Hidden Powers Lise Meitner's Call to Science

 

Young people, especially girls who are interested in science will find a wonderful role model in Lise Meitner.

This book written in a beautiful poetry style easily explains the life of Lise Meitner and her critically important contribution to science.

Each chapter is written in a simple poetic style that makes understanding the complicated science that Lise and her fellow laboratory partners are discovering easily understandable.

The story of Lise’s life and how she worked her way through many obstacles is amazing as well as inspiring.

Lise Meitner wanted to be a scientist from a very young age. She lived at a time in history when women were not offered an education and certainly not encouraged to attend university, get a doctorate, or become a professor.   She overcame all these challenges and became the first woman physics professor at the University of Berlin.  As she was working hard to try and discover a new element for the periodic table alongside her partner, Otto Hahn, they discovered nuclear fission.

Life in Germany is getting more and more dangerous for the Jewish citizens. The Nazis are coming to power and Lise is in danger as she continues to work in the lab and is dismissed from teaching because of her Jewish religious beliefs.  She escapes to Sweden and continues her work. Along the way we also met other women scientists who were working hard to be accepted into the all male world of research and professorship. 

This book will encourage all young people to pursue their dreams with vigor and remain true to their beliefs and ideals. 

This book details references the Holocaust and how it affects Lise,  her colleagues,  her friends and family

but does not delve into the atrocities of the war.  We learn about how Hitler's rise to power affects Lise's life and career.  We learn how she withstands the pressure of the Nazis to curtail her work and how she escapes to Sweden.  Her fellows scientists help her and also are against the war and support the Jewish people.  They help her as much as they can.    Lise continues her work and is asked to come to America and assist in the creation of the atomic bomb.  She refuses because she is first and foremost a humanitarian.

The Auschwitz Detective

 What a great mystery novel.  This is a prequel for the Adam Lapid series, which takes us back to his experience in Auschwitz.  It is a hard to read account of life in the camp as a Jewish prisoner, but also a heart warming account of how some of the prisoners rose above the strain and horrific ordeals and kept their dignity and sense of humanity.  Intwined in the novel of the Holocaust is a mysterious death, that Lapid needs to unravel to save his own life.

A Deadly Act

 This is a great mystery series that I have just discovered.  I will go back now and read all the earlier novels in this series.  Adam Lapid is a retired Hungarian Jewish detective who now after the Holocaust immigrates to Palestine/Israel.  He is living there in 1950 and working as a private detective.  His past gives him a hardboiled tough exterior.  He takes on the cold case of a actress murdered in a graveyard.  As he tries to find the killer who has roamed free for five years, he finds that one death may lead to another.. he must protect his own life as he sticks his hand the nest and uncovers a hand full of trouble.

The Maid

 The Maid by Nita Prose is listed as a novel, but it is also very much a mystery novel.

Prose is writing this novel from the perspective of Molly Gray, best known as Molly Maid.

She works very hard cleaning rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel.  Moly Maid is twenty five years old, but she is also an unusual young lady, who struggles with understanding the cues and social interactions that other people take for granted.  She sees the world in black and white and sometimes  misses thee nuanced  shades of grey.  Having grown up with her Gran, she is trying now to move on after Gran's death.  She is trying to negotiate the daily life of going to work, cleaning her apartment, making the rent and understanding those around  her.  

She is happiest when she is wearing her crisp clean uniform, pushing her cleaning cart full of clean sheets, towels, miniature soaps, shampoos and little individually wrapped chocolates to leave on pillows. She takes her job  seriously and she takes the directions of the manager at face value and literally.

When she tries to befriend the Rodney, bartender at the Regency and tries to help Juan Manuel, the  dishwasher in the kitchen, her cleaning skills are put to the test and her honesty is questioned.

The Man Who Loved His Wife

 The Man Who Loved His Wife is a book of short stories written by Jennifer Ann Moses.  Short stories are a little harder to write than a novel.  The author must capture the reader’s attention quickly, keep their attention while building the plot of the story, then reach a conclusion in a limited amount of time and pages.  Enticing the reader, making them feel emotions for the characters and stay engaged with the storyline is something that Moses does very well throughout this book.

Each of the stories uses a dark comedic style to show the real lives of Jewish people living in many locations; New Jersey, Israel and the southern United States.  Stories of immigrants and survivors. The stories grab the reader, pulling them into the character’s lives and end leaving the reader with an uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty of what happens next in the protagonist's life.  Adolescent love, marriage and infidelity, true love are all scrutinized.  Jewish rituals and customs are explored through stories of funerals and sitting shiva.

The Ladies of the Secret Circus

 Constance Sayers has a terrific imagination that she shares with the reader in her book, The Ladies of the Secret Circus.  This is the  story of Lara Barnes who on her wedding day is left alone at the alter.   She and Todd have had a long romance which is finally about to culminate in marriage when her fails to show up at the church.  Lara does not believe he is gone of his own volition.

Her mother, Audrey is supportive but seems to have her own secrets she is guarding, as she tries to protect her daughter.  Ben Archer, the police chief is very supportive and helpful to Lara as she decides to investigate the disappearance of her fiancé .

Tied to this modern day family is the history of a magical circus that only appears to special people in Paris back in the 1925.  Sayers paints a beautiful picture of artistic, social cafe scene in Paris at night. With descriptions of the nightlife and the artists who live there and paint the beautiful women.

The Secret Circus is magical and full of illusions.  Sometimes places and experiences that are so fantastic that could bring a person to the edge of evil.  Could the Circus of such fantastical beauty and magnificence be connected to the world of evil?  

So wonderfully presented that the beauty and the grotesque come to life and seem real.