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A Long Petal of the Sea, Isabel Allende's epic of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath

Allende’s fluidly written saga conveys her deep familiarity with the events she depicts, and her intent to illustrate their human impact in a moving way. The scope spans most of the lives of Victor Dalmau, a Republican army medic in 1936 Spain, and Roser Bruguera, a music student taken in by Victor’s family and, later, his brother Guillem’s lover and the mother of Guillem’s child. The story follows them over nearly sixty years, beginning with the tumult of the Spanish Civil War. Guillem is killed fighting against the Fascists, news that Victor can’t bear to tell Roser initially. After surviving separate and terrible circumstances that leave them refugees in France, where authorities treat them with contempt and worse, the two marry for practical reasons in order to join Pablo Neruda’s mission transporting over 2000 Spanish exiles to Chile aboard the S.S. Winnipeg . In Santiago, the Dalmaus find many Chileans sympathetic to the Spaniards, while others make them unwelcome. With a poetic ...

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Eight historical novels sitting on Mt. TBR

Hope you're all having a good weekend. I've been using the time to catch up with the TBR, and along those lines, here are eight books I'm looking forward to reading in the near future, time permitting. I took over additional duties at the library in June, so my summer has been more packed than it used to be.



The Locksmith's Daughter, my latest read, is a meaty novel of suspense and intrigue set in Elizabethan England.  Review to come.

Hamilton and Peggy!, which I received a copy of during the winter, covers the friendship between Alexander Hamilton and the woman who became his sister-in-law, Peggy Schuyler. It's a YA title, but L.M. Elliott's earlier novel of Renaissance Italy was equally enjoyable for adults, so I'm expecting this one will be too.

The Last of Our Kind, a prize-winner in France, is a literary mystery about love and family secrets set during WWII and the 1970s.

Death of a Rainmaker, a mystery set in Dust Bowl Oklahoma, just received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. I'd enjoyed Laurie Loewenstein's first novel about social change in small-town Illinois, Unmentionables, when it was published in 2014.

Twentieth-century Korea and its people have been the subject of several new historical novels, including Min Jin Lee's Pachinko and Mary Lynn Bracht's White Chrysanthemum. Eugenia Kim's The Kinship of Secrets (which has a blurb from Min Jin Lee) focuses on two sisters divided by the Korean War.

Kate Morton's newest gothic saga The Clockmaker's Daughter (yes, another "daughter" book) is one I've been anticipating for months, since I've loved all of her earlier books.

In The Splendor Before the Dark, Margaret George will conclude her two-book saga of about Emperor Nero.  I have a review due in 10 days so had better get cracking...

Lastly, The Latecomers is about an Irish housemaid and an old New England house with lots of secrets. There's a detailed family tree at the beginning, which is enough to catch my attention.

Will you be putting any of these on your own TBRs?

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The Almanack by Martine Bailey, a richly atmospheric mystery of mid-18th-century England

Saturated with beautiful images of the natural world in mid-18th century rural England, Bailey’s third mystery evokes a time when people regulated their lives according to the change of seasons and were fascinated by mechanisms, scientific and not, used to predict future events. It takes place during a pivotal period rarely seen in fiction: the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752, when eleven days were “lost.” A young woman named Tabitha Hart is robbed by her latest bedmate while traveling from London to her home village of Netherlea at her ailing mother’s request. Alas, she arrives too late: the Widow Hart lies cold in her bed, presumably having drowned in the river. Although she is shamed for her loose behavior, and for leaving behind an infant girl for her mother to raise, Tabitha is well-educated, and she takes up her mother’s former post as village searcher. She also picks up her mother’s favorite Almanack, and the scribbled marginalia in the little book, along with a threa...

The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey, a mystery set in 1920s India

Perveen Mistry’s position as the only female lawyer in 1921 Bombay keeps her services in demand. When Sir David Hobson-Jones, the governor’s chief councillor, asks her to investigate a legal matter for the Kolhapur Agency, a British civil service branch, she’s wary of getting into bed with India’s colonizers. It’s a lucrative, prestigious short-term opportunity, however, and she feels compelled to accept. The maharaja of the small princely state of Satapur is a ten-year-old boy, and his widowed mother and grandmother disagree on his education. Because they live in purdah, a woman lawyer is the best choice as mediator. While this premise is similar to the series opener, The Widows of Malabar Hill , Perveen quickly finds herself in a very different situation that tests her physical strength and negotiating skills and lands her into danger. Massey devotes ample time to illustrating the politics and culture of a remote Indian princely state and the personalities of a new cast before introd...

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes, a novel about books, dedication, and female friendship during the Depression years

Books provide people with education and entertainment; they change lives as they introduce different worlds and unfamiliar experiences. During the Depression, the women who transported books in their horses’ saddlebags to isolated Kentucky mountain residents, in all seasons, as part of the WPA’s Pack Horse Library Initiative provided a lifeline of literacy to their audiences. Hearing about this unique job after a dull church service, Alice Van Cleve grows intrigued and immediately volunteers to join. After getting swept off her feet by Bennett Van Cleve, a burly, handsome Kentuckian visiting her native England, Alice feels stifled by the insularity in her new home of Baileyville, a small Appalachian town, and surprised by her new husband’s unexpected aloofness. Alice had never fit in at home, and with her clipped British accent and dislike for frivolous social pursuits, she’s an outsider in Kentucky, too. She finds an unofficial new family with the four other pack-horse librarians, inc...

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