Review of Tita, a novel set in 1950’s South of France: Tita is not an exercise in blind nostalgia for a lost past. It is a rich and warm, yet open-eyed portrait of a place and time just beyond our current reach. It’s a book worth savoring.
Sharon Kay Penman’s epic novel of the latter part of Richard the Lionheart’s life, A King’s Ransom, engages in some literary alchemy.
Review of Helen Hollick’s Sea Witch: a rich pirate yarn with magic mixed into the ships and battles–oh, and a love story.
Susan Spann’s second historical mystery, Blade of the Samurai, is set in medieval Japan and has several unpredictable twists for its two “sleuths,” a Portuguese Jesuit priest and a shinobi assassin. Highly recommended.
Kanner has filled in the sparse Biblical account of Noah, telling the story of the flood from the point of view of Noah’s wife, and thus creating an extended modern midrash.
Set in Galveston in 1900, The Promise brings us inside two utterly different women’s voices and experiences as they cope with upheaval, loss and love. A masterful book.
Lincoln is a popular topic these days with sometimes fanciful results in fiction and movies. This book has a solid historian behind the fantasy. The prosecutor of the Booth conspirators told on his deathbed of a dangerous secret concerning Lincoln’s assassination, but he took the secret to his grave and the provenance of this tale was “by no means sturdy.” The story being too juicy to ignore, Stewart turned to fiction.
Flirtations of the most dangerous and serious sort entangle Frances Stuart first in the court of Louis XIV and then in the Restoration court of Charles II. Despite the luscious gowns and extravagant jewels she wins for herself, we don’t envy her the high-wire balancing act she must maintain as she tries to win first one king’s influence and then another, while concealing the tragic secrets that would destroy her family and herself.
“Webb holds up a light into the inner recesses of a fascinating and contradictory woman . . . Becoming Josephine is an accomplished debut.” Read my review of Heather’s excellent novel about Josephine, Empress of France, Napoléon Bonaparte’s wife on the New York Journal of Books.
Another page-turning, alternately funny and bone-chilling mystery from Julie Kramer. A delivery of an envelope of human teeth gets Riley going on another lethal investigation.
