Two Tribes

Two Tribes is a fun graphic novel by Emily Bowen Cohen inspired by her own life.

The two tribes in this novel refer to the Jewish people and the Muscogee Nation.  She is Jewish Native American.  This book is written based on her own experience growing a part of two tribes.

Mia is living with her mothre and her stepfather, but misses her father who has moved far away with his new family.  As she is feeling out of place in her Jewish Day school and her mother refuses to talk about her father with her, Mia hatches a plan to visit her father in Oklahoma.  

In this novel we learn the origin story of the Muscogee story, the traditional account of the creation of the Muscogee clan from Mia's grandmother.  We also learn the Jewish text shared by Mia's Rabbi Goldfarb.  Both of these stories are sacred and important to each tribe.

After Mia travels to visit and meet her father's family, her mother realizes that it is important to bring everyone together.  Mia can share both of her family traditions and everyon can learn from each other wheen they share Shabbat dinner. 

Colorful drawings and well defined characters in an easy to read graphic novel style with well laid out pages and simple font.

My Last Innocent Year

 Daisy Alpert Florin has written an incredible coming of age story about the life of a college student.  We are watching the life of Isabel Rosen as she traverses life as a student in her last year of college.  We are there with her in her mind seeing the experience from her viewpoint.

My Last Innocent Year was a great novel.  It brings back the to mind the college years and how we had to navigate so many things at the same time.  There were the classes and studying, balanced with time to party and socialize.  Dating and finding the right social circle to be apart of.

Then there are always the dangerous pitfalls, that this book deals with, goin g back to a dorm room with a guy and what to expect.  Is it a date, or just friends?  How far should you take the relationship sexually and today is saying no good enough.  Is the sex consensual or forced.  Then there are the professor student complications of sexual relationships.  There are so many nuances to work through.

Florian puts inside th mind of Isabel Rosen as she navigates all these different relationships and feelings in her head and heart.  Balancing her desire to find love and her need to fit in with her girlfriends.  

She comes from a very different background than many of the other student at her New Hampshire college and she is trying to work out the logistics of fitting in.  Her New York City, Lower East Side childhood living and working in a Appetizing store and growing up Jewish, makes her a minority at this school.

Well written and very entertaining.

Ferris

 Kate DiCamillo has written another engaging and important novel for young people in Ferris.

This the story of a young girl nicknamed Ferris, younger sister Pinky and their family.  Ferris is very close to her grandmother , Charisse, who is living with the family.  Now Uncle Ted has moved into the basement after having a disagreement with his wife, Aunt Shirley.  Charisse is staying in her room more and more, not feeling well.  She also keeps telling Ferris she can see a ghost standing on the threshold of the room. Little sister Pinky is looking for attention and starts getting in trouble calling herself an outlaw.

Ferris and her best friend will work hard to fulfill the wishes of the Charisse and the ghost and bring the family together.  This story is delightful even as it deals with serious subjects including sibling rivalry and death of a grandparent.  

Kate DiCamillo writes with expression and deals with these difficult topics in a soothing way for young readers.

The Effects of Pickled Herring

 The Effects of Pickled Herring is the newest graphic novel by author and cartoonist, Alex Schumacher.

Reading this graphic novel for middle school and high school students will help any teenager who is grappling with the changes that are happening to them and the changes that happen to our grandparents as they age.  

Micah Gadsky and his sister, Alana are preparing for their B'nai Mitzvah.  As they are learning their prayers, Torah and Haftorah portions, they are also learning many life lessons. This story follows Micah as his voice cracks while practicing his Hebrew prayers, as he worries about not remembering what to say when he gets up on the bima and as he struggles to get up the courage to ask a girl he likes to his Bar Mitzvah.

Drawn with colorful exaggerated comic characters we follow Micah as he goes to school and negotiates  the trials of adolescence.  While Micah finds the social scene in Middle school difficult, his sister is working hard to fit in, joining the cheerleading team and be careful to stay thin and wear the right clothes.  Micah has one close friend who is encouraging and supportive.  Omar is Mexican and together they stand up to anti-Semitic taunts from the bullies at the school.

At home things are getting serious when Micah's grandmother, who he is close to, is starting to experience signs of dementia.   As Micah and Alana are getting closer to the B'nai Mitzvah date, Grams is getting more forgetful.  The novel shows how the family learns that staying strong is easier together rather than divided.

The characters are drawn in colorful exaggerated cartoon style. There are easy to read fonts and well laid out pages.  Big sound effects and bold backgrounds add a pop to the story.  There is even a dramatic dream scene similar to Tevye's dream scene with Fruma Sarah in Fiddler on the Roof.

This graphic novel covers the discussion about what a Bar Mitzvah is and why Jewish children have one at thirteen.  Other Jewish holidays are discussed also as the family goes through the year before the Bnai Mitzvah.  The family has a Passover Seder and tells the story of Passover.  

Long After We are Gone

 What a wonderfully written story about family dynamics, friendships and love.  Long After We Are Gone is written by Torah Sheldon Harris.

When their father dies, the siblings come home to save the family home and land.  It brings four siblings who have gone in many different directions back together to work as a unit and fight  a company that wants to buy them out.  The house and five acres are already sold and large amounts of money are being offered for the rest of their land.  Each sibling has a secret .  The money is very tempting to help each out of trouble.  

The characters are wonderfully developed , they have complexity and depth.  The scenery is described in detail that brings the reader to Digg.  The reader can feel the difficulty each character has letting go of the money, finding themselves and becoming true to themselves in the end.

Woman on Fire

 Woman on Fire by Lisa Barr is another fabulous novel about the artwork confiscated by the Nazis during World War II.  

Using  fictional characters , Barr sets up the situation that a young ambitious journalist becomes embroiled in an international art scandal as she searches for the missing Woman on Fire portrait painted by a new impressionist artist during the war.  

Jules Roth the young journalist pushes her way into the newsroom of Dan Mansfield, editor for the paper.  He hires her to help him find a famous painting,  missing since the war, for his long time friend, Elias Baum, a famous shoe designer.  Baum was a small child when his mother posed for the artist.  Elias remembers the day the Nazis came, took the painting and then killed his mother.  All these years later he wants retrieve the painting for his family.  

There is another person who also thinks the painting belongs to them, Marguerite de Laurent, a provocative and powerful art gallery owner.  She grew up working for her grandfather’s art gallery and he always spoke about the Woman on Fire painting and its importance to him.  She feels she is the rightful owner and wants the painting for her art collection.  She will go to great lengths to get it and is used to getting everything she wants.  This is an entertaining mystery novel set around the premise of being the first to find the painting and Jules is determined to prove her prowess as a reporter and get there first.

There are many twist and turns as the characters struggle to find and hold onto the painting .  

Ella Minnow Pea

 OK I realize this is another middle school or maybe young adult book, but this is a great story.  I love this book!  I read it when it first was published and enjoyed it just for its writing style and the uniqueness of the plot.  But now when I reread it for my book group, I was amazed at how timely and relevant it still is.

This is the story of a small,  fictional island of Nollop, off the state of South Carolina.  Ella Minnow Pea lives on the island, her name is a play on the in the alphabet, “L M N O P “ .  The island is named after Nevin Nollop who wrote the famous pangram, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”.

On this island because they worship Nollop, when a letter under the statue of Nollop drops and breaks they town leaders decide it is Nollop speaking to them from the beyond.  They pass a law that each letter that drops from the statue must not be spoken or written anymore.  As the story continues author Mark Dunn drops letters from the story script.  The book written all in correspondence between Ella and others gets more and more interesting to read as letters cannot be used at the risk of public embarrassment in the stocks or banishment from the island.

So much fun to read!

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl's fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.

*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet

The Dearly Beloved

 Cara Wall has written a very complicated and intense novel about so many topics.

Definitely not a novel I would normally pick up and read.. but it did turn out to be a great book discussion book. 

There were a few too many themes for the characters to balance in their lives ..but it was rich with topics to discuss in the group... 

It is about two ministers and their wives. It follows their relationships and interactions through dating and marriage from college to careers. It is the question of faith , love, friendship, parenting, and those are only a few . It definitely got my attention...

Charles and Lily and James and Nan are the main characters. It took me a little while to remember who was who and who was mated with which.  But then you see that each of the men have different relationships to their faith and each of the wives are opposites.  Lily lost her faith after her parents were killed in a car accident when she was a child.  Nan grew up the child of a minister and spent her youth joining her father as he ministered to his congregation. Charles found his faith after a college lecture and James grew up with an angry alcoholic father who treated him terribly.  

As the story progresses each of the characters face certain obstacles and experiences that help them grow as people, learning empathy and how approach their beliefs and those of their spouse.

It turned out to be a very complex and compulsive read. 

The Keeper of Lost Things

 Ruth Hogan has created an entertaining plot line in The Keeper of Lost Things.  I am sure so many of us have been walking along and spot something on the ground and wonder how someone could have lost it.  Many times it seems that they would have noticed and retrieved it right way or missed it and come back retracing their foot steps to find the item.

Interestingly as I was reading this book, I read in the Talmud that the rule is if you find a lost object you need to take care of it and bring it to the public square until you find the owner, or until you determine that the owner has despaired of finding it again and then you can keep it .

In this book we meet four people who are also lost and as they find each other their lives improve and they find happiness.  Anthony lost the love of his life many years ago and also the religious charm she gave him.  To fill the void he has been collecting lost objects hopping one to reunite the objects with their owners. Laura comes to work for Anthony and inherits the library full of lost items.  She has left a disgust marriage and is a little lost herself.  Eunice found an object and does not know who it belongs to … as all their lives run along in parallel we lean more about each character.  

It is a sweet story of loss and the finding of  love in many different ways.  My favorite character is Sunshine, a young girl with Down syndrome who is looking for friends and love.  She is a delightful breath of fresh air in the book and has some of the best quotes.

Stitches

 Moving into graphic novels when visiting my father…. Stitches by David Small is a memoir written and drawn by the children’s illustrator.  Using the comic medium to share the scary story of a troubled childhood that leads to an early diagnosis of cancer and then to running away from home at 16 years old This is the story of his life.  

The child of a a family physician who vented his anger on a punching bag in the basement and a mother who was stingy with both the family pocketbook and her emotions. She kept her feelings hidden and was excessively strict.

Small was a sickly child who loved to read and draw.  His father gave him large amounts of radiation to cure him. At fourteen he has surgery on his neck but is never told it is to remove a cancerous growth.

Drawn in haunting black and white comic illustrations, there is a threatening feeling to the work.  Drawing the viewpoint from above looking down on the child makes him seem even smaller and vulnerable.

The Main Character

Check out this author Jaclyn Gordis, she has a very vivid immagination.  Her novel The Chateau was an interesting twisting plot with a mysterious thread running through it. Now Gordis has captured the imagination again with this new novel, The Main Character.  

Have you ever wondered if there are things about those closest to you that you do not know? How would you react if their secrets came out and affected your life? This mysterious novel shows how characters react to the secrets as they come to light.  

One of the interesting themes in this novel is sibling rivalry, a topic close to my heart. Always in competition with a younger smarter sister, always wondering who Mom loved best.  This is a novel that examines how the relationship between siblings can fester and grow into love and or resentment.  How a parent responds to each child can have an affect on both children and their relationship.  Reader, you may want to watch your back after reading this story, you never know what your sibling might be planning.

Following in the footsteps of Agatha Christie, we meet our characters on the famous train ride along Italy’s Mediterranean coast, the renovated Orient Express. Rory is the main character in Ginevra Ex’s new novel.  Ginevra Ex is a prolific author who studies people and writes mystery novels based on their lives.  She learned early on in her career to write what you know sells the most books, but she cannot bring herself to really delve into her own life for a book. 

Rory is the newest character that Ex is writing about.  She has interviewed her for hours about her life and also the people closest to Rory, her brother, Caroline, her best friend, and her ex fiance, Nate.  When they all turn up on the train Rory begins to wonder if real life will start to imitate fiction and that Ginevra is manipulating her life into a mystery novel.  She is concerned that this may lead to someone’s death.

Riding the train and stopping at various tourist locations builds suspense.  Learning about each character’s lives through alternating chapters, we become privy to the secrets each person is hiding and how that information will affect the group.  Even the author Ginevra Ex has an agenda and secrets she is haboring.

On a more serious note this book also discusses the topic of the refusnicks, Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union who escaped and came to America.  The author bases the character of Rory’s father, Ansel, on her father and his parents' experience.  The author’s father was born in Ukraine and his identification card stated he was Jewish. He took the perilous parth to freedom in 1976.  The author describes life in the Soviet Union and refusnicks situation beautifully.  She also paints the picture of the scenery of Italy’s Mediteranian coast with a rich palette. 

The Lioness of Boston

 The Lioness of Boston is a fascinating historical novel about the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Bella or Mrs Jack.  

Emily Franklin has captured Boston and its snowy winters and hot summers beautifully.  If she has done so well with describing the city I have assume that her retelling of Bella Gardner's life is also percise and accurate also.  

This is a sort of slow moving novel, but then I guess that is how the real life of any famous person really is. There is so much to learn and it is an intriguing story but nothing earth shattering happens that moves a plot along quickly or with any suspense.  It is interesting to see that she was a woman who did not fit into the rules upper class society expected of her.  She was always looking to stretch the box that women were supposed to live in.  She had trouble making friends, though she did make good friends with those who also found themselves struggling with the behaviors expected of them in their social circles.  So she became good friends with artists and writers and even scientists who were on the fringes.

Her husband tolerated her antics and amazingly they stayed married throughout their lives.  He even assisted her and encouraged many of her purchases and ideas.  The most fun for me was reading about Boston at the turn of the last century and the  artists and artwork.  I took extra time while reading to look up many of the artists and their paintings.  

I also went to Emerson College when it was housed on Beacon Street.  We went to classes in 130 Beacon Street.  The cafeteria and the administrative offices were all at 150 Beacon Street. then I read that Isabella requested that her house number 152 never be used again after she moved out.  After Gardner moved to the Fenway where her house is now a museum, Eben Sumner Draper was the next owner and then Alvan Tufts Fuller also lived in the house.  Both men were later governors of Massachusetts.  It became known as the Governors Mansion.

Last Summer at the Golden Hotel

 I cannot believe I have already reviewed this novel by Elise Friedland, Last Summer at the Golden Hotel.  

This novel a fun look back at the history of the Catskill Mountains, a piece of especially Jewish nostalgia. This novel can be read for the simple entertainment and/or for a deeper dive into the family dynamics and drama. 

The Golden Hotel has been a family run business for generations.  Two families have come together every summer to open the hotel to the guests who return on a regular basis expecting a certain standard of service that is renown in the Catskills.  This book is based on the historical hotels that attracted so many families who summered in the Catskills from New York City.  The families would drive up and mothers and children would stay while fathers would commute back and forth to the city between work and leisure.  

But times have changed and the hotels are not as popular as they once were. The clientele is not returning and those who are seeing the decline of the facilities. The owners cannot keep the hotel running.  There are of course also secrets that have been kept over the years and relationships are on edge.  it is time to sell and move on.  But not everyone is in agreement about how to move forward.

The issues of the generational divide and the hard decisions to live in the past or to embrace the future.  How to memorialize the past and not lose the memories of fun times had.  This plot also examines family secrets and how much you know about people even when you live with them.

I interviewed the author about this book and we had a wonderful exchange about her reasons for writing this book and how she met a member of the Grossinger family, from the Grossinger Hotel, one of the most famous of the Catskill establishments.

The Stolen Lady

 The Stolen Lady written by Laura Morelli explores another little known topic of World War II.

Morelli builds a beautiful novel around the artwork hidden during the war to save it from Nazi hands.

I have read and reviewed a few different books here about the Mona Lisa painting.  Like her famous smile the story of the Mona Lisa and who she was has been a unresolved mystery for years.  This book introduces us to who the famous unknown lady might have been and how her painting ended up in the Louvre in Paris, then how it was saved from the Nazis, as they took Paris and tried to steal the art.

In alternating chapters the story of Lisa Gherardini, and her maid servant, Bellini Sardi who accompanies Lisa as she marries a prosperous silk merchant.  We see the closed world of women at this time in society. As we learn about the government of Medici that Lisa's husband follows the Florentines are preparing to  rise up against the Medici and a young monk convinces Bellini to join their efforts.  

Then in the later story, at the dawn of WWII, Anne Guichard, is a young archivist employed at the Louvre.  Anne joins the effort helping move artwork including the Mona Lisa to the Castle of Chambord, where the Louvre’s most precious artworks are being transferred to ensure their safety.   

This book was fast paced with intrigue and suspense, but also so interesting in the historical events it covers and so much new information to me.

Mastering the Art of French Murder

Warm, right out of the oven, Mastering the Art of French Murder, is the the amazingly perfect entertaining mystery for anyone viewer of the Great British Baking Show.  Written by Colleen Cambridge, it brings the reader right into the tent, under the lights and behind the cameras.

As I read this delightfully delicious mystery, I could hear the voices of the real TV show in my head.  I could picture the tent and the chefs all trying to bake or prepare the recipes for the contest, and the heat of the competition was palatable .

Such a clever idea to use the British Baking Show as a backdrop for a murder mystery, I cannot believe I did not think of it myself..  As we read this novel, we are introduced to each of the cooking contestants, learning a little of their background and how and why they wanted to enter the contest.  

Each chapter releases a little more of their stories and then some background connections to each other or to the mansion that houses this baking show set.  The only thing missing from this fun, delectable are some recipes that you could sink your teeth into after finishing the book and solving the mystery.

The Bookstore Sisters

 Ann Hoffman does not disappoint int his new novella, The Bookstore Sisters.

Though this is a short story, it packs a big punch.  Two sisters grow up together with their father, running a small bookstore in Brinkey's Island,  Maine.  Their father is so nice that he almost has turned his bookstore into a lending library, allowing people to read the books and return them.  When he dies one sister, Isabel, decides that she is ready to leave the small town and head off on her own.  She goes and builds a life in New York and tries to forget the past. 

Sophie, the other sister stays and keeps the promise they made to their father to keep the store open. She marries a local young man and is pregnant when he dies.  She brings up her daughter on her own.  But when Sophie breaks a leg and cannot take care ofher daughter or the book store, her daughter takes matters into her own hands.

Writing to her aunt she summons her home to help out.  The two sisters must face each other and their past to work together to save the bookstore and take care of family.  They need to work through their feelings of anger and distrust to reach a close sister relationship again.

A sweet story of the love that is hidden bewtween two sisters that can be covered up but never really lost.

Pineapple Street

If you know NYC and Brooklyn you will feel right at home reading this novel. If you know the area of the fruit streets even better.  Author, Jenny Jackson has beautifully described the world of the ultra wealthy and how they see the world.  Also how others perceive them from the other side of the tracks.

This is the story of the Stockton family, which even the name sounds stuffy and sounds like old money and the family originally came over on the Mayflower.  The parents, Chip and Tilda have moved out of the family home on Pineapple Street and moved into a smaller home on Orange Street.  The three children who are now adults grew up in the family home and now the son, Cord brings his new wife, Sasha to live there.  Cord's sisters have also left the house and his sister Darcy is married to Malcolm, and their are parents to Poppy and Hatcher.  The youngest Stockton is Georgiana, still single and working in a not for profit to help solve world hunger.  Cord is working with his father in the family real estate business and Darcy is a stay at home mom, with Malcom working in finance.

Darcy describes herself as an orange, a tough outer shell to protect the sweet though vulnerable fruit on the inside.  Her sister was always the Cranberry, a little sour, and Cord was the Pineapple, fun, thrilled to be the center of attention and always made a gathering more festive. 

As the family closes rank to protect itself from the outside world, each family member needs to learn how to welcome in the new spouses and not shut them out.  There are so many secrets that each member of the family is keeping to maintain face that it gets to be too overwhelming.

Also it is current day and these one percenters are struggling with having so much at the expense of others having so little.  How to balance your wealth, live a happy life and share with others is a theme throughout.  So many series topics in what seems on the surface to be a lighthearted entertainment.

The Ghost Writer

 The Ghost Writer written by the infamous Philip Roth.   A oldie but a goodie was brought back to my attention by a book discussion group and I jumped in to read and discuss it.

This for me a book that requires a good discussion afterwards otherwise, not one of my favorite of Roth's books I would have re-shelved it before the end.  Of course the end is the probably the whole point of the book so I would have missed the entire meaning of the plot.

SO if you do pick up this novel keep reading all the way to the end.

Also the book seemed so confusing and was not grabbing my interest, but I soldiered on because there was going to be a discussion.  Once again I must say that talking to others about the book made it so much better.  It will not sit on my favorite book list, but now I do find it a fancinating read.

So if you want to discuss it ..I am in!

This is the story of Zuckerman, a consistent Roth character, who is a young writer starting out and looking for a mentor.  He goes through a few authors and settles on Lanoff who he decides is the type of author he wants to work with.  He is invited to Lanoff's house.  There he meets Hope, Lanoff's wife and Amy a young woman who is staying with them as a house guest.

The book focuses on the ideas of fathers and children, their relationships.  The idea of writing and revealing family secrets.  Of course Judaism and how it perceived by other Jews and by "outsiders".

It is set in the 1950s and written and published int he 1970s, but it is still a relevant topic to what is happening today. There are historic conversations and current discussions around these topics.

The Lost Library

 Rebecca Stead has written a delightful middle grade book in The Lost Library.  

I picked this up because I thought it might be about banning books, which is my current obsession.

This is a entertaining read that will keep those young readers, and even this old one, intrigued throughout.

It is the story of a small town where the library burned down years ago and was never rebuilt.  When the remaining books from the library are put outside in a little free library, young Evan comes by and takes two books.  He is surprised to discover his father had checked out one of them as a child.  The other was checked out by a famous author, about how to write a mystery novel.  Evan uses the book to start his investigation.  He father, who grew up in town, is being very secretive about his relationship to the library.

We meet three ghosts, a cat, and some daredevil mice.  There is the mystery of how the fire started and even a famous author, who uses a pseudonym who might have once lived in town.  Evan will use all the clues he can find to figure out the mystery.

Tom Lake

 Tom Lake is Ann Patchett's newest novel.  Patchett is one of all time incredible writers.  Her books are always heart felt and having incite into the human condition.  

Tom Lake is again a novel about family, love and relationships.  She calmly takes three grown daughters brings them home during the covid pandemic and sets them up with their parents alone in the house for multiple weeks.  The family owns a fruit farm and it is cherry picking season.

As they spend their days again bringing in the harvest alone because their helpers cannot come to work, the mother tells the story of her youth.  Bringing back the days when she wanted to become an actress and played the part of Emily in Our Town.  She tells the story of her playing the part at a summer stock theatre  called Tom Lake.  She acted opposite and fell in love with the actor Peter Duke, who later becomes famous.  The girls have grown up watching Peter Duke movies.  As their mother spins her tale the girls are forced to reconsider the picture they have always had of their parents.

This is a story of family dynamics. Mother, daughter relationships.  Young love and long lasting love. Realizing what is really important and what it means to be happy.  Written with a quiet subtle message that packs a big punch.

The Last Mona Lisa

 The Last Mona Lisa written by Jonathan Santloffer is an adult novel version of the same story that I reviewed earlier.. The Mona Lisa Vanishes, a young adult non fiction book.

Interestingly both of these books were required reading at the same time.  I read the non fiction account first and judged this fictionalized story against the facts I had just learned.  This historical fiction version holds up quite well and adds a little mystery and suspense to the story.

We bring in a modern day young man, Luke Perrone, the great grandson of Vincenzo Peruggia, the man who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre Museum back in 1911.  The book takes us back and forth between the actual series of events that led to Peruggia stealing the painting and how it altered his life and the modern day intrigue around a diary that may have been left by Vincenzo that Luke is trying to trace and the story of whether the painting hanging in the Louvre today is the original or a fake.  There are others who also are interested in finding out the same information and Luke is in a race to get the information first before too many die, including himself.

As I said it is an entertaining mystery story and does stick quite close to the facts of history.

Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies

 Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies another entertaining mystery novel with a very long title. This novel is written by Catherine Mack.  

Thsi novel also is about a mystery author on a book tour interacting with her fans and readers. Along on the tour is her ex boyfriend who starts complaining that there have been murderous attempts on his life. As they travel along the Amalfi coast.  As a few murders of people involved in the tour party start to make author Eleanor Dash begin to wonder if her ex's accusations are real, she starts to work out the truth around the deaths following her book tour.  

So many different ways to approach mystery novels and so many different ways to present a new amateur detective.  

How To Solve Your Own Murder

 How to Solve Your Own Murder, written by Kristen Perrin first in what seems to be the beginning of a new mystery series.  Annie Adams comes to the country estate of her Great Aunt Frances to finally meet her.  But when she finally arrives she finds her aunt already dead.  

Annie has come to the small village of Castle Knoll, summoned by an aunt she never met.  She is brought the estate along with the solicitor,  Walter and Oliver Gordon and Saxon Gravesdown , Frances nephew, who grew up at the estate and his wife Elva.

When they arrive Frances has been murdered.  She has lived her whole life afraid that dwas going to be her end.  Her last will states that Saxon and Annie are in a competition to uncover her killer and the one that solves the mystery will inherit her estate.  

As Annie learns more about the aunt she never met she works hard to solve the mystery of her death and bring her murderer to justice.  Working with the handsome Detective Crane find the answers before someone stops her by killing her..

Everyone on This Train is a Suspect

 Everyone on This Train is a Suspect, written by Benjamin Stevenson,  is the second novel that follows the same characters, after Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone.  Definitely could win awards for mystery novels with the longest titles.  

In each of these mysteries, the author writes as a first person narrator.  Ernest Cunningham survived at the end of the last adventure and wrote the story of his experience.  The book had great sales and now his publisher has given him an advance for another novel.  As he and his girlfriend, Erin,  board a train with other authors for a special Writer's Festival, he is worried that he cannot come through with another book.

But when a dead body is discovered on the train, it is clear the next book is all set.  Again this time Ernest promises the reader that he is following the rules of of writing a murder mystery.  As you reading the book the narrator continues to make sure you are getting all the facts he is getting and sharing the facts even down to how many times killer's name is mentioned in the book and when a character should be killed off.

Though he promises to be a reliable narrator, when you get to the end of the book the twist is still surprising.  Probably all the facts that being offered are just another red herring.

Cleverly written and very entertaining style.

A Murder of Crows

 A Murder of Crows by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett is the start of another entertaining mystery series.  This time we meet a young woman with a secret who is working as an environmentalist studying bats and their habitat. There is of course a murder, a few romances and then the amateur detective accused as a suspect who though law enforcement won't listen tries to solve the case herself.

This was an interesting mystery that explores the varieties of bats and where their natural environments. We also learn about a rare type of bat and how character, Nell Ward nurses the bat back to health.

So all the elements of a good mystery are there and they do not disappoint.  There is already a follow up and I will be reading that next.

Impossible Escape: A True Story of Survival and Heroism in Nazi Europe

 

Impossible Escape: A True Story of Survival and Heroism in Nazi Europe, by Steve Sheinkin is another great book for teens and young adults to read about the Holocaust.  

Clearly explained, this is the story of a teenage young man who survived the atrocities Auschwitz and escaped to tell the world what was happening there.  This is a straight forward account of his experience.  Also the experience of his childhood friend Gerta who with her parents escaped to Hungary and survived the war in a very different way.  

There is no mistaking the serious consequences of anti-semitism and not standing up for people of other ethnic backgrounds.  What happened then could happen again.