The German Doctor

It is hard to say wow what a terrific book when the story is as disturbing as this as a book is.  But with that disclaimer I must say...I really liked it.   It is an incredibly well written story.  Author Lucia Puenzo writes this story based on the true events of Josef Mengele's escape to South America and his time spent hiding in Bariloche, Argentina. 

In this story he is the guest of a family who runs a local inn. He is on the run  trying to stay one step ahead of the Nazi hunters.  He knows he should listen to his collaborators and keep moving.   He meets this family and becomes obsessed with the daughter who has a growth deformity and the mother who is pregnant with twins. He becomes a guest in their inn.  He starts giving injections to the daughter telling her that he will help her grow.  The relationship takes on a eerie, frightening dimension as the daughter, Lilith gets more and more caught up in a relationship with Jose, as he refers to himself.  Then just as we learn that Adolf Eichmann has been caught and kidnapped to Israel, the supporters of Jose try to spirit him away to safety.  He stays just a little longer to help with the delivery of the twins for Eva, Lilith's mother.  

The reader feels the tension building from the beginning because as a reader you are aware of who Josef Mengele is and was, but the other characters in the story do not know who this man is . He is referred to as the stranger for much of the book. So you feel the tension building as he worms his way into the lives of this family. You want to shout...don't let him in! the author gives you, the reader, an incredible look into the mind of this monster.

So well written!!!

The Witch of Napoli

What a wonderful story.  It draws you in from the first page and does not release you from its spell till the very end.  Author, Michael Schmicker has taken an historical person and using some real events culled from newspaper articles and real locales that were mentioned in those articles, he has created a work of fiction that is inthralling.  The characters come alive and you can not help but feel the passion, pain and triumph along with Alessandra, the witch of Napoli and Tomaso Labella the narrator of this story, a newspaper photographer.

The story takes place in Naples in the year 1899.  Alessandra is medium who works performing weekly seances in the apartment of Dr. Ercole Rossi.  Rossi is a professor of philosophy at the University of Naples and the leader of the Spiritualist Society of Naples.  Alessandra can talk to the dead.  She passes on messages from the loved ones spirits who have died and gone to the Other Side.

Alessandra was a physical Spiritualist, levitating tables, making things fly across the room, and having the taking on the persona of a spirit who would act through her.  She was in an unhappy, abusive relationship with her manager, husband that she wanted to escape.  Labelle is a a young, 16 year old, who falls in love with Alessandra and wants to help her escape her unhappy marriage.
He is also trying to establish himself as a news journalist and move up to news editor, so he travels with Alessandra, following the story of her success.  Tomaso works for the newspaper, Mattino.

Rossi and his colleagues were interested in studying Alessandra as a science experiment.  There were many frauds who were performing as mediums with assistants who helped them create a show. These charlatans would take advantage of people, distraught from the death of a loved one, paying for contact to the Other Side.  The members of the Spiritualist Society were in disagreement over the reality of the mediums. "Camillo Lombardi changed everything....The week after the seance at Rossi's home announced he would giving a big, public lecture in Rome on the topic of 'Science, Evolution, and Spiritualism'. " The newspaper Mattino, offers to fund travel expenses for Lombardi to come to Naples and attend a seance led by Alessandra.

"Lombardi's position on Spiritualism was well-known.  He had attended three seances in Florence at the invitation of Dr. Lauro Nobile, head of the Italian Spiritualist Society, and concluded the medium, was suffering from what he called female hysteria.  As for the mysterious rappings and furniture levitations, they were most likely produced by trickery."

A wager is struck, Alessandra agrees to travel across Europe leading seances under strict guidelines, while the members of the Society study her every move.  They are looking for her tricks and the pressure increases as the story develops.

This book is terrific as a novel on its own.  Schmicker has created a fascinating novel that could stand on its own. Interestingly, the story is based on the live of Eusapia Palladino, a controversial medium who lived from 1854 - 1918.  Also, that Schmicker was able to use many memorable quotes, descriptions and observations from real news stories, historical books and scientific records in the book makes the book even more incredible.

City of the Sun

Author, Juliana Maio has written an historical novel that showcases the events that were happening during World War II in the Middle East.  Don’t dismiss the book, City of the Sun too quickly, there is a love story and intrigue mixed in with the historically accurate details of this book that makes this a story that grabs the reader’s attention and keeps you engaged until the end.

Mickey Connolly, is an American who has come to Egypt to make a name for himself as a newspaper reporter.  He is rather naive, idealistic and seems rather uninformed about the area he is in and the events happening around him, as he tries to report on civilian life in Egypt.  He is caught up in the exotic “Paris on the Nile” until he gets recruited to work for the American Embassy on a covert mission.  

As the novel unfolds we see that America was not the only country interested in the Jewish scientists that were escaping from Germany.  As Rommel is trying to expand the Nazi influence further in Northern Africa, Maio creates a story of intrigue and espionage pitting Connolly against a Nazi spy as they both try to recruit the same scientist who has information about creating a bomb that could end the war.  

This story of a developing romance between the fictional Mickey and his love interest Maya is interwoven with real historical characters like, Anwar Sadat, the young King Farouk, Sir Miles Lampson and American Ambassador Alexander Kirk and the situations that were happening during the 1940s in Egypt.  Maio has rewritten the real life German spy Johannes Eppler, as the character, Heinrich Kesner, the obsessive Nazi spy working to get recognized by the SS.  Like Eppler, he has mixed Arab and German background and lives on a houseboat while infiltrating into Egyptian society to spy on the British and American presence there.

The story is centered in Cairo, which was a very sophisticated city where French was the main language spoken and Europeans, Jews and Arabs coexisted in peace.  The Suez Canal is built and the country becomes more modernized.  Then the English take control and the book explains the history of turmoil as dissonance is heard from the Islamic fundamentalists, the nationalists and the Egyptian monarchy.  Even as war is waging in Europe and coming closer to North Africa, life in Cairo is still glamorous.  “Ataba Square, the wide open plaza at the west end of the city, was easily Cairo’s foremost commercial center, buzzing all day with soldiers and merchants.  But this evening when Mickey descended from the arabya hantour, the horse-drawn buggy he had taken to the Continental Hotel. he encountered a very different crowd.  Men in linen suits  and women in pearls emerged from Rolls Royces and Bentleys arriving at the hotel in battalions.  Valets, dressed all in white, scurried frantically to assist this influx of Cairo’s high society.”

The author, Juliana Maio was drawn to this topic because of her personal background of Jewish- Egyptian heritage.  Her family was expelled from Egypt during the Suez Crisis and she grew up in France.  She knew she wanted to write and learn about the Jews of Egypt.  She began studying Egypt’s history, and after ten years of research and writing she has completed City of the Sun.

Maio received her B.A. at the University of California, Berkeley, and her Juris Doctor degree from UC Hastings.

Juliana practices entertainment law in Los Angeles and has represented internationally renowned filmmakers as well as a host of independent production companies. Prior to that she served as vice president of worldwide corporate and business affairs for Triumph Films, a joint venture between Columbia Pictures and Gaumont Films.

Juliana co-founded Lighthouse Productions, an independent film and television company. She has spoken both domestically and abroad about the Arab Spring. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, film producer Michael Phillips. They have a daughter.

The Betrayers

The Betrayers

by David Bezmozgis

Some books are written to really make the reader think.  The Betrayers is one of those novels.  This is a book that makes the reader question and weigh their personal opinions.  When someone has committed acts of betrayal at different times in their lives should they be forgiven or condemned.  Can one earn the right to forgiveness or once you have sinned that becomes what defines you?  Can the person you wronged offer you absolution.

Those are the topics that author, David Bezmozgis explores in his debut novel, The Betrayers.  By following a day in the life of protagonist Baruch Kolter we learn the story

of his rise to power as an Israeli politician from the life of a Soviet Jewish dissident and his crash to disgrace as his political viewpoint on the West Bank settlements lead to the exposure of his affair with a women as young as his daughter.  They try to escape the backlash of the press by running off to Russian Crimea and a seaside town of his youth.  While he is there fate leads him to reconnect with the man who forty years earlier, as a KGB agent denounced Kolter and had him sent to the Gulag for thirteen years.  As these two mens lives intersect in the present, the past is explained.  The reader is only privy to the parts of the characters lives as they come up in dialog.  There is no extra room here for sentimental feelings.  In answer to Svetlana accusations Kolter replies, “Svetlana, you may not believe it, but I harbor no ill will toward your husband.  So it is not even a matter of forgiveness.  I hold him blameless.  I accept  that he couldn’t have acted any differently any more than I could have acted differently.  THis is the primary insight I have gleaned from life: The moral component is no different from the physical component - a man’s soul, a man’s conscience, is like his height or the shape of his nose.  We are all born with inherent propensities and limits.  You can no more be reviled for your character than for your height.  No more reviled than revered.”

We follow the lives of Kolter on the holiday with his mistress, Leora Rosenberg as they encounter Vladimir Tankilevich, his betrayer and his wife Svetlana.  The four main characters meet at the home of Tankilevich and as they square off between their hurt feelings from the past and a sense of morality.  Each of them has acted from what they believe is a position of righteousness.  Kolter as an ardent Zionist and Tankilevich, a man with strong family loyalty.

The question of how each man’s life was shaped by the events of Israel and the former Soviet Union during the 1960s.  Each man stubbornly acting on what he felt was the moral and ethical high road.  The reader is left to find their own answers. Is there one correct answer or does man follow his beliefs and fate controls the outcome.  Kolter argues, “You spoke before of fate, that you believe in a Divine Providence.  You asked my opinion, and I said that I believed we walk hand in hand with fate.  We choose to follow it or pull against it, depending on our characters.  But it is character that decides, and the trouble is, we don’t decide our characters.  We are born as we are.”

In the end, the irony is finally not lost on Baruch Kolter who betrayed his family, wife, son and daughter for his principles, that man he hated all these years stood up for his family.  As he returns to Israel to face the future and the consequences of his actions we see him as a changed man.

David Bezmozgis is an award winning writer and filmmaker whose fiction has appeared in many magazines.  He is also the author of Natasha and the novel The Free World.  In 2010 he was named one of The New Yorker’s, “20 Under 40” writers.

Contents Under Pressure

This is the first in a series about Britt Montero, a Cuban-Angelo journalist. She is working for a Miami newspaper covering the police beat so she is always there when a crime is committed. She has many connections on the force and the streets. 

Of course it is hard for a police chasing reporter to meet the right man.  "My personal life is a battlefield littered with corpses of once-promising relationships."   But then there is a love interest that starts developing in this first book of the series.  "All I wanted was to go home alone, mope a little and get to bed early. ....That is why it is difficult to explain how I wound up dining on smoked salmon and red snapper and sipping 1986 Chardonnay in an intimate and elegant little restaurant on a side street in Coral Gables, with Sgt. Kendall McDonald."

Of course there is a mother who doesn't like that her daughter has this unfeminine career and also doesn't like the way she dresses. The mother is hoping for her daughter to meet a nice man and settle down. 
"Call had come from my mother(I know you are always busy Britt but so am I.  We're having a huge sale, thirty per cent off.  Come and take a look.  Your wardrobe could certainly use it.)"

Author Edna Buchanan was a newspaper journalist for the Miami Herald and won the Pulitzer Prize for her news stories so she is in the perfect position to write these mystery novels. Even with the topics Buchanan picks for her plots these are still a fun light read that goes grabs your attention and reads quickly.

I Want A Dog: My Opinion Essay

I Want a Dog: My Opinion Essay (The Read and Write Series Book 1) (Kindle Edition)

What a interesting and different idea for a plot. This is a very clever way to present the idea of writing an essay for a school assignment and it was a fun way to rad about the different reasons people want dogs as pets. It was also a great way to present the differences between various breeds of dogs. Quite a bit of information was disseminated in a short concise children's book. Writing essays can be fun when the student is interested in the topic.. this is an importnat message to both the student and the teacher. Well done!

The Missing File

Dror Mishani grew up reading the detective stories of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie translated into Hebrew.  He has felt the lack of crime fiction in Israel since his childhood. He was inspired to write his own series of crime fiction to emulate the detective novels that he enjoyed reading.  So in his first book, The Missing File, his protagonist, police detective, Avraham Avraham says to the woman who has come to the station to report a crime,  “Do you know why there are no detective novels in Hebrew?, he then asked.  ‘What?’  ‘Why aren’t there any detective novels?  Why doesn’t Israel produce books like those of Agatha Christie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?’  ‘I don’t read much’, she replied. ‘Then I will tell you.  Because we don’t have crimes like that.  We don’t have serial killers;  we don’t have kidnappings; and there aren't many rapists out there attacking women on the streets.  Here when a crime is committed, it’s usually the neighbor, the uncle, the grandfather, and there’s no need for a complex investigation to find the criminal and clear up the mystery.  There’s simply no mystery here.”

Mishani is trying, he says, to write a realistic crime series.  He doesn’t like the detective who thinks he knows everything. He is dedicated to the tradition of the mystery genre.  He wanted to create a detective who is not brilliant or assertive.   Avraham is a sensitive character, who will grow as the series continues.   

The plot of the book, The Missing File, is about a mother who comes to the police station to report that her son is missing.  Avraham heads up the investigation of the missing person.

This story is written in the style Mishani feels he has always wanted to read in crime fiction,

“a detective mystery with true interest in the life of its characters, all its characters: the detective, of course, but also the victims, the witnesses, the criminals. I believe not every crime is a mystery but most crimes are a human drama, often a human tragedy. And I believe a good crime novel shouldn’t just be about ‘whodunit’ but should also emotionally explore this drama or tragedy. And it’s true that while writing The Missing FIle I felt as if I was reading the novel more than creating it .”

The victim in this story is Ofer Sharabi, who has disappeared from the apartment he lives in with his parents, brother and sister.  Downstairs lives the young family of Ze’ev Avni with his wife and baby.  Ze’ev becomes a prime suspect in the investigation to find Ofer. Interestingly, the name Ofer means deer and and the name Ze’ev means wolf reinforcing the relationship between these two characters in conflict through the story.  

In his second mystery novel, A Possibility of Violence, Mishani follows the same writing style.  

This time a suitcase is spotted outside a daycare and turns out to contain a fake bomb.  Avraham Avraham is assigned to the case.  The reader follows along with Avraham as he interviews all the potential suspects.  He has learned from his mistakes in the previous case so

he is less trusting of everyone he meets in connection with the mysterious suitcase.

As the investigation proceeds Avraham is trying to determine which suspect could be responsible for the bomb and now the death of the daycare owner.  This is juxtaposed with his developing relationship to Marianka, the Belgian woman he has started a romantic relationship with.  Both of these interactions are puzzling to him.  He walks along the beach after leaving the office thinking,  “In every investigation there’s a moment when it seems that the confusion before your eyes will never clear.  That the details are too numerous, too strange, distinct from one another like the people sitting on the beach.  Everything is sunk in darkness or fog.  But after some time the connections are clarified and the picture always grows clear.  In the darkness a new point of light suddenly turns on, and it illuminates the other as well; details look different, take on meaning, connect.  What looks strange at first turns out to be familiar.”

Mishani writes beautiful prose and brings the reader inside the minds of the characters in his stories.  These mystery novels are more than just a “whodunit”.  They are explorations of the human psyche.

Dror A. Mishani was born in 1975 and lived all his life in Israel.   He now lives in Tel Aviv with his wife and two children.  He has worked as a translator and an editor of Israeli fiction and crime literature for the publisher, Keter Books.  The first novel in the series, The Missing File, was shortlisted for the 2013 CWA international dagger award and won the Martin Beck award, for the best translated crime novel in Sweden.  He is currently writing his third novel for the series.

The Sirena Quest

Author, Michael Kahn is an attorney at law with a list of mystery novels under his belt.

He has created a wonderful series of mysteries that star his young attorney,

Rachel Gold.  She has recently left the world of big law firms and decided to start 

her own practice.  She has built a client base from the lawyers she has worked 

for in the past and they hand off the more controversial cases to her.

In his newest mystery, Sirena Quest, Kahn has given Rachel Gold nothing more than a cameo appearance, when the protagonist lawyer in this novel follows up on a lead that connects him to a previous case involving lawyer, Graham Anderson Marshall III and the first mystery ever solved by Gold involving Marshall’s pet Canaan and Wagging Tails Estates Pet Cemetery.  It is a clever plot point that reminds of us of Kahn’s earlier work but is a red herring because this book never has any serious crimes.  Though there are many travesties along the way that keep you guessing and wondering what will happen next.

This new novel, is a fun puzzle story.  The reader travels along with four men who are about to return to college for their 20th reunion.  They reunite in advance of the reunion on a quest to find a missing statue that has intrigued graduates of Barrett College for years. The reader takes a road trip with the characters.  Along the way each character has the chance to share their feelings and thoughts on the successes and failures in their lives.  

Ray Gorman did not end college on a positive note.  He left school and became a drug user and dealer.  He came clean and found his career as a shopping center developer.  He is talking to Lou Solomon the lawyer of the quartet.  He has had on the surface a pretty straight forward life.  He is a successful lawyer with two young children, but is looking for love.  The group member nicknamed, Bronco Billy followed a curious path and surprisingly has ended up as a school teacher and Gordie Cohen is Hollywood script writer, who hasn’t yet written a hit.

As they look back and discuss regrets they might have in their lives, Ray quotes Satchel Paige saying, ‘you can’t look back’.  Ray thinks that you are where you are today and you shouldn’t have regrets about how you got there.   He likens it to the Beatles song lyrics, “it’s a long and winding road.”  Ray tells the others his theory, “All I know is that if you trace my quote career path - or yours, or anyone who’s ever done anything in life - it’s gonna look like one of those Rube Goldberg contraptions where the ball hits the boot that spooks the dog that pulls the leash that’s connected to the bowling pin that knocks over the candle that starts the cannon ball rolling down an incline...Life happens.”

This is a fun light novel to read.  It will take people of a certain age down nostalgia lane with references to college life during the 1960s.  It also will have the reader thinking about where they are in life now.  Has life been good to you?  Have you achieved your goals and are you happy with where your career path has taken you?  Which made me think of the lyrics of the Frank Sinatra song, “My Way”.  “Regrets, I have few, but then again too few to mention…..”

So don’t stop at The Sirena Quest, go back and read all eight of the Rachel Gold mystery novels that predate this one.  They are each a wonderful way to spend some time reading cleverly written mysteries.  As you read through the series you are watching Rachel Gold develop as a character and grow as a person.  You will root for her successes and you might even think of her as a friend.

Michael Kahn, trial lawyer by day, mystery writer by night is the award winning author of the Rachel Gold mystery series and a stand alone novel, The Mourning Sexton, under the pen name Michael Baron.  He has also written several short stories.  He is an adjunct professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.  He is married to his high school sweetheart, Margi.

He is the father of five children and grandfather of four.

I Am Sophie Tucker: A Fictional Memoir

Susan Ecker and Lloyd Ecker have captured the voice of Sophie Tucker in their fictional memoir,
I Am Sophie Tucker.  After laughing out loud while reading this book and underlining many quotes to repeat later to friends and family, I am not sure Sophie Tucker could have written about herself quite as well as these authors did.  In this book they created a character that comes alive.  You can almost hear Sophie describing her experiences like she would if she were sitting in the room with you.  The Eckers have captured Tucker's speech patterns, and her enthusiasm for life in quite a realistic way.

Sophie Tucker, born Sophie Abuza, was a vaudeville actress, who rose to stardom from working in a family restaurant business in Hartford Connecticut.  Her family had come to this country from the Ukraine via Italy and after a few false starts had opened what became the popular Abuza's Family Restaurant, known for her mother's goulash.  Sophie worked in the family business as a waitress and dishwasher.  "I handled all fifteen tables and I never dropped so much a poppy seed on a customer."

Sophie marries young, then quickly realizes her mistake and leaves home to try her hand at a career in New York.  Her persistence and outspoken personality are what get her foot in the door.
Though she didn't have the figure of a model, she wasn't going to change herself for the stage.  She thought they should accept the person she was.

"According to Harry Tilzer, I was an unknown heavyweight.  I wasn't going to give up noodle kugel but I'd be damned if I was going to stay an unknown.  After a month of throw money and daily trips to Tin Pan Alley, it was Jimmy Durante - then a unknown himself, though his nose had quite a reputation - who helped me get my first break.  It is not surprising that most of my closest friends in show business were just like me, a little too funny looking to be a star.  You could dress me or my pal Fanny Brice in the fanciest gold lame gowns on earth, but you know what they say about a silk purse and a sow's ear.  Yt, give that sow a personality the size of Cleveland and a set of pipes?  That is an act people will pay to see."

Sophie had the personality and the pipes.

Then as she rises to fame her quick wit and comedic character keep her in the spotlight.  Her boldness and lack of fear are the tools she uses to keep taking risks to rise to the center of the stage in vaudeville and become the most popular and well known star of the time.  This book and all her experiences are fascinating and it is amazing how many famous people she knew.   She drops names of the famous people she worked with like they were just the boy next door.  In many cases for her that was how she knew them.  Irving Berlin, Jimmy Durante, Buster Keaton and Carol Channing just to name a few.  All of them starting out and becoming famous along with Tucker.  She also entertained royalty.  "I'd met some bigwigs in my time, but in 1922 George, the Duke of York, was second in line to be King of England.  Talk about a case of nerves.  I left the dressing room and stepped out onto a small set of stairs that led down to the stage.  While trying to spot George, I tripped on the hem of my long gown and landed on my biggest asset smack in the middle of the stage."

Tucker was married three times and though she likes men and had many male friends, husbands are another story.  "By and large the fellas in my life have been warm and kind and generous....Sex, I've found is the surest way to kill a perfectly good friendship....In truth, I've really only been with a few men other than my scmendrick husbands.  That's right I Sophie Tucker, the Last of the Red Hot Mamas, the duchess of the double entendre, has only had a handful of lovers.....Sixty years later, I've concluded that a juicy steak is always more satisfying than a lousy love affair."

Authors Susan and Lloyd do a terrific job of bringing to life the voice and personality of Sophie Tucker in all her glory.  The Eckers also do a wonderful job capturing the lifestyle in America during this time period and as a reader it makes you nostalgic for a time in history we will never be able to experience first hand.

Cinderella's Secret Slipper

Cinderella's Secret Slipper By Alinka Rotkowska (Classic Fairy Tales with a Modern Twist) (Kindle Edition) CInderella's Secret Slipper by Alinka Rotkowska is a modern day update on the age  old story of Cinderella.  This is the story of what would happen if Cinderella and the  Prince had a child after they got married.  When their son Junior is four years old  they to throw him a birthday party and get him a gift.  What do you get for the child  who has everything?  How do you make their party special? Oh the worries of the modern parent.  Then Cinderella wants to wear her glass  slippers to the party and finds out that Junior has broken one.  Here is the only down  side of this story...like a modern day parent there is no yelling and definitely no spanking. She just goes out with the shards of glass to see if she can get it repaired.   In the end Junior doesn't get a time out or punishment, he gets a lavish party and a  special gift.  Very colorful, bright drawings illustrate the cute story.

The Nightingale

The newest book by author Kristin Hannah is about a topic very close to my heart, the Holocaust.
Hannah writes a tender love story that has you pulling your tissue box at the end.  But also she
writes about World War II from yet again another angle that has not been written about before.
Interestingly though there are many Holocaust novels and true stories on the bookshelves, there always seems to be some point of view that can still be uncovered by an author.

This is the story of a small village in France called Carriveau, where families have lived quietly for generations.  When France is drawn into the war German troops invade this small town.  German officers impose themselves on the households of the townspeople.  The men have all gone off to fight the war and the women and children have stayed behind.  Now the Germans either commandeer the house or move in with the remaining family.

This story focuses on one French family and how they react to the circumstances that now face them. Of course there is a backstory about the father, who stays in Paris and his relationship with his two daughters who are in Carriveau.  Vianne and her sister Isabelle were youngsters during the first world war when their father went off to fight the French army.  During the novel we learn about the effects of that war on the men who had fought.  How seeing the devastation and killing altered the personalities of those men when they came home.  The results of that war have lasting memories for all the characters involved as the second world war begins.  Now as Vianne's husband goes off to war and leaves her and her child we see how her childhood memories affect the decisions she makes in present time.  Her sister also still really a child at 18 when the second world war starts, reacts based on her personality and the circumstances of her childhood.

As the author presents the facts of war and how France fell to the Nazis, she also gives the reader great insight into how and why people acted as they did during the war.  Kristen Hannah deftly shows how slowly life changed and how trapped a person would feel as the Germans demanded information about your neighbors and friends and a room in your house.   This is a novel that explores the strength and passion that women showed during the difficult war years.  Time and time again Isabelle
says that people think just men fight in a war but women also are truly affected by the war.
This book show that women can be strong, resourceful and stand of for their ideals.

This book is a inspiring story.

Monogram Murders

This book had an incredible amount of publicity leading up to publication. I went into trying to figure out if this was really how Agatha Christie would have written Hercule Poirot....but in the end if you just read the book and follow the mystery you can caught up in a very well written story with a good plot, a few wrong turns as the author tries to mislead the reader into thinking everything is concluded...except that there are too many pages left so there must be something else and then a satisfying ending. All wrapped up neatly as Poirot gathers all the significant characters together for the final reveal.

The Boy Who Harnessed the WInd

Interesting story of about William Kamkwamba's life in Africa. Growing up in a small village as farmers. Living through the famine. His incredible pursuit of knowledge that led him to the library and the the personal study of science to create a windmill and bring electricity to his small rural home. even though his family could not afford the tuition to send him to school. Wonderfully told.