Fiona Buckley’s latest installment in her Ursula Blanchard mystery series set in Elizabeth I’s court, Queen without a Crown, will please her fans. Ursula is back in action on a double mission, to track down Elizabeth’s hidden foes and to lift an accusation of poisoner from a man who died twenty-three years before. Both seem impossible, but Ursula has no choice.
Iran is in the news these days and the issues are important to us all, so it was with interest that I picked up Libby Fischer Hellman’s new novel, A Bitter Veil, set in the midst of the Iranian revolution that brought Khomeini to power. Two essential themes predominate in this viscerally effective novel: the fate of women when their choices have been taken from them and the banality of evil, to borrow a phrase applied to the Nazis—who also appear in this book if somewhat indirectly.
Berlin, 1931, the year Germany was lost to the Nazis. Hannah Vogel, a crime reporter, wanders into the Hall of the Unnamed Dead to examine the police reports from which she gathers her stories each week. Instead she sees her brother’s photograph on the wall. But her identity papers, and with them her ability to talk to the police, are on their way to America in the hands of her Jewish friend Sarah. Finding out who killed her brother is the least of many traps Hannah will fall into.
The setting of A Killing Season is a fearsome castle in the middle of winter—a castle that “looms like Satan’s shadow” on a wild coast connected to the mainland only by a narrow walkway over jagged rocks and crashing sea. Murders are propagating at an alarming rate. Is some evil plot of men behind these deaths or has the devil come to exact his due? Can Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas stop them or will they fall victim to Satan’s wiles?
What do modern Tibet, Cleopatra’s Egypt, revolutionary France, contemporary Paris, reincarnation, the Chinese mafia, the Dalai Lama, the catacombs, perfume production, and Greek mythology have to do with each other? Read The Book of Lost Fragrances and you will find out.
Kate Quinn knows how to serve up a full-flavored Rome with plenty of spice. Empress of the Seven Hills is driven along by fully-developed characters and skillful dialogue. Her main character, Sabina, from a powerful patrician family, sets out to see the world—and the world of the Roman Empire is a big place!
If you are a fan of Jacqueline Winspear’s mysteries set in London between the World Wars, when you read her last book (A Lesson in Secrets) you might have thought Maisie Dobb’s life was getting comfortably settled. Without any soap opera antics, just Winspear’s impeccable, nuanced character development, Maisie is at sea again in a variety of ways, and she’s solving a mystery of a completely new sort. Eddie is a “slow” man who has a magic way with horses. When he dies in an “accident,” the cockney costermongers of Maisie’s childhood feel justice hasn’t been done and they come to see her. You wouldn’t think this would involve issues of national safety, now would you?
Instead of contemporary England, P.D. James has set her latest book at Pemberley estate in 1803, six years after Miss Elizabeth Bennet has married Darcy. That is, P.D. James takes the prose of Jane Austen as her setting. James plus Austen is a fascinating combination, although there are some difficulties in the marriage.
If you’ve ever thought about the relationship between historical fantasy and historical fiction (think Tolkien vs. Forester), how HF writers cope with the strictures of following known history, why Cornwell will never write “alternate” history, how to write a great battle scene, or love either of these writers, you’ll enjoy this interview between Bernard Cornwell and George R.R. Martin.
The Scottish Prisoner is Gabaldon’s latest book in her extended family of books set in 18th century England/Scotland/Ireland. This offshoot from her main Outlander series focuses on Lord John Grey as his life once again tangles with Jamie Fraser, the ex-Jacobite rebel who is now a prisoner at Helwater farm. Great character development and a twisting plot cleverly incorporating snippets of Celtic language and folklore make this a pleasure to read.
