The Yard

The Yard by Alex Grecian

 

1889 London.  Jack the Ripper's reign of terror is finally over, but a new one is just beginning.

 

 Victorian London - a violent cesspool of squalid depravity. Only twelve detectives - The Murder Squad - are expected to solve the thousands of crimes committed here each month. Formed after the Metropolitan Police's spectacular failure in capturing Jack the Ripper, the Murder Squad suffers the brunt of public contempt. But no one can anticipate the brutal murder of one of their own...

A Scotland Yard Inspector has been found stuffed in a black steamer trunk at Euston Square Station, his eyes and mouth sewn shut. When Walter Day, the squad's new hire, is assigned to the case, he finds a strange ally in Dr. Bernard Kingsley, the Yard's first forensic pathologist. Their grim conclusion: this was not just a random, bizarre murder but in all probability, the first of twelve. Because the squad itself it being targeted and the devious killer shows no signs of stopping before completing his grim duty. But Inspector Day has one more surprise, something even more shocking than the crimes: the killer's motive.

This one was a real page-turner!  Hard to put down.

-Mona

O Pioneers

"We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it - for a little while."  So the primary character of Willa Cather's classic short novel (just over 100 pages) Alexandra describes her love for the rolling prairie country of Nebraska called 'the Divide' to her lifetime best friend Carl.

In this semi-autobiographical story of good and hard life on the late 19th and early 20th century prairie Ms. Cather paints pictures of life so easy to see every time I picked it up that I felt as though I were on the farm, visiting her friends, experiencing the wind blown beauty of her land that moment.

And as she said, only her land for 'a little while'. In the time before her parents broke the sod American Indians rode and walked 'her' land seeking the buffalo, and each other.  In the time since she wrote it in 1913 'her' land has had other owners, and perhaps now is under a large corporations plow.

But this small book brought to life, for me, one segment of time, on a seemingly endless prairie; one which beckons to Mona and I as we prepare to travel the rest of our lives together.

-Ken

Three by Sandra G.

The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.

 

Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe

 

The Last Great Dance on Earth

 

Excellent trilogy of novels based on the life of Josephine Bonaparte by Sandra Gulland.  These books are written in the form of letters and diaries kept by Josephine Bonaparte.  Gulland took many years to write them and they are extremely accurate in their detail.  She also uses many footnotes of explanation and enlightenment of various passages.  Through her eyes we see the love and loyalty Josephine had for her family and for Bonaparte.

-Mona

The Confession

The Confession, by John Grisham.

Grisham is a lawyer, and an author of law and legal thrillers.  But this book reads like it's written by a pastor, who happens to write legal thrillers.  In other words, it's very convincingly real.

It's 1998 Texas and an innocent man is going to die by lethal injection.  And the real rapist and murderer is the only person who can save him. So the killer goes to a Lutheran pastor in Topeka, Kansas, to confess.

USA Today says, "Packed with tension, legal roadblocks and shocking revelations".  Maybe, but I found it packed with believable facts, frighteningly real issues, and found myself tricked numerous times into thinking I was reading today's news instead of fiction. Little, if anything, has changed in Texas courts since this book came out.  And that means this story has occurred, and will again, somewhere, without a brave pastor coming forward to make the necessary difference.

I can say I enjoyed it, because it was fiction.  I can also say I am bothered by it, since it deals with a real situation in every death penalty state.  What happens when we kill an innocent? I think John Grisham wanted to bother all of us.

-Ken

The Orchardist

The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin.

At the turn of the twentieth century, in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a reclusive orchardist, William Talmadge, tends to apples and apricots as if they were loved ones. A gentle man, he's found solace in the sweetness of the fruit he grows and the quiet, beating heart of the land he cultivates. One day, two teenage girls appear and steal his fruit from the market; they later return to the outskirts of his orchard to see the man who gave them no chase. Feral, scared, and very pregnant, the girls take up on Talmadge's land and indulge in his deep reservoir of compassion. Just as the girls begin to trust him, men arrive in the orchard with guns, and the shattering tragedy that follows will set Talmadge on an irrevocable course not only to save and protect but also to reconcile the ghosts of his own troubled past.

Transcribing America as it once was before railways and roads connected its corners, Amanda Coplin weaves a tapestry of solitary souls who come together in the wake of unspeakable cruelty and misfortune. She writes with breathtaking precision and empathy, and in The Orchardist she crafts an astonishing debut novel about a man who disrupts the lonely harmony of an ordered life when he opens his heart and lets the world in.

I found this book to be uplifting...and heartbreaking.  Enjoy!

-Mona

The William Monk Series- Trilogy

Few authors have made Victorian London as engaging and lively as Anne Perry has, and her rich descriptions and charismatic characters have long captivated fans around the world.  Here are Anne Perry's first three classic novels featuring private investigator William Monk:

 

The Face of a Stranger

A Dangerous Mourning

Defend and Betray

 

There are twenty books in Perry's William Monk series.  After reading the first three I am looking forward to the next seventeen.  They should be read in order to fully understand the character development.  Perry takes the suspense of the solution right to the last page!

And did you know... Anne Perry herself is a convicted, sentence served, New Zealand murderer?  Check it out on www.FantasticFiction.com

-Mona

Undaunted Courage

Some years ago Mona told me about this book.  She had read it and knew I would like it too.  But I forgot
about it as time passed. Until we began planning to live on the road. Then I began to read many books about or by those who lived, at least for a time, on the roads, and trails, of the North American continent.

The most impressive thing I found about this book was author Steven Ambrose' style of writing.  Casual, yet precise.  Care in every word to say what he means but also what is true.  This is a book which replaces none of the others written about Lewis, Clark or Jefferson. Instead it informs the reading of all of them.

I won't tell you any of the conclusions Ambrose comes up with  for Lewis' decision to break his little band of Americans up into five tinier bands on the way home, having his own first and only fight with Indians in the process. Or why Lewis never bothered to complete the manuscript for his journals in his lifetime. And I surely don't want to reveal Steven's belief's about the sad suicide of Meriwether Lewis (or was it suicide?).

What I will say is that upon completion of this tale I, like Ambrose, and Lewis and Clark before him and others, want to stand in Lemhi Pass, with one foot in the Missouri and one in the Columbia watershed, and say with these first Americans to do so, "I've done it".

-Ken

Travels with Charley

In 1960 world renowned American author John Steinbeck took a trip of 10,000 miles  to see if his country had changed much at ground level since he had become so well known.  Steinbeck wasn't sure when he began what he would do with all of his notes.  What came out was one of the twentieth centuries most fascinating travelogues. While he seemed not to be ill during his journey, he told others that indeed, he knew he was dying at this time.  If that is so, it only lends poignancy to the personal tale of man and dog searching out roots and finding their way together, perhaps one last time.

I picked up this book in preparation for the journey Mona and I are preparing to take, traveling over the US and Canada as we live out our retirement on the road. While our vehicle will be somewhat more comfortable than Steinbeck's custom made Rosinante, and we have no animals to take with us, we expect to discover nuances of the North american continent wherever we go.

And while Steinbeck mourned the loss of regional identity in 1962, when the book was published (McDonald's was only beginning it's world conquering tour, though Coke was already a standard everywhere) I think we'll find plenty of local color, and wisdom, left now over fifty years later.  America had, and has, much to offer the traveler, and comparing Steinbeck's journey with ours will be a special treat.

-Ken