The Spanish Flu and Murder

Murder by the Book An Unmarked Grave by Charles Todd is the fourth book in the Bess Crawford series.  Here we find Bess in the Spring of 1918 in France in the middle of something deadlier than World War I, the Spanish Influenza Flu.  It is becoming more of an issue  by the minute.  However, Bess Crawford finds hidden among the countless dead waiting for burial the body of a friend and officer who also served in her father's regiment who was not killed by disease or by a German's bullet.  Bess wants to report this heinous crime but falls ill with the Spanish flu.  When she recovers, she finds out that the only other witness to the crime has hung himself.  Bess refuses to let either death go without investigating further putting her life and others close to her in danger.  This is another intriguing look into World War I with its heartache, compassion and dedication of all who have lived through this time period.
Murder by the Book

Star cast, weak story

Cowboys vs Aliens starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford and Olivia Wilde was a pretty good movie.  The movie is set in 1875 in New Mexico, a stranger (Craig) appeared with no memory and with an alien device on his wrist.  He decides to go to the nearest town and finds the  law enforcement and the towns people know who he is and he becomes public enemy number one.  Harrison Ford plays a concerned father of a troubled spoiled son and a cowboy who is the leader of this town.  Olivia Wilde is a beautiful woman with an agenda of her own and a secret.  When more townspeople are taken by the aliens, enemies and rivals have to work together to fight the aliens.  The actors were great and they did the best they could with such a weak storyline.  The  story was so disjointed and confusing that it made a movie by director Jon Favreau and Steven Spielberg not really worth seeing.

A First for a Native American

Geraldine Brooks has done it again with Caleb's Crossing.  She is a dynamic writer and researcher.  Her historical fiction stories make you ache for more.  This time she goes from 1660 to 1715 at Martha's Vineyard and Harvard College.  A twelve year old girl, Bethia Mayfield and a Native American Indian named Caleb meet in her homeland of Great Harbor which houses a small band of English Puritans. They forge a forbidden friendship and teach each other the ways of their people to each other.  When tragedy strikes both families, Caleb and Bethia are sent away to school together.  Bethia, to clean and care for the boys at Cambridge and Harvard and to pay the way for her brother to get a free education.  Caleb who was tutored by Bethia's father attends Harvard with the colonial elite studying Latin and Greek.  Both characters struggle to get their voices heard during this period of time.  Women are not supposed to get formal educational training and Native Americans have to fight and accept christian culture and prejudice in order to gain a proper education for their future and their people. The outcome of these two characters and the people around them will have you thinking about them and their circumstances and our sordid past for years to cone. Caleb's Crossing is a reminder of our past and how history unfortunately repeats itself.

Two Girls and a Secret

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton is her debut novel. It is a historical fiction book about a girl named Grace Bradley and two sisters, Hannah and Emmeline Hartford. The three live in the Riverton house and experience good times and tragedy. The worse tragedy happened in the summer of 1924 when a young poet shoots himself. The only witnesses are Grace, Hannah and Emmeline.
In 1999, at the age of 99, Grace is visited by a director who is doing a movie on the history of Riverton. The director takes Grace back to Riverton and awakens a lot of secrets that she kept her whole life. The story is gripping throughout to it's astonishing ending. Kate Morton also wrote the unforgettable book, The Forgotten Garden. The House at Riverton is an intense read.

Sir John Fielding and Jeremy together again

Murder in Grub Street by Bruce Alexander is the second book in the Sir John Fielding mysteries.  The time period is the eighteenth century in London.  This time there is a murder of six people at a printers home and place of work.  The Crabb family and two of Mr. Crabb's apprentices were brutally murdered.  A mad man was also found at the scene with a bloody axe but doesn't  know why or how any of this happened.  Thirteen-year-old Jeremy Proctor and the blind Sir John are on the case to solve this evil massacre.  This series is becoming one of my favorites.  Bruce Alexander transports you to the eighteenth century with his brilliant descriptive detail.

The Rise of the Nazis

A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell is based in Berlin in 1931.  Hannah Vogel, a crime reporter heads to the police station to get a story and sees a picture of her brother in the hall of the unnamed dead.  Hannah is then dragged into her brother Ernst's world where he was a cross dressing lounge siner and was associating with Nazis.  Then, if there wasn't enough to worry about, there is a five-year-old boy named Anton who shows up on Hannah's doorstep claiming that Ernst is his father and Hannah his mother.
Hannah starts to investigate the death of her brother and finds secrets of sex scandals within the high ranks of the Nazi party that puts Anton and herself in grave danger.  Cantrell transports you to 1930's Berlin with her vivid descriptions of a terrifying and profound time when nothing can be spoken and very few people can be trusted.

Blind Justice - An unusual judge

This book by Bruce Alexander was a surprising  find.  I never heard of this author and then found out that he died in 2003.  Blind Justice is the first in a Sir John Fielding series.  The setting is in London in 1768 when a thirteen year old child named Jeremy Proctor ends up in the court of Sir John Fielding because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  However, Sir John, the founder of the Bow Street Runners and who is also blind finds an  intelligent young lad in Proctor and allows him to work for him.  When a man's body is found in a locked room dead, Sir John asks Proctor to be his "eyes" for him.  The police first suspect suicide until the man's wife says that her husband has been murdered.  Now Sir John and young Proctor need to not only find out how the person got into the room but who did it and why.  These two "men" find out more about themselves when they work together to solve this suicide/murder.  Mr. Alexander has a way of putting you right in the setting of the time and keeps you wanting more.  This reviewer finished this book in two days.  Great series to get into if you like murder mysteries. The writing world lost a talented and expressive historical fiction author.

Year of Wonder by Geraldine Brooks

Year of Wonder is based on the great plague of 1666 in a small mountain village outside of London.  A bolt of infected cloth carried by an unknown man from London brought this deadly disease to this village.  The people of the village and  Anna, a young woman with a strong heart and constitution all decide to quarantine themselves within the village to stave off spreading this deadly disease.  However, as death reaches every household in the village, all the faith people have start to become non-existent and the village disintegrates in front of Anna's eyes. The year of the plague becomes the most challenging, and deadly year of history.  Geraldine Brooks again transports you with vivid clarity back to the 1600's and the devastation of this plague and the people involved.

Recommended reading:  People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

March by Geraldine Brooks

March is set in the first year of the civil war in 1861 from New England to the south.  The story is of a man who leaves his home, his three daughters and his wife in New England and travels to the south to help and aid in the Union cause.  His discoveries with soldiers and, who are desperate for help to be free, changes his  opinion of the war.  At home, his family is fighting to help anyone who wishes or needs to be freed.  Geraldine Brooks take you into the horrible and devastating reality of the civil war.  She describes very vividly the horros and the shame of the time.  If you are curious about what went on during the civil war, this book will give you a strong sense of how it felt to live at that time and how much was sacrificed for our freedom today.

An Impartial Witness

An Impartial Witness by Charles Todd is the next book to A Duty to the Dead.  Here again we find Sister Crawford in the summer of 1917 on a short reprieve from the trenches in Paris.  She left a badly burned pilot who talked of going home to see his wife back in London.  He shows a picture of his wife to Bess. She finally arrives at a train station in London and sees a distraught woman that happens to be the pilot’s wife.  Murder finds Bess again and she is reluctantly involved in helping Scotland Yard solve a case and the secrets behind this pilot’s family.  The author again transports you back to the Great War and the devastation behind it in vivid descriptions.  I finished this book in a day and a half.  I recommend this book as well and can’t wait for the next Bess Crawford book.

You can find this book by clicking on the links below:

http://www.bluewillowbookshop.com/

http://www.murderbythebook.com/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/

http://www.amazon.com/

A Duty to the Dead

A Duty to the Dead is a historical fiction mystery set during the Great War in Europe.  A nurse, Bess Crawford was on the Britannic (a hospital ship) and the sister ship to the Titanic when it hit a mine on November 21, 1916 and sank.  A lieutenant who was dying under the care of Sister Crawford asked her for a favor.  He wanted her to relay a message to his brother in England.  “I did it for mother’s sake.  But it has to be set right.”  With this in mind and her “duty to the dead”, Bess Crawford comes across many mishaps and shameful secrets and murder to deliver this message.  Charles Todd draws you into one of the world’s most deadliest and devastating wars and also into this soldier’s family secrets.  It’s hard to put this book down.  

Recommended author is Jacqueline Winspear who wrote the Maisie Dobb series.


You can find this book at Amazon.com by clicking on this link

http://www.amazon.com/Duty-Dead-Bess-Crawford-Mystery/dp/0061791768

You can also find this book at Barnesandnoble.com by clicking on the link below:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/product.aspx?r=1&isbn=9780061791765&cm_mmc=Shopzilla-_-Category-_-Title-_-9780061791765&mr:referralid=36518586-22b5-11e0-af68-001b2166becc

The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

Kostova’s, The Swan Thieves was an intriguing read.  It’s 561 pages and if big books don’t run you off, then The Swan Thieves is the book to read when you have time to savor the contents.  The Swan Thieves is a historical fiction/love story/mystery.  Kostova takes you into the world of art, the love of it and the obsession of it.  There are four main characters.  Robert, who as a brilliant painter goes mad and tries to destroy a painting at the National Gallery.   Marlow is a psychiatrist, who treats Robert and tries to understand why this young man tried to destroy a painting.  Kate, Robert’s wife, is frustrated and confused about her husband’s act of violence.  Mary, a painter and teacher who may hold the key to this mystery.  Kostova is a very good descriptive writer.  The time period is from the late 1800 to 1999 just before the turn of the twenty-first century.  It takes you from Paris to the D.C area to North Carolina.  Kostova sweeps you off into a world of painters and sketchers and their love of the craft.  If you have a love for the arts or are intrigued by it, then you will love this book.  The author made this reviewer look for more information on the painters of that time.  The Swan Thieves is recommended for summer reads and book clubs.  Another book by Elizabeth Kostova is her first novel called The Historian.  It’s about the history of vampires and it’s a book I would also recommend.

You can find this book by clicking on the links below:

http://www.bluewillowbookshop.com/

http://www.murderbythebook.com/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/

http://www.amazon.com/

Book Review

This is my first post so please be patient with me. I read this wonderful book and would like to share it. The name of the book is called, The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.

If you love historical fiction mystery stories, this book will intrigue you. It starts with a four-year old girl in England who is left on ship in 1913 heading to Australia. The only thing she had on her was a white suitcase with a fairy tale book and some money. There was no identification and the little girl refused to say what her name was or where she came from. She was named Nell by a couple who found her. The story follows her incredible journey to find out who she is and where she came from. The journey started at Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast in 1900 to Brisbane Australia and Nell’s special relationship with her granddaughter Cassandra that ended in 2005. Between the two, they find mystery and a lot of answers surrounding the world of Nell and her fairy tale book. Morton writes with compassion and sensitivity to her characters. She transports you to the time period nicely and gives vivid descriptions of the time period.