Trojan Horse

 This book was not really in a genre I would probably have picked up.. it is a thriller with some descriptions of torture..and maybe I am a bit squeamish... but after reading it I will definitely recommend it as a great entertaining read.  

The Trojan Horse by S. Lee Manning, a novel dealing with espionage and political spying, it makes you think about keeping secrets, loyalty, and risk.  It also looks at the idea of sending someone off to a dangerous experience and if you don't watch , does that absolve you of guilt, even if you know what the results of that action will be.  

Margaret Bradford is at the helm of the ECA, a top secret government agency. She is working directly for the United States President and alongside the CIA and other top level government agencies. On her team; Jonathan Egan, the son of a former Senator, who grew up mixing with the Washington elite and Kolya Petrov, the Russian emigre who loves working against Russia and for America.  Sometimes the people you think you can trust are not really acting in your best interest.  Somewhere in these top government officials there seems to be a mole.  Three agents have already been killed by the notorious Mihai Cuza, a descendant of Vlad the Impaler, a Romanian national who has the ear of the next leader of Romania. 

Entertaining but also can be a deeper read..  On the surface this is an action story of secret agents fighting to see who will maintain power and control. As you read the novel, questions of fairness, value of human life and loyalty rise to the surface.  When information that is supposedly top secret seems to be getting into the wrong hands, there is suspicion of a mole somewhere in the operation. Who can be trusted with information? Then as agents are being killed Margaret and the President need to decide how far can you take a risk with a person’s life.  When does your conscience start to bother you?

There is plenty of suspense and fast paced action for an entertaining read, but also some ideas that leave the reader thinking long after the novel is put back on the shelf. This is a thriller that will keep you reading until late into the night, but be prepared for some descriptive violence.

Looking forward to reading more by this author.

Lady Clementine

 Why did I  wait so long to read this book?  It is another fabulous accounting of a woman who has been over looked by history.  Winston Churchill has been famous through history for his role in England's successes and failures through the two world wars.  He has been written about and played in film roles by famous actors.  But his wife Clementine has never really been seen or spoken of.

This book by Marie Benedict changes that.  This book looks at Clementine Churchill through a realistic lens.  We see her successes and triumphs.  We also see her faults and missteps.  She was a strong determined partner to Winston,  She was a successful leader throughout the Second World War, with many incredible positive initiatives started to help the English citizens and especially the women.  She was Winston's right hand man.  She whispered in his ear and helped him with his speeches.

But as a mother to her four children, she was not as strong.  She did not seem to have the mothering instinct and left her children to the care of many nannies.  This book does not end up giving us a very positive perspective on many of their lives. 

All in all it is a fascinating and intriguing account of the historical times and of Clementine's life during that time in history.  She was an incredible woman.

Figs and Alligators

Traveling to Israel we read the book written by Aaron Leibel, about his family’s years spent living in Israel.  Figs and Alligators is the recollections of the years Aaron and his wife, Bonnie, took their family and moved from America to Israel.  They lived there through the 1970s and 80s.  Leibel worked a variety of jobs in Israel, finally as a reporter and editor for Israel newspapers.  He also served as a soldier, called up in 1974.  The family experienced living in Jerusalem, on a kibbutz.  They experienced living there through the Yom Kippur and the first Lebanon War and they were there when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his historic visit, which led to the  first peace treaty.  This is a personal story of a family living day to day in a turbulent , beautiful

Nation.

 

Three Ordinary Girls

 Three Ordinary Girls, written by Tim Brady, really makes you think about how you would react in the face of adversity.  This book shows you how people reacted to the invasion of their country and the threat to their citizens. This book details how three Dutch teenagers became spies, saboteurs and though at first felt shooting someone in cold blood was unthinkable, in the end they became Nazi assassins. What would you do if faced with similar circumstances? This book shows the bravery and fearlessness of these girls and others, could we be as courageous?

This is a recounting of three Dutch teenagers who stepped up and joined the resistance movement in Holland, as the Germans invaded their country.  Two sisters, Truus and Freddie Oversteegen grew up in a socialist home with a mother whose passion was politics and progressive thought.  Hannie Schaft, was at college studying when she decided to take action to help her Jewish friends avoid capture. 

By the end of WWII, these three girls would be notorious for having taken direct action against the Nazis from their homes in the city of Haarlem. This is a fascinating look at the how these ordinary Dutch girls performed extraordinary acts of selfless courage to slow the Nazi’s Final Solution.

It is again interesting to see what was happening in another country during the war.  How the Dutch people in the Netherlands responded to the invasion from Germany.  This country did not have an issue with their Jewish neighbors and so were more than willing to assist and hide them.  

This story of Truus, Freddie and Hannie is taking place as Anne Frank and her family are first in hiding and then discovered in Amsterdam.  I think if they had known Anne and her family they would have tried to help them.  These young women risked their lives to protect people in their country from the Nazis.

In Another Place; With and Without My Father Norman Mailer

 Reading is one of my favorite pastimes and I am in awe of the authors who are able to

capture your imagination and write one winning masterpiece after another.  One talented, though controversial, author is Norman Mailer.  His books were celebrated and he was a best selling author, with books like, The Naked and The Dead and In the Belly of the Beast, among others.

His daughter Susan Mailer has chronicled her life with her father in a memoir titled, In Another Place WIth and Without My Father Norman Mailer.  Susan takes the reader on an intimate journey of the life she lived with her father.  It was intense, fractured and complex.  Norman Mailer was married six times and fathered nine children.  Susan details her relationship with Norman, all his wives and her siblings.  It is like getting to be the proverbial fly on the wall

In the Mailer household.

Interesting memoir by the daughter of Norman Mailer, Susan. She is the oldest child of Mailer, a controversial and bestselling author. She details her life with her father as he became a famous writer, and married six women and fathered her eight brothers and sisters. Years of traumatic encounters with her father, she finally comes to terms with his faults and can accept him to be the person he is. She works with therapists and becomes a therapist herself and she works through the situations her parents put her in throughout her life. An interesting story of an famous writer and his demons.

Her Last Flight

This is a fantastic novel, written by Beatriz Williams.  She is the author of A Certain Age and The Golden Hour, both excellent novels, that I have read and there are others that I look forward to reading.

 This novel takes off with a whoosh of wind into the sky and brings you in for a perfect landing .  Inspired, I would say, by the continued mystery of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, this novel imagines what could have happened.  It is a love story, an adventure and a look into the social mores of a time in US history.  Womens' rights, marriage  and relationships, the choices people make and how they affect others.. all these themes are pulled together in this plot by Janey Everett, a photo journalist works to uncover the hidden truth of forgotten aviation pioneer, Sam Mallory and Irene Lindquist, the owner of a small island -hopping airline.  A heart felt story that makes you feel attached to the characters and cheer for their successes and worry about their failures.

The Vanishing Half

 Once again I am reminded how incredible a book can be.  I realize that I read in a few limited genres and many of my books are written by a Jewish author and also are of jewish content, either historical or modern day.  There is a comfort in reading a book that feels like home.  The characters are recognizable, the language and inflection flow through you like you are listening to family.  You understand a little of where the characters came from or why they think they way they do.  

This time I read a book that is so out of my usual comfort zone, The Vanishing Half, that at first it was very jarring.  I almost put it down and then I realized that it was just another family and their style of speech, their food choices and clothing ideas.  This was my chance to sneak in and see how other people live and think.  What a fascinating concept.

This book has been getting fabulous reviews.  I heard the author, Brit Bennett, speak about writing this book.  So I really wanted to keep reading.  In the end it is definitely a good read.  It is interesting to see other people view themselves and people of their social, economic and racial and ethnic groups.

This book looks at the prejudices of people who identify differently than other people around them.  It looks not only at black and, so called, white, but also at sexual differences.  People who are comfortable in their own skin and people who are not.  Who you are on the inside vs how you look on the outside.

In the end, this is a wonderful heartfelt story of people caught in a world that is hard to negotiate. It is the younger generation that seems to be learning to trust themselves and their feelings.  It gives you hope that our young people will help bring us all to a better place of getting along with all people and moving our world closer to acceptance of all different kinds of human beings.

Moonflower Murders

 Of course I must review Anthony Horowtiz's newest mystery, Moonflower Murders without delay!!

Horowtiz is an amazing writer.  His newest mystery novels I think may be the beginning of a new genre completely.  Each of these quirky, witty, entertaining mysteries are really a novel within a novel.  

We again meet the now retired book editor, Susan Ryeland.  She was the editor for the late Alan Conway who wrote the Atticus Pund mystery series.  Ryeland has retired with her boyfriend, Andreas to help him run his small hotel on a Greek island.  This is a wonderful relaxing lifestyle with sun, beaches, delicious food and island time.  But is becoming all too much for Susan who was used to the busy schedule and noise of London traffic and congestion. So when a couple shows up on the Greek island inviting her back to England to their hotel to help solve the mystery of their daughter's disappearance, Susan is off for the adventure.

Cecily, disappearance is linked to a murder that happened at the hotel eight years prior, where possibly now the wrong man is serving time for a crime he did not commit.  Cecily may have figured out the real answer to the mystery by reading a Atticus Pund novel written by Alan Conway.  This is where Anthony Horowtiz uses all his creative abilities and writes a full Atticus Pund mystery within the main storyline, which links to the answer to the current mystery.  

As a reader you are trying to figure out the answers to two mysteries at once, because one discovery leads to the second.  Of course they are both impossible to figure out but when you see each detective bring the culprits into the room for the big reveal you are amazed at how the facts pull together.

And this time even after the crimes are all wrapped up neatly with a bow, Horowitz has Ryeland revealing more and more little touches that were placed in the mystery that he wants to make sure the reader notices.  Because what author does not want the reader to see how much creative hard work goes into building an incredible mystery novel.

The Last Flight

 The Last Flight is an extremely popular book right now.  Julie Clark has done a great job writing a plot that will have you sitting on the edge of your seat until you are finished.  Though is not my usual style of book and I thought it would not be in my comfort zone, I read it for a book discussion group and ended up really enjoying it.  Though I would say, I did not want to read it at night alone in the house.

This is a story of two women who are stuck in relationships that are damaging to their wellbeing.  For all the world to see, Claire Cook looks like she has the perfect life, a wealthy attractive husband, everything money can buy and working the charity circuit of social events.  But under the makeup and beautiful clothes are the markings of an abusive marriage and Claire wants to escape.

When she runs into Eva who is also running away from a secret unhappy life she thinks she has found the answer to her problems.  The two women decide to switch places and start their lives over.

Reading this psychological thriller is entertaining, but this novel is so much more.  The topics of spousal abuse and love, family and a place to belong and feel needed are so strong throughout this novel.  This book keeps looking at how the each decision you make along the way can change the trajectory of your life so easily.  

It is always interesting when a fast well paced thriller can also give you something to think about as you enjoy the tantalizing plot.

Aunty Lee's Delights

 This is the first in the Aunty Lee series by Ovidia Yu.  An entertaining new mystery series set in Singapore.  Aunty Lee is an elderly widow who along with her "housekeeper" who is really her right hand assistant runs a cafe and solves mysteries.

In this first novel the plot sets the scene with the major characters, Aunty Rosie Lee, Nina, her assistant, Mark Lee and Selina, Aunty's stepson and his wife.  There is also a step daughter Mahtilda off with her family in England.  Of course they will work to solve the murders of the girls who seem to be washing up on the beach with Police Commissioner, Raja and Senior Staff Sargent, Salim.  

Though these mysteries are light and entertaining they do delve into deeper subjects, this time exploring the feelings around homosexuality.  

Food is a major theme in each book and there are some recipes in the back of the book.  It would be very interesting to eat some of the signature Singapore delicacies some day.  But until then we can read about the delicious recipes and ingredients and listen to Aunty Lee's descriptions of the food.

Aunty Lee explains the connection between food and life... "In life as in recipes, it was often. the smallest pinch of contrasting flavor - the lightest splash of seasoning savored undetected - that made all the difference to a dish."

Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials

 On the surface Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials seems like just an entertaining mystery.  And though that is true and I look forward to reading more of the series, there are some interesting issues that are part of the mystery that can lead to a larger discussion and get the reader thinking on a deeper level.

Aunty Lee is this wonderfully colorful character who lives in Singapore and owns a delightful and delicious cafe.  She is a widow with two step children and her step son Mark is selling his wine cellar business to Lee's new business partner Cherril.  Cherril will be Aunty's partner in detection.  Aunty also has a sort of sidekick, her assistant, Nina who looks out for Lee's best interest. 

When two people end up dead at a catering event that Aunty Lee and Cherril have cooked for and are serving, they must work with the police to help solve the crime before their business gets closed down.

While trying to solve this mystery other people are turning up missing and there is talk of people selling their organs for money.  Organ donation is illegal in Singapore.  This book gives the reader a chance to think about how one feels about organ donation, or selling body parts like a kidney for money.

If you thought that you could save someone's life with a cadaver body part, how far would you go to get one?  There is also the rumor that the dead woman's business is in trouble.  How far would you go to save your business?  Or could it just be as simple as badly cooked food?  The chicken dish they ate just could have been cooked improperly... was it just food poison?

Author, Ovidia Yu is off to a great start with this clever mystery series

A Question of Betrayal

 Anne Perry, once again brings her readers a great series of mysteries.  This time we are following the exploits of Elena Standish, granddaughter of retired director of MI6, Lucas Standish. 

World War One has ended and the countries of Europe are trying to rebuild.  In Germany Adolf Hitler is starting to take advantage of the war torn country to build his followers and make the people believe he is offering the best solution to their troubles.  In England Lucas Standish who lead MI6 through the war has stepped down and though he still has his ear to the ground and friends on the inside he is in retirement.

This is the second book in the series and I look forward to more of this fascinating collections of adventures that Elena will be taking as she becomes a more experienced spy for Britain.  Though in the last book she had been dumped by the man she loved her, and fired from her job, she went off on a holiday and got caught up in a murder and espionage.  Now back in this second mystery, she has proved herself worthy of being a undercover agent for the British intelligence and is sent off to northern Italy to help bring informant Aiden Strother back with the information he has gathered, because it has become clear his cover has been blown.  Elena has been chosen because she may be the only one who can recognize him... he is the man she loved who dumped her.  

Elena has to accomplish this mission to prove herself worthy of continuing to be a trusted agent.  She has to maintain her level of calm, control and not get caught up in personal feelings.  It is hard to be a young woman scorned and still want to rescue the man who ruined her name.  

This is a absorbing book, with a good mystery, good character development and some historical developments that keep the plot moving and the story compelling.  It will be fun to watch Elena and her sister Margot  as they move forward with their personal relationships and their top secret government positions.  Also very relatable are their grandparents, Lucas and Josephine Standish.  

A Bookshop In Berlin

Another fascinating book.  This one is a memoir written right after the Holocaust and found years later.  So glad we have this small account of Francoise Frenkel's life during the war years.  

She is a young woman at the time, starting out in life on her own.  She grew up in Poland and has left her family there to strike out on her own as a bookstore owner who after going to school in Paris loves French literature.  She opens her French bookstore in Berlin.  For a while she is successful catering to a niche audience.  As the Nazis invade France everything changes.  

Francoise ends up on the run, hiding from the Nazis and also trying to get home to her family.  Crossing borders becomes more and more difficult.  This is a story of survival and leaning on the kindness of strangers and friends.  It shows you the hard times people were living through and how there were some people who wanted to help but were too frightened and others who were willing to take more risks to help those the Nazis were hunting.

A WINDOW OPENS

 "whenever a door closes.. a window opens". a famous quote, but quite accurate.  The real original quote is from Alexander Graham Bell,    “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

This is exactly what this book is about.  Knowing where to look to make sure you are seeing the door that has opened.  It is a little like the situation many of us find ourselves in these days.  CoVid has sidelined us from our usual lives.  But complaining or looking for what we cannot do anymore is not helpful.  Looking purposefully for the open door is a better use of our time.  Finding ways to appreciate the new world we are living in.  

There are so many cliches , glass half full..etc..

A Window Opens, is a beautiful look at the kind of life many of have been living.  Elizabeth Egan has captured the 40 something woman's battle with independence, motherhood, and marriage in this entertaining and poignant novel.  

Alice Pearse is married, has the requisite three children and a part time job in publishing.  The house is blocks from the local schools where her children walk.  Her parents live blocks away.  She has a babysitter who comes and helps the kids after school with homework, dinner and driving to after school activities.

Her husband, a lawyer decides to change his work situation which sends Alice back to full time employment.  Between the actual hours needed on the job, the commuting from NJ into NYC and the after hours emails that come in all night, life has taken a major turn off course.  Combine that with the idea of being the oldest worker in the office with new technology and terminology, which kind of funny.  Then add in a dying father from cancer and your heartstrings are pulled.  

Wonderfully written and so real to life that it is hard to put down and you cannot give Alice a hard time even though it does take a little longer than I would like to for her to realize she needs to stand up for herself. A satisfying ending. Don't forget your tissues.

CODE NAME HELENE

 What is in a name?  Does your name reflect who you are and what if you change your name or use an alias? Does that help you achieve anonymity, does it help you create a new persona?  

During World War II, as the Germans invaded France, many Frenchmen became part of the resistance.  Partisans who hid in the woods and learned to fight with guns air dropped for their use against the Germans.

Code Name Helene written by is really historical fiction but it can almost feel at times like a thriller.

Written by Ariel Lawhon, this is an intriguing novel based on the real life heroine, Nancy Wake, who during the war took on four different names and identities.  It is 1936 and young Nancy Wake has traveled from Australia to the glamorous city, Paris after talking her way into a journalist position reporting for the Hearst newspaper.  As she captures the hearts of the young men around her, the war is picking up and her first hand experiences are disturbing.  Romantically she swept off her feet by the handsome businessman, Henri Fiocca and just as she becomes his wife with her first name change she gets caught up in the war and takes on a code name,  Lucienne Carlier, her cover, an oblivious mistress, as she carries papers, documents and smuggles people across the border.  She becomes known as the White Mouse and there is a bounty on her head, so she joins special forces and becomes Helene learning from the Special Operations Executives, then she is airdropped into the woods of France to lead the Resistance army of bedraggled men as she directs missions and orders air dropped weapons and other needs to help them win the war.

All this is done with the alias, Madame Andre.  Wearing her signature red lipstick creates for her the powerful image she wants to portray.  This is a complicated story but so powerful and amazing that it makes you wonder if you would have the stamina and courage to be anything like her in a time of crisis.

With some red lipstick and the proper name can a woman change the world?

A Dangerous Language

 Sulari Gentill is continuing to make Australian history fascinating and intriguing to audience sof the Rowland Sinclair Mystery series.  In the eighth book in this series, Rowland and his friends, Edna, the sculptress, Milton, the wayward poet, and Clyde the auto mechanic are again caught up in a plot against the rule of government and their lives are in danger.

As we move through this series we are moving through the years leading up to World War II.  Hitler is a threat to Germany and Rowland's friends, who are Communist leaning individuals, are trying to stop  Fascism from becoming imbedded in Australia.  Rowland stays independent but get caught up int he mayhem that takes place as Milton agrees this time to go to the seat of government and watch from the balcony to oversee the legislature and how they are responding to the Nazi threat.

Of course there are fascists who want to stop them and people will get hurt and there may even be a murder along the way.  Rowland's brother is always there to bail Rowly and his friends out of trouble and keep it all out of the press, so as to preserve the family name.

All of that is quite fun to read.  Though I think I am getting quite anxious for Rowland and Edna to find a way to share their feelings for each other out loud to each other, instead of continuing to just miss out on the beautiful relationship they could have together.

Along the way you are learning a piece of history that you would only be aware of if you grew up in Australia.  This time we learn about a journalist, Egon Kirsch, though a citizen of Czechoslovakia, lived primarily in Berlin, who was trying to speak out in Australia and was being prevented from landing on Australian soil.  Gentill places Rowland and his friends in the place to help Kirsch land, mixing the true story of his trip on board the ship, Strathaird, with fiction.    The right-wing Australian government refused Kisch entry from the ship Strathaird at Fremantle and Melbourne because of his previous exclusion from the UK.  In real life, when Kirsch was not allowed to leave the boat and come ashore, he jumped off the railing landing in the water, breaking his leg, in Melbourne, but was put back on the ship.  This brought him some support from the left and he was finally allowed to land when his boat docked in Sydney, though he was taken to jail there and had to appear in court.  It is a fascinating story and Gentill places Rowland and Clyde Watson-Jones on the ship with Kirsch and embellishes the story using to leap from the boat deck in an all out fight with the enemy.  

Entertaining reading on so many levels.  Wonderfully written and I am enjoying following the adventures of Rowland, Edna, Milton and Clyde and the supporting characters who show us how life the of the wealthy was lived in 1930s Australia.

The Stranger Diaries

 Elly Griffiths' new series with Detective Harbinder Kaur as the lead with her assistant Neil working for a small police force looks like the beginning of a very interesting mystery series.  

Harbinder is already shaping up to be a complex character, she is from India, a woman in her thirties living with her parents and gay.  Starting off with all those personal traits leaves plenty of room for Griffiths to build a wonderful character storyline as the series progresses.  Her partner Neil Winston, seems to be typical white male, playing off Kaur's personality with a more average alter ego, married always asking questions and playing the empathetic role to Kaur's caustic rougher personality. 

This is plot follows a combination cozy murder and a psychological thriller.  We meet the characters living in a small town outside London, Clare, a teacher working at a private school, divorced, living with her teenage daughter, Georgia.  Framing the whole novel around a short story written by an author, who once lived at the school, and the diaries that a few of the characters keep is a unique way to move the plot forward.  We are given parts of the short story along the way as the main story unravels.

When murders start happening at the school, Clare  is at the center of the controversy.  You are always wondering as you hear the same story from varying points of view who to believe.  Reading carefully looking for the slip up from one of the characters that will give away their hand, but this very cleverly written and you will be surprised at the end.  There are many references to famous authors and quotes from literature.  Interestingly, this is the second book this year using the quote, "Hell is empty, all the devils are here."  

Griffiths keeps you guessing all the way to the end who the murder could be and you are constantly second guessing yourself as you are reading holding back from getting attached to any characters because you cannot trust that they are not going to turnout to be the killer.  Well written and fun to read.

The Library Book

 The library has always been a magical place for me.  Just like the author, Susan Orlean, writes about in this book, The Library Book, I have since childhood loved the idea of walking through the library stacks picking out my pile of books to take home and read, returning them for in exchange for more.  There was a time where I also felt a need to buy books to hold onto and my house has bookshelves in many of the rooms.

Sitting surrounded by books is a warm feeling for me and the idea of shopping in the library now, bringing home books that I can read and return, saving money is as good as a bookstore. I love the friendship, camaraderie and quiet of the library.

This book has been patiently waiting for me to pick it up.  To read about libraries and how there was a possibility that someone would set fire to one was intriguing. This book is interesting for a bibliophile.

You learn about the history of libraries and especially about the Los Angeles library system and Central Library.  You also learn about the sad life of Harry Peak, who was always looking for attention and wanted to be known.  He has gained that notoriety now as the Library arsonist.

As Orlean writes, "The idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not that I, personally, will be forgotten, but that we are all doomed to be forgotten - that the sum of life is ultimately nothing; that we experience joy and disappoints and aches and delights and loss, make our little mark on the world and then we vanish, and the mark is erased and it is as if we never existed."  This is a conundrum I have been wrestling with for the last few years also.  How do we make our mark so that we stand out from the multitudes and will be remembered.   

This is why Orlean says she wrote this book. It also could be a reason Harry Peak behaved the way he did. People want to feel special. Peak is seems was a lost soul and had trouble in life finding his path.

This book is so much more than just a book about libraries or the fire that consumed Los Angeles Public Library.  This book helps the library live on in our memories.  It also gives the author's childhood memory of visiting the library with her mother and her memory of visiting the library with her son permanent record.  

Cocktails and Murder

These novels keep coming one right after another.  Still a fun light entertaining mystery series about Ellie who is visiting her Aunt Olive at a Florida resort until after the New Year, when she will have to return to dreary London.

She is taking full advantage of the sunny, warm atmosphere and the friendly people she is meeting at the resort.  Each time there is another crime happening that Ellie just happens to trip across.  She overhears some significant conversations that send her investigating possibly where she should not really be.

Of course the police inspector always warns her off and tells her to mind her own business.  As she gets friendlier with the hotel staff and her romance builds with the resort doctor, she feels more embolden to follow her instincts and look into clues and get into trouble.

Each book has her solving the crime in a very amateurish way, but she is so adorable you are all in and cheering for her all the way.

The Exiles

 This is another fabulous book written by Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train and A Piece of the World.   

This time she has created an amazing plot based on real life experience using fictional characters, but just as powerful.  When the young governess is discharged and sent to debtor's prison we see the worst side of British history.  Following this young girl who, through ignorance and naive trust, faces a life she could never have imagined, we learn about the prison system and unfairness to women in 1840s London.  

Evangeline has led a sheltered life, in a small village as the vicar's daughter.  When her father passes on, she is left to fend for herself at the young age of 20 years old.  She answers an advertisement for a nanny and heads out into the world of sophisticated London.  Wooed by the young gentleman of the house she is working in she is fooled into believing he has the same feelings for her she has developed for him.  When the lady of the house has her arrested and no one comes to her defense she is once again on her own but this time so much worse off.

At this time prisoners are being shipped to Australia to start a new British colony there.  After serving their prisons sentences working hard, people are able to start their lives there, building families and working.  We learn so much about "Van Diemen’s Land", a penal colony in Australia., which was populated for Britain by prisoners sent by boat to inhabit and start businesses and families there.  

Evangeline and the people she meets along the way, some are kind and helpful and some are mean and uncaring.  Some are just downright evil.  Sometimes life throws curves in your way and it is how prepared to deal with them and who assists you along the way that can make all the difference.

An incredibly well written and powerful plot that will stay with you long after you close the book.

So much history for us all still to learn.

What The Night Sings

This is listed as a Young Adult novel, written by Vesper Stamper.

This is a wonder story of what it was like after the war is over and the survivors are trying to rejoin the land of the living.  It is a story of the displaced persons camps that were created and the people who are living there.  How do you come to grips with your situation and learn to eat, accept life and love again.  A story of how we see ourselves and how we can remake ourselves.  If you have created an image of who you are and how you look to the world and then all that gets stripped away, how do you cope and recreate yourself?  The very idea that you can is the message of this novel.

I think so many of us come to a point in our early lives where we decide that we are going to be whatever profession we think is correct for us.  We pick a type of person we want to present to the outside and work to make that person walk in our shoes.  We think of a type of person we want as a mate and the kinds of friends we think are popular.  But what happens if somewhere along the way all that changes through no fault or thought of our own.  Then do we close down and give up or get up, dust ourselves off and recreate and redirect our energy in a new direction?

This is the story of Gerta Rausch, a young girl who grows up with her father and his friend Maria Buchner.  Maria is a diva, an opera singer who is teaching Gerta to sing even though she is technically too young to begin sining opera.  Gerta's father is a concert violist.  Gerta and father moved in with Maria when Gerta's mother died, though Gerta was so young she does not remember how.

Now the Nazis are taking over and Jews are slowly being driven away and have to identify with a yellow star on their clothing.  Gerta and her father go out of the house less and less often, but Gerta does not realize it is because they are Jewish.  When they are finally rounded up, she is confused.  She did not realize they were Jewish.  She is taken to the Theresienstadt camp first and plays her father's viola there.  Then later she is transferred to Auschwitz and plays the viola there so she is still alive when the camp is liberated.  

Now she is in her teens and alone in the world at the displaced persons camp trying to get healthy, and figure out how to move forward with her life.  This is a powerful novel with an incredible message.  Gerta shows the reader how to stay strong and determined in the face of adversity.  But along the way you need friends and support to really make it through.

Crossing The Lines

 Crossing The Lines is written by one of my favorite authors, Sulari Gentil.  I have been following her series about a Australian aristocrat, Roland Sinclair, who has given up society life to paint and spend time with his friends, Milton, Clyde and the woman he loves, Edna.  They are always solving a crime though in a very low key way that sometimes almost does not seem like a mystery nove but reads more like historical fiction.

This time, Gentil takes the mystery novel art to a whole new level of intrigue.  This time Gentil is writing a mystery about Madeleine, who is a mystery author writing a novel about her character Edward but the lines become blurred as fiction and fact becomes more unclear and Edward seems to talking to Madeleine.  Madeleine falls down the rabbit hole of not being sure what is real and what is imagined.

Gentil writes this world so well.  It is fascinating to see the how the two mystery novels intersect.  Also there are so many fabulous quotes about writing in general and writing mysteries.  

Gentil writes about the writing process, "And so the story is about...?  It's an exploration of an author's relationship with her protagonist, an examination of the tenuous line between belief and reality, imagination and self, and what happens when that line is crossed."

This is like a story within a story within a story and then sometimes you wonder if Gentil is not writing about herself and Rowland, mystery series protagonist.  Does she sometimes forget he is just a character and think that he has stepped off the page and joined her at the kitchen table?

A Bend in the Stars

Such a beautifully written novel.  Rachel Barenbaum has created a version of the world in Russia at the time of the eclipse  that is completely believable.  So many times while reading the book, I paused to double check a name or even the cover of the book to remind myself that it was all fiction and not really based on a real person of history.

This is a story of a young Russian Jew, who was working on the theory of relativity at the same that Einstein is developing his theory and Russia is on the brink of war.  Vanya and Miri are two Jewish siblings living with their grandmother after the death of their parents in an accident.  Their grandmother who escaped from Russian pogroms against Jews has brought these siblings up to watch their back and be wary at all times.  Now with the the start of the war in 1914, they are again up against prejudice and are hoping to escape to America. 

Vanya is studying the science of relativity at the University and realizes that he is close to beating Einstein if he can only get to see the eclipse first hand and have a photograph of the event.  With this information he has been invited to bring his family to Harvard to teach.  

Miri is also an exceptional student.  She has been given the education to become a doctor, something extremely unheard of in Russia in 1914.  When she realizes her brother's fate is in jeopardy as he travels to see the eclipse, she follows him to warn him.  

Vanya travels with Miri's fiancé and together they fight their way across the country.  Miri sets out to follow them with a wounded Jewish soldier to has escaped his unit.  There is intrigue as they defy the odds against soldiers and others willing to sell out a Jew for money.  There is romance and the race against the clock and time.  

While reading this terrific story you also learn about the science of the time, relativity and the bending of light and the science of time.  Telling time, clocks and how time is set.  Today we look at a clock and know that all across the world we are looking at the same time.  But then time could be off by minutes from place to place, country to country.  

The Glass Ocean

Though the ocean might have been like glass, the disturbance that came under the ocean was horrific.  This is a story based on the sinking of the Lusitania.  The Glass Ocean is a collaboration of three wonderful authors, Beatriz Williams, Lisa Wingate, and Karen White.  

I am not sure how much of this story is really based on fact, but the authors did say they referenced Erik Larson's Dead Wake when writing this novel. This is a fictionalized interpretation of that fateful journey.

In this novel we follow the story of Caroline Hochstetter and her inattentive husband, Gilbert as they board the ship for its ill-fated trip across the ocean from NYC to Liverpool.  Also on that boat is an old friend of Caroline's, Robert Langford, who has loved her for years.  There are three German spies caught as the ship sets sail and locked in the brig.  Word has it on board there could be more people willing to sabotage the trip for the German cause.  Gilbert has a treasured manuscript he is carrying to Britain, and he has many secret business meetings while on board.  Left to her own devices, Caroline, hurt and angry at her husband's abandonment, turns to Robert for comfort.  Two other women play an important part in this novel,  Ginny and Tess, sisters who are also on board for their own nefarious reasons.

To learn about the past we meet Sarah Blake, a young novelist who had a big bestseller, and now is looking for her next great novel.  The opening scene with her attending a book discussion group who have read her book for their monthly meeting is so well written and funny.  But she really needs a good story to write, so she takes a box out of the closet and discovers a relative that was on the Lusitania and starts to do her do diligence.  Her research leads her to England and the newly disgraced John Langford.  

Together they set out uncover what happened on that fateful trip across the ocean.

This is an entertaining romance both past and present that makes for fun reading.  You are definitely making guesses as you read of how you think it will turn out at the end and there are twists and turns that make you change your mind along the way, so that there was a surprise for me when I got to the end of the book.  

After reading Dead Wake myself, I do recognize some of the facts that were mentioned, but maybe some creative license was taken to create this story.

Mr. Penumbra's 24 hour Bookstore

 I have wanted to read this book for quite some time, but it always slipped to the bottom of my to read pile as new books kept coming out... So glad my book group picked it for this month's selection.  What a fun book.  It is entertaining and enjoyable for a quiet afternoon.  A perfect read for a bibliophile, or someone interested in the Fountain of Youth... a modern day version of searching for that Holy Grail that will help you live forever.  The descriptions of the characters that frequent the 24 hour bookstore are wonderful.  

This is the story of a young man who is out of work and out of ideas.  He was an online marketing director of a small bagel business that goes out of business.  He has been designing the advertisements.  Now he is unemployed in San Fransisco wondering what to do next with no real career path and no job prospects he walks into a small book shop with an advertisement int he window.

Hired by the odd little gentleman, for the overnight shift, he is unsure what kind of bookstore looks so cluttered and has no current bestsellers on the shelves. Also he is asked to write a detailed description of the customers who come in to exchange books wrapped in brown paper.  

As time goes by he becomes intrigued with the clients who frequent the shop late at night, they are an eccentric bunch.  He brings on his friends and a new hopeful relationship with a girl he meets from Google to help him discover the secrets of the bookstore.

His discoveries lead his group to uncover bigger secrets and threatened to change the world of all those who are faithful followers of Mr, Penumbra.

This book was much more entertaining than I thought it would turn out to be.  Even though there is a bit of fantasy and science fiction to the story I was enthralled to the very end.

The Mystery of Alice

 The Mystery of Alice, by Lee Bacon

I listened to this audio book and it is very cleverly written.  It is written as an audio diary of this young girl named Emily who is unhappy in her public school.  She is being bullied .  She gets an invitation to take a test and apply for a scholarship for an elite private school and she passes and goes off to the special school.  She meets her roommate who also is a scholarship student, Alice.  Then the mystery begins, Alice disappears.  Emily walks around recording her surroundings and conversations and also her own thoughts.  So you are listening to her in real time.  It is very well done because you also hear street noise as she is walking around the city, horns, other people passing her talking.  Good middle school story plot.

Though this is a clever technique for writing I am not sure how realistic it is.  Maybe by being so extreme that these plans can not really happen, it is readable with an important message but not real enough for others to imitate.  The message is clear bullying is not appropriate, funny or nice.  It is a serious offence.

Pages and Co. The Bookwanders

 This is the first book in a series of Pages and Co. novels written by Anna James.  The Bookwanders explains it all.  There is something special about reading a good book.  It is like you fall into the pages of the story and can get lost in the plot and become friends with the characters.  These days it is a wonderful way to escape from the reality of your living room or bedroom and felling like you have traveled somewhere else.

That is exactly what this book explores.  What would happen if this were not just your imagination that carries you away but you really could leave where you physically are and travel into the book you are reading.  Tilly Pages lives with her grandfather and grandmother following the disappearance of her mother when she was a baby, in the bookstore they run.  Now at the grand old age of ten, she is a lonely child who finds comfort in the books she loves.  Her favorite characters are Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland.  

One day those characters come alive and visit her in the bookstore.  She then begins to notice some other interesting visitors her grandparents are entertaining and when she and her new friend Oskar are pulled into the book in Green Gables with Anne they begin to learn what is the secret of the Pages bookstore and book traveling.  

Fun for kids who love books and even an adult who loves to read and imagine this could happen to them.

Exile Music

Music to my ears!  This is a beautiful symphonic novel written by Jennifer Steil, taking the reader through the lives a family who escapes the Holocaust to Bolivia in South America.  Again we are exposed to another piece of history that has not been exposed before. 

Divided into the movements in musical work of art, this novel follows the Zingel family from Vienna as Hitler is coming to power and then taking over Austria, in the slow moving first movement at a largo pace.   Told from the point of view of Orly the youngest member of the Zingel family,  born into a musical family in Vienna, living in a building owned by her grandparents, she from birth, is best friends with the upstairs neighbor, Annalise.  Though the parents are not close they all share the building and watching over the two girls.   But the differences become more apparent as the Nazi party comes into power and eventually the Night of Broken Glass changes everything.  

As Orly's parents, her father a violist with the Symphony and her mother, a treasured opera singer, realize that their music and popularity will not save them, they prepare to take their family out of Austria.  Leaving behind her older brother, Willi who will escape through the underground, they finally book passage to Bolivia, as Steil takes us into a crescendo building up to the boat passage out of Austria and their introduction to life in Bolivia.  Life was hard for the displaced Jews who were able to escape there during the war.  So the next section of the musical piece is more of an agitated pace, quickly changing direction as they jump from a full life of connection to a life of confusion, loss of language, loss of familiar foods and traditions.  

Orly has an easier time of adjusting than her parents and she embraces the new language and lifestyle. We follow her life as the years go by and she grows from a ten year old child to an adult woman.  So many incredible encounters and hardships happen to this family.  They all have to deal with the hard lifestyle of the mountains of Bolivia, foreign language, altitude sickness, different culture and finally the Nazis they were trying to escape.  All these experiences are representative of what really happened to people who went to South America.  Steil spent years interviewing the remaining survivors and their descendants to share their real life stories in this novel.   So this is a great book to read, to learn about a different perspective about a time and place in history.  

So now we have come to the conclusion of this powerful piece of literature and our musical concert. The tempo reaches its ending with a mezzo-forte, moderately loud passage, though it is still restrained in style.  Because exile can mean so many things.  Exile from your home, exile from your culture, exile from your friends.  Orly works to triumph over the tragedies of being exiled in so many ways.

The Mystery of the Three Quarters

Sophie Hannah has taken over writing the Hercule Poirot  mystery series from the legendary Agatha Christie.  This book is the third in the collection.  Another entertaining storyline that you cannot predict until the very end, when Poirot gathers all the suspects in a room and lays out the clues in order to lead you to the obvious explanation.

This time Poirot is drawn into the plot by four, it seems, random people who have received letters accusing them of murder.  The letters were allegedly written by Poirot, so each person comes to yell at Poirot for accusing them unjustly.  Inspector Crabtree is brought onto the case to assist Poirot to appease an important judge, whose son is one of the accused.  Each person has been told that they have been found out for the murder of Barnabas Pandy.  Hercules Poirot does not know who Pandy was and if he was murdered.  he does not know any of the letter recipients.  He can let this lie.  He must investigate who wrote the letters and if Pandy is dead, was it murder.  

Crabtree is now recounting the story to us, and explaining all the facts and clues that happened and giving us all the information as they learned it.  You, the reader, are piecing together all the facts and discarding all the superfluous information that is designed to throw you off target.  

But in the end after meeting so many characters and trying to digest so much, that when Poirot pulls out the piece of Church window cake one last time and divides into 4 squares and explains how the individual quarters are connected or not, you finally see the connections.

The Yellow Bird Sings

Beautifully written, this novel by Jennifer Rosner is another very moving story of the survival of Jews during the Holocaust.  The stories of people who survived that horrible time period in our collective history need to be recorded for the future generations.  This is a wonderful way to preserve the horror of the age, with the beauty of love and each person's experience written as a novel that makes the atrocities more bearable to read about.

The Yellow Bird Sings is the story that so many survivors tell from both  the mother and the child's perspective.  This story though a creation of the author's imagination combines some of these tales into a story from both the child's perspective and the parents's experience.  The camps and the crimes committed there are alluded to as the backdrop for this plot but in this novel we focus on a mother and her five year old daughter who have escaped as their family was killed in their small Polish town.

Now they are hiding in a barn for the night hoping that this man who had shopped in their family store will be kind to them when he finds them there.

Hidden in the hayloft days and nights turn into a year, as Roza and Shira stay hidden and silent. Communicating in whispers and made up sign language they spend their time together eating potatoes and other food scraps brought to them by the farmer, Henryk.  A few times when the rest of the family is away the wife, Krystyna, will take Shira out into the sunshine to see the chickens and the cow.  She will share some milk and an egg with her, but not for Roza.  

Shira has a secret pet bird who stays with her when she is happy and when she is scared.  "Shira's bird stays with her when Krystyna takes her out of the barn, and when the warning footsteps of the soldiers prompt Shira and her mother to bury themselves completely under the hay. When Shira is happy,..... he perches in the rafters or on a mound of hay nearby.  But when she is upset....he flies straight into her cupped hands."

When it becomes too dangerous to stay any longer, Krystyna offers to help get Shira to an orphanage. Roza fearing that she and her daughter cannot survive in the woods together through a cold harsh winter agrees.

Shira is taken without understanding what is happening to her to a catholic orphanage where the nuns rename her Zosia.  Her hair is dyed blond and she is taught her catechism.  But she is also introduced to the violin and her music ability is discovered.  though she is well treated by the nuns, as well fed as can be during a war and warm and dry, she misses her mother and is worried about forgetting her past.   But the music from her childhood comes through and reminds her of her Jewish background and family Shabbats.  these musical moments will be what saves her.

Roza, on the other hand, is out in the woods, surviving the elements, surviving on mushrooms and thistles that she cooks into soup, until she meets up with some other Jewish partisans hiding.  Life for her is hard and she misses Shira, and is always searching for her.  She is always conflicted with the question, did she do the correct thing sending her to the orphanage.  The rest of her life will be in search of her daughter.

This is a touching at times heartbreaking story from both sides.  There was good and evil but this story and so many others show, that in the end though, there are not always perfect endings there can be happiness, kindness and love.  People did help others, some more altruistically than others.  Each story is unique and incredible.  

South Pole Station

This novel written by Ashley Shelby caught my eye on the bookshelf because I do love reading books that take me places I have never been.  I have been fascinated with the idea of traveling to the South Pole forever.  My elementary school was named for Admiral Richard E Byrd, the famous explorer who is credited with discovering Mount Sidney on Antarctic.  So even as a child I was curious about the Poles.  I also spent some time studying the South Pole and was interested in the idea that so many countries can do research there and working cooperatively.  I wanted to go there and film a documentary about the tiny fish called krill that are specific to the Antarctic waters. Just a few reasons this book caught my eye and had to come home with me.

I just keep wondering if this is really what it would be like to live at the South Pole Scientific station... would I be able to survive it?  Probably not ...so darn cold and you are so bundled up, but it sounds beautiful in this interesting novel about a twin who loses her brother, who as children they played fantasy games about being South Pole explorers.. so she want to go to the place he loved to sort of mourn his death.  She discovers her artistic talent and who she really is as she struggles to become a part of the scientists, Beakers, and the Nailheads, workers at the Science station.

Cooper Gosling is applying for a grant for the Science Foundation's Antarctica  Artists and Writers grant to go unfreeze her drawing career on the South Pole.  She has been stuck since her brother's death.  She grew up with a father who was obsessed with the Pole and its explorers and she and her brother grew up pretending they were famous explorers.  She is really very prepared for this journey.

At the psychological test they are not quite sure but Tucker the leader of the mission recognized  something in her that he saw in himself and gives her the chance.  Tucker tells her, "It's not running from something. It's turning aside.  Or looking askance.  Looking askance at civilization.  IF you apply to go to the Pole because it seems 'cool' or because you are looking for 'adventure', then you'll crack up when you  realize it's not a frat party.  If you don't fit in anywhere else, you will work your ass off for us. .."

But of course after going through some hard times, trials and tribulations, Cooper becomes a member of the team.  She is ready to winter over, and is on the way to healing herself and recovering her artistic talent.  Also this is not just a fluffy warm story, there is a climate change denier who raises his ugly head and challenges the scientists who are studying weather at the South Pole.  This creates tension and drama at the International Station and between the characters in the book.  This takes place in 2003 - 4 and things have developed since then but it gives the reader pause.

This was a great novel with an entertaining plot and may even change or at least question my views on climate change...

The Forgers

Written by Bradford Morrow, I finally read The Forgers.  This is the story of a forger of signatures and famous authors from our past.  Writers like Edgar Allen Poe and Nathanial Hawthorne whose first edition writings are worth a tidy sum.  Buying these books, altering them with signatures and dedications that are not original and reselling them for even more money.  It is a dangerous way to make a living.

This plot follows the murder of Adam Diehl who was found with his hands cut off and dies later in the hospital without being able to tell anyone what happened.  His house has been vandalized and valuable inscribed books and original manuscripts are destroyed.  

His sister, Meghan, who owns a book shop has fallen in love with a forger, Will and together as we listen to the story unfolds from Will's point of view.   We learn how Will, after being caught forging, has given up the career he actually loved and is going on the straight and narrow.  He marries Meg and they move to Ireland.

But sometimes you have to be careful because the greed and the need to be the best can get out of hand.

When one forger falls in love with a book store owner and needs to give up his trade, it can be difficult to really put away your calligraphy pen and inks.

With a few good plot twists and turns you see just as life seems to be perfect,  Will begins receiving threatening handwritten letters, seemingly penned by long-dead authors, but really from someone who knows secrets about Adam's death and Will's past.  

With Meg now pregnant he understands his own life is also on the line-just as he is attempting to forge a new beginning for himself and Meg.  And now surprisingly there is a new follow up to this book.  

So I will be reading about The Forger's Daughter next,

The Imperfects. by Amy Meyerson

What an entertaining book.  When you are sitting home during a pandemic and little annoyances get you and the other members in your household snapping at each other, this is a good book to be reading.

This novel will remind you that all families have some level of dysfunctional behavior happening in them.  If you are lucky you will feel like your family is not really all that bad.  Or maybe you will just be able to relate to the frustrating behavior of these siblings and their mother.

The plot of this novel centers around three siblings and their mostly absent mother.  She was never around when they were growing up and they were left with their grandmother, Helen Auerbach.  Now they are all grown and living in different parts of the country pursing different lives, not speaking to each other.  They have not seen their mother in a few years, since an unpleasant get together which ending in fight.

The first plot twist is that now their grandmother has died and in her will she brings them all back to the  last family home where they lived with Helen. One of the last requests she specifies that they should all sit shiva together.   At the end of the week when the will is read, the house has been left to Deborah, Helen's daughter and the kids mother.  The assets are to be divided between the three children, Ashley, the eldest, married with two children, Jake the middle son, unemployed movie writer, and Beck, the youngest, a paralegal.  Each of these adult children are in some form of financial trouble and personal disgrace.

Their personal lives are in turmoil.  

Beck gets one more special gift from her grandmother, the Florence diamond.  The diamond is set in an old style brooch.  But it turns out to be worth a fortune.  Can the three siblings work together with their mother to find out how Helen came to be in possession of this heirloom and if they really have a claim to own it.  

We follow each of these characters progressing toward the truth about how Helen escaped the Holocaust and what happened to her family.  Researching the valuable diamond and how it came into Helen's possession.  Along the way they each learn something about themselves and are growing up as they move closer to the truth about their grandmother.

This book is fast paced, intriguing and brings together the collapse of the Austrian government government with the Holocaust.  Just touching on the history to give the reader something new to learn and keeping the story light and easy to follow with a good twist at the end.

Make It Concrete

I listened to author Miyram Sivan talk about her newest release the novel, Make It Concrete, and I developed a great appreciation for the story.  I think discussing this with a group would also be a wonderful way to really bring out all the nuances and deeper meaning of the plot, the title and connect readers to the characters.  I have long been consumed with an appreciation and interest in reading Holocaust fiction and memoirs.  Though I have not found myself feeling oppressed by these stories, I can see where it could eventually take a toll emotionally on an author or even a reader.

This is a novel with many layers to uncover. To read it on the surface is to miss the complexity involved.  On the surface this is the story of a woman searching for happiness and meaning in her life.  She is a divorced mother of three children living in Israel.  Isabel Toledo is a descendant of Spanish Jewry.  Even though she makes Aliyah, moving to Israel to marry her Israeli husband and raise her children there, she would not give up her name and connection to her past.  Her father's family can trace its lineage back to the expulsion from Spain in 1492.  Her mother, Suri, is a Polish Holocaust survivor who does not want to talk about her experience during the war.

Though Isabel asks her mother questions about her past, Suri always puts off the discussion, which has left Isabel frustrated and unfulfilled for years. "Isabel, sweetheart, life is beautiful, live it, and leave the dead alone. Suri took a delicate sip of wine.  Her eyes looked up from the rim of her wine glass and met Isabel's. They told her flat out to mind her own business. The same message she had been receiving for the past thirty years."  These pent up, confusing feelings have led her to leave the United States to live in Israel and work with Holocaust survivors, preserving their stories.

Now living with her youngest child, a seven year old son and her oldest daughter home from the army, she is struggling still with feeling like an outsider in Israel, never a true Sabra always an American ex-pat.  Her middle daughter, serving in the Army now, tells her mother she is being transferred. When Isabel expresses her concern the girls laugh. Isabel realizes she will never fit in.  "Times like these reminded Isabel of how little she knew of this country.  And its army.  Even after all these years she got it wrong.  Even after all these years she was an American outsider."

Telling the stories of Holocaust survivors, Isabel as the ghostwriter, telling other peoples stories, one after the other for a demanding publisher in NY.  She has written many books for him but this current book is becoming hard to finish. Isabel tells Emanuel, "Jaim Benjamins's book is just hard.  Feels like iron chains are attached to the sentences." The survivor, Jaim Benjamin is a Greek Jew of Sephardic heritage like her father and it is disconcerting to her.   This story seems to be more personal than the others, reminding her that her own mother has never told her story.  It becomes harder and harder for Isabel to finish this manuscript.  Taking on the burden of listening and sharing the Holocaust memoirs is getting more and more difficult.  She is starting to see demons wherever she looks.

To try and find some peace, Isabel has multiple relationships.  There is the serious boyfriend, who is pushing to make the relationship more permanent.  But Isabel cannot commit yet because she also  has a young lover who she visits at construction sites and another man, on the side, she visits when in Prague.  This was the one area of the book I found a bit unrealistic, at least based on my own feelings and relationships.  I found it hard to  believe a woman would be so sexually active, without commitment.  Isabel is looking for a way to avoid the demons in her head, but even with these affairs she cannot get rid of them.

Isabel loves to watch the concrete pours at construction sites.  "Isabel purred with excitement.  The masonry crew stepped forward to meet the mixers.  After twenty minutes of prep, concrete began to flow from the drums.  A metal pipe held high by a brontosaurus-like crane swallowed it and channeled it to a thick rubber hose. Isabel rocked with anticipation. The head of the crew seized the hose and used all the weight and force of his body to control the heavy surge of grey lava that rushed out of the bucking black hose."

Each of her relationships is similar to concrete, it starts off as a liquid and pours into a foundation that then becomes either strong and permanent or the cracks and defects appear and start to break it apart. There is even a sensuality to the descriptions of the concrete pours and how concrete is described in the book.   Isabel is afraid to commit to Emanuel, who wants to marry her and offers permanence and stability.  She is unsure about her young construction worker, because he is younger than she is and deserves to find true love and start his own family.  She also picks up men while traveling for one night stands.  But the cracks are developing and the weakness of the concrete is starting to show.

The reader will enjoy Sivan's wonderful prose and descriptions of Israeli locations as they follow the characters and encourage the ones you have become attached to to succeed.

The Bishop's Bedroom / by Piero Chiara ; translated from the Italian by Jill Foulston.

The Bishop's Bedroom, was a short but interesting book.

We meet a young sailor as disembarks from his sailboat at the dock.  An older gentleman is waiting on the pier for him and strikes up a conversation, inviting the young man for drinks.  They find out that they have both returned from war and are at loose ends trying to get their lives back in order.

The young man has been sailing up and down the lake visiting woman along the way before he decides to get a job and settle down.  The older man invites him to his home up the hill where he lives with his wife and beautiful widowed sister-in-law.  The young man is intrigued with the tranquility of the lake side mansion and gets caught up in the mysteries that surround the owners and their servants.

As a friendship seems to develop the two men take to sailing expeditions around the lake.  When they are at the house, the young man sleeps int he bishop's room, a relative of the wife.  Things start to become more mysterious as a tragedy strikes and the young man begins to realize how little he really knows about his hosts.

This is a physiological thriller with exquisite taste, a study of desire, greed and deception.

AC

AC, short for Atlantic City, is a mystery novel written by Alan Lieberman.  The author is a friend of a very good friend of mine, so when he recommended the book I jumped right in.  But I must say that because of the current situation with Black Lives Matter and all the recognition of inherent racism in this country I had trouble enjoying this book and I find it hard to recommend it to others.

I  understand totally that the author is trying to write with a flavor that reflects the time period he is writing about.  I understand completely that that may have been the way people of a certain social and economic group spoke in the '60s and '70s and that he is setting an atmosphere and creating the characters that would be realistic to that situation, but it is still very uncomfortable to read now.

I grew up in Northern New Jersey, we visited relatives in Atlantic City every spring and summer.
I loved driving to Atlantic City and the smell of brackish water as you came over the last bridge that said you had arrived at your destination.  We would walk along the boardwalk and visit Mr Peanut, James Salt Water Taffy, Nathans and the Steel Pier.  We would watch the rolling chairs and rent bicycles to ride.  We would see the Jitneys and visit the Knife and Fork and Hackneys, our favorite restaurants. 

As yo can see I have wonderful fond memories of Atlantic City and was very sad to see it change into the casino capitol of NJ.  So I guess was Alan Lieberman.  This book is all about growing up on the boards and on the streets made famous by the game of Monopoly and what happened when the crime families and other greedy politicians took over and ruined a beautiful seaside city with racketeering .

This is a mystery about a young man named Jake Harris who falls in love with the sister of the gang leader, Michelle.  Her brother Joey Nardo is the leader of the pack of guys they spend their summer nights with.  As they all grow up and follow different paths, with Joey now in jail and Jake a local police detective, and other members of the gang part of the corruption that is happening to Atlantic City.  When an old murder is uncovered while excavating for a new hotel, Jake starts to uncover some the secrets from his last summer before going to college. 

This is a coming of age story about true love and also about who has your back and who you need to protect.  So if you can get past some of the rough speech and want a trip down memory lane or want to learn a little about what happened to Atlantic City... read this book.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson, as any good book will do, has opened my eyes yet again to a subject I had never even heard of.  The book brings to life all the prejudice that people have about things they just don't understand.  It never has to make sense or have any basis in reality, people seem to just be afraid of things without explanation.

It is a delightful novel on its own merits, but coming out at this point with everything that is happening in the United States, it is so much more poignant.   It is also fascinating that there really were people living in Kentucky with blue skin color, that was inherited from generation to generation and it turned out to be a medical phenomenon. 

The story line follows a young woman named Cussy Mary, who lives with her father in the rural mountains of Kentucky.  Their family has been living there for generations and in each generation there are people who skin is colored blue.  Cussy Mary, also nicknamed Bluet, has been told she is the last in long line of blue skinned people in her family.  They are miners by trade, and discriminated against just as are the people with black skin color.  But Cussy Mary knows how to read and write which gives her a chance to step out of the life she was born into.  She is finds a way to get an impressive position as a traveling librarian, so now she becomes known around the county as Book Woman.  She travels by mule throughout the area, miles a day, delivery books and magazines to people to read.  She creates friendships and helps people as she goes from farmstead to home along her very rustic route.  The book describes the area and the people beautifully. It also creates the atmosphere and the feelings of the people vividly. 

This novel really makes you think about what you have and do not.  All of us have probably wished for something we see in other people and envied.  In the end if we have received it, the thing or the new look does not usually give us the satisfaction we would have thought.  In a way, that is what Cussy finds, happiness though fragile is about living your best life, being your best self. 

The Murder List

The Murder List is a new book out by Hank Phillippi Ryan.  Ryan is a long time news reporter in the Boston market and has written many mystery novels and won many awards both for her TV career and for her writing.

I have read some of her books in the past, but must admit I never became a big fan of her characters or her mystery novels.  But I was asked to read this new stand alone book for a discussion group. 

It is a fun entertaining plot, with all the good details of this new mystery genre, the psychological thriller twist.  Like the first in this genre, Gone Girl, you are led down the garden path, thinking you are headed in the correct direction to figure out who killed the young girl from the office, but you always wonder, "are you being led astray?"     Now there have been so many that I began to realize that there was going to be a twist at the end and I knew we were heading the direction of The Girl on the Train or The Silent Patient.  All books that follow this new formula.


This is the story that is based on the kind of experiences Ryan knows first hand, set in the Boston State House, situated in the neighborhoods and streets of Back Bay, Boston. 

Rachel has left her job at the State House and gone back to law school.  She is married to a top Boston, defense attorney, Jack Kirkland and is going to intern for his arch nemesis, Martha Gardiner, the top prosecutor for the state.  The story starts as Rachel is working during the summer as Martha's intern and the case they are assigned to is an old unsolved case that may have new evidence coming to light.  As we watch the current story unfolds Rachel and Jack also have some chapters of flashback experiences, that lead us up to and converge with present day events.

Well told and creative, Ryan does keep you in suspense until the end.  Though I thought I knew what was coming there was a satisfying ending to the book.  Those in the book group who had not read other books like this were completely surprised at the end.  I enjoyed this Hank Phillippi Ryan novel.

A Ceiling Made of Eggshells

A Ceiling Made of Eggshells evokes such a clear, powerful image.  The thought of an off white ceiling above you with many tiny cracks, that is so fragile and thin the light seeps through.  When it was whole it protected the egg inside, but also was easily penetrated.  All these thoughts run through your mind even before you have cracked the binding of this new book by the wonderful author, Gail Carson Levine.

Levine who brought us so many pre-teen fiction favorites like The Princess Tales series and Ella Enchanted and Dave At Night, now looks to the Spanish Inquisition and using historical accuracy weaves a tale of life in Spain for Jews leading up to the Expulsion in 1492. 

Paloma is the main character in this book and we see the world through her eyes.  She is a young girl living in the juderia of Alcala de Henares, Spain.  Loma as she is known in her large family is only 12 years old when her beloved grandmother dies and as she reminds her grandfather of his lost wife, she becomes his favorite.  Belo, grandfather, or Don Joseph as he is known to the many people he collects taxes from and to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella , who he works to befriend when he delivers the taxes, brings Loma along with him as he travels.  Don Joseph along with a few other important men in the Jewish quarter are working to keep the Jewish people safe.  They offer bribes and placate the royal family to protect the families around them.

Loma is watching and learning.  The reader is also learning along with Loma the very dangers that face the Jewish people living in Spain at this time in history.  The Inquisition is gearing up slowly and at first just seems to be a nuisance that can be lived with.  But slowly it increases its tentacles and tries to draw in more and more people.  There are the Old Cristians and the New Christians and the Jews.  There is always pressure and danger.  Loma grows up as we follow her traveling with her Belo across Spain and even when she is threatened or in life threatening situations she remains brave and always thinking quickly on her feet.

An interesting, captivating plot that will appeal to all readers who are interested in learning more about the Spanish Inquisition .

On Division

Goldie Goldbloom has written a positive and comforting novel about the Chasidic community. 
On Division gives the reader a view into this closed Williamsburg community, showing both positive and unpleasant sides.  The reader can take away their own view in the end,  but this is a book that wants to give the reader a change to appreciate how people who live in these kinds of communities and stay there are feeling.

In most of the books that come out about the very religious Jewish sects, the stories are about how these authors do not fit in and have left their families behind to find a new life in the secular world.
In this novel, that is written by a Chasidic woman who stays and works from within the Jewish religious world, we see a different perspective .

Suri is a mother, grandmother and is about to become a great-grandmother.  She has gone through menopause and even is a breast cancer survivor.  Her family has been a pillar in the community until the tragic death of her oldest son.  Now when her latest daughter got married Suri feels the match was not as prestigious, that their standing the community has been lessened.  If people were to find she was pregnant what would happen to their standing int he community then?  She is also worried about what her family will think so she starts to keep it a secret from everyone including her husband. 

She goes to the midwife and is convinced to start regular weekly visits to the hospital for checkups for health reasons. These she does in secret.  She gets more and more involved in working with midwife to help other pregnant women coming to the hospital clinic. As the secret is kept and more secrets are kept,  Suri starts to feel the power of having these parts of her that other people do not know about her.  She also begins to understand how her son felt, that as a young gay man in a community that was not accepting of homosexuality, he was keeping a secret that hurt. 
Suri realizes that she did not help her son enough.  She finds a way int he end to come to peace with what happened and know that if she could have it to do over she would do things differently.

Suri comes to the realization that she is apart of the Chasidic life and she can see both the pros and cons of that life, but that it is the place she is comfortable.   She invites the midwife to come to her home for a Purim celebration.  Val the midwife is uncomfortable with all the noise and chaos.  She is upset by the fact that everything in this Jewish home revolves around marriage and children.  She wants to know why Suri doesn't want more of life for herself or for her daughters and granddaughters.  Suri explains to her,  "What else is there? The whole life of a Jew is devoted to family.  There is no end to that cycle.  Think of Dead Onyo, in another community she would be in a nursing home, alone.  No one would know that she makes excellent poppy-seed jam.  Instead, here, she is loved.  Her great-grandchildren sit in her lap every day.  She will never be moved to a nursing home because there will always be someone to rake care of her."

In the end isn't that what all of us want?  To  be loved and cared for and never alone?  There is something to be said in favor of some of the rules that govern the Chasidic and other Orthodox sects of Judaism.  This book helps point out that it is not all black and white.  There are so many shades of gray, that there are good parts and restrictive parts to every experience in life.  We all have to choose where on the spectrum we are most comfortable living.

The Matzo Ball Heiress

The Matzo Ball Heiress, written by Lauren Gwen Shapiro is a fun light fully story about Heather Greenblotz, the heiress to the Greenblotz family fortune and part owner of the number one selling matzo company, under the family name.  She shares the running of the company with her cousins, the third generation of Greenblotz to control the company started by their grandfather Izzy.

Of course Passover is upon us as the story begins and Heather has been recruited to take a news reporter on a tour of the matzo factory.  As she guides the reporter, Steve Myers and his crew through the factory she is thinking of how she can impress Steve and Jared the cameraman with her own film experience and whether she finds either of them attractive.  This becomes a romantic plot with a bit of tension as Heather first goes on a date with Steve and then finding him narcissistic finds Jared much more likable. 

Steve it turns out is interested in using Greenblotz matzo and the Greenblotz family to further his career.  He offers to film the Greenblotz seder asa publicity move for the company and a career move for himself.  Of course the family agrees even though all the members of the family have been estranged for years and have not held a family seder in all that time.  It is a family secret that threatens to come out and possibly ruin the business.  Who wants to buy Passover food from a family that does not know how to throw their own seder.

As the plot thickens characters are developed who interact with Heather and her cousin Jake, who will be called on to participate in a seder.  We learn who is Jewish and who is not.  Who is religious and who has no knowledge about the religion they were born into.  There is fun dialog about Judaism and references to social and religious topics. There are definitely stereotypical statements and misconceptions about Kashrut and other Jewish symbols and people. 

In all it is entertaining and humorous ... not offending, but reminiscent of an earlier time...

I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti

I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti , written by Giulia Melucci is a fun entertaining book for a sunny afternoon.  Then go into the kitchen and cook up all the recipes in the book.

Wha a fun entertaining book to read and I marked so many fo the recipes that scattered throughout the book.

This is a food memoir.  Melucci goes through her adult life chronicling her social life.  The men she has dated and the even eventually the single women get togethers.  With each boyfriend she talks about their relationship and the role food plays in the relationship.  Each date involves at least a dinner.  Some of the relationships last for a while and then more meals are described.

The recipes look easy and delicious.  It is hard to image any of the relationships not working out when there is so much delicious food being shared.  One of the boyfriends that lasts three years she thinks is just based on their common interest in food.  Most of their conversations and entertainment revolve around meals, the discussion of menus, the shopping for ingredients, the cooking and eating of the meal.  In the end even that connection is not enough for marriage.

I have earmarked many of the pages in the hopes that someday soon I will make some of these recipes.  Luckily I know that my husband did not marry me for my cooking, so however they turn out I will still have my husband asleep next to me every night.

Some of the fun recipe titles are; Pear Cake for Friends with Benefits, First Date Butterflies,  and Morning After Pumpkin Bread.

Lift and Separate

Clever, funny and entertaining, Lift and Separate, by Marilyn Simon Rothstein.   This is such a fun light novel about as woman who is on the precipice of her new life, as her husband throws a match to their marriage.  Marcy is facing herself in the mirror as she reevaluates the importance of marriage and the years she devoted to her husband and children ignoring her own desires.  Now as her husband betrays her, having an affair with a young woman, Marcy must decide whether to take him back or move forward without him.

There are so many experiences in this book any woman  and especially mothers can relate to.  One is the feelings is the empty nest when your children have all grown and off living their own lives.  It is hard to accept that they will not be home for dinner or dropping by to visit.  You keep thinking of them as you shop for groceries.  Marcy explains what happens when she is reminded that the kids are gone, "True, but I tend to forget that.  I enjoyed their growing up so much that even though I know they're adults, I cling to whatever I can.  Besides, it's tough to think about only yourself when you've spent your whole life thinking about everybody else.  Until a few weeks ago, I still went to the supermarket and bought their favorite things.  But I have to say, I'm trying to get over that. I restrict myself to the ten-items of less checkout."

Married at a young age to her first boyfriend, Harvey, Marcy has been married longer than she was single.  She has devoted her life to being Harvey's wife and making him look good in his business.  He is head of a global brassiere empire, working to out do Victoria's Secret.  He can tell what size and design bra would be best on any woman just by looking at her.  He brings home every new design in Marcy's size.  She has so many bras she will never be able to wear them all.

When Harvey admits that he had a short term affair she throws him out.  Then she starts to work through how to move on with the help of her friend, Dana.  Then her mother has a fall and ends up in the hospital. There she runs into an old acquaintance, Candy, whose father is also in the hospital.
Marcy and Candy build strong friendship as they lean on each other through their parent's slow decline.

Candy also has a marriage that is in trouble.  Dana is on her third marriage.  This book takes a long hard look at relationships, trust and dependence.  It also in a funny lighthearted way looks at independence, and resolve. 

The Guest Book

Author Sarah Blake has developed into a wonderful writer with new book, building on her success and further developing the world of World War II Europe and post war United States.

I read her first novel The Postmistress and found it interesting and entertaining.  A great book group discussion followed.  People either loved or disliked the book.  There were strong feelings about individual characters.  We agreed that most interesting character was the young woman, American radio gal Frankie Bard is working with Edward R. Murrow, who has traveled to Europe as a young journalist to find and share the news happening during the Blitz with the United States.  She finds out so much more than she expected.

Now we move to Blake's newest book, The Guest Book.  With a start during the War and a main character, Ogden Milton traveling to Germany for business during the war.  He and his young bride Kitty are part of the wealthy old money class in America. They are starting out life with their young children in New York City.  After a family tragedy, Ogden takes the family on a trip to Maine.  There  they discover an island for sale and purchase it as the family compound.  Every summer they leave the heat of the City and travel to their island in Maine.

The book covers the generations of Miltons as they grow, marry have children, then grandchildren always following the tradition of WASP customs to keep secrets and shrouding tragedy in silence.

They spend their summers with family gatherings living a life of privilege eating lobsters, swimming and boating.  Each generation holding their secrets until Kitty's grandchildren are faced with financial debt and a house that needs major repairs.  Evie,  Kitty's granddaughter who has spent her life as an historian is having trouble letting go of the house and begins to realize there are some family secrets that need to be uncovered.  She needs to find out the truth before she can let go of the Maine house and the past.

This novel weaves it way through time from pre war Germany through the war, into the 1950s as the world is changing each generation brings new ideas with it.  As Kitty's son Moss grows into adulthood, he wants something different the gold spoon.  He does not want to go into the family business and he feels called to be an artist, write music that has the beat of a changing time.  He meets with a young black man who is also ready to challenge the status quo and they talk over drinks in a bar in New York.  As they sit at a table a black man and a white man, in a room full of dockworkers, writers, and "cool cats", he explains, that things are changing, "The room, man.  Us in the room." Moss leaned toward him.  "Here we are, talking. All of us in the same room, unimaginable to my parents, my grandparents.  But we are here now.  New notes."

This is a long volume with many characters.  I looked for a family tree on the inside cover numerous times.  Working to keep them all straight is a challenge but it is worth it.   The book explores so many topics, love, loss, family dynamics, prejudice and desire.
This is one of those sweeping sagas that pulls you in and keeps you engaged until the very end.
Sarah Blake has found her stride and I look forward to following for a while.