Author of Historical Fiction and Mysteries
Today's review is a bit of a throwback, especially given that Hilary Mantel recently published the last book in her historical Cromwell series, The MIrror and The Light. However, that book had rather mixed reviews, so to get my Mantel fix I reached for something else on my shelf, A Place of Greater Safety, published in 1992. I have... Continue Reading →
Colum McGann's novel Zoli delves into the little known world of eastern European Roma, who for centuries were known as Gypsies. Although set mainly in Slovakia, it is loosely based on the life of Polish Roma poet Papusza. Disaffected Irishman Stephen Swann arrives in Slovakia in the early postwar years, attracted by the revolutionary allure of the... Continue Reading →
In the fourth installment of the Giordano Bruno series, Treachery, Sir Francis Drake is still basking in the glory of being the first person to circumnavigate the globe. It is August 1585 and he is preparing for another sea voyage, which this time will take him to the New World via the coast of Spain,... Continue Reading →
Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger combines historical fiction with a touch of supernatural. Set in a crumbling, gloomy manor of Hundreds Hall in the English countryside in the immediate postwar years, it has a psychologically tense air that will appeal to many gothic mystery fans. Middle-aged country physician, Dr. Faraday, is called one day to attend to... Continue Reading →
Ariel Lawhon's historical novel Flight of Dreams imagines the lives of the Hindenburg passengers in the final days before the epic disaster that destroyed the airship. The history is well-known: in the 1930s, the world's aviation industry was rapidly changing and expanding into intercontinental passenger travel, and nothing was a greater symbol of those ambitions that the... Continue Reading →
Kristin Hannah's novel The Nightingale traces the fate of two French sisters, Vianne and Isabelle, whose complicated relationship is further tested when the Nazis invade their country in the spring of 1940. The story starts when Vianne's husband, Antoine, joins the army to fight the enemy, and Vianne settles into a life that's increasingly full of... Continue Reading →
I've been on a dual-timeline narrative bender lately (see my review of The Lake House), so I picked up a copy of A Witch in Time at Barnes&Noble on a weekend trip just before the coronavirus pandemic hit. The protagonist is Helen Lambert, a high-powered DC publisher, who is reeling from a recent divorce and... Continue Reading →
Holly Tucker's non-fiction book City of Light, City of Poison documents a lesser-known period of French history. A hundred years before the French Revolution, Louis XIV presided over another turbulent era and made efforts to establish the first system of law enforcement in the country. In the second half of the 17th century, Paris was a place... Continue Reading →
As a new Vermonter, I'm fascinated by local folktales. None are more popular here than those telling of the possible existence of Bigfoot, a hairy, ape-like creature that is said to dwell in the wilderness. J.P. Choquette's Silence In the Woods is the first in the Monsters in the Green Mountains series that centers around... Continue Reading →
I haven't enjoyed a novel like Kate Morton's The Lake House in a long time. What a revelation! A dual time narrative, the novel tells the parallel story of Alice Edavane whose baby brother Theo went missing from the family's Cornish estate in the summer of 1933; and that of Sadie Sparrow, a Met detective... Continue Reading →
