Atmosphere

 Atmosphere is on of those books that I would have let slip by.  It was talked about on every show and on every best book list.  But again I ahd to read it for my book discussion group so I bit the bullet and dove in.

So glad I did.  It turned out to be a very entertaining and interesting story.  Looking back at a time when women were still not given equal rights with men.  They were not paid the same rate that men were.  They were still expected to be the houseewife and mother.  They were not really supposed to want a career especially one that wold get in the way of taking care of the home and being there to welcome your husband home from work.

Joan Goodwin wants to break all those barriers.  She has always been in love with the stars and fascinated with the planets and the sky.  She is not interested in the life her parents and sister think she should lead.  She goes to flight school and becomes an astronaut.  She is thrilled to actually be flying and practicing for a space mission. She is also very good, calm and level headed in the control room.  

Until there is a catastrophe and her best closest friend is in danger up in space with her crew. Joan finds out how important relationships and friendships can be. She also finds out how important family is .

It was a very compelling story and also there were many facts about space and the space program.

Everyone in This Bank is a Thief

Everyone in This Bank is a Thief  is the latest in Benjamin Stevenson's list of titles.  In each of his tongue in cheek mystery novels, his amateur detective , Ernest Cunningham is always, through a series of mistakes and missteps, finds the answer to the crime, solving the mystery.

Ernest's special power is that he promises the reader that he is sharing the facts of the mystery without leaving out key pieces, not bringing in any clues at the end.  He tries to suggest that the reader has as much information as Ernest has and could solve the murder just as the ending is being presented.

The books in the series are starting to become a little repetitive.  The theme is clever but each book though very different from each other, are becoming in general very similar.  

Interestingly the entire book is told as Ernest is writing the story after everything has occurred.  He is now locked in the vault, thinking it is the end of his life, and he leaving the story for others to find when they finally open the vault.

As he explains the beginning of the story, time he walks into a bank with his fiancée looking for a bank loan to start a private detective agency.  Then there is a bank robbery in progress and Ernest and his fiancée are taken hostage along with eight others.  Now Ernest is charged with trying to find out what happened to the bank manager's brother who is missing.  

The bank vault is locked and the combination to the lock is missing. As the plot progresses, Ernest tries to figure out the combination and is also searching for the missing brother.  He also is trying to figure out the mindset of the bank robber.

Bringing all these various plot points are, in the end, brought together to tie the story up wrapping up the murder, robbery and missing brother into a neat package.

The Cloak from Bagdad

 Cartoonist, Carol Isaacs, uses the medium she knows best, the graphic novel, to tell the story of her family’s history.  She is the author of several books that share stories about growing up in London as the child of Iraqi Jews. This middle grade story was taken from Carol Isaacs original graphic novel The Wolf of Bagdad, a more detailed graphic novel version of the story for adults.

In The Cloak From Bagdad we meet Louise who was born in London and her parents who have immigrated from Bagdad, Iraq.  At home Louise and her family speak Arabic and eat Middle Eastern foods. Louise stands out in her London classroom with her dark curly hair and Middle Eastern features. Though Louise has asked about the family history her parents are reluctant to talk about why they left Bagdad. 

When Louise finds a box of old family photographs her grandmother tells her the story about why the family had to leave Bagdad.  Traveling back in time, Louise, under an invisibility cloak, the abaya, is able to see her mother as a young girl living in Iraq. She secretly follows her mother around. Louise can see the family celebrating Shabbat, then Purim and as they prepare for Passover.  She follows her young mother and uncle as they walk through the Jewish quarter to school. 

Louise witnesses as the anti-semitism grows in Iraq. Then as World War II escalates Hitler invades Iraq and the Jewish people there are in danger. Louise, hidden by her cloak, watches as the family with the help of a friendly neighbor escapes their home as the neighborhood is being attacked. 

Back at home in London, Louise understands the details of her family history, she feels more secure with her differences.  Now she is proud to share her family’s story. Louise tells the story of her family’s escape from Iraq for a school presentation. This gives the other students the opportunity to ask her questions and share some of their favorite family foods and experiences.  She learns that other kids at school have their own family customs and some of them are similar to hers.

This story is illustrated in comic book style with muted colors. With pen and ink drawings of her family, she is able to share the customs and clothing of the Iraqi Jews.  Isaacs draws the neighborhoods of Jewish Bagdad, Iraq, to illustrate how it may have looked in the 1920’s before it was destroyed and the Jewish people were pushed out.

The Taverna At The Edge of Night

 The Taverna At The Edge of Night is the newest mystery novel written by author H.Y. Hanna.  Hanna is the author of a few different mystery series including The Oxford Tearoom, The English Cottage Garden and  Bewitched by Chocolate.  Each of these book series were light cozy romantic mysteries.

This time Hanna has taken a sharp turn for a more dark and sinister mystery.  There is still some romantic interludes that help move the storyline along, but the plot follows a darker path and is more of a thriller novel.  Hanna has proven herself capable of stretching between genres.  

When Daphne travels to a small Greek Island to surprise her best friend Roxy she does know that she also is in for a surprise. Daphne is a young woman who has worked hard to develop her own business.  Her college roommate and best friend, Roxy, has recently left everything behind and moved to the small Greek island of Agia Eleni and open a taverna.  Daphne has recently sold her business and decides to visit her friend.  

Imagine the surprised look on both women's faces when Daphne arrives to find after traveling through dangerous terrain to the secluded island of Agia Eleni Roxy and taverna are not what she had imagined. Roxy is not happy to see Daphne because her dream has not become the beautiful little restaurant and hotel she has been posting on social media. 

As the two friends try to navigate their relationship, Daphne also is exploring the island and meeting the local citizens. She meets local artists and shopkeepers who warn her about the dangers of hiking the treacherous trails and about a recent deadly accident. She also meets handsome fishermen who offer to show her around the area in their boats.

As Daphne tries to find out what secrets the taverna and her friend Roxy are hiding she stumbles across a possible crime and the tragic accidental fall of a woman may not have been an accident after all.

H.Y. Hanna has proven that she can write a very intriguing plot, building tension, anticipation and twists and turns all deserving of a really good mystery.  She intertwines the action with beautiful descriptions of the scenery and develops her characters well. Hanna has stepped away from the light cozy and is sitting on the edge of the cliff with a new more exciting series in front of her.

May Contain Murder

 May Contain Murder is the newest mystery novel written by Orlando Murrin.    It is the second book in the Chef Paul Delamare series.

This time we find Chef Paul on a cruise with his long time friend Xera, who has just gotten married and is celebrating heer honeymoon with friends aboard this yacht.  Paul has been invited because he is going to write her memoir and this is the perfect time to record Xera's life story.  

Quickly things turn ugly when murder happens aboard the boat while out at sea.  Paul is recruited to the kitchen to help the chef.  This gives him a great perspective on all the guests and a chance to interview them as he tries to solve the murder before they dock.  Though his life also seems to be in jeopardy as he tries to cook gourmet meals and uncover the murderer, he is determined to find the killer before they reach shore.  He owes it to his friend.

An entertaining novel, but the food descriptions make you hungry and it would be nice to have recipes stirred into this novel.

The Last Dekrepitzer

 The book for this month’s review, The Last Dekrepitzer, by author Howard Langer, is not only the winner of the National Jewish Book Awards’ Book Club prize, it is a fascinating novel to read.

The  Last Dekrepitzer is a young man who was taken from his Polish Hasidic village during World War II by a Russian officer who hears him playing the fiddle.  The officer thinks there is a great future for Shumel Meir Lichtbencher as a violinist. But when the war gets in the way of his studies and he is drafted into the Russian army.  At the end of the war he returns to the Dekrepitzer village to find everyone has been killed. He buries the bodies of his family and townspeople and travels without direction.  He finds himself , a rebbe without a congregation, wandering through the chaos of postwar Europe.  A master fiddler whose niggunim—wordless Hasidic melodies—capture the attention of Black G.I.s in Naples, Italy, who bring him back with them to Mississippi.

He is welcomed in Mississippi by the community, learns English with a Southern Black dialect. Known in America as Sam Lighup, he has a full beard and wears a hat low on his face.  People are not sure if he is a black or white man. He plays his fiddle with the Brown Street Ramblers and preaches Jewish sermons in the local church. He raises chickens and like a  shochet, kills the chickens according to kosher laws. But he refuses to utter Jewish prayers anymore.  He is in an argument with GD.  He plays niggunim  as a rebuke to the higher power. 

He finds love with a black woman, Lula Curtain, and after he converts her to Judaism they marry and have a son, Moses. Lula becomes the strength behind Shumel. She encourages him to continue and not give up. When neighbors come with burning torches to scare them he leaves for New York City.

He is always searching for people from his village that may have escaped the Holocaust and still be alive, so he plays niggunim on his fiddle, hoping someone will recognize the tunes. In  New York City he plays in the subway and on the streets. He meets the Reverend Gary Davis, a blind Black acoustic guitarist well-known as a musical genius and would-be saver of souls who was an actual historical figure and plays with him on the street corners. 

He learns to repair violins and becomes friends with Schiff , a violin restorer, who employs him in a music shop. Schiff has a crate of fiddles salvaged from the Shoah in need of repair, which he wants fixed and given to children in Harlem schools.

Shumel also befriends the Bobover Rebbe who helps him and his family negotiate the prejudice that is evident in 1960s America.   The book also shows how Jews and Blacks found common ground in their respective struggles, during these divisive times, at this period in history. Using real people and created characters, Langer paints an incredibly realistic view of life in post Holocaust America.

The Secret Book Society

The Secret Book Society,  written by Madeline Martin was a delightful read. 

This was a very entertaining novel. Labeled as historical fiction the reader gets a feel for the plight of women living in London England in the early 1800.  They were considered property and totally controlled by their fathers and then by their husbands. 

This is the story of how a small group of women defied their husbands and found ways to read the novels they so enjoyed.  They developed the strength and fortitude to stand up to their husbands and demand better treatment.  

In this story the husbands are controlling and cruel.  They ban books from their wives in fear that they will gather too much knowledge and possibly become independent or develop hysteria, becoming unhinged.  

We meet this three women in unhappy marriages, Mrs Eleanor Clarke, who is married to Cecil.  She came from a life as a daughter of noble birth whose family had fallen on hard times. He is a merchant looking to show his new wealth, marries her and makes a gratuitous  display of her and the gemstones and dresses he can buy.  She is a prisoner to her husband.  Mrs. Rose Wharton, is an American who fell in love with her husband, Theodore.  Now Theodore's brother who was the earl, but is dying from cancer and Theodore will soon step into that role. Rose has to learn how to behave properly for the society she has married into. Theodore is hard on Rose because he fears his brother.  Then there is Lady Lavinia Cavendish, a young woman, not yet married, whose father is worried she feels things too deeply, and that books only increase her exaggerated emotions. Her father takes away her books because he is afraid she is not marriage material and will end up in the lunatic asylum.

This is what happens to many wives who do not obey their husbands. On the word of an angry, spiteful husband they can be sent off to the asylum for life. 

Lady Duxbury who is a widow, but suffered through two terrible marriages, invites the women for tea, they start the secret book group.  They become friends and their bond helps them build resolve to change their circumstances.  They bolster each other as they decide to take control of their lives and their marriages.

You will enjoy spending a few afternoons reading this book with a cup of tea and biscuits.