senior preferred simple design. Conflicts abounded. Although the family was involved in philanthropy on an immense scale (founding the University of Chicago, etc.), on a personal level Senior was a miser with his workers, equating their wages with charity. This contrast adds a powerful background to the story of getting Kykuit built. Several generations later, however, in December 1991, the Rockefellers would celebrate their final family dinner there, when Kykuit became part of the National Trust. The Dalzells have researched and written an enjoyable and compelling account of a home and its monumental family.
Tess Allegra
THE SEA VENTURE: Shipwreck, Survival, and the Salvation of the First English Colony in the New World Kieran Doherty, St. Martin’s Press, 2007, $24.95/C$31.00, hb, 276pp, 0312354533
Released to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Jamestown’s founding, The Sea Venture provides an informative and dramatic account of the 1609 shipwreck which may have been the basis for Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.
Filled with supplies, settlers, and colonial officials to buttress the struggling Virginia colony, the Sea Venture becomes separated from the rest of its fleet during a hurricane and runs
aground at Bermuda—a dangerous no-man’s land—and finds an Eden-like paradise. Over ten months later, most of the surviving colonists sail up the James River to find Jamestown virtually deserted, the only remaining inhabitants near death.
Doherty does a creditable job of intertwining the stories of Bermuda and Jamestown, depicting the hardships the settlers faced—starvation, disease, hostile natives, death, multiple mutinies, greed—as well as the triumphs wrought by faith, courage, hard work, and the will to survive in a harsh new world. Such familiar characters as Christopher Newport, Powhatan, John Smith, Pocahontas and John Rolfe, are included, as well as lesser known figures like Sir Thomas Gates, William Strachey, and Alexander Whitaker. A few minor errors exist: e.g., the largest ship of the original three to arrive at Jamestown in 1607 was the Susan Constant, not Susan Comfort (p. 28). That said, this is a solid and enjoyable chronicle of a pivotal event in our nation’s early history.
Illustrations, notes, sources included, but no index.
Michael I. Shoop
ALLIANCE:
The Inside Story of How Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill Won One War and Began Another Jonathan Fenby, MacAdam/Cage, 2007, $28.00, hb, 475pp, 1596922532 / Simon & Schuster, 2007, £25.00, hb, 480pp, 9780743259262
It took a global cataclysm to put Winston Churchill on the same side of the table as Joseph Stalin, and in the process catapult Franklin Roosevelt’s isolationist United States beyond its shores. Alliance never loses sight of the three extraordinary individuals who led their nations through the greatest human conflict in history, nor the underlying tension between them. As the war progresses, it changes the relationship and the power of these leaders. Churchill sees his position diminish, Roosevelt’s improve, and the sinister nature of Stalin’s postwar vision emerge from virtually the first moments of the “Big Three’s” association. In the process, they spawned not only the “special relationship” between Britain and the U.S., but the Cold War that inevitably grew from the seeds of the old conflict. This book documents three titanic personalities, and the times they were both led by and shaped.
William Thornton
THE CASE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A Story of Adultery, Murder and the Making of a Great President
Julie M. Fenster, Palgrave, 2007, $24.95/ C$31.00/£14.99, hb, 256pp, 9781403976352
In 1856, Springfield, Illinois, is abuzz. One of its citizens, a prosperous blacksmith named George Anderson, has been murdered—and the suspects are Anderson’s wife and his young nephew, believed to have been carrying on a love affair in Anderson’s own house. Eventually, another citizen of Springfield will become involved in the Anderson murder case—a prominent lawyer and rising politician named Abraham Lincoln.
The Case of Abraham Lincoln has two main strands, the murder case in Springfield and Lincoln’s career as a lawyer and a politician. The strands intersect only peripherally until near the end of the book, when Lincoln joins the Anderson defense and plays a crucial, though undramatic, role in achieving an acquittal for the suspects.
Despite the subtitle, readers expecting a juicy tale of murder and adultery will be disappointed. Fenster’s main interest is in the procedural aspects of the case and in the lawyers on both sides, not in the suspects, who took their secrets, if they had any, to the grave. Those wanting to know more about Lincoln as a lawyer and about his role in 1850s American party politics, however, will find this a welcome addition to their shelves.
Susan Higginbotham
FLYING TIGERS: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-42
Daniel Ford, Smithsonian, 2007, $15.95/ C$19.95, pb, 384pp, 9780061246555
The Flying Tigers, the nickname of the fighter pilots of the American Volunteer Group serving in China and Burma against Japanese air power in World War II, resemble a Hollywood war story more than a real-life group of fliers. Recruited by US Army Air Corps officer Claire Chennault, the Flying Tigers were either daredevil American heroes determined to seek revenge for Pearl Harbor or dysfunctional individualists more interested in their lucrative paychecks than they were in national or international events. The AVG was recruited by a desperate China which was in critical need of trained fighter pilots to counter Japanese air power. The Flying Tigers more than fulfilled expectations, shooting down 229 planes for the loss of 14 American pilots. Through it all, Claire Chennault showed himself to be as creative and inspired an air combat officer as those produced by any World War II air force. His pilots, in turn, displayed all of the flamboyance and devil-may-care attitudes associated with World War II fighter pilots. Ford originally published this monograph in 1991, but this second edition is the result of extensive research in the years between.
John R. Vallely
THE RULING CASTE: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj
David Gilmour, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007, $17, pb, 381pp, 978037453088 / Pimlico, 2007, £9.99, pb, 352pp, 9780712665650
There was a time when the mention of India, and specifically England’s administration of the Subcontinent, was a matter of pride. Such notions strike 21st-century ears as smacking of imperialism and, at worst, racism. But the author of this study will have none of it, and makes a fairly good case that England’s stewardship of India in the 19th century was one of the Empire’s greatest achievements. To modern minds, the idea that a handful of civil servants could successfully administer a nation of several hundred million in the age of the telegraph is still an astonishing achievement. Gilmour shows virtually every aspect of the
lives and works of those previously anonymous workers, and recreates the struggles within a bureaucracy adapting to the needs of the moment. In the process, he shows how their work laid the foundation for a thriving, modern, independent nation.
William Thornton
PRIVILEGE AND SCANDAL: The Remarkable Life of Harriet Spencer, Sister of Georgiana
Janet Gleeson, Crown, 2007, $24.95, hb, 420pp, 9780307381972 / Pub in the UK as An Aristocratic Affair, Bantam, 2007, £8.99, pb, 416pp, 9780553817416
Daughter of a prominent family, sister to the infamous Duchess of Devonshire, Harriet Spencer lived in a universe of sophisticated, morally lax aristocrats. The Spencers had many houses and moved effortlessly from George III’s court of George III to that of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Harriet’s husband, the awkward, reticent heir to the Earl of Bessborough, turned out to have a vicious temper. For diversion she had her children, the gaming tables, and her lovers—most of whom were politicians. Discovery of her infidelities, and her support of her equally unfaithful, profligate sister, not surprisingly added to the Bessboroughs’ marital strife.
Thomas Sheridan, the playwright, alarmed her with his intense obsession long after their physical relationship ended. The great love of her life was the handsome diplomat Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, to whom she bore children and who later married her niece. Their lengthy, intimate correspondence, which informs this biography, is a gold mine of political and social history.
Harriet witnessed several cataclysmic events—the French Revolution, an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and her daughter Caroline’s volatile passion for Lord Byron. Her life story is an absorbing read, a welcome addition to the growing list of biographies of notable, scandalous women of her era.
WEST END CHRONICLES, 300 Years of Glamour and Excess in the Heart of London
Ed Glinert, Allen Lane, £25.00/C$42.00, hb, 322pp, 9780713999006
In this, Ed Glinert describes 300 years of glamour and excess in the heart of London. Its streets and squares have been home to poets, authors and revolutionary anarchists: Casanova, Francis Bacon, George IV, Oscar Wilde, Dylan Thomas: these are but a few of the inhabitants, hedonists and revellers who have enjoyed and played in the clubs, theatres and restaurants. The bawdy atmosphere of the music hall is recreated on the page as Marie Lloyd struts her stuff with her double entendres that delighted the audiences and almost caused the theatre to lose its licence. From the seedy clubs of Soho to the luxurious hotels such as Claridges and the Dorchester, people from every walk of life have contributed to the ever-evolving story of London’s West End.
Ann Oughton
AARONSOHN’S MAPS: The Untold Story of the Man Who Might Have Created Peace in the Middle East
Patricia Goldstone, Harcourt, 2007, $26.00, hb, 344pp, 9780151011698
Those critics who ridicule novelists for creating action heroes with talents and lives that transcend those of the average person will do well to examine the biography of Aaron Aaronsohn. A Jew living in Britishcontrolled Palestine, Aaronsohn did indeed live the type of life associated with Indiana Jones and James Bond. The turbulence of the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War gave Aaronsohn the opportunity to operate an intelligence network which played a not inconsiderable role in assisting Allenby in taking Jerusalem from the Turks. His sister, Sarah, apparently won T.E. Lawrence’s heart and may have been one of the few lights that pierced the darkness surrounding Lawrence of Arabia. Aaronsohn’s real importance lay in his mapmaking abilities and the brain that allowed him to see the critical importance water would play in Arab-Jewish relations. His maps and the documentation that supported them have been lost, but Goldstone theorizes that they continue to play a central role in contemporary Middle Eastern affairs.
John R. Vallely
DOWN AND OUT IN EIGHTEENTHCENTURY LONDON
Tim Hitchcock, Hambledon Continuum, 2007, $24.95/C$30.95/£16.99, pb, 343pp, 9781852855529
In this well-researched volume, Tim Hitchcock, Professor of History at the University of Hertfordshire, offers a scholarly look at the beggars and the poor of London during the 18th century. Hitchcock explores the day-to-day life of beggars as they struggle to find the means to survive in the burgeoning city. Beggars were an integral part of society, performing the tasks and jobs that no one else wanted to do, in return for a little charity. The book seeks to give a voice to the poor and reshape how they have been portrayed by other historians in the past. This time period in London’s history is shown through their perspective rather than through the eyes of the upper classes.
Hitchcock has written an invaluable resource that is a historian’s and writer’s dream, complete with a mixture of letters, personal narratives, government documents, and illustrations. These features and Hitchcock’s writing style make this volume a treasure trove of material that brings the 18th-century London streets to life with sounds, smells, sights, and life stories. Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London is a highly recommended work.
Troy Reed
CONFRONTATION AT LEPANTO: Christendom vs. Islam
T.C.F. Hopkins, Forge, 2007, $14.95, pb, 208pp, 9780765305398
Had Lepanto taken place on land instead of at sea, Hopkins argues, its name would be much more enduring in the realms of combat. Instead,
Margaret Barr
it ranks as a pivotal sea battle and the focal point of this study of East and West. Hopkins draws attention to the contrasts between a ragtag alliance of nominally Christian powers and the Ottoman pirate navy. The book sets a scene where appearances can be deceiving, with boats loaded with oarsmen rooting for the other side. The cast of characters include the Venetians, the Hapsburgs, and a young Cervantes. The picture is wide-ranging, at times dry but brisk and comprehensive for the student or the amateur. And as with similar studies, the battle illuminates the present power struggle that in some ways mirrors its predecessor.
William Thornton
SANDHILLS BOY
Elmer Kelton, Forge, 2007, $23.95, hb, 256pp, 0765315211
Rather than being an historical novel, this is a book by and about an historical novelist. Moreover, this memoir deals with no ordinary novelist, but rather one of the most prolific and prodigious writers of the American West, Elmer Kelton. An author of over fifty books, Kelton was recently honored as the greatest Western author of all time by the Western Writers of America.
The prologue gives ample evidence of his writing skill in its almost lyrical description of his growing up on a dry and rugged West Texas ranch. Although born after the fabled settling of the West, Kelton nevertheless became acquainted with those who had achieved it. This set the stage for his novels, which consistently dismissed the mythical heroes and villains of the Old West and replaced them with the very real courageous and flawed human beings who actually lived it.
However, the rest of the book is more in the nature of a conversation with a true gentleman recalling the good old days. Kelton’s reminiscences are liberally flavored with the colorful old cowboys, writers, and journalists who gave substance to his life. Within his relatively unremarkable story are sprinkled gems of wisdom and not a small amount of advice to writers. When you’ve finished this book, you’ll feel that you’ve acquired a new friend.
Kelton’s body of work is best summed up by his characters. Rather than the seven foot tall invincible heroes of the mythical West, his are “five-eight and nervous.” The movie cowboy is John Wayne; the real thing is Elmer Kelton.
Ken Kreckel
DEAD MAN IN PARADISE
J.B. MacKinnon, The New Press, 2007 (c2005), $24.95, hb, 272pp, 9781595581815 / Faber & Faber, 2007, £8.99, pb, 272pp, 9780571231270
This book is the winner of the 2006 Charles Taylor Prize, Canada’s award for the best literary nonfiction. It’s a sad, frustrating read if you care about Central and South America, as it clearly shows the damage done through constant interference by the United States. MacKinnon is the nephew of Father James Arthur MacKinnon, a Catholic missionary
priest murdered by government soldiers in the Dominican Republic. Father James was shot during the American occupation of the Republic in 1965 because he spoke out against the terror tactics in his parish.
Growing up with the story, but not the details, which no one seemed to be able to discover, MacKinnon decided find out for himself. The book explains what happens as he travels in the Republic seeking answers. Was his uncle’s death an “orchestrated assassination,” or was it, as the then government insisted, an accidental shooting?
Father James’s story is told in short chapters between MacKinnon’s research and an excellent history of the doomed Republic. In the end MacKinnon arrives at a solution which seems to fit the events as he heard them from everyone and the medical reports of the bullet holes in his uncle’s body. With this he is content, and it satisfied this reader too.
Patrika Salmon
LOVES OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
Philip McFarland, Grove, 2007, $26.00/ C$32.50, hb, 320pp, 9780802118455
As every American schoolchild knows, or ought to know, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the great anti-slavery novel. Few, including myself, know much more about her. Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe undertakes to fill this gap.
McFarland looks not only at Stowe, but at her “loves” of the title—chiefly her family members, including Stowe’s brother, the famed preacher Henry Ward Beecher, whose notorious adultery trial is given particular attention here. We also meet Stowe’s good friend Lady Byron, whose posthumous reputation Stowe championed, resulting in controversy both in the United States and in England. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the sensation it caused are examined in depth, but Stowe’s lesser known writings (one of which, Dred, garnered fulsome praise from George Eliot) are given their fair share of attention, as are her successful reading tours. In addition, McFarland examines Stowe’s views on such diverse issues as spiritualism and women’s rights, introducing us to people such as stockbroker, free-love advocate, and presidential candidate Victoria Woodhull (whom Stowe described succinctly as “this witch”).
As a portrait not only of a fascinating woman but of a vibrant period in American history, Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe is an illuminating read.
Susan Higginbotham
HOME RUN: Escape from Nazi Europe
Jon Nichol & Tony Rennel, Viking, 2007, £20.00/C$39.00, hb, 514pp, 9780670916030
Throughout World War II a total of a quarter of a million Allied soldiers and airmen found themselves cut off, behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Europe. Soldiers were stranded on beaches after the evacuation of Dunkirk, and many airmen were shot down by flak or fighters. Separated from their units and the
support of comrades, they found themselves alone and on the run. Many were captured and became prisoners of war; between 3,000 and 5,000 evaded capture and made that home run back to Britain. They took refuge in hovels and smart city flats or swam rivers in the dark, walking hundreds of miles or risking exposure by travelling on the railways where Gestapo trawled the corridors looking for runaways. Often there was help from the Resistance, but betrayals were common.
These are the personal stories of the many who succeeded in their battle to get home, no matter what: the privations they suffered, the cold and the hunger… anything was endurable when freedom was their goal and those who made it home could give valuable information on survival to their colleagues. Exciting, devoid of sentimentality, it reads like a novel.
Ann Oughton
THE PERFECT SUMMER: Dancing into Shadow in 1911
Juliet Nicolson, John Murray, 2007, £8.99, pb, 290pp, 9780719562433 / Grove, 2007, $25.00, hb, 304pp, 9780802118462
“I have been born at the end of the age of peace and can’t expect to feel anything but despair,” E.M. Forster wrote, eulogizing the sunlit English idyll shattered by the First World War. This delightful book, written by a latter day descendant of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, renders in exquisite detail the long, unseasonably warm summer of 1911, the zenith of English Arcadia, before the storm clouds moved in. This was the summer when the Ballet Russe, starring Vaslav Nijinksy, had their celebrated London debut, when Lloyd George pushed through the National Insurance Act, and when Leonard Woolf first fell in love with Virginia Stephen. The author illuminates the lives of all social classes: royalty and union leaders; debutantes and butlers; the Bloomsbury intelligentsia and flame-haired Elinor Glyn whose novel Three Weeks, which waxed rhapsodic over the joys of making love on a tiger skin rug, became a runaway bestseller.
Juliet Nicolson’s enthusiasm about her subject matter is infectious. An exuberant book about an exuberant—and fleeting—era. Warmly recommended.
Mary Sharratt
THE MOTHER’S STORY
Julia O’Donnell, Ebury Press, 2007, £12.99, hb, 317pp, 9780091917975
The author is the mother of Irish singers Margo and Daniel O’Donnell, and this is her story of growing up on the island of Owey. The people were poor, the children went barefoot in summer, and worked hard on the small farmsteads as soon as they were old enough. In their teens they spent months away from home picking potatoes and gutting fish.
Julia married and settled on the mainland, but her husband Francie continued to work away in Scotland until he died, and Julia was left to bring up five children. When first Margo,
and then Daniel, won fame as singers her life changed dramatically and she began to mingle with celebrities, including royalty.
This is a vivid account of the hardship endured by the island folk in the first half of the 20th century, but there is no resentment at fate. The people just got on with doing whatever was necessary to survive, and they played as hard as they worked, creating enjoyment with simple pleasures. It is a story full of warmth and laughter, and the love Julia bore her parents and children shines through.
Marina Oliver
UNCOMMON ARRANGEMENTS: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles, 1910-1939
Katie Roiphe, Dial, 2007, $26, hb, 334pp, 9780385339377 / Virago, 2008, £20.00, hb, 352pp, 9781844082728
Uncommon Arrangements describes the marriages of several famous writers as works in progress. These husbands and wives struggled valiantly with their dissatisfactions with traditional marriage, each working in his or her own way to transcend the ordinary expectations of the times, often with surprising results.
The couples featured in this book are all associated with the Bloomsbury Group, writers who flourished between the World Wars. Not far removed from the Victorian era, these men and women were among the first to question the conformity of marriage, the first to try to find other ways to live. H.G. Wells was quite candid with his wife concerning his succession of mistresses, whereas Radclyffe Hall, best known for The Well of Loneliness, the first openly lesbian novel, managed to duplicate the same sad ménage of demanding mistress and disappointed wife in her lesbian affairs.
A lot of these artists manage to have a pretty good time for themselves. Vanessa Bell often had her husband, her former lover, her current lover, and his male lover over for dinner. Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murray lived like happy children, untroubled by notions of fidelity or practical concerns. Unfortunately, reality often intruded, in the shape of poverty, disease, or children.
Colleen Quinn
THE HISTORICAL EPIC AND CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD: From Dances With Wolves to Gladiator
James Russell, Continuum, 2007, $29.95/£16.99, pb, 9780826427991
This book, by a British film studies lecturer, tries to accomplish many things in its examination of the contemporary epic picture, though I wasn’t quite sure what its total aim was. A quick scan among the highest grossing movies of all time would lead one to believe the epic genre—big casts, historical plots, a dash of spectacle—is a surefire winner at the box office. The only problem is the outlay of money needed, and the sometimes risky prospects of return.
When Russell examines his six contemporary “epics,” he is informative and generous with what his information may mean. Movies are examined not just in terms of performance but cultural significance, and what they portend for the future of movies.
Perhaps my biggest quibble with the book is Russell’s sometimes dubious choices for “epic” status. While very few people would begrudge sticking Gladiator on the list, I did find my eyebrow raising a bit at The Prince of Egypt, an animated film, and The Passion of the Christ While Mel Gibson’s retelling of the Crucifixion does fit in with the historical template, it was a relatively low-budget independent film and does not fit easily into the “epic” category. The book does put its significance into context: an intensely violent movie with sometimes savage reviews that nevertheless was the highest grossing Rrated picture of all time. Hanging over the whole story is the guiding force of Steven Spielberg, whose name figures prominently in the movies discussed as well as the times that made them.
William Thornton
FEMME FATALE: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari
Pat Shipman, Morrow, 2007, $25.95, hb, 450pp, 9780060817283 / Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20.00, hb, 464pp, 9780297850748
Misperceptions about Mata Hari abound— many due to the persona that she herself promulgated with convenient lies. Though often thought to be of Indian extraction, Margaretha Zelle MacLeod was actually a young Dutchwoman married to a much older naval officer. After years in this torturous marriage, stationed with him in the Dutch East Indies, she divorced and moved to France. Here she transformed herself into Mata Hari—an exotic, sensual dancer with an insatiable sexual appetite and preference for officers. When World War I broke out, she allegedly became the most notorious double-agent in history.
Shipman attempts to clear Mata Hari, presenting evidence (some compelling, some less so) that she was innocent of espionage charges. Shipman hypothesizes that she was framed by French bureaucrats and convicted because of her unabashed sexuality and the money she accepted from men, rather than because there was concrete evidence against her. Shipman’s style is often speculative, she is righteously dismissive of previous biographers’ discernment, and she has a tendency to digress. She views events through a modern feminist viewpoint, which provides fresh insight in some cases and muddies the waters in others. With these caveats, however, this is a highly readable biography offering an interesting and, for the most part, convincing interpretation of Mata Hari’s fascinating life and tragic death.
Bethany Latham
INDIAN SUMMER: The Secret History of the End of an Empire
Alex von Tunzelmann, Holt, 2007, $30.00, hb,
416pp, 0805080732 / Simon & Schuster, 2007, 20.00, hb, 480pp, 9780743285889
Those fascinated by the turbulent history of India’s transition from colony to commonwealth and then independent nation will find much to ponder in this scrupulously researched, wellwritten work of non-fiction. Von Tunzelmann’s approach is to go deeply into the personal and political histories of the independent players: Gandhi, Jinna, Nehru, and most of all, Edwina and Dickie Mountbatten.
With a refreshing focus on the real contributions of Edwina Mountbatten, who fearlessly entered the most dangerous regions in her efforts to ensure relief to the wounded and starving, Indian Summer serves as a balance to several previous works that have lionized her husband, overlooking his failings and concentrating on his achievements.
But perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this book is von Tunzelmann’s ability to examine without sensationalism the personal relationship of Edwina and Nehru, and its place in the Mountbattens’ bizarre, open marriage. Highly recommended.
Susanne Dunlap SHAKESPEARE UNBOUND: Decoding a Hidden Life
René Weis, Holt, 2007, $32.50, hb, 416pp, 9780805075014 / Pub. in the UK as Shakespeare Revealed: A Biography, John Murray, 2007, £25.00, hb, 464pp, 9780719564185
“May” and “might” are words without which this book would not be possible. Nevertheless, the author, a professor of English at University College London, has written an eminently readable argument for his thesis. For almost as long as there has been Shakespeare scholarship, it has been received wisdom that The Bard was “Protean,” a shape-shifter. His genius was to transform the heady brew of his experience into great poems and even greater plays while remaining personally obscure.
Professor Weis thinks otherwise. A beneficiary of new archival research, and with an in-depth knowledge of the canon, Weis begins his story in Shakespeare’s boyhood Stratford, then follows his subject’s trajectory to the London stage and back again. Themes—and characters—in the plays and sonnets are clearly linked to events and people in their author’s life. Some are obvious, such as Shakespeare’s obsession with twins. Other connections were apparently shaped as riddles for reasons of policy, like a personal feud with the wealthy Lucys, or a dangerous sympathy for the thenextensive Catholic underground. Shakespeare’s affairs of the heart—his Dark Lady, and, perhaps, a homosexual passion—are likewise shown to be real people, part of the Elizabethan world.
Scholarly and speculative, I found Shakespeare Unbound to be both livelier and more engaging than Will in the World, an earlier academic journey down a similar road.
Juliet Waldron
Historical Novels Review
ISSN: 1471-7492
© 2007, The Historical Novel Society
