Reviews
N n PREHISTORIC
SHADOW VALLEY
Steven Barnes, Del Rey, 2009, $26.00/C$30.00, hb, 272pp, 9780345459039
Set 30,000 years ago in Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro region, this follow-up to Great Sky Woman has T’Cori, the heroine from the previous novel, on an important quest: to lead her people to a safe haven far from their ruthless enemies, the cruel and brutish Mk*tk. The gods tell T’Cori through dreams that the Ibandis’ only hope for survival is to follow the pathway they provide to another land and settle there. With the support of her husband, the brave and caring Frog Hopping, and the wise elder, Mother Stillshadow, T’Cori is able to lead the peaceful Ibandi tribe to the Shadow Valley, a paradise of plenty, teeming with huge herds, rippling lakes, and vast plains. But underneath the beauty exists the constant threat of the Mk*tk, determined to annihilate the Ibandi, and, from within the tribal group, a man thought dead returns to take revenge on those he deems responsible for his misery. An additional complication is the Vokka, strange, light-skinned people who control wolflike animals, and who seem to be neither friend nor foe—yet.
Barnes has written a wonderfully imaginative story of life in prehistoric Africa, with all its natural beauty and inherent dangers. His depiction of the three tribes, Ibandi, Mk*tk,
Y TUTANKHAMUN
and Vokka, are interesting and realistic, both culturally and anthropologically. His characters, including the villainous Flat Nose and the tortured Fire Ant, are well drawn, along with scenes of battles, torture and mutilation, disease, childbirth, death, and lion attacks. Certain sections may not be for the faint-hearted, but on the whole, this is an entertaining adventure of how life may have been on the African plains at the beginnings of tribal civilization.
Michael I. Shoop
mature emotionally and spiritually, confronting (however unwillingly) events leading to the eventual transformation of her faith in God. I found this enjoyable and entertaining, similar in style and tone to Biblical novels by Lynn Austin. I look forward to the next installment in the series.
Michael I. Shoop
JOURNEY TO THE WELL
Diana Wallis Taylor, Revell, 2009, $13.99, pb, 329pp, 9780800733094
BIBLICAL
N n
MICHAL
Jill Eileen Smith, Revell, 2009, $13.99, pb, 382pp, 9780800733209
Adhering closely to the traditional Bible story found in the books of Samuel, Smith places Michal, daughter of semi-mad King Saul of ancient Israel, at the forefront of this novel. At the height of the continuous war with the Philistines, the handsome shepherd-who-willbe-king David volunteers to slay the Philistine giant Goliath and is promised Saul’s beautiful eldest daughter, Merab, as a reward. Young Michal falls for the charismatic and heroic David and manipulates events to marry him herself. The king’s dangerous bouts of madness and repeated threats of violence and murder intervene to separate them for years. Saul’s death and the ensuing power struggle provide a glimmer of hope for the couple’s eventual reunion.
Smith’s Michal is passionate, courageous, and desirable, as well as selfish, jealous, and unforgiving. Written with an inspirational slant and a smooth narrative, this retelling of Michal’s life allows the reader to see her
EDITORS’ CHOICE
In a familiar New Testament story, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman by a well, speaks to her in spite of custom, and then proceeds to tell that woman her own history: That she has had five husbands and that the man she was with now was not her husband. In Journey to the Well, Diana Wallis Taylor pens an imaginative scenario for this woman’s life.
Marah’s story is a tale of woe. Orphaned young, she is forced to marry a brute instead of the young shepherd she loves. She is widowed by the age of fourteen. Following the Law, she is betrothed to her husband’s brother, but for his own reasons, he divorces her. Some joy enters her life when she encounters her shepherd again, and they are happily married. When he dies unexpectedly, she is once again forced to marry a relative—a deceitful man soon executed for murder. With a son and an elderly in-law to care for, she decides to marry a gentle merchant who offers her financial stability. He promptly goes missing, for three long years. When her husband’s half-brother arrives, he takes terrible advantage of her vulnerability. It is then, at her most sorrowful, that she encounters Jesus at the well.
Nick Drake, Bantam, 2009, £10.99, pb, 9780593054024
Thebes, 1324 BC. Tutankhamun has inherited an empire that should be at the height of power and glory. The king, only just 18 years old, faces the political conspiracies of the court and a bitter struggle for ascendancy. When his own security is threatened by an intruder in the palace, he summons Rahotep, chief detective, to track down the traitor. The detective is already involved in solving a series of brutal murders where the cryptically mutilated bodies of several young people are threatening to destabilise a ruthless regime already made precarious by corruption, dissent, the strain of distant wars, and the appalling divide between rich and poor. What he discovers at the dark heart of power will put his life and his family in grave danger.
This is the second novel featuring Rahotep, and judging by the quality of this book there will be many more to follow. The characters are well drawn and believable, and the use of the first-person narrative brings an immediacy and excitement to the book. The reader is drawn in to the culture, sights, smells, and life of ancient Egypt without being overwhelmed by pages of descriptive passages. If you like the genre, you will undoubtedly like this atmospheric and intriguing novel.
Mike Ashworth
In an unexpected twist on the usual depiction of the Samaritan woman as a creature of loose morals, Ms. Taylor portrays Marah as a Godfearing girl who, through obedience to the Law and her elders—and a terrible stretch of bad luck—,finds herself married five times and then raped. Written with passion and honesty, Journey to the Well is a heartfelt story about the difficulties of being a woman in Biblical times.
Lisa Ann Verge
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LAVINIA
CLASSICAL
Ursula Le Guin, Orion, 2009, £14.99, hb, 295pp, 9780575084582 / Harvest, 2009, $14.95, pb, 288pp, 9780156033688
The setting and characters of this novel all stem from Virgil’s poem the Aeneid. In the poem, the character of Lavinia is minor and voiceless, while here she is the narrator of her life and the events surrounding her. This is not a straightforward tale; Lavinia is aware of herself as a literary character and even meets the poet in a strange mystic dream sequence. They discuss the poem and her place within it, and the poet foretells what will happen to her, raising the question of free will versus destiny. The jumping
Classical-1st Century
around of the story from past to present to future adds to the sense of inevitability as the event is first told in prophecy, and is then experienced in the present. The mystical elements are reflected in the language with sentences such as “I am a fleck of light on the surface of the sea”.
I’m sure it’s all very deep and meaningful, but these parts for me detracted from the narrative drive. The historical details are well researched and conjure up a sense of time and place, but the endless religious rituals with sacred salt and animal slaughtering became a little repetitive, as did the chunks recounting battles, truces, and slaying. The pointlessness and casual carnage of war are clearly shown, and there are various musings on the nature of honour, the gods, and the attributes necessary for leadership. The book provides an interesting view into this ancient time and shows events from an unfamiliar and female perspective. I’m sure many would enjoy this novel, especially those who enjoy fantasy and myth, but for me, it failed to compel as much as I’d hoped.
Ann Northfield
GIVE ME BACK MY LEGIONS
Harry Turtledove, St. Martin’s Press, 2009, $24.95/C$27.95, hb, 310pp, 0312371063
Quinctilius Varus is not a natural soldier. But no upper-class Roman can refuse the wishes of the Emperor Augustus, and so when the emperor sends Varus north to bring Germany under Roman control, Varus dutifully goes.
In Germany, Roman and German soldiers alike view the other side with fear, hatred, and grudging respect. Although the two sides seem to be at a stalemate, both Varus and Arminius, the cultured son of a German chieftain, realize that Germany is slowly but steadily becoming Romanized. The difference is that Varus wants to accelerate this process, while Arminius secretly is determined to keep his people independent. Through guile, Arminius gains the confidence and friendship of Varus and leads him into an ambush that destroys three full Roman legions and ends Augustus’ hopes of a Romanized Germany.
brave but lacks empathy. However, Arminius’ deception is too prolonged. Although at the start of the novel Arminius’ hidden motives help to create an effective ominous tone, the middle of the novel drags from a lack of conflict. As a result the climax seems rather abrupt. Overall, an interesting read, but not an outstanding one.
Caitlin
Higgins
GLADIATRIX
Russell Whitfield, Griffin, 2008, $14.95/C$16.95, pb, 448pp, 9780312534882 / Myrmidon, 2008, £7.99, pb, 320pp, 9781905802098
In the first century AD, a 19-year-old Spartan, Lysandra, is enslaved after being the sole survivor of a shipwreck. In Sparta, she was raised to be a warrior-priestess. The Romans force her to become a gladiatrix. She undergoes brutal training in a school for women gladiators, finds a female lover there, and is sent to live or die in the arena.
1st CENTURY
N n
WARRIOR DAUGHTER
Janet Paisley, Penguin, 2009, £7.99, pb, 320pp, 9780141033044
In the Isle we now know as Skye, Kerrigan, Iron Age Queen of Warriors, has met a premature death. Living in a powerful matriarchy, women were highly regarded. Considered twice the value of men, they were mistresses of their own destinies, uninhibited sexually and trained in all the attributes of war. Kerrigan’s daughters, however, too young to claim leadership, have become outcasts. Skaaha, the eldest at eleven years old, leaves home with a father she did not know she had, to learn from the craft of a smith working in bronze, iron, and silver.
Janet Paisley has drawn her latest novel, Warrior Daughter, from historical legend and gleaned the early life of Skaaha from archaeological and anthropological research. The rite of passage to womanhood is convincingly written, the author seeming totally immersed in the distant world she has created. The warrior lifestyle of the Celts is well attested to by Plutarch and Tacitus; Druidic culture had only oral tradition.
This is in many ways a surprising book that totally enthrals. It is also very erotic and gives warning in its overt feminism to the male species—be aware and cautious; remember, patriarchy was only brought to Britannia by the Roman conquest.
Placing her novel in the setting where remnants of the prehistoric past remain, exchanging possible facts for mythical elements, Ms. Paisley has written a compelling story. I do not wish to detract from this but even the second Iron Age had ended by 25 BC, so why choose a birth date of 1 AD for Skaaha?
Gwen Sly
Harry Turtledove does an excellent job contrasting the cultural differences of the Romans and the Germans, in everything from their views on sexuality to their methods of farming. Historical details are presented for the most part organically (for instance, Arminius studies Roman customs and military tactics to better fool Varus and defeat the Romans). Turtledove also balances well the two main characters. Varus and Arminius are sympathetic but flawed: Varus is fair but foolish, Arminius is
Y PATHS OF EXILE
There were, as we learn from the Author’s Notes, actually were women gladiators in ancient Rome. The gladiatorial combats seem historically accurate and believable, and the book is full of well-described action scenes. Lysandra’s struggle to survive at first kept me quickly turning the pages. However, despite the fact that Howard Fast’s Spartacus is one of my favorite novels and I’m a fan of the movie Gladiator, my interest dipped by the middle of this book. My problem, I think, was mainly with Lysandra as a protagonist. For one thing,
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Carla Nayland, Quaestor2000, 2009, £9.99, pb, 221pp, 9781906836092
Paths of Exile is a wonderful story, one that conjures up this long-gone age in extraordinary detail and reveals a profound understanding of its politics, cultures, and religions based on extensive research. It may be true, as Nayland admits, that “solid facts are rare indeed in 7thcentury Britain”, but these characters—some real, others pure fiction—are so solid and credible that they will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
There will, I’m sure, be more to come, as this is just the first stage of Eadwine of Deira’s story. He and his loyal companions—Lilla, Ashere, and Drust—escape after the disastrous battle outside Eboracum (modern York) at which Aethelferth the Twister, a powerful ruler from the northern kingdom of Bernicia, routs the army led by Eadwine’s father, Aelle, contemptuously known as “Ox Brains.” Who else would relinquish a stronghold like Eboracum? Eadwine flees south, but as he knows well, there is no a safe haven if you have a price on your head—particularly when loyalty demands that he first solve the mystery of his brother Eadric’s death and then avenge it.
Nayland is an author who confidently weaves together an intricate and thrilling series of subplots, revealing more about the individuals whom Eadwine meets while in exile and the widely diverse groups that occupied areas now so familiar to us. Severa, a keenly intelligent young Christian woman and a healer whose skill exposes her to accusations of witchcraft, is a particularly unforgettable character. One controversial hurdle that Nayland has, to my mind, cleared in every respect is her wholly convincing dialogue that satisfies the modern ear while also distinguishing between the various accents and languages then in use. In all, a compelling tale and an authoritative new voice: one to watch.
Lucinda Byatt
11th Century-13th Century
she lacks a fully fleshed-out past. The warriorpriestesses of Sparta never existed. Novelists have made wilder flights of fancy than this, and those come vividly to life for the reader, but here we have a perfunctory backstory devised to explain Lysandra’s fighting spirit. Despite her bravery, I found it hard to care about her. At the beginning of this novel she is credulous and arrogant, and, as the story goes on, though she suffers, she does not change much. None of the characters has much depth.
Some readers may be put off by this novel’s explicit lesbian sex or a truly savage heterosexual rape scene, but neither goes beyond the bounds of other recent fiction. If you want action packed entertainment with a dash of historical realism, you may enjoy this book.
Phyllis T. Smith
11th CENTURY
MERCENARIES
Jack Ludlow, Allison & Busby, 2009, £19.99, hb, 380pp, 9780749007508
The Norman/French Border in 1033. Duke Robert is preparing for battle supported by his cousin Tancred de Hauteville and his sons. Tancred is hoping that Duke Robert will take the boys into his household but is sadly disappointed when he refuses point-blank to do so. When it also becomes clear that the Duke intends to name his bastard son William as his heir, the de Hauteville boys have no alternative but to make their own way in the world. Meanwhile in Italy, there is another power struggle going on. Sixteen-year-old Guaimar, heir to Salerno, vows vengeance when his father is betrayed by the Normans and sees his lands stolen by Pandulf, Prince of Capua, known as The Wolf.
The two eldest de Hauteville sons, William and Drogo, travel to Italy to enlist as mercenaries in whichever household will take them and soon find themselves in service to Rainulf Drengot.
The story continues with the paths of William and Drogo, and Guaimar and Pandulf crisscrossing across Italy. It has pace and excitement and the pages just keep turning. This was not an episode in history that I knew much about, being more familiar with the exploits of the Normans versus the English than the Normans in Italy and Sicily. This is the first book in a new series by Jack Ludlow, chronicling the achievements of the de Hauteville family, and I look forward to reading the next one.
Marilyn Sherlock
12th CENTURY
A KNIGHT’S TEMPTATION
Catherine Kean, Medallion, 2009, $8.95, pb, 388pp, 9781933836522
Lady Leona Ransley has taken responsibility for her family estate since her father is in no condition to handle affairs. When Leona brings a stolen ruby pendant to a local tavern
in order to collect the reward, she is abducted by squire Aldwin Treynarde, who is charged with returning the pendant to its rightful owner. Leona and Aldwin have a past—they met as children and were involved in a tragic accident. As the two travel the countryside on a quest to return the pendant to its rightful owner, they quickly realize that they also have a future.
Both Leona and Aldwin are a little too headstrong for their own good, and both have a strong sense of duty. Aldwin’s desire for forgiveness is the novel’s emotional center, and the love story hinges on whether Leona can forgive Aldwin—and whether Aldwin can forgive himself. Kean’s love of the era is apparent, and readers looking for medieval romantic suspense will find much to enjoy here.
Nanette Donohue
13th CENTURY
A PLAGUE OF POISON
Maureen Ash, Berkley Prime Crime, 2009, $7.99/C$8.99, pb, 291pp, 9780425226773
Maureen Ash’s Templar Knight mystery series has introduced Bascot de Marins to scores of readers in previous volumes. Her latest finds the battle-scarred veteran of Crusader warfare challenged by a series of murders by poison in and around Lincoln Castle. An intelligent and methodical man, Bascot is faced by a puzzling number of murders which seem to have no relationship to one another, but all involve the same type of poison. Called upon by the Lady Nicolaa to resolve the problem, Bascot steadily moves forward from isolating the means by
YTHE SINS OF THE FATHER
which the poison is transmitted to the inevitable confrontation with the murderer. Along the way, the reader is treated to Ash’s absolutely astonishing understanding of early 13th-entury social life and conditions. Every detail from food preparation to castle life is outlined in a manner which appears almost seamless to the 21stcentury interloper. Unfortunately, Ash is unable to inject any life into her characters. Bascot and those around him move through their world as lifeless and uninteresting actors in a drama that does not concern them. This is a shame, since it is such a contrast with the author’s brilliant eye for providing the setting in which they live.
John R. Vallely
THE REBEL PRINCESS
Judith Koll Healey, Morrow, 2009, $24.99, 384pp, 9780061673566
Healey (The Canterbury Papers/The Lost Letters of Aquitaine) brings readers the second installment of the story of Princess Alaïs Capet, sister to King Philippe Auguste of France. Set in 1207, the tale begins as the court of King Philippe is awash in conspiracies. Alaïs’s aunt, the dowager countess Constance of Toulouse, is acting secretive, the king does not know which of his ministers he can trust, and two monks dispatched by the pope in hopes of persuading the king to support stamping out the Cathars, a Christian sect in the south of France, arrive at court. King Philippe turns to his beloved sister Alaïs for advice. Alaïs vows to help her brother and uncover the mischief at court. What she really longs to do though is finally reunite with and settle down with her lover, William of Caen, and reveal to Williams’ ward, Francis, that she is his mother. The plot deepens when
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Catherine Hanley, Quaestor2000, 2009, £9.99/£14.99 (large print), pb, 200pp, 978190683 6115/9781906836122 (large print)
England in 1217 is in turmoil. Many nobles have rebelled against King John and invited the French prince Louis to take the throne. Because of John’s sudden death the year before, William de Warenne, Earl of Surrey and Lord of Conisbrough Castle in Lincolnshire, switches his allegiance away from Prince Louis and declares for the young King Henry III and his regent William Marshal. William Marshal calls for the loyal forces to muster at Lincoln, but when another lord and his retinue arrive at Conisbrough for a stopover on the way to Lincoln, there is a murder in the night.
Such a crime would normally be dealt with by Conisbrough’s bailiff, but he is mortally ill, so his son Edwin is ordered to solve the mystery within two days, before the combined retinues leave for Lincoln.
The story is mainly told from Edwin’s point of view, but there are frequent excursions into the minds of other characters. This results in the reader having more information than Edwin does, which makes it too easy to spot the murderer. The Sins of the Father is gripping, nonetheless, with interesting characters who are credibly mediaeval. The author is an academic expert on the period, but she doesn’t deliver a history lesson. Instead, we get a fascinating glimpse of how a mediaeval murder might really have been investigated. Highly recommended. Alan Fisk N n N n N n
13th
the St. John’s Cup, a relic sacred to the Cathars, is stolen. Following the cup’s disappearance, Constance is absent from court, and Francis is kidnapped. Alaïs takes matters into her own hands and devises a way to search for her son, risking her life and rebelling against William’s explicit instructions to stay at court.
The Rebel Princess is a fast-paced historical mystery with plenty of suspense and intrigue. With every turn of the page there is the threat of bloodshed due to the rising conflict between the bishops and the Cathars. Healey does a fantastic job rendering the touching story of the intense bond between Alaïs and her son. Equally compelling is the exploration of Alaïs’s regret over the harsh parting words between her and William. I am looking forward to more in this series and hope that the love story between William and Alaïs unfolds even more. A very enjoyable read.
Troy Reed
VOICES OF THE DESERT
Nélida Piñon (trans. Clifford E. Landers), Knopf, 2009, $24.95 / C$28.95, hb, 272 pp, 9780307266675
A retelling of One Thousand and One Nights, Nélida Piñon’s Voices of the Desert is concerned not with the tales but with the teller, and the effect on Scheherazade and her family of her decision to sacrifice herself to the ruler of 13thcentury Baghdad. Convinced she can entrance the ruler with her tales, Scheherazade becomes one of the Caliph’s wives in an attempt to save other young women of the kingdom. After one night with each, the Caliph executes his wives as an act of vengeance. Scheherazade succeeds in engaging the Caliph with her stories, winning another day of life for herself, and advancing her plan “to make the Caliph suffer whenever she introduces him to her creatures and he becomes a participant in the pain of others.”
Through her adventure tales Scheherazade hopes to instill compassion for his subjects in the ruler of the Caliphate of Baghdad. But the tales take a toll on Scheherazade, as do her nightly loveless couplings with the ruler. Voices of the Desert is a challenging novel, devoid of dialogue, detailing Scheherazade’s nights with the Caliph, as seen from the storyteller’s point of view and those of her family members, servant, and the ruler himself. Perhaps because of this, the story has a densely packed quality, but the exceptionally rich language of Voices of the Desert does evoke an exotic place and time long past.
Eva Ulett
insists this is best for her. She craves a last adventure and escapes her betrothal feast to join a band of traveling musicians. Never has she felt such freedom, but unease filters through her as she overhears whispered tidbits and is mistaken for someone else in the company.
Sir Hugh Douglas wants no part in hunting down his brother’s wayward heiress, but agrees to prevent a scandal. A warrior adept at mimicking others, he assumes the identity of a troubadour to travel with the musicians. Accomplishing his task proves challenging, for Jenny has stumbled on a plot that might endanger the peace between Scotland and England, and she’s determined to warn his liege lord herself.
Slow to start, this story, set in the Border region of Scotland in 1374, captivates and charms once Jenny and Hugh join the musicians. Humor, love, and tension build to the climax, where secrets and truths are revealed. This is the first in a trilogy and more of a backstory to the next title, which may explain why the ending leaves the reader feeling a bit disappointed.
Cindy Vallar
ORDER IN CHAOS
Jack Whyte, Putnam, 2009, $26.95, hb, 560pp, 9780399155772 / Harper, Oct. 2009, £7.99, pb, 400pp, 9780007207497
Early on the morning of Friday the thirteenth of October, 1307, King Philip le Bel of France descended upon every Templar house in his realm, arresting every knight. Within days, torture had wrung the confession of horrible
Y THE MAGICIAN’S DEATH
crimes from the captive men, and within years, the last Grand Master would die at the stake in Paris. This was the effective end of the order, save for mystical rumors.
In Jack Whyte’s retelling, Scottish knight Sir William St. Clair manages to save the Templar treasure and a few boatfuls of knights from their fortress at La Rochelle and bring them to safety on the Arran Islands, eventually to his family’s ancestral home at Roslin. How some few Templars lived in those dark days when every hand in Christendom was after their proud insignia is interesting to contemplate, evolving, I don’t doubt, into Scottish rite freemasonry. I was frustrated, however, by the dearth of battle scenes, for which Whyte is famous. Of course, when you’re lying low, galloping onto the field under your black-and-white banner should be avoided. Getting us up to speed on Scottish politics involves pages and pages of dull dialogue, which in the end proved unnecessary, and the sudden miraculous appearance of the defeated order on the Scottish side at Bannockburn receives but a similar cursory account. A nod to romance, possible now as monkish vows of celibacy are wiped out, is just that, an awkward nod, although it improves a little toward the end.
All in all, however, the book is worth the read to discover how those North American plants got on the walls of Roslin chapel years before Columbus.
Ann Chamberlin
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Paul Doherty, St. Martin’s Press, 2009, hb, 288pp, $24.95, 9780312565626 / Headline, 2004, £7.99, pb, 384pp, 9780755307753
The Magician’s Death is the fourteenth of Paul Doherty’s Hugh Corbett medieval mysteries. Playing on the rivalry between England’s Edward I and France’s Philip IV, Doherty draws the reader into multilayered political conspiracies that would make any spy’s heart flutter with envy.
The top layer of the intrigue surrounds Roger Bacon’s impenetrable text, the Secret of Secrets, in which both sovereigns have developed an inexplicable interest. A collaboration is arranged to attempt translation of the mysterious tome. The symposium of scholars will meet through the bitter cold winter of 1304 at remote Corfe Castle, near the coast of Devonshire.
While France’s top schoolmen puzzle over the arcane text, young women—six is the final tally—have their throats slashed, Flemish pirates are sighted too near the coast, and local bandits find a corpse hanging in the forest.
14th CENTURY
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TAMED
BY A LAIRD
Amanda Scott, Forever, 2009, $6.99/C$8.50, pb, 432pp, 9780446541374
Jenny Easdale awaits her fate—marriage to a man who wishes to possess her lands and title. Not the future she desired, but her guardian
Then, one after the other, France’s three scholars suffer unfortunate deaths. Add to the mix the mysterious Father Matthew, the castle’s chaplain, who is not what he purports to be. Corfe’s winter blizzards are a fitting metaphor for the swirl of puzzle pieces and hidden motives that confound Sir Hugh until at dawn’s first light (another apt metaphor) the pieces fall into place just in time…for an excellent climax.
The Magician’s Death is a rollicking good story, but what gives special pleasure is the gracefulness of the story’s development. It is like a finely executed dance—one scene flowing into the next, in a measured, accelerating pace to a beautifully crafted climax. It’s the work of a writer at the height of his skill. Most highly recommended!
Lucille Cormier
pregnant woman in a burning brothel!
England in the 1580s is in the midst of a security scare. The Pope has declared Holy War on Elizabeth and is infiltrating foreign-trained religious fanatics into England to carry out terrorist attacks. Anti-Catholic paranoia sweeps the country, conspiracies are everywhere, and some members of the security services resort to torture in secret prisons. Shakespeare will have none of this and of course he succeeds in thwarting the terrorists and bringing them to justice, although if Francis Drake’s wouldbe assassin had had a better aim, the outcome might not have been so fortunate.
If you enjoy the Shardlake series, you will probably like this, but it is not for the squeamish.
Edward James
SACRED HEARTS
Sarah Dunant, Random House, 2009, $25.95, hb, XXpp, 9781400063826 / Virago, 2009, £14.99, hb, 480pp, 9781844085965
In Renaissance Italy, the Council of Trent moves to purge convent life of the contamination of the outside world, the Counter-Reformation imposing further oppression on already marginalized religious communities. Meanwhile, behind the high walls and locked iron gates of the convent of Santa Caterina in Ferrara, prayer and hard work define the hours of the day, angelic voices raised in heavenly praise. Abbess Madonna Chiara ruthlessly guards her charges, juggling convent politics and secular interests on behalf of those in her care. In contrast, the piously ambitious mistress of novices, Suora Umiliana, yearns for transcendence from earthly restraints, convinced that starving the body feeds the soul.
Dispensary mistress Suora Zuana cultivates herbs to relieve the sisters’ physical suffering, conscientiously attending the newly arrived novice, Serafina, who howls against her fate, stripped of love, her future interred behind convent walls. It is over Serafina that the battle is waged, a confrontation of pragmatism and piety, the order’s law of obedience sorely tested as the novice flails against a life she has not chosen and those who would manipulate her gifts to their own ends.
Dunant treads fearlessly the terrain of the soul and the temptations of the heart, a place suffused with worship yet tainted by fanaticism, where miracles flirt with gossip, holiness riddled with human flaws. Richly nuanced characters inhabit this rarified world where the Divine is avidly pursued, each failed test a mark against the soul. Strong women beget passionate conflicts, Serafina at the heart of all, an innocent pawn hollowed by submission, broken by despair. Sacred Hearts is a harrowing excavation of spiritual conceits, a collision of body and soul, an exquisite balance of rage and ecstasy, of love and hope, of dark secrets and unexpected grace. Luan Gaines
Y THE STING OF JUSTICE
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Cora Harrison, Macmillan, 2009, £16.99/C$34.99, hb, 355pp, 9781405092272 / Minotaur, Nov. 2009, $25.99, hb, 368pp, 9780312372699
Mara, the Brehon judge, attends the funeral of a local priest little expecting that his will not be the only dead body in the church that day. Sorley Skerrett, silversmith and local mine owner, has been stung to death by bees. Mara becomes convinced that his death is no accident and is soon on the murder’s trail.
Her efforts are hampered by the multitude of suspects available, ranging from his wife, his son, and his daughter to his apprentice. Even Mara’s own fiancé might be implicated in the gruesome death. A man as unpleasant and as harsh an employer as Sorley is bound to have hidden enemies, too, and the innocent are relying on Mara to clear their names. With her superb attention to detail, Cora Harrison brings medieval Ireland into vivid life, being equally skilful at portraying the good, the bad, and the ugly. Her research appears impeccable and is always included using a lightness of touch.
Mara is up there with the great fictional detectives. Her formidable intellect is beautifully balanced by her humanity and ability to empathise even with those she dislikes. She is a creation to be proud of and one assured a long stay on my bookshelves.
Sara Wilson
THE DEVIL’S QUEEN: A Novel of Catherine de Medici
Jeanne Kalogridis, St. Martin’s Press, 2009, $24.95/C$27.95, hb, 470pp, 9780312368432
Catherine de Medici is perhaps one of the most maligned women in history. It appears, however, in Kalogridis’s deft interpretation of Catherine’s life, she was more sinned against than sinning, a political pawn in Machiavellian times. She lived much of her young childhood either a prisoner of Florentine rebels or the patsy for her manipulative family.
Much is known and written about Catherine’s attraction to and reliance on the black arts and astrology. Her confidant and astrologer, Cosimo Ruggieri, appears to have played a major role not merely in her surviving the overthrow of the Medicis, but in having shaped her major life decisions by use of talismans and much worse. Without ruining the story, suffice it to say that Catherine’s desire for children was so powerful that she was willing to do anything to make that happen—anything.
Kalogridis paints Catherine as a brilliant, tenacious, and single-minded woman who is often able to manipulate those around her to do her bidding. What Catherine often fails to see is impending betrayal. We empathize with Catherine’s ability to give her love, but there are occasions where Catherine is a tough pill to swallow.
So, too, are some of what seem to be gratuitously gruesome scenes in the novel. Without going into specifics, and giving Kalogridis the benefit of the doubt in grafting those scenes onto the plot, they merely illuminate the inhumane, sickening lack of “people value” that characterizes war and the abuse of power. That having been said, what is admirable is how Catherine stands by her husband, Henri, year
after year, tolerating his dalliances, particularly with Diane de Poitiers. She truly loves him and wants to be able to share her life with him.
Kalogridis’s Catherine is a complex, intricately drawn character. Despite the downsides to this book, it is a very good read.
Ilysa Magnus
ROYAL BLOOD
Rona Sharon, Kensington, 2009, $15.00/ C$17.95, pb, 488pp, 9780759228581
Arriving at the court of King Henry VIII in the spring of 1518, within days of one another, in fact, Michael Devereaux and Princess Renee of France have seemingly little in common. One is a newcomer, a first-time courtier, representing his benefactor, the Earl of Tyrone. His intention is to secure an appointment through knightly prowess in the Order of the Garter. The other, having grown up in the French court, is well acquainted with court intrigue and custom. She joins the English court with a secret mission assigned to her by Cardinal Medici. Events and an undeniable chemistry draw them together as they strive to attain their perhaps not altogether separate goals.
This seems to be a traditional historical, at first. Michael and Renee interact with all the usual suspects in the Tudor court as they navigate various political and social currents. Along the way, they land in the middle of the tug-of-war between the king, Cardinal Wolsey, and the Duke of Buckingham. Hints that there is more to the story than meets the eye begin to surface in the narrative about a quarter of the way through. Only after a heinous murder occurs, however, is it clear what that difference might be.
I enjoyed Royal Blood immensely. I found it fun to read, with lively dialogue and
Y THE VIRGIN’S DAUGHTERS
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Jeane Westin, New American Library, 2009, $16.00/C$20.00, 400pp, pb, 9780451226679
It seems as though everything that could be written about the Tudors has been done in recent years, with a glut of books retreading the same tales saturating the market. So it was with mild trepidation that I opened Jeane Westin’s The Virgin’s Daughters, wary yet hopeful that maybe this novel would succeed where others had become stale. After literally racing through its 400 pages, I happily breathed a contented sigh of relief that yes, indeed, this is a Tudor novel not to be missed.
The Virgin’s Daughters is actually two tales woven together by service to Elizabeth I. The first half of the book focuses on Lady Katherine Grey, sister to Lady Jane, whose illicit love affair and marriage with Lord Hertford leads to disaster when discovered by Elizabeth. Katherine’s nearness to the throne and her impetuous nature fuel this part of the story as she runs headlong past her cousin’s adamant dictate that she remain an unmarried virgin. In the second part of the novel, set almost forty years later, young Mary Rogers begins her service to Elizabeth with good intentions of remaining devotedly virtuous, yet still manages to find herself in love with one of the queen’s godsons. Though much time has passed, Mary’s story begins to echo Katherine’s; time alone will show whether or not she retains the fortitude to withstand her beloved’s advances.
Well told and well researched, this book gripped me from its earliest pages and wouldn’t let go until I’d read all the way through the reader’s guide at the end. I became caught up in the lives of these two relatively unknown ladies of Elizabeth’s court, and the way Westin ties both tales together is unique and riveting. What might have been merely two love stories truly became history brought to life. Highly recommended.
Tamela McCann
Y CITY OF SILVER
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Annamaria Alfieri, Minotaur, 2009, $24.95/C$27.95, hb, 336 pp, 9780312383862
In the 17th century, fabulous lodes of silver were mined from the area around Potosi, making the city in the mountains the richest city in the western hemisphere. As part of the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru, the wealth derived from Potosi financed Spanish colonial efforts around the world and supported the infamous Spanish Inquisition. But when the King of Spain discovers that the coins the city has been circulating throughout the world are not pure silver, the city’s very existence is threatened. His prosecutor and the Grand Inquisitor come to Potosi to uncover and punish both the counterfeiters and those who have run afoul of the Church.
Amid this tension, Inez Morada, the willful daughter of Potosi’s powerful alcalde, dies under mysterious circumstances in the convent run by Mother Maria Santa Hilda. All the signs point to suicide as the cause of death, but the abbess refuses to believe the girl would commit an act that would condemn her soul to hell and buries her within the convent. The abbess finds her own life at stake as a powerful enemy connected to the Inquisition uses that act against her and some of her fellow sisters.
Annamaria Alfieri weaves together a beautiful tapestry of life in 17th-century New Spain with amazing details; as an example, the reader learns that Spanish newlyweds consummated their marriage through a slit cut into the linen bed sheets. The author also has a great appreciation for the Indian and Spanish cultures of that time and place, as well as for the political and social nuances that made that period so intriguing. This is an engrossing, fast-paced mystery packed full of historical fact that illuminates the story but never overshadows it; a great read, highly recommended.
John Kachuba
generous detail. The relationship between the main characters, while improbable, evolved realistically.
Alice Logsdon
17th CENTURY
THE FREE NEGRESS ELISABETH
Cynthia McLeod (trans. Brian Doyle), Trafalgar Square/Black Amber, 2009 (c2008), $16.95/£11.99, pb, 496pp, 9780060822217
This semi-biographical novel is set in early 17th-century Dutch Surinam, a land as exotic, brutal, and utterly insane as any other slave society of the time. By accident of birth, Elisabeth is born free, with a wealthy white Dutch benefactor, who is also a de facto uncle. Uniquely, she is raised, educated, and adored like a white child. Intelligent and acquisitive, she creates an import business which becomes the eventual source of legendary wealth. Although jealousy, prejudice, and hatred are relentless facts of her life, what she wants more than anything is social acceptance—and the legal right to marry her white lover.
The story is meticulously researched and abundantly footnoted. The author cites much original material which had been, in succeeding centuries, swept under the (White) rug. Despite the dedication to the subject and to history, the characterization didn’t always satisfy, perhaps due to difficulties with translation. I also wished, even if it had to be fictionalized, to know more about Elisabeth’s business, and to see her more often at work upon it. While I’d recommend this to anyone interested the period or in European/ Dutch colonial history, I found the larger issues raised by the story—race, religion, gender, and the inefficiency and universal degradation that afflicts a slave-owning society—to be more interesting than the characters.
Juliet Waldron
SEA ROBBER
Tim Severin, Macmillan, 2009, £12.99, hb, 322pp, 9780230709713
The book opens with Hector Lynch, pirate and fugitive, working for a slave trader on the Guinea Coast of West Africa. While waiting for his employer to return from a slaving expedition, Hector is ambushed by a gang of sea robbers and forced to navigate them around Cape Horn. Abandoned in Peru, along with his group of close companions, Hector learns that Maria, the woman who stole his heart, is now living on the remote Thief Islands on the far side of the Pacific. He persuades a group of marauding buccaneers to sail to the remote islands with promises of unlimited gold and plunder. The voyage to reach her brings him face to face with a Japanese warlord and a Stone Age tribe whose boats can outpace the fastest galleon.
The characters are well drawn and the plot believable, but I would recommend reading the first two instalments in the series first. Although Sea Robber is the third in the Hector Lynch
Y HIGHLAND REBEL
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Judith James, Sourcebooks, 2009, $6.99, pb 450pp, 9781402224331
Set during the religious warfare in the reign of James II of England (1685-1688), this rousing historical romance pits the fearless Catherine Drummond, the daughter of a Highland laird, against Jamie Sinclair, a seasoned soldier, adventurer, and spy who lives by his wit and sword.
After Jamie impulsively marries Catherine on the battlefield to keep her from being defiled and executed by the king’s mercenaries, their lives and fortunes become entwined. Whether in the Highlands, on Jamie’s estate, or in the London court of King James, they navigate through intolerance and ever-shifting political and personal alliances of Restoration England, Jacobite Scotland, and Ireland. They grow to respect, protect, and love each other over the course of adventures that test friendship, family ties, and intimacy.
Highland Rebel represents the best of the genre: carefully researched, with complex, compelling characters and a good, galloping plot that, despite a slightly sagging middle, is sure to please. Upscale historical romance at its best! Highly recommended.
LADY OF THE BUTTERFLIES
Fiona Mountain, Preface, 2009, hb, £12.99, 400 pp, 9781848091641
Eileen Charbonneau
After Cromwell, 17th-century England has entered a time of enormous changes. Politics are driven by the intense demands of religion and commerce. In the great maritime city of Bristol, ruthless men of business are intent on draining the peat moors of Somersetshire and turning the land over to farming. The inhabitants should gain in health and comfort but are dead set against losing their way of life. Over many generations they have gained knowledge and expertise, using their environment to the greatest advantage.
Eleanor Goodricke, lady of the manor of Tickenham, loves her changeable, water-filled land of wide skies, streams and springs, causeways, and bog and marsh, home to an extraordinary variety of wildlife. For Eleanor that means her lifelong obsession of the beauty and mystery of butterflies, which she identifies, names, and collects. Her struggle to protect her moorland brings powerful enemies and, ironically, hostility and suspicion from her tenants: a woman who chases after butterflies must at best be insane, at worst a witch.
Adored by her malleable husband Edmund and tantalised by Richard Glanville, her beautiful prince of darkness whose temperament matches her own sensuality, she finds that only James the London apothecary understands her restless spirit. When she seems to have lost everything, he points out the dangerous and difficult path she must take. Sadly, her own kinsmen have proved to be her worst enemies.
A serious and impressively researched work of exciting historical fiction that gathers momentum after a slow-paced start up to a thrilling finale.
Nancy Henshaw
THE FRENCH MISTRESS: A Novel of the Duchess of Portsmouth and King Charles II
Susan Holloway Scott, New American Library, 2009, $15/C$18.50, pb, 400pp, 9780451226945
Susan Holloway Scott’s latest novel revolves around the life of the controversial and muchmaligned Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, lover of King Charles II. Like many other well-born girls, she is sent to the glittering royal court of Louis XIV to make her fortune as maid of honor to the English Princess Henriette. During her service to the princess, Louise is initiated into her mistress’s innermost confidence, wherein lie ugly and treacherous secrets. After the princess’s mysterious death, Louise is sent to the English court, where she had previously caught the lustful eye of King Charles II. Her dual roles as spy for the French king and lover to the English king cause Louise many perils, but in the midst of it all, she uses her wit and ambition to create her own destiny in a dangerous dance of intrigue between two kings—and two countries.
This is the first of Susan Holloway Scott’s novels I’ve had the pleasure of reading, and it won’t be the last. Her grasp of period detail is impressive and colorful. She fleshes out these well-known historical figures’ psyches so they become alive and human, and her words evoke the senses—one can feel silk and wool against skin, experience the discomfort from long hours of standing in an overheated ballroom, and witness the first shocking view of London from a Frenchwoman’s perspective. She expertly weaves the complex political events of the time into the flow of the story, which makes for a thoroughly entertaining, enjoyable, and intellectually stimulating read. Highly recommended.
Andrea Connell
series, it is the first that I have read and I found myself at a distinct disadvantage. References to previous adventures help to move the plot along but do not clarify how and why Hector and his companions have got to where they are. The world of 17th-century sailing with dangers of shipwreck, scurvy, and casual deadly violence is effectively portrayed.
Mike Ashworth
18th CENTURY
THE CAVALIER OF THE APOCALYPSE Susanne Alleyn, Minotaur, 2009, $24.99, hc, 304pp, 0312379889
The story begins prophetically on All Hallows Eve, 1785, as Aristide Ravel, an impoverished young political writer, wanders into the scene of a fire set in the small Parisian church of St. Médard. In this prequel to Susanne Alleyn’s Game of Patience (2006) and A Treasury of Regrets (2007), it is over the curious pattern of charred debris at the altar of St. Médard’s that Ravel first meets his future cohort, Inspector Brasseur.
Two months later the curious pattern is repeated in the churchyard of St. André des Arts, scene of a grizzly murder, the victim unidentified but clearly a wealthy man. Brasseur suspects Ravel and forces him into the role of investigator to avoid arrest. Over a period of eight days the investigation moves nonstop. The corpse, still unidentified, is stolen from the morgue. There are signs of Masonic intrigue and political plots at the highest levels. Ravel’s investigation takes him to the Royal Veterinary School and Honoré Fragonard’s Le Chevalier de l’Apocalypse, his ghoulish écorché masterpiece—a dried, preserved horse and rider—which turns out to be the key to the mystery.
Reading The Cavalier of the Apocalypse is like being in France just before the Revolution. Ms. Alleyn has managed to capture the spirit of the time in the angry squalor of the poor against the backdrop of titled privilege. But the story is not a social commentary—it never stops being a splendid mystery, packed with historical detail, red herrings, surprising twists, and even a little romance. If this is your first Aristide Ravel mystery you will want to dive into the sequels as soon as you can—promise.
Lucille Cormier
THE BROTHERS BOSWELL
Philip Baruth, Soho, 2009, $24.95/£16.99, pb, 336pp, 9781569475591
In 1763 John Boswell, brother of writer James Boswell, stalks his older sibling down the Thames with sinister intent. John has recently been released from a Plymouth mental hospital and accuses his brother of hiding him from his esteemed friends—most notably his new friend, the author of the famous dictionary, Samuel Johnson. Both Boswell boys grew up in Scotland reading the dictionary and playing word games with the definitions. James now
seeks acceptance as a writer in England. His incredible charm fascinates the literary giant, Johnson, and John is desperate to join their inner circle. With madness always lurking in his fevered mind, John packs two golden pistols and plans to kidnap both men to demand retribution.
The river excursion and kidnapping frame flashbacks into John’s boyhood and troubled relationship with his brother. Part of the story is told from James’s point of view, which helps illuminate his struggles in London society. James Boswell will go on to fame as the biographer of Samuel Johnson. This novel’s prose is beautiful, never plodding and shows what good writing can accomplish. The dénouement is dragged out a little too long, however. An author’s note is needed at the end to explain which details are true events and which are not, but the novel is a literary excursion in itself.
Diane
Scott Lewis
THE TORY WIDOW
Christine Blevins, Berkley, 2009, $15.00, pb, 384pp, 9780425226018
The widow Anne Merrick, virtually sold into marriage with a much older man, runs a print shop and coffee house in colonial New York on the eve of the Revolution. A Tory because of her late husband’s sympathies, she must bend and sway with the changing fortunes of her city to keep herself and her business intact.
At first, keeping to the familiar Tory ways, she attracts the notice of a rebel, Jack Hampton— who burst into her wedding ceremony ten years earlier and gave her an exuberant and thrilling kiss. Now, however they are on opposite sides, as he goes undercover to help the rebel cause when General Howe’s army sends Washington’s rebels into retreat. But as time passes and Anne’s brother enlists in Washington’s army, Anne becomes caught up in the cause and does her own dangerous part in helping the Continental Army.
It’s always a pleasure to read a really wellresearched novel that takes you into a period in history in a way that illuminates it or brings a new perspective to historical events. Blevins has truly mastered her subject matter, with a tone and attention to details of speech and expression that feel authentic and draw the reader into the period and the story.
At its best in the scenes of action and adventure, where pages go by quickly as scenes are brought to life with evocative language and unerring syntax, The Tory Widow starts a little slowly, weighed down by a preponderance of adjectives. But this is a small fault in an otherwise engaging book, with a strong main character and just enough romance.
Susanne Dunlap
French Revolution, Christophé St. Laurent’s entire family is guillotined at the behest of Maximilien Robespierre. Barely escaping from Paris with his life, Christophé flees to Carcassonne, in the south of France. For five years he lives alone, in constant fear of discovery and denunciation. As he wanders through the cemetery early one morning, he encounters a pregnant woman mourning at her husband’s grave. Her name, Scarlett, suits her vivid personality, and soon Christophé falls in love. Shocked by his discovery that Scarlett’s deceased husband was Robespierre’s nephew, he packs his dagger and heads for Paris. When Scarlett grasps that Christophé plans to avenge his family, she follows him north.
Much of the excitement in this novel is created at the expense of historical authenticity (the St. Laurents are executed, without trial, on a portable guillotine brought to their own home) or practical reality (Scarlett is eight months pregnant when she blithely travels the 500 oftenmountainous miles from Carcassonne to Paris), but these lacks may be overlooked in a novel essentially about faith, love, and forgiveness. The inventive plotting of Love’s First Light will entertain the many fans of Carie’s inspirational fiction.
Nancy J. Attwell
SALLY HEMINGS
Barbara Chase-Riboud, Chicago Review, 2009 (c1979), $14.95/C$16.95, pb, 371pp, 9781556529450
I am old enough to remember the furor this book caused when it first came out in 1979, presenting in novelized form the thesis that Thomas Jefferson had a long-time liaison and numerous children by his slave Sally Hemings. Since that time, DNA studies have confirmed the connection, which was ardently denied by staunch Jefferson defenders then and still today. Details of these conflicts as well as a helpful family tree appear in a new afterword by the author along with Reader’s Questions which will make this new edition even more useful for today’s readers.
day messes are anonymous, not tied to us in webs of family and childhood play, and so we feel no responsibility to sit with them as they die.
Ann Chamberlin
SURRENDER THE WIND
Rita Gerlach, Abingdon Press, 2009, $13.99, pb, 381pp, 9781426700729
Revolutionary War veteran Seth Braxton loses his father in America and his grandfather in England, thus inheriting estates in both lands. Although he does not want his English manor, Seth travels there to reunite with a younger sister, who lived with his grandfather. Seth quickly falls for his sister’s friend, Juleah, and they marry. But an old flame of Juleah’s kidnaps her and ships her to America, covering his tracks by burning down Seth’s home. Believing Juleah dead, Seth goes back to Virginia where he discovers her alive. The couple returns to England where Juleah is kidnapped again by the same villain and Seth comes to her rescue.
Although marketed as Christian romance, Surrender the Wind is more like a Victoria Holt gothic romance with stock protagonists, an amber-eyed damsel in distress and a handsome nobleman with an air of danger about him. The plot is likewise formulaic in that the nobleman lusts for the heroine, often happening upon her in states of undress, falls in love with her, and then rescues her from a lecherous man. In addition, this novel suffers from poor editing and is riddled with historical errors and plot flaws. For example, Seth wears a black crepe mourning armband, a Victorian fashion. Seth’s friend claims to be “not rich” even though he has an income of £2000 per annum. And everyone in the novel can tell that Seth is an American by his accent, even though the American accent was not considered unique until the middle of the 19th century.
Patricia O’Sullivan
WIND OF THE SPIRIT
J.M. Hochstetler, Sheaf House, 2009, $13.99, pb, 368pp, 9780979748530
LOVE’S FIRST LIGHT
Jamie Carie, B&H, 2009, $14.99, pb, 320pp, 9780805448139
In 1789, during the opening weeks of the
I didn’t read this book when it first came out, but I’m glad to have done so today. Although sometimes weighted down by a history we all know, or think we know, this novel nonetheless demonstrates the power of fiction to put forth historical facts in a way that scholarly articles cannot. The story of the Hemingses was floating around in scholarly journals and yet did not become widely known—or widely objected to—until this story portrayed the woman “as a person with actual thoughts and conflicts,” as another reviewer has said. This is the power of fiction to offend the creators of larger-than-life heroes of any stripe, but particularly those who deny the paradoxes upon which our country is built. Fiction can offend where nonfiction cannot. It also brought to my mind the dubious nature of “freedom,” of monetary relationships where the people who clean up all our present-
In book three of the American Patriot series, Elizabeth Howard continues posing as a Tory by day and transforming into a male Rebel spy at night. In her breeches role, she escapes capture with the rest of the Rebel troops after their defeat in the Battle of Brooklyn. But Elizabeth’s main preoccupation is her sweetheart, General Jonathan Carleton, who was sent west to treat with the Indians and hasn’t been heard from for months. Elizabeth joins an expedition to the Ohio country to find him, only to learn that Jon, now the Shawnee war chief White Eagle, may not be so eager to return to the white world.
I haven’t been able to “buy” Jon’s triple change of allegiance. He begins as a British officer in the first book, changes to the Rebel side, and then once among the Shawnee, fights the white settlers he was formerly defending as a Rebel officer. Hochstetler lets the reader inside
Jon’s head, but I still didn’t find the situation believable. Some purple prose passages may prove distracting: “he at last surrendered to slumber.” A positive is that the series is set in one of the less “sexy” time periods for historical fiction.
B.J. Sedlock
THE TIDE OF WAR
Seth Hunter, Headline Review, 2009, £19.99, hb, 344pp, 9780755343089
1794. A French frigate is causing trouble in the Caribbean. The British have a frigate there, too, but she has lost her captain in decidedly strange circumstances. Newly promoted Nathan Peake is sent to take command, unravel the mystery of what happened to his predecessor, and of course eliminate the French ship.
The first third of the book is background. It takes forever to actually reach the Caribbean but things pick up as soon as we arrive, although the emphasis is on character rather than action. There are lots of coincidences and Peake makes some decidedly dodgy decisions. Mr. Hunter has a wonderful knack for painting interesting characters, but unfortunately its main effect is to make the hero seem pallid in comparison. Still, there is a lot of tension and a good air of mystery, and I wanted to know how it all ended.
Martin Bourne
DUCHESS BY NIGHT
Eloisa James, Hodder, 2009, £7.99, pb, 406pp, 9780340961087 / Avon, 2008, $7.99, pb, 384pp, 9780061245572
Harriet, the Duchess of Berrow, has led a life of quiet rural seclusion since the suicide of her husband, Benjamin, and is ready for some fun. On a whim she agrees to masquerade as a man during a decadent house party held at the country home of Lord Strange.
For the first time in her life, Harriet feels properly alive, attractive, and witty and all because of her newfound friendship with Lord Strange himself. Mixing with actresses, scientists, gamesters, and politicians is bound to be a dangerous game, but Harriet excels at it until she finds herself falling in love. Then she must decide whether to stay a man and deny her love or declare her true identity and risk losing her heart.
Duchess by Night is the third in a racy new series of novels all featuring the “Desperate Duchesses,” and what a triumph it is. Characterised by its wit, charm, and downright sexiness, this is a historical romance to give its pallid competitors a proper run for their money.
Stuffed full of nubile ladies, cads in tight breeches, swordplay, gambling, and seduction, it is cheeky, ever so slightly camp, and the most charming romance I’ve read in years. And if that sounds too frivolous then don’t be fooled—this is no old school historical novel with essentially modern characters simply dressed in period costumes. Eloisa James knows her history and is canny enough to ground her plot firmly in the
Y THE DEVIL’S COMPANY
EDITORS’ CHOICE
David Liss, Random House, 2009, $25.00, hb, 384pp, 9781400064199
Fans of David Liss’s Benjamin Weaver series will not be disappointed by his latest installment. Benjamin Weaver makes his living as an independent thief-taker, detective, bodyguard, and sometimes thug. But after a seemingly simple job goes wrong, he is forced to work for the mysterious Jerome Cobb, who has threatened to ruin Weaver’s family and friends if he does not comply.
Filled with Dickens-like characters and descriptions of London’s dangerous back streets, The Devil’s Company finds Weaver forced into the heart of the British East India Company where he must negotiate a world of foreign spies, corporate secrets, and deadly rivals. At the heart of this tale is the Company’s attempt to remain the primary importer of textiles despite growing competition from France and the American colonies, the machinations of Indian suppliers to secure a more equitable relationship with the Company, and Parliament’s attempts to protect the British wool industry.
Liss’s ability to slip into the story historical tidbits and lessons in 18th-century manners, fashion, and commerce is masterful, as it neither feels pedantic nor contrived. Also, his period vocabulary is authentic without being archaic. But what makes the Benjamin Weaver series so compelling is the protagonist himself. Born in London to PortugueseJewish parents, Weaver stands between two cultures, often defying the expectations of both of them while trying to figure out his place in the world. This is a character Liss’s readers admire for his uncommon streets smarts, but care about because of his personal struggles with religious bigotry and difficult relationships with his family and his people.
Patricia O’Sullivan
late 18th century.
Fabulous fun and highly recommended. Sara Wilson
THE COUNTERFEIT GUEST
Rose Melikan, Sphere, 2009, £19.99, hb, 408pp, 9781847441355 / Touchstone, 2009, $15.00, pb, 432pp, 9781416560876
This, the second in the Mary Finch series (the first reviewed in HNR 44) sees our redoubtable heroine immersed in yet another, somewhat unlikely Adventure (with a capital A) set in the last years of the 18th century.
Mary is now the owner and mistress of White Ladies, a substantial property on the Suffolk coast. When she has suspicions about the activities of Colonel Crosby-Nash, the new husband of her good friend Susannah, Mary is recruited by the shadowy intelligence agencies of Britain to stay at their house in Kent and spy on Crosby-Nash. Meanwhile, Captain Holland, Mary’s love interest from the previous novel, maintains his somewhat ambiguous passions for Mary (reciprocated, but not acknowledged) and is likewise involved in nefarious activities in preventing mutiny and sabotage against the British Army, fomented by France and involving the arch-cad Crosby-Nash. This all comes together in a thrilling but rather far-fetched conclusion, in which Mary plays the role of brave heroine, with a huge hand from Holland.
This is good historical fiction with a racy and enjoyable plot based upon a core of actual events, though I do not feel that the book has quite the same panache and appeal as the volume.
Doug Kemp
KILL-GRIEF
Caroline Rance, Picnic, 2009, $10.00, pb, 371pp, 9780955861345
‘Kill-grief’ is 18th-century cant for gin, and this novel certainly is awash with the stuff. Mary arrives in Chester in 1756 to work as a nurse in a newly established infirmary for the poor. However, her secret purpose is to help her smuggler husband who is awaiting trial for murder. This task is complicated by her passion for the Squire, a thief-taker, who has turned her husband in for a reward, and also by her growing infatuation with the infirmary’s alcoholic porter. Seeking comfort from the blood, stench, and filth of her job and the horrors of her husband’s gaol, she relies on gin. There are many twists and turns to the plot and many, often colourful, characters are involved. At times the novel is confusing, yet Rance skilfully pulls all the threads together for a surprisingly heartening conclusion.
Her research is thorough and her sense of period excellent. But the grim reality of 18thcentury urban life is pictured in such sordid detail that it can become monotonous. Disease and deformity, squalor, decay, and cruelty threaten to lose their impact through overuse. However, the dialogue is particularly good—colourful but never obscure. Even better, although Mary is strong (when nowhere near a gin bottle) and ambitious, she is never a 21st-century girl dressed in 18th-century rags. Unfortunately, drunks do tend to be bores and this reader often longed for Mary and her porter to go on the wagon. This first novel is not a comfortable read, nor
encounters an unlikely ally in the form of notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, himself no stranger to homoerotic desire. Moved by pity, fascination, and his own dark designs, Crowley lures MacDonald into the depths of sin, claiming that the only path to redemption is through damnation. After secretly dosing the general with a hallucinogenic drug, Crowley guides the taciturn Scotsman on a stygian odyssey through the fleshpots of Paris.
Under sway of the drug, MacDonald relives his glorious victories in the Sudan where he fell painfully in love with one of his Abyssinian soldiers, a former jihadiyya, or holy warrior, forced to fight on the side of the British infidels. The devil’s paintbrush of the title is the newly invented automatic machine gun which, in the mind of MacDonald’s lover, is bringing about the End of Days foretold by Mohammed. Later, serving in South Africa, MacDonald finds himself herding Boer families into the world’s first concentration camps. These flashbacks force him to realise that he lost his soul years before Crowley escorted him to his first black mass.
This powerful and highly intelligent novel echoes Joseph Conrad in heralding the 20th century’s heart of darkness: a godless epoch ruled by selfish lusts, diabolical weaponry, swastikas, and death camps. A highly recommended, sobering read.
Mary Sharratt
JULIA AND THE MASTER OF MORANCOURT
Janet Aylmer, Harper, 2009, $14.99, pb, 224pp, 9780061672958
After her brother is killed in the Napoleonic Wars and her family loses its fortune, Julia Maitland’s mother wishes her to marry Dominic Brandon, the elder son of an earl, a wild young man who prefers to live the high life in London with his lower-class mistress. Julia’s ailing father would rather that she consider Jack Douglas, the son of a self-made man and neighbor of the Maitlands in rural Derbyshire. On a visit to the Douglas family, Julia is drawn not to Jack, who cares for nothing but horses and farming, but to his younger brother Kit, who shares her love of books. Later, while Julia visits her aunt in Bath, she discovers that Kit has inherited the estate of Morancourt in Dorset from his childless godmother and taken her family name. She and her aunt visit Kit at Morancourt, where Julia and Kit discover that a ring of smugglers has been using the farm buildings. Will they succeed in tracking down the smugglers and finding happiness together?
Aylmer, author of Darcy’s Story, a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, has written a delightful Regency romance with a strong-minded, intelligent heroine, which should appeal to fans of Jane Austen.
Vicki Kondelik
SEDUCING AN ANGEL
Mary Balogh, Bantam Dell, 2009, $22.00/ C$26.00, hb, 339pp, 9780385341059
In this fourth Regency romance series starring the Huxtable family, Stephen Huxtable, unattached youngest and only son, gets the spotlight. Set two years after the marriage of Meg, our favorite golden-haired angelic man becomes the perfect target for Cassandra Belmont, a destitute widow who allegedly murdered her husband. In town hoping to find a wealthy, wellborn lover, Cassandra wants someone to support her while she pieces her life back together. Setting her sights on Stephen, Cassandra soon learns that heartless seduction is not easy when Stephen pronounces he will not accept a mistress, but only a friend and a wife. While not as sparkling as her Slightly series, the Huxtables still contain Balogh’s trademarks: flawed yet engaging characters and a charmingly alluring storyline. Delving into deeper themes, including alcoholism and domestic violence, this series rings slightly modern. But with her adept skill and creative storytelling, Balogh still manages to create a passionate love story that dazzles. Seducing an Angel is a fine addition to the series, and fans will hope to see cousin Con Huxtable’s story next.
Rebecca Roberts
CROOKED MILE
Ben Beazley, Picnic, 2009, £9.99, pb, 448pp, 9780955861352
The wages due to the Irish navvies digging a cutting for the Kelsford Canal are snatched, then one of the crooks is murdered and the money disappears. Detective Tom Norton investigates. There are multiple strands in this closely plotted thriller set in the 1880s. The thieves work for the Fenian Irish Brotherhood, with its connections to New York gangsters. A wealthy widow, Ruth Samuels, is involved with helping persecuted Jews escape from Tsarist Russia. Among them is a Latvian anarchist eager to purchase guns from the Irish, who stays in Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel. Then there are the local businessmen constructing financial frauds. It is a heady brew.
The author makes the most of copious historical research, and his fertile imagination in constructing minutely detailed backgrounds for even minor characters has to be admired. The tendency, however, of giving elaborate and often irrelevant biographies when any new characters are introduced breaks into the flow and pace of the story. I frequently think many novels would be improved by judicious pruning, and most of these mini-life histories could with benefit be cut. So could much of the background detail, though in among this ostensibly full account there is deliberate and misleading selection. A few hints to prepare readers for the final twist dénouement would have made the story more skilful.
Marina Oliver
RIO CHAMA
Johnny D. Boggs, Five Star, 2009, $25.95, hb, 224pp, 139781594147371
New Mexico Territory in the 1890s was as wild as the West could be with gunslingers, cattle rustlers, and hostile Indians, trying to outsmart, outsteal, and outshoot each other. Three-time Spur Award winner Johnny D. Boggs captures the excitement and drama of those times in the story of notorious gunman Britton Wade’s attempt to bring to justice a young man convicted of lynching a priest.
But the murderer, Jeremiah Cole, is the son of Senator Robert Cole, the most powerful man in New Mexico Territory. The senator has no intention of letting his son hang for killing the priest, despite the fact that young Cole admitted to the crime. Why would a man like Wade— an outlaw and dying consumptive—risk the senator’s wrath to bring Cole to Chama where he is sentenced to hang? As Wade’s story unfolds, it becomes clear that there is more than simple justice at stake. Ultimately, the story becomes that of a man’s search for redemption for a life lived badly and for a restoration of a faith he thought he had lost long ago. Rio Chama is an engrossing Western with several surprising twists and well worth the read.
John Kachuba
OSCAR WILDE AND THE DEAD MAN’S SMILE
Gyles Brandreth, Touchstone, 2009, $24.00, hb, 368pp, 9781439137284 / John Murray, 2009, £16.99, hb, 384pp, 9780719569807
Oscar Wilde sails back to Europe after one of his visits to the United States, where this latest mystery begins to unfold with the death of an obnoxious poodle. Most of the story takes place in Paris among the theater circles, where Oscar is assisting with an adaptation of Hamlet for the French stage. With the death of the star’s dresser, the theater family staging the play appears to be as cursed as that of the Danish prince. While Oscar and his friends investigate the events, the actors and actresses, including the Divine Sarah (Sarah Bernhardt), indulge themselves in the “art of life.” My favorite line “Darjeeling tea and Swiss absinthe, cucumber sandwiches and pipes of hashishin were served,” illustrates this rather well. Crossing the strata of society at will allowed Oscar Wilde unique perspectives during this period of his life and this makes for another vastly entertaining novel among the rich, the artistic, the working classes, and the outcasts.
Mary K. Bird-Guilliams
DARCY AND ANNE
Judith Brocklehurst, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2009, $12.99, pb, 190pp, 9781402224386
Readers of Pride and Prejudice will remember that Darcy had a cousin called Anne de Bourgh, daughter of the formidable Lady Catherine. They will also remember her as a sickly, unattractive little thing that her mother hoped would catch Darcy’s fancy. But suppose she had
the opportunity to spread her wings and flourish?
In this delightful sequel to the great novel, Anne gets the chance to do just that. En route to Pemberley for a visit there is an accident that leaves Lady Catherine laid up at an inn. Anne has to get word to her cousin, and thus begins a remarkable transformation leading to love and more. I’ve read other Pride and Prejudice sequels but this is one of my favourites for several reasons. I enjoyed the way in which it concentrated on a minor character rather than the further adventures of the more major ones only, as most of the sequels seem to. Nor does it tell the story we already know from another character’s perspective, but builds cleverly on what is already there and takes it in a different direction. Here, too, is an author who can tell her tale in a suitable voice, and in remarkably few pages while filling those pages up with enough incidents to satisfy the reader. I will be looking out for more from this author, and if you enjoy Regency romances you will surely enjoy this one.
Rachel A Hyde
THE
STREETS OF BABYLON: A London Mystery
Carina Burman, Marion Boyars, 2008, $16.95/£7.99, pb, 468pp, 978071453180
Renowned Swedish mystery author Euthanasia Bondeson and her companion, Agnes, travel to England to spend a season enjoying the Great Exhibition of 1851 and surrounding London. Euthanasia is not your ordinary 19th-century lady; refusing to be confined to a woman’s role in her society, she sometimes wanders the evening streets wearing men’s clothing and smoking the best of Cuban cigars. In contrast, her companion, Agnes, is rather unassuming yet beautiful with a penchant for getting lost.
At first her second disappearance within one week of their London tour is mildly troubling to Euthanasia, who diligently searches for her friend but at the same time continues to carry out her social obligations and touring schedule with some fascinating people in her new social and detective world. They include the debonair Indian swooner, Professor Devindra, who with each successive meeting has more than casual conversation in mind with Euthanasia. You’ll also meet the painter Sir Edmund, whose constant lectures on art and culture repulse our heroine and whose secrets seem to frighten his timid wife. However, it is the indomitable Inspector Evans who captures our heroine’s mind and heart as they explore the mystery of seven other rapidly disappearing, attractive, young women from the London scene and the murder of other unfortunate young ladies.
Simple but elegant jewelry, outrageously fierce statues of Eastern and Greek gods and goddesses, the terrifying streets of the more sordid sections of London, the secret behind some supposedly innocent paintings, and much more combine to mold this cleverly plotted, always thrilling mystery which remains
Y THE CHILDREN’S BOOK
EDITORS’ CHOICE
A.S. Byatt, Chatto & Windus, 2009, £18.99, hb, 617pp, , hb, 9780701183899 / Knopf, Oct. 2009, $26.95, hb, 688pp, 9780307272096
This long-awaited novel, A.S. Byatt’s first since 2001, is extraordinarily difficult to encapsulate and to do full justice to within the confines of this short review. It straddles the last five years of the 19th century and the period leading up to the First World War, narrating the various stories of a related group of disparate intellectuals, writers, artists, and bohemian folk associated with the Arts & Craft movement. The novel allows numerous readings and interpretations. It is a splendid historical novel, a family saga, a study of a cultural and artistic movement, as well as a gimlet look at society and family politics, of sex, betrayal, and fidelity and the importance of one’s past and one’s parents to shape a life—as Philip Larkin so pungently observed. It is narrated with the same element of eccentricity that the characters display; it is detailed and slow-paced. Artistic endeavours and clothes are described in minute detail and the historical content is comprehensive and impressive in its depth and accuracy.
I will not attempt to describe the plot, for it is too ramified to adequately summarise. Save that Byatt gets the reader to care passionately about her large cast of characters and what happens to them, and the ending is moving and sobering. The children’s author Olive Wellwood is based very much on E. Nesbit and her complicated domestic arrangements, and Eric Gill can be seen in the eccentric potter Benedict Fludd and his sexual peccadilloes.
Occasionally basic history is dumped somewhat awkwardly on the narrative and there a few typographical errors; Rupert Brooke is described as being “beautiful” on a number of occasions within a few pages. But this does not detract from the delights of reading this challenging and demanding book—a work that demands time and dedication from the reader and repays it fully.
impossible to solve until the very last pages (no sneak peeks, please)! While certain elements within the tale seem rather contrived, these parts admittedly fit well into what is a light-hearted yet captivating and enjoyable read.
Viviane Crystal
McNAUGHTEN
Sian Busby, Short Books, 2009, £14.99, 475pp, 9781906021054
It is 1843, a time of intense agitation about the Corn Laws. Sir Robert Peel’s private secretary is shot and dies, and a Scot, Daniel McNaughten, is charged and tried. His defence leads to the drafting of the McNaughten rules on guilt and insanity. The author has researched the subject intensively and provides convincing detail of London life. She follows the initial shooting, investigation, and trial and includes the early life of McNaughten.
Busby’s non-fiction is well regarded but, though this is a clever pastiche, as a novel it did not work for me. I rarely give up on novels but this time was tempted for several reasons. There are so many characters of equal importance, yet there were none to empathise with. The copious punctuation and the author’s often seemingly random use of dashes, ellipses, italics, and parentheses is so obtrusive it distracts from rather than illuminates the sense. The narration, written in a number of third person viewpoints, incorporating different voices, using dialect and
Doug Kemp
phonetics, draws attention to the style rather than the content and, incidentally, refutes the cover suggestion of it being written by one of the characters.
If you enjoy detailed discussions about obscure arguments for and against the Corn Laws, you will appreciate this book. For my taste there was rather too much detail that was irrelevant to the plot.
Marina Oliver
THE BELLY DANCER
DeAnna Cameron, Berkley, 2009, $14.00, pb, 311pp, 9780425227787
At the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, young wife Dora Chambers hopes that her appointment as one of the Fair’s Lady Managers will impress her emotionally distant husband and gain her approval from the matrons who rule Chicago’s high society. But when Dora’s given the task of ensuring that the Egyptian belly dancers observe proper modesty and decorum in their act, she finds the exotic, passionate life of the dancers strangely compelling. When her attempt to gain her husband’s love fails, and a secret from her past threatens her position in society, Dora must make a choice between respectability and freedom.
Although The Belly Dancer has an intriguing premise, and although the author clearly did a great deal of research on the Fair, her handling of the time period and its historical details is
unconvincing. The descriptions of the clothing are awkward and inaccurate, and the author’s grasp of Chicago society is shaky at best. (A young matron being introduced to Mrs. Potter Palmer on the street does not curtsey! And we don’t have “women of rank” here either.) I would also have liked a great deal more about the belly dancing and the dancers. I was deeply disappointed in this book.
India Edghill
REMARKABLE CREATURES
Tracy Chevalier, HarperCollins, 2009, £15.99, hb, 324pp, 9780007178377 / Dutton, 2010, hb, $25.95, 9780525951452
In this novel, Tracy Chevalier turns her novelist’s eye to the life of Mary Anning who, although reasonably well known as a pioneering fossil hunter, has never received the attention she deserved and remains something of an enigma. However, without her skill and knowledge, the learned palaeontologists of her day would never have had access to the specimens from which they formed their theories and reputations.
Mary was born in and never left Lyme Regis on the coast of Dorset, a place long renowned for its strange fossils. The family supplemented their income by selling fossils to visitors. Mary’s keen eye began to discern the fossilised remains of huge and strange creatures buried in the rocks. These finds caught the attention of the leading fossil hunters of the day and in turn led to a radical rethinking of the earth’s origins and the Biblical interpretation of the Earth’s creation.
As an experienced and talented writer of historical fiction, Chevalier is not content merely to tell Mary’s story. She has cleverly allied it to that of another fossil hunter, Elizabeth Philpot, who also lived in Lyme and who became an authority on fossilised fish. Her story was new to me and I am grateful for Chevalier’s insight. This is not just a story about two remarkable women but an exploration of women’s roles in the 19th century and particularly friendship between women of different background and expectations.
With Remarkable Creatures, Chevalier has returned to form partly, I believe, because she is more comfortable writing about women’s domestic lives. Having said that, although Remarkable Creatures held my interest, I felt the writing lacked passion and commitment and was a little tired and predictable. For me, it concentrated too much on the heart rather than the intellect, which belittled both of these remarkable women.
Sally Zigmond
the daughter of the Bennets’ uncle and aunt. This is her story, telling the tale of her refusal to become a dutiful, compliant wife and her career as a forthright reformer—as well as her business sense when her father becomes ill—and, of course, her romance.
This saga is something rather different from the usual run of Austen sequels, taking minor characters and cutting them a story of their own from whole cloth while at the same time including the familiar P&P characters. It is not an easy book to read without reading the others first, and trying to do so is rather akin to being invited to a party where you don’t know anybody. The author (who is Australian) demonstrates a good knowledge of the period and its mores, and Caroline is a modern young woman who wants more than the meager rights that society can give her. This makes it sound rather as though it is just another tale of women’s fight for equality, which is unfair. Austen fans are treated to a novel that contains something of the appeal of the original, while at the same time adding much that is uniquely that of the author as well as plenty of appeal for the modern female reader. I aim to read the whole series.
Rachel
A Hyde
THREE TIMES BLESSED
Lori Copeland, Avon Inspire, 2009, $12.99/ C$16.99, pb, 264pp, 9780061364938
In post-Civil War Texas, Audrey Pride is excited to visit her friend Willow in Thunder Ridge, after which she expects to take up a teaching post. But she arrives to find that the school board doesn’t have enough money to pay her until the following year, which leaves
Y A GENTLEMAN OF FORTUNE
Audrey with no means of support. Swallowing her qualms, she agrees to a job as an undertaker’s assistant. Days of rain in a normally dry locale result in a wagon train full of sick people stopping in Thunder Ridge, which provides her with more work than she bargained for. Can Audrey keep body and soul together in these conditions, while pursuing young but dour widower Eli Gray, despite his lack of encouragement?
With the exception of a brief prologue, this inspirational novel starts pretty much in media res, assuming that you have already read the first book in the Belles of Timber Creek series. The story is fast-paced, with lively, though not very deep, characters. But look elsewhere for historical accuracy. I doubt that people in 1860s Texas would have used the expressions “upside the head” or “uptight.” A list of discussion questions for book club use is included.
B.J. Sedlock
SEDUCE ME
Robyn DeHart, Forever, 2009, $6.99/C$8.50, pb, 297pp, 9780446542005
Esme Worthington, a self-taught scholar, lives in Victorian London and dreams of finding the location of the legendary Pandora’s Box. She knows that, as a woman, her adventures are fated to be conducted from a seat in her parlor. Fielding Grey, Viscount Lord Eldon, is an adventurer and treasure-seeker who lives the life that Esme covets. When Esme is kidnapped for the key to Pandora’s Box that she possesses, Fielding rescues her. From that point, passion and treasure are foremost in their minds. Together they discover the Box and the wonders held within.
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Anna Dean, Allison & Busby, 2009, £19.99, hb, 335pp, 9780749007256
MY COUSIN CAROLINE
Rebecca Ann Collins, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2009, $14.99, pb, 320pp, 9781402224317
This is, before you rush out and buy it, book six in a ten-book series following on from the events in Pride and Prejudice. This continues the story of minor character Caroline Gardiner,
This is the second novel featuring amateur detective Miss Dido Kent and is set during the Regency period. This was a new author for me and a very welcome one at that; although second in a series, the book stands alone without any confusion.
An old lady is apparently murdered by an overdose of ‘Black Drop’ and her beneficiary, a handsome young man, is thought to be the guilty party and so faces a terrible fate. Convinced that the explanation is more complex than this and inclined to believe in the man’s innocence, Miss Kent decides to find the real culprit. By means of opening the novel with a letter, the author introduces the characters and central premise of the novel skilfully. The central character is believable, likeable, and convincing while the historical details are beautifully rendered, subtle, and unobtrusive yet adding an unmistakable sense of period and place.
In some ways it is reminiscent of Cranford with its small town full of women with little to do except gossip and keep an eye on each other. There are sly subtle comments about the status of women at this time, particularly commenting on the difficult and often unpleasant situation of spinsters and governesses, those without money or a chance of marriage. The plot is full of twists and turns with mysterious visitors, disguises, and lots of secrets discovered by Miss Kent. There is never a dull moment and I didn’t want it to end. Overall, a wonderful book which I recommend very highly. I will definitely be getting the first in the series and looking forward with great anticipation to the third.
Ann Northfield
Readers should not expect this novel to be full of historical facts and dry information. This is a fun, fast read and is part of the Legend Hunter series. Its short length makes it the perfect beach read. Enjoy!
Monica E. Spence
GOLD DIGGER: A Klondike Mystery
Vicki Delany, RendezVous Crime, 2009, $18.95, 328pp, 9781894917803
The mysterious Fiona MacGillivray and her 12-year-old son Angus came to Dawson at the end of the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush to evade a scandalous past. In the Yukon Territory, where traditional laws do not apply, Fiona’s charm attracts men willing to spend their gold at the successful Savoy dance hall, which she co-owns with a Scottish business partner responsible for bartending and security. When an unscrupulous San Francisco reporter arrives, murder soon follows. After he reports disgraceful lies and harasses Irene, Fiona’s most popular dance hall girl, his corpse winds up on the Savoy dance hall stage. Almost everyone is a suspect. Constable Richard Sterling of the Canadian Mounties assists with the investigation and keeps tabs, like usual, on Fiona, whom he respectfully admires. Fiona, always wary of the law, hastens to find the murderer first, convinced that it must be one of her allies.
Mostly murder mystery, part farce, and completely amusing, Gold Digger is told mostly from Fiona’s point of view. Chapters are also devoted to the activities of Angus and Constable Sterling. Fiona, despite her penchant for selfishness and manipulation, except where her son is considered, becomes a likeable character as she frets over Angus and reluctantly worries about her friends and customers. Angus and Sterling, as well as many townsmen, are smitten with Fiona’s resourcefulness and grace. Both men clearly recognize Fiona as a capable woman who does not need a man’s protection, but could use a little help now and again.
The accurate depiction of Dawson life as muddy and harsh and the hints to Fiona’s past as a lady of means add depth to this intriguing comedic murder mystery that is too entertaining to be missed.
Suzanne Sprague
THE TUAREG: Blue Man of the Sahara George DiGuido, Vivisphere, 2009, $22.95, pb, 412pp, 9781587761577
Fleur Caldwell, an orphaned Virginia belle, is sent to live with an estranged uncle in London in 1828. Unbeknownst to her, the uncle is a heartless slave trader. After arranging to be his niece’s heir, the uncle arranges for Fleur’s disappearance. By introducing Fleur to Gregoire, a mysterious employee, the uncle hopes that she will instantly fall in love with the handsome Frenchman and join him on his dangerous assignment: Gregoire must travel deep into Africa to curry favor with the Slave King, by using Fleur as a gift. It’s a plan that goes quickly
awry, as their ship to Africa is wrecked in a storm. Fleur and Gregoire survive, and she succumbs to his seduction as they struggle to find their way to safety. After they are separated, a powerful man of a Tuareg tribe saves Fleur from certain death, and she succumbs to him, too. Fleur later runs away, only to be captured anew by slave traders. Meanwhile, Gregoire meets the Tuareg leader and they become friends as they set out to find their mutual lover. They discover her at the palace in Algiers—only for her to be sold into slavery yet again. This time, her freedom comes at a great price.
Though the story is written with great passion, and the author has done considerable research on African tribes, languages, and customs, this book falters on very fundamental writing issues. The characters—particularly Fleur—are one-dimensional, the dialogue is stilted, and there is little real emotional development of the relationships that are central to the plot. Unfortunately, these issues make The Tuareg a very difficult read.
Lisa Ann Verge
THE WET NURSE’S TALE
Erica Eisdorfer, Putnam, 2009, $25.95, hb, 272pp, 9780399155765
Miss Susan Rose is the narrator and protagonist of this tale, which takes place in Victorian England. Raised by a surly father and caring mother, Susan must leave home to work at a neighboring manor house. She is free with her favors and thoughtless about her future, which she readily admits, but she’s flattered by the attention she receives from the heir to the manor. Soon she is pregnant and must return home. When her son is a month old, her father insists with fists and anger that she leave her child behind and become a wet nurse as her own mother has done since the birth of Susan’s oldest sibling.
Thus begins one of the best stories I have read in a while. As Susan sits quietly in the nursery of her employers, she is privy to goings-on in the rest of the household, and it’s not long before her honesty and wisdom are appreciated by all who come to know her. She describes herself as having a lumpy body and a nose like a potato, but she’s smart, tenacious, promiscuous when need be, and brutally honest about herself and those around her. She’s not pretty, but she’s real. When her second child is born out of wedlock, she is forced to go home once more. Her irate father decides that the child would only hinder Susan’s ability to make him money and gives her son away.
Reader, her frantic search to find her Davey will have you cheering on one page and tearyeyed on the next. The ending is uplifting and joyful. The small vignettes between the chapters are an added treat as well. I highly recommend this first novel by Erica Eisdorfer.
Susan Zabolotny
THE QUICKENING MAZE
Adam Foulds, Jonathan Cape, 2009, £12.99, hb, 262pp, 9780224087469
England, around 1840, and John Clare, the middle-aged poet of rural England, is incarcerated with his delusions and alter egos in High Beach mental asylum in Epping Forest, near London. The young Alfred Tennyson, still grieving over the death of his beloved friend, Arthur Hallam, lives nearby to be close to his brother Septimus who is also at High Beach. The asylum is run by Matthew Allen, a progressive man of science and industry, with his family living in unusually close proximity to the mentally disturbed inmates.
From this foundation in actual events, Adam Foulds weaves a delicate tale that has at its centre the inner lives, thoughts, desires, and self-deceptions of both the seemingly sane and those incarcerated in the asylum. Foulds, who last year published the highly regarded versenovel The Broken Word (reviewed in HNR 45) writes as a poet, with shaped prose and accurate and original description and impressions driving the narrative and plot. At times, the language and depiction of events is visceral and disturbing as Foulds depicts the churn of human activity. As Matthew Allen reflects upon the failure of a business venture, he captures the essence of the novel: “He achieved a deeply peaceful dejection….thinking of man’s short squirming frenzy before entering the silence.” The kind of maze without a way out that entraps us all, eventually.
Doug Kemp
EMILY’S GHOST: A Novel of the Brontë Sisters
Denise Giardina, Norton, 2009, $24.95/C$27.50, hb, 320pp, 9780393069150
William Weightman, the personable young curate who assisted the Reverend Patrick Brontë at Haworth Parsonage for several years, is best known for sending Valentines to the three Brontë sisters and for possibly being the object of Anne Brontë’s affections. In this novel, however, it is the fiercely independent, unconventional Emily Brontë who finds herself falling in love with Weightman, who possesses not only charm and good looks but also a social conscience and a kind heart.
Meticulously researched and written in a clean, crisp prose style, Emily’s Ghost encompasses not only the splendor of the Yorkshire moors but also the hardships of daily life in the poor parish of Haworth, where, as one character notes forebodingly, few people live past their thirties. The inhabitants of the Brontë parsonage, human and animal alike, each possess distinct personalities. Giardina manages the difficult feat of making Weightman a genuinely good man without making him colorless, Emily is strongly individualistic without becoming tiresomely eccentric, Charlotte exasperates the reader but never entirely forfeits our sympathy, and Branwell’s better qualities are not lost amid
his dissipation.
Without departing from known facts or engaging in bodice ripping, Giardina gives us a compelling and moving love story between people we come to care about deeply. Even those who have not read the works of the Brontë sisters should enjoy this novel thoroughly.
Susan Higginbotham
RIDING VENGEANCE WITH THE JAMES GANG
Donald L. Gilmore, Pelican, 2009, $23.00, hb, 368pp, 9781589806269
In the preface to this novel about the notorious gang headed by Frank and Jesse James, Gilmore expresses how difficult it was to imagine the thoughts, words, and emotions of his characters while telling their story in an historically accurate manner. Still, he succeeds admirably.
Gilmore, who has written other works about the Missouri-Kansas border war, shows in detail how much that war, and the subsequent Civil War, affected the James brothers, especially Jesse, and how it shaped their future lives as outlaws. The James brothers teamed up early in their careers with the Younger brothers, an alliance that lasted many years. The novel gives the reader a bonus in that it provides as much information about the Younger brothers as it does about their more famous partners.
One of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the James-Younger gang was the disastrous bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota. The raid triggered one of the most massive manhunts in history as hundreds of policemen and vigilantes combed the countryside for the gang members. Gilmore’s vivid retelling of this event is extremely well detailed and keeps the reader engrossed in the daring story. This is a great read all around.
John Kachuba
CRUEL LORD CRANHAM
Sandra Heath, Robert Hale/Trafalgar Square, 2008 (c1993), £18.99/$39.95/C$43.95, hb, 223pp, 9780709083399
Sarah Lovell was living a contented life in England in 1803. She had good friends, an attentive father, and a loving fiancée. She was also heiress to a comfortable fortune. She was young and beautiful and her whole life was before her. Then her fiancée chose to leave her at the request of his father.
Nicholas Stanhope never wanted to know his own father. He was a self-made man, and his father, who schemed to cheat men of their fortunes, was an embarrassment to him. He tried to avoid his father at every turn. When Nicholas and Sarah meet, their attraction for each other is instant. But there are so many people who contrive to ensure their budding romance is doomed to fail.
Sandra Heath has crafted a romantic adventure full of twists and turns that keep the protagonists from trusting each other, though their attraction remains. Ms. Heath enhances her story with
detailed physical descriptions of the characters, clothing, and scenery.
Nan Curnutt
MISS CHENEY’S CHARADE
Emily Hendrickson, Robert Hale/Trafalgar Square, 2009, £18.99/$24.95/C$27.95, hb, 223pp, 9780709082736
Emma Cheney is in London in 1815 at the height of the season, determined to do her duty to make a successful match, helping to bolster her family’s flagging finances. While most young women are looking forward to dancing at balls and meeting new beaus, Emma would rather spend her time sketching the antiquities that she loves. Therefore, when she intercepts an invitation to her brother to attend the unwrapping of an Egyptian mummy at the home of Sir Peter Dancy, she decides to disguise herself as a young man and attend in her brother’s place. The plot thickens when Lady Titheridge, Sir Peter’s aunt, decides to take an active role in Emma’s deception.
Miss Cheney soon finds herself employed as an artist by the owner of the mummy himself. As Emma sketches Sir Peter’s acquisitions, she begins to hope he will see her as a woman, but this would be hard for him to do when she is dressed as a man.
Author Emily Hendrickson has crafted a delightful romp in Miss Cheney’s Charade, complete with characters and details that reflect the times and an engaging and entertaining plot.
Nan Curnutt
Y ALL OTHER NIGHTS
SEEN THE GLORY: A Novel of the Battle of Gettysburg
John Hough, Jr., Simon & Schuster, 2009, $25.00, hb, 420pp, 9781416589655
The young Chandler brothers, brash 18-yearold Luke and soft-spoken 16-year-old Thomas, advance to maturity in the blood-soaked fields of Gettysburg in John Hough’s latest novel. At novel’s start, the brothers live in isolated Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, in a house they share with their widowed doctor father and the pretty Rose, a black freedwoman from Cape Verde. Rose plays a central role in the story as she becomes the love interest of all three Chandlers. The lonely father’s love and that of the two brothers serve to drive the tale along in the face of the impending Union and Confederate trial of strength at Gettysburg. The young soldier brothers must confront combat while simultaneously quarreling over Rose. The object of their affection is, meanwhile, attempting to survive in the face of the local toughs, Ben Howland and Luke Daggett. At first glance, one assumes the Battle of Gettysburg will occupy center stage, but the reality is this is a compelling love story and family saga set against the backgrounds of 19th-century small town Cape Cod, American race relations, the coming-of-age of young men, and the stress of military life in the American Civil War.
John R. Vallely
THE SECRET DIARIES OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE
Syrie James, Avon A, 2009, $14.99, pb, 512pp,
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Dara Horn, W.W. Norton, 2009, $24.95/C$27.50, hb, 363 pp, 9780393064920
The title to this brilliant and thought-provoking novel comes from a question asked to the youngest participant at a Passover seder: Why is tonight different from all other nights? For Jacob Rappaport, a young Jewish soldier from New York City serving in the Union Army, the answer is provided to him by his commanding officers. Jacob is to go to New Orleans and, at the first seder of Passover, 1862, to murder his uncle, a man who is conspiring to plot the assassination of President Lincoln.
Jacob is so successful a secret agent that he is recruited again, not to murder, but to marry in order to break up a spy ring in Virginia. What Jacob encounters there tests the bounds of family ties and tradition. It also brings him face-to-face with what he values most in life.
The novel reads so beautifully, it virtually sings. The characters are fully fleshed out—Jacob is a gem of a creation. The plotline is tight, and one event runs seamlessly into the next. The introduction of historical figures like Judah Benjamin, Jefferson Davis’s second in command of the Confederacy and himself a Jew, is by no means a “throw away”—Benjamin becomes a focal character in the second part of the book. Horn introduces us to the workings of the slave spy network. She leads us inexorably through the self-destruction of the city of Richmond. The Author’s Note is a wonderful addition, helping us to put the events in perspective.
What is clear is how we continue, over 140 years later, to confront many of the same conflicts that confronted Jacob—conflicts over heritage, religious tradition, and equal rights.
This is a must read and highly recommended. Ilysa Magnus
19th Century
9780061648373
Jane Eyre and Villette are two of my favorite books, and I’ve always been interested in Charlotte Brontë and her family. I am fascinated by the idea of three sisters, living in a remote Yorkshire village, all becoming published authors and then all dying so young. (Charlotte died from complications of pregnancy in 1855 at the age of 38.)
Syrie James has studied Charlotte’s life and has drawn on many of the sources she studied, such as Charlotte’s letters to her good friend Ellen Nussey and the biography written by Charlotte’s friend, the author Mrs. Gaskell, to tell Charlotte’s story in Charlotte’s own voice.
We read about her experiences at boarding school; her time in Belgium teaching at a pensionnat and her attachment to the married headmaster Monsieur Hegér; the evolution of her and her sisters’ writing careers; the decline and death of her alcoholic brother Branwell; the deaths of her sisters Anne and Emily; and her relationship with her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, who later became her husband. By the time I finished reading, I had an understanding of how Charlotte’s life experiences are reflected in her novels.
I wasn’t sure I would like this book, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The author has done a wonderful job. The story of Charlotte’s life flows like a novel and has the sound of a 19thcentury diary. I had to keep reading to find out how Charlotte went from disliking Mr. Nicholls to marrying him! The book includes a Q&A with the author, excerpts from selected correspondence of Charlotte Brontë, selected poetry by the Brontës, and a bibliography of Charlotte’s writings. I especially appreciated the information at the end about what the author imagined and what was fact.
Jane Kessler
WITHOUT A MOTHER’S LOVE
Catherine King, Sphere/Trafalgar Square, 2009, $38.95/£18.99, hb, 384pp, 9781847442345
In 1830s Yorkshire, Harriet Trent moves to Hill Top House, hired as a governess for Olivia Copley who has been living with her great-uncle (Old Hesley) and cousin (Young Hesley) since the death of her parents. Olivia, a sweet but wild girl, becomes a young lady under the tender guidance of Miss Trent. However, the Hesleys are evil people, with drinking, gambling, and the raping of innocent young women as common activities. Harriet and Olivia need to leave Hill Top House, but without money, family, or friends how can they survive?
Harriet is the stronger character, a selfsacrificing governess who cares more for her charge than for her own well-being and who attempts to do what little she can to improve their situations. Olivia is described as intelligent, but she comes off as childlike and dim-witted. When Olivia plans her escape from Hill Top House, she takes no food, has no planned destination, and soon loses her one cloak and
the little money she brought with her. King’s Silk and Steel was on the shortlist for the UK Romantic Novel of the Year, but American romance readers should note that Without a Mother’s Love is not a typical Victorian romance. A majority of the sexual encounters involve an unwilling female participant, and the novel’s ending may leave some disappointed. Still, King’s third Yorkshire novel will please her loyal readers with its strong sense of time and place and its unpredictable plot twists.
Elizabeth Caulfield Felt
LOVING MR. DARCY
Sharon Lathan, Sourcebooks, 2009, $14.99, pb, 448pp, 9781402217418
My idea of good company is that of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation. But, I fear Loving Mr. Darcy seems but a quick succession of busy nothings. Its author appears to possess the unhappy talent of flattering without delicacy. These attentions appear to proceed from the impulse of the moment (2005 film) rather than the result of previous study (Pride and Prejudice). On the subject of cultural and linguistic anachronisms, may I make bold to remind authors one and all that an artist cannot do anything slovenly?
I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours, and I am firm in the belief that the person who has not pleasure in a good novel must be intolerably stupid. I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress. Moreover, I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting. Yet, those who do not complain are never pitied.
Eileen Charbonneau (with apologies to Jane Austen)
MASTERED BY LOVE
Stephanie Laurens, Avon, 2009, $7.99/C$10.99, pb, 480pp, 9780061246371 / Piatkus, 2009, £7.99, pb, 320pp, 9780749940133
The ninth Duke of Wolverstone died in 1816 before his long-estranged son could reach the castle. Arriving too late to reconcile with his father, Royce Varisey, now tenth Duke of Wolverstone, has a difficult time assuaging his guilt. To help him put it all in perspective, as well as bring him up-to-date on the estate is his beautiful chatelaine, Minerva Chesterton. When Minerva was orphaned as a child, Royce’s mother brought her to Wolverstone and raised her with her own children. Although well born and an heiress in her own right, Minerva stayed on at Wolverstone as companion to the duchess and, after her death, to became chatelaine of the estate for the duke. Minerva plans to leave Wolverstone and begin her own life as soon as she can turn over her keys to the new duchess and despite his mourning, circumstances decree that Royce choose a bride immediately. Whoever that may be.
This is vintage Laurens: excellent plot, erotic
love scenes, mystery, and danger. Laurens’s devoted readers will meet characters from the Bastion Club series and the Cynster novels who are all friends of Royce. Mastered by Love also answers the question of ‘who is Dalziel.’
Audrey Braver
ENDURING LOVE
Bonnie Leon, Revell, 2009, $12.99, pb, 301pp, 9780800731786
John and Hannah Bradshaw had emigrated to Australia against their will, on a prison ship in 1804. Three years later they are free, and the newlyweds are determined to make a go of it as settlers. But their plans come to a sudden halt when John’s first wife, whom he thought dead, reappears, very intent on resuming their relationship. Because the church doesn’t consider the awkward situation reason enough for John to divorce Margaret, Hannah’s faith is tested, as she can see no way out of their predicament. Then her suspicions are raised when Margaret shows signs of being more interested in John’s property than in John himself.
This is book three of the author’s Sydney Cove series. Leon says in the acknowledgments section that she had Australians vet the manuscript for her, so I must be mistaken about what I thought were some Americanisms, such as the use of “pants” to refer to men’s trousers. There’s more talk than action in the story, even in the final confrontation with Margaret. Fans of the quieter type of inspirational romance will like it, but would probably enjoy the story arc more if they started with the first volume of the series.
B.J. Sedlock
THE HONORED DEAD
Robert N. Macomber, Pineapple Press, 2009, $21.95, hb, 400pp, 9781561644384
In 1883, President Arthur orders Lt. Commander Peter Wake on a secret mission into French Indochina. As an intelligence officer, Wake travels the Mekong River on a riverboat to deliver a secret message to the king of Cambodia. Thinking this a simple assignment, he ends up fighting with Chinese-Malay pirates and French gangsters looking to make money in illegal trading and finally joins the French in a battle against the Empire of Viet Nam. The cultural clash between Indochina and the West, which the author describes in great detail throughout the novel, will continue for another one hundred years.
This novel is the seventh book in the series about Peter Wake, spanning the years 1863 through 1883. I have read all his novels and enjoy Mr. Macomber’s writing style, his ability to get the historical facts correct, and his development of interesting characters while spinning his tale. This series is a different type of naval fiction than the Hornblower or the Aubrey books; you don’t have to be knowledgeable about nautical terms. Instead, you get caught up in the story without becoming confused trying to define
unusual words, which tend to stop the flow of the novel. This book can be enjoyed without reading the previous books in the series. Highly recommended. I look forward to his eighth book.
Jeff Westerhoff
ANGEL TRAIN
Gilbert Morris, B&H, 2009, $14.99, pb, 324pp, 9780805447293
The Pilgrim’s Way, a devout religious community in Pennsylvania, decides to accept the government’s offer of free land in the West. Knowing little of the Oregon Trail, the pioneers pray for guidance and are led to engage a crew of rough ex-convicts to help them across dangerous 1850s America. Beautiful and strong-willed Charity Morgan is the first in the community to meet the ex-convicts, including their handsome leader Casey Tremayne.
Heavy doses of romance, danger, and prayer are what drive this mismatched group on their way to Oregon. All conflict in Angel Train is quickly and predictably resolved and, although the suspense surrounding the romances is more drawn out, there are no surprises. The writing is simple, almost clunky, but perhaps that was Morris’s intention. I was often reminded of Genesis: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
Still, Angel Train is a fun, upbeat story. The good characters are likeable and realistic, the bad guys are not wholly bad, and God is available to redeem their souls. Readers of Christian historical fiction will find much to like in this story of a community whose faith and prayer lead them to a happy ending.
Elizabeth Caulfield Felt
MRS LINCOLN (UK) / MARY (US)
Janis Cooke Newman, Myrmidon, 2008, £16.99, hb, 565pp, 97881905802104 / Harvest, 2007, $15.00, pb, 636pp, 9780156033473
Born in 1819 and brought up in Kentucky in a slave-owning family, Mary Lincoln visited a black one-legged ‘conjure woman’ who told her that she would marry a very ugly man who would one day be president. Over the next month she studied all the unmarried gentlemen in town, looking to find one sufficiently ugly to satisfy the prediction. Abraham Lincoln was swarthy, and his large ears were as fleshy as ham steaks. Worse still, he was badly dressed. His swallow-tail coat, too short, did not match the cut of his trousers.
Mary’s behaviour scandalised society. She attended séances, aired her political opinions, and ran up huge debts with her compulsive spending. Although Mary’s family disapproved of her relationship with Abraham, the sheer inevitability of marriage due to their physical need for each other resulted in a hurried wedding.
Abraham’s political career progressed and he soon became president. Mary, who bore him four children, was delighted to become first lady. The
happiness and success of Mary and Abraham Lincoln ended when President Lincoln was assassinated and their two younger sons died. The eldest surviving son, Robert, lacked the ability to show sympathy and understanding to both his mother and his own wife, and he began committal proceedings against his mother. He persuaded Cook County Court to declare Mary insane, and she was incarcerated in an asylum. In this book, Mary Lincoln writes her own story in order to prove her sanity and win back her freedom.
This is a powerful novel. I was impressed with the research, but horrified at the ease with which families were able to commit their own relatives to lunatic asylums when it suited them.
Jane E. Hill
THE COSGROVE REPORT: Being the Private Inquiry of a Pinkerton Detective into the Death of President Lincoln G. J. A. O’Toole, Grove Press, 2009 (c1979), $14.95, pb, 464pp, 9780802144072
Originally published in 1979 and now reissued to coincide with the Lincoln bicentennial, the novel purports to be a manuscript written by one Nicholas Cosgrove, Pinkerton agent. In 1868, Cosgrove is assigned to determine whether John Wilkes Booth escaped from the burning farmhouse in Maryland and still lives. His report, having lain concealed for a century, now falls into the hands of private detective Michael Croft, whose job is to verify and annotate it. Writing in a grandiloquent High Victorian style, Cosgrove tells a tale of switched identities, doctored documents, and bitter feuding within the White House as he pursues the elusive Booth. Historical characters, such as President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Allan Pinkerton, and many others make their appearance to either aid or thwart Cosgrove in his mission. And Cosgrove himself is an ambiguous figure with seemingly no family, friends, or worldly attachments. It all ends with a duel and a fatal balloon chase—or does it? One final plot twist turns the whole tale on its head. ‘Croft’s’ annotations, like the footnotes in George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman novels, are, in this reviewer’s opinion, the best part of the book. With impressive scholarship and sharp wit, O’Toole lays bare for the nonspecialist the real and persistent mysteries that still surround the trial of the Lincoln assassins. Altogether, highly entertaining and highly informative.
Bruce Macbain
LEADEN SKIES
Ann Parker, Poisoned Pen Press, 2009, $24.95, hb, 298pp, 9781590585771
It’s 1880 and Ulysses S. Grant is visiting Leadville, Colorado, with an entourage of hangers-on, among them John Quincy Adams Wesley, a wet-behind-the-ears political upand-comer. Against the distraction of the Grant visit, a mysterious fire rages in the bordello. The next day a prostitute is found, apparently
murdered, shortly after Inez Stannert, co-owner of the Silver Queen saloon, becomes caught up as a silent partner in Frisco Flo’s new, uptown brothel.
Leaden Skies is the third in the Silver Rush Mystery series. In this adventure, Inez tries to move her life forward by divorcing her husband, Mark, who abandoned her. Not that this will necessarily make life easier for her lover, the honorable Reverend Sands, but it may allow her to reclaim her young son.
It’s great to see Ann Parker’s Leadville characters back in the latest series installment! While Inez is still able to run a man’s business and command respect in a frontier town, she isn’t satisfied to remain where she is indefinitely, nor is she able to walk away from the challenge of a mystery.
As always, Parker’s settings feel true to their time, right down to the rain-muddied streets. This installment features an intriguing cast of characters that will keep the reader guessing. A wonderful book for a lazy summer weekend.
Janette King
BRIMSTONE
Robert B. Parker, Putnam, 2009, $25.95/ C$32.50, hb, 293pp, 9780399155710
Hired gunmen Everett Hitch and Virgil Cole become deputies again to “clean up” a town in the Old West. These two heroes got their reputation for restoring law and order in the towns of Appaloosa and Resolution, the previous two books in the series. Now, a year later, after locating Virgil’s sweetheart Allie French, they arrive in the small town of Brimstone. Looking to start over, they become the law and must deal with two opposing elements—Brother Percival and his Church of the Brotherhood, who want to eliminate the town’s saloons, and Pike, owner of Pike’s Palace. Each side hires gunmen to eventually wage war against each other, while Everett and Virgil try to maintain peace in the town.
I enjoy a good Western, and, in my opinion, this is one of the finest series of Western stories ever written. The dialog and characterization are brilliant. If you prefer to read novels with descriptive settings and scenes, you would not care for Mr. Parker’s style, but this novel is a page-turner, with short chapters and exceptional action. I really hope there is another Western in Mr. Parker, because I would surely miss reading another adventure of Everett and Virgil. Robert Parker is known as the dean of American crime fiction and has written over fifty novels in that genre. This series of Western stories are fun reads, and if you’ve never read a Western novel, I would highly recommend this series, starting with Appaloosa.
Jeff Westerhoff
THE LAST DICKENS
Matthew Pearl, Harvill Secker, 2009, £12.99, 358 pp, hb, 9781846550843 / Random House, 2009, $25.00, hb, 381pp, 9781400066568
Charles Dickens has just died, and his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, is unfinished. Boston publisher James R Osgood is expecting the next instalment and has sent out his young clerk Daniel Sand to the docks to collect it. But the next time he sees Daniel, he is lying dead on a morgue slab—was he running away, unlucky or murdered? The manuscript is missing and, in the face of pressure from New York publishers, James and Daniel’s sister Rebecca must go forth to find it—and discover more things besides.
This is a convoluted tale with more to say for it than just another historical murder mystery. Balancing out a somewhat far-fetched “penny dreadful” plot is the very real presence of Osgood himself, partner in an old established publishing company who is looking ruin in the face. The world of books and publishing is moving forwards rapidly to what we know today, and it was this that stayed in my mind after the book had been read. A complicated subplot involving India, foggy London streets, the theatre, opium dens with sinister Fu Manchu Chinamen and all the panoply of Victorian mysteries can also be found in here, making it an interesting blend of the literary and genre fiction. Anne Perry it ain’t, but the Dickens theme and the author’s very palpable love of books makes it an interesting curiosity.
Rachel A Hyde
A LOVE TO LAST FOREVER
Tracie Peterson, Bethany House, 2009, $13.99, pb, 367pp, 9780764201493
A Love to Last Forever, the second in the Brides of Gallatin County trilogy, focuses on Beth, the middle Gallatin sister. Beth is ready to settle down and find the love she reads about in romances, but is also dealing with guilt over her father’s death. Nick Lassiter, her neighbor, to whom she has long been attracted, has finally found faith, and she feels she can allow herself to turn to him. But just when they are on the verge of an engagement, Nick’s past returns to threaten their relationship.
Entwined with their romance are the ongoing troubles of the Montana frontier settlers, hoping that the railroad will choose a route through their fledgling town and ensure their prosperity. Parallel romances between Nick’s brother and a saloon girl, and Beth’s sister and the deputy sheriff investigating their father’s death further season the plot.
Although the novel has no distinguishing elements, it was nevertheless engaging. Peterson creates characters with whom it is easy to empathize, whose struggles are not extraordinary yet are relatable. My only real complaint is that she leaves too many threads hanging in anticipation of the third book. A cozy, inspirational romance for a rainy afternoon.
Susan Cook
340pp, 9781420103281
What happens to aristocratic boys who rebel against the strict mores of the English nobility? In this charming debut to The Lost Lords series we learn the answer: they go to Westerfield Academy, Lady Agnes’s school for unconventional youths. The year is 1812. Westerfield’s first student, Adam Lawford, Duke of Ashton, who is now a respected member of the peerage despite his Anglo-Indian heritage, has lost his memory in a steamboat accident. When Adam awakes he is relieved to find that he was dragged ashore near his own home, in Cumberland, and is safe in the delectable arms of his wife. There is just one problem: Mariah Clarke falsely claimed her injured guest as her husband in order to rid herself of an obnoxious suitor. Mariah wishes to end the deception but fears that, if she acknowledges the truth, her patient may never recover his wits.
Mariah and Adam are both very likeable characters. The complex plotting required to bring the story to resolution is saved from absurdity by Mariah’s amused exclamation, “I feel as if I’ve wandered into a Restoration comedy.” This book was such an enjoyable read that I eagerly await my next frolic with a “Lost Lord.”
Nancy J. Attwell
THE PERFECT POISON
Amanda Quick, Putnam, 2009, $24.95/C$31.00, hb, 352pp, 9780399155802 / Piatkus, 2009, £12.99, pb, 352pp, 9780749909154
Lucinda Bromley is a botanist living in Victorian London. She has an apparently paranormal knack for detecting poisons which makes her quite a useful friend to the police. But having in the past been wrongly suspected of poisoning her fiancé, she senses peril when she discovers an aristocrat was done in by a poison made from a plant stolen from her conservatory. Lucinda is a member of the Arcane Society, dedicated to the study of paranormal phenomena, and she and fellow member Caleb Jones set out to solve the case. They fall head over heels for each other, as old Arcane Society secrets emerge and a knot of danger tightens around Lucinda. This is the kind of light, romantic historical mystery that doesn’t strain the intellect but is fun to read. I can’t say I felt transported to a different time and place as I do when I read the best work in the genre. On the other hand, Amanda Quick knows how to write a terrific love scene. This book is sixth in a series of novels about the Arcane Society by this extremely prolific author.
Phyllis T. Smith
CHILD OF THE SOUTH
Joanna Catherine Scott, Berkley, 2009, $14, pb, 324pp, 9780425226025
LOVING A LOST LORD
Mary Jo Putney, Zebra, 2009, $6.99/C$8.49, pb,
This sequel to The Road from Chapel Hill continues the saga of Eugenia Mae Spotswood and Tom Maryson now that the Civil War has ended. Eugenia returns to Wilmington to try to
discover who her mother really was: her father’s deceased wife or his slave. Ex-slave Tom reencounters his old nemesis, Clyde Bricket and, through a twist of fate, becomes Clyde’s business partner and co-owner of Clyde’s family farm.
The novel begins in the chaotic days following the end of fighting when Reconstruction is taking control of the South and freed slaves are experiencing the first euphoric days of freedom and the beginnings of political power. Eugenia lands in the thick of this, living with wealthy preCivil War white friends all the while working as a nurse among poverty-stricken freedmen. One of the novel’s characters, an actual historical figure of the time and a powerful exponent of Negro rights, Abraham Galloway, befriends Eugenia. He and his family help her to discover her parentage and her place in the new South.
Filled with considerable insight into the psyche of both white and black southerners of the time and into why the South evolved as it did, this novel lacks the driving suspense of its predecessor. The relationships among the main characters reach surprising conclusions, but the coincidences which bring them all together stretch credulity. Nevertheless, it’s a worthy, thoughtful read for anyone interested in race relations and Southern history.
Pamela Ortega
THE TURQUOISE
Anya Seton, Chicago Review, 2009 (c1946), $14.95/C$16.95, pb, 378pp, 9781556528033
Santa Fe Cameron never knew her aristocratic Spanish mother. When she was seven years old, her Scottish father discovered that she had what they call “the sight” back in his native Highlands. Fey’s father, a doctor, dies in a cholera epidemic, and her Mexican nurse raises Fey in squalor and poverty along with her own children. Fey’s gift is recognized by an old Navajo medicine man, who gives her a turquoise talisman along with a warning about her future. At seventeen, Fey, longing to leave New Mexico and start a new life, runs away with an itinerant actor, Terry Dillon. At first Fey resists Terry’s amorous attentions, but when he arranges to marry her at a Colorado frontier station, she agrees. The couple head for New York City. Terry, dazzled by the slick glamour and golden opportunities of 1870s New York, soon abandons Fey. After his departure Fey realizes she is pregnant. A woman doctor befriends Fey and urges her to become a doctor also. However, Fey has an ambition for herself and her child that requires a great deal of money and she has already found the way to attain all her dreams. After divorcing Terry, she marries financier Simeon Tower and climbs to the top of New York’s society. For ten years, Fey and Simeon are a typical wealthy society couple, and then Terry returns, bringing misery and death.
The late Anya Seton was a prolific bestselling author in the 1940s and ‘50s. Miss Seton’s novels always reflect a rich historical background based on solid research. Her style
is clear, concise, and flowing. The end of The Turquoise, however, seems a bit rushed and vaguely unsatisfactory.
Audrey Braver
HAMMER
Sara Stockbridge, Chatto & Windus, 2009, £12.99, hb, 277pp, 9780701182236
Set in Victorian London and concerning a young woman pursued by a master criminal with murder on his mind, this book should work very well as a thriller, but somehow it never quite succeeds.
Grace Hammer, a single mother, is in many ways a likeable young woman and is well educated. But she has a talent for thieving. She lives alone in the East End, where the airs are less balmy than the countryside from which she comes. Yet, she is, in a sense, respectable. She not only trains her children in her trade of thieving, but she makes every effort to educate them in higher matters, and it is clear the family are familiar with such books of the period as Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. Such titles occur frequently in the text. Indeed there is a Dickensian feel to the writing. The characters have a larger than life quality. A female character is spoken of by one of Grace’s children as a crone from Grimms’ Tales. She is also variously described as a goblin and a witch. Such characterisations have a nightmare quality.
Add to this the fact that the murderous master criminal who pursues Grace does so because she has acquired a valuable necklace he believes to be rightfully his, and the book has all the ingredients for a thriller—all that is except one crucial ingredient. It lacks the requisite tension and narrative drive. The writing is good, the descriptions of the squalor of London’s East End are vivid and evocative, but I could not engage and identify with Grace and her plight. For me the writing is somehow too distant to induce empathy. I’m afraid I could not warm to this book.
Neville Firman
MURDER ON WAVERLY PLACE: A Gaslight Mystery
Victoria Thompson, Berkley Prime Crime, 2009, $24.95, hb, 304pp, 9780425227756
Sarah Brandt has eschewed her wealthy background to become a midwife for the needy of New York City in the 1890s. A widow, whose husband was murdered sometime before this story begins, lives with her adopted daughter, Catherine and Maeve, the nanny. Sarah’s mother, one of the wealthiest women in New York, has suffered terrible guilt since the death of Sarah’s sister. She wants to contact Maggie at a séance and apologize. Sarah, a nonbeliever, agrees to go with her. We meet Mrs. Gittings, Serafina, and the professor running the very successful business of contacting the dead. After the first visit, Sarah hopes her mother is appeased, but Mrs. Decker attends the next session alone where Mrs. Gittings is murdered.
Detective Frank Malloy, a longtime friend of Sarah’s, begins his investigation. Together, they solve this perplexing whodunit.
This is Victoria Thompson’s 11th book in the series. She does a good job with the time period, and her characters are well developed. I’m planning to read the entire series to see how Frank and Sarah arrived at this point in their lives.
Susan Zabolotny
THE COLLECTOR OF WORLDS: A Novel of Sir
Richard Francis Burton
Iliya Troyanov (trans. William Hobson), Ecco, 2009, $24.99, 454pp, hb, 9780061351938 / Faber & Faber, 2009, £8.99, pb, 464pp, 9780571236541
Sir Richard Francis Burton—British military officer, spy, and gifted linguist—has been the subject of multiple biographies, with conflicting opinions as to his motivations and veracity. Perhaps it is best, then, to turn to a fictionalized account of three of his adventures for assistance in contextualizing the “facts” of his life. Troyanov does just that: he provides historical settings and backgrounds, peppered with real-life figures and invented characters who fit seamlessly into the time and place under discussion.
First up is the story of Burton’s years in British India, as related by his servant, Naukaram, who has hired a greedy scribe to tell his story. Interspersed with the details provided in response to the scribe’s prying questions are sections from Burton’s perspective, as he becomes immersed in the languages, politics, and culture of mid-19th-century India. Next, Burton continues in his Indian guise, this time as a doctor and a dervish on a traditional hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina—something definitely not allowed to Christians. Arabian government officials track his activities in an attempt to prove England’s imperial designs on the area; their interrogations and reports provide a counterpoint to Burton’s reflections on the journey. The final adventure nearly was the end for Burton: his explorations in Africa for the source of the Nile almost killed him. The trek from Zanzibar to Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria with fellow Brit John Hanning Speke are related by Burton’s guide, Sidi Mubarak Bombay, who vividly recalls the many dangers posed by both the land and the people along the way; his recollections are interrupted by his listeners’ questions and segments of Burton’s perspective.
All three tales are great stories in their own right, with the added value of providing insights into the life of a most interesting man.
Helene Williams
BEEN HERE A THOUSAND YEARS
Mariolina Venezia (trans Marina Harss), Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009, $24/C$30, hb, 272pp, 9780374208912
Life has always been hard in the small
southern Italian farming village of Grottole. The inhabitants give their all to the land, but the land doesn’t always give back; any gains in productivity or prosperity are looked upon with suspicion, as everyone knows that happiness and satisfaction are fleeting. What holds the village together is its women, and this delightful tale is the story of six generations of Falcone women.
The dynasty begins around 1850, with Don Francesco Falcone’s lust for a young field worker, Concetta. Like the other girls in the village, Concetta is resigned to her fate of hard work, a loveless marriage, and as many children as her body can bear. What happens, though, is that she loves the man who seduced her in a shed, then refused to marry her until she bore him a boy. Don Francesco loves her, too, in his way—and he loves their children—six girls, then, finally, a boy. Although the family makes a good living off the land, Don Francesco’s hopes of a large home and fortune are dashed by politics.
The supposedly unified Italy is rife with outlaws and bandits fighting the government, and in the battle of the haves vs. the havenots, sometimes the bad guys win. The women learn and relearn this lesson throughout the generations, dealing with wars, Fascism, and Communism, all the while holding the family and community together. Concetta’s daughters have their own daughters, who in turn have daughters—there are sons, too, but their stories are ancillary—who all meet the challenges of the day with their individual strengths. Their hardscrabble tales, often sad, but sometimes slyly humorous, serve to succinctly illustrate 150 years of Italian history and culture.
Helene Williams
BEYOND THE BLOSSOMING FIELDS
Jun’ichi Watanabe (trans. Deborah Iwabuchi and Anna Isozaki), Trafalgar Square/Alma, 2008, $24.95/C$27.95/£18.99, hb, 313 pp, 9781846880643
Set in Japan from 1851 to 1913, this novel illuminates the life of Ginko Ogino, the first woman doctor in that country. Married in her late teens to the son of a wealthy neighboring family, Ginko contracts gonorrhea from her husband, whom she divorces. Suffering humiliation and pain at the hands of male gynecologists, Ginko determines to become a doctor for women. Her family finds this unacceptable within Ginko’s social class, and she leaves her family, finding her parents’ values at odds with her own.
Determined to gain an education, she pursues her goals as she struggles in school for many years. She enters a medical school where she is the only woman, and she must endure ridicule and abuse in order to succeed. Brilliant, she establishes her own clinic in Tokyo, becoming a renowned mentor to aspiring women doctors and a strong figure in the Japanese Christian Women’s Organization. Despite suffering chronic symptoms of gonorrhea, she becomes famous—from far and near the Japanese public
19th Century-20th Century
seeks her out for her leadership in medical and political causes. She remarries Yokiyoshi Shikata, a Protestant minister and eventually follows him to the northern island of Hokkaido to build a utopian Christian settlement.
Reading more like a biography than a work of fiction, this detailed novel, eye-opening in its descriptions of the sacrifices independent women endured, will interest those curious about woman’s issues in Japan in the late 1800s. Western audiences will gain respect for Ginko, who refused to be limited by her time and place in history.
Liz Allenby
SIEGE OF KHARTOUM
John Wilcox. Headline, 2009, £19.99, hb, 373pp, 9780755345595
The year is 1884. General Gordon is under siege in Khartoum. Under pressure from public opinion, the government has ordered General Wolseley to put together a relief column to raise the siege and rescue Gordon. Simon Fonthill and his sidekick ‘352’ Jenkins must cross the desert, enter Khartoum, and make contact with General Gordon to ascertain how long he can realistically hold out. The first part of the mission, although filled with danger and threats from both the Mahdi’s forces and friendly forces, is successful and the intrepid duo make contact with Gordon. Unfortunately, as they leave the stricken city, the group is captured. Will Fonthill manage to escape and get the vital information that Wolseley needs before Khartoum falls?
This is the latest instalment in the series of novels about Fonthill and ‘352’ Jenkins. As with previous novels, the book is well researched with actual events and historical figures woven seamlessly into the plot, while the politics of the time provide a framework against which the action takes place. The relationship between Fonthill and his intended, Alice Covington, a headstrong but resourceful heroine, provides further opportunity for exploits, as well as (just a little) romantic involvement. A sadistic enemy, deadly adversaries, honourable friends, and lots of action—what more could you ask for? Recommended.
Mike Ashworth
20th CENTURY
HAUNTING BOMBAY
Shilpa Agarwal, Soho, 2009, $24.00/ C$26.00/£16.99, 362pp, hb, 9781569475584 Bombay, India, in the summer of 1960 is a city crowded with color, politics, and ritual; it’s hot and humid, on the cusp of the monsoon season, lending an air of feverish expectancy to the atmosphere. There’s also a lot of fear among individuals, families, castes, neighborhoods and—because of the Partition of 1947—between countries.
Pinky Mittal lost her mother during Partition and was taken in by her grandmother Maji, matriarch of one of Bombay’s powerful
families. Pinky dearly loves her grandmother, but chafes against the anger and bitterness of her Aunt Savita, who lost a baby at the same time Maji took in the infant Pinky. Added to this intergenerational strife is the undercurrent of fear that pervades the Mittal house itself: the family believes Savita’s baby was drowned in the children’s bathroom by Avni, the baby’s nurse, and for the last thirteen years the door to that room has been bolted at sundown, out of fear that the baby’s ghost will escape that room and wreak havoc. In a rage one night, Pinky unbolts the door, and immediately she and the family can sense the difference and feel the growing strength of an evil presence. Everyone in the house, from the servants to Maji, try to free themselves from this evil spirit through rituals both religious and profane.
Whether the ghost is intent on destroying the Mittal family or simply trying to expose the truth, the readers learn much about Indian society and culture of the time through this unnerving tale. Although the characters are well drawn, there’s a dearth of redeeming qualities among them, making it difficult for readers to sympathize with their plight. Keeping one’s distance from a ghost may be the proper course of action in any case!
Helene
Williams
THE DEAD OF WINTER
Rennie Airth, Macmillan, 2009, £16.99, hb, 408pp, 9780230714847 / Viking, 2009, $25.95, hb, 416pp, 9780670020935
This is the final book in the murder mystery trilogy featuring Inspector Madden. In wartime London, a young Polish girl is found murdered near the British Museum. She is identified as a Land Girl who was employed by John Madden. Madden has long since been retired from the police force and settled into a quiet married life, but the girl’s death prompts him to get back in harness and find her killer.
More murders follow, and a trail leads to refugees from occupied Europe. It is a gripping tale, and the atmosphere of the darkest days of World War II is perfectly captured. The old order has been turned upside down and the usual rules do not seem to apply any more. Believable characters and a well crafted story make for an enjoyable, satisfying read. I have not read the previous novels, and although it has taken ten years for Rennie Airth to complete the series, I am sure that fans will consider this final novel worth waiting for.
Ann Oughton
STRANGE BUSINESS
Rilla Askew, Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2009, $14.95, pb, 208pp, 9780806140285
Strange Business is a collection of short stories written about the people of Cedar, Oklahoma, focusing on specific events between the years 1961 and 1986. Although several of the stories share characters, each tale is an entity unto itself, focusing on a few characters
and some unusual happenings. Beginning in 1961, Askew describes the events leading up to a strange encounter between a toddler and a raccoon. As the decades unfold, the characters become older—teenagers who steal watermelons and defy authority, a dead Vietnam soldier and the friend who stayed behind—until the final 1986 story of an ancient, bedridden, smelling-like-death auctioneer whom nobody cares to visit. These sketches are rich in detail, allowing the reader to breathe the dust-filled air of rural Oklahoma. Askew delves deeply into the minds of her characters, allowing the reader to befriend, briefly, a different sort of person trapped in the strangeness of a different sort of life. Askew provides vivid glimpses of these rural Oklahomans, which, taken together, forge the town of Cedar and all its Strange Business.
Elizabeth Caulfield Felt
EVIL FOR EVIL
James R Benn, Soho, 2009, $25.00, hb, 320pp, 9781569475935
In this fourth installment of the Billy Boyle World War II mysteries, the intrepid lieutenant from South Boston is sent by General Eisenhower to investigate the disappearance of fifty Browning automatic rifles from a U.S. Army depot in Northern Ireland. This assignment places him in the middle of a chaotic mix of IRA terrorism, Ulster-baked reprisals, MI-5 skullduggery, and possible German infiltrators, with a dose of good old-fashioned Army rear echelon embezzlement to boot. Billy handles all of this with his usual aplomb, keeping his Irish sympathies at bay, even while being forced to question his most basic assumptions about good and evil in this almost mythic land of his forefathers.
This is a very good mystery, set in a credibly presented Ireland at the time of World War II. Benn gets his characters right and manages to pass along some history along the way without letting any of it get in the way of a compelling story. The basics are indeed rooted in facts, although the author takes those facts a bit further than what actually really happened. Still, his projections are plausible. As ever, the clever device of Boyle being a sort of handyman on Eisenhower’s staff allows the telling of almost any story related to the war without unduly hampering reality. This is first and foremost a mystery, although, due to its setting, one with more than the usual sense of adventure. Anyone who loves mysteries and has more than a passing interest in the era of World War II will not be disappointed.
Ken Kreckel
THE CARPENTER’S CHILDREN
Maggie Bennett, Allison & Busby, 2009, £19.99, hb, 352 pp, 9780749079895
As a writer/reader, I find sagas irritating. I want to delve more deeply into the main character’s personality and motives, but sagas cover all the family members and long spaces
of time; thus, the writing tells a lot about too many characters for me to be deeply involved with. But a good saga is a corking good story, and Maggie Bennett writes some of the best.
The carpenter is Tom Munday who lives, with wife and three children, in the village of North Camp, southern England, in 1904. Violet Munday loves her husband and is ambitious for her children. Ernest, she hopes, will become a clerk in a bank or solicitor’s office. Beautiful Isabel, the good child, she hopes will teach. Grace, the naughty, hot-tempered baby of the family, she worries about, but hopes nursing might calm her.
As a good saga, we follow the Mundays and their friends and community through all the radical changes that take place in the early 20th century. These historical details are one of Maggie Bennett’s strengths. Her research is excellent and used not as a history lesson, but to show how they affect the characters. Grace and her friends are influenced by Hollywood films and dream of being ‘discovered’ and becoming film stars. Ernest is bright, but religious, and becomes a pacifist. Isabel falls in love when fifteen, but he is a curate and much older. Tom watches his children grow and struggle, helps when he can, and reaches his own kind of peace in 1919 with his daughters near him. It’s a comfortable ending: the good get their earthly rewards, and the bad receive their just desserts. That’s what sagas do, provide a comfortable read. This is an excellent book for bedtime reading—one chapter a night to cheer you up. pdr lindsay-salmon
THE SECRETS OF THE CAVE
Phillipa Bowers, Trafalgar Square/Piatkus, 2009, $12.95/£7.99, pb, 9780749909390
In the rural village of Oakey Vale, teenage Betty Barnes dreams of becoming a glamorous movie star. Her sister, now her guardian after their parents’ deaths, has moved them back from London to their recently deceased grandmother’s home to care for their feeble Uncle Albert. A cave nearby hides a grotto where the women of their family, and at least one unlucky man, have been entombed for generations. Betty and Kate have inherited special psychic gifts and were taught the healing benefits of herbal potions by their grandmother. Betty sees visions through touching the personal belongings of others. When she finds the handle of her great-grandmother’s knife, she can witness her ancestor’s history. Betty eventually runs away to London and leads a fashionable but rather unsatisfying life that she supplements by holding the knife handle. Still young, and with a broken heart, she eventually returns home where she knows she is needed to carry on the tradition of wise women.
Bowers tells a complex tale of Betty and her friends from the gentleman’s club that intermingles with the effects of World War II. The juxtaposition of her visions brought about by objects furthers the storyline rather than detracts. The parallel stories give insight to
current as well as past events, providing hints to tragedies and a future happiness despite her current circumstances.
This novel, second in the Wise Woman series, proves entertaining on its own, but would be best read after the first novel, The Wise Woman’s Tale. Anyone who enjoys magical elements with their historical fiction will find this book enchanting.
Suzanne Sprague
HYPERSONIC THUNDER
Walter J. Boyne, Forge, 2009, $26.95, hb, 352pp, 9780765308450
This is the third book in Boyne’s trilogy about the Shannons, a family of test pilots whose careers span the years of jet aviation from the first successful jet flight in 1939 through the trilogy’s end in 2007. In the previous books, Vance Shannon, a WWI flying ace and renowned test pilot, founded Aerospace Consultants, a firm that grew into a multicity company involved in “avionics, simulators,
Y REMEMBER ME
precision-guided munitions, and the executive jet business.” Vance’s twin sons, Tom and Harry, his grandson, V.R., and his protégé, Bob Rodriquez, all followed in his footsteps (or, more appropriately, “in his jet stream”) as pilots cum businessmen.
When this novel begins (1973), the future of the company is at risk: Vance is retired and unwell, Tom is shattered by his experiences in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, Harry is preoccupied with his wife’s alcoholism, V.R. is launching his career in the Air Force Academy, and Rod is ensnared by a feud with Tom. While the loves and losses within the Shannon family propel the book forward, the heart of the story is in the never-ending quest for new technology within the aerospace industry. There are many participants in this quest, including NASA, the Air Force, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, Lockheed, and, of course, the fictional Aerospace Consultants. We are given glimpses into numerous projects, but the book highlights the development of the Stealth Bomber, the
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Melvyn Bragg, Sceptre, 2009, £7.99, pb, 551pp, 9780340951231
This is the fourth in Melvyn Bragg’s autobiographical quartet of novels about Joe Richardson, the workingclass boy we first meet as a child of seven in The Soldier’s Return (HNR 10). Joe is now in his final year at Oxford in 1960, hurting from the love affair so tenderly evoked in Crossing the Lines At a party, he meets Natasha, a French art student several years his senior, also nursing a lover’s rejection. With moving, microscopic intensity, Bragg explores their relationship over the following decade, the nature of marital love and conjugal loyalty at a time of rapid social change, London in the sixties, superbly drawn. Joe—idealistic, romantic, works for the BBC and also writes film scripts and fiction—is swept into the spirit of the times, growing his hair and abandoning his tweed sports jacket for crushed velvet. Natasha, captivated by his zest for life, suppresses anxieties, inner darkness, and a troubled childhood.
The novel is a confessional to their daughter, a brave use of knowledge and imagination to reconstruct the past. Sometimes Bragg breaks from the narrative to address her directly. For the reader, there is the temptation to put real names to fictional faces. Yet the novel demands more than this. In intimate, powerful detail, Bragg captures the emotions that bind two people together and the subtle shifts in thought and feeling that can prise them apart. He adopts an authorial viewpoint, frequently jumping from one character’s thoughts to another’s. This I found a distraction, as I did the references to the ultimate tragedy, so that I was waiting for it to happen. Nothing, however, can detract from the empathy, insight, the visceral emotional honesty of the writing of two damaged characters unable to communicate, and the tormenting power of memory years later.
Janet Hancock
I knew Melvyn Bragg at Oxford; I left college the term before the action in Remember Me begins, so I cannot say authoritatively how much of the story is autobiographical and how much fiction. Bragg prefers to describe it as a novel based on personal experience. Obviously, I found it fascinating, but I thought it fairer to ask somebody else to review it and I am pleased Janet Hancock agrees with my sentiments. However, I found that knowing the tragic outcome gave the book an extra power, like a novel set on the Titanic
The ‘sixties’ are only borderline historical, but if you are too young to remember what it was like to be a young professional starting your career and your family in this decade, then read Remember Me and you will understand our generation a little better.
Edward James
Global Positioning System (GPS), and the Hypersonic Cruiser.
All of this technology may sound a little overwhelming to those who are not aviation enthusiasts, but Boyle does a superb job of intertwining the history of the aerospace industry with the saga of a fictional family. The result is a fascinating story about an industry that is leading mankind beyond the moon and into the future.
Nancy J. Attwell
HONOLULU
Alan Brennert, St. Martin’s Press, 2009, $24.95, hb, 360pp, 9780312360405
Originally named “Regret” in Korea by her parents, who had prayed for a male baby twenty-five years earlier, Jin chooses a costly rebellion as a young girl by deciding to learn how to read—an almost criminal act for Korean women in the early 1900s. She then decides to become the “picture bride” of a Korean man living in Hawaii, an experience which enables her to deeply understand the Korean concept of han, the endurance of suffering with courage and dignity despite and throughout life’s most difficult circumstances.
The novel is chock full of historical relevance, ranging from the horrific conditions of Koreans’ submission to Japan’s invasion and control, the dire conditions of Hawaiian pineapple farm workers, the struggle for survival through the 1929 Depression and its aftermath, the violent conflicts between white (haolis) and native/ Asian-Hawaiian residents, and so much more. Jin returns to Korea twenty-five years later to complete unfinished business with her family and her adopted sister-in-law, who early on in the story ran away to find the family who had sold her. Violence, divorce, prejudice, financial strife, and finally acceptance fill Jin and her family’s life, as dramatically and lovingly presented in these fascinating pages so elegantly crafted by this talented author. Hawaiian customs and traditions are depicted with just the right balance of truth to lend a spirit of joy and celebration next to the more cutting edges of this very “real” saga.
Honolulu is a graceful, honest, and dynamic story sure to evoke a multitude of emotions and leave the reader with deep respect for the endurance and dignity of the human spirit. A must read and superb example of KoreanAmerican historical fiction.
Viviane Crystal
LILY’S JOURNEY
Tania Crosse, Allison and Busby 2009, hb, 320pp, 9780749007201
The story is set in 1952. After the death of her mother, 15-year-old Lily Hayes leaves London to live with her estranged and mysteriously hostile father in a remote cottage on Dartmoor. Gradually their relationship develops and the secrets and shames of the past begin to be revealed. Lily has to come to terms with her
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THE DAY THE FALLS STOOD STILL
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Cathy Marie Buchanan, Voice, 2009, $24.99, hb, 320pp, 9781401340971 / Hutchinson, 2010, £14.99, hb, 368pp, 9780091925956
Bess Heath is in her next to last year at the Loretto Academy in Niagara Falls in 1915 when her father loses his job as the director of the Niagara Power Company. Her life, previously one of ease and comfort, changes almost overnight. She won’t be able to return for her senior year, and when she slips away from the school at night, with only her mother to help carry her bulky trunk on the trolley home, the man who offers to assist them will propel the change in her life. He is Tom Cole, a workingman with great knowledge of Niagara Falls, who is obviously not of her social class. While she is drawn to him, her mother battles the attraction. At home, her family life seems to be splintering in front of her eyes. Bess helps her mother, who has had to start working again as a seamstress, and also tries to cajole her older sister, Isabel, back to health. She is torn between the social connections her mother seeks for her, and her feelings for Tom.
This compelling story is set against the backdrop of the falls and the effect that the emerging hydroelectric power plants are having on them. Should the greed of the business owners and their persuasion of the populace to embrace electrical gadgets be allowed to radically change nature? Readers will learn fascinating details of the river and the falls, both through Tom’s expertise and the newspaper articles sprinkled through the book, which illuminate the action. The novel, the author’s first, was inspired by the life of life of an actual, legendary, Niagara riverman. It is a novel to savor.
Trudi E. Jacobson
discoveries whilst facing the challenges of growing up and falling in love.
The novel is richly evocative of Dartmoor and its history, intertwined with the stories and the struggles of the people who lived there. I was more convinced by the setting than by the romance, but as one who remembers Devon’s steam trains, crisps with blue salt twists, and Camp coffee, I found much to enjoy here.
Y THE PALACE OF STRANGE GIRLS
Ruth Downie
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Sallie Day, Grand Central, 2009, $13.99/C$16.99, pb, 344pp, 9780446545860 / HarperPerennial, 2009, £6.99, pb, 304pp, 9780007276073
This engaging novel takes place during the summer of 1959 in the resort of Blackpool, England. Seven-year-old Beth is there with her family—her parents Ruth and Jack and her 16-year-old sister, Helen, who would have much preferred to stay home and work at the dress shop. Ruth has iron-clad rules, not only for Beth, who recently underwent a heart operation and whose health is uncertain, but also for Helen, who is eager to join in the fun of other adolescents who have far more freedom than she does. There are also tensions between Ruth and Jack, exacerbated by a letter Jack has just received from the woman he loved when he was in Crete during World War II and whom he believed to be dead. Each chapter is prefaced by an item from Beth’s I-Spy at the Seaside book, which has become her favorite possession, and she strives to earn enough points to qualify for an official membership card issued by Big Chief I-Spy.
The correspondence between the quote and the action in each chapter is fun to identify. The author skillfully interweaves details of what things were like in 1959 to fully transport us to that period. I particularly enjoyed learning more about the cotton manufacturing trade in which Jack is employed. The effect that imports and new synthetic fabrics had on the cotton firms and on those employed by the companies came across vividly. There is an endorsement on the book from Easy Living: “This might just be the most delightful book you read this year.” I’ll second that.
Trudi E. Jacobson
PRAYERS FOR SALE
Sandra Dallas, St. Martin’s Press, 2009, $24.95, hb, 320pp, 9780312385187
This charming novel follows the life of 86year-old Hennie Comfort as revealed in the stories she spins for her newly married friend, 17-year-old Nit Spindle. In a Depressionera Colorado mining town, Hennie gradually reveals how the tragedies of Civil War-era North Carolina led to the deaths of her husband and young daughter and how a chance letter from an old friend led Hennie to become the wife of a Colorado miner. Stories abound about 1860s North Carolina and about the turn of the century in the High Country West. Told with humor and wit and authentic regionalisms, Hennie’s stories help young Nit face her own hardships with grace and optimism. They also help Hennie sort out her own long life as she prepares herself to deal with changes she also must face.
Filled with history and eccentric characters of the period, Prayers for Sale gradually profiles an extraordinary woman who passes on her strength to the younger woman. The stories are told with wit and irony and great pathos, but the innermost secret of Hennie’s life is not revealed until the surprising ending, one which is sure to please all readers.
Pamela Ortega
MAN ON THE MOVE
Otto de Kat (trans. Sam Garrett), MacLehose Press, 2009, £12.99, pb, 136pp, 9781906694081
This slim novella translated from the Dutch is the author’s second book. It begins with the protagonist Rob being waved goodbye by his parents as he sets out for Africa in January 1935. The action, or perhaps a better word would be description, switches from goldmines to a Japanese POW camp where Rob makes friends with Guus. After their ship is torpedoed, Guus is lost—presumed drowned—and Rob never seems to recover from the loss of his friend. Maybe it is survivor’s guilt. Rob cannot seem to find anywhere in the world where he feels at home. He has rejected his family seemingly due to unresolved issues with his father. One of the reasons he is so drawn to Guus could be that Guus embraced the conventional family life disdained by Rob.
The existential angst and emotional distance from the narrator makes it difficult sometimes to really empathise with him. The book is written in a minimalist, economical style which still conveys a great deal. It is reminiscent of a Joycean stream of consciousness in many ways. If you are a fan of modernism and like authors such as Sartre and Camus (to whom de Kat is compared on the back of the book) then you will probably enjoy this very much. For me, despite several moments of power, it lacked a cohesive whole and sometimes the narrator’s aloneness and angsty self-involvement seemed just a little bit teenage. Not a book for all therefore, but I’m sure Joyce fans would like it.
Ann Northfield
THE INVISIBLE MOUNTAIN
Carolina De Robertis, Random House, 2009, $24.95, hb, 384pp, 9780307271631 / HarperCollins, 2009, £12.99, hb, 432pp, 9780007302819
The Invisible Mountain is Carolina De Robertis’s accomplished generational saga describing the fates of three women intertwined with those of Uruguay and Argentina. In Uruguay an infant girl, Pajarita is missing and then found on New Year’s Day, 1900. Pajarita marries an Italian immigrant from Venice. When demons plague her husband, Pajarita sustains the family with a combination of herbal medicine and psychological counseling. Divided into three parts, the novel moves to Eva, Pajarita’s fourth child. Assault drives Eva to flee Montevideo with a childhood friend for Argentina. In Buenos Aires Eva becomes dangerously ill, and in the hospital the star physician falls in love with her, enchanted by the fierce Uruguayan writing poetry from her bed. Married to the doctor, Eva enters elegant Buenos Aires society in the same strata as President Peron. When she helps expose a human rights issue, Eva and her family must flee to Uruguay. The novel concludes with Salomé, Eva’s daughter, and the young woman’s adolescent enchantment with revolution and such figures as Ernesto (Che) Guevara. Salomé joins a revolutionary group at a time in both Uruguay and Argentina when dictators were making victims of their own citizenry.
Salomé’s tale is the most tragic, and the arc of the women’s stories, begun with the miraculous survival of Pajarita, seems to follow that of the 20th century at the beginning of which Uruguay thought itself the Switzerland of Latin America. By Salomé’s time Uruguay had become “less innocent, smaller somehow, dwarfed by the looming world.”
Rich in language, character, and incident, The Invisible Mountain is a satisfying tale wherein, as De Robertis writes, “women were like cities, full of darkened rooms, able to find new worlds down hidden hallways.”
Eva Ulett
THE CROOKED CROSS
Michael Dean, Quaestor2000, 2009, £9.99 pb, 191pp, 9781906836139 and £14.99, 9781906836146 (large print)
This is a masterly fiction of events and characters who, in 1933, hatch an elaborate plot to kill Hitler in Munich. The author has researched in detail the places, buildings, furniture, art galleries, and events that might offer success. The cover, a Durer allegorical engraving of a crusader on horseback, and the title are too intellectual a face for an absorbing yet despicable history.
Though fascinating as a read, the book shows a sore lack of editing. Expressions such as “keeping tabs on” and “plasterboard” do not ring true for 1933. I was there! The profusion of characters and places, some with three names, at times hides the story. If the Nazi high-ups and
locations are right, then the book is a staggering, if ponderous, piece of research. If they are not, there are far too many. This book seems so truthful yet it purports to be fiction. Michael Dean has done a brilliant job writing a “love it or hate it” book.
As Hitler inspects the Munich artists’ studios, the author displays sensitive understanding of the work of the period and the Nazi (i.e. Hitler’s) preferences. There is remarkable police prosecution detail of a terrifying period in German history when both Jews and Communists were persecuted, their property and art collections stolen, or bought for a pittance, and painters were either in or out. And out meant death.
I don’t need to tell you how the book ends.
Geoffrey Harfield
ANGEL’S FLIGHT
Alice Duncan, Five Star, 2009, $25.95, hb, pp, 9781594147838
Boston blueblood Mercy Alcutt returns in the second book in Duncan’s series set in 1920s Los Angeles. Mercy, a budding novelist, has taken a job as secretary to Ernest Templeton, Private Investigator, in hopes of life experiences to inform her work. Ernest isn’t too inclined to take the cases that would add some spark to Mercy’s days, but she has enough drive for two. Incidentally, although the name Ernest conjures up a less than prepossessing image, this Ernest is attractive enough that female clients give Mercy pangs of jealousy.
Phony psychics, a murdered gossip columnist, and worst of all, a visit from Mercy’s terrifying mother—these things turn out to be the least of Mercy’s problems when she once again unwittingly reveals too much to a murderer. I had a sense of déjà vu as she found herself in the same situation in the first book, but she remains a highly enjoyable character. Despite her penchant for confessing her suspicions to the wrong people, she proves to be a worthy foil to her employer and even manages to stand up to her formidable mother. I’m an admitted sucker for mysteries set in the early Hollywood era, and Duncan makes this a fast, fun read.
Ellen Keith
THE HIDDEN WAR
David Fiddimore, Pan, 2009, £7.99, pb, 496pp, 9780330454483
Set in 1948, the novel opens with tensions increasing between the Soviet forces and the western Allied forces in Berlin. As the situation deteriorates, Charlie Bassett finds himself coordinating the efforts of a small freight outfit flying from the UK to West Germany and on to Berlin as part of the massive allied air bridge, making essential drops of food and medicines to help the increasingly beleaguered and starving population. Of course, it’s not all work for Charlie who soon has a girl in each airport and a scheme in every country. However, when the people he loves are threatened by the effects of
the blockade, he knows he must take a desperate chance to smuggle them out of the country.
The Hidden War is the fourth in a series of novels involving Charlie Bassett—war hero, man-about-town and inveterate womaniser.
David Fiddemore’s story is an entertaining mixture of the strangely surreal and the totally believable while evoking the danger and tragedy that were an unspoken but inevitable part of the whole operation. Bassett is a plausible personality whose wisecracking and cynicism masks a more sensitive, caring side. An entertaining read. Recommended.
Mike Ashworth
COLD BLOOD
James Fleming, Jonathan Cape, 2009, £16.99, hb, 328pp, 9780224087216
As the Bolsheviks seize power, Charlie Doig, half-Scot, half-Russian, sets off in pursuit of personal vengeance. Acquiring an armoured train and a motley collection of followers, not all of whom are to be trusted, naturally enough, he heads east and learns that there is huge quantity of gold bullion at Kazan, a city being fought over by Reds, Whites, and the Czech Legion. Charlie determines that he will not only kill the villainous People’s Commissar Glebov, but carry off the gold as well.
Is Mr. Fleming writing a serious thriller or a send-up of the genre? Cold Blood occupies an uneasy boundary between the two and doesn’t quite work as either. We are informed that Mr. Fleming is a nephew of Ian, and his previous work has been extensively and favourably reviewed, but I found myself wondering why, although the book frequently reads like a screenplay for a modern Bond film—all action sequences and dashing about and very little to hold things together. For me, a serious thriller needs to convey a strong sense of ‘this really could happen’, but Cold Blood doesn’t do that. In the comic thriller/historical sphere, Mr. Fleming faces the awesome precedent of Flashman, which, despite all the absurdities and the suspension of disbelief required as our antihero manages to get involved in every war of the Victorian age, remains strongly rooted in reality as well being very funny indeed. The reader is also with Flashman all the way. There are moments of good muscular writing in Cold Blood, and the chaos and anarchy of Revolutionary Russia is well conveyed, but at times I lost track of what was going on. And did I care about Charlie Doig and his quest? No, I didn’t.
Ann Lyon
THE GIRL FROM JUNCHOW (US) / THE CONCUBINE’S SECRET (UK)
Kate Furnivall, Berkley, 2009, $15.00/C$16.50, 512pp, pb, 9780425227640 / Sphere, 2009, £6.99, pb, 528pp, 9780751540451
Lydia Ivanovna is The Girl From Junchow When Lydia was five, she and her Russian mother went to China to escape the Bolsheviks,
Y SUNNYSIDE
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Glen David Gold, Knopf, 2009, $26.95, hc, 560pp, 9780307270689 / Sceptre, 2009, £17.99, hb, 559pp, 9780340829813
Gold’s panoramic novel of World War I and early Hollywood opens with a mass delusion: film actor Charlie Chaplin is simultaneously spotted in more than eight hundred places across the United States. Sunnyside’s main characters, though they never connect, are affected by the incident: Leland Wheeler sees Chaplin drown in a boat off the rugged northern California coast, and Hugo Black witnesses a riot in a small Texas town where the residents are disappointed that Chaplin has snubbed them by not appearing on a train. Chaplin, however, is safely ensconced in southern California—while he is famous, he hasn’t reached the level of celebrity or legend that we associate with him. Gold follows Chaplin, Wheeler, and Black as they navigate difficult personal situations, the war in Europe, and their desire for fame and recognition.
It’s difficult to describe what type of novel Sunnyside is, since it is so many things all at once—a war novel, a romance, a comic novel, biographical fiction, a portrait of a nation on the brink of a new era. The threads of the story connect in unsuspected ways, and readers will find themselves learning things that they did not know about WWI-era film and how it influenced the way Americans (and, through the long arms of cinema, much of the Western world) think about war and celebrity. By delving into stories and legends both well known and long forgotten, Gold captures the moment where the modern era of celebrity and American cultural dominance begins—and he does it with style. At the end of Sunnyside, you’ll find yourself awed by the lasting influence of a few seemingly minor incidents in American cultural history.
Historical novels usually take themselves rather seriously, even the romantic fantasies. It is rare to find an historical novel which is intentionally humorous. Sunnyside is an exception; indeed, it is exceptional in many ways.
Sunnyside is an exuberant, hilarious, anarchic book. It is definitely historical since it is firmly anchored in the years 1916 to 1919 and takes in great historical events such as America’s entry into the Great War, the Western Front, and the Allied intervention in the Bolshevik Revolution, as well as the early history of Hollywood and the career of Charlie Chaplin. It is more difficult to decide if this is a novel. There are several different stories told concurrently, all of them fantastical but clearly with elements of historical fact (the author adds the usual appendix which explains which is which but deliberately leaves large areas in doubt). Each story has its own protagonists and even at the end they do not link up, although they touch each other at points.
Nanette Donohue
Gradually the reader realises that the book is itself like a Charlie Chaplin film, the shooting of which is one of the story lines. We laugh because it touches on things which are too deep for tears, as when Charlie laughs during the funeral of his baby son. The stories are about love and betrayal—all sorts of love including Charlie’s mix of love and shame for his half-mad East End mother and a soldier’s love for the puppy he finds on the battlefield—about death and life, the meaning and the meaningless of life and the capriciousness of fate. You will laugh as you read this book and feel like weeping for the pity of all when you reach the end.
leaving behind Lydia’s father, Jens Friis, a Danish engineer, whom she and her mother believed had been killed by the Bolsheviks. In 1929, after her mother’s death, Lydia learns that her father is alive and a prisoner in Siberia. She longs to see her father again. She leaves China with her half-brother, Alexei, and her self-
Edward James
appointed protector, a Cossack named Popkov. Their journey to Russia brings many dangers, friends, false friends, and betrayals. In Moscow, where Jens Friis has been transferred to a secret prison, Lydia renews her love affair with Chang An Lo, her Chinese Communist lover from Junchow. Not only is Chang in Moscow as
a delegate for Mao Tse-Tung, but he also has knowledge of Jens Friis’s whereabouts. He helps Lydia and Alexei in their efforts to rescue their father. Chang also has knowledge concerning the truth about Lydia’s brother, Alexei.
In this immediate sequel to The Russian Concubine, Kate Furnivall has created a remarkable heroine in 17-year-old Lydia, who is young and vulnerable yet headstrong and fearless. This is a believable depiction of survival in Stalin’s Communist Russia. Ms. Furnivall’s descriptions are powerful, bringing the reader completely into the setting. She has developed characters that are well balanced and believable. The plotting and pace are breathless.
Audrey Braver
THE MOON LOOKED DOWN
Dorothy Garlock, Grand Central, 2009, $19.99, hb, 386pp, 9780446577946
Sophie Heller and her family flee the Nazi regime in 1933, emigrating from Germany to the United States. The family settles in the small farming community of Victory, Illinois, where they own a farm. As anti-German sentiment increases during the early years of World War II, the Hellers are persecuted by a group of local ruffians intent on driving them out of town. One summer night, Sophie witnesses the destruction of the family’s barn, as well as threats against her family, and acts bravely to fight back. Meanwhile, Cole Ambrose returns to Victory after completing his education in Chicago. Cole is discouraged because he can’t go to war due to a disability, and his relationship with his father is poor, but when he meets Sophie, he finds a reason to overcome all his fears and concerns. While Garlock does a masterful job capturing small-town America, the characters leave something to be desired. Though their love story is sweet, there’s nothing distinguishing about Sophie and Cole—their actions are often predictable. Sophie is a textbook plucky heroine, showing bravery and resilience in the face of fear; Cole is a typical unexpected knight in shining armor, ready to ride to her rescue in his pickup truck. The villains show little motivation for their actions other than general small-mindedness, and even though the reader knows from their actions that they are the ”bad guys,” the author makes them over-the-top vulgar and abusive to remind us of the fact. The wife of Sophie’s employer pops up throughout the novel to harass Sophie for no apparent reason other than to add conflict. A little more backstory to explain the characters’ motivations would have improved this novel.
Nanette Donohue
A RELIABLE WIFE
Robert Goolrick, Algonquin, 2009, $23.95, hb, 291pp, 9781410417381 / Little, Brown, 2009, £12.99, hb, 304pp, 9781408701935
Ralph Truitt and Catherine Land meet at a train station in rural Wisconsin in 1907. Ralph’s
ad for a reliable wife has brought them together. They’re both looking to make a change in their life, but it may be more than just a simple marriage. She hungers for more in life, with money and social standing utmost in her sights. She is not who she seems: she hides more than the precious gems sewn in her dress hem and a small blue bottle she carries. When she steps off the train, Ralph takes one look at the well-worn photograph of Catherine; clearly she is not the woman he has been corresponding with. Though furious at her subterfuge, she will still suit his purpose. He has plans for Catherine that with any luck will bring his wayward son home to him. Detectives do locate this lost son, now a man who plays piano in a bar. He is the lascivious Tony Moretti, but on approach he denies Ralph is his father. Meanwhile, Catherine sets in motion a plan to kill her husband with arsenic from her small blue bottle. Why would she jeopardize her new charmed lifestyle married to the rich Mr. Truitt?
The characters of Ralph and Catherine are carefully chiseled and polished. Robert Goolrick creates a clever labyrinth of deceit, guilt, and forgiveness. The story is racked with tension as he slowly manipulates his readers through the twisted maze of plot complexity. Goolrick’s writing is warm and embraceable but with an occasional electric shock. Suspense is this storyteller’s magic.
Wisteria
Leigh
MURDER IN THE DARK
Kerry Greenwood, Poisoned Pen Press, 2009, $24.95, hb, 266pp, 9781590584392
Phryne Fisher receives an invitation from the eccentric twins Gerald and Isabella Templar to the Last Best Party of 1928, to be held at their estate near Werribee, Australia. At first she hesitates, but after she receives various threats, including a snake in a Christmas present, she decides to go because the best way to get Phryne to do something is to tell her not to do it.
Phryne enjoys herself at the party, peopled by a number of eccentric guests. But soon Gerald’s obnoxious adopted son, Tarquin, is kidnapped, and Phryne learns that an internationally renowned assassin is among the guests. Who is the killer’s intended victim: the twins or Phryne herself? And are the kidnapper and the assassin one and the same? Phryne races to find the truth, with not many clues to go on except a series of riddles left on luggage labels for her to find. But the intrepid Phryne is determined to win this cat-and-mouse game with her adversary.
I had read only one other book in this mystery series before, but I don’t think you need to have read the others to fully appreciate this one. Greenwood provides extensive details about life in 1920s Australia, and the adventurous Phryne is a delightful heroine with whom I would definitely like to spend more time. These books are pure entertainment—an absolute pleasure to read.
Vicki Kondelik
MURDER ON A MIDSUMMER NIGHT
Kerry Greenwood, Poisoned Pen Press, 2009, $24.95/C$31.95, hb, 268pp, 9781590586327
Greenwood’s latest entry in the Phryne Fisher series, her 16th, has the unflappable Melbourne detective facing a multitude of problems: her 29th birthday (a serious occasion); a midsummer heat wave (complete with dangerously hot winds); a dead antiques dealer (young, and not suicidal, so he must have been murdered); and a genealogy quest (for a fractious, and fractured, family). It’s enough to leave other investigators wishing for a stiff drink and some ice.
Fortunately, Phryne has the resources to meet all challenges—for one of them, a large block of ice is indeed the answer—without breaking a sweat. Her foray into the antique dealer’s life includes meeting his mother, who had once been a model for the Pre-Raphaelites, his friends, who are “modern” types into smoking pot and holding séances, and the stock of his store, which holds many secrets, and perhaps the answer to his untimely demise. The family asking for help with resolving a will that mentions an unknown child has just as many quirks and secrets. Phryne enlists the help of her companion, Dot, and her sister, Eliza, as well as her usual cadre of lovers, adopted daughters, cab drivers, and off-duty policemen to help track down every lead; the expanded roles of Dot and Eliza are especially well crafted. The only false note is that of the Pre-Raphaelite model, as she would have had to be a very young model, and a very old mother, for the dates of the artists (1850s) and the story (1929) to mesh.
Given a willing suspension of disbelief, however, the story works just fine. Readers should sit back and enjoy the rollicking action that Phryne Fisher’s investigations always provide. A glass of iced orange crush is optional.
Helene Williams
WINTER IN JUNE
Kathryn Miller Haines, Harper, 2009, $13.99/ C$17.99, pb, 336pp, 9780061579561
Third in Haines’s Rosie Winter mystery series, this outing finds the World War II-era actress on a steamer to the South Pacific with best gal pal Jayne and three other actresses to be in a USO show. Her motives are personal rather than patriotic; she’s in search of her exboyfriend Jack, a Navy man gone missing. The discovery of a dead woman in the water at the docks is not a propitious start to the journey, nor does the murder of a fellow actress during a show contribute to morale.
I’ve been a fan of this series for the first two books, and the third increases my admiration for Haines and her protagonist. In the first two, Haines brought wartime New York to vivid life, and in Winter in June she brings the reader to the war itself. Rosie, her fellow actresses, and the men with whom they are stationed are alternately
bored and terrified. Wartime politicking abounds, and Rosie is almost blackballed for daring to express the opinion that “Japs” are people, too, who shouldn’t be tortured. Haines has an ear for the dialogue of the 1940s, and in Rosie, she’s created a heck of a dame.
Ellen Keith
THE FINEST TYPE OF ENGLISH WOMANHOOD
Rachel Heath, Hutchinson, 2009, £12.99, hb, 373pp, 9780091925864
Two girls who have never met escape from the drab restrictions of post-World War II Britain, their destination South Africa. Innocent and bewildered 17-year-old bride Laura Lovell struggles for understanding in this hot, disturbing alien land where nothing is explained and knowledge is no sooner gained than discredited. Actress Gay Gibson’s diary shows a fiercely ambitious and manipulative young woman whose compelling attractions spell danger: but for whom? Her motives are obscure; her actions, self-damaging.
The meeting of the two girls brings Laura grief and more confusion but a growing maturity as she demonstrates her own resourcefulness. Gay is apparently a desperately sick woman living on alcohol, cigarettes, her own nerves, and valiant determination. They decide to return to England together.
The news of Gay’s disappearance from the liner Durban Castle en route from South Africa is a welcome sensation in shabby, war-torn Britain. The glamorous vanished protagonist and enticing rumours of all manner of vice lead to a notorious and well-documented murder trial.
This book could have given readers a commonplace story of lust in a hot climate. Instead the author has created a surreal 20thcentury scenario with the quality of a grim fairy tale where the normal threatens to become monstrous and clues, which may prove to be true or false, must be followed,. An accomplished and successful first novel.
Nancy Henshaw
DARKEST HOUR
James Holland, Bantam, 2009, £12.99, hb, 432pp, 9780593058367
Sergeant Jack Tanner hasn’t even been at Manston training camp for 24 hours before he realises something dodgy is going on. The death of two Polish refugees and an attempt on his life and that of his loyal corporal, Stan Sykes, heighten Tanner’s suspicions against an old army adversary.
Before he can get to the bottom of the mystery, however, his company is sent out to reinforce the rest of his regiment in France and Flanders. It is May 1940, and the French and Belgian armies are in retreat in the face of the relentless thrust of the Germans. As the evacuation of the BEF becomes more inevitable, enemy opposition and treachery from within means that Tanner and his
men may not make it back to Dunkirk in time. Darkest Hour is a rollicking, testosterone- and adrenaline-fuelled adventure story. Tanner is the sort of hero I imagine many little boys would like to grow up to be: principled, courageous, and resourceful enough to be able to come up with a cunning plan, however dire his situation appears.
Inevitably, given the subject matter, the novel is an all-male affair (apart from the guest appearance of a pretty nurse whom, I suspect, might play a greater role in future novels). To enjoy this book I suspect many new readers will probably seek out the earlier novel, The Odin Mission.
The book includes a glossary of military terms and slang, several maps, and an informative historical note. For boys of all ages.
Jasmina Svenne
THE BURNT-OUT TOWN OF MIRACLES
Roy Jacobsen (trans. Don Bartlett), Trafalgar Square/John Murray, 2009 (c2008), $12.95, pb, 200pp, 9780719521126
When his village is evacuated by the Finnish army, Timo Vatanen, a village idiot who makes his living as a woodcutter, refuses to leave. As Timo is confirmed a fool by his fleeing countrymen, he muses, “At such moments it is difficult to know whether you are changing or just learning to understand yourself.” When the Russian army sets up camp in his village, Timo remains and plays the fool to his captors, secretly acting as caretaker to the villagers’ homes and savior to an odd assortment of Russian men pressed into service by the Russian army. But when the war is over, Timo is finally driven from his home when neither he nor the returning villagers understand his actions during the war.
Plagued for years by confusion and shame, Timo concludes that “everyone has the right to be a hero in his own life.” He decides to discover the truth about Finland’s Winter War and the fate of his Russian companions. Artfully translated from Norwegian, Jacobsen’s novel is an internal narrative of survival, friendship, and loss with the war serving as little more than a backdrop. It is the kind of story that stays with the reader long after one has put it down, like a hauntingly beautiful melody that cannot be shaken.
Patricia O’Sullivan
INSPECTOR GHOTE’S FIRST CASE
H. R. F. Keating, Minotaur, 2009, $24.95, hb, 288pp, 9780312384043
Inspector Ghote has been with us for over forty years, solving crimes in newly independent India since it was contemporary, and not historical, fiction. This installment returns us to the moment when Ghote has just been advanced to the rank of inspector and posted to the Crime Branch in Bombay. His wife is expecting their first child, he wants to move to a new flat corresponding to his new status—but is called by Sir Rustom Engineer to investigate the suicide of the wife
of an old British acquaintance—coincidentally also pregnant.
Self-doubts plague the novice inspector in a maddening fashion, resonating the words from the Sir Lawrence Olivier Hamlet which duty compels Ghote to miss attending with his wife: “a man who couldn’t make up his mind.” Of course, in Ghote’s case, the doubts bring him back again and again to probe the life of the dead woman that was more than it seemed, even to her husband. To my ears, pitch-perfect Indian English, even in Ghote’s tortured thoughts, keeps the story going at a clip. Excellent reading for those who couldn’t get enough of Slumdog Millionaire
Ann Chamberlin
THE
LANGUAGE OF BEES: A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes
Laurie R. King, Bantam, 2009, $25.00/C$28.95, hb, 434pp, 9780553804546
I, admittedly, have been a fan of Laurie R. King’s since I picked up The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, the first installment in the RussellHolmes series, years ago. I’ve also reviewed a number of the entries for this publication. This one stands out and is perhaps the most compelling and complex of them.
Holmes fans know that he was a beekeeper. He understood the “language of bees”—how they operate within a hive, how their communal society works, how they communicate wordlessly and yet extraordinarily effectively. So, when Mary and Sherlock return to Sussex after a long absence, it is mystifying to them why an entire hive has inexplicably disappeared. The only reason for this behavior is the community was driven by some sort of madness to take flight.
Add to that mix is the disturbing reappearance of Holmes’s son—by Irene Adler—the surrealist painter, Damian Adler. His wife and child have gone missing. Can Damian’s behavior, often as bizarre as his paintings, be explained away or is he involved in the disappearances?
The investigative team of Holmes and Russell follow an increasingly sinister path of gruesome murders and strange cults. Russell finds herself in the underbelly of London, cultivating acquaintanceships with bohemian artists and cultist fanatics—all the while recognizing that Holmes is dealing with an investigation much too close to home emotionally.
This is a very satisfying and enjoyable mystery, dense and yet an easy read. I highly recommend it whether you’ve read the earlier installments or not.
Ilysa Magnus
A SEASON OF LEAVES
Catherine Law, Preface, 2009, £7.99, pb, 341pp, 9781848090989
The novel begins in 1992, in Cornwall, England, with an old lady, Rose Pepper, preparing for a trip to Prague. Many intriguing
mysteries are set up in this first chapter—a scar, half-remembered memories, hidden unopened letters, and lots of hints about the past—leaving the reader suitably curious to find out what happened. The story then switches back to wartime England and the reader is immersed in the world of air raids, uniforms, blackouts, and so on. The historical details set the scene but don’t overwhelm the characters or story. Rose becomes a Land Girl and, although engaged to the deeply unpleasant Will, she meets and falls in love with a Czech soldier. The later parts of the novel switch to Prague showing the problems, fears, and difficulties of Czechoslovakia at that time, particularly the tribulations caused by the presence of the Russians and the beginnings of the communist state.
Sometimes it is easy for modern women to become a little frustrated with Rose not standing up for herself as much as she might, but this is, in fairness, probably more accurate for a nice, young girl of the Forties. The novel is very enjoyable, entertaining, and deserves to be very popular. If you liked The Outcast or The Welsh Girl, you’ll probably love this. The harshest of critics might find it a very little bit clichéd, but who cares? It’s an excellent, old-fashioned story and I found it thoroughly compelling.
Ann Northfield
AFTER YOU’VE GONE
Jeffrey Lent, Atlantic Monthly, 2009, $24.00, hb, 272pp, 9780871138941
After You’ve Gone takes place at the beginning of the 20th century and spans a number of years in the life of Henry Dorn. It takes place where he grew up in Nova Scotia and follows his travels to New York and Amsterdam. Henry Dorn’s life is radically changed one day when his wife Olivia and son Robert are tragically killed in an automobile accident. Olivia is the love of Henry’s life, and with her death he carries unbearable grief. He and Robert have had a strained relationship, unable to communicate, neither able to understand the other. Robert has returned from war addicted to morphine, full of self-pity and lacking motivation. Henry’s last conversation with his son was a disaster. When he realizes his two daughters are too busy to include him in their lives, he withdraws, instead making plans to travel. He chooses Amsterdam where he decides he will research his heritage. While there he meets Lydia Pierce, independent and confident, happy to be single and free to come and go as she pleases. It is a new age, where women are venturing out on their own. The plot is somewhat predictable as Henry falls in love with Lydia. However, this is not the full story, nor is it the end.
Jeffrey Lent again demonstrates his storytelling finesse. The language is breathtakingly rich, the characters are crafted with finite detail, and the ending is anyone’s guess. Although somewhat slow reading at the beginning, the story soon picks up momentum. Reading anything by Jeffrey Lent is a sensual gift to savor. After
You’ve Gone is no exception, a love story that will leave a lingering imprint.
Wisteria Leigh
HOLLYWOOD BUZZ
Margit Liesche, Poisoned Pen Press, 2009, $24.95, hb, 285pp, 9781590585795
To begin with, Pucci Lewis is a WASP, Women’s Airforce Service Pilot, that is, the organization established during World War II to ferry warplanes and perform other flight related duties to free up the men for operations against the enemy. Finding herself in Hollywood in this second installment of a series, the intrepid Pucci, master pilot and semi-professional government agent, becomes involved in all manner of skullduggery, including the suspicious crash of a fellow female pilot, possible Nazi agents, the black market, foreign propaganda, illegal drug trade, and even a Bela Lugosi in the downside of his career. All the while, she has to cope with promoting an organization threatened by a potent male backlash and keeping her bearings in the glitz and glamour of Tinseltown. There is more novel than history to this work. Although the WASPs, the environs of Fort Roach and nearby Hollywood are rendered competently, history is not allowed to get in the way of a good story. That is both this book’s blessing and its curse. As an amateur sleuth tale it succeeds, but it often feels that the historical background is mere prop. Pucci could be in any profession in any time period without the story missing a beat. Take this one as a light mystery, one that happens to throw in a bit of history along the way, and you won’t risk disappointment.
Ken Kreckel
GIVE ME TOMORROW
Elizabeth Lord, Piatkus/Trafalgar Square, 2009 (c2006), £6.99/$9.95, pb, 344pp, 9780749929817
Elizabeth Lord writes warm and dependable sagas about the lives of women in the early 20th century. This one, first published in 2006, is no exception. Eveline meets Connie at a suffragette march, and they immediately become friends despite their contrasting backgrounds. Eveline is the daughter of an East End grocer whereas Connie’s father is a Harley Street doctor. And yet both face similar difficulties, especially Connie, whose father is a domineering bully. When she falls in love with a ‘lowly’ bank clerk, she is disowned. Eveline, on the other hand, finds herself attracted by a man from the upper classes. But can she trust him?
Their friendship, which begins with a dalliance with the suffragettes, takes them through the First World War and its aftermath with the usual heartbreak and horrors. It endures and it matures.
When I began reading this novel and its vibrant opening scene of a suffragette rally, I had hoped that Connie and Eveline would become more involved with the movement, but this was not to be. If, however, you prefer history
to barely ruffle the surface of your reading then this gentle saga is for you.
Sally Zigmond
THE LAST TRAIN TO SCARBOROUGH
Andrew Martin, Faber & Faber, 2009, £12.99, hb, 314pp, 9780571229697
March 1914. In what could be his last case before leaving the force to train as a lawyer, railway detective Jim Stringer has been ordered to go undercover in a seedy Scarborough lodging house (misnamed Paradise) to investigate the disappearance of the last railwayman to stay there overnight.
Along the way he has to deal with a disgruntled chief inspector who seems to be withholding information about the case, an overenthusiastic assistant with a passion for guns, and the voluptuous and seductive landlady of Paradise, Amanda Rickerby.
The structure of this novel is clever, beginning with Jim waking up after the climax of the book in a dark, confined space on a shifting mound of coal with only fragmentary memories of the events leading up to this point. This device allows Martin to inform new readers and remind existing fans about Jim’s family, background, and work colleagues in a natural way while he tries to piece together what happened.
The book can be read as a stand alone novel, though I suspect I might have cared more about the potential threat to Jim’s marriage from the ambitious, energetic Lydia if I had read the earlier novels in the series.
Jasmina Svenne
MURDER AT DEVIATION JUNCTION
Andrew Martin, Mariner, 2009, $13.95/C$18.95, pb, 256pp, 9780156034456 / Faber and Faber, 2008, £7.99, pb, 256pp, 9780571229666
In this fourth in a series featuring railway detective Jim Stringer, the harsh British winter of 1909 can be felt to the bone. Jim is now a family man with a wife and small, sickly son, so he’s desperate for a promotion. He agrees to investigate an assault case, but upon returning home, a frozen body of an apparent suicide sends him on a different track. Soon Jim is entangled in a series of grim events that surround a group of men who shared a private railway car. He follows his instincts, much to the consternation of his fellows, and embarks on a wild chase from the furnaces of Ironopolis to a hideout in Scotland. On the way he tries the patience of his temperance-leaning wife and searches out the perfect Christmas presents for his aeroplane-, not railway- ,entranced son.
England’s industrial age is illuminated with a fierce beauty from a crime-solving perspective that cuts through class lines. Jim struggles to make life better for his family without sacrificing his own steady and dogged allegiance to justice and truth. He’s a character who sustains a series well. And does he know and love his railways!
Eileen Charbonneau
BLOOD & ICE
Robert Masello, Harvill Secker, 2009, £12.99, pb, 495pp, 9781846552731 / Bantam, 2009, $24.00, hb, 512pp, 9780553807288
Photojournalist Michael Wilde, tormented by guilt and grief, takes on an assignment in the Antarctic, a chance to abandon the intolerable circumstances of his life in the United States. His first dive into dangerous waters beneath the ice cap leads him to a discovery so dauntingly bizarre that only his colleagues, the hardened, experienced scientists and service personnel there at the furthest reach of existence, would believe him. They have learned that nothing can be discounted in this region “at pole” where humanity has such a fragile toehold. A second dive brings two ice-shrouded treasures into the laboratory. Terror and tragedy ensue, the grisly events vividly detailed and horribly convincing. Then a discovery by dedicated marine biologist Darryl Hirsch brings hope to the beleaguered survivors—a hope that may allow Michael a strange chance of happiness in an ending that can never be more than bittersweet. To disclose anything more would spoil the story for readers.
There is some excellent characterisation of clever, inquisitive, and occasionally eccentric people, each one sharply individualised, plus exciting scenes of intense physical action. The verses from The Rime the Ancient Mariner are a nice touch. This is an unusual and admirably researched book mainly set in a place where men and women live at the limit of human endurance and the smallest mistake may prove deadly.
Nancy Henshaw
THE CHAPEL AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
Kirsten McKenzie, John Murray, 2009, £14.99, hb, 307pp, 9871848541498
In 1942, Italian prisoners of war were taken to the Orkneys and employed to build the defences around Scapa Flow and later the causeway. While there, they turned a Nissen hut into a chapel. The chapel is still there and is visited by thousands of tourists every year, myself being one of them.
These events are told around a story featuring Emilio and his childhood sweetheart, Rosa, who live on the shores of Lake Como in northern Italy. They are engaged to be married when Emilio is called up and sent to North Africa. He is soon captured by the English and finds himself on board a ship bound for Scotland and the tiny island of Lamb Holm. Meanwhile, back in Italy, Rosa and her mother, who runs a small hotel, find themselves caught up in the local resistance.
Although the characters are fictitious, I found this a very moving story and one that I couldn’t put down, made all the more real as I have seen the Chapel and appreciated its apparent isolation from the rest of the world. I highly recommend this book.
Marilyn Sherlock
AMERICAN ADULTERER
Jed Mercurio, Jonathan Cape, 2009, £12.99 hb, 354pp, 9780224081566
This novel is unputdownable. Much of what makes it compulsive reading, however, is its voyeuristic quality. Although written in prose of lapidary concision and brilliance, it is literary fiction’s answer to a Sunday tabloid, which is all part of the author’s plan.
Mercurio’s subject is the presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, from Jackie’s dress bills to Marilyn’s overdose, the Bay of Pigs to the Cuban missile crisis, and the fateful motorcade through Dallas. But what Mercurio has done with the legend is something very clever. A doctor himself, he makes Kennedy’s health the focus of the novel. Stretching a point, perhaps, he casts the president’s libido as one more in a list of ailments which included chronic back trouble and Addison’s disease. By juxtaposing accounts of Kennedy’s ordeals with his health and the women in his life, with transcriptions from his speeches and accounts of his war heroism, his actions on Cuba, civil rights, or space exploration, Mercurio leads us to question the relationship between the public and the private man. From there it is a short leap to the realisation that, today, when the press can plead public interest as an excuse to demolish a public figure’s reputation on a whim, Kennedy could never have been elected.
There are many ways to interpret a public life, but Mercurio leaves the reader in little doubt of his belief in the importance of Kennedy’s presidency. He implicitly questions whether we would still be here at all had it not been for Kennedy’s willingness to override
Y UNDER THIS UNBROKEN SKY
his military advisers and engage in a direct, personal correspondence with Khrushchev in 1961—which leads back to the bigger question underlying his narrative: What do we want from our public servants and what happens when we get the politicians we deserve? This is a deeply serious novel, one we should all read and be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves.
Sarah Bower
THE SUMMER HOUSE
Mary Nichols, Allison and Busby, 2009, £19.99, hb, 399pp, 9780749079840
Lady Helen Barstairs marries her soldier husband at her family’s request and regrets it almost instantly when she meets Oliver Donovan. Their brief but intense affair leaves her with a baby daughter, Laura, much wanted but forcibly adopted. Laura’s life is poor but happy until another war robs her of her fiancé and also leaves her a single mother.
Then Laura and Helen’s lives come together again and the family begins to learn to love each other. Cue the arrival of Oliver’s son Wayne to stir the mix. Secrets long hidden are likely to come into the open and could ruin the lives of all concerned. But always in the background is Steve, Laura’s “rock”, who, although badly injured, is the one person to teach Laura to live and love again.
Mary Nichols is a prolific and popular novelist and from this latest offering it is easy to see why. She writes in a lively and engaging style and knows exactly how to spin a darn good tale. The Summer House is a lovely slice-of-life saga which uses its dual First and Second World War backdrops to the full. Her characters are
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Shandi Mitchell, Harper, 2009, $25.99, hb, 352pp, 9780061885266 / Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009, £12.99, hb, 368pp, 9780297856580
Lured by promises of prosperity and fertile land for farming, Theo Mykolayenko and his family immigrated to Canada to escape the political and social unrest and harsh conditions of Stalin’s regime. As the novel opens, he is returning from prison—he was imprisoned for ”stealing” grain from his harvest to feed his family. His experiences in prison haunt him throughout the novel as he struggles to tame the land and care for his family. Both nature and civilization seem to be against the family’s success; they are faced with fires, wild animals, blizzards, and inhospitable locals, among other challenges. Theo’s greatest challenge, however, is his sister Anna, who owns the deed to the land Theo farms and whose husband, Stefan, wants a prosperous life without exerting any effort.
Mitchell’s unflinching debut chronicles the harsh conditions for immigrants to the prairie provinces during the 1930s. The region was still an unsettled frontier, and the challenges of ekeing out a living were overwhelming. Yet despite all the despair, there’s a light of hope that permeates this novel. Mitchell based the story on her own family’s experiences settling in the prairie provinces, and there’s a love for the land and the immigrant spirit throughout the book. This is one of the finest novels I have read this year—a lyrical, evocative tale of pioneer life from an immensely talented debut author.
Nanette Donohue
rather appealing and even the various “bit parts” are well fleshed out. All in all a very good read.
Sara Wilson
EARLY’S FALL
Jerry Peterson, Five Star, 2009, $25.95, hb, 303pp, 9781594146787
Sheriff James Early is an old-fashioned lawman in late 1940s Kansas, confronted with a gruesome murder and a daylight bank robbery that leads him on a futile chase. The outrageous robbery is a welcome distraction to the brutal axe murder of a local schoolteacher, Judith Smitts. Early is a good-hearted, cowboy lawman with a pregnant wife, more at home on the range than facing the ugly realities of his job. Investigating the murdered woman’s past, the sheriff discovers connections to a newly formed Israel that belie the unassuming lifestyle of a teacher, wife, and mother.
Peterson sprinkles his homey, but ultimately tragic, tale with eccentric characters and quirky events: a conversation with President Harry Truman while in Kansas City to interview a witness, a spontaneous friendship with a black railroad worker, an audacious bank robber, an Israeli agent, and a homeless old man who provides a critical link to the killer. At the heart of all is a conscientious sheriff who solves the murder only to suffer a heartbreaking loss, an ex-foot soldier who personifies the landscape of post-WWII America.
Luan Gaines
LARK AND TERMITE
Jayne Anne Phillips, Jonathan Cape, 2009, £16.99, hb, 254pp, 9780224059763 / Knopf, 2009, $24.00, hb, 272pp, 9780375401954
Set in 1950s Virginia, Lark and Termite is a suspenseful novel focusing on a cast of characters affected by love, loss, dreams of the future, and ghosts of the past. Concentrating on Lark and Termite—two children—the result of passionate love for a lost soldier and strong sister, the reader explores the relationships that bring the characters together and events that will change all their lives.
The book opens with Sergeant Leavitt, Termite’s father, caught in friendly fire in Korea and his thoughts of his unborn child. As the attack continues, we learn of his love for Lola, a beautiful and seemingly confused young woman, who is a singer in a club where she helps look after the ‘girls’. Ten years on we meet Nonie, Lola’s sister, who raises the children and is a waitress in love with Charlie, the diner owner. We learn of the mysteries and social circumstances surrounding all their relationships until a terrible flood forces them to finally face the past and look to the future for the sake of Lark and Termite.
Lark and Termite is captivating, beautifully and gently told by each character. We are introduced to each character’s world and are provided glimpses of an era where appearances are important to the detriment of change. With
Y DEATH ON THE ICE
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Robert Ryan, Headline Review, 2009, £12.99, hb, 500pp, 9780755348350
As every British schoolchild used to know, Captain Robert Falcon Scott led an expedition to win the South Pole for King and Empire in 1910-13, only to be beaten by the Norwegian, Amundsen. Scott’s party perished on the return journey, leaving the expedition to be remembered as an Heroic Failure.
Death on the Ice opens in 1917 when Scott’s widow, Kathleen, asks Tryggve Gran, Scott’s Norwegian ski expert, to contribute to a book she is writing about the expedition. Gran is not sure that she and the British public are ready for ‘the true story’. He was amongst those who found the frozen remains and had become a close friend of Captain Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates, who had been critical of Scott but famously sacrificed himself in a blizzard to give his companions a chance of survival. Thus the story awakes from the memories of those who knew Scott, starting with Shackleton, a member of Scott’s earlier Antarctic expedition, who became his bitter rival.
Although Ryan introduces a few fictional elements, he stays close to the record, venturing into imaginative speculation only at the end. He celebrates the men’s courage and endurance whilst acknowledging mistakes and recognising that this was a serious scientific expedition. Characters and conflicts are shown in deft, vivid brushstrokes but because we see Scott mainly through the eyes of others, he himself remains enigmatic. Ryan is particularly good on the austere beauty of Antarctica and the horrific toll taken on the brave but astonishingly (to us) underequipped explorers by the harsh landscape and cruel weather.
This is a thrilling and thoughtful novel which puts flesh on the bones of history and allows us to look on the past with deeper understanding.
Sarah Cuthbertson
Y SHANGHAI GIRLS
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Lisa See, Random House, 2009, $25.00, hb, 360pp, 9781400067114 / Bloomsbury, 2009, £11.99, hb, 336pp, 9780747597384
Pearl and May are two sisters born in Shanghai, China in the early 20th century. Raised in luxury with traditional Chinese parents, they become the “beautiful girls” adorning Chinese posters advertising modern products. On the cusp of what appears to be a bright future balancing tradition and modernity, their father loses everything and arranges their marriage to “Gold Mountain men” living in San Francisco, California. Horrified by this loss and the fear engendered by this arrangement, they seek to escape this future and instead are plunged into the nightmare of the Japanese invasion of China.
Betrayal, unspeakable violation by the invaders, and dire poverty force Pearl and May to compromise everything true for the sake of survival. They arrive in America in the early 1930s and undergo a lengthy, torturous investigation at the infamous Angel Island, a place designed to permit entry to those with legitimate connections and deport anyone with suspicious backgrounds. The birth of Joy facilitates a quick entry, and the remainder of the tale harbors the sorrows and joys borne out of a series of fabricated stories. Later tragedy will again result from the family’s exposure to the little-known “Confession Period” of American history rooted in the fear of encroaching Communism.
The outstanding quality of this novel is the way Lisa See has captured the essence of those clinging to the traditions of their ancestral home and embracing the beauty and boundless possibilities of American life. The fear, conflict, joy, and love of every scene are so palpably described that the reader is vicariously living each event, thought and consequence, including the endearing, complex relationship of siblings caught up in the vicissitudes of immigration. Shanghai Girls is another phenomenal addition to Lisa See’s masterpieces of historical fiction. Stunning! Viviane Crystal
Y ONCE ON A MOONLESS NIGHT
EDITORS’ CHOICE
Dai Sijie (trans. Adriana Hunter), Knopf, 2009, $24.95/C$28.95, 288pp, hb, 9780307271587 / Chatto & Windus, 2009, £12.99, hb, 224pp, 9780701182458
This latest novel from the author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is another tour de force of intertwined language and love. The unnamed narrator is a young French woman studying languages in Peking in the late 1970s; a young greengrocer, Tumchooq, introduces her to some of the local customs, and, as their relationship deepens, to the story of his lifelong search for the lost language for which he has been named.
Legend holds that when Pu Yi, the last Chinese emperor, was exiled to Manchuria in 1924, he took with him a silk scroll containing a Buddhist sutra in an unknown language. The scroll was torn and the last segment of the sutra was lost. A French linguist, Paul d’Ampere, illegally obtained the first part of the scroll and successfully translated the beginning of the sutra, but the missing piece of the tale torments d’Ampere, Tumchooq, and the narrator in turn, as each devotes a lifetime to locating and translating the missing segment. They all suffer for their efforts, whether their prison is emotional or physical.
The interconnectedness of the three characters and the larger meaning of the sutra makes for a captivating and well-told story. The strictures of China during the mid-20th century, the history of the emperors and their collections of treasures, and excursions to France, Africa, and Manchuria, are revealed through flashbacks, diary entries, and inserted chapters of scholarship. Together, these tales weave together a powerful story of love, language, and heritage which will follow the reader long after the last page is turned.
hints of the supernatural, passionate love, and forgiveness, I found this novel gripping from the start.
Kathryn Downes
LITTLE GODS
Anna Richards, Picador, 2009, £16.99, hb, 422pp, 9780330464406
This is a story revolving around four people: Jean, Gloria, Jack, and Denny. It begins in England just before WWII. Jean and Gloria meet Jack and Denny when the Americans enter the war and come over to England. They marry and then are separated for the remaining three years of hostilities before going to America as GI brides.
Apart from the date linking it with the war and the connection with the GI brides, I found this to be a fairly mainstream novel following the life and loves of the four main characters. I found the story line fairly thin and the characters more caricatures than real flesh and blood people.
With apologies to the author, I regret that I did not like this book at all, but it may well appeal to others.
Marilyn Sherlock
ROOFTOPS OF TEHRAN
Mahbod Seraji, New American Library, 2009, $15.00/C$18.50, pb, 345pp, 9780451226815
In this stirring coming-of-age story set in Iran under the Shah, Mahbod Seraji pens a poignant tale of forbidden love in troubled times.
On the rooftops of Tehran in 1973, 17-yearold Pasha and his best friend, Ahmed, sleep
Helene Williams
off the heat of a carefree summer, joking, laughing, and talking about their futures. Pasha plans to become a filmmaker in America, but for the moment he has a guilty secret: He is in love with his neighbor, Zari, a beautiful girl a few years older than himself, who has been betrothed since birth to “Doctor,” Pasha’s good friend and mentor. When Doctor is arrested for activities against the Shah, Pasha and Zari are thrown together in anxiety and grief, a bond that deepens after Doctor is executed in prison. But guilt and uncertainty work to undermine their relationship, as does Pasha and Ahmed’s growing anti-Shah sentiments. When one of them, frustrated by powerlessness, commits a desperate act of violent political protest, all three lives are altered forever.
Full of domestic details about the everyday lives of middle-class Iranians, Rooftops of Tehran evokes a warm sense of community and nostalgia even in a time of great troubles. The author, himself an Iranian immigrant to the United States, has poured his heart into this lovely story—and it shows.
Lisa Ann Verge
THE BLOOD LANCE
Craig Smith, Myrmidon/Trafalgar Square, 2008, £11.99/$16.95/C$18.95, pb, 382pp, 9781905802234
In 1935 Otto Rahn publishes a book about the Holy Grail that catches the eye of Himmler. Rahn agrees to become the SS’s official historian and to search for the Blood Lance of Antioch, which legends claim will make its owner’s army
unconquerable. In 1997 on their honeymoon, Robert and Kate Kenyon are attacked while climbing the Eiger Mountain. The assassins kill Robert and leave Kate for dead. In 2008 a board member of the philanthropic organization, the Order of the Knights of the Holy Lance, steals millions of dollars of corporate funds and goes into hiding with Europe’s most famous assassin. CIA agent T.K. Malloy enlists the help of Kate and Ethan Brand on this international manhunt, which may also lead them to the murderer of Kate’s first husband.
Switching between stories and decades, Smith takes readers on a fast-paced ride of love and revenge, innocence and guilt, with glimpses of the subtle areas that fall in between. Seamlessly mixing history, legend, and fiction, Smith’s writing is both intelligent and exhilarating. His characters are alive, and the twists and turns of the several plots will keep readers breathless.
The Blood Lance is Smith’s second book to chronicle the exploits of CIA agent T.K.Malloy, who was also featured in The Painted Messiah (Myrmidon, 2007).
Elizabeth Caulfield Felt
THE SECRET SPEECH
Tom Rob Smith, Grand Central, 2009, $24.99/C$27.99, hb, 407pp, 9780446402408 / Simon & Schuster, 2009, £12.99, hb, 464pp, 9781847371287
Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 detailing of the monstrous crimes of the Joseph Stalin era had an enormous impact on both the Soviet Union and communists all over the world. One Soviet citizen affected is Leo Demidov, a policeman who is one of many who participated in the arrest of thousands of innocent fellow citizens, two of whom were the parents of his adopted daughters. Demidov is consumed by guilt and a justifiable fear for his future as he confronts the post-Stalinist world inhabited both by communists and by those seeking vengeance for the bestial acts of the ruling cliques. His path to remedy his sins would lead him ever deeper into the nightmarish world of Soviet security, the twists and turns of the dead hand of Soviet bureaucracy, the brutal and unforgiving world of the dreaded Gulag, and an exhilarating climax in the Budapest of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Dealing with the horrors of the Gulag and the security system that underlay every facet of Soviet life are serious challenges for the historical novelist. Tom Rob Smith allows us to experience them in all their clarity and frightfulness through the eyes of the tormented and tragic Demidov and his family.
John R. Vallely
BITTER TIDE: An Ellis Island Mystery
Ann Stamos, Five Star, 2009, $25.95, hb, 410pp, 9781594147821
It’s 1901 and Ellis Island, New York, is teeming with scores of immigrants seeking a better life for themselves and their children. Joseph Hennegan feels an almost sacred need to fight corruption
and discharge his duties as the superintendent. His attempt to gather evidence of corruption is sidetracked when Irish immigrant Maggie Flynn shoots her fiancé moments after they disembark. Joseph’s efforts to solve the crime are impeded by Maggie’s refusal to talk, the disappearance of the victim, and Joseph’s growing concern that his own father may be withholding important information. He asks Rachel Bonner, a women’s matron at the facility, to help. She’s wealthy and works for social reform while Joseph has known severe poverty in a strange country and the harm a social worker can do. She and Joseph must overcome these differences if they are to prove Maggie’s innocence.
Ann Stamos is the pen name for mystery writers Takis and Judy Iakovou. This is the first in a series of Ellis Island mysteries. It was a fascinating time in history, and they’ve made the events of that era come alive.
Susan Zabolotny
ASK ALICE
D.J. Taylor, Chatto & Windus, 2009, £16.99, hb, 341pp, 9780701183561
From the windswept prairies of Kansas to downtown Chicago, and from rural Norfolk to the rarefied atmosphere of Chelsea and Mayfair society, D.J. Taylor’s latest novel includes a motley cast of characters and landscapes, forming separate strands that weave together as the plot moves towards an unlooked-for end. A chance encounter and a delayed train journey results in an invitation that triggers a life-changing chain of events. Even seemingly insignificant occurrences—a snowstorm, a safe left ajar—can prompt unpremeditated actions and consequences: after being seduced by the travelling salesman, George Drouett, in 1904, Alice Alden is saved by a Lutheran preacher, Sven Hanson, who knocks on the door of the isolated house in De Smet, and finally—having escaped to London and made her name on the stage—she marries the rich but consumptive businessman Guy Keach. However, in order to bring about this last transformation from actress to society hostess and heiress, Alice is forced to abandon the child who is her only tie to her past life in America.
In a parallel plot, the narrator is a small boy growing up in a sprawling country house who, on the outbreak of the Great War, is informally adopted by the housekeeper’s brother. Through a series of harebrained schemes this eccentric inventor develops a receipt for coal-tar dye that heralds a complete transformation in his and Ralph’s fortunes. As the economic storm clouds gather in the late 1920s, however, these business disasters are reflected in Alice’s life by Drouett’s unexpected arrival in London. What does he want is the question Alice repeatedly asks. With its vignettes of the bright young things of London society and richly detailed settings, this is an exploration of change and identity that both entertains and disturbs.
Lucinda Byatt
AN IRISH COUNTRY DOCTOR
Patrick Taylor, Brandon, 2009, £8.99, pb, 322 pp, 9780863224003
More faction than fiction, for Doctor Taylor calls heavily on his own experiences as an Ulster country doctor, the characters in this book first saw life in a series of humorous medical tales in ‘Stitches’, the apt name for the ‘Medical Journal of Humour’. Indeed, it was the editor who encouraged the development of these characters. Taylor is an experienced novelist and writer of humour and it shows. The novel is well written and guaranteed to make readers laugh. Lovers of James Herriot will enjoy this novel; substitute people for animals and you have the same sort of laughter over peculiar country practises, larger than life eccentrics, and humanity’s foibles.
Taylor writes of a remote Ulster community in the early 1960s, seen through the eyes of a newly qualified doctor, assistant to the irascible older doctor, a well-established character who does not do things by the medical book. Definitely shades of Doctor Finlay and Doctor Cameron here, and indeed the novel would make a delightful, humorous television series.
The book is a tonic in itself and should be available on prescription. Do buy it for anyone who needs cheering up.
pdr lindsay-salmon
ULTIMATE BETRAYAL
Loren Teague, Robert Hale, 2009, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 9780709087335
When Katrina Jones finds out the man she loves is an IRA terrorist on the run from the police, she is devastated. He disappears after a bomb explosion, and Katrina sets out to track him down. She finds Sean McKinlay on a high country station in New Zealand and confronts him about his past. What she uncovers leads them both into danger but also reignites the love between them.
Strictly speaking, this is not what I would call an historical novel. It is set in presentday New Zealand but deals with events that occurred during the IRA bombing campaign in London and in the peace process that eventually followed. Halfway through the book, it livens up a bit. Add a bomb plot and throw in a bit of Al-Qaeda and you have the makings of a good story, but to me it lacked depth. The characters were a little superficial, and the story wrapped up too quickly. I kept on wondering where the betrayal came into it, so in that sense it held my interest, but I found it very much an average sort of read.
Karen Wintle
REMEMBER ME
Margaret Thornton, Alison & Busby, 2009, £6.99, pb, 512pp, 9780749079048
A saga set in Edwardian Britain, this is the story of Maddy Moon, a 17-year-old singer with a touring company in the north of England. During her travels she meets many new people,
falls in love, and eventually finds the man she wants to marry.
Although the author uses many viewpoints, she has a trick of repeating information in virtually the same phrasing, from the point of view of different characters, which neither gives us a greater knowledge of the event, nor advances our understanding of the characters concerned, which I found made for boring reading. And the story as a whole lacks tension—there are no really villainous characters (the rape scene early on in the plot peters out into a non-event), and none of the main characters seem to have any flaws to make them interesting.
Thornton is, apparently, a very popular writer who has published 15 novels, but I was disappointed with this one. However, if you enjoy sagas set in the north of England, you might while away a pleasant hour or two in Maddy’s company.
jay Dixon
THE ENGLISHMAN’S BOY
Guy Vanderhaeghe, Grove, 2009 (c1996), $14.00, pb, 333p, 9780802144102
Two story lines present the title character, caught up in a massacre in 1870s Saskatchewan, and the machinations of 1920s Hollywood. A film mogul, Chance, has heard rumors that a particular stunt man has an extraordinary life story that’s ripe for exploitation in Chance’s plans to produce a Western on the grand scale. Chance hires a silent film title writer, Harry Vincent, to try to find Shorty McAdoo and record his memoirs. But Shorty has no desire to relive the past, namely his involvement in a conflict between a group of wolfers arriving at a Saskatchewan trading post demanding whiskey, and a band of Assiniboine camped near the post, accused of stealing horses. Harry must resort to bargains and fast talking to finally worm the story out of Shorty.
Chance then plunges into production. While he insists on historical accuracy in the film’s visuals no matter what the cost, truth has no place in his ambition to twist the facts of the story to suit his own ends: critical acclaim a la D.W. Griffith, and an absurd political, but in his mind patriotic, agenda.
Vanderhaeghe won the Canadian Governor General’s Award for fiction when the book was originally published in 1996. It contains some memorable prose images: “the short curly grass writhed and shuddered under the invisible lash of the shrilling wind. The Englishman’s boy rode leaning into it, like a man shouldering through swinging doors…” Both story lines portray life on different frontiers—the harsh North American West and the beginnings of the Hollywood film industry, a place no less ruthless. I was fascinated by both. An historical footnote: the Cypress Hills massacre, fictionalized here, led directly to the formation of the North-West Mounted Police, forerunner of the RCMP.
B.J. Sedlock
THE INNOCENT SPY (US) / STRATTON’S WAR (UK)
Laura Wilson, Minotaur, 2009, $24.95, hb, 464pp, 9780312538101 / Orion, 2009, £7.99, pb, 464pp, 9780752884585
In wartime London, Detective Stratton is investigating the death of silent screen star Mabel Morgan. Although it appears to be the work of a Soho gangster, he soon finds himself immersed in the shadowy world of counterespionage. At the same time, beautiful Diana Calthrop flees a stifling marriage to take a job in government, only to be pursued by a womanizing double agent and eventually recruited as a spy herself by her boss. This man becomes the link that ties Stratton and Diana together in a sordid, many-faceted investigation that is as murky as a blacked-out London night. This is a mystery that could only be written in England. It is longish, overflowing with exposition, delving into the minutiae of the daily lives of its two main characters without restraint. Indeed, the reader can never be sure if it is about the plodding Stratton, the conflicted Diana, or even the plot at hand, which seems at times almost incidental. That’s not to say the work isn’t well written—it is. The characterizations are first rate, and the historical context rings true. The story can be absorbing. But in the end there is something unsatisfying about it. Realistic, perhaps, but disappointing in its resolution, like an investment that doesn’t quite pay off as one would have liked.
Colin Dexter was a master at this sort of thing, but at least one liked the complex and brooding Morse. I found it difficult to warm to either Stratton or Diana. Worse, I’m not sure it really matters.
Ken Kreckel
AMONG THE MAD
Jacqueline Winspear, John Murray, 2009, £16.99, hb, 303pp, 9780719569814 / Henry Holt, 2009, $25.00, hb, 320pp, 9780805082166
I first encountered Maisie Dobbs in her first outing in the book of that title, the premise of which—a maid of all work being able to find time to study and do so well as to eventually get to Cambridge—I did not find credible. Among the Mad is the sixth book in the series, and the plot is more believable, involving a terrorist threat to London by a disaffected soldier injured in the First World War. Invited to temporarily join Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, Maisie has to race against time to stop him. Intertwined with this plot is the story of the effect of the death of a baby on the wife of Maisie’s assistant, which counterpoints the main plot nicely.
Winspear has garnered a lot of praise for this series, but I personally find it lacking in period detail—there is, for instance, no description of dress to give the reader the sense she is reading a historical novel—although the historic geographical detail is accurate. I also found there to be too much coincidence in the plotting for my liking. That said, though, it is fluently
written and there are some affecting scenes. If you enjoy 1930s-set crime novels, this series is not one to miss.
jay Dixon
MULTI-PERIOD
ABANDON
Blake Crouch, Minotaur, 2009, $24.95/C$27.95, hb, 352pp, 9780312537401
In 2009, Abigail Foster, a journalist enticed by the prospect of a good story, is recruited by her estranged father, a history professor, to trek into the Colorado wilderness and investigate Abandon, a ghost town. Its name, quite apt as it turns out, was taken from Dante’s inscription on the entrance to hell, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” Why did the town’s entire population disappear on a single day, Christmas of 1893? Abigail hopes to find the answer. This novel, a dark, harrowing thriller with an historical twist, takes the reader back and forth in time and tells two interrelated stories, each full of dread.
Two casts of characters—one in the present, one in 1893—are presented quickly. In 1893, the author sketches a whole community. I have to admit I struggled to keep the characters straight. Some, like the female bartender in 1893, an accused murderess kept chained as she serves drinks to customers, are vividly drawn. Others are barely described. A character list would have been a great help.
As Abigail, her father, two wilderness guides, and two paranormal investigators make their way toward Abandon, the author sets the scene—his descriptions of nature are achingly beautiful—and then, when the reader least expects it, unlooses horrendous violence. It would be giving too much away to say what the source is, but the effect is pure terror. Abigail and her father are suddenly caught up in a struggle for survival. Their troubled bond adds depth to the story, as love and pain in the relationship between parent and child resonate in both the present and past. The plot is fast moving, and its two threads finally come together in a way that is highly satisfying but not for the squeamish.
Phyllis T. Smith
THE GUARDIANS OF THE COVENANT
Tom Egeland, John Murray, 2009, £10.99, pb, 484pp, 9780719521430
If you liked The Da Vinci Code (and millions did despite the ridicule), then you will be delighted with The Guardians of the Covenant If not, be warned, for this is TDVC on a grander scale, ranging in time from Moses to Christopher Columbus and visiting not only Egypt and the West Indies but also Iceland, Norway, Rome, London, and elsewhere. Eurostar will not be organising any Guardians tours.
All the familiar ingredients are here: ruined abbeys, lost tombs, coded manuscripts, ruthless enemies and treacherous friends, a little light love interest, and a mystic secret which has been guarded through the centuries by a select
group of initiates. There are also two elements of TDVC which imitators often miss. Firstly, Tom Egeland is a Norwegian writer who is sufficiently steeped in Viking and mediaeval history and legend to make his fantasy almost credible. Indeed, there is rather too much cryptanalysis for my taste, but one can skip it. Secondly, the hero is not a super-James Bond but an impractical nerd who stumbles into the mayhem by accident and is as bewildered and frightened as any reader would be.
In the author’s own words this is ‘a mind game that starts where reality and science end’.
Edward James
THE GLASSBLOWER OF MURANO
Marina Fiorato, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2009, $13.95, pb, 368pp, 9780312386986 / Beautiful Books, 2008, £7.99, pb, 356pp, 9781905636242
In a tale of genius and tragedy, Leonora Manin is inspired to travel to Murano, Italy from Hampstead, England, the home of her 17thcentury ancestor, glass artist Corradino Manin. In Murano, Leonora hopes to find her roots, become a glass artist, and heal her heart, and is faced instead with a mystery that casts a shadow over her life.
In the 17th century, Murano is rich with history, the exquisite art of glassblowing a carefully guarded secret, craftsmen and artists strictly governed by the powerful Council of Ten. Seduced by the promises of France’s Louis XIV and his plans for the palace at Versailles, Corradino makes a fateful decision, his secrets lost with his death. Centuries later, while Leonora discovers her own artistic talent, she learns that her future happiness is inextricably bound to the mystery surrounding Corradino’s tragic fate.
Surrounded by treachery and intrigue, Corradino pays a terrible price for his hubris, but Leonora finds her future as Fiorato transports her characters across time, their art forged by their passion for glass. Melding Venetian history with contemporary romance, this novel celebrates creativity and the flawed humans who breathe life into art.
Luan Gaines
THE TIGER WARRIOR
David Gibbins, Headline, 2009, £12.99, hb, 431pp, 9780755335176
This is the fourth novel by underwater archaeologist David Gibbins, and although it is not presented as a sequel, there are quite a few events referred to in this book that must have happened in the previous one(s). This is a little confusing at times. The novel opens promisingly in 19 BC with the violent murder of a trader by ‘lost’ Roman legionaries. He tells them of treasure beyond their wildest dreams and so begins a pursuit that continues into the present day. The main character is Jack Howard, an underwater archaeologist who is presented in the novel as akin to Indiana Jones.
Sadly, characterisation takes a back place to the chunks of history, and we never get a sense of Jack as a person. The history is well researched, detailed, and interesting but it is introduced into the narrative sometimes quite clumsily (‘What? You mean the tomb that was discovered in 1908 by such and such a person?’), and then comes a whole history lesson disguised as filling in a character on the information.
The action moves from ancient times to modern, and there is also a part set in 1908 involving Jack’s long-lost great-grandfather. The plot centres around a search for fabulous jewels, with the tiger warrior of the title, a member of a weird familial sect, also in pursuit. The descriptions of the jungle, the underwater scenes, and the gun battles make it move along at a rapid place but because of the weak characterisation, it is difficult to care much. Lots of interesting things, extremely well-researched, and exciting scenes with lots of action but overall a little disappointing.
Ann Northfield
HOUSE OF SHADOWS: A Historical Mystery by the Medieval Murderers
Michael Jecks, Susanna Gregory, Bernard Knight, Ian Morson and Philip Gooden, Pocket/ Trafalgar Square, 2009 (c2007), $9.95/£6.99, pb, 386pp, 9781416526803
This compendium of short stories by five well-known and talented authors of medieval mysteries, each a star in his or her own right, all revolve around mysterious goings-on at Bermondsey Priory from its earliest years in the 12th century through the 16th century. Broken out in “acts,” each author has penned a story around a particular weird event occurring at Bermondsey in which his or her protagonist solves the mystery.
It all begins in 1114 when a young chaplain succumbs to the temptations of the flesh and suffers a gruesome fate. From Knight’s Crowner John, to Morson’s William Falconer, to Jecks’s Sir Baldwin, to Gooden’s Chaucer and Gregory’s Thomas Chaloner, each investigator works—over a span of 500 years—to understand the priory’s dark history and to unravel the treacheries that continue to haunt that old and hallowed place.
This is a fun summer read—nothing terribly deep or profound—but if you enjoy the works of any or all of these respected writers, it’s a joy seeing just how each of them manages to find a common thread and to embellish it. Each story is chock full of historical references and the tenor of the times, and, of course, each of the protagonists, well drawn in their creators’ hands, act just as we remember them from their full-length adventures.
Ilysa Magnus
Gary Jennings, author of many historical thrillers including Aztec, died in 1999, leaving behind notes of ideas for further stories. Editor Robert Gleason and writer Junius Podrug have paired up to continue Jennings’s historical thriller legacy with several novels, including this one.
Apocalypse 2012 describes a modern world where global warming is destroying the planet, the volcano under Yellowstone National Park is about to explode, and an asteroid is heading toward the earth. Astrophysicist Monica Cardiff believes that four codices written 1000 years ago by an Aztec-Mayan man named Coyotl may contain a solution to the earth’s problems. Racing against bandits and time, two archeologists travel through lawless Mexico in search of the hidden codices.
In a parallel story we follow the life of Coyotl from his time as a slave of the Dog People to his eventual role as astronomer to the king of Tula. The civilization of Tula is collapsing, and Coctyl must work on and then hide the Great Calendar and three other codices so they will be available for future generations.
For a historical thriller, Apocalypse 2012 is slow moving. Near mid-novel, the pace picks up, but the suspense is not gripping, possibly because the action scenes are not smoothly written. The reader must at times reread a scene to figure out what happened. The dialogue is implausible with characters sharing encyclopedic information rather than having conversations. The novel concludes mid-action, making this reader guess that a sequel is forthcoming.
Elizabeth Caulfield Felt
THE TOWN HOUSE
Norah Lofts, The History Press, 2009 (c1959), £7.99, pb, 349pp, 9780752448695
THE HOUSE AT OLD VINE
Norah Lofts, The History Press, 2009 (c1961), £7.99, 349, 9780752448688
THE HOUSE AT SUNSET
Norah Lofts, The History Press, 2009 (c1963), £7.99, pb, 285, 9780752448701
A consummate storyteller, Norah Lofts’ sympathetic touch and ability to imbue each character with life involves the reader from the first to the last page. She convincingly recreates the historical era in which each character lives, not merely to set the scene but to add an understanding of why and how they act as they do. The vast scope of this trilogy involves the reader in a fascinating journey through time. Although life for some may become more comfortable, every age throws up new challenges and there are always winners and losers.
These latest editions of Norah Lofts historical novels, as readable today as when they were first issued, will surely please existing fans as well as introduce them to a new generation of readers.
Ann
Oughton
THE TREASURES OF VENICE
Loucinda McGary, Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2009, $6.99, pb, 318pp, 9781402226700
Ah, Romance! Loucinda McGary’s second ultra-romantic novel, set in a sultry modernday Venice, has all the requisites of a frothy by-the-pool read: a hunky, mysterious action hero (Kiernan) with startlingly blue eyes and a sexy Irish lilt; a stubborn, pretty American librarian (Sam) on the rebound from a no-good fiancé; and a breathless round of chases, fights, kidnappings, and various dangers that require the heroine to be rescued by the hero—and vice versa!
The “historical” part is a parallel romance in 15th-century Venice, with a mystical link between the lovers in the past and the present. The mulligan in the tale is a set of blue jewels that went missing in the 15th century and are now the object of desire by several characters (both good and evil). The sex scenes (mostly the present-day ones) sizzle with thankfully brief episodes of “soul-searing kisses,” “hot, liquid centers,” and the “silken steel” of the hero’s male member.
APOCALYPSE 2012
Gary Jennings, Robert Gleason, and Junius Podrug, Forge, 2009, $25.95/C$28.95, 384pp, 9780765322593
This trilogy, spanning six centuries, is the story of a Suffolk house and the people who lived in it from the late 14th century until the middle of the 20th. The house evolves as each successive family puts their own individual stamp on it, adapting the building to suit their needs. Like the house, its inhabitants develop as their situation and custom dictates. They are, each and every one, children of their time. The founder of the house and a dynasty is Martin Reed, a serf living under the yoke of Lord Bowdegrave. Denied permission to acquire an education or to marry, Martin decides to run away with his Kate. A life of hardship and tragedy follows as the couple struggles to survive the harsh reality of a fugitive life. Martin tells his own moving story and each successive chapter introduces another character who takes over the continuing narrative throughout the trilogy.
Not a literary gem, and rather light on the historical treatment, but a good, fun, fast read which starts with that magic “love at first sight” moment and keeps you turning the pages until the final kiss.
Mary Burns
THE DEVLIN DIARY
Christi Phillips, Pocket, 2009, $25.00/C$32.99, hb, 448pp, 9781416527398 / Simon & Schuster, 2009, £12.99, pb, 448pp, 9781847373199
Have you ever read a book that you wish did not end? The author’s second novel focuses on Hannah Devlin, a middle-class woman “physick” trained by her late husband and her father in the practice of medicine. Although it was illegal for a woman to practice medicine, Hannah possesses the skills and talent to heal and pays little heed to a person’s class or wealth if he or she is in need. When Hannah is kidnapped and ordered to care for the favorite mistress of England’s King Charles II, she is
thrust into a political morass that involves ritual murder, conspiracies, and threats to the throne.
Claire Donovan’s new job as a lecturer in History at Trinity College is her dream come true. When an overbearing colleague is found dead on the riverbank, doubts are raised about the validity of his research. A scrap of paper leads Claire and her friend, Andrew Kent, her associate from Phillips’s debut novel The Rossetti Letter, to discover a coded diary written by Hannah Devlin in the dead professor’s apartment. The race is on to decode the diary, find the killer, and solve a four-hundred-yearold mystery.
Phillips’s storytelling style is easy to read and keeps you interested throughout. The flashbacks are told in the present tense, and the modern story is told in the past tense. A reader may not even notice the subtle change, the story is so engrossing. The Devlin Diary is a historical page-turner in the truest sense.
I have read both of Christie Phillips’s novels and thoroughly enjoyed the plots, the characters, and the writing. I look forward to her next book.
Monica E. Spence
STRANGER ROOM
Frederick Ramsay, Poisoned Pen, 2008, $24.95 hb, 256pp, 9781590585351
The fifth title in the Ike Schwartz series finds the erstwhile sheriff of Picketville, Virginia, with a murder on his hands that has its roots in a Civil War-era mystery.
In the days before train travel, homeowners near stagecoach stops would rent out rooms in their homes to rich travelers for whom the local inn or pub couldn’t provide adequate accommodations. These rooms, usually unconnected to the main house, and with their own entrance, were called “stranger rooms.” During the Civil War, a traveler was murdered in the stranger room at the Jonathan Lydell residence; the case was never solved. Fast forward to today: the house’s current owner, Jonathan Lydell IV, is proud of his family and his home’s heritage, to the point of restoring it exactly as it was 150 years ago. When a visitor turns up dead in the stranger room, with the same lack of clues, Ike has to figure out whether the two murders are related or just coincidental bad luck for the Lydell family. Accompanying Ike is Karl Hedrick, an African-American FBI officer “on loan” to the sheriff’s department. Karl’s perspective as an outsider provides some additional light on the local situation. This fastpaced tale is well told, though it is a bit overrun with eccentric characters who at times distract from the plot. Overall, there’s enough Civil War history (and guns and politics) to keep buffs intrigued but not too much to be overwhelming to a reader who’s just passing through.
Helene Williams
9780553589979
Several hidden pieces of a map focus the quest to find the Gospel of Judas, a puzzle spanning A. D. 33 in Egypt to the present day in Europe and New York City.
Joseph Koster, a brilliant architect whose Asperger syndrome helps and hurts this work, and Savita Sajan, a wealthy computer engineer, are manipulated into becoming the last pieces of a puzzle that could change governments, religions, and the very existence of human beings. Their search involves Judas Iscariot, infamously known as the traitor who betrayed Jesus Christ but whose gospel might reveal that he was the most beloved disciple who actually was chosen to be the keystone of a far larger divine plan. Representatives of the Masons, the Knights of Malta, the Templars, the Roman Catholic Church, and the United States Government are on a similar quest, but what starts out as a journey to enhance each group’s status becomes a frenzied attempt to squash the revelation of a disastrous, enigmatic puzzle’s outcome.
History galore, violence, and intrigue fill the pages of this tightly plotted, twisting and turning adventure story, reminding one of a multilayered Russian matryoshka doll. The reader will also learn a great deal about da Vinci, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and many more historical geniuses, albeit in a simplistic, surface manner. Those who love numbers, physics, and a truly unpredictable, suspenseful mystery will relish the facts and ponderings replete in this well-written, mysterious spin-off of The Da Vinci Code The God Machine is a very impressive historical thriller!
Viviane Crystal
A MONSTER’S NOTES
Laurie Sheck, Knopf, 2009, $28/C$33, hb, 540pp, 9780307271051
What would it mean if Mary Shelley’s monster had been real? What implications would there be for her story, what clues about her story could we find in the people she lived with and loved? That is the premise of this ambitious book.
Sheck, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, poses answers to these questions in a series of stories and flashbacks, all connected by the monster who was created by an unknown hand and interacted with Mary when she was a child, sitting together, reading at her mother’s graveside. The stories are told through the monster’s own ponderings, letters written by Mary Shelley, her sister Claire, and Clerval, who in this universe was an intimate of the monster’s maker, as well as a character in Mary’s book.
As is to be expected, the book is well written—more of a free-form 540-page poem than a novel. There is little plot, and it is difficult to connect with the characters and their plights—even the monster.
dream, think, see, to know someone, to know yourself. It’s heady, ambitious stuff, quite thought-provoking, though not at all an easy read.
Julie K. Rose
THE GOD MACHINE
J. G. Sandom, Bantam, 2009, $7.99, pb, 468pp,
It is a meditation on mind, what it means to think, what it means to be a person, what it means to be an individual; what it means to
N n
TIMESLIP
RUDE AWAKENINGS
OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT
Laurie Viera Rigler, Dutton, 2009, $25.95/ C$32.50, hb, 336pp, 9780525950769
Regency romance intertwines with modern chick lit in this is the highly anticipated sequel to Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. Previously, modern-day free spirit Courtney Stone awoke into the social confines of the Jane Austen era. Now, Rude Awakenings continues the story, but with Jane Mansfield, an English country lass from 1813, who inexplicably awakens in 2009 Los Angeles. Jane has no opportunity to ponder how this transfer could have occurred, as she must quickly learn to interact with the people of this technological world. Strange noises, fewer clothes, and living on her own are just a few things Jane must strive to understand. The one thing she finds in common with Courtney is their mutual passion for Jane Austen, and Jane is thrilled to discover that she can watch tiny figures act out the scenes of her favorite stories inside a small container in her new living quarters.
As Jane begins to relish the privacy and independence, she remains bewildered by memories that are not her own. Even more confusing are the attentions of a friend named Wes. Jane wonders if she can ever truly fit in and begins to miss home, where at least the rules were clear.
Flung into the future, Jane learns the importance of living in the present. Blending humor, love, and exploration of identity and destiny, Rude Awakenings is a colorful look at this genre. The ultimate question is answered: can a 19th-century girl survive in a morally confused world? This bubbly take on literary time travel will appeal to Jane Austen and chick lit fans alike. It will be interesting to see what Rigler comes up with next.
Rebecca Roberts
HISTORICAL FANTASY
N n
BOOK OF SHADOWS
Paula Brackston, Snowbooks, 2009, £7.99, pb, 382pp, 9781905005970
1628. When Bess Hawksmith’s mother is hanged as a witch there is only one person to whom she can turn to save her from sharing her mother’s fate. The help of the warlock, Gideon Masters, comes at a terrible price, one that, ultimately Bess is not prepared to pay. (Bess’s story continues from the 17th century up to the
Historical Fantasy-Children & YA
present.)
2007 and Bess, now calling herself Elizabeth, is still in hiding. Believing she may have finally found a safe haven she allows herself to befriend a lonely teenager, Tagen, in whom she glimpses a spark of magic. But, Gideon is not done with her yet, and Elizabeth realises she will be forced to face him one last time.
I am not usually a fan of supernatural fiction, but Brackston does a good job of rooting her magic in the everyday world, not only in this century but in previous ones, too, which makes it easier to suspend disbelief. It helps that she starts with odd little incidents that could be put down to coincidence, sleight of hand, or the medicinal properties of herbs building towards more dramatic demonstrations of magic.
There are one or two tiny glitches with her research. Haymaking, for instance, unlike the rest of the harvesting, takes place at the beginning and not the end of summer. She is also unaware that the new moon always occurs in whichever sign the sun is currently placed. In mid-October the new moon will be in Libra making it impossible for it to move into Cancer the next day. Minor quibbles that did not spoil my enjoyment of the book.
The characterisation is consistent throughout and there are some interesting twists to historical periods we think we know--not just the 17th century but late Victorian London and the dying days of World War I. All in all, a promising debut novel.
Jasmina Svenne
THE PATRIOT WITCH
C. C. Finlay, Del Rey, 2009, $7.99/C$9.99, pb, 341pp, 9780345503909
I must admit that I approached this novel predisposed to writing a negative review. I was not a fan of fantasy fiction and was certainly antagonistic to the very idea of using fantasy and magic in a book on the American Revolution. That said, I now admit I thoroughly enjoyed C. C. Finlay’s work.
Patriot Witch is based on the interesting concept that New England witches were not eliminated in the years preceding Lexington and Concord, but went into hiding in the midst of populated areas. The central figures, the young farmer-rebel Proctor Brown and his colleague Deborah Walcott, practice their ancient rituals and make prudent use of their special powers as Boston and the surrounding towns inch closer to armed rebellion. John Pitcairn, a British marine officer, early on stands in as a symbol of royal power and arrogance and is ready and able to apply his magic to frustrate the rebellious colonists. Proctor must deal with his love for Emily Rucke and his desire to fight British military might while simultaneously adjusting to life as a witch. Clearly, this plot has possibilities in the hands of a clever craftsman.
C. C. Finlay plans to add two other novels to his Traitor to the Crown series. Consider me a convert to fantasy fiction.
John R. Vallely
HEART OF THE RONIN
Travis Heermann, Five Star, 2009, $24.95, hb, 442pp, 9781594147791
Ken’ishi, a ronin or masterless samurai living in 13th-century Japan, resumes living in the human world after having received superior martial arts training from a bird-like tengu (goblin). His major strength lies in the way he wields his ornate sword, Silver Dragon, a weapon which he believes will someday lead him to discover the truth about his background and the sword’s mystical powers. For now, though, he must confront an evil spirit-like creature, the complexities of a nobleman’s daughter whom he comes to love, a former samurai planning the ultimate betrayal of his country to the plans of Genghis Khan, a water demon who devours neighboring villagers, an enemy who makes up for lack of military skill with strength fostered from a fierce desire for revenge, and many more unforeseen problems. Ken’ishi’s abilities to hear the kami (gods) spirits help him acquire discipline and wisdom he will need in the fiercest and bloodiest battles as well as in the cultural suspicions of the most innocent and guilty men and women he meets on a daily basis.
Travis Heermann has done his research well and infuses the first of this planned threepart saga with both typical Japanese folk tales and legends. The history contained herein is accurate, if not well-developed, which adds enough to the story’s credibility to keep the reader thoroughly engaged and wanting more of this well-written blend of fantasy and historical fiction. This reviewer thoroughly enjoyed this first novel in the Ronin Trilogy and is avidly looking forward to reading the next installment. Very nicely done!
Viviane
Crystal
CHILDREN & YOUNG ADULT
SECRETS OF GREYMOOR
Clara Gillow Clark, Candlewick, 2009, $15.99, hb, 166pp, 9780763632496
Secrets of Greymoor is Clara Gillow Clark’s third book about inquisitive Hattie Belle Basket. In this book 11-year-old tomboy Hattie is still living with her “prim” grandmother in late 19th-century Kingston-on-the-Hudson. No one speaks about her grandfather, who is living in the Utica Insane Asylum after he squandered his wife’s money and started hearing voices. After a telegram arrives about her grandfather’s death, Hattie intercepts a threatening notice from a tax collector and learns her grandmother is in danger of losing her fortune. Hattie cannot believe the fortune is lost. Clark’s feisty young heroine finds a mysterious book in her grandfather’s suit pocket and works to crack its secret code and save the family’s wealth.
Readers will love this middle-grade historical mystery and will want more from Clark’s Hattie. As in all good mysteries, the author provides readers with believable characters, a fair number of clues, period details that don’t detract but rather enhance the setting, and a satisfying ending. Clara Gillow Clark’s firstperson narrative does all that and more. Readers new to Hattie will want to pick up the first two books, and fans will happily devour Clark’s latest. Ages 9-12.
Nancy Castaldo
HIDDEN VOICES: The Orphan Musicians of Venice
Pat Lowery Collins, Candlewick, 2009, $17.99, hb, 352pp, 9780763639174
This engaging novel focuses on the lives of three members of the figli di coro at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice in the early 1700s. Young women with musical talent, almost all orphans, receive an extensive musical education. Those girls without such talent become members of the figli di commun and are trained to become nurses or lace makers or such. Anetta, Rosalba, and Luisa lead lives that may seem highly structured to them but have allowed them to thrive and to develop their prodigious talents. Anetta excels on the viola d’amore, and Luisa has a heavenly voice. Luisa, unlike the others, has a fashionable and mysterious mother who visits, but not often enough to make Luisa happy. These young female musicians are studying under Vivaldi, who writes compositions for them: compositions that allow them to develop their talents and that might attract rich and cultured suitors for their hands. When Rosalba decides that the young man she frequently sees passing the Ospedale is of more interest than her studies, her life changes dramatically, and only then does she realize the wonderful opportunities she had previously taken for granted.
Told alternately by the three young women, this novel will entice both young adults and notso-young adults with its glimpse into a riveting world.
Trudi E. Jacobson
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MONTMARAY
Michelle Cooper, Random House Australia, 2008, AU$17.95, pb, 286pp, 9781741663228 / Knopf, Oct. 2009, $16.99, hb, 9780375858644
The island kingdom of Montmaray is fictitious. Its royal house never existed. But everything else about this delightful historical novel—its voice, its context and its detail—is grounded in research.
Set in the year 1936, The Brief History of Montmaray is the diary of Sophia Fitz Osborne, niece to the kingdom’s reigning monarch, King John. Sophie’s brother Toby is heir to the throne of Montmaray. But he is away at school. Sophie lives on the island with her cousin Veronica, her younger sister, Henry, her mad uncle, the king, and a handful of loyal retainers. The castle is crumbling, war is brewing in Europe, and
Sophie’s Aunt Charlotte has decided it is time for the girls to leave their island home and take their place in society.
Sophie’s last days on the island are marred by death, the emergence of deep family secrets, her growing affection for Simon Chester, the housekeeper’s son, and a mysterious visit from Nazi officials. But this is no vacuous secret diary. Through Sophie’s interaction with two unexpected groups of visitors, we experience the aftermath of World War I, which killed many of the island’s male inhabitants, the turmoil of Spanish Civil War, and the impending disaster which became World War II. In the midst of political upheaval, Sophie grapples with issues of love, identity, and truth. Her voice is vivid and engaging; her inner growth real and profound. By the end of the book she is ready to take her place in society. But her interests have grown beyond dress shops, parties, and cinemas.
This is an excellent book for teenage girls with an interest in history, a weakness for crumbling castles, and a desire to see beyond the princess myth without becoming completely disillusioned. I couldn’t put it down.
Elizabeth Jane
JOURNEY TO GOLIAD
Melodie A. Cuate, Texas Tech Univ. Press, 2009, $17.95, hb, 176pp, 9780896726499
The fourth in an ongoing series for YA/ middle readers, Journey to Goliad once again transports the trio of Jackie, Hannah, and Nick back into Texas history via their history teacher’s “mysterious trunk” aka time machine. With plenty of junior-high-school-level banter, whining, mischief ,and pluck, the three heroes acquit themselves well in the midst of battle between the Texians and the soldados of Santa Anna in 1836 during the Texas Revolution. Central to the theme is the notion that the trunk won’t let them return to the present until they’ve accomplished what “it” wants them to do—plus, they have to track it down each time before they can attempt the magic trip home!
Award-winning author and history teacher Melodie Cuate is persnickety about her facts and gives readers a charming and fast-moving adventure tale while relaying important historical information for present-day Texans (and others). The author conducts teacher workshops with a curriculum developed specifically for the Mr. Barrington’s Mysterious Trunk Series, and each book includes translations of Spanish and citations for excerpts from original historic documents (letters, books, etc.). I wish we had books like these when I was studying history in elementary school!
Mary Burns
slave—in Sparta, one of the most ruthless states in the Classical world. All Spartan males undergo a rigorous and brutal training to become the most feared warriors of the age. Then a gang of Spartan youths on a terrorizing and killing spree attack Lysander and steal his most valuable possession, a pendant called ‘the fire of Ares’, left to him by his unknown father.
All Lysander and his friend Timeon can do is secretly train for the longed-for resistance uprising.
Then, a chance meeting with a Spartan nobleman, Sarpedon, changes Lysander’s life. He discovers that his unknown father was Sarpedon’s son, and he is offered an escape from slavery—a Spartan warrior training. Timeon can accompany him as his servant. But will the training camp boys accept him? Or will they treat him like a despised ‘half-breed’? And does he want to become a Spartan, anyway? On the other hand, it will give him a chance to search for the fire of Ares.
As the press release has it, ‘this is an absorbing and informative read with bags of boy appeal.’ There is certainly enough brutality. Spartan training included savage, and sometimes fatal, punishments; the repression of any softer emotions like pity or empathy; denigration of helots and women (there are only two minor female characters in the book) and the glorification of war.
Personally, I found the Spartans so repellent that it was difficult to cheer when, after the usual spills and thrills, and some dastardly behaviour by Lysander’s particular enemy, the vicious Demaratos, Lysander wins the victor’s crown at the Festival of Ortheia. However, blood-thirsty boys of 10 plus might well enjoy it. I’ll be interested to see what Hal thinks.
Elizabeth Hawksley
The Fire of Ares is an excellent book. It’s about a boy aged thirteen called Lysander who is a Helot (slave of the Spartans). His life is filled with pain and anguish along with that of his mother and many other Helots who work in the fields every day. Until one day he finds out his ancestry and goes to the Agoge to train as a Spartan.
I cannot find any faults in this book. Michael Ford is an incredibly gifted writer. I enjoyed this book because unlike some books, it is not filled with happiness throughout, and so does not grow boring. My favourite character is a Helot slave called Timeon who is the friend and slave of Lysander. I like him because he helps Lysander instead of staying back.
I think The Fire of Ares is a great book, and I will be looking out for a sequel.
Hal McNulty, aged 11
of Carthage seeking refuge, they are welcomed with open arms by Queen Dido. Herself an exile, Dido has used her beauty, intelligence, and natural power to establish herself as a popular and independent queen. Identifying with Aeneas’ plight and beguiled by his tales of the war in Troy, she finds herself falling helplessly and passionately in love (with a little help from Aphrodite!). The two marry, but sharing power is something that neither finds easy. His destiny lies elsewhere and he abandons her to establish his own city overseas.
As with her previous novels, Troy and Ithaka, Geras takes a well-known Classical tale and gives it her own twist. The story unfolds not from the viewpoint of the main characters or the Gods, but through the eyes of minor characters: Elissa, the nursemaid; Cubby, the kitchen boy; Iopas, the poet; and Anna, the Queen’s sister. These characters are wrapped up in their own problems, and an overarching theme of unrequited love echoes the main story. Through their interactions with Dido and Aeneas, as well as each other, the classic story is revealed.
The number of narrators distances the reader from becoming fully emotionally involved but gives an overview of the whole Dido story and a glimpse into the various areas of the Classical court from the kitchens to the queen’s bedchamber. The Gods appear regularly to the mortals in order to help them (or to cause trouble!). They are a nice touch and help create a magical atmosphere where people are not wholly responsible for their actions.
This is an enjoyable novel for young adults that should appeal both to those who are familiar with the Classical story and those that come to it fresh.
Julie Nicol
ENVY
Anna Godbersen, Penguin, 2009, £6.99, pb, 405pp, 9780141323381 / HarperCollins, 2009, $17.99, 416pp, 9780061345722
It is now Manhattan in 1900 and a few months have passed by since we left the story of the Holland family in Rumours. Once again, the simplicity of the title Envy explains the theme of the book; however, it hides the complexity of the lives of the troubled characters revealed within its pages.
THE FIRE OF ARES
Michael Ford, Bloomsbury, 2008, £6.99, pb, 245pp, 9780747593669 / Walker Books for Young Readers, 2008, $16.95, pb, 256pp, 9780802797445
Ancient Sparta. Lysander is a helot—a
DIDO
Adele Geras, David Fickling, 2009, £12.99, hb, 272pp, 9780385615174
When Aeneas and his soldiers, battle weary and almost shipwrecked, arrive on the shores
Elizabeth Holland, once the envy of all young ladies of society, is now a grieving widow of a secret marriage. Her health, her spirits, and her future prospects are equally bleak. Her younger sister Diana is also nursing a broken heart. Meanwhile, Mrs Penelope Schoonmaker has everything she wants except the love and company of her husband Henry. Miss Carolina Broad has the trinkets and lifestyle she craved, one beyond her own birthright, but lacks the freedom to enjoy it. Together they go on a journey that will change fortunes, affect each character’s destiny, and leave many unanswered questions.
This series has the ability to hook the reader.
Gossip can kill a reputation and ostracise a person and their family from the society they so tentatively cling to. The lifestyle is shallow and fickle. However, the characters are believable, intricate, and deep. Whether good or bad, or just trying to survive within a world they crave but have no right to, they are all engaging. The reader wants to know what is going to happen— who will find happiness and who will stay in despair?
The plot is full of interesting twists and turns and, as usual, the ending is far from predictable. This is another very enjoyable and well written Luxe novel. Young Adult.
Val Loh
STEPPING ON THE CRACKS
Mary Downing Hahn, Sandpiper, 2009 (c1991), $5.99, pb, 224pp, 9780547076607
In a small Maryland town in 1944, the specter of world war shadows everyone’s lives. Eleven-year-old Margaret is eager for news of Allied advances, for her brother Jimmy fights in Europe. Her best friend Elizabeth can sympathize, having a brother of her own fighting in the Pacific. Both girls believe the war is a just one, and that it’s only a matter of “breaking Hitler’s back” before their brothers are home safe. They know others have lost loved ones, but neither can imagine the violence actually touching their own families.
At the opening of the story, Margaret’s main concern is how to avoid Gordy, the local bully. Gordy is vicious and violent—for no good reason, as far as she and Elizabeth are concerned. The girls are furious when he wrecks the tree house they worked so hard to construct. But when they search out Gordy’s forest hideout to exact revenge, they learn a disturbing secret. Further revelations follow, changing their perception of the boy and his family. Ultimately, these secrets will alter their understanding of the war itself.
First published in 1991, this reprinted edition features an eye-catching new cover. The story itself is well paced, multilayered, and poignant, raising issues about war and patriotism that young readers will find relevant today. Hahn’s own memories of wartime College Park, Maryland, enhance the intimate feel of the setting. A winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, this novel is recommended for readers 9 and up.
Sonia Gensler
THE EVOLUTION OF CALPURNIA TATE
Jacqueline Kelly, Henry Holt, 2009, $16.95/ C$18.95, hb, 352pp, 9780805088410
It is the summer of 1899, and 11-year-old Calpurnia Virginia Tate discovers that her forbidding grandfather is actually an engaging person who will help open her eyes to the wonder of nature around her. Calpurnia (better known as Callie Vee) is not your typical young lady—the traditional tasks of knitting and cooking leave her cold—so she revels in the
chance to explore the habits of wildlife and the characteristics of plant life. When she and her grandfather find what might be a new species of plant, the excitement is palpable. However, Callie Vee’s mother is not pleased at these new interests of her daughter’s, and we watch Callie Vee try to find her way between conflicting forces. Exciting new inventions find their way to Caldwell County, Texas, during this year, including a telephone exchange and a motor car, and present throughout Callie Vee’s narration is the anticipation over what the coming turn of the century might hold.
Callie Vee is part of a large family, though the only girl, and readers will enjoy her interactions with her six brothers, root for her time with her grandfather, and probably wish her mother would leave her alone. Callie Vee is inquisitive, charming, and a delight to spend time with. I recommend her to you highly.
Trudi E. Jacobson
THE SCRIBES FROM ALEXANDRIA
Caroline Lawrence, Orion, 2008, £8.99, hb, 259pp, 9781842551905
81 A.D. Alexandria. In this, the fifteenth Roman Mysteries adventure, the four children, Flavia, Jonathan, Nubia, and Lupus are shipwrecked off the coast of Egypt. Flavia, Jonathan, and Lupus are rescued and go to the port of Alexandria, hoping to find news of the missing Nubia.
Here, they stumble on a mystery. Chryses, a young eunuch who works in Alexandria’s world famous library, has gone missing, taking Nubia with him. But where are they going? And why? The head scribe orders junior scribe Seth (who dislikes Chryses intensely) to escort Flavia, Jonathan, and Lupus up the Nile in search of Chryses.
Then the children learn that government officials have issued orders for their arrest; they must get out of Alexandria, and fast.
Fortunately, Chryses deliberately leaves clues in the form of elaborate riddles chalked on various famous buildings and they follow the trail. But what will they find? Nubia? The mysterious treasure Chryses keeps hinting at? Or death?
Generally, the story is pretty silly, with the children regularly disguising themselves, usually as members of the opposite sex, in order to evade capture. And a child coming new to the series would have difficulty working out who was who and what was going on.
Fellow novelists will recognize ‘information dumps’ all through the book. Remove the detailed descriptions of Alexandria, its famous buildings, the travelogue as they go down the Nile, the explanations of the attributes of various gods and religious festivals and the book would be about a quarter of the length.
Fortunately, the information dumps are interesting, even if the story itself is somewhat preposterous. My impression is of a series which is getting a little tired. However, Rachel
feels very differently.
Elizabeth Hawksley
This is a very exciting book full of adventure and mystery with lots of surprises and little twists.
I found it an easy, quick, enjoyable read, although if you have not read the preceding book, you might get a bit confused as it starts in the middle of a shipwreck that happened at the end of the last book. However, the ending is a bit disappointing. Things are left hanging in the air and the story doesn’t really finish properly. For example, we don’t know why the four children are being hunted down, and we don’t know what happens to them because they are just left in the middle of Egypt, although this does make me want to read the next book.
Generally, I enjoy this series because it shows you lots of different places in the world in one era. It keeps the same characters throughout, which means you get involved with them. From a historical point of view, I think the author goes into a lot of accurate detail, which I find very interesting. I enjoy learning about all the different gods in Egypt, Africa, Rome, and Greece.
I think this book would be suitable for both boys and girls aged around 11-14.
Rachel Beggs, aged 14
PHARAOH’S DAUGHTER
Julius Lester, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009 (c2000)), $6.99, pb, 182pp, 9780152066628
The story of Moses, hidden among the reeds and found by a princess of Egypt, is one many of us remember hearing from earliest childhood. We know that from the moment of his rescue, Moses went to live at the Pharaoh’s palace, accompanied by his own mother as his wet nurse at the suggestion of his sister. The mention of the sister is often overlooked; it is this character that Julius Lester has chosen to illuminate in his young adult novel. Almah, sister of Mosis (as he is called here), goes with her mother and younger brother when they are taken to the palace, and it is Almah who is most accepting of the turn her life has made. Though she has always felt herself to be different than her family, the speed and ease of her transition into Egyptian life amazes not only Almah but the Pharaoh as well. So taken with Almah is he that he claims her as his own daughter, but will she be able to fully leave her Hebrew past behind her?
Lester’s novel moves between Almah’s point of view and Mosis’s, though it might have flowed more smoothly had it remained with just Almah’s. The conflict Mosis feels for his Hebrew family and his Egyptian life is heartfelt, and Lester shows us an unsure young man whose life has been shaped by the three women who have raised him. Almah is a strong personality who finds her own way but at major cost to her familial ties; I enjoyed reading her point of view and felt she spoke clearly and engagingly. Lester
went to great lengths to show both the Hebrew and Egyptian sides, and I very much enjoyed this different take on a story I felt I knew well. This is a short, easy book; quite well written and thought provoking.
Tamela McCann
THE LOCKET
Suzanne Lieurance, Enslow, 2008, $27.93, hb, 160pp, 9780766029286
This is a young adult story of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of March 25, 1911, as told through the eyes of Galena, an 11-year-old girl employed at the factory. Galena and her older sister Anya work in the factory in order to help their Russian immigrant family pay for the expenses of living in New York City. Anya wears a locket holding two precious pictures, one of their grandmother and another of their own family. Every morning Galena asks Anya if she may see the pictures. This gives Galena strength to get through her day, as well as making a connection to her grandmother, who she misses very much.
The work in the factory is long and difficult. The conditions are unsafe, with fabric, oily rags, and crowded conditions adding to the mix. One day fire breaks out. The owners had locked the doors from the outside, in order to prevent theft and possible union activity. This sealed the fate of the workers trapped inside. By the time the fire was doused, 146 people had lost their lives. All but 21 of those were women in their midteens.
Lieurance paints sympathetic main characters. She does not gloss over sweatshop conditions or the tedious, repetitive work done by underage women working for pennies a day in order to survive in their new country. This is a wellwritten, fascinating account of life in New York City at the turn of the last century. I recommend The Locket to readers and librarians.
Monica Spence
SAHWIRA
Carolyn Marsden and Philip Matzigkeit, Candlewick, 2009, $15.99/C$17.50, hb, 189pp, 9780763635756
In a Methodist mission in Rhodesia in 1964, two 12-year-old boys call themselves Sahwira, meaning best friends who are closer than brothers. One boy, Evan, is from America. He is white, and his parents are teachers in the mission. The other boy, Blessing, is the son of the mission’s pastor. He is black. At the mission, everyone lives in peace. Unfortunately, outside the mission, the world of Rhodesia is not at all at peace.
Evan attends an all-white school in town, while Blessing attends the mission’s school. Evan’s friends at school make fun of him and his parents for being “kaffir lovers.” They do not approve of treating black people equally. Blessing has problems of his own. His minister father is taken to jail for questioning when a white man is killed near the mission. Blessing’s
friends from the mission don’t understand why he is friends with a white boy. Evan and the young men in his school are trained as cadets. They are asked to look for signs of rebellion from the black people around them. They are offered rewards for any information they find. When Evan sees a piece of evidence that could convict one of the young men in the mission, he must decide what to do. If he turns the evidence in, he will be a hero in his school, but it may hurt the people he loves in the mission. This decision he cannot even share with his friend, Blessing.
Sahwira is a story of two boys who find friendship more important than the color of their skin or the circumstances of their lives. It is a coming-of-age adventure that can be enjoyed by both teens and adults.
Nan Curnutt
JESSE BOWMAN: A Union Boy’s War Story
Tom McGowen, Enslow, 2008, $27.93, hb, 160pp, 9780766029293
Young readers are the target audience of this American Civil War story. Jesse Bowman enlists in the Chicago Zouaves, a colorful unit outfitted in Moroccan style by way of French imitators and noted for complex parade ground drills. By the time Jesse joins, they are wearing ordinary Union uniforms, but they do receive special training in Zouave tactics, enabling them to perform gallantly in a series of gently described bloody battles leading up to the capture and holding of Chattanooga. All action is seen through Northern eyes, but one constant theme is the Union admiration for the courage and tenacity of the rebels. The book is at its best describing how and why the soldiers’ shoes have to fit either foot or how the troops were victimized by shoddy clothing from unscrupulous manufacturers. A generous, wellillustrated final section called “The Real History behind the Story” helps to turn the story into a history lesson.
James Hawking
GUINEVERE’S GAMBLE
Nancy McKenzie, Knopf, 2009, $16.99/C18.99, pb, 368pp, 9780375843464
Book II of the Chrysalis Queen Quartet for younger readers chronicles the formative years of the woman destined to become King Arthur’s queen. Though a princess, Guinevere is an orphan being raised by her uncle and aunt, the rulers of Gwynedd. Her relationship with her aunt and cousin have improved since the events in the first novel, Guinevere’s Gift (2008), but fresh challenges await when the family travels to attend an assembly of Welsh kings and to meet Arthur’s sister, Morgan. Not only must she sort out friends from enemies among the intimidating strangers whom she encounters, but she must foil the plot to blame her friend Llyr the hillman for the theft of a valuable dagger if she is to save his life.
Thirteen-year-old Guinevere is a sympathetic
character: courageous and thoughtful; painfully honest and staunchly loyal to her friends; and understanding of and compassionate towards others, even those who have injured her. She will be an ideal partner for Arthur with his noble aspirations for Britain. Yet she is doomed to betray him and to destroy all that he has built. This is the fate that awaits her; it is decreed by the legend and by the author’s own earlier novels, and, in this series, by the prophecy with which she is burdened. It creates a level of irony that adds poignancy to the story of a girl growing to womanhood, struggling to deal with all her hopes and uncertainties, and torn between the securities of childhood and the challenges of the future. This is another insightful and thoughtprovoking novel from a skilled author.
Ray Thompson
WHEN I CROSSED NO-BOB
Margaret McMullan, Sandpiper, 2009 (c2007), pb, $5.95, 209pp, 9780547237633
Being an O’Donnell isn’t easy, but being an O’Donnell abandoned first by your Pappy and then by your Momma is even more difficult to live down. Quite unexpectedly, 12-year-old Addy finds herself living with the couple whose wedding her momma abandoned her at and feels she must at least earn her keep in order to repay their kindness. She sets herself to win the respect of Frank Russell, who only agreed to take her in because his new wife Irene insisted.
Told in the present in Addy’s voice, When I Crossed No-Bob is like hearing a story told from the heart by a friend. Author Margaret McMullan’s use of language and the characters she creates are richly evocative of post-Civil War times in the South. Addy is from NoBob, a backwoods slum. Already a resourceful girl, her lack of parents gives her the gift of perspective on ways of life. Proving her worth to Mr. Frank allows her to become the sort of person who isn’t from No-Bob. Along the way Addy makes friends, something she doesn’t take lightly. When she and her best friend, Little Bit, witness a shocking event, Addy finds she must decide where her loyalties lie, with real kin or the people in her new life. A clear but uneasy choice.
When I Crossed No-Bob is a gem of a book that can be read again and again.
Janette King
THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF CHARLEY DARWIN
Carolyn Meyer, Harcourt, 2009, $17, hb, 336pp, 9780152061944
The book is very much a record of Charles Darwin’s youth from the time he is a nine-yearold going off to boarding school to his work as an established scientist twenty years later. It is also a wonderful, clearly written introduction to his theories of evolution and natural selection and to social life in 19th-century England.
What may most attract young readers to the book is the focus on Darwin’s personal life. The
author gives us a very real boy who gets bullied, feels homesick, and hates studying Greek and Latin. What captivates Charley Darwin is the outdoors and collecting specimens of all sorts of things, especially beetles. The opportunity to ship onto the Beagle comes at a time when he cannot make up his mind about a career. After some convincing his father agrees to support the venture, and at twenty-two, Charles leaves on the historic voyage.
During the next five years, Darwin will ride with gauchos in Argentina, survive storms off Tierra del Fuego, experience an earthquake, and witness a volcanic eruption. He will discover fossils and collect crates of specimens to ship back to England from every port, recording his discoveries in meticulously kept journals. The excitement of the adventure is shaded with the death of shipmates and long waits for mail from home.
All in all, this is a fine read. The author makes abundant use of Darwin’s journals and autobiography but does not bog the text down with it. She portrays Darwin’s research as a large part of his life—but not the whole of it so there is plenty of room for readers to see him away from his desk. Charley Darwin turns out to be a strong, engaging, and very likeable character. The book is an excellent choice for summer reading and should be on every library’s shelves.
Lucille Cormier
BLOODLINE
Katy Moran, Candlewick, 2009, $16.00, hb, 320pp, 9780763640835 / Walker, 2008, £6.99, pb, 400pp, 978-1406309386
Set in Britain circa 650 AD, Katy Moran’s debut novel is a coming-of-age story featuring a boy named Essa who is caught in the middle of two warring kingdoms when he is abandoned by his father, Cai, a traveling bard and double agent spying for both the Mercians and the Wolf Folk. Left on his own with the Wolf Folk, Essa forges new friendships while struggling to discover not only who but also what he is. Half British and half Anglish, he is the “son of no tribe, child of no kingdom.”
But Essa possesses great gifts: heightened intuition and the ability to enter the minds and eyes of animals, which saves him on more than one occasion. Destiny gives him the leading role in the fateful final battle between the Mercians and the Wolf Clan; a battle that is at once realistically gory and beautifully
wrought. In Essa the author creates a complex and satisfying teen: angry, sullen, questioning, and brave. Hi s relationship with birds, dogs, and horses is wonderfully written and utilized to the fullest potential in the development of the plot. Although the ending is satisfying, there are enough loose ends to keep readers hungry for the next title in the trilogy. The publisher has provided a map of 7th-century Britain to help readers visualize Essa’s landscape; a wise decision, as I found myself referring to it repeatedly. Highly recommended.
Alana White
FAR FROM HOME
K.M. Peyton, Usborne, 2009, £5.99, pb, 191pp, 9780746090886
This is the third volume in the Roman Pony Stories trilogy. Minna is watching as Theo, with whom she is hopelessly in love, leads a cohort out of Camulodunum bound for Hadrian’s Wall. On a sudden impulse Minna rushes and pulls herself into one of the last of the baggage wagons.
Minna is now one of the army’s camp followers. These camp followers are mostly centurions’ wives and slaves. Minna’s position is made slightly easier by the fact that the reliable and resourceful Stuf is always there for her. He gives her a cloak and sheepskin and finds food for her. Stuf has not joined the army, but Theo finds his skills of scouting useful.
Then Theo receives orders. In what is now Derbyshire, a ruined Roman fort has been taken over by a native tribe of brigands. Theo is ordered to retake the fort before continuing on the march north. As the story is being told from the point of view of Minna, there is no detailed description of the battles. Instead Minna, in hiding with the rest of the women, just hears the screams and shrieks of the wounded. Afterwards, she sees the piles of corpses and helps with the wounded. Then she is horrified to find that Theo, the man she loves, is actually excited and enjoys the fighting which results in such carnage. Minna has some serious decisions to make. Eventually she settles for a compromise of realism and is able to look forward to a life of contentment. A life which also includes Silva.
But this is also history for animal lovers, and Silva and the faithful hunting dog Fortis also have their parts to play.
This book gives a graphic picture of the Roman army on the march and shows the period from a different perspective. It comes with a
glossary and a map and is suitable for teenage girls.
Mary Moffat
ROMAN
DIARY
Richard Platt and David Parkins, 2009, $18.99/ C$21.00 hb, 64pp, 9780763634803
The subtitle of this illustrated children’s book is “The Journal of Iliona of Mytilini, Who Was Captured and Sold as a Slave in Rome, AD 107.” The intended audience is preteen and, considering that, the book is rather daring. Roman slavery was not pretty—in fact, Roman society was not pretty—but the author resists the temptation to entirely gloss over the unpleasant bits.
Iliona, a Greek girl of about twelve, and her little brother Apollo are purchased by a Roman senator and separated, Apollo being sent to the country villa to perform grueling farm labor, while Iliona is kept as a girl-of-allwork in the family’s townhouse. Over the next months she experiences Rome’s delights (the baths, a splendid triumphal procession) and its depravities. Taken to the arena, she is swept up by the excitement of gladiatorial combat, “but when the show ended, I felt ashamed.” Taken to see a pantomime (a kind of Roman burlesque), “When some of the women in the cast took off their clothes, I covered my eyes.” At home she is, momentarily, a victim of sexual abuse. The eldest son, a rough soldier, pinches her bottom and, when she protests, warns her, “…you are just a slave girl and I can do whatever I like.” Strong stuff for a kid’s book. Eventually, due to her pluck and good heart, Iliona wins freedom for herself and her brother—although ‘freedom’ in a Roman context means that they are still bound by duty to their former owner.
Young readers will learn a great deal about Roman daily life both from the text and from Parkins’s superb illustrations. An appendix offers additional information on the Roman army, technology, religion, and other matters.
Bruce Macbain
HANNAH PRITCHARD, PIRATE OF THE REVOLUTION
Bonnie Pryor, Enslow, 2008, $27.93, hb, 160pp, 9780766028517
Hannah Pritchard, a young teenage New York farm girl, returns to her home after a carefree day of berry gathering to discover her family murdered by the Iroquois Indians and the British army during the Revolutionary War. This sets
the main character on a journey for revenge. She hides her gender and lands a position as a cabin boy on the privateering vessel Sea Hawk. What follows is a predictable, well-traveled and glossed-over tale that is both emotionless and dull. It lacks wit, energy, and real focus. The historical characters that make fleeting appearances (Paul Revere, John Paul Jones) are cursory and insignificant. The plot moves quickly because it has little substance to slow it down. Hannah’s life is all too unreal and convenient even for a tale of fiction, nor is this young character ever weighed down by emotions.
While by no means is this book poorly written or even scantily researched (the “Real History” incorporated in the end notes was a terrific bonus) its main character is missing warmth and substance.
Wendy Zollo
SOVAY
Celia Rees, Bloomsbury, 2008, £10.99, hb, 404pp, 9780747592006 / Bloomsbury USA, 2008, $16.99, hb, 416pp, 9781599902036 1794. England. The government is in the grip of paranoia about the effects of the French Revolution on Britain’s political stability. Any Republican sympathizer is seen as potentially a traitor. Among them is idealist Sir John Middleton, now in France. Back home, his wilful and passionate 17-year-old daughter, Sovay, is also in trouble. Disguised as a highwayman, she holds up her fiancé to see if he will hand over the ring she gave him. When he does, she throws him over and, unwittingly, precipitates a chain of events which take her to London, Thursley Abbey (part Strawberry Hill Gothic, part Hell Fire Club), and to France, a country in the grip of the Reign of Terror. Can Sovay and her friends unmask the power-crazy Sir Robert Dysart before he installs a murderous Committee of Public Safety along the French model in London?
Celia Rees certainly knows how to write a page-turning adventure story – the pace never drops – and she captures well British fears about possible Republican repercussions in Britain, and the dangerous volatility in Paris during the Reign of Terror.
However, I must be honest and say that I have some historical quibbles. For example, no 18thcentury young lady would ever receive a man at home without a chaperone, as Sovay receives Sir Robert Dysart, nor would she go to his party,
no matter who he provides to chaperone her. She is underage; it would be impossible to do such a thing without her father’s consent. Nor would her friends leave her alone in the middle of London to find her own way home. Such anachronistic behaviour destroyed my suspension of disbelief and made the book difficult to read.
Still, Celia Rees is an immensely successful author and most readers probably won’t notice the various social solecisms.
Elizabeth Hawksley
SISTERS OF THE SWORD: The Warrior’s Path
Maya Snow, Oxford, 2009, £5.99, pb, 300pp, 9780192728296
Japan 1216. The respected and powerful Jito, Lord Yoshijiro, is awaiting the arrival of his much-loved elder brother, Hidehira. It should have been Hidehira who inherited the family estate, but their father thought his younger son’s prowess in martial arms made him fitter to become the Jito. But the affection between the brothers has remained strong—or has it?
When Kimi and Hana, Yoshijiro’s daughters, peek through a screen to watch the welcome ceremony, what they witness instead is murder. Hidehira suddenly plunges a dagger into the Jito’s back, kills his two nephews, and yells to his Samurai guard to kill the rest of the family. Kimi and Hana must flee for their lives.
Disguised as peasant boys, they enter the service of Master Goku, who runs a martial arts school and once trained their father. Kiri and Hana must adapt to their new lives and learn things they would never have dreamed of doing as wealthy daughters of the Jito. All they have to hold on to is the hope that their mother and youngest brother managed to escape and to train for the day when they can avenge their father’s death and restore the prestige of their family. They must also keep out of the way of their arrogant cousin, Hidehira’s son, Kan-ichi, who is a student there. The sisters have done some martial arts training with their father and, recognizing their talent, Master Goku allows them to watch some of the classes. The girls practise all they can.
Then they learn that Hidehira intends to pay the school a visit…
This is the first of a quartet about Kiri and Hana’s adventures, and it certainly kicks off splendidly. The author skilfully entwines 13thcentury Japanese customs and assumptions with an exciting and entertaining story.
For 11-14 year-old girls. Elizabeth Hawksley
I thought this book started well, with an interesting atmosphere set up, warriors, etc, and at the beginning of the book there were some exiting plot twists and situations. However, I didn’t think the characters in this book were very three-dimensional or original, and this meant that the book, narrated by the main character, was not very easy or interesting to read, although some scenes in it were intriguing.
There are some tense life-or-death situations, which create suspense, and some good descriptions of fighting. There was also a good family dynamic, with characters protecting each other, etc.
I would have liked better descriptions of the setting of the book, as the time/place was unusual.
I think altogether this book could have been better if the characters, especially the main one and her sister, had more to them.
Ella McNulty, age 14
THE WOLF KING
Ann Turnbull, Back to Front, 2008, £6.99, pb, 141pp, 1904529402
Bronze Age Britain. ‘We are the Wolf Clan. Long ago our people swore brotherhood with the wolves.’ But now Coll’s tribe is under attack by their former friends, led by the terrifying Wolf King, a masked horseman dressed all in black. Two people have already disappeared: Coll’s brother Ruadh, whose inadvertent killing of a wolf began the present feud, and the travelling smith, Arven. Desperate to find their missing kinsmen, Coll and Grayla, Arven’s daughter, go in search of them.
Can they find a way to break the power of the Wolf King?
Ann Turnbull has written over thirty books for children and been short-listed for both the Guardian and Whitbread children’s fiction prizes, and The Wolf King does not disappoint. I found it gripping. Conn must learn to discard his prejudices and judge people for what they are; he must also face his deepest fears and take responsibility for his actions—and he is tested to the uttermost.
The book reminds me of Rosemary Sutcliff’s Warrior Scarlet, another story of a world on the cusp: the Bronze Age giving way to the Iron Age. Ann Turnbull shows us how the smith, Arven, is respected by the various communities he visits.
Not only does he bring news but he also knows the secrets of working the new metal, iron—a metal regarded with both awe and superstition by the Wolf Clan. We also meet the indigenous ‘Dark People’ who still use stone tools. Once they owned all the land but now they have been ousted by the Bronze Age tribes and are either enslaved or live in the forest.
The Wolf King would be a good introduction to the dawn of history and a world in transition.
Elizabeth
Hawksley
The Wolf King is set a long time ago, at the beginning of the Iron Age. The main character is Coll, and he sees something in Grayla, the blacksmith’s daughter, that no one else can see. It isn’t a frightening story; the wolves sometimes taunt the humans, but they aren’t scary. In the winter, the community moves because it is too cold where they are. I wouldn’t have liked to live with them; it felt very bleak and uncomfortable. This is a very action-packed story, and it makes you feel like you are there in the cold mountains. I enjoyed it, but I thought the story moved too fast at the beginning, and I would have liked to get to know Cole and Grayla better first. I think 9-10 year olds who like a bit of action and suspense would like this book.
Minna McNulty, aged 9
LINCOLN AND HIS BOYS
Rosemary Wells, Candlewick, 2009, $16.99/ C$18.50, hb, 96pp, 9780763637231
In Lincoln and His Boys, Rosemary Wells traces Lincoln’s journey to the presidency and through the Civil War years through the eyes of his two younger sons, Tad, and, more poignantly, Willie, who died in the White House. Although an interesting biographical introduction to the Lincoln family, the book is more about fatherson relationships than history or politics. We see Abraham Lincoln as a man who involves himself with his sons at every level, be it inspecting a fort set up on the White House roof, colluding at their welcome intrusions into cabinet meetings, or leading Tad through the ruins of Richmond. Difficult situations, such as war and mental illness, are seen sensitively through the eyes of children, who are ultimately more concerned with their parents’ love than events in the adult world around them. P.J. Lynch’s lavish illustrations compliment the text, depicting a Lincoln who is both a haunted man and a loving father. However, although a picture book, the vocabulary and subject matter are too
mature for very young readers. Recommended for grades 3 upwards or as a gift for a father. Susan Cook
CECELIA’S HARVEST: A Novel of the Revolution
Blonnie Bunn Wyche, Whittler’s Bench Press, 2009, $19.95, pb, 243pp, 9780978526566
It is the eve of the Revolutionary War, but the only independence on the mind of 16-yearold Cecelia Moore is freedom from her family. When handsome Kenneth Black comes courting with tales of an easy life on his family plantation, she is eager to accept. Then tragedy strikes and Cecelia is left with a baby, a dilapidated farm, a few slaves, and the choice to flee or fight back against her circumstances.
Cecelia has a vision that goes beyond mere survival to turn the plantation into a thriving business, but the war and the lawlessness it generates are relentless enemies. As she struggles to make her dream a reality, she learns, along with her fledgling country, that independence has a price, but that the rewards are worth the suffering.
In Cecelia’s Harvest, Blonnie Wyche captures the complexities of a country divided, with honor and dishonor, and heroes and villains on both sides. She also creates an absorbing narrative and a cast of colorful, sympathetic characters. It may be a cliché to call a heroine ‘feisty’, but Cecelia is, well, feisty; in some ways, she reminded me of Little Women’s Jo March. Readers will be informed and impressed at just what a colonial teenager faced, both in war and everyday life—and cheering Cecelia on all the way.
Susan Cook
Cecelia’s Harvest is an inspiring novel. Cecelia was put in an awful position, but she did not give up. She learned how to manage her household and run a farm. Cecelia herself was a remarkable young woman. One of the things about her that stood out to me was her decisiveness. She seemed to know the right thing to do in all the challenges that were thrown at her. I would highly recommend this book.
Magdalen Dobson, age 12
NONFICTION
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
Mark Bostridge, Penguin, 2009, £10.99/ C$20.00, pb, 646pp, 9780140263923
At the age of 17, Florence received a calling from God, and although she persisted in her quest to study nursing, her parents refused permission for their daughter to involve herself in an occupation that was seen to be peopled by the dissolute and immoral. Florence’s chance to escape came when the Crimean War broke out and Sir Sydney Herbert, Secretary at War, asked her to take a number of nurses to Scutari. After just six months she returned home to lead the life of an invalid. For want of a better name, Crimean fever was diagnosed but it was probably brucellosis, a debilitating illness contracted by drinking untreated milk.
So much is already known about Florence Nightingale that it seems unlikely that any further investigation can shed more light on this Victorian icon. Mark Bostridge, however, gives a new, unbiased account of the character that was Florence Nightingale. Fanatical pioneer of cleanliness and fresh air, arrogant and opinionated she undoubtedly was, nevertheless, she got things done.
Ann Oughton
TESTAMENT OF YOUTH
Vera Brittain, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009, £30/$29.95, hb, 608pp, 9780297858317
What more can one say about this classic autobiography? It is one of those books that absolutely everyone should read and not just for its harrowing depiction of the horrors of the First World War, its filth, its stench, its total futility. Vera, with her parochial and tranquil middleclass background, was about to take a place at Oxford University. She had fought prejudice and had worked hard to get there. She was engaged to her brother’s best friend, a young poet who shared her world view. Life was sweet, so when war was declared, she saw it as no more than an irritation. Not for long…
What Brittain experienced first hand as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse turned her into a vehement life-long socialist, a member of the women’s movement, but above all an antiwar campaigner. She spent the rest of her life as a pacifist and a political activist.
I consider it essential reading, not just as an anti-war polemic but as a portrait of a whole generation of young people who were totally illprepared and whose lives were utterly changed within four momentous years. It’s full of anger, pain, and bitterness but also determination and joy. The paperback edition I’ve owned and cried over since the seventies is battered and
well thumbed so this new hardback edition is a welcome addition to my shelves. It contains some photographs—although I would have liked more—and a foreword by Baroness Shirley Williams, Vera Brittain’s daughter.
Sally Zigmond
THE CANTERBURY TALES
Geoffrey Chaucer/A retelling by Peter Ackroyd, Penguin Classics, 2009, £25.00, hb, 435pp, 9781846140587
Geoffrey Chaucer (c1343-1400) was an English author, poet, philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier, and diplomat. Best known for The Canterbury Tales, he spent his life at court, first serving Edward III and then his son, John of Gaunt, for whom Chaucer wrote poetry. From his house in Aldgate, he was able to observe the multitudes coming and going, which undoubtedly provided a rich source of material for his writing.
Peter Ackroyd’s prose retelling of the tales brings to life all the wit, ribaldry, and romance, providing an insight into human nature and a glimpse of 14th-century London. The introduction explains the historical background to Chaucer, his life and times, and Ackroyd’s reason for translating the work to make it accessible to the general reader. The attractive cover design is sure to attract the bookshop browser, and in truth, the entire work is nothing short of a masterpiece.
Ann Oughton
THE FIRST FAMILY: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia
Mike Dash, Random House, 2009, $27.00, hc, 357pp, 9781400067220
The roots of the Mafia lie in Sicily, but one man—Giuseppe Morello—is primarily responsible for the rise of organized crime in the United States. Morello, known as the Clutch Hand due to a physical deformity, came to the United States during the last decade of the 19th century during a boom of Italian immigration. Morello’s cruelty and cunning may be the stuff of legend, but the events chronicled in the book are all true.
Organized crime has had a surprising impact on American popular culture, and The First Family gives readers a unique look at the people who first brought the Mafia to prominence. Dash relied heavily on primary sources in his research, including some previously unreleased
material from the U.S. Secret Service. His goal was to write an historically accurate book that would debunk some of the commonly accepted myths about the rise of the Mafia, and he has accomplished just that. A must read for Mafia and true crime aficionados.
Nanette Donohue
CAPTIVATED: J. M. Barrie, Daphne du Maurier and the Dark Secret of Neverland Piers Dudgeon, Vintage, 2008, £9.99, pb, 333pp, 9780099520450
‘Barrie has a fatal touch for those he loves. They die.’ D. H. Lawrence.
This fascinating and disturbing book unravels the subtle and deadly mixture of manipulation, fantasy, and control with which J. M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, entangled a number of child victims. The most famous examples are the orphaned Llewellyn-Davies boys, but their tomboy cousin, Daphne du Maurier, was also profoundly affected by Barrie’s games.
Dudgeon begins with the children’s grandfather, George du Maurier, author of Trilby, which features the hypnotist, Svengali, and Peter Ibbetson, which centres on ‘dreaming true’, that is, being able to communicate even when apart. Both became bestsellers and influenced the 1890s generation. He demonstrates how George du Maurier’s interest in hypnosis and dreaming true fed into Barrie’s psychological need to have emotional control over those he loved.
Dudgeon is good at asking the right questions, particularly about Barrie’s own tragic and dysfunctional childhood. This, together with his long view covering several generations, allows him to disentangle the threads and examine not only how Barrie was able to take over the Llewelyn-Davies boys so completely, but also how they, and Daphne du Maurier, ended up deeply disturbed and, in some cases, destroyed, by him. Highly recommended.
Elizabeth Hawksley
THE AGE OF THE SHIP OF THE LINE:
The British and French Navies, 1650-1815
Jonathan R. Dull, Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2009, $29.95, hb, 250pp, 9780803219304
The “ship of the line” was the equivalent of the battleship in navies in the Age of Sail. While numerous smaller types of naval vessels played critical roles in battle, blockading, and convoy protection, the large and heavily armed ship of the line was the final arbiter when it came to maritime supremacy. Acclaimed naval historian
Jonathan Dull takes the reader through the intricacies of warship design and construction in both French and British navies and the wars they and their allies waged from 1688 to the fall of Napoleon in 1815. Dull’s knowledge of the topic is encyclopedic, and he offers both the first-time researcher and the specialist a comprehensive study of these ships and the role they played in allowing the Royal Navy to dominate the world’s oceans at book’s end. I can think of no better tool for a writer wishing to publish in the ever-popular field of Age of Sail fiction than The Age of the Ship of the Line
John R. Vallely
AGNES LAKE HICKOK: Queen of the Circus, Wife of a Legend
Linda A. Fisher and Carrie Bowers, Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2009, $29.95, hb, 287pp, 9780806139838
Agnes Lake Hickok must have been made of extraordinary stuff. She married circus performer Bill Lake in 1847 and made her circus debut shortly after. She performed on the “floating wire,” a predecessor of the high wire that was not stretched taut, and was a superb horsewoman. For many years, she and her husband appeared in circuses throughout the United States. Although he was a well-known star, she eventually surpassed him in crowd appeal and billing.
In addition to being successful performers, the couple proved to be able entrepreneurs, eventually owning their own circuses. They had no children of their own, but “adopted” several to take part in circus acts.
Their fruitful association was curtailed when Bill was murdered by a disgruntled audience member, leaving Agnes either to sell off the circus assets or carry on alone. She chose to carry on, becoming the first woman circus proprietor. It was in this capacity some years later that she met the legendary Bill Hickok, who ended his bachelorhood to marry Agnes.
This scholarly and absorbing biography gives a nearly forgotten woman of courage and talent her place in history. Lavishly illustrated with pictures and reproductions of advertisements and circus posters, the late Linda Fisher and coauthor Carrie Bowers have provided a wellwritten testament to a unique period in American history.
Susanne
Dunlap
