I will usually finish any book I start, but I am slowly learning that sometimes it’s better to cut my losses and move on. Here are two that I’ve given up on recently. The Phantom of Pemberley by Regina Jeffers Synopsis from GoodReads: Newlyweds Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet knew their first year of married Continue Reading…
Vicar General Thomas Cromwell is sending his man, Matthew Shardlake, to investigate a brutal murder. As he brings Reformation to England, Cromwell is trying to subtly force monasteries to “voluntarily” dissolve, and the man he sent to the monastery in Scarnsea has been killed. Shardlake needs to find the killer–and try to convince the abbot Continue Reading…
Ludelphia Bennett is worried about her mom. After several miscarriages, Mama finally seems to be carrying a baby to term. But she is coughing a lot and looking weaker every day. When the baby comes early, Ludelphia doesn’t know what to do. She asks their neighbor, Etta Mae, for help. But Etta Mae has a Continue Reading…
What I knew about Marie Antoinette before reading this book (spoilers ahead if you don’t know anything at all about her): She was married to Louis XVI, she said “Let them eat cake,” she was queen during the French Revolution, and (possible spoiler here)————————-she was beheaded. That was it. Three out of four isn’t bad. Continue Reading…
The Map of Love tells two stories. Primarily, it is about Anna Winterbourne, living in the early 1900s, and her fascination with Egypt. In the present, Isabel Parkman and Amal al-Ghamrawi have found a trunk of Anna’s journals and letters and set out to piece together her story, while living their own. The writing in Continue Reading…
Seven-year-old Rachel Kalama is living in Honolulu in 1893. Her life is punctuated with a child’s hopes and dreams and drama. Her father is a sailor, and she loves it when he comes home on leave, mostly because she’s excited to see him, but also because she loves to hear his stories about the wider Continue Reading…
“My name is Calpurnia Virginia Tate, but back then everybody called me Callie Vee. That summer, I was eleven years old and the only girl out of seven children. Can you imagine a worse situation?” “That summer” is the summer of 1899 and it is a scorcher. Amid the heat and the drought though, Callie Continue Reading…
This is the story of Mary Magdalene’s entire life, from childhood to her death. I enjoyed seeing this controversial historical figure in her own element, with no one sitting in judgment of who she was and her relationship to Jesus. The woman who emerged from these pages was initially very troubled. She was doing her Continue Reading…
Annemarie Johansen is a 10-year-old girl growing up in Denmark during WWII. Soldiers occupy every street corner and everyone does his or her best not to draw attention to themselves. Annemarie’s best friend, Ellen, is a Jew. One night, Annemarie’s family hides Ellen from soldiers who are looking for Jews. How far is the family Continue Reading…
Twenty-three-year-old Jacob Jankowski has just lost his parents in a car crash. They had already lost everything in the Great Depression. In a devastating bout of grief, Jacob, a vet school student, walks out of his final exams at Cornell University. He ends up working for a circus as the vet. His boss, August, is Continue Reading…
Picking up where the first book left off, the Seven Kingdoms are in chaos. There are now three claimants to the Iron Throne and the North has declared something of a war of independence on the rest of the country. This book has almost everything. Treachery, loyalty, conspiracies, conspiracies within conspiracies, turncoats, power plays, twists, Continue Reading…