A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore...

Pages: 972 Originally published: 1944 My edition: 2000 (Chicago Review Press) How I acquired my copy: Amazon.com, 2004 Forever Amber  takes place in the 1660s, immediately follwing Charles II's ("the Merry Monarch") return of the Stuarts to the English throne. The book features Amber St. Claire, a young woman who starts out as a sixteen-year-old country girl, naieve to the workings of the world. She immediately meets Bruce Carlton, a dashing young Cavalier, with whom she has a passionate love affair in choppy intervals throughout the book. They have two children together, but Bruce won't marry her for the reason he tells his friend Lord Almsbury: that Amber just isn't the kind of woman one marries. Upon following Bruce to London, he goes to Virginia, leaving her to fend for herself. What follows is a series of affairs and four marriages, with Bruce coming back from America now and then. Amber's marriages are imprudent: her first husband is...

Pages: 500 Originally published: 1954 My copy: 2004 (Chicago Review Press) How I acquired my copy: Borders, 2004 This book is more than just a good romance. It is an all-time classic. I am a younger reader, and so I don't have fond memories of the first time this book came out; but I'm glad that they brought Katherine  back into print. It is one of those books that all lovers of historical fiction should read, not simply for the history, but because this is an elegantly crafted novel; unarguably one of the very best I've read in a long time. This novel is a great introduction to the works of Anya Seton. The story of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt is set against a backdrop of chivalry and heroic adventure during the 14th century. I thoroughly loved this novel; there are parts of it that still stay with me two months after reading it. Whenever I read historical fiction, I always look to see whether the author has done her research- Anya Seton most definit...

Pages: 384 Original date of publication: My copy: 2013 (Harlequin MIRA) Why I decided to read: Copy offered for review How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine, April 2013 Set in 1923, the novel focuses on Delilah Drummond, a daringly modern woman who is forced to take a “break” from society when a scandal threatens her reputation. She goes to Kenya and her stepfather’s estate, Fairlight, and quickly becomes acclimatized to the way of life there—meeting, as she does so, Ryder White, a hunter/tracker. I’ve had a taste of British colonial life in Kenya—Frances Osborne’s The Bolter is about a famous colonist of the period, Idina Sackville, and the five husbands she “bolted” from in order to set up a new life in Kenya (where she continued her adventures, many of them sexual). So there are pretty obvious comparisons to be made between Idina Sackville and Delilah Drummond, as there are between Dennis Finch-Hatton (of Out of Africa fame) and Ryder White. Still, there’s enough...

Pages: 367 Original date of publication: My copy: 1978 (Ace books) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon.com, November 2010 DE Stevenson’s books are quite hard to find, but I was able to buy a copy of Celia’s House a few years ago. The novel takes place over the course of about 40 years and focuses on the lives and fortune of the Dunne family and their family estate, Dinnian, in Scotland. Humphrey Dunne inherits the estate in 1905 from Celia Dunne, with the stipulation that Dunnian will be passed to Humphrey’s daughter, Celia, when she comes of age. Some of the plot is a little predictable; for example, when the elder Celia states that Dunnian be passed on to the younger Celia, the younger Celia hasn’t even been born yet—so it’s pretty obvious that there will indeed be another Celia to carry on the family name. Because the book takes place over a larger period of time, there were also large gaps between events; for example, Stevenson doesn’t really ...

Pages: 506 Original date of publication: July, 2013 My copy: 2013 (Random House; ARC) Why I decided to read: Offered through Amazon Vine program How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine program, march 2013 I’ve loved Sarah Dunant’s novels for years, so when I saw that Blood and Beauty was available for review before publication, I jumped at the chance to read it. It tells the story of the Borgia family, specifically Lucrezia, and follows them from Rodrigo Borgia’s ascension to the papacy (and pope Alexander) in 1492 to Lucrezia’s third marriage to Alfonso d’Este in 1502. Rodrigo Borgia’s rise to power was much in keeping with the mores of the time period in which his lived. He even Italianized his name from Borja to Borgia. He and his four children, as well as his mistresses, became symbols of the power, splendor, and decadence of the Papal court in the late 15th century. It’s really, really hard to write fiction about the Borgia family without completely vilifying or ...

Pages: 378 Original date of publication: 2013 My copy: 2013 (Norton) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine program, March 2013 The Gods of Heavenly Punishment is set during WWII, and specifically focuses on the American firebombing of Tokyo in 1942 and 1945. We are introduced to Yoshi Kobayashi, the daughter of an expansionist; Cam, a bomber pilot taken prisoner by the Japanese; and Anton, an American architect, who had helped build some of Tokyo’s modern buildings in the 1920s and ‘30s but is enlisted to build test structures for the American air force to practice. Epstein has chosen an event that rarely gets written about in fiction, yet caused so much devastation at the same time; in the Operation Meetinghouse attack of 1945, 16 square miles of Tokyo were destroyed, approximately 100,000 people were killed, and over a million lost their homes. It was the deadliest air raid of WWII. So I was very interested to read about this lesser-known pe...

Pages: 640 Original date of publication: 2011 My copy: 2011 Why I decided to read: received a copy from the publisher for review How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine program, 2011 Although I wasn’t too keen on the first two books in this trilogy— The Tea Rose and The Winter Rose —I picked this one up hoping my mind had changed. Each book in the story offers a different perspective on one family at the turn of the century; this book begins just before WWI and focuses on Seamie and Willa. I think the story is meant to be fast-paced and give the reader a good overview of early 20th century history, but the story lines were so unrealistic and predictable that I had a hard time finishing the book. There were so many characters and coincidences that the book got pretty convoluted after a while. The characters’ dialogue also didn’t seem era-appropriate. This might be a good book if you’re looking for a period romance, but be prepared to suspend disbelief at the plot and chara...

Pages: 162 Original date of publication: 1927 My copy: 1981 (Virago Modern Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Library Thing member, July 2011 One day, young Jacky Jacka visits a witch, where he sees a vision of a woman in a bowl of water. The vision leads him to seek passage on a ship to the West Indies, which is then hijacked en route by the pirate Captain Lovel and the crew aboard the Moonraker. The year in 1801, a time when Napoleon had control of the high seas and the days of swashbuckling piracy was—nearly—on its way out. The story takes young Jacky throughout the Caribbean, and along the way he meets a Frenchman named Raoul and a black man Toussaint L’Ouverture, who works to free Haiti from the forces of Napoleon. On the surface it’s a fun tale; Tennyson drew her inspiration from Robert Louis Stevenson, and obvious comparisons might be made between this book and the Pirates of the Caribbean films. But this novel goes a bit deeper than th...

Pages: 274 Original date of publication: 1961 My copy: 2004 (Virago Modern Classics) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: The Strand, NYC, July 2011 Castle Dor was the last unfinished work of the critic Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and finished (at his daughter’s request) by Daphne Du Maurier after his death. The novel is a modern retelling of the Tristan and Isolde myth, re-set to Cornwall of the 1840s. Linnet Lewarne is a young woman married to an innkeeper; she strikes up a relationship with a Briton onion seller named Amyot Trestane. Although not written from the first person point of view, the center viewpoint is that of the village doctor, who recognizes how history is repeating itself, literally. Du Maurier did a fairly good job of finishing the novel—you can’t tell where Quiller-Couch’s writing leaves off and Du Maurier’s begins. She later wrote that she could never hope to imitate Quiller-Couch’s style of writing, but that she tried to adopt his “mo...

Pages: 509 Original date of publication: 2011 My copy: 2011 (Black Swan) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, September 2011 Maybe I’ve been reading too many classic novels recently, but I thought that this novel fell a bit short for me. I guess I was expecting lush descriptions of India, vivid descriptions of historical events, and great characters. Sadly, I was disappointed. The Sandalwood Tree is a split-time novel. One half of the novel focuses on an American, Evie, whose husband Martin comes to India on a Fulbright scholarship to document the end of the British Raj and the separation of India and Pakistan in 1947. One day, she finds a packet of old, illegible letters that documents the friendship between two Englishwomen, Adela and Felicity in 1856. The chapters then alternate between the two stories; Evie’s story focuses on the disintegration of her marriage, while Felicity goes to India as a member of the “Fishing Fleet,”...

Pages: 356 Original date of publication: 1993 My edition: 1993 (Penguin Books) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Philly used bookstore, July 2012 Although the back cover of the book states that the book is about several generations of one family, Away only really focuses on two generations: Mary, who experiences a vision when a stranger washes up on the Irish shore. To release her from her “demons,” she must marry, and with her husband Brian has two children: Liam and Eileen, on whom most of the second half of the novel focuses. From the Irish potato famine to the Canadian wilderness, this is a pretty amazing story about familial bonds. The story is structured pretty well, and I loved the historical details. There are some truly interesting characters, too, in particular the two eccentric Sedgewick brothers, the Irish landowners who dabble in naturalism; and the mysterious Aiden Lanighan, with who Eileen falls in love. But particularly interesting was...

Pages: 592 Original date of publication: 1946 My edition: Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Philly bookstore, April 2012 The World is Not Enough is set in France in the late 12th century. Opening with the marriage of Alis and Ansiau, the reader is immediately thrust into the lives of these characters and the time they lived in, right up through old age. The focus of the novel is on the Crusades, which Ansiau participates in, leaving Alis at home to manage the household and become a person in her own right. The strength of the novel lies in the amount of detail with which the author provides the reader, but I thought that at times the detail bogged down the pace and progress of the story, making the book at least 100 pages longer than it really needed to be. We also get told a lot of things rather than have them shown to us, which made the novel much less interesting to read. The prose is also stilted, which may have more to do with the translation of ...

Pages: 329 Original date of publication: 1972 My edition: 2010 (St. Martin’s Press) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Barnes and Noble, April 2012 After running out of fresh Mary Stewart novels to read, I turned back to Victoria Holt to try and fill the gap. On the Night of the Seventh Moon is romantic suspense with a bit of a fantasy twist. Set in the middle of the 19th century and spanning the course of about two decades, this novel is set in the Black Forest. The Night of the Seventh Moon is the evening on which Loke, the god of mischief, comes out to play; on one such of these nights, Helena Trant becomes lost and meets a dark handsome stranger in the forest… The concept is a little bit cheesy, the outcome is predictable, and there were a number of coincidences that were a little bit too much for me. But I loved this novel. The setting is magical, literally, and the book moves at a rapid pace. Holt keeps her reader perpetually guessing at the moti...

Pages: 690 Original date of publication: 2000 My edition: 2000 (Random House) (later published as I Am the Chosen King) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon UK, November 2009 I’ve had Harold the King on the TBR pile for a long, long time and had nearly forgotten about it, but when I went on a trip, this seemed as though it would be perfect reading for the plane ride. The novel tells the story of the Norman Conquest from the point of view of Harold, the last truly English king. The novel is a sequel of sorts to The Hollow Crown . It opens in 1044 with the crowing of Edward, but follow Harold’s story over the next 20 years. It covers his relationship with Edyth Swan-neck; conflict with William; and eventual crowning. Because the novel is from Harold’s perspective, it portrays him in a bit of a rosy light; its William that gets short-changed. But I thought that Hollick’s treatment of both characters seemed very realistic, given that the events of thi...

Pages: 380 Original date of publication: 2012 My edition: 2010 (Ballantine) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine, May 2012 Until I began reading this book, I hadn’t realized that I’ve never actually read a novel about Isabella of Spain—one of the most powerful women in early modern history. The novel is set during the early years of Isabella’s life and covers her marriage, struggle to maintain the throne of Castile, and the birth of her children. CW Gortner is known for researching the heck out of his novels, so you know you will always get high-quality fiction from him. That said, though, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I’ve enjoyed some of his others or as much as I wanted to. There’s nothing technically wrong with this novel, but I wasn’t as interested or invested in Isabella’s story as I was with Juana la Loca’s in The Last Queen . The prose is stiff, as is the dialogue, and I found it hard to like or relate to Isabella’s plight (e...

Pages: 188 Original date of publication: 1995 My edition: 2001 (Penguin) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, London, September 2011 In the late 14th century, a young, errant cleric comes across a troupe of traveling players. One of their party has recently died, and the cleric, Nicholas Barber, steps in to play parts. Their travels take them to a town where a woman of the town has recently murdered a young boy, apparently. Although players in the middle ages only focused on religious subjects, this troupe decides to stage a theatrical version of the murder as a Morality Play. But as they perform it, they discover that the truth is far from what they thought it was. I thought it was a great idea—and I love everything related to the middle ages, so I thought I would love this book. But I didn’t really. It’s a short book, but it drags in places due to the author’s laborious attempt to sound like a medieval person. There’s a heavy-h...

Pages: 202 Original date of publication: 1993 My edition: 2010 (Phoenix) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, September 2011 Carlos Ruiz Zafon is best known in the US for his bestselling adult novels, The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel’s Game . The Prince of Mist is a young adult novel, published before his adult novels. The novel is the story of Max Carver, a 13-year-old boy who’s watchmaker father moves his family from an unnamed city to an unnamed seaside town. Once there, Max discovers a garden with strange statues and his sisters begin having unexplainable visions. It’s definitely a first novel, and even though I kept the fact that this is a YA novel in the back of my mind as I was reading, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. The characters are pretty one-dimensional; none of them really grow in any way. Max seemed way too mature and intuitive for a 13-yer-old (even for a novel of this type), and there were s...

Pages: 532 Original date of publication: 2000 My edition: 2009 (Sphere) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon UK, May 2010 #23: Covers 1874-1885. As the novel opens, Lady Venetia Fleetwood is engaged to be married; when she finds out that her future husband doesn’t support her ambitions to become a doctor, she breaks off the engagement. Her distant cousin George Morland and his social-climbing wife Alfreda had been invited to the wedding, but are bitterly disappointed when it is called off. In order to improve their social standing, George and Alfreda begin an ambitious project to “improve” and modernize Morland Place. Although I enjoy this series in general, it’s been a while since I read the previous book in the series , so I had to go back to my notes and review them before I began reading The Cause. Still, I thought that this book was more of a filler for the series—the connection between the two branches of the family is too great. Accordin...

Pages: 671 Original date of publication: 2011 My edition: 2012 (Penguin) Why I decided to read: bought on a whim How I acquired my copy: bookshop in the Phoenix airport, April 2012 Elizabeth I continues to fascinate people 400 years after her death. Arguably England’s greatest queen, she left a legacy that included, among other things, the defeat of the Spanish Armada (leading to the waning of Spain’s influence as a world power), exploration of the New World (leading to the rise of English power abroad), and the rise of the Golden Age of English drama, personified in the works of Marlowe, Kyd, and Shakespeare. Although Elizabeth herself was such a public figure, she kept her thoughts private. So it’s intriguing to wonder what was going on in her head. Elizabeth I is one of many novels that seeks to find out. The story is told from the point of view of both Elizabeth and her cousin and nemesis Lettice Knollys, whose marriage to Elizabeth’s favorite, Robert Dudley, led to Lettice’s banis...

Pages: 960 Original date of publication: My edition: 1998 Why I decided to read: How i acquired my copy: The NYC Strand, Summer 2006 Review originally published September 11 2006 on Amazon.com We all know the Henry VIII of legend: the obese king with six wives, who executed two, divorced two, "killed" a fifth, and was only survived by one; who had gout and a variety of other ailments. Too often, too, we only hear his story through his enemies. However, Margaret George's "autobiographical" novel tells Henry's story through is own eyes--leaving nothing out but sometimes changing the truth a bit to suit his own purposes. In addition, his old Fool, Will Somers puts Henry's story into perspective, giving us an "afterward" of sorts." The novel begins with Henry's origins: the struggle between the houses of York and Lancaster. Continuing through childhood and beyond, the Autobiography tells the story of a truly remarkable person, one who is o...