One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow follows the lives of two families, the Webbers (Substance and Nettie Mae) and the Bemises (Ernest and Cora), who live in eastern Wyoming, within walking distance of each other but with no other humans within twenty miles. Mr....
I enjoyed Barbara Nickless’s prior Sydney Rose Parnell four-book series and the Dr. Evan Wilding three-book series, so I thought I’d like the first of her newest Benedict Hoffman and Helen Belle series, A Voice in the Dark. It has a Criminal Minds feel, and with its...
The Botticelli Secret is a mix of art history and thriller. Though the plot was highly improbable and at times thin, the book was fun to read. When Luciana, a lovely Florentine prostitute, is chosen as the model for Flora, a goddess in Botticelli’s painting...
Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance is not my typical read, but I’m glad I ventured into it. A Tarzan fan from my grade school days, I confess to a fondness for feral children, and the hero of this book is truly a child of extraordinary circumstance. Born with...
Ariadne Unraveled is a retelling of the lives of Ariadne, the woman who gave Theseus a ball of yarn to guide him through the Minotaur’s lair, and Dionysus, a relatively new god of fertility and wine, so new he doesn’t have a seat on Mount Olympus. Typically I enjoy a...
Ransom is the 26th (so far) in Daniel Silva’s spy series starring the legendary Israeli spy and art restorer, Gabriel Allon. I fell in love with the series years ago because Silva so successfully melds art, art history, and thrillers and because, unlike other spy...
All Who Wander is a fascinating look at the long-term effects of insufficient love, emotional and physical abuse, as well as poor choices in relationships and life in general. Brooke, trapped in a broken family (one that’s missing a mother but has an added stepbrother...
Wisdom Corner is the second in the Virgil Wounded Horse mystery series. Like its predecessor, Winter Counts, it is set on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and picks up where that novel left off. Virgil has become an “enforcer,” administering justice when...
Cleopatra does a remarkable job piecing together the story of a woman from the first century BCE about whom very little is actually known. Schiff pulls together many early sources, extrapolates as many facts as she possibly can, then pieces them into a coherent vision...
I LOVE Elif Shafak’s work and am working my way through her twelve novels. With every read I find a new favorite, but There Are Rivers in the Sky is my all-favorite so far. The book opens in 630 BCE, in Ninevah, the capital of the ancient Assyrian Empire along the...
As I have been with so many other authors, I am slowly working my way through Ann Patchett’s oeuvre, starting years ago with Bel Canto. Whistler ties with Tom Lake as my—so far—all-time favorites of her works. Tom Lake is a quiet story. Whistler tells of a family...
I have been slowly working my way through Larry McMurtry’s oeuvre. The Berrybender Narratives brings together the four volumes of the epic story of the American West: Sin Killer, The Wandering Hill, Sorrow’s River, and Folly and Glory. In these books, he sets the...
Poison is about the intertwined fates of a Spanish commoner and a queen born on the same day and year. Set in 1692, the bicentennial of Columbus’s discovery of America, it features the worst of Spanish life at the time: the dreaded Inquisition. Spain is now a bankrupt...
Winter Counts is a gritty multi-award winning mystery set on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation and written by an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation. I enjoy both thrillers and Native American novels, so this was right up my alley. The hero (or...
As always, I love books about art, art history, and Italy, so I enjoyed reading The Secret Courtesan. Mia Harding is an art historian sent from the States to certify a fellow art historian’s identification of a statue called “The Estasi” (the Ecstasy) as being by a...
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