Shoulder the Sky: 1915

Shoulder the Sky: 1915 by Anne Perry

Library Journal
In 1915, British chaplain Joseph Reavley is horrified to discover the corpse of a hated war correspondent, clearly not done in by enemy fire. Second (after No Graves As Yet) in this mystery writer's acclaimed new World War I series. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews
Perry trades the stately homes of Selbourne St. Giles for the rat-infested trenches of Flanders in this foursquare sequel to No Graves as Yet (2003). The Reavley family, still devastated by the assassination of their parents, are now scattered as well. Judith and Joseph are in Belgium, Judith driving General Owen Cullingford's car and falling hopelessly in love with him, Joseph serving as a chaplain who manfully dispenses comfort to the remnants of the British Expeditionary Force. Back in England, Hannah and her tykes are anxiously keeping the home fires burning for her absent husband Archie, and Matthew, working with the Secret Intelligence Service, is trying to uncover the identity of the Peacemaker, the peace-at-any-price activist on whose orders the senior Reavleys were murdered. Matthew's assignment may sound the most deadly, but it's Joseph who sees the most action and has to deal with the most piercing moral problems. Joseph's troubles, already considerable because of the difficulties of persuading his wounded and shell-shocked fellow-Cambridgeshire villagers that God loves them despite everything they've seen and felt, are multiplied when he finds the body of Eldon Prentice, a correspondent whose pushy tactlessness had made him universally disliked-even by Gen. Cullingford, the uncle he blackmailed into giving him preferential treatment. Prentice has clearly been murdered by someone he trusted, and Joseph vows against stiff resistance to find out who. But how can he pick out the killer from a landscape that includes so many killers? And will Matthew ever identify the Peacemaker?An absorbing tale, ranging from Flanders fields to Gallipoli, in which the visceral horrors of warprovide a better balance for the plummy periods of Perry's high-flown dialogue than Victorian England ever did (Seven Dials, 2003, etc.). Be warned, though: She's evidently saving the Peacemaker's identity for the third, or the thirteenth, entry in this new series. Agent: Donald Maass/Donald Maass Literary Agency

-FantasticFiction

This second book in Anne Perry's WW I series is every bit compelling as the first.  I rate this one with four stars****.

-Mona

No Graves As Yet: 1914

No Graves As Yet: 1914  by Anne Perry

The calm June days of 1914 are shattered for Cambridge don Joseph Reavley when his brother brings news of their parents' deaths in a car accident. But when they find out that their father was carrying a mysterious document uncovering a sinister plot, the deaths begin to look less accidental.

-FantasticFiction

Anne Perry begins a new 5-book mystery series based during WW I. This first book in the series deals heavily with the events leading up to the beginning of the war woven throughout the mysterious deaths of several people, supposedly completely unconnected with the threat of war.  I think this series will be every bit as compelling as her other ones.  The first book leaves you looking forward to the next.  I rate this one with four stars****.

-MONA

A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin

A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin by Helen Forrester

A powerful  novel, heart-breaking but ultimately uplifting, from the author of the classic Twopence to Cross The Mersey. Life in a Liverpool tenement block during the Great Depression is a grim struggle for Martha Connelly and her poverty-stricken family, as every day renews the threat of homelessness, hunger and disease. Family warmth remains constant however, despite the misery and disquiet of the slum surroundings, and the indomitible neighbourhood puts up a relentless fight for survival. Helen Forrester's poignant novel relays bleakness and hardships, but celebrates also the spirit of unified hope and the restorative values of the close-knit community.

-FantasticFiction

A tragic story of extreme poverty and the courageous will to survive.  I rate this with five stars*****.

-Mona

Fox's Earth

Fox's Earth by Anne Rivers Siddons

 

Determined to make the magnificent Georgia house Fox's Earth her own, abused miller's daughter Ruth Yancey achieves her ends, only to become the cruel mistress of the house and a jealous protector of many secrets.

-FantasticFiction

A tragic story of the ruin of a family caused by obsessive greed and focused determination of one person.  Once again Anne Rivers Siddons does not disappoint with this compelling story that you won't want to put down.  I rate this one with five stars*****.

-Mona

Resurrection Row

Resurrection Row by Anne Perry

 It was the most incredible thing: a corpse driving an empty hansom cab through the foggy streets of a London evening. And it wasn't just any corpse but the body of a peer of the realm. This was sheer lunacy. Who on earth would want to unearth a decently buried old chap like Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond? The doctor insisted that his death had been natural. But there was nothing natural about this as far as the police were concerned. Inspector Pitt was determined to reveal the truth, but even he was unprepared for the horrors of greed and exploitation that lay in store.

-FantasticFiction

This fourth book in Anne Perry's Thomas and Charlotte Pitt Victorian mystery series will keep you wondering till the last page.  I rate it with four stars****.

-Mona

A Lesson in Secrets

A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear

Maisie Dobbs's first assignment for the British Secret Service takes her undercover to Cambridge as a professor - and leads to the investigation of a web of activities being conducted by the emerging Nazi Party.

In the summer of 1932, Maisie Dobbs's career takes an exciting new turn when she accepts an undercover assignment directed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch and the Secret Service. Posing as a junior lecturer, she is sent to a private college in Cambridge to monitor any activities "not in the interests of His Majesty's government."

When the college's controversial pacifist founder and principal, Greville Liddicote, is murdered, Maisie is directed to stand back as Detective Chief Superintendent Robert MacFarlane and Detective Chief Inspector Richard Stratton spearhead the investigation. She soon discovers, however, that the circumstances of Liddicote's death appear inextricably linked to the suspicious comings and goings of faculty and students under her surveillance.

To unravel this web, Maisie must overcome a reluctant Secret Service, discover shameful hidden truths about Britain's conduct during the Great War, and face off against the rising powers of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - the Nazi Party - in Britain.

As the storm clouds of World War II gather on the horizon, this pivotal chapter in the life of Maisie Dobbs foreshadows new challenges and powerful enemies facing the psychologist and investigator - and will engage new readers and loyal fans of this "outstanding" series (Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review).

-FantasticFiction

This eighth book in the Maisie Dobbs series does not disappoint!  I rate this one with four stars****.

-Mona

Desert Solitaire

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

We've been to the desert in the past, and without any horse, except the couple of hundred under the hood. And their name was emblazoned on the grill and tail of our conveyance every time.

We won't be in serious desert this year as we travel the United States at all, but heartily expect to be enjoying the northern New Mexico and Arizona deserts next Spring to see them as they bloom.  Yes, we are still planning to camp in your front yard, O'Rourkes!

But I pulled this book out of my stash on board FROG a couple of weeks ago because we were still considering a swing down to Taos  before heading east.  That ended when the refrigerator blew. But the choice of book has been wonderful. Though we will NOT be experiencing his desert quite as Abbey did in the mid 1950's.

The tale is of his first summer as a young ranger in the then very remote Arches National Park.  No paved roads; few roads at all, and peace. Desert peace. The campers had to dry camp for there just was no other way. And he wished the pit toilets had been left out of the park plan anyway.  I felt if he were alive today (Abbey died in 1989) he would say something like, "Let the tourists dig their own shitters!".  Yeah, well, that's the way he talks throughout the book so I took a liberty.

Its a fast, sometimes offensive (even today) read. Yes, I took a couple of weeks to finish it and Mona reads several books a week, but I have to clean the pounds of dead bugs off the coach windscreens and nose, dump the tanks and refill the water, write the blogs AND... well, something else.  I'll think of it later.

This book really takes you into the canyons and onto the mesas with Edward and friends. Dated? not at all.  The arguments he makes for keeping the parks for the serious wilderness folk are still being made today, as they were when Teddy Roosevelt began kicking National Park building into gear over 100 years ago.

But for me reading of the beauty, grandeur, joy of living a summer in a place no one else lived near was wonderful. And the way Abbey describes each scene and tells each story brings humor, concern, danger, and even a tragedy into focus as very few could.

Enjoy this book!  ***** 5 stars.
-Ken

Across a Hundred Mountains

Across a Hundred Mountains by Reyna Grande

Across a Hundred Mountains is a stunning and poignant story of migration, loss, and discovery as two women -- one born in Mexico, one in the United States -- find their lives joined in the most unlikely way. After a tragedy separates her from her mother, Juana García leaves her small town in Mexico to find her father, who left his home and family two years before to find work in America, el otro lado, and rise above the oppressive poverty so many of his countrymen endure. Out of money and in need of someone to help her across the border, Juana meets Adelina Vasquez, a young woman who left her family in California to follow her lover to Mexico. Finding each other -- in a Tijuana jail -- in desperate circumstances, they offer each other much needed material and spiritual support and ultimately become linked forever in the most unexpected way. The phenomenon of Mexican immigration to the United States is one of the most controversial issues of our time. While it is often discussed in terms of the political and economic implications, Grande, with this brilliant debut novel and her own profound insider's perspective, puts a human face on the subject. Who are the men, women, and children whose lives are affected by the forces that propel so many to risk life and limb, crossing the border in pursuit of a better life? Take the journey Across a Hundred Mountains and see.

-FantasticFiction

Reyna Grande's novel creates a real heightened awareness of the poverty and despair that causes so many individuals to risk everything, including death, to make a better life for themselves and their families by attempting illegal immigration into the US.  A real eye-opener, I would rate this with five stars*****.

-Mona

The Falcon At The Portal

The Falcon at the Portal by Elizabeth Peters

In this  Amelia Peabody mystery there's more trouble in store for our intrepid Egyptologist. This time it is of a distinctly personal nature.

Her niece's new, Egyptian husband stands accused of forging priceless antiquities. Is he guilty or merely the fall guy for some unscrupulous villain? Meanwhile, matters are complicated by the arrival of Amelia's detestable nephew who begins an ardently amorous pursuit of her son's wife, Nefret ...

-FantasticFiction

This #11 volume in the Amelia Peabody mystery series is as entertaining as the previous volumes.  I rate this one with four stars****.

-MONA

Shem Creek

Shem Creek by Dorothea Benton Frank

Linda Breland is the single parent of two teenage daughters. The oldest, Lindsey, is just about to leave for college; and Gracie, her youngest, is giving her nightmares. Between the cold New York winters, Linda's dating drought, financial problems and an ex-husband who has married a beautiful, successful woman ten years younger than she is, Linda has reached the end of her tether even before she discovers birth control pills in Gracie's school bag. So when she is offered the chance to move back home to her home town, Linda grabs it. She is welcomed by her generous sister Mimi, who dispenses good advice along with an endless supply of cookies, cake and lessons in how to be a lady. Meanwhile, Linda, despite her lack of experience, convinces local restaurateur, Brad Jackson, to give her a job managing the Shem Creek Cafe. Ignoring Gracie's protests at her enforced uprooting, Linda begins to hope that the Deep South and Mimi's good influence will work their magic on her rebellious daughter. And that maybe she too can find a better life, one in which she won't be rushing around fulfilling everyone's needs but her own.

-FantasticFiction

Although at times somewhat predictable, as in her other novels  Dorothea Benton Frank absorbs us into the tastes, smells, sights, sounds, romance...all that embodies the Lowcountry of South Carolina.  I rate this one with four stars****.

-MONA

The Falls

The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates

 

Awards
Orange Prize for Fiction (nominee)

A novel of tremendous sweep and pace about the American family in crisis - but also about America itself in the mid-20th century. This novel is the crowning achievement of Joyce Carol Oates's career to date. A man climbs over the railings and plunges into Niagara Falls. He's a newly-wed, and his bride has been left behind in the honeymoon suite the morning after their wedding. For two weeks, Ariah, the deserted bride, waits by the side of the roaring waterfall for news of her husband's recovered body. During her vigil, an unlikely new love story begins to unfold when she meets a wealthy lawyer who is transfixed by her strange, otherworldly gaze. So it all begins, in the 1950s, with the dark foreboding of the Falls the sinister background to events. From this cataclysmic event unfurls a drama of parents and their children; of secrets and sins; of lawsuits, murder and, eventually redemption. As Alma's children learn that their past is enmeshed with a hushed-up scandal involving radioactive waste materials, they are confronting not only their own family history, but America's own murky past.
-FantasticFiction

 

This incredibly well written book makes me look forward to reading more of Joyce Carol Oates' work.  I rate this one with five stars*****

-MONA

Blood and Thunder

The dime novels about Kit Carson and the other early western heroes that were sold to young and old alike in the mid 1800's were often called 'Blood and Thunder' readers.  They were full of blood and thunder, and not so discreet references to sex and lust.  However no American frontier hero who earned these historically inaccurate but exciting anyway stories about them who I have read of actually matched or beat the stories written of them like Kit Carson.  In fact, as I read this extremely well researched and well written history of the American southwest and biography of Christopher Carson himself I kept finding myself thinking, "This can't be true! I'm reading another fake blood and thunder dime novel myself!"  But it was, and is, true.

This book captures the mid nineteenth century from the Indian and White American perspective clearly, and savagely; and the savages are often NOT the Indians.

The church where we are parked this week, Stratmoor UMC, Colorado Springs, sent its leadership to Sand Creek during the Rocky Mountain Conference Annual meetings in Pueblo, Colorado, this June.  There a day was spent with some descendants of the Colorado Militia and Black Foot's Cheyenne clan who were massacred along that creek, near Eads, Colorado.  Forgiveness wasn't just talked about; it was made real, and plans for continued practical healing were made.

Kit Carson died of an aneurysm in 1868, just a couple of years after Methodist Pastor and General Chivington's horrible attack upon the defenseless camp. Kit was a fearless Indian fighter himself when he had to be, said this, as recorded in Side's book, about that day:

"...treacherous, brutal, and cowardly butchery. an affair in which the blame is on our side."

Reading this book will either change your attitude about who won the west and how it was won, or it will add to your knowledge of our American dichotomous past.   Americans have been both the bringers of great freedoms and peace, and the the harbingers of great wrongs and evil.  We need to learn which to celebrate and which to seek forgiveness from.

This book, along with its soul stirring history, may help us do just that.

I give it 5 stars *****.
-Ken

Kane and Abel

Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer

 

William Lowell Kane and Abel Rosnovski, one the son of a Boston millionaire, the other a penniless Polish immigrant, are two men born on the same day on opposite sides of the world, their paths destined to cross in the ruthless struggle to build a fortune.

-FantasticFiction

 

A somewhat predictable book which I thought was OK...just somewhat disappointing.  I guess I was expecting more.  I didn't enjoy it enough to want to read the sequels, The Prodigal Daughter and Shall We Tell the President?.  I rate this one with two stars**.

-Mona