Maddalena and the Dark is a dark fantasy or a dark academia-type story set in eighteen-century Venice, mostly at the Ospedale della Pietà, a cloistered school for foundling girls. Most are abandoned at the doorstep and have no known family. As they are raised, if they...
Vincent van Gogh, the most iconic of the Post-Impressionist artists, spends the last few months of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, painting the countryside some thirty kilometers from Paris. He lives in the Ravoux family’s inn. This book is a fictional account of...
The Shadow of Perseus is another female-centric retelling of ancient Greek myths, this one the story of Perseus, the purported son of Danae and Zeus, slayer of Gorgons (Medusa) and all-round hero. Author Heywood leaves the Greek gods in the background, having them...
This is a review of Elizabeth Peters’ six volume set of Vicky Bliss mysteries and the prequel The Camelot Caper. Bliss is a typical Peters heroine, beautiful, brainy and sexually liberated—with lots of courage and an expertise in medieval art history to boot, with her...
For some reason, I thought Eye of the Beholder was art-related historical fiction; however, it is a nonfiction look at art, mapmaking, optics, and learning to see through the new devices: telescopes, microscopes and camera obscuras. I found it fascinating, none the...
The Dollmaker of Krakow takes a difficult subject, the Holocaust, and through the use of fantasy and a smidgeon of magic, makes it palatable enough for children to serve as an introduction to genocide. But, just because this is a children’s story, doesn’t mean adults...
Poor little orphan Evie is taken in by her wealthy aunt and uncle. To show her appreciation, she’s tried to be compliant and helpful, to the point of journeying to England to learn to be a secretary and work in her uncle’s company. Her wealthy cousin Aimee convinces...
Signs is the second in Carol Potenza's new De-Exinct Zoo Mystery Series and continues the story of veterinarian Milly Smith, who trained in Siberia and now works in Pleistocene BioPark, a zoo dedicated by resurrected extinct megafauna (giant short-faced bears, dire...
I had such a great time reading all the Aaron Elkins series of Gideon Oliver mysteries in order last month, I decided to tackle Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series next. This twenty-volume mystery series follows Amelia, a self-proclaimed Victorian spinster through...
Like Richard Wagamese’s novel Indian Horse, Where the Dead Sit Talking is a complex story simply told. Hobson’s prose isn’t quite as elegant as that of Wagamese but close. Both are chronicles of children growing up in the worst possible conditions, but where Indian...
Stacey Abrams, lawyer and Georgia Democratic political superstar, writes a tense legal thriller starring Supreme Court legal clerk Avery Keene that begs the question of what happens when the US Supreme Court is split, and Howard Wynn, the justice with the swing vote...
Escape to Florence switches between the present and World War II in telling the story of two women. The first, Tori, is a British author in the present day living on an isolated English estate with a cold, hypercritical husband. The second is Stella, a...
This is a first for me, a review of an entire series of books. Fellowship of Fear is the first of an eighteen-book mystery series with forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver, Ph.D. as the protagonist. I started with Dead Men’s Hearts (#8 in the series) and liked it...
I have several biographies of Leonardo da Vinci in my to-be-read pile (including Martin Kemp’s Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Walter's Isaacson's Leonardo Da Vinci) and wanted to review some of the artist/scientist’s work before embarking on the...
A Newlywed's Guide to Fortune and Murder is the sixth in the Countess of Harleigh cozy mystery series, set in London in 1900. In this story, the reader finds Frances, the Countess of Harleigh sponsoring the dowager Viscountess Winstead’s niece for presentation to...
La Vie, According to Rose, Lauren Parvizi’s debut, is a thought-provoking novel that covers a lot of ground. First, it’s a heartfelt story of self-discovery coupled with grief and family issues. Rose, the eldest daughter of an Iranian man who escaped Iran just as the...
Andrea Bartz continues to explore complicated female relationships in her works, laced with suspense and sinister overtones, which expand the usual range of emotions women generally have in fiction. I always enjoy seeing what she's cooked up between her female...
Queen Clytemnestra, happily married to Tantalus and with a newborn son, is devastated when Agamemnon, a rival to the throne of Mycenae, retakes the throne, kills her husband and son, then forces her to marry him. She has three children by Agamemnon, two daughters...
You Can Trust Me is an exciting thriller that grabs the reader from the start. Every character is far more than what they seem. Couple that with two unreliable narrators, and the reader is drawn further into the world of drifters and ultra-rich billionaires with each...
The Wind Knows My Name begins with Kristallnacht and ends with the current Covid-19 pandemic. Samuel Adler, a five-year-old Jewish boy, is sent to England in 1938 to hopefully survive the extermination of the Jews in Germany. The novel then moves to the present and...
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