Kingdom of the Blind

I can never really do Louise Penny justice.  Her books are written with such beautiful, moving and flowing prose.  They are a pleasure to read even before you get to the fact that she writes a believable, beguiling and intriguing mystery plot in each one. 

This is a series that I look forward to reading as soon as each new book is released.
I put aside all other work, reading and activities to immerse myself in the world of Three Pines and become apart of the group that gathers at the bistro owned by Gabri and Oliver.  I look forward to conversations over dinner with Reine Marie and Armand either around their table or their neighbor, Clara's.  As Ruth and Myrna join the Chief Inspector and his daughter, Annie and her husband the Chief's second in command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

Oh, to feel that kind of connection to a group of friends in real life.  It seems like it would be the perfect life.

Again in this mystery novel, Penny tackles current day issues and modern problems.  The opioid crisis and electronic banking and money schemes.  Picking up where she left off at the end of the last book, drugs are being released on the streets that can kill the addicts who live day to day.  Gamache seems to be responsible because of the way he did not arrest all the dealers at the end of Glass Houses.

Also interspersed with the plot is the death and will of an old woman in a nursing home, who called herself the Baroness, though she cleaned houses in her younger days.  She has named Gamache, Myrna and another young man the liquidators of her estate.  This is an unusual occurrence and it starts the digging into of the people involved.  Two separate plots running concurrently, until though as a reader you may have some theories, they will be uncovered all in good time.

The prose is incredible, with examples like where he thinks back to the last tragedy he lived through with his police officers,: "But leaving was hard.  Especially his agents, men and women whose lives were lost because they followed his orders.  Followed him. He'd felt, for a long time, that he owed it to them to not leave that place of sorrow. To keep them company there....Their lives could not be defined by their deaths.  They belonged not in perpetual pain but in the beauty of their short lives."
So many connections to the word blind.  People being blind when they are dealing with other people. Being blind to your emotions, being blind to people's lies, being blind in a snow storm or being blind when something physically affects your eyesight.

So beautifully crafted.  I will say that Penny has built up her talent and I have become so attached to these characters, I feel like I know them.  I was moved to tears at the end of this book.  That is a first when reading a mystery novel. 

Blackbird Fly

I admit that I picked this book to listen to because the main character and I share a first name.  That is unusual for me to find in books.  So I listened. It was fun to hear my name and the plot line is interesting and keeps you interested trying to figure out the mystery.  It just moved extremely slowly.

The story seemed stretched out interminably and I was like lets get to the solution way before the book got there.  The narrator's voice is pleasant to listen to and the story line is interesting about wine country in France and the small village where Merle finds herself, after her husband's death, having inherited a small house there.  The description of the house and fixing it up and the death of an old woman keep you reading.  You do want to find out who the woman was and how Merle and her son will succeed in fixing up the house and if they will live there.  I do think that some of the loose ends are not sufficiently tied up at the end.  Some answers are not clear, but all in all I enjoyed listening while I walked and while I drove to meetings.

The book is written by Lise McClendon and narrated by Denise Stradling. 

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The Fallen Architect

Another enjoyable novel from the author, Charles Belfoure.  I believe his most powerful novel was
The Paris Architect and then also his next incredible read was House of Thieves.  Now this novel has a little lighter plot and is not as architecturally intricate, but it is every bit as entertaining as his previous books.

This time we meet an architect who has been disbarred and sent to serve a five year sentence in prison when a theatre he designed collapse, killing and injuring many people.  Douglas Layton, who has risen from his station in society as the son of a mason to become a well respected architect, has lost his wife, son and home when the balcony falls and he accused of faulty design work. 

Now, his sentence is finished and he has paid his debt to society.  He returns to London, under a new identity, as Frank Owen, a scenic designer.  He becomes beloved by the people he works with and the woman he works for, Cissie Mapes.  Creating a new life for himself, he is finding happiness and also realizes that he was not responsible for the accident that brought down the house and killed the patrons of the theatre.  He and Cissie decide to clear his name and investigate on their own to find out who was responsible for the collapse of the theatre.

Belfoure uses tricks of the trade to build the case for this mystery.  Describing the architecture behind building theaters in London at the turn of the century, we are again treated to the world building and designing buildings.  We are also treated to the fascinating world of vaudeville back stage.  The characters are colorful and the backdrops, Owens paints are realistic and beautiful.
the plot is intricate and keeps the reader thinking alongside Douglas Layton aka Frank Owens as he tries to clear his name and get a second chance at happiness.

Tombstone: Not A Western

Just a quick short review about Tombstone: Not a Western because I really did not like this book.  Because I usually do not like to give bad reviews, I will keep this short but I just want to acknowledge that I have read the book.

This is supposed to be a funny look at death, old age and end of life.
Maybe because I have three elderly parents and I am definitely a member of the sandwich generation, I was both looking for a good laugh about the end of life and then did not find this book funny.
Though I do try to keep my sense of humor about all the changes that you watch happening to your parents and trying to laugh with them at themselves and with my friends over dinner with funny antidotes about what we are experiencing, this book is not that kind of funny.

I found it so unfunny that now even though I have a copy of the book, I do not have anyone I can even think of to share it with. 

The Rain Watcher

The Rain Watcher is not my favorite of Tatiana De Rosnay's novels.  It is an interesting story told about a family who has never been able to share personal feelings, now faced with illness and the rising water of the 2016 Paris flood, finds ways to open up and share long hidden fears, hurts and resentments.

Set against the backdrop of the Paris flood with newscasts and very descriptive narration of the rising water comparing this flood to the Paris flood of 1910, we meet the Malegarde family.  Linden is the famous photographer and son to Lauren and Paul.  Lauren , married at an early age to Paul, who has become famous for his love of trees.  Known as the "Treeman", he travels the world trying to save tress that come in the path of progress.  Paul had told his son,  "What do the trees tell me?  Everything.  ...
They tell me what lies under their roots, in the thickness of their leaves.  That's why we need trees to understand the world.  Trees are living encyclopedias.  They give us the keys."

Lauren was a young girl traveling with her sister Candice, from Boston, when she met Paul.  She married him and moved to the quiet and distant homestead of Venozan between the villages of Nyons and Sevral, a six hour drive from Paris.  Each family member has secrets they have been harboring for years.  As the flood waters rise and Paris is evacuated, Linden, his sister, Tilia and the parents slowly unravel and face their long buried fears to bring the family together and face the turmoil that is happening both within the family and around them with the weather.

Though the main plot should be the focus of the family and their relationship and interactions, the book is mainly focused on the flooding of Paris.  It is interesting historically, but I thought it should take on more of a background role in the novel.

When Life Gives You Luluemons

Sitting on the couch with a cold, my tissues and hot tea at the ready is the perfect time to indulge in a chick lit book.  Lauren Weisberger is the perfect writer to read when looking for a well written and very entertaining plot.  Already known for her novel, The Devil Wears Prada, she has once again been able to use a clothing label to conjure the image of the Gen X housewife.  Realizing that I have just left the "stay at home mother vs working woman" stage of life it is still fun to read.  I still feel I can relate to the angst and worries of wanting to stay home and not feeling productive and independent.  This is was a fun novel that dealt with that issue, with a bit of an exaggeration,  with three women.

All three women are in their thirties, approaching life from different prospectives.  Emily Charlton, married, working as a Hollywood image consultant, is a hard brash woman, who says she does not want children and works hard to maintain her figure and her social connections.  Her childhood friend, Miriam is now a stay at home mom, living in Greenwich, Ct.  Greenwich is a wealthy suburb of New York City, where all the young moms are wearing Luluemon leggings and looking beautiful in their workout clothes.  They are living a fast, over the top lifestyle with sex toy parties and discussions of plastic surgeries over lunch at the juice bar.   Then, there is Karolina Hartwell, beautiful Victoria Secret model, now married to an ambiguous senator who has aspirations of the presidency.  Karolina thinking she cannot have children of her own is step mom to Hartwell's son.

The three women each run into personal trouble and are trying to find their way through the hard dilemmas they are facing. They come together as a team helping each other through their problems.  Miriam, loves staying home with her three children, wearing sweatpants with elastic waists, but maybe not completely.  She is thrilled when her old friend Emily appears on her doorstep needing a shoulder to cry on as she experiences a crisis of faith that she is still viable in the workplace. Emily  feels she is being replaced by younger women.  The two band together when their mutual friend Karolina is possibly set up by her husband with a DUI and deserted by her "friends" in WDC.  Looking for retribution,  the women work side by side, discovering something new about each other and themselves as they work to clear Karolina's name.

How's Your Mom?

Michelle Lebs has chronicled the story of her experience being the daughter of Tamra Devine, a mother who suffered with Multiple Scoliosis.  The book is both touching and sad.  Michelle is incredibly brave as she helps her mother wrestle with the disease that will slowly incapacitate her.  Together they will try to understand and make sense of the turn theirs lives have taken when diagnosed with this debilitating illness.

In alternating chapters and also including the thoughts and feelings of her father, Chris and her brother, Alex the reader has an inside look at what happens to a family when one member is diagnosed with a life threatening disease. As Michelle points out the illness does not just affect the patient, it changes the lives of the entire family. 

This book is written from the heart.  Michelle does not sugar coat the day to day struggles her mother went through, or the harsh feelings Michelle was feeling while everything was happening.  It also does not try to make it seem like everything works out in the end.  The family members here are angry at the disease, they are angry at life throwing them this curve ball.  They get angry at each other.  The book shows all those raw exposed moments when life really hurts.

This book also shows how through it all they were there for each other.  How though Michelle was furious that, her teenage years and young adult time, when she wanted a mother who would bake with her and  go shopping with her was taken away, she was there for her mother.  She took care of her mother and loved her mother.  Her father had taken a vow to love and take of, til death do you part, and he was taking that very seriously.  Her brother was there also helping to hold them all together as a family.

Personally knowing this family for many years, having been friends with Tammy and watched the children grow up makes this book even more incredible.  The have been through the toughest of times and have stayed strong and resilient.  I hope writing this memoir has helped them heal.  Tammy will never be forgotten.  Her memory will be for a blessing and her strength will help others in their personal struggles.

The Lost Girls of Paris

Jenna Blum has written another fascinating historical novel.  I just finished reading the
The Lost Girls of Paris.  Again I have been able to learn something new while enjoying a compelling novel. I really appreciate the authors who are taking the history lessons that have remained undiscovered and bringing them to the forefront in an easily readable way.  Then we the readers should go and learn more about the topics after finishing these novels.

This time Blum takes us on a time travel back to the early days after World War II , in New York City.  We meet Grace Healey, a young woman getting back on her feet after the death of her husband.  She is escaping the memories and her family, taking an apartment in the city and finding a job working in a small office.  Day to day she is assisting families who have come to America get established with apartments, jobs and daily necessities after the war.

One day she walks through Grand Central train station and finding an abandoned suitcase, her life changes.  Finding pictures of young women in the suitcase she begins to uncover the mysterious disappearance of not only the person who owned the suitcase but of the girls whose pictures Grace has discovered.  At the same time she has reconnected with an old friend of her husband's who is a lawyer in Washington DC.  Grace is trying to work out her feelings for this man as he helps her uncover the truth about what happened during the war to these women.

Interspersed with Grace and her story is the back story of the British SOE special agents who were all young women, trained in Britain and sent to France joining the resistance fighters to spy on the Germans and send messages back to England.  They were trained in radio operations and combat then sent on dangerous missions without proper preparation or support.  As Grace is uncovering their stories and names we learn about,  Eleanor Trigg, who was the woman who was in charge of recruiting and training the secret agents.  We follow the stories of Josie and Marie who are trained and sent to join the Vesper team in Paris.  We learn of the fates of many of the women both real and imagined who were brave and courageous and who the Nazis tried to erase from history.

This is an incredible story of friendship, valor, and betrayal.  It shows how these heroic women had the strength to survive in the worst circumstances.  They put their mission first before their personal lives.

The Dough Must Go On

The Dough Must Go On, is a simple, entertaining mysteries that are a fun way to spend a rainy afternoon.  Clever title and contemporary theme to the mystery as Gemma joins a Who's Got Talent type TV show filming in her village and "The Old Biddies"  are right there taking center stage.

The H.Y. Hanna Oxford Mystery series continues as Gemma is pulled into a catering job for a TV reality entertainment show comes to town to videotape.  Local talent and delicious scones lead to murder. Gemma and now her love interest, Devlin, the local police detective are on the case, figuring out who could have done it.  Stay around to the end of the book for a scrumptious recipe for scones which is just the finishing touch needed to a nicely packaged ending, gathering up all the crumbs of the mystery into a tidy bundle.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Taylor Jenkins Reid has a box office hit with this novel, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.  Somehow it missed my radar when it came out in 2017, so I really glad it was recommended for  one of my book discussion groups.  What a fun and enticing read.  Once you pick it up you will not want to put it down, until all is revealed.

Evelyn Hugo has moved herself out of Hell's Kitchen in New York City and across the country to Hollywood to become a movie star.  At the young age of 18 she reinvents herself and using every trick in the book she launches herself to stardom.  Along the way she marries seven times sometimes for love, sometimes for fame and at least once get herself out of Hell's Kitchen.  She breaks hearts and changes the way people view movies.  Now she is at the end of her life, nearing 80 years old, alone in her New York apartment, having lost all her family and close friends.  She has not been in front of the camera or done any interviews for decades.  She contacts a magazine, requesting only Monique Grant, a new fledgling journalist to do a cover story on her donation to Chrisitie's Auction
House of her famous dresses for charity. 

Monique Grant, whose husband has left her and whose professional life is going nowhere, is surprised by the request but shows up to find that Evelyn has a different plan in mind.  She is going to give Monique the exclusive rights to her life story.  Evelyn will tell Monique all the secrets, good and bad about her life, coming to Hollywood, all her seven husbands, and the love of her life.  Also all the terrible things she did throughout her life to get ahead and keep her fans attention and love.

Wonderfully told, incredibly descriptive of the lifestyle and feelings of the motion picture industry.  The characters pull you right in and leave you drained at the end.  You can relate to Monique's reactions to Evelyn's story because you also are unsure of how you would react in similar circumstances.  You have been totally pulled into the story.

My Oxford Year

Sentimental is the best word to describe this novel.  Julia Whelan tugs at your heart strings as you read through the plot of Eleanor Durran fulfilling her childhood dream to spend a year at Oxford.

Eleanor is presented as a modern young woman.  She is getting off the plane in England as she begins her adventure at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar student.  This is accomplishing both the success of being named a Rhodes scholar, very prestigious and attending Oxford, which she promised herself she would do when she was 13 years old.

Right away two things happen, first a call with an incredible job opportunity to help run the election campaign of a woman running for Unites States president.  She accepts and as she works from England, while attending classes she agrees to return at the end of term to the US.

Then she meets a man who almost hits her with his auto and then spills condiments on her dress.
Of course she hates him, which will mean later she loves him.

As the story progresses Eleanor must come to terms with being her own person and also falling in love.  Being independent and wanting to continue to pursue her career path, or is it really what she wanted ??  Where does love fit into this life she has created for herself?

Whelan gives the reader a chance to see Eleanor and her love interest, Jamie deal with hard choices.  Also as they deal with the present hard choices they are both able to sort out mistaken ideas they have harbored that have led them to how they perceive the present situation.  Letting go and letting life take you on its daily journey may be the message of this book.

The Emperor of Shoes

The Emperor of Shoes written by Spencer Wise was a surprisingly interesting novel.  It did move a little slowly for me and at a few points I wanted to put it down but I kept going and in the end it was quite good.

We travel to China with  twenty six year old, Alex Cohen, a Jewish Bostonian, the son of Fedor who has made his career as a shoe manufacturer running a shoe factory in China.  Fedor  left his family to save the family business, by moving the American shoe company his father started to China.  Now it is Alex's turn to start preparing to take over the family business.  He comes to China to learn from his father. 

Alex is of a new generation.  He falls in love with a factory worker and learns of the Chinese Revolution that is starting to work behind the scenes.  He is more sensitive to the workers than his father.  He starts to want to help the workers instead of paying off the bribes to protect the bottom line.  Alex and his father collide over their differing viewpoints,   "I was staring straight ahead, but I could feel Dad side-eyeing me. I knew he was thinking I created you.  Like how the old rabbis would mold a mythical golem to follow orders-  I honestly think that is how Dad saw fatherhood.  And now he was worried that his divine creature was beginning to turn against him."

As tensions build we see Alex come into his own, building strength of character as he stands up for what he believes in.  His father, sees that the business he built is failing as times change, and he ages out.  The Jewish values Alex learned give him the convictions to challenge his father.

November Road

November 22, 1963 is a day that many will not soon forget.  That is the day that President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Tx.  Ask anyone who was old enough that day to remember where they were when they heard the news and they can tell you.  Harvey Oswald was arrested as the shooter, but before he could confirm that he acted alone and fired the fatal shot, he was gunned down by Jack Ruby.  There was an intense investigation by the Warren Commission and still some of those files have never been released to the public.  The speculation about what happened that day in Dallas has led people to create their own conspiracy theories and details for the actions that took place there between the green and the book depository.

So Lou Berney has joined the group of authors using the historic events of November 1963 to create another theory on . what could have happened in Dallas and its ramifications on the people involved.
Back in the '60s the Mob and organized crime loomed large.  Berney brings us the New Orleans mob boss, Carlos Marcello.  Could it possible that he was responsible for the assassination of a president?  Frank Guidry has been a loyal street lieutenant of the mob boss for years, but he know that if anyone person gets too much information they are expendable.

When the country hears the news reports of a shooter in the Book Depository in Dallas, Guidry connects it to a getaway car he left in a local garage.  He realizes that his time may be up.

Charlotte is feeling suffocated in her small town, her failing marriage and dead end job.  On an impulse she gathers her two daughters, Rosemary and Joan and the epileptic dog in the car after Sunday dinner and drives off from her Oklahoma town toward an aunt she vaguely remembers in California.   Leaving her alcholic husband behind, she plans to start over and live "the future she might have had".   She thinks to herself as she watches her daughters playing, "The tornado might have blown Dorothy from Kansas to Oz, but Dorothy was the one who'd had to open the front door of the farmhouse and step outside."

In an uncharacteristic move Charlotte gathers the children and heads out the door.  Her path crosses with Guidry and their interactions and relationship are the meat of this plot.  Watching each character grow and change.  The love story developing as they both are hiding some facts from each other and trying to save themselves.  Each person caught in their own personal moral dilemma.  How a chance meeting can change the course of your life.  How the one action can affect so many different lives in unknown ways.

This is an enticing story and entertaining read.  Guidry is on the run to save himself. Charlotte is heading to California to save herself. When their lives interconnect at a small run down motel in New Mexico both of their lives are taking a new unexpected path. This is a love story and a very interesting new way to imagine the Kennedy assassination.

My Lady's Choosing

This is so much not my usual genre of reading material, and I only picked it up because a friend pointed it out to me.  Written by Kitty Curran and Larissa Zageris who are creative and must be very organized to have curated this.

Though, I have always enjoyed the kids interactive books when they were younger, so I was definitely curious to see what this was about.  The most intriguing part of the book is how it is written and organized.  I think the most amazing part of this is how they arrange the pages and keep everything straight.  That must be more complicated than writing a straight novel.  So are never reading this book in a linear fashion, you are always skipping around depending on whether you want to follow love interest A or leave the country with character B. 

Of course it is a very light read and corny but interesting to see how at the end of a page you are offered a choice of how you want to proceed with the story line and taken to another page which changes depending on the storyline you follow.  I will not even outline it and there is no character development at all.  The plot is designed around regency characters looking for romance and of course there is a family scandal that is presented at a formal ball.  There is some sexual innuendo and a visit to a brothel.  But only if you take that path.  There is also travel to Egypt if you choose a different path.  So in the end it is more the fun of the puzzle than the plot that matters.

Gentlemen Formerly Dressed

Sulari Gentil has written another great mystery novel!  Each novel builds on the previous one and each one is better than the last.  Gentil had me captivated . with the first of this series but I must say I did not realize how much better they would each get.  I look forward to each one and luckily for me there is no wait because the whole series has been written and it is just a matter of having them published in the Unites States. 

I will not go into too much detail because I have reviewed this series a number of times here.
Needless to say, Rowland Sinclair and his unusual group of associates, Edna the sculptress, Clyde, the painter and Milton, the plagiarizing poet are now in Britain.  Traveling home from Germany they have stopped on the way back to Australia.  They run into trouble, when they want to share with people in authority what they have learnt is happening in Germany.

A body is found and Rowland is there when the young girl who discovers the body needs to be taken home.  Ever the chivalrous gentleman he gets involved in trying to find the real killer so this young girl will not spend too much time as the accused killer.

Gentil wraps her story around the history of what was happening in the world in 1933.  Bringing in many real events; The London Economic Conference, and so many real people, some of them very scandalous, including;  H.G. Wells, Winston Churchill, Wallis Simpson, Josslyn Hay and the author, Evelyn Waugh.

Again I say these books are a wonderful way to while away some time lost in the past and enjoying the scandals of this historic moment.

Carnegie's Maid

Marie Benedict has wowed me yet again.  I loved her book, The Other Einstein.  I find that these historical fiction novels bring you pieces of history that may never have come to light in a very entertaining format.  Carnegie's Maid follows a similar pattern.  Though Benedict does point out in Author's Note that this is a research based fictional story, there is actually no basis in fact that there was a maid who influenced Andrew Carnegie to become the man he was.

So to start with the facts that are true, Andrew Carnegie started out an impoverished immigrant, who was bright but had no access to education.   He did travel across the United States to New York City from his home in Pittsburgh, PA.  He did go on a Grand Tour of Europe and wrote The Gospel of Wealth.  It is also thought that he pledged in December of 1868, at the age of thirty three, to focus on education and "improvement of the poorer classes" in a letter he wrote to himself.  Andrew Carnegie became the world's first true philanthropist.

So Benedict uses the historical setting of Irish immigrants coming to America looking for a better life and interweaves it with the life of the Carnegie family living in Pittsburgh.  She imagines the relationship between Mrs Carnegie and her lady's maid.  The reader is there with Clara Kelley as she sails on the boat, in steerage class, from Ireland to America.  Kelley is given a lucky break when she ends up in the Carnegie home, walking from the kitchen to the front parlor, "As the decor grew more elaborate - the molding changing from simple blond pine to intricately carved mahogany and the window glass shifting from clear to stained glass in vivid  patterns of cobalt blue, persimmon and citrine - the air grew colder." 

She writes home through out the book keeping in touch with her sister, who along with cousins living a very different lifestyle in the "Slab Town" area of Pittsburgh, keeps the reader up to date on the famine and political unrest in Ireland.  While here in America, the Civil War is ending and the industrial revolution is growing.  Andrew Carnegie is there taking full advantage of the changing landscape of our country.

There are many similarities between our main characters, Clara and Andrew, and there are many similarities between the lives of the rich and poor.  One example that stands out is that in Ireland, as the Kelley family is losing their farm land, they want to marry Clara's sister to a local young man to take over the farm.  In the United States, Andrew's brother, Tom,  is also marring for convenience.
His father-in-law raises a glass and toasts the couple, "We feel blessed to be joining the Carnegie and Coleman families and would like everyone to raise a glass to our fruitful union."  The two men were joining the iron manufacturing and oil drilling businesses.

This wonderful novel gives insight into a part of history, leads the reader to want to find out more about the characters, and the history, while providing a very entertaining story.

Questioning Return

So many of my American friends have said that when their plane landed in Israel and they stepped off into the Holy Land for the first time they would kiss the ground. They found the experience extremely moving. Since the end of World War II, the Jewish people and the Land of Israel have had a special relationship that seems different than citizens of any other country have with a physical place. To add to the connection, the tie between the location and a religion. So the Jewish person is connected to Israel not only by nationality but also by religion.

Beth Kissileff explores the concept of baalei teshuvah, Jews who are discovering a tradition once lost to them in her new novel, Questioning Return. The story of the intense pull both the State of Israel and the Jewish religion can have on a person. The protagonist in this novel, Wendy Goldberg, is a Princeton University graduate student writing her dissertation. Her plan is to interview American Jews who have come to connect more intensely to the Jewish religion. They are captivated by the ultra orthodox Judaism that has never been apart of their lives before. Wendy plans to question their motivations and write her thesis on the road to her academic and career success.

We watch as Wendy lands in Israel and finds her way around Jerusalem. She is meeting people, learning how to speak Hebrew at Ulpan, using her new knowledge of the language as she buys groceries and handles day to day life. As Wendy becomes emerced in the lifestyle the novel becomes more of a personal exploration as the plot develops. Wendy finds herself alone in Israel, learning about herself as she questions others. Her own introspection becomes part of the storyline. Wendy explains to others that her impetus for writing her dissertation about baalei teshuvah is because of never understanding her friend's sister who became religious, but as the book moves along we see that it may be Wendy working out her own questions of where she fits into the Jewish religion. As she meets potential friends in Jerusalem she explains her story to them, "I've always wondered how people can change? This is my chance to find out. I have this friend Nina whose sister Debbie, now Devorah, became religious. Debbie was always worried about her looks and what people would think of her. When she became religious, she was still the same, except now she worries about how her sheitel looks and if her sleeves are long enough."

Wendy has questions about her own place within Judaism and about her career. She is concerned with being in control of her destiny. She is questioning the ability of a person who makes radical changes to their lives. Wondering if they can still retain the core beliefs and personality of who they really are. Control is an underlying theme throughout the book. Wendy is always vigilant to make sure she does not give up her goals of academic success and thoughts of a career when she gets involved in a relationship. She is always questioning whether she can have love and a career at the same time. While she is anxious to be successful with her dissertation, looking for love and marriage is very much on her mind.

Meeting Uri, a religious student of psychology, at a party and starting a romantic relationship takes Wendy through self examination. Could she give up something of herself to fit in another person? 

Can she compromise on religious practice and maybe stay in Israel for another person?
Wendy and Uri explore their friendship, she wonders, can she safely soften her expectations and protective shell, "It's tough...I prefer being analytical observer to emotional and vulnerable participant. I want my dissertation to be like that - precise, rigorous, carefully etched, solid, but with reticulations of nerves and emotions running through, to keep it from being completely hard." As she is speaking the reader may be wondering if she is just describing her thesis paper or really her own personal feelings of protection, afraid to get to close to another person or religious belief for fear of losing herself.

In an interview with baalei teshuvah, Rachel, Wendy receives some very good advice including the thought that life is not an all or nothing proposition, "some people ...can't allow themselves the slightest chink in the armor of their faith, because they think it will make the entire suit crumble."

As Wendy interviews her subjects she gets some great advice for herself, though some people are afraid of weakness, we can all take heed from interviewee, Rachel’s words; "To get to certainty or understanding, you need questioning and not knowing. If you don't bring up those doubts, you can't proceed beyond them.", one of her subjects informs her.Throughout the book there are beautiful descriptions of Israel. Kissileff takes the reader on a tour of Jerusalem as she describes in detail the streets of the city, Machane Yehuda Market, the Old City and the cobblestone streets of the German Colony. As her characters walk through the city you feel you are right there encountering the tastes, smells and sounds of the market and city with them. Jerusalem plays almost as important role in shaping each of the characters as the people they interact with. Could there really be something different about Israel that draws people to it?

Life is all about balance. You need to be able to feel confident in who you are, so that you can accept others. You need to create a balance in life. To welcome in different ideas and beliefs. To enjoy the religious life with the secular. Be careful not to cut yourself off from experiences out of fear, but to embrace every opportunity that comes along and enjoy it in the moment. Start with reading about Wendy and her tribulations and triumphs.

Bitter and Sweet

Sandra Feder uses the title, Bitter and Sweet, “to acknowledge duality in everyday life.  Judaism and Jewish teaching provide many wonderful ways to recognize that life holds some of both.”  She has written a delightful story of young Hannah who has to move and leave her friends and house behind.  She thinks there things will only be unpleasant in her new home. She discovers that there are both bitter and sweet things in her new home, Shabbat wine is sweet, and she makes a new friend.  She finds out that you have to sweeten the bitter yourself. Wonderfully illustrated by Kyrsten Brooker.

The Amazing Adventures of Aaron Broom

The Amazing Adventures of Aaron Broom, is a wonderful story of a 12 year old boy
growing up during the depression years in St Louis.  
The book is written by A.E. Hotchner, who at the age of 100 has written this
adventure story based on his youth.  Hotchner is the noted biographer of Hemingway,
Doris Day and he is the founder, with Paul Newman, of Newman's Own.  

This fun mystery novel is a whodunit to find out who the jewel thieves are that have
implicated his father in their heist.   With his father in jail, his mother in a sanitarium with tuberculosis, he finds ways to be very resourceful to try and stay one step ahead of child welfare services and uncover the real culprits in the robbery.  Despite seeing the real killer flee the scene, Aaron can't do much to help in the moment. Undaunted, he enlists an unlikely band of friends and helpful adults to clear his father's name, including a world-weary paperboy, an aspiring teen journalist, a kindly lawyer, and a neighborhood friend with a penchant for baking. And as they dig into the details of the case, these unconventional detectives reveal a cover-up that goes much deeper than a jewelry-store heist gone sour.

The Girls in The Picture

Have you ever realized that you change your behavior depending on who you are spending time with?  There are different types of personalities.  The people who are helpers and those who are takers.  those who are insecure and need constant reassurance.  When you find your best friend it is usually someone who compliments your personality and needs.  But, if you are masking your true self to be friends or circumstances change and you change over time, that can stress the friendship. 
This novel, explores the relationship of two such friends, Mary Pickford and Frances Marion. 
Author, Melanie Benjamin has taken the research and facts she was able to unearth and written an entertaining and compelling story about how Mary and Frances became friends and how much they needed each other all through their lives. 

I really loved this novel, which tells the story of Mary Pickford the Queen of Motion Pictures and her best friend Frances Marion, the best scenarist, or film writer of early motion pictures.  Wonderfully imagined are the conversations between the two women, which show how their friendship ebbed and flowed over the years as Hollywood went through its infancy of silent films to talkies and through WWI.   Mary marries her prince charming, Douglas Fairbanks and rides out a turbulent marriage.  Melanie Benjamin captures the times and the characters in such realistic clarity.

They were the only girls in the picture.  Mary Pickford and Frances Marion became fast friends because they were both driven in their careers at a time when other women were not.  They were willing to give up their personal lives, love, marriage, and children to move their careers ahead. They were willing to stand up to the male run world of big business and Hollywood.  Refusing to use the casting couch to get ahead.  Yes, the casting couch was a well known situation all the way back to the early days of Hollywood and silent movies.  What would these women think of the #METOO movement that took so long to stand up to the chauvinism of the men in charge.

They have been through quite of bit of history together.  Their single years, the start of their careers, their marriages and the loss of their husbands.  At the end Mary hides away in her bedroom.  Frances avoids her for a number years, but in the end she cannot stay away.  They have a pull on each other.
Frances confronts Mary and they have a discussion that ends unpleasantly. 

Frances leaves and realizes that they see the past from different viewpoints, "When I thought back on all those years, those golden years, that was how I remembered it.  At least - that was how I chose to remember it; I knew now that Mary remembered something different.  Something darker. 
Something closer to the truth?  No just a different truth; ...like a movie shot from a different point of view...  We remembered these identical experiences differently, but that didn't make them any less truthful."

To me that sums up the story of many relationships, between friends, spouses, and even in business.
These are powerful words to recognize in all our everyday interactions.

The Grave's a Fine and Private Place

This is another in the Flavia de Luce series of mystery novels.  Flavia is a young girl, age 12, from an upper class British family who is always struggling to relieve the boredom  of her empty days. She solves crimes along with the help of Dogger, her trusted assistant,  the family's loyal servant.  She also has two older sisters.  Flavia, who describes herself as a expert chemist, loves to solve the crimes she comes across with her passion for poisons. 

In this novel the plot revolves around a body Flavia happens upon as Dogger takes her and her sisters on a boat ride.  As she dangles her hand over the side of the punt she happens to feel what she thinks might be a fish under the water, but pulls up something much more exciting,  a dead body!  Flavia is off and sleuthing. 

This is a clever concept for a mystery series.  Using a young child as the narrator and assisted by the adult servant, who really is leading the investigation.  Also the use of different chemical descriptions both in the actual crime and in the investigation of testing different substances for chemical reactions, makes this a little bit of a different type of mystery.

By Alan Bradley

Holy Ceremony

Author Harri Nykanen has written a intriguing mystery of dirty secrets uncovered as the reader is taken through twists, turns and misdirection along with Lieutenant Ariel Kafka of the Helsinki Violent Crime Unit.  This is the third case that Ariel Kafka is solving in this series, but you don’t need to have read the first two to enjoy reading about the strange goings as the Lieutenant try’s to uncover a murder.

Reijo“Reka” Lauren is being investigated after a dead woman is found in his apartment.  The woman its turns out that Roosa Nevala is found with a biblical verse scratched into her skin on Lauren’s apartment floor.  But when the coroner, Dr Esko Vuorio tells Kafka that he has seen this body before the confusion begins.  Vuorio says, “For the first time in my career, the same person has been killed twice..or to be exact, not killed, but killed herself twice...”. He explains further, “Thsi woman was found dead in her apartment yesterday.  Had downed a vial of sedatives I went to the scene myself.”

Kafka is one of two Jewish police working in all of Helsinki.  He is a dedicated policeman always easy-going, with a wry sense of humor, assuming the best in people.  When his partner uses some anti-Semitic slurs he tries to overlook them, but it is hard to forget.

As the investigation proceeds the biblical clues lead Kafka to the Christian Brotherhood of the Sacred Vault, a group students at Daybreak School created years before.  The intricate plot uncovers many secrets from the Sacred Vault which seem to have far reaching consequences, as other members start turning up dead.

After you read this mystery, you may even want to go back and read more about Lt. Ariel Kafka in Behind God’s Back and Nights of Awe.  

Secrets and Shadows

Looking back to the Holocaust from the perspective of  current day and how it has affected the lives of those who lived through it.  Here again is a novel with a different viewpoint of this horrific time in our history.  Roberta Silman has approached two interesting subjects, The Holocaust and Taking Down the Berlin Wall.  Through the lense of a marriage that is also faltering she builds up the individuals who are affected deeply by these historic events.

Paul Bertram has lived the past 50 years of his life hiding his childhood experience in war torn Germany and escaping Europe and coming to America.  Not even his parents and sister know all the secrets he is keeping.  He has worked hard to become a model citizen, successful lawyer, husband and father.  Playing the role of  the man he thinks he should be has been difficult and taken a toll on his family.

Now it is 1989 and the Berlin Wall is being dismantled.  He feels that this may be his last chance to rectify the wrongs he has committed and the important people in his life he has alienated.  His children are angry at him and his wife has divorced him.  He has been through a succession of affairs that are not satisfying him.  So he asks his ex-wife to accompany him to Germany to help him work through the past and maybe save the future.

Eve is shocked by the phone call from her husband asking her to join him on a trip to the new Germany, but after realizing she still has feelings for her ex husband she accompanies him to revisit the city of his childhood.

Paul did not realize how difficult the return would be, “I didn’t know what to expect, I was so anxious to get here I hardly thought about what I would find...”. They are on the street where his childhood home still is.  He is very shook up as he looks down the tree lined street.  Eve suggests he take some deep breaths.  He has trouble speaking as he says, “It looks so harmless.  Like an ordinary well-heeled neighborhood.  Exactly as it looked when I was eight or nine.  Unbelievable, not a single blemish.”

Paul and Eve tour through Berlin exploring the city and confronting the past.  As Paul looks for a chance for redemption, Eve faces the fact that part of their marital problems were her fear of pushing Paul to answer the questions of his past.

They work together finding out the love means accepting your partner including all their flaws.  Helping each other through discovering who they were when they were young and now who they are after maturing.

Silman has written a novel that brings to life the fear and suspense of trying to live in Berlin if you were Jewish during the Great War.  Hiding in Berlin, Paul describes was different than hiding in other places,  “I guess that was the difference between Berlin and other places.  Berlin was not a city that could become a cage, it was too big, too spread out, its citizens far too independent.  That’s why it was possible for so many people to hide there.”

She also clearly delves into the complexities of marriage.  Eve remembers someone once telling her that, “Marriage is like a minefield.”  But she wonders, “What if a marriage is layered, like a palimpsest, on top of a war, which has minefield after minefield?  And what if it is your marriage?”

This is a wonderful novel about both individually working through your demons and finding out if the marriage you thought was finished can be renewed on a different level of understanding.
Keeps the reader thinking through out the story.

The Symphony Heist: A Tale of Music and Desire (Lieutenant Lowell Mystery) (Volume 2

Not one of the better mystery novels I have read.  Written by Kameel Nsar, this will not be a book I recommend.

The mystery itself was weak and the writing style was clumsy.  The sentence structure was awkward.
I had high hopes for this book.  I love mysteries, music and the Boston Symphony.
I appreciate the idea of using music and symphonies as chapter titles but describing everyone
with musical numbers was difficult to follow.  Also if you do not know the piece of music the author is referring to it is hard to know what the description means.  I did go back and listen to a number of the musical titles that were referenced in the book.

Kameel Nsar has written another mystery about the Isabel Gardner Museum Heist, but I do not think I will be reading that one.

Bonbons and Broomsticks

Bewitched By Chocolate book 5 in the series that features Caitlyn Le Fey who has returned to England found out that her mother is the daughter of a witch, known as, The Widow Mags.  The Widow runs a chocolate shop in the small town and Caitlyn now lives with her and is learning how to make the most delicious chocolate.  The way it is described in the book makes me wish that either there was a recipe in the book or that there were samples to purchase.  It sounds heavenly.

Of course in each of the books there is a murder and the people of the town usually suspect the Widow or her daughter, Bertha, who is also Caitlyn's aunt and her cousin, Evie who has trouble when she attempts to cast a spell.  Caitlyn always tries to help solve the mystery and her American cousin, who she grew up with in America, Pomona shows up on the scene to assist her.

There also is a love interest, which is developing extremely slowly.  Lord James Fitzroy, who is the handsome owner of the Huntington Manor.  The Lord of the Manor is the major landowner in the small village and did I mention handsome and single.  He seems to be drawn to Caitlyn but so far neither of them knows how to move this relationship into a romance.  They are friends and keep tripping over their words when they are together, all the signs of young people in love.

In this mystery there seems to be a story about a huge black dog that is supposed to haunt the woods and the lonely dark country lanes at night.  There are few attacks and some people end up dead as Caitlyn and others are trying to figure out who to catch the Black Shuck, or monster dog.

These are light entertaining books where if you are willing to suspend your disbelief and accept the power of magic you can enjoy these mystery novels and even get a surprise at the end.

Paving the New Road

Looking for a fun mystery that takes you into the heart of the Germany during World War One, than look no further, you have found it; Paving The New Road, Sulari Gentil.  This is the fourth book in the Rowland Sinclair Mystery series.  You really should start out with the first book in the series and work your way through.  It is so enjoyable and the characters do develop with each installment of their life story.

Sulari Gentill has done again.  I love having discovered this fun mystery series, “A Rowland Sinclair Mystery”.  Rowland and his friends are off again on another adventure.  Of course there is danger afoot and they get in over their heads.  This mystery series is different than the typical who-nun-it.  This is more a storyline that involves Rowland, Edna, Milton and Clyde in escapades that throw them in the path of danger.  In the end a mystery has been uncovered and solved, but only because they have stumbled on the answers.  This time they are actually sent to Germany to keep the New Guard leader, Eric Campbell from meeting Hitler and while they are there maybe they could solve a murder.  This plot line is based on real people and occurrences of the beginning of Hitler’s rein of terror.  The year is 1933.  Danger surrounds our motley crew, a bohemian wealthy artist, along with his friends a Jewish poet, a gorgeous sculptress and a Communist painter.

The main players in this series are of course Rowland Sinclair, a the bohemian heir to the family estate and fortune along with Wilfred who is the conservative, wealthy, influential, older brother.  Rowland really is unconventional and has turned the stuffy grand parlor of the mansion with its high ceilings and large windows into his art studio.  Here he paints the beautiful, Edna, the sculptress, who also lives in the mansion along with their other friends, Clyde Watson Jones, a painter, and Milton Issacs, a poet.  To the chagrin of the family housekeeper, Mary Brown, Rowland has taken in these strays to live with him and follow adventures with him.

The location is Australia with a historical look at the country and its politics in the 1930s.  We have now arrived at 1933 and Hitler is beginning to make trouble for the world.  As New Guard leader Eric Campbell, the man who would be Australia's Fuhrer, is in England meeting with Britain's Fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, word comes to the unofficial Old Guard back in Australia that Campbell is planning to move onto Germany next and meet with Hitler himself.  It is decided that Rowland and his friends will go to Germany and try to stop that meeting from happening.

When the friends find out that their contact person in Germany has been killed they are now searching for a murderer as they also try to stop the meeting Campbell thinks he has set up with Hitler.  Things get complicated but Edna, Milton and Clyde are always there to cause a bit of trouble and in the end save the day.

Adding more interest to this mystery is the setting of Germany leading up to the war, when one of the main characters is Jewish and gathering of art work in Germany from local Dada artists of the time.  Also added to the intrigue is the story of a young woman photographer they meet along the way and befriend when she seems to be having romantic troubles.  She in the end turns out to be Eva Braun who is in love with a man she calls Mr. Wolf.  So many different tangents to follow, it keeps you caught up til the end.

Memento Park

Matt Santos grew up in the home of his parents, one generation removed from the horrors of the Holocaust, displaying a Christmas tree and not celebrating Jewish holidays or attending synagogue.  He can recall the three times he entered a synagogue as a child with his grandfather.  Now, as an adult working as an actor and living with his fiancee, Tracy he is as far removed from his Jewish heritage as he can get.  Then a phone call changes everything.  A lawyer is offering to handle a case of Holocaust art restitution for a painting by Ervin Kalman that last hung in his grandparents apartment in Budapest, in 1944.

On the surface this novel, Memento Park, written by Mark Sarvas, seems to be about the process of recovering Budapest Street Scene, the painting that was lost by the Santos family when his grandfather escaped to America and his grandmother was killed in a concentration camp.  But underneath there are multiple interactions that are all ripe for discussion and analysis.  So many different points that different readers will relate to and connect to.

Matt decides to work with Rachel, the Los Angeles attorney and follow the path of the painting back to Budapest and his relatives to discover if it really belongs to his family.  During this journey he tries to come to terms with the charged relationship he has with his father.   He says his father never taught him anything.  Matt and his father have, he says, a relationship of fear and and lies,  "This, I suppose, is my father's legacy, the ease of the lie the comfort of the half-truth.  The actor born in fear, borne by fear."

So many times in this book, Matt describes interactions as scenes, and watches himself from off stage acting a part.  He struggles with emotion and actually showing himself to others.  He remains hidden, the actor performing.  This, he also says, was because of his father,  "He also never taught me the more essential things - right and wrong, how to read a stranger, how to love.  That this omission went unnoticed by me for so long is, in itself, telling."  He comes back to this struggle with his father over and over again.  It informs all of his interactions with other people.  How he gets along with Tracy and Rachel, the lawyer.

He replays the story in remembrances, that he is supposedly telling to a night guard in the art auction house where Budapest Street Scene will go up for bidding in the morning.  He talks about growing up with his father and working with him at toy trade shows.  His father is a collector of toy cars.  Now he is going with his father to another toy show, Matt recounts,   "Once again, I knew the part I was intended to play, had so internalized this character, this first great role, that I knew precisely how to step in and play him.  My father understood, as good actors do.  He'd picked up on my rhythms and responded in kind and , all at once, we found ourselves returned to the roles that made us famous, these earliest portrayals of ourselves."  Such wonderful prose.

Tracy, the fiancee, a model, is struggling with her own demons.  She is working with a lawyer, to help a young man on death row in a Texas jail.  Tracy has been, interceding for nearly a year, helping to underwrite his legal team and coordinating an 'awareness campaign' for clemency.  Each morning Matt still wakes up surprised to see that she is his.  Tracy, he describes her, "..my flaxen goddess... I pursued her hard, proposed early, knowing how rare openings for men like me are with women like her."  This is another plot line that we follow throughout the book.

Another wonderfully descriptive quote about Tracy, that I could relate to in my own personal relationship,  "She was late, always late, I would learn, for her internal clock, set at a permanent forty-five-minute delay.  Even when I used the time-honored technique of padding departure times, Tracy maintained the forty five minute window without fail, some inner gyroscopic mechanism inexorably attuned behind time's flow. "

There is the lawyer, Rachel, and her relationship with her own elderly father, both religiously observant Jews.   There is the Rabbi from Chicago who may also have a claim on the painting.  All these characters help Matt realize his Jewish roots and give him questions and change his interactions with Judaism.

So many complicated characters and choices to make through out the book.  It is a gripping story and even if you think you know what may happen next you will be surprised at the ending.  People and objects are not always what they seem.

The Daughters

This is definitely a book that needs a group discussion when you reach the end.   It is written about four women, Greta, who lives in Poland during the Second World War, her daughter Ada, who is sent to America as a child to escape the fate of war.  Then Ada has a daughter, Sara, who grows up to be a jazz singer in nightclubs and has a daughter Lulu out of wedlock.    Lulu is mainly raised by her grandmother, Ada and told stories of family lore.  Sara is not a good mother, emotionally withdrawn and busy with her own life.  She leaves her daughter and mother behind and disappears in the middle of the night. 

Adrienne Celt weaves all these back stories into the current day plot of Lulu who has just delivered her daughter, Kara.  She is married but admits to the reader that the baby was conceived with someone else. 
Lulu has been raised on Ada's stories of Greta and a supposed family curse.  Lulu is afraid for her daughter.  Worried the curse will continue.  But as a reader I was never really clear on what the actual curse was.  I had plenty of speculation about the curse and Greta's life.  I was confused about why the some of the ideas were presented in the book.  Music plays a large role in the book, mention of Dvorak's Rusalka opera makes me want to find a parallel with the plot, but that will need to be discussed.  The story of Greta and her lost daughters.  The story of the young boy who told the false story of the Jews attacking him.  These, I think are important plot points that area a ripe for conversation and analysis.

Let me know when you finish this book and we can sit down for a chat, I will bering the coffee.

Women of the Castle

What would it have been like to be a German who was not a Nazi supporter.  Before the war began, as the different groups were banding together, the brown shirts, Nazi party, and others are building their coalitions and recruiting members.  Some people supported them and agreed with their ideology.  Others joined as sheep follow a leader.  Others thought it may improve their lives as an escape from an unhappy existence.  But there were those who were opposed from the beginning and fought back based on their strength of their convictions.

XXX was one of those men.  He and his friends meet as they realize the country is on the brink of war and start to build their underground retaliation.  On the surface they are business men leading normal lives, attending dance parties and getting married.  But  YYY marries the girl of his dreams as he is secretly planning to try and murder the Fuhrer.  He tells his childhood friend to look after his young wife if something happens to him. 

With a brief account of the war, we are brought to the end, as XXX goes out from the family castle to find, rescue and fulfill her promise to YYY.  She finds three of the wives of YYY and other members of the resistance and brings them and their children to the castle to live with her and her children.  This book beautifully describes the  Europe after the war.  The devastation, the starvation and all the lost people, permanently changed by the experiences they suffered through.  We meet three women and their children, hear their stories of life during the war and see how they try to put it behind them and move through the horrors to make a life on the other side.

In this book we hear about German women who suffered at the hands of the Nazi party.  A women who made terrible mistakes and joined the Nazi party, now is trying to flee who she was during the war, create a new identity.   Women who want to erase the past and start over for the future.

This is again is a novel based on truth and stories the author was told.  Another one of those books that shares with the reader a different perspective on the horrors of Germany during and after World War II.

The Button War

The Button War is written by the children's author Avi, but it is quite a dark novel and would be hard for a young child to read.   The Button War takes place during the beginning of World War I.  AS the author and many reviews of the novel mention, it is a story of how young boys who start out as friends, can loose sight of the fun nature of a game and contest and become very competitive and threatening to each other.

Avi takes the reader back to a small town in Poland at the start of World War I.  This is a town that is isolated and self sufficient.  We start out with seven boys who spend their days playing and exploring together.  Their town is occupied by Russian soldiers, which displeases the townspeople.  One day the Russians leave and German soldiers arrive moving into some the citizens homes.

Patryk is the narrator and tells about how the boys meet up and sit on a ledge above the water pump.  They are watching as their village changes with the German soldiers arriving.  Jurek is the instigator, daring the others to take risks and he starts the contest to find the best button.  As the boys each try to get a button from the clothing of either a Russian or German soldier, the stakes get higher and more dangerous.   As the boys get caught up in the competition they mirror the fighting between the Russians and the Germans.  It all seems to be fighting without clear knowledge of how to recognize the winner.  The stakes get higher and people start getting hurt and dying, but then who wants to be the first to cry Uncle and admit to being scared?

Avi says he based this dark story on a tale his father-in-law shared with him from his childhood.
The collection of buttons from soldier's uniforms developed into this serious thought provoking plot though Avi's imagination.  His father-in-law's interest in the buttons was much more innocent.  read this book with your child and be able to have a discussion about war and how following a leader blindly can lead to serious trouble.  It is a great message for our present day political climate.  It is also a important lesson to learn for children in general.

All The World Praises You

All The World Praises You is the compilation of beautiful artwork of artist, Debra Band .


Using the wording of the biblical prose of Perek Shira, Band has created wonderful drawings to illustrate each of these writings.  Taking a word that represents each Hebrew letter and a descriptive musing about that word, she has created a wonderful way to enjoy learning new Hebrew words while enjoying the beautiful art creations.  Working with the translations and transliterations of scholar, and Arnold J. Band, and added her colorful and imaginative artwork.

The artwork is brilliant and brightly colored.  Covering all the the Alef Bet with words like Eretz/Earth and Barak/Lightening all the way to Shin represented by the Milky Way/ Shvil hehalav.

In each of the drawings there are dahlias and honeybees.  The author has hidden these two depictions in the drawings following a medieval custom, colophon, where the Jewish scribe included their names hidden in their work at the end of their written work.  Band has hidden dahlias in the pictures for her granddaughter, Dahlia and the word for honeybee is devorah.  At the end there are two paintings with hidden dahlias and honeybees along with Hebrew letters for readers to find. 

There is also a learning guide for teachers to use this book in a classroom setting.  This is a beautiful way for readers of all ages to start learning some Hebrew vocabulary, while enjoying the colorful artwork. 

Death By Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake

OK, so some days I do think enjoying myself and eating all the delicious foods I want would not be such a bad way to go, forget about weight control and healthy diets and all that... but in the end like eating all those high calorie foods where you just feel sick the next morning and regret it, Death By Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake by Sarah Graves, is fun for a while, but in the morning you may wish you had spent the time reading a different book.

If you are sitting in the shade of a big old tree, or under the umbrella at the beach, dive right in.  Enjoy the light entertaining mystery for an afternoon.  In this first in a new series of Chocolate Mysteries, author Sarah Graves, takes her amateur detective, Jacobia, "Jake" Tiptree from her previous series of Home Repair is Homicide mysteries, and brings her to a new career as the owner of a small bake shop.

Jake lives in a waterfront, tourist location in Maine and though she has had many run-ins with murder while fixing up her old home, now she and her friend are starting up the chocolate shop and have already found a dead body.  Of course, they feel pressure to solve the crime because they feel the local police are busy elsewhere and will not be able to clear their names in time.

 The most clever thing that Graves has accomplished with this novel, is that she has taken her characters from one series that must have outlived its plots and moved them into a new arena that will open up the possibilities for trouble.  But otherwise, this is not a compelling mystery novel.  The plot is very typical and the dialogue repetitive.   They describe the details of making the cheesecakes over and over. They keep running between the house and the bakery, sometimes it seems needlessly just for some action.  The clues become too obvious as the author keeps repeating them which makes them so clear you know what will happen next before it does.  Finally the characters are flat.  The suspense never really feels authentic.  So though it is a light read for an afternoon, when your book pile is very tall and precariously balanced, this may be a book or series that can be used to at the bottom so the rest of the pile does not tip over.

Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit

Amy Stewart has continued to flesh out the wonderful lives of Norma, Constance and Fleurette Kopp and the world of Bergman County in Northern NJ during the early 1900s.  I cannot get enough of the Lady Deputy Sheriff and how life was lived in my home county and state during this time period.

Not only is Stewart’s writing and plots intriguing, but her attention to historical details and facts are spot on.  You can totally enjoy these mystery novels on the surface level of good plot development and destinctive characters through each book in the series.  Then the added interest of the historical descriptions and finally there is the added enjoyment if you happen to be from Bergan County and recognize the names of towns and locations that are being mentioned thoughout the book.

Constance  Kopp and her sisters have been left to fend for themselves when their mother finally passes away.  Living in the family home, a big old drafty house with fields for farming and a few animals to care for, Norma, a lover of carrier pigeons is one who keeps the house running smoothly. Fleurette, the youngest sister, and unknown to her and the outside world really,  Constance's daughter, is becoming quite the young lady.  She has gotten a job as a seamstress to help support the family and also has dreams of becoming an actress.

Constance is the star of the series going out to work as a Deputy Sheriff, the first in the state of NJ.  There are so many pitfalls and challenges to being a lady deputy.  But Constance Kopp is tall, sturdy and quite capable of taking care of herself and catching any criminal.  She is also very sympathetic to all the women who come under her charge in the jail.  She is helping to change how law enforcement and women’s rights are being seen.

I look forward to continuing to read about the Kopp sisters and the world in NJ as the United States starts preparing to enter the first world war.

The Word is Murder

I cannot say enough good things about Anthony Horowitz and his mystery novels for adults.  I absolutely loved Magpie Murders.  I have been using quotes from that book when I lead book discussion groups about other mystery novels.  I willl be leading a discussion group about that book this summer and I have recommended it multiple times.

Horowitz has outdone himself with this new book, The Word is Murder.  I really kept wanting to google the characters in the book, thinking they were real people.  I was almost completely convinced that he was writing a non fiction account of following a detective as he solved a case.  It is so convincingly written.  Such clever prose and so entertaining at the same time.

I do not want to give too much away so I will just tease the plot by saying that in this novel, Horowitz places himself as the sidekick to the ex policeofficer, Hawthorne, who is extremely secretive, but wants to have Horowitz accompany him as he solves the murder of a woman who had just planned and paid for her own funeral that afternoon.  The storyline just gets more convoluted as we go, but the reader is so drawn in you cannot stop reading.

I do not think I can say enough complimentary things about this book, but more importantly about this author in general.  I said it when I reviewed Magpie Murders, that I needed to go back and House of Silk and Moriaty but now more than ever I must go back and read these while I wait for Horowitz to think up his next clever mystery novel.

Her Royal Spyness

Another fun light and entertaining mystery series.  This time written by Rhys Bowen, starting with Her Royal Spyness.  Here we meet Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, daughter of the Duke of Glen Garry and Rannoch.  Georgiana is thirty four in line for the throne of England.  She is after her half brother, Hamish , better known to his friends as Binky, the third Duke.

This novel starts off as just a fun light story of royal life when you have run out of money and you have never had to take care of yourself.   When her father dies, Binky in an effort to save the family home has cut off Georgiana's allowance.  He is hoping she will find a rich man, marry and settle down.  Georgiana, of course, has other ideas.  Off she goes to their London house without any servants and learns how to take care of herself.  On her first night alone she finds out just how hard this can all be, "I found a kettle and I even found a tinderbox and a spill to light the gas.  Feeling very proud of myself I boiled some water.  I even located a tea caddy.  Of course that was when I realized that there was no milk, nor was there likely to be unless I contacted the milkman."

But she gains experience as she goes along and about half way through the novel there is finally a murder.  When her brother is accused of the crime, and Georgiana starts to realize there are just too many coincidences around her accidents, she begins to questions the friends who she is spending time with.  They have all fallen on difficult times and are suspiciously happily crashing parties and gambling.  Could there be something more sinister going on?

Definitely written in a fun style of first person, royalty.  I will look into reading more the books in this series.

The Librarian of Auschwitz

Just when you have thought all the stories that could be told about life in one of the concentration camps have been told, you find an incredible story of bravery, fortitude, inner strength and endurance.

Antonio Iturbe has interviewed Dita Kraus, who now lives in Israel and when she was a fourteen year old girl was the Librarian of Auschwitz.   This book has been labeled a young adult book but I found it as intense, and both heartbreaking and inspiring as any of the adult fiction books about the Holocaust that I have read.  This book uses the fictionalized plot line to fill out the story of Dita but does not soften the horrors of life in the death camp.  There are a few very graphic scenes described in this novel.

Dita and her parents are forced to leave their lives behind in 1944 when they are sent from their home in Prague to the model camp Terezin.  There the prisoners are treated in a more human style to show the outside world that the Germans are just holding people in ghettos and work camps.

The family is then transferred to Auschwitz, where their life becomes much worse.  In the beginning because there is a chance that the Red Cross may come for an inspection, a fellow prisoner, Fredy Hirsch is allowed to run a "school" for the children.  Though at 14, Dita is too old for the school, she becomes the librarian and caretaker of the eight books that have been brought into camp clandestinely.    Books are banned in the concentration camp.  There was also the living library of teachers who would tell stories.  Dita is in charge of lending out the books and scheduling the teachers to tell stories.  "Dita caressed the books. They were broken and scratched, worn with reddish brown patches of mildew; some were mutilated.  But without them, the wisdom of centuries of civilization might be lost - geography, literature, mathematics, history, language.  They were precious. She would protect them with her life."

As Dita escapes into the book about the Count of Monte Crisco, she finds herself comparing his suffering to her own.  "She wonders if she'll manage to get away from where she is, as the protagonist of the novel did.  She doesn't think she is as brave as him, although if she had an opportunity to run toward the woods, she won't hesitate.  ...She asks herself, Can you really choose, or do the blows dealt to you by fate change you no matter what, in the same way that the blow of an ax converts a living tree into firewood?"

She feels hatred for the SS guards and officers, who are torturing her, her family and all the others.  She worries that she will become a person swallowed up with hate and seeking revenge.  She thinks about the injustices with which the Nazis have themselves in their obsession with death.
 "As she thinks about this she feels her temples throb with rage and an insatiable hunger for violence.  But then she remembers what Professor Morgenstern taught her: Our hatred is a victory for them.  And she nods in agreement.  If Professor Morgenstern was mad, then lock me up with him."


As a passionate reader, it is easy to see how books can save a soul when they need an escape from reality.  Though life was hard and those in the camps could never relax and be happy, the books I can image could give those in the "school" a chance to escape in their imaginations for just a little while.

Boob Job: Confessions of Professional Bra Fitter

It is always so interesting how different women react to their bodies.  Body image is so important to women.  They diet and exercise and have plastic surgery to achieve what they think is the perfect body.  And then they continue to agonize over it. 

Natalee Woods is going through a difficult time in her life.  She is at the cusp of adulthood.  She is about to go out on her own and find out who she is as a n adult when her mother dies.  Though she feels bad leaving her father, she feels it is important to get away and start a job in a new place.  As she establishes herself as the grow up she feels she should be.  She gets her first job, quite by accident, as a sales person in the lingerie department of a clothing store. 

In a narrative that takes the reader through her experiences with the women who come into her department and her dressing room, Natalee learns from these women how to navigate life without her mother.  Then her father becomes ill and she goes through a few love interests.  Each time she questions herself, someone comes into the dressing room and shares a story about their bodies and their lives that makes Natalee either feel better about her situation or helps her understand herself better.

The stories of the women who come through her lingerie department are fascinating.  I think that is really the most interesting part of this book.  Though Natalee is somewhat interesting, I do not think this book would be as good if the women who come through and tell their stories did not share their experiences.  It is kind of amazing that women feel so open when stepping into a dressing room and trying on bras.

The Last Watchman of Old Cairo

Written by Michael David Lukas, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo tells the story of beautiful interactions between the Jewish and Muslim communities of Egypt one thousand years ago, then it shows the change in climate as the years pass.

First we are introduced to the famous Ezra Synagogue when a Muslim orphan, Ali ibn al-Marwani becomes the night watchman. We follow the generations of his dependents who stay loyal to the synagogue and in generation after generation there is a watchman who is descended from Ali bin al-Marwani.  Each watchman has a story which is passed down to the current descendent, who is now Joseph, a Berkeley graduate student.  Joseph is the son of the last watchman of the Ezra Synagogue. He fell in love with a Jewish girl and followed her to Paris, but this was a match that could not last, so Joseph, the son has been raised in America by his Jewish mother, with very little connection to his Egyptian father.  When his father dies, Joseph receives a package that takes him across the world to Cairo.  He reconnects with this father’s brother and family.  He searches for the story of his father’s life.

Intertwined with the history of our fictional character is the true story that surrounds the Ben Ezra Synagogue.  This famous synagogue has sometimes also been referred to as the El Geniza Synagogue.  This is the geniza that was discovered by the English twin sisters, Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson.  They were very helpful to Solomon Schecter in acquiring ancient scrolls and papers that were stored in the synagogue’s storage attic.
A geniza was usually a storage area that was used for discarded religious papers that Jewish people would not throw away.  Today these papers are buried in a grave in the cemetery,  but at that time they were just left in an attic.  This geniza had a treasure trove of documents that are now housed in Cambridge, England.

This is a wonderful story that shows how people could get along and work together between different religious beliefs .  It is also a delightful way to read the story of the sisters, Agnes and Margaret and how they worked to bring the contents of the Geniza back to England for the pure love of history and study.  The sisters were not Jewish but strongly wanted to make sure the papers were not sold on the black market when they were discovered.

Baltimore Blues

Laura Lippman has been writing the Tess Monaghan series of mystery novels for quite awhile.  I had read one of them a few years ago from the middle of the series but never went back to start at the beginning.  Now with my Female Detective book discussion group we read the first book in the series, Baltimore Blues.

Tess Monaghan it turns out is a frustrated journalist, who like her creator, Lippman, lost a job on the newspaper in Baltimore where she lives and is looking for a new job.  She is a young adult, out on her own for the first time, living in an apartment above her aunt's bookstore.  She is exchanging work in the bookstore for rent and also working for her uncle in the city records office.  It turns out that he is paying her personally to do part of his job.

Tess is the product of a Jewish mother and a Catholic father and was brought up with no real religious practice, but interestingly, the topic of Judaism seems to come up in a few of her books.  It is mentioned in this book, when a friend of hers is killed and she attends the Jewish funeral.  In the only other book I read so far, By A Spider's Thread, she is working with an Orthodox group to find a missing family.  So I am interested to see how Lippman continues to weave Judaism into her msytery novels.

In the first book, Baltimore Blues, we learn about Tess and how she backs into being a private detective.  The book is clever, entertaining and holds your attention to the end.  But I have read reviews that Lippman continues to develop her writing style as the series progresses.

Looking forward to following the exploits of Tess Monaghan as she grows as a private investigator and also learns more about Jewish and Catholic roots and her family background.

Forest Dark

Forest Dark is the newest novel from the wonderful author, Nicole Krauss.
Quite the confusing  plot!  Not sure I really understand the book .  One character, an elderly man is giving away all his worldly possessions.    Another storyline of a woman in midlife. She is married and has two sons.  Her marriage is in trouble.  She is an author who is facing a writer's block.  She goes off to Israel looking for the motivation to try and write her next book.  She meets a man who tells her that Kafka left some unfinished work in Israel and he wants her to finish it. 

 One a elderly man at the end of his life, looking to find some satisfaction in giving away all his material goods.  He wants to donate money to leave a memory of his parents.  The other a young woman unhappy in her marriage and stuck in her writing career, trying to come back to a place she has fond childhood memories of to write her next novel.    I know there is deep meaning in this novel, but it is hard to work out alone.  It will be a great book group discussion.

  This is a novel full of disorienting moments.  I loved all of Nicole Krauss's other novels.  This one I am not as sure about.  It is the story of two lost souls.  They parallel their stories, starting in NYC and ending up in Israel. Two plots running side by side, one with a young novelist, Nicole, facing a writer’s block, leaves her husband and children in New York and goes off to Israel to the Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel of childhood family vacations, looking for inspiration.  Running alongside this plot is the story of Jules Epstein, an wealthy, ambitious industrious New York lawyer who is now flailing after the loss of both his parents, retirement from his law firm and divorce from his wife.  At age 68 he starts to divest himself of things including his art collection.  He travels to Israel with idea of leaving a legacy tribute to his parents.  He goes off to Israel to looking for charities to donate his money to and create a memory to his father and mother.  He does not seem to care about leaving anything to his children.   I was never quite sure of his motivation.

Each character go on separate goose chases, which have life changing consequences they could never have imagined.  Epstein follows a charismatic rabbi who has convinced him is a descendant of King David and a young woman who is producing a film in the desert about the life of of the King.  Nicole follows the lost manuscripts of Franz Kafka hidden away in a suitcase by Max Brod and found possibly in the home of his sister in the desert.

Then the plot gets very confusing.  The two characters never meet, which was what I was waiting for.  For their lives to intersect but they do not.  Each character goes through their own trials and tribulations.  Each must find the answers for their own survival.

Dinner at the Center of the Earth

Nathan Englander, has written what I think is a very confusing novel.  I absolutely loved What Do You Think About When You Think About Anne Frank.  It is one of my all time favorite books ever.  But I was let down by this newest book.  I even listened to an interview hoping to like the book more and understand the thought process behind it.  Though I  did come away from the interview with a better understanding I cannot say it made the book more enjoyable to finish or one that I would recommend.

Dinner At The Center of The Earth is a complicated novel.  A story that keeps you thinking and working to keep the plot and characters straight in your mind as you are reading.  Also working through who all the characters represent and the historical references that discussed in this novel are important.

Like other Englander novels, these books are edgy with a sense of dark humor, and complexity.  Englander takes on topics that are controversial, taking chances that are courageous and provocative.  This time, in Dinner At The Center of The Earth,  Englander has brought us to Israel with a political thriller that explores the Israeli-Palestinian tensions and failed peace process.  We meet X, a jailer and Prisoner Z, an American spy for Israel who is accused of treason.   We follow the thoughts of the General, who is modeled on Ariel Sharon, caught in his own prison of unconsciousness.   His nurse, who is hoping he will wake up and finish what he started, is the mother of Prisoner Z’s guard.  In this novel, Englander works through his personal “optimistic pessimism or pessimistic optimism for
Israel - Palestine, his true heartbreak over the peace process falling apart.”

Apple Strudel Alibi

Once again H.Y. Hanna captured my attention with her clever fun amateur detective.  Gemma and the Old Biddies are at it again, solving a murder the police do not seem interested in.

This time instead of staying in Oxford and solving the murder while serving delicious scones at her Tea Shop, Gemma is off to Vienna to accept an award for her scone recipe.  The Old Biddies surprisingly show up at the hotel for a vacation at the same time and the detecting begins when a dead body is discovered in the hotel also.  Gemma has to call home for assistance from her boyfriend, the police detective, who had to stay behind and solve another crime. 

Gemma and the Old Biddies are great giving the readers a wonderful description of the city sights to see and the scrumptious food one should taste while visiting the country of Austria.  Once I picked up the book I did not put it down until I had finished it.

It is always a fun break from all the hard work we do to sit down and enjoy a simple mystery, with characters you remember, like old friends, who keep coming back to share an experience they had with you.

Eternal Life

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live forever, to never die?  I know as I am now living in the second half life, assuming that fifty is the midpoint, I start to chant the Jewish blessing as an incantation, "May you live to 120".  It is based on the most often cited sources in Bereishit  (Genesis) 6:3 and in Devarim (Deuteronomy) 34:7.  The age of Moses upon his death is given as 120, and the text explains, "his eye had not dimmed, and his vigor had not diminished."  That is also important, that we live a long healthy and happy life.  The idea being that life is so enjoyable that we do not want to leave.

Author,  Dara Horn has given us a novel that will keep you thinking about living for eternity for quite some time after you put the book down.  As I finished this novel, Eternal Life, I sat wondering what it would be like to continue to live on as those I love in my life were not.  It is something many of us have thought about as we age or get sick, wondering if it would be possible to stay the same age or find a cure to keep us alive longer.  Right off the top of my head I think of instances where we dream of ways to stay young.  Ponce de Leon and the myth we learned about his search for the fountain of youth and Dorian Gray and his portrait hanging in the attic, after realizing his wish to remain young and let the portrait age is coming true.

That is similar to the premise of this book.  The plot is based on the idea that Rachel and Elazar are two young lovers living during the first temple time.  Rachel, the daughter of a scribe and Elazar, the son of a high priest.  They are star crossed lovers who have to hide to spend time together because they would not be permitted to marry.  When Rachel is married off Zakkai this relationship should end but of course it does not and Rachel finds herself pregnant.  The son is born as Zakkai's and then as a small boy becomes deathly ill.  To save his life Rachael and Elazar vow their lives for his.  They agree without understanding that they will never die.  They will continue to live forever while those around them age and pass on to the next life.

Thus begins the extremely long and fruitful lives of both Rachel and Elazar, who between other lives they are leading meet up again throughout the centuries.  They never stay together, but marry others and bear children in each new century, each leaving a long legacy of children, grandchildren and so on.  Each time they start life over again young, and learn new things as science and time move on, living through wars, disease, modern medicine and computers, right up until today with social media and bitcoin.

In a way it seems like starting to read a new book.  Each time you pick up a book, it is like a new relationship.  You open it full of the expectations. You read the first chapter with anticipation and hope that you will fall in love.  The plot draws you in and you are hooked.  It is exciting to come back to it each day, when you have finished your other work.  Time passes and you are in the middle and fully attached, then the end approaches and you are starting to read slower and dreading the experience coming to an end.  When it is over you are both at peace and fulfilled by the enjoyment of it and sad that it has come to an end.  Then you reach to your bookshelf or to-read pile and pick up the next book and the process begins again.  Would this be similar to living forever, while others around you do not?

Dara Horn has created her both an enticing novel that is enjoyable just on the P'shat level of reading a fascinating plot.  She also has given the reader an interesting D'rash to contemplate. Thinking about what it would be like to live through all the changes in history.  To be immortal when those around you are still mortal.