O IS FOR OUTLAW by Sue Grafton ~ A Book Review
One of the things that keeps this series so compelling is the character of Kinsey Milhone. She has such a voice, such a presence on the page, she is hard to forget. And yet, we don’t know much about her. Over the last 14 books, we’ve heard about her parents’ tragic deaths, Aunt Gin who […]
THE HANGING IN THE HOTEL ~ FETHERING #5 ~ by Simon Brett
If you haven’t discovered Simon Brett yet, and you are British or an Anglophile, you really should. For not only does Brett write compelling cozies, but his stories are hilarious send-ups of Britishness. In this volume, The Hanging in the Hotel (Number 5 of the Fethering Mysteries), Jude is forced to dress up as an […]
SUSAN by Alice McVeigh ~ A Book Review
How I loved Susan! In Alice McVeigh’s deft hands, she jumps of the pages and makes the novel glow in reflected glory. When Jane Austen was in her late teens, she wrote a novel called LADY SUSAN, about a cold mother and her mistreated daughter. In the original novel, Lady Susan is 35 years old […]
CASE HISTORIES by Kate Atkinson ~ A Book Review
British writers are not the same as American writers. I know this is an obvious statement, but American readers who pick up Kate Atkinson’s CASE HISTORIES, the first in a series of six novels featuring PI Jackson Brodie, should be warned that this novel goes at a far slower clip, than its American cousin. Set […]
THE MAPPING OF LOVE & DEATH ~ MAISIE DOBBS #7 ~ by Jacqueline Winspear
Jacqueline Winspear conveys perfectly, in THE MAPPING OF LOVE AND DEATH the tragic waste of young lives during the Great War of 1914-1918 (aka World War I.) We learn about a young man Michael Clifton, an American from California, who changes his plans one day in August 1914, so that he can fight on the […]
Adventures with Cecylee Part IV ~ Different Clocks
My first novel Thwarted Queen is a fictionalized autobiography told mostly in the voice of Lady Cecylee Neville, the youngest daughter of Ralph, Earl of Westmorland and his second wife Countess Joan. We know only two facts about Cecylee’s youth. The first is that she was born in May 1415. The second is that on […]
THE ASSASSIN OF VENICE by Alyssa Palombo ~ A Book Review
THE ASSASSIN OF VENICE is a well-crafted tale about a Venetian courtesan called Valentina Ricciardi in 1530s Venice. In those days, Venice was an rich and imposing republic, powerful enough to do battle with the Turks over who was going to dominate the trade routes in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Another up-and-coming […]
TO THE SUN by Octavia Randolph ~ Circle of Ceridwen #11
This volume has two very different threads. One is an adventure story about a group of Svaer (Swedes) and a group of Gotlanders who somehow manage to sail into the Gulf of Finland, through the marshy swamps of what is now St Petersburg, into Lake Ladoga before heading south to Novgorod, and across the snow […]
WATER BORNE ~ CERIDWEN #10 ~ by Octavia Randolph
Water Borne has such a poetic feel to it that it seems a shame that I’m going to start this book review by criticizing it. But this title doesn’t, in my humble opinion, really tell you what this novel is about. Yes, the piece starts with Lady Dwynwen pouring water from a silver jug. Yes, […]
THE VANISHED DAYS by Susanna Kearsley ~ A Book Review
Though she writes about Scotland during the Jacobite era (1688 to 1745), Susanna Kearsley is a Canadian author who lives near Toronto. Obviously, she has Scottish ancestors, some of whom must have been players in the Jacobite rebellion. I have not read her first two novels – Undertow published in March 1993 or The Gemini […]
