Son of a Witch

Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire

To read Son of... you must first have read Wicked. The tale of a mother who was born good, though frightening, and learned to do some pretty mean things, amongst the good, because she was treated badly by most. A tale of cause and effect; of gain and loss; of possibilities and problems in Oz which mirrors our world of the 21st Century as Frank Baum's Oz mirrored the early 20th.

Now comes a son, though you don't know it and neither does he.  Is he Elphaba's own?  Is he the child of the Wicked Witch of the West?  He is not green.  He has no magic. He is as unsure of himself as she was sure of hers.

Like Wicked, this is a fascinating read placing you in a land that seems one moment like the Oz of Judy Garland, and the next the same land but with an all too REAL reality.  As the movie went from black and white to color when the house dropped on Munchkinland, so this tale goes back and forth from light to dark repeatedly. Both books left me rooting for the dark much more than I thought they would.

Elphaba Lives!

-en

Paragon Walk

Paragon Walk by Anne Perry

 

"Perry has the great gift of making it all seem immediate and very much alive."
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

In the posh London street of Paragon Walk, a young woman is brutally raped and murdered. Once again the incomparable team of sleuths, Inspector Thomas Pitt and his young wife, Charlotte, peer beneath the elegant masks of the well-born suspects and reveal that something ugly lurks behind the handsome facades of Paragon Walk-something that could lead to more scandal, and more murder....
-FantasticFiction.com

 

This third book in the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series is every bit as engaging as the first two.  Sit back and enjoy!

-Mona

The Meaning of Night

The Meaning of Nigh tby Michael Cox

Awards
Waterstone's Newcomer of the Year (nominee)
Costa Book Awards (nominee)

This work is set in a cold October night, 1854. In a dark passageway, an innocent man is stabbed to death. So begins the extraordinary story of Edward Glyver, booklover, scholar and murderer. As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. This seems the stuff of dreams, until a chance discovery convinces Glyver that he was right: greatness does await him, along with immense wealth and influence. And he will stop at nothing to win back a prize that he now knows is rightfully his. Glyver's path leads him from the depths of Victorian London, with its foggy streets, brothels and opium dens, to Evenwood, one of England's most enchanting country houses. His is a story of betrayal and treachery, of death and delusion, of ruthless obsession and ambition. And at every turn, driving Glyver irresistibly onwards, is his deadly rival: the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt. Thirty years in the writing, "The Meaning Of Night" is a stunning achievement. Full of drama and passion, it is an enthralling novel that will captivate readers right up to its final thrilling revelation.

-FantasticFiction.com

 

The Meaning of Night is filled with great detailed descriptions and footnotes as to historical accuracy and could at times be very tedious.  But at the same time it was a thrilling story of obsession and revenge.

-Mona

The Irregulars

The Irregulars by Jennet Conant

I took up this volume to add it to my WW 2 spy genre, which had been up to now mostly about the OSS, forerunner to the CIA in America and European actors on both sides of the struggle.  I'd read a bit about the man code named "Intrepid", Sir William Stephenson, the Canadian millionaire (billionaire in 2014 dollars) who in his mid forties was THE spymaster above them all. He ran thousands of British agents in America and Canada out of his two floors at the International Building in Radio City, Manhattan. He helped Bill Donovan start the OSS and worked strategically on Britain's behalf throughout the war to grow support for FDR's pro-war aims and defeat isolationists of both parties. Now I would learn more about America's own relationship with spies.

What surprised me about this book was the connection of Roald Dahl, the author of many books and short stories, most notably James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Willie Wonka in the movies), and WW2 spying.  Roald was a high end 'listener' and influencer at the British embassy in DC and worked at times side by side with Ian Fleming, David Ogilvy, Noel Coward and many other well known Brits who spent more time collecting information than writing, singing, or acting during the war.

One of the best known of Roald's colleagues was Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, whose stories are  patterned in many ways on various aspects of Stephenson's 'IRREGULARS', called this by Winston Churchill for Sherlock Holmes Baker's Street Irregulars, the street boys who were Holmes' army of spies all over Victorian London.

Well researched, Conant brings to life a playboy who circles the men he wants to spy on and the women he wishes to, well... .  He's a model for James Bond so you figure it out.

Fascinatingly written, tying together the horror of war and the glamour of DC at it's highest levels I found myself sitting at the picnic tables, in the patios, smoking rooms and libraries of the most famous leaders of the free world along with Roald and his friends, seeking secrets and influencing elections, right here in America.

Wonderful.

-Ken

The Scent of Rain and Lightning

The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard

 

Awards
Agatha Award (nominee)

Written with the wisdom and grace devoted readers have come to expect from the award-winning author of The Virgin of Small Plains, here is a brilliantly moving tale of family, murder, and redemptive love.

Rose, Kansas, is a quiet town poised between the orderly and the unpredictable, where a terrible secret lies long dormant. . .until it vengefully stirs to life one fateful day. Young English teacher Jody Linder wakes up one morning to find her three intimidating rancher uncles on her doorstep. They bring shocking news: Billy Crosby, the man convicted of murdering her father--and presumably her mother's killer as well--is being released from prison and coming back to Rose with his son, Collin, an attorney. Convinced of his father's innocence, Collin provokes Jody to face the stunning mystery behind her tragic past. Enthralling, surprising, and beautifully textured, The Scent of Rain and Lightning blurs the boundaries between suspense and literary fiction.

-FantasticFiction.com

 

I formed my own conclusions as to the guilt or innocence of the characters in Pickard's narrative.  Boy, was I ever wrong!  Read...and find out for yourself!

-Mona

Blind Side of the Heart

The Blind Side of the Heart by Michael C. White

 

From the author of the critically acclaimed novel A Brother's Blood, comes a haunting story about an Irish housekeeper who must discover the truth when her friend, the parish priest, is accused of horrible crimes.

Maggie Quinn has had her share of misfortune: Having grown up poor and fatherless in Galway, she was forced to quit school early and find work to support her ailing mother and her own child. But when a tragedy of her own making strikes, it is too much for her to bear. Plagued by feelings of guilt and sorrow and by losing her faith in God, she runs from her past; first by fleeing Ireland for America and later by drowning her sorrows with the bottle. Maggie hits rock bottom when she makes an unsuccessful suicide attempt. While recuperating in a hospital bed, she meets the remarkable Father Jack Devlin. With his compassion and love, Maggie once more finds her faith and a reason to live.

For the past eighteen years, Maggie has devoted herself to the man who saved her life. But now Father Jack, the beloved if controversial priest in the small town of Hebron Falls, Massachusetts, is accused of having done terrible things to altar boys many years before. At first Maggie is convinced that the accusations are only lies brought out by Father Jack's enemies. Yet as she sifts through the memories of her life with Father Jack, doubts begin to emerge: Could she have been blind to a darker side of her friend all these years? And when new information surfaces regarding the unsolved murder of a young altar boy with possible links to Father Jack, her faith is once again put to the test. Maggie must search her memory and her heart to help her decide what to believe. The Blind Side of the Heart poignantly captures one woman's struggle to remain loyal to a friend while at the same time she is forced to examine her conscience to arrive at the truth.

- FantasticFiction.com

 

I found this emotionally charged book about love and loyalty impossible to put down.

-Mona

Passions of Andrew Jackson

Passions of Andrew Jackson by Andrew Burstein

Who was Andrew Jackson really? And should we, almost 200 years later, care?

First answer could be war hero, tyrant, uneducated, brilliant, murderer, savior, adulterer, white supremacist, and more.  Second answer is YES.  We need to care, for he changed the American presidency forever, and we have elected, or almost have, others like him for similar reasons.

Author Burstein says beware the politician who seems to make our complex world too simple; who sees issues in black and white instead of their varied shades of grey.  He may win your heart, and lose your country.

-Ken

Old School

Old School by Tobias Wolff

 

Awards
PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction (nominee)

It's 1960, in America, at a prestigious boys' public school. The school is a place of privilege that yet places great emphasis on its democratic ideals. A teenage boy in his final year at the school, on a scholarship has,during his time there, learned to fit in with his adoptive tribe while concealing as much as possible about himself and his background. Class is ever present, but the only acknowledged snobbery is a literary snobbery. These boys' heroes are writers - Fitzgerald, cummings, Kerouac. They want to be writers themselves, and the school has a tradition whereby once a term big names from the literary world are invited to visit. A contest takes place with the boys submitting a piece of writing and the winner getting to have a private audience with the visitor. When it is announced that Hemingway will be the next to come to the school, competition among the boys is intense, and the morals the school and the boys pride themselves on - honour, loyalty and friendship - become severely tested. No one writes more astutely than Wolff about the process by which character is formed, and here he illuminates the irresistible strength, even the violence, of the self-creative urge.

-FantasticFiction.com

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book about honesty and dishonesty, truth and fiction....and the wisdom to know the difference.

-Mona

Porch Lights

Porch Lights by Dorothea Benton Frank

 

New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank is back home in the Carolina lowcountry, spinning a tale that brims with the warmth, charm, heart, and humor that has become her trademark. Porch Lights is a stirring, emotionally rich multigenerational story--a poignant tale of life, love, and transformation--as a nurse, returning to Sullivans Island from the  war in Afghanistan, finds her life has been irrevocably altered by tragedy...and now must rediscover love and purpose with the help of her son and aging mother. An evocative visit to enchanting Sullivans Island with its unique pluff mud beaches, palmetto trees, and colorful local lore--a novel filled with unforgettable characters, and enlivened by tales of the notorious Blackbeard and his bloodthirsty pirate crew and eerie Edgar Allen Poe stories--Porch Lights stands tall among the very best works of not only Dottie Frank, but Anne Rivers Siddons, Rebecca Wells, Pat Conroy, and other masters of the modern Southern novel as well.
-FantasticFiction.com

 

I love the way Dorothea Benton Frank's books truly take one not just TO the South Carolina Lowcountry but envelopes one into the tastes, smells, sounds, feelings, the LIFE of the Lowcountry.  Porch Lights is no exception. I have just BEEN to Sullivan's Island!

-Mona

Firewall

Firewall by Henning Mankell

 

A body is found at an ATM the apparent victim of heart attack. Then two teenage girls are arrested for the brutal murder of a cab driver. The girls confess to the crime showing no remorse whatsoever. Two open and shut cases. At first these two incidents seem to have nothing in common, but as Wallander delves deeper into the mystery of why the girls murdered the cab driver he begins to unravel a plot much more involved complicated than he initially suspected. The two cases become one and lead to conspiracy that stretches to encompass a world larger than the borders of Sweden.

-FantasticFiction.com

We have here another suspense-filled thriller in the Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell, Sweden's greatest living mystery writer. I liked this book.

-Mona

The Garden of Evening Mists

The Garden of Evening Mists by TanTwan Eng

 

The Man Booker Prize (nominee)

It's Malaya, 1949. After studying law at Cambrige and time spent helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals, Yun Ling Teoh, herself the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle fringed plantations of Northern Malaya where she grew up as a child. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the Emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in Kuala Lumpur, in memory of her sister who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses, but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice 'until the monsoon comes'. Then she can design a garden for herself. As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to her sensei and his art while, outside the garden, the threat of murder and kidnapping from the guerrillas of the jungle hinterland increases with each passing day. But the Garden of Evening Mists is also a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? Why is it that Yun Ling's friend and host Magnus Praetorius, seems to almost immune from the depredations of the Communists? What is the legend of 'Yamashita's Gold' and does it have any basis in fact? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?

 

Even though the story line sometimes seems slow, the word pictures Eng paints are incredible.  Well worth your time to read and absorb this wonderful book.

-Mona

American Emperor

American Emperor by David O. Stewart

Stewart holds no punches as he shares the facts he has collected and recounted in this 200 year old legal thriller.  While courtroom drama and actual procedure have changed much since the early nineteenth century, the performance of John Marshall, premier Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Thomas Jefferson, one of the most genteel and politically active (though he'd deny it from the grave) of our presidents and of Aaron Burr himself are like watching Law and Order tonight.

Was Burr a scoundrel or a hero?  Could Burr have taken Mexico if Andrew Jackson would have delivered his militia to him? Would the entire western territories have made a good confederacy separate from the eastern states, as Jefferson said they might?

Secession in 1807?  Prepare to be amazed at what you may not know of your countries history!

-Ken

Dissolution

Dissolution by C.J. Sansom

 

It is 1537 and Thomas Cromwell has ordered that all monastries should be dissolved. Cromwell's Comissioner is found dead, his head severed from his body. Dr Shardlake is sent to uncover the truth behind what has happened. His investigation forces him to question everything that he himself believes.

This first novel featuring Matthew Shardlake will make you eager to continue the series.  Interesting character and plot development.

-Mona

The Bells

The Bells by Richard Harvell

Dazzling, enchanting and epic, The Bells is the confession of a thief, kidnapper and unlikely lover - a boy with the voice of an angel whose exquisite sense of hearing becomes both his life's tragic curse and its greatest blessing.

Moses Froben was born in a belfry high in the Swiss Alps, the bastard son of a deaf-mute woman banished to the church tower to ring each day the Loudest and Most Beautiful Bells in the land. His life is simple but he is content, until the day his father recognizes Moses's singular sense of hearing and its power to expose his sins. Cast into the world with only his ears to protect and guide him, Moses finds refuge in the choir of the great Abbey of St. Gall and becomes its star singer, only to endure the horrifying act of castration meant to preserve his angelic voice and turn him into a musico.

In a letter to his son, Moses recounts his humble birth in eighteenth-century Switzerland and his life as a novice monk, and tells of the two noble friends - and a forbidden lover - whom he cherished during his chaotic years in Mozart's Vienna as apprentice to the great Gaetano Guadagni, and even as he ascended Europe's most celebrated stages as Lo Svizzero. But in this letter he will also reveal the astonishing secrets of his past and answer the question that has shadowed his fame: how did Moses Froben, world-renowned musico, come to raise a son who by all rights he could never have sired?

 

I found this book to be very compelling, despite an occasional slow section.  Bear with these several areas and enjoy the beauty and the tragedy of this tale.

-Mona

So Cold the River

So Cold the River by Michael Koryta

 

It started with a beautiful woman and a challenge. As a gift for her husband, Alyssa Bradford approaches Eric Shaw to make a documentary about her father-in-law, Campbell Bradford, a 95-year-old billionaire whose past is wrapped in mystery. Eric grabs the job even though there are few clues to the man's past--just the name of his hometown and an antique water bottle he's kept his entire life.

In Bradford's hometown, Eric discovers an extraordinary history--a glorious domed hotel where movie stars, presidents, athletes, and mobsters once mingled, and hot springs whose miraculous mineral water cured everything from insomnia to malaria. Neglected for years, the resort has been restored to its former grandeur just in time for Eric's stay.

Just hours after his arrival, Eric experiences a frighteningly vivid vision. As the days pass, the frequency and intensity of his hallucinations increase and draw Eric deeper into the town's dark history. He discovers that something besides the hotel has been restored--a long-forgotten evil that will stop at nothing to regain its lost glory. Brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, So Cold the River is a tale of irresistible suspense with a racing, unstoppable current.
 

What a thriller!  It is reminiscent of "The Twilight Zone" is style. I finished this 500 page book in a day (1AM) to be exact!  I couldn't put it down!

-Mona

The Orphanmaster

The Orphanmaster by Jean Zimmerman

From a debut novelist, a gripping historical thriller and rousing love story set in seventeenth-century Manhattan

It's 1663 in the tiny, hardscrabble Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, now present-day southern Manhattan. Orphan children are going missing, and among those looking into the mysterious state of affairs are a quick-witted twenty-two-year-old trader, Blandine von Couvering, herself an orphan, and a dashing British spy named Edward Drummond.

Suspects abound, including the governor's wealthy nephew, a green-eyed aristocrat with decadent tastes; an Algonquin trapper who may be possessed by a demon that turns people into cannibals; and the colony's own corrupt and conflicted orphanmaster. Both the search for the killer and Edward and Blandine's newfound romance are endangered, however, when Blandine is accused of being a witch and Edward is sentenced to hang for espionage. Meanwhile, war looms as the English king plans to wrest control of the colony.Jean Zimmerman brings New Amsterdam and its surrounding wilderness alive for modern-day readers with exacting period detail. Lively, fast paced, and full of colorful characters,

The Orphanmaster is a dramatic page-turner that will appeal to fans of Hilary Mantel and Geraldine Brooks.

I found this book to be excellent...a real page-turner!

-Mona

Note from Ken:  I asked her if it was time for supper and she said, "Not now! I've got only ten pages to go and I HAVE to finish them!"

American Sphinx

American Sphinx by Joseph J. Ellis

Thomas Jefferson's premier scholar of this generation writes this book not to dot i's and cross t's other able biographers have missed but rather to express his own discovered views on the character of the man perhaps most associated today with the founding of our country.

Rebel, statesman, liar, confused, elegant, wise, and mean.  Each of these very disconnected words might have described this tall ruddy Virginian at any moment of his life.

While against slavery in theory he could never find a way to let it go in practice. Sure that young America required a navy to fight the Barbary pirates as soon as they were defeated he mothballed the fleet and left his country wide open when a few years later the British lifted sailors right off our ships at sea.  Always seeking 'less' government like a modern day Tea Party'er going after Obamacare he flaunted the brand new U S Constitution and purchased the Louisiana Territory from napoleon the First for a couple of cents on the acre all on his own presidential say-so.

Thomas Jefferson, remembered as the creator of the Declaration of Independence which, when it was written, was thought to be no more than the period at the end of the Continental Congress's declaration of war with Britain soon learned that if he could defend his authorship well enough he would be called almost the father of his country.. And while author Ellis did not have the facts he would later come to support when he wrote this book, Tom was a master miscegenationist who along with his heirs denied his intimate life with slave Sally Hemmings till the first decade of this century.

A very good read that keeps you moving through the most important character revealing episodes of his life, and doesn't let itself get bogged down in the thousands of Jeffersonian documents that make some other bios of the man overwhelming for all but the most academic.

-Ken

The Dry Grass of August

The Dry Grass of August by Anna Jean Mayhew

 

In this beautifully written debut, Anna Jean Mayhew offers a riveting depiction of Southern life in the throes of segregation, what it will mean for a young girl on her way to adulthood--and for the woman who means the world to her. . .

On a scorching day in August 1954, thirteen-year-old Jubie Watts leaves Charlotte, North Carolina, with her family for a Florida vacation. Crammed into the Packard along with Jubie are her three siblings, her mother, and the family's black maid, Mary Luther. For as long as Jubie can remember, Mary has been there--cooking, cleaning, compensating for her father's rages and her mother's benign neglect, and loving Jubie unconditionally.

Bright and curious, Jubie takes note of the anti-integration signs they pass, and of the racial tension that builds as they journey further south. But she could never have predicted the shocking turn their trip will take. Now, in the wake of tragedy, Jubie must confront her parents' failings and limitations, decide where her own convictions lie, and make the tumultuous leap to independence. . .

Infused with the intensity of a changing time, here is a story of hope, heartbreak, and the love and courage that can transform us--from child to adult, from wounded to indomitable.

I would probably give this a 31/2 star rating (out of 5).  I didn't think it described the tragedy and seriousness of the time with as much intensity as it might have, but that may have been because it was told through the eyes of a 13 year old child who would not have had enough life perspective to have told it differently.

-Mona