Though listed on the side and cross posted on 4MA, here's a summary of my reads in August.
All descriptions are from Amazon.
THE STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL TALE OF MISS PERCY PARKER by Leanna Renee Hieber
1st of new series (?)What fortune awaited timid Percy Parker at Athens Academy? Considering how few of Queen Victoria’s Londoners knew of it, the great Romanesque fortress was dreadfully imposing, and little could Percy guess what lay inside. She had never met the mysterious Professor Alexi Rychman, knew nothing of the growing shadow, the Ripper and other supernatural terrors against which his coterie stood guard. She knew simply that she was different, with her snow-white hair and uncanny gifts. But this arched stone doorway offered an education far from the convent—and an invitation to a dangerous dance at the threshold of life and death… This is labeled as historical fantasy in Victorian England with romance and a touch of the Ripper mystery thrown in. Overblown and over the top may have suited the melodramatic story. It was okay.
A PLAGUE OF POISON by Maureen Ash
3rd of 4 in series featuring Bascot de Marins, a Templar Knight recovering from imprisonment in the holy lands, in the early 1200s, in England. This is becoming a common trope in medieval historical mysteries, but this is one of the authors who does it well. When a cake kills a squire, the castle governor enlists the help of Templar Bascot de Marins. But as murder spreads beyond the castle walls, he wonders if it is in fact the work of a lethal master of poisons. Very good.
IN A DARK HOUSE by Deborah Crombie
10th of 13 featuring Duncan Kincaid, a Scotland Yard superintendent, and Gemma James, Det. Insp., in London. When a nude, charred female corpse turns up in a burned warehouse, the police discover that the unidentified victim, one of four possible women, was murdered beforehand. Duncan and Gemma also look into the abduction of 10-year-old Harriet Novak, a pawn in her parents' ongoing acrimonious divorce. Young, eager firefighter Rose Kearny, who found the body in the burning building, works the case on her own and comes up with a theory that may explain the arsonist's unusual motive. Good.
THE GRIM REAPER by Bernard Knight
6th of 13 in series featuring Sir John de Wolfe, the crowner (coroner), in 12th century Devon, England May, 1195. Sir John de Wolfe is summoned at dawn to inspect a corpse that has been discovered in Exeter's cathedral precinct. Aaron of Salisbury, a Jewish moneylender, has been found dead, his head enveloped in a brown leather money bag, a scrap of folded parchment clutched in his hand. On it is written: "And Jesus went into the temple and overthrew the tables of the money-changers." This is just the beginning of a strange series of murders in which an apt biblical text is left at the scene of the crime. Setting out to track down a literate and Bible-learned killer in an age when only one percent of the population can read or write, Sir John deduces that he is looking for a homicidal priest. Excellent as always.
SAND SHARKS by Margaret Maron
15th of 15 in series featuring Deborah Knott, district judge in North Carolina. Discovering a murdered colleague isn't quite the adventure Deborah Knott anticipated during her getaway/conference in Wrightsville Beach, N.C. The judge agrees to aid local investigators with discreet inquiries among her fellow conventioneers. She quickly encounters plenty of folks none too distressed by the victim's demise, including one of her own exes, and escalating danger. Good.
DEATH ON THE ROMNEY MARSH by Deryn Lake
4th of 13 in series featuring John Rawlings, an apothecary and associate of John Fielding, mostly in 18th century London. Summoned to attend a patient in a house near the lonely Romney Marsh, Rawlings does not suspect that he is walking into a web of conspiracy, intrigue and mystery. Until he discovers a body near a deserted church, bearing a coded document. Rawlings reports the case to London's famous blind magistrate John Fielding who identifies the victim as a French spymaster. So Rawlings returns to the marshes to investigate who, amongst the colourful local characters, could be harbouring politically explosive secrets... Excellent.
VANISHED by Jospeh Finder
1st in new series featuring Nick Heller, ex-Special Forces, now an international security consultant. Nick Heller is tough, smart, and stubborn. And in his line of work, it's essential. Trained in the Special Forces, Nick is a high-powered intelligence investigator--exposing secrets that powerful people would rather keep hidden. He's a guy you don't want to mess with. He's also the man you call when you need a problem fixed. Desperate, with nowhere else to turn, Nick's nephew, Gabe makes that call one night. After being attacked in Georgetown, his mother, Lauren, lies in a coma, and his step-dad, Roger, Nick's brother, has vanished without a trace. Nick and Roger have been on the outs since the arrest, trial, and conviction of their father, the notorious "fugitive financier," Victor Heller. Where Nick strayed from the path, Roger followed their father's footsteps into the corporate world. Now, as Nick searches for his brother, he's on a collision course with one of the most powerful corporations in the world--and they will stop at nothing to protect their secrets. Very good.
THE WHITE QUEEN by Philippa Gregory
First of “The Cousin’s War” series featuring Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen. This tells the story of a woman of extraordinary beauty and ambition who, catching the eye of the newly crowned boy king, marries him in secret and ascends to royalty. While Elizabeth rises to the demands of her exalted position and fights for the success of her family, her two sons become central figures in a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries: the missing princes in the Tower of London whose fate is still unknown. Many historical inaccuracies and repetitions. I wanted more depth to the storytelling. Ugh.
THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLES by Susanna Gregory
14th of 15 in series featuring Matthew Bartholomew, physician, and his colleague Brother Michael, in 14th century Cambridge. In 1357, rumors of plague threaten Cambridge again, 10 years after the Black Death almost laid waste to the town. Neither the church nor its priests had defended people from the disease so now they turn elsewhere for protection, to pagan ritual and magical potions. It is a ripe atmosphere to be exploited by the mysterious Sorcerer, an anonymous magician whose increasing influence seems certain to oust both civil and church leaders from power. One murder, another unexplained death, a font filled with blood, a desecrated grave—all bear the hallmarks of the Sorcerer's hand, only the identity of the magician remains a mystery. Very good, love this series.
THE LAST EMBER by Daniel Levin
Stand alone. Jonathan Marcus a young American lawyer and a former doctoral student in classics, has become a sought-after commodity among antiquities dealers. But when he is summoned to Rome to examine a client's fragment of an ancient stone map, he stumbles across a startling secret: a hidden message carved inside the stone itself. The discovery propels him on a perilous journey from the labyrinth beneath the Coliseum to the biblical-era tunnels of Jerusalem in search of a hidden 2,000-year-old artifact sought by empires throughout the ages. As Marcus and a passionate UN preservationist, Dr. Emili Travia, dig more deeply into the past, they're stunned to discover not only an ancient intelligence operation to protect the artifact, but also a ruthless modern plot to destroy all trace of it by a mysterious radical bent on erasing every remnant of Jewish and Christian presence from the Temple Mount. Most excellent.
THE YELLOW-LIGHTED BOOKSTORE by Lewis Buzbee
Memoir. Buzbee is a book lover. When he describes walking into a bookstore, feasting his eyes on the walls lined with stock, gravitating to the tables stacked with new issues and then discovering some volume so irresistibly beautiful he just has to buy it, you realize that he just doesn't love books, he's besotted. Buzbee tells the story of his lifelong obsession, from his elementary school Weekly Reader orders to his first jobs clerking in bookstores and his short career as a publisher's rep. Woven into these personal essays is a tangential discourse on the history of bookmaking and bookselling, from the ancient Romans and Chinese to the modern era. He describes the scriptoriums in Roman bookshops where the wealthy could order a book copied, the stacks of unbound quires a customer would have chosen from in a 15th-century bookshop (proto-paperbacks) and everything one would want to know about the modern business of bookselling, from ISBNs to remainders. On current hot-button issues, like predatory pricing by big-box stores and Internet vendors, he's careful where he draws his bottom line, which is "between bookstores and the absence of them." Good.
A GENTLEMAN OF GOOD FORTUNE by Anna Dean
2nd of 2 in series featuring Miss Dido Kent in Regency England. It is Richmond, 1806. Miss Dido Kent has developed rather a taste for mysteries. Having solved the riddle of her niece's missing fiancé and the body in the bushes at Belsfield Hall, she is finding her quiet holiday at her cousin Flora's home rather unchallenging to say the least. And Miss Dido is a woman who likes to be challenged. So when a neighbor dies suddenly, leaving her entire estate to her young nephew, Miss Dido can't help but be suspicious. But is her over-active imagination making her look for murder where there is none? When the local doctor pronounces an overdose as the cause of death and publicly accuses the nephew of killing his aunt, Miss Dido feels her inquisitiveness is justified. And when Flora prevails upon her cousin's mystery-solving capabilities to prove the nephew innocent of the crime, she can hardly refuse to comply. After all, what harm can a little investigating do? With dirty dealings and death amongst Richmond's upper classes, she is ideally placed to observe her neighbors' behavior, and as she does so, she brings more to light than even she could have imagined. Very good.
CHAMBERS OF DEATH by Priscilla Royal
6th of 6 in series featuring Eleanor, Prioress of Tyndal in 11th century East Anglia, England. Eleanor and a group returning from a journey through Norfolk take shelter from a bitter autumn rainstorm in a manor house near Tyndal after one of their party, a young nun, falls gravely ill. Eleanor and her companions receive a warm welcome, but they soon realize all is not well at the manor, whose residents include the earl of Lincoln's steward, the steward's family and staff. When a groom is brutally butchered in the stable and the cook accused of his murder, Eleanor and her faithful friend, Brother Thomas, can't help investigating what they soon see is a convenient rush to judgment by the local sheriff. As the death toll mounts, they discover any number of suspects among the manor's household. Very good.
THE REISLING RETRIBUTION by Ellen Crosby
4th of 4 in series featuring Lucie Montgomery, operating her family’s winery in Virginia. When a tornado rips through Montgomery Estate Vineyard, it not only destroys some of Lucie Montgomery's newest grapevines but also unearths a grave in an abandoned field; the police inform Lucie that the odds are good someone in her family is responsible -- possibly for murder. Her new farm manager clashes constantly with her winemaker, and accidents, broken equipment, and injuries fuel the combustible atmosphere around the winery. Meanwhile, Lucie has granted permission to a group of Civil War re-enactors to use a field near the grave site to stage the local Battle of Ball's Bluff. Not very much crime solving in this outing, but a nice series to visit. Good.
THE STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL TALE OF MISS PERCY PARKER by Leanna Renee Hieber
1st of new series (?)What fortune awaited timid Percy Parker at Athens Academy? Considering how few of Queen Victoria’s Londoners knew of it, the great Romanesque fortress was dreadfully imposing, and little could Percy guess what lay inside. She had never met the mysterious Professor Alexi Rychman, knew nothing of the growing shadow, the Ripper and other supernatural terrors against which his coterie stood guard. She knew simply that she was different, with her snow-white hair and uncanny gifts. But this arched stone doorway offered an education far from the convent—and an invitation to a dangerous dance at the threshold of life and death… This is labeled as historical fantasy in Victorian England with romance and a touch of the Ripper mystery thrown in. Overblown and over the top may have suited the melodramatic story. It was okay.
A PLAGUE OF POISON by Maureen Ash
3rd of 4 in series featuring Bascot de Marins, a Templar Knight recovering from imprisonment in the holy lands, in the early 1200s, in England. This is becoming a common trope in medieval historical mysteries, but this is one of the authors who does it well. When a cake kills a squire, the castle governor enlists the help of Templar Bascot de Marins. But as murder spreads beyond the castle walls, he wonders if it is in fact the work of a lethal master of poisons. Very good.
IN A DARK HOUSE by Deborah Crombie
10th of 13 featuring Duncan Kincaid, a Scotland Yard superintendent, and Gemma James, Det. Insp., in London. When a nude, charred female corpse turns up in a burned warehouse, the police discover that the unidentified victim, one of four possible women, was murdered beforehand. Duncan and Gemma also look into the abduction of 10-year-old Harriet Novak, a pawn in her parents' ongoing acrimonious divorce. Young, eager firefighter Rose Kearny, who found the body in the burning building, works the case on her own and comes up with a theory that may explain the arsonist's unusual motive. Good.
THE GRIM REAPER by Bernard Knight
6th of 13 in series featuring Sir John de Wolfe, the crowner (coroner), in 12th century Devon, England May, 1195. Sir John de Wolfe is summoned at dawn to inspect a corpse that has been discovered in Exeter's cathedral precinct. Aaron of Salisbury, a Jewish moneylender, has been found dead, his head enveloped in a brown leather money bag, a scrap of folded parchment clutched in his hand. On it is written: "And Jesus went into the temple and overthrew the tables of the money-changers." This is just the beginning of a strange series of murders in which an apt biblical text is left at the scene of the crime. Setting out to track down a literate and Bible-learned killer in an age when only one percent of the population can read or write, Sir John deduces that he is looking for a homicidal priest. Excellent as always.
SAND SHARKS by Margaret Maron
15th of 15 in series featuring Deborah Knott, district judge in North Carolina. Discovering a murdered colleague isn't quite the adventure Deborah Knott anticipated during her getaway/conference in Wrightsville Beach, N.C. The judge agrees to aid local investigators with discreet inquiries among her fellow conventioneers. She quickly encounters plenty of folks none too distressed by the victim's demise, including one of her own exes, and escalating danger. Good.
DEATH ON THE ROMNEY MARSH by Deryn Lake
4th of 13 in series featuring John Rawlings, an apothecary and associate of John Fielding, mostly in 18th century London. Summoned to attend a patient in a house near the lonely Romney Marsh, Rawlings does not suspect that he is walking into a web of conspiracy, intrigue and mystery. Until he discovers a body near a deserted church, bearing a coded document. Rawlings reports the case to London's famous blind magistrate John Fielding who identifies the victim as a French spymaster. So Rawlings returns to the marshes to investigate who, amongst the colourful local characters, could be harbouring politically explosive secrets... Excellent.
VANISHED by Jospeh Finder
1st in new series featuring Nick Heller, ex-Special Forces, now an international security consultant. Nick Heller is tough, smart, and stubborn. And in his line of work, it's essential. Trained in the Special Forces, Nick is a high-powered intelligence investigator--exposing secrets that powerful people would rather keep hidden. He's a guy you don't want to mess with. He's also the man you call when you need a problem fixed. Desperate, with nowhere else to turn, Nick's nephew, Gabe makes that call one night. After being attacked in Georgetown, his mother, Lauren, lies in a coma, and his step-dad, Roger, Nick's brother, has vanished without a trace. Nick and Roger have been on the outs since the arrest, trial, and conviction of their father, the notorious "fugitive financier," Victor Heller. Where Nick strayed from the path, Roger followed their father's footsteps into the corporate world. Now, as Nick searches for his brother, he's on a collision course with one of the most powerful corporations in the world--and they will stop at nothing to protect their secrets. Very good.
THE WHITE QUEEN by Philippa Gregory
First of “The Cousin’s War” series featuring Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen. This tells the story of a woman of extraordinary beauty and ambition who, catching the eye of the newly crowned boy king, marries him in secret and ascends to royalty. While Elizabeth rises to the demands of her exalted position and fights for the success of her family, her two sons become central figures in a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries: the missing princes in the Tower of London whose fate is still unknown. Many historical inaccuracies and repetitions. I wanted more depth to the storytelling. Ugh.
THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLES by Susanna Gregory
14th of 15 in series featuring Matthew Bartholomew, physician, and his colleague Brother Michael, in 14th century Cambridge. In 1357, rumors of plague threaten Cambridge again, 10 years after the Black Death almost laid waste to the town. Neither the church nor its priests had defended people from the disease so now they turn elsewhere for protection, to pagan ritual and magical potions. It is a ripe atmosphere to be exploited by the mysterious Sorcerer, an anonymous magician whose increasing influence seems certain to oust both civil and church leaders from power. One murder, another unexplained death, a font filled with blood, a desecrated grave—all bear the hallmarks of the Sorcerer's hand, only the identity of the magician remains a mystery. Very good, love this series.
THE LAST EMBER by Daniel Levin
Stand alone. Jonathan Marcus a young American lawyer and a former doctoral student in classics, has become a sought-after commodity among antiquities dealers. But when he is summoned to Rome to examine a client's fragment of an ancient stone map, he stumbles across a startling secret: a hidden message carved inside the stone itself. The discovery propels him on a perilous journey from the labyrinth beneath the Coliseum to the biblical-era tunnels of Jerusalem in search of a hidden 2,000-year-old artifact sought by empires throughout the ages. As Marcus and a passionate UN preservationist, Dr. Emili Travia, dig more deeply into the past, they're stunned to discover not only an ancient intelligence operation to protect the artifact, but also a ruthless modern plot to destroy all trace of it by a mysterious radical bent on erasing every remnant of Jewish and Christian presence from the Temple Mount. Most excellent.
THE YELLOW-LIGHTED BOOKSTORE by Lewis Buzbee
Memoir. Buzbee is a book lover. When he describes walking into a bookstore, feasting his eyes on the walls lined with stock, gravitating to the tables stacked with new issues and then discovering some volume so irresistibly beautiful he just has to buy it, you realize that he just doesn't love books, he's besotted. Buzbee tells the story of his lifelong obsession, from his elementary school Weekly Reader orders to his first jobs clerking in bookstores and his short career as a publisher's rep. Woven into these personal essays is a tangential discourse on the history of bookmaking and bookselling, from the ancient Romans and Chinese to the modern era. He describes the scriptoriums in Roman bookshops where the wealthy could order a book copied, the stacks of unbound quires a customer would have chosen from in a 15th-century bookshop (proto-paperbacks) and everything one would want to know about the modern business of bookselling, from ISBNs to remainders. On current hot-button issues, like predatory pricing by big-box stores and Internet vendors, he's careful where he draws his bottom line, which is "between bookstores and the absence of them." Good.
A GENTLEMAN OF GOOD FORTUNE by Anna Dean
2nd of 2 in series featuring Miss Dido Kent in Regency England. It is Richmond, 1806. Miss Dido Kent has developed rather a taste for mysteries. Having solved the riddle of her niece's missing fiancé and the body in the bushes at Belsfield Hall, she is finding her quiet holiday at her cousin Flora's home rather unchallenging to say the least. And Miss Dido is a woman who likes to be challenged. So when a neighbor dies suddenly, leaving her entire estate to her young nephew, Miss Dido can't help but be suspicious. But is her over-active imagination making her look for murder where there is none? When the local doctor pronounces an overdose as the cause of death and publicly accuses the nephew of killing his aunt, Miss Dido feels her inquisitiveness is justified. And when Flora prevails upon her cousin's mystery-solving capabilities to prove the nephew innocent of the crime, she can hardly refuse to comply. After all, what harm can a little investigating do? With dirty dealings and death amongst Richmond's upper classes, she is ideally placed to observe her neighbors' behavior, and as she does so, she brings more to light than even she could have imagined. Very good.
CHAMBERS OF DEATH by Priscilla Royal
6th of 6 in series featuring Eleanor, Prioress of Tyndal in 11th century East Anglia, England. Eleanor and a group returning from a journey through Norfolk take shelter from a bitter autumn rainstorm in a manor house near Tyndal after one of their party, a young nun, falls gravely ill. Eleanor and her companions receive a warm welcome, but they soon realize all is not well at the manor, whose residents include the earl of Lincoln's steward, the steward's family and staff. When a groom is brutally butchered in the stable and the cook accused of his murder, Eleanor and her faithful friend, Brother Thomas, can't help investigating what they soon see is a convenient rush to judgment by the local sheriff. As the death toll mounts, they discover any number of suspects among the manor's household. Very good.
THE REISLING RETRIBUTION by Ellen Crosby
4th of 4 in series featuring Lucie Montgomery, operating her family’s winery in Virginia. When a tornado rips through Montgomery Estate Vineyard, it not only destroys some of Lucie Montgomery's newest grapevines but also unearths a grave in an abandoned field; the police inform Lucie that the odds are good someone in her family is responsible -- possibly for murder. Her new farm manager clashes constantly with her winemaker, and accidents, broken equipment, and injuries fuel the combustible atmosphere around the winery. Meanwhile, Lucie has granted permission to a group of Civil War re-enactors to use a field near the grave site to stage the local Battle of Ball's Bluff. Not very much crime solving in this outing, but a nice series to visit. Good.
Enjoy your Saturday!
Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster
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