Author: joycesmysteryandfictionbookreviews

I read I Let You Go when it was released in 2016.  This was the author’s first novel. A former police officer, the author knows her crime details.  The book told the story of a mother who lost her child after a brief moment of inattention when picking him up from school.  This is not a spoiler; you learn this early on. What happened in the hit and run?  Who was responsible?  How does the mom, Jenna, cope? Where does she go to try to recuperate?  This atmospheric novel had me turning the pages quickly and left me looking forward to reading other books by this author.

Today is the release date for Let Me Lie which promises to be a good read as well.  I will let you know once I have made my way through it…something to which I look forward.

#TheGigglyGuideOfHowToBehave #NetGalley

This book is adorable! Your child will probably enjoy it and I think that the adult doing the reading will find it quite amusing. Each example of how to behave is illustrated with an animal drawing that shows what the result of bad manners would be. I especially enjoyed the beginning of the book with the rabbit and the turtle. Look at the book to see how cute this is! Talking about manners does not always seems like fun but this short book may make the subject more appealing in your household.

I read The Paris Wife when it was released in 2011 and loved it.  Paula McLain did a marvelous job of bringing Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, to life.  Many secondary characters in the novel were also well known figures from the time, including Sara and Gerald Murphy and the Fitzgeralds.  Settings came vividly to life including the Midwest, Paris and France, as well as Spain.  Here are some of the accolades for this novel:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
 
WINNER—BEST HISTORICAL FICTION—GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY People • Chicago Tribune • NPR • The Philadelphia Inquirer • Kirkus Reviews • The Toronto Sun • BookPage

If, by any chance, you missed this one, pick it up now before Love and Ruin is released.

I have just started Love and Ruin which is about Hemingway and Martha Gelhorn.  First there was Hadley, then Pauline, then Martha and then…My full review will follow.  I will say for now that Paula Mclain does a masterful job of capturing Martha’s voice and experience.  Hemingway, once again, come very much to life with his complex personality.

As I write this, I am free associating to other great fiction about real people.  I would also highly recommend Loving Frank if you have not read it.  This is about Frank Loyd Wright’s early life both professionally and in terms of his personality and relationships.  SPOILER…there is tragedy but the book is so well written and involving that this just adds to its impact.

by Nancy Horan

Happy reading!

Recently I blogged about a book called Everything Love Is.  If that book seemed like your kind of book, I am pretty certain that you would like to read Nina George’s novels.  I adored The Little Paris Bookshop with its story of how one can become isolated and yet have a richer and more meaningful life when moving beyond that unsatisfying safety.  From Amazon:  “Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. (INTERJECTION BY ME…WHAT COULD BE BETTER?)  From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can’t seem to heal through literature is himself; he’s still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened.”  Will Perdu open the letter?  If he does, what will this mean to him?  Find out in this lovely book.

Confession…I have Little French Bistro but have not as yet read it.  I have been holding on to it because once I read it, I will not be able to read it for this first time ever again.  Does that make sense?  I surely do look forward to it though.

Twenty-one Days is an offshoot of Anne Perry’s Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series. I read the first Charlotte and Thomas book, The Cater Street Hangman, in 1979. I can still remember not wanting to arrive at my destination on the subway because I wanted to keep reading.
So, it was with much anticipation that I began this novel in which Charlotte and Thomas’s son, Daniel, is the protagonist. He is all grown up, has attended Cambridge and is a newly qualified lawyer. Daniel is assigned several cases in this story, the 21 days has to do with the number of days it will be until a man convicted of murder will be hanged…or will he? Is he guilty? Read the story for a complex and engrossing solution.
It was lovely to see Thomas and Charlotte as peripheral characters and to read about Jemima, Thomas’s sister, who is now in New York. Victor Narraway and Aunt Vespasia also are mentioned.  There are also new and very likeable characters as well.
If you like Anne Perry, read this! If you don’t know Anne Perry, read this and then work your way through the series starting with the book mentioned above. Highly recommended by me. Many thanks NetGalley!!

#Twenty-oneDays #NetGalley

Do you like to know what books are coming out so that you can add them to your TBR list?  If your answer is yes, you may well like these three newsletters as much as I do.

The first is from the Poisoned Pen Bookstore which is located in Arizona but, of course, available to all on line.  Find them at http://www.poisonedpress.com.  Below is a brief paragraph from the newsletter,

“Please sign up for our Enews, read our Booknews.”

Next is the equally good newsletter from http://www.mysteriousbookshop.com.  They are located in Manhattan (New York, not Kansas).  Great newsletter and lots of mentions of rare, as well as, new books.  The owner, Otto Penzler, is a force in the mystery world.

Last but by NO means least,  is http://www.bookreporter.com.  They publish a newsletter every Saturday and, on Tuesdays, a selected list of book beings published that week.  They also have contests.

Please let me know if you like these sites and if you know of other good ones.  Happy reading!

This novel contains so much that my class on Adultery in 19th Century Literature could discuss, that it is a shame that we only had two classes for this novel.  It is on to Dostoevsky next week with a story called The Eternal Husband and then to Tolstoy and Anna Karenina after that.  This class is an audit for me of a for credit college comp lit class so the pace is quick. But…back to Madame Bovary.  There was much discussion of Emma.  Is she someone to feel sorry for?  Is she  a victim?  Why is she unable to be happy with her husband?  What can be said of her as a mother?  Why does she try to make herself feel better by spending lots of money that she does not have?  What does it mean that she has read many novels and is quite influenced by them?  Is she constrained by the roles that were available to her? What does the reader think about what happens to her at the end of the novel? And then…What of the men in the book?  Does the reader feel sympathy for Charles?  Why is he not enough for Emma?  What does the reader make of Rodolphe?  of Leon? Do any of these men love her? What of the many bourgeois villagers including the pharmacist and the money lender?  We learned to watch for colors…blue symbolizes passion and yellow danger and, that there are many “threes” in the novel.  We also learned that even the most casual seeming detail can come back later in the novel with great importance.  Read Nabokov’s views on the novel as we did in an article.   I am very glad to have reread this novel which I last read in my twenties.  There is so much in it.  If you don’t mind SPOILER some tragedy think about reading or re-reading this important novel of realism.   And readers…let me know if you are interested in following this class as it continues or if this is enough on adultery.  Thanks.

I have not read Fiona Barton’s first book, “The Widow,” although I probably will now. Her sophomore effort, “The Child,” is intriguing and suspenseful Who is the baby found on the building site? How are the characters and their stories connected? What does it mean to be a parent? To grieve? To confront and accept one’s past? “The Child” is about all of this while being a page turner. I did guess the answer to the central mystery but this did not in any way lessen my enjoyment of this novel. I feel confident that Fiona Barton’s next book will be, “third time the charm.” Recommended for suspense fans.  Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to review this novel.

Fans of Andrea Camilleri and Donna Leon may well enjoy this mystery featuring a woman of a “certain age” who moves to Sicily. Enjoy the setting, the views and watch what happens to Auntie Poldi as she gets involved in solving a mystery. The book is narrated by Poldi’s nephew who is an aspiring author. Each chapter begins with an italicized summary.
This book was not compelling but was a fine read.

I loved Missing Presumed, Susie Steiner’s first book in this series, and was very eager to read Persons Unknown. What I most enjoyed in reading both books was the author’s ability to create a quirky, interesting protagonist in Manon. I related to Manon’s observations on the bonds of parenting and her experience of pregnancy. Early on, I was glued to this book because I was so worried for Fly, Manon’s adoptive son. I found the mystery itself a bit less strong but that did not lessen my enjoyment of this book. Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book.  I hope that there will be more in the series in future!

ENJOY!

and growing!  This is for having over 100 likes on WordPress for the blog.  Thanks everyone.  I enjoy seeing this number get bigger.  It is like getting a report card for my reviews.  Do we ever outgrow elementary school?  Reports, stickers, etc.

first of series first of series

Ann Cleeves’s books are among my favorites.  Raven Black starts the Jimmy Perez series.  All of the novels in the series are set on Shetland, a place that truly comes to life and a spot that I would love to see.  The cast of characters is wonderful and characters grow and change over the course of the novels.  Both the Shetland and the Vera Stanhope books (to be described below) have been made into TV series.  They are available at times on PBS or at acorntv.com or Netflix.  Often I do not enjoy the televised versions of series I have read as the characters do not look or feel as I had imagined.  These issues were pretty easily overcome and I watch every available episode.

Vera Stanhope is large and ungainly; she is single, middle-aged and a workaholic.  She is intelligent and always gets to where she needs to be.  Every novel in this series is a good and absorbing read as one gets to know Vera and her squad room.  Highly recommended.

Also, there are two earlier series.  I will post a couple of covers below.

Inspector Ramsay series

George and Mary Palmer Jones series

If you are looking for some series to run through, you cannot go wrong with the novels of Ann Cleeves.  Enjoy!