Between the Lions

 This is a fascinating novel about the New York City Public Library.  It seems to be based on some real facts but is a novel with all fictional characters and a very intriguing plot.  Starting with the interesting tidbit that the two lions that stand perched outside on the sides of the steps leading into the library are Patience and Fortitude.

The characters of Laura Lyon and her husband and two children are fictional.  They live in an apartment hidden in the NYC Library.  There really seems to have been an apartment there at one time where the superintendent for the library lived.  But the story of the Lyons family and what happened at the library is all in Fiona Davis' mind.

Using her imagination to create a family who could have lived there. Fiona Davis builds beautifully on the idea of women's rights and changing times in America to create this novel.  We meet the Lyons family, husband, wife and two children as they are moving into the apartment in the New York City Library on Fifth Avenue.  Her family was against this marriage from the beginning because her husband really want s to be a writer.  He is working on his first novel, while working as the caretaker of the library. Laura is taking care of the children, but is starting to feel like she wants a career of her own.  She is accepted to NYU and is one of first four women in the journalism class of 1913.  As she is covering stories to practice her news reporting skills, she meet Amanda, a doctor helping low income women with their health needs.

Laura discovers the Heterodoxy Club—a radical, all-female group in which women are encouraged to loudly share their opinions on suffrage, birth control, and women’s rights.  For the first time she is questioning her traditional role as a wife and mother and is looking to take on this new persona.

When tragedy starts to invade her family life she realizes that she may have made a mistake and that she really cannot have it all.  There is a cost to happiness and self gratification.  

Eighty years later,  Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, the famous essayist Laura Lyons.  Sadie has landed her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library.  She is in charge of displaying a retrospective of the life of Laura Lyons.  As Sadie finds out more and more about her grandmother she is unsure she wants the people she works with to know they are related.  Then when a similar tragedy strikes the library, Sadie needs to solve the eighty year old puzzle and fix the wrongs of the past and the present.

A wonderful novel to sink your teeth into and stay up late reading.

Ghost Ups Her Game

 Fun light cute cozy mystery.  This is the 65th book Carolyn Hart has written.  She is prolific.  She writes three different mystery series and a few stand alone novels.  Hart has won many awards.

Mystery series about a ghost who comes back to her home town after death to help people there.

This is the newest book in the series and though the story stands on its own it would be nice to have some background information written into the story to let a new reader better understand the reason she is doing what she does.  Otherwise, though obviously impossible, reading a story about a ghost who can dress up in whatever fashionable outfit she wants to by just thinking about it and be seen or not seen on demand is an entertaining way to spend an afternoon.

Our book discussion group felt this was entertaining but not really that well written.  There is no context to give a new reader some background on at least the main character, Bailey Ruth, now a ghost.  How did she get there, who was she before she went to heaven?  She works foe the good works department in heaven and is returned to earth to help people in trouble.  So int his book she comes back to her Oklahoma town to help a woman accused of murder.  When Bailey Ruth walks into the room to see the woman with the murder weapon in her hand , Bailey Ruth knows the woman is innocent, and works to make sure the police find the true criminal.

Not sure I will go back to start this series and catch up ..there are too many other mysteries to devour.

We Love Anderson Cooper

 Also by R.L. Maizes is the book of short stories, We Love Anderson Cooper.  How many times do we feel we do not fit in?   This is a collection of stories about outsiders.  In the title story a young boy who wants to announce his sexual identity to parents and does not know how, so he uses his Bar Mitzvah speech to explain.  In a story entitled "Tattoo", a painter with no tattoos finds a job inking people in a tattoo parlor and is sought after for his artwork.  These stories are about the irony of life.

This is also a powerful and insightful book .  It will also leave you thinking about the topic raised long after you close the cover.

Other People's Pets

 R.L. Maizes has written an extraordinary plot for her slim novel, Other People's Pets.  We all have parents and some of us also have raised children.  The novel explores the feelings a child has for their parents and how those relationships shape our lives.  Close or distant, loving or abusive, the interactions between parents and children are influential in the adults we become.  This novel explores how far a child will go to connect with a parent and how much the child will risk for the parent they love.

La La grew up with her father, after her mother abandoned them.  Her father, a locksmith by trade, to cover a more sinister career, raises La La and teaches her the tricks of the trade.  It was an unusual childhood.  She had no friends or social life outside her home.  

Now an adult on the verge of having it all, a degree in veterinary medicine, a fiancé and a job, it all is on the brink of collapse when her father gets into trouble.  La La has to decide should she risk all her independence and autonomy to help her father or stay the course and move on with her life.  This is the moment every parent awaits; is their child there for them or is the fissure too large to repair.  For La La helping her father means giving up finishing her degree program and trying to raise enough money to bail him out.  La La tests the family she has created, the support group around her to see if it is stronger than the family she was born into.  

There is also La La's connection to animals.  She is an animal empath, able to feel what an animal is feeling.  "She felt the aching belly of the dog who ate a sock and the broken leg of the cat that tumbled from a window, and a rabbit with a respiratory infection made her wheeze."  La La cannot help helping the animals she encounters.  Her pet dogs are a comfort to her as she struggles with how to balance the past and not destroy her future.

Maizes books are beautifully written and disturbing at times with incredible messages and insights.  But in the end, there is so much to think about it will still be with you long after you put them down.  The ideas and concepts will stay with you and keep you thinking and rethinking about them as you move through your day.

The Lost and Found Bookshop

 Pulled out this book from the bottom of my pile for some lighter reading.  It turns out to be a very entertaining novel but also has some very interesting topics to take a deep dive into.  Author Susan Wiggs has written a great book for book lovers.  She references many different books and authors as she writes about a local independent book store.

Natalie is faced with so many challenges at the same time she is not sure which way to turn and the person she would go to for answers is gone.  As Natalie is realizing that the job she thought was so important to her is not really fulfilling and as she gets a promotion to the corner office she thought would make her happy.

Then tragedy hits and she heads home to San Francisco to the bookstore she grew up in with her mother, Blythe and her Grandfather, Andrew.  She wants to help rescue the building and the business to honor her mother and help her grandfather.  Along the way she meets Peach Gallagher, a workman with his own relationship troubles and Trevor Dashwood, who is, as his name implies a dashing, popular, children's author who can help save the store.  

A building that is one of the few remaining in San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.  As Peach starts fixing the plumbing leaks and crumbling walls he finds secrets the building has been hiding for years.

So reading this fun romance you are introduced relationship problems, people who are afraid of being vulnerable and open to love.  Also many of the artifacts found in the building bring up various historical memories of the minority behaviors in the United States from the past.  

The novel never gets really into any of the topics it touches, but brings them up and leaves room for the reader to examine these topics in their book discussions.

The Book of Lost Names

 The Book of Lost Names is another fabulous accounting of what happened to children during the Holocaust, those who saved them and their desire for the children's identities not be forgotten.

We follow Eva and her mother as they escape from Paris to the countryside after Paris is invaded by Germany.  Though her parents felt they were safe and protected living in Paris, as the Germans close in Eva's father is taken away from their home.  Eva promises him she will take care of her mother.  

Using her knowledge learned from her father who was a typewriter repairman, she is able to help the resistance in assisting children and others to escape across the French border.  She keeps herself busy working with the resistance movement in this small town as she and her mother wait to also cross the border.   Creating new passports and papers for many children who are traveling without their parents to safety.  She meets and works with Remy who is also experienced in forgery.  They work in the local church together helping others.  In an effort to make sure the children's original identities are not lost they create a code that they use in the the church bible to save the names of the children who they are renaming so that when the war ends they will be able to reconnect them with their families.

So many years later, Eva is living in Florida, not knowing what became of Remy and never assuming the church bible of names still exists when she sees an article in the newspaper.  

The story is told in reverse order, meeting Eva in current day and then traveling back with her in her memory of the war time.  The end is a bit unreal, but satisfying none the less.

Dear Mrs. Bird

 Dear Mrs Bird is a delightful, entertaining novel.  Taking place in a much innocent time,  Mrs Bird follows the newspaper advice columns that have always been so popular .  This book is described as charming and I will agree.  It is a light entertaining novel with a little turn in the path that I thought we were heading down.  

Taking us back to the 1930s in London, we meet Emmeline and her friend Bunty.  Two young ladies off to live on their own and start careers and marriages in a world turned upside down by the war.  They take up residence in the upper floors of Bunty's grandmother's building and find jobs to help the war effort.   They have to learn to dodge the bombs and move on as life throws them curve balls along the way.  

Emmeline has dreams of becoming a war correspondent and answers an advertisement in a newspaper office. It turns out she will just be typing letters and answers to the women advice column.  But she decides to stay and work hard in hopes of moving up the ladder of success.  Eventually she starts answering the advice column letters under the name of Mrs. Bird.  Whether that turns out to be a smart idea or not she has yet to find out.  Romance and the tragedy of war run through this novel.

This novel shows us how strong friendship can be.  It also shows us how strong a person can be in the face of adversity. This is a fun entertaining book with a few lessons to be learned along the way for Emmeline,  Bunty and maybe for the reader also.    A light read with a strong message.

The Officer and The Spy

 The Officer and the Spy by Robert Harris reads like a non-fiction account of the Dreyfus Affair.

It is a fascinating story about Alfred Dreyfus and how he accused of treason as a spy.  Harris takes the story plot from the point of view of an Officer who is promoted to the Special Secret branch of the army after Dreyfus is convicted and sent off to Devil's Island.  

The most interesting part of the story is what happens after that the trial.   French captain Alfred Dreyfus who is wrongfully convicted of passing military secrets to the Germans and sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil's island.  At the time there was controversy around the accusations,  the trial and conviction.  Georges Picquart is promoted to Colonel and assigned to the Special unit for undercover activities. He begins to sense that there are thing happening that he cannot explain.  He becomes aware of the unusual techniques the department uses and begins his own investigation into how the incriminating letters that were used to convict Dreyfus were found.   As he struggles to expose the truth about the doctored evidence that sent Alfred he becomes embroiled in a struggle of his own.

The novel includes espionage, intrigue, romance and even a sword fight.  I did not realize that people did actually challenge others to a duel to settle their differences.  So though the book is written a bit dryly, and there are so many characters to keep straight,  there are some fascinating facts to learn and interesting developments to keep you reading.