“The bride stood like a pillar of salt, rigid under layers of itchy petticoats. Sweat dripped down the hollow of her back and collected in pools under her arms staining the ivory silk. She edged closer to The Bedeken Room door, one ear pressed up against it.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (APR 7, 2014)

In The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, Eve Harris discloses the secrets of a Chasidic community in Golders Green, London, focusing on the tribulations of three families: the Kaufmans, Levys, and Zilbermans. The Kaufmans have eight daughters, one of whom, nineteen-year-old Chani, is seeking an intelligent, animated, and good-natured husband. The Levys, a well-to-do couple, want only the best for their son, Baruch, and plan to settle for nothing less. The Zilbermans are facing a major crisis. Rabbi Zilberman’s wife, Rivka, is no longer a contented spouse, mother, and homemaker; she is restless, edgy, and depressed. Adding to the tension is the fact that one of her sons, Avromi, a university student, is acting strangely. He is secretive, stays out late, and avoids telling his family where he has been.

Harris goes back and forth in time, creating a well-rounded portrait of a community whose members prize tradition, virtue, and spirituality. If anyone deviates from prescribed standards of behavior–by dressing immodestly, showing too much interest in secular matters, or flouting religious law–he or she risks censure or, in some cases, ostracism. However, the author indicates that many Chasidim have a great deal to be grateful for: particularly the support of relatives, friends, and neighbors and the peace of mind that comes from knowing one’s place in the world.

The cast includes the young and not-so-young, the experienced and naïve, the affluent and those struggling to get by. We observe Chani Kaufman navigating the dating scene with anticipation as well as trepidation. We also meet Baruch Levy, a twenty-year-old who fears that he is not ready to shoulder the responsibilities that marriage entails. Manipulating the matchmaking strings is the smug and calculating Mrs. Gelbmann, a shadchan who relishes the inordinate amount of power that she wields. Readers’ hearts go out to Chani’s mother, a long-suffering matriarch who, at forty-five, has already borne eight daughters and is thoroughly burned out.

Ms. Harris is knowledgeable about the Hasidic lifestyle, and portrays her flawed and troubled characters with understanding, insight, and compassion. Her decision to relate events out of chronological order is initially bewildering. However, it allows us to stand back and consider complex situations from a variety of angles and viewpoints. The author presents the limited options available to young people like Chanie and Baruch. Should they adhere to the accepted laws and customs handed down by their parents or follow a different path that might be more to their liking? Chani wonders, “What was it like to roam freely in the world and not have to think about your every action and its spiritual consequence?” For men and women who find the constraints of a sheltered and choreographed existence limiting, the choice to remain strictly observant is a difficult one. The Marrying of Chani Kaufman is a provocative, enlightening, and engrossing book, written with skill and flair, in which the author explores universal themes that will resonate with anyone who has clashed with loved ones, suffered unbearable losses, and has had to make difficult, life-changing decisions.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 41 readers
PUBLISHER:	Grove Press, Black Cat (April 1, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Eve Harris
EXTRAS:	Excerpt and an interview with the author
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Foreign Brides by Elena Lappin

Bibliography:

• The Marrying of Chani Kaufman (2013; April 2014 in US)

“It’s quarter to midnight. I’m standing in the rain outside my next-door neighbor’s house, gripping his rusted railings with cold, wet hands, staring down through them at the misshapen and perilously narrow stone steps leading to his converted basement, from which noise is blaring. It’s my least favorite song in the world: Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now.’ ”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (FEB 13, 2014)

In Sophie Hannah’s The Orphan Choir, forty-one year old Louise Beeston may be on the verge of an emotional breakdown. Her creepy next-door neighbor, Justin Clay, plays loud music late at night, usually every other weekend. Although Louise has repeatedly implored him to stop, Clay is indifferent to her pleas. (Louise’s husband, Stuart, is oblivious to the cacophony. Even if a freight train were to pass through their bedroom, Stuart would remain asleep.) Unfortunately, Louise has little hope that Clay, a pot-smoking party animal who enjoys living it up with his loud-mouthed friends, will change his ways.

Adding to her distress is Stuart’s plan to sandblast the exterior of their sooty Cambridge home. The workman her husband hired plans to cover and seal their windows, leaving them without natural light for at least three weeks. In addition, the sandblasting will kick up a great deal of dust. All this would be bearable if Louise’s only child, seven-year-old son, Joseph, were living with them. Instead, he is a junior probationer boarding at Saviour College School, an elite educational institution that trains promising youngsters to sing religious choral music. Although Louise and Stuart see their son regularly, Joseph spends most of his time away from home. Louise hates this arrangement; she misses Joseph terribly. Stuart, on the other hand, argues that their child is happy and thriving, and should remain where he is.

As Louise narrates her tale of woe, we gradually start to wonder if she is completely sane. She admits that she is sleep-deprived, irritable, and resentful. Louise and her husband quarrel frequently and she soon becomes too distraught to go to work. Moreover, she is having troubling visions: She sees and hears a choir of children similar to her son’s, except that this group includes girls. Is Louise hallucinating? Or does this “visitation” have a deeper meaning?

The Orphan Choir is relatively brief, yet extremely vivid and powerful. The author is clever but not self-consciously so, and she uses foreshadowing skillfully to hint that everything is not as it seems. Hannah’s hard-hitting dialogue, adept use of setting, and wonderful feel for language add to the novel’s potency. We sympathize with the exhausted, frustrated, and high-strung heroine, and hope that she will somehow find the peace of mind she craves. Leave it to the talented and creative Sophie Hannah to spring some big surprises at the conclusion of this engrossing and eerie psychological thriller; the riveting finale will knock your socks off.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 16 readers
PUBLISHER:	Picador (January 28, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Sophie Hannah
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Dead Lie Down

Bibliography:

• Gripless (1999)
• Cordial and Corrosive: an unfairy tale (2000)
• The Superpower of Love (2002)
• The Fantastic Book of Everybody’s Secrets : Stories (2008)
• The Orphan Choir (January 2014)

Zailer & Waterhouse Mysteries:

• Little Face (2006)
• The Wrong Mother (2008 UK; 2009 US) ( Published as The Point of Rescue) in the UK
• The Dead Lie Down (2009 UK; 2010 US) (Published as The Other Half Livesin the UK)
• The Truth Teller’s Lie (2010 UK; 2010 US) (Published as Hurting Distance in the UK)
• The Cradle in the Grave (2011) (Published as A Room Swept White in the UK)
• The Other Woman’s House (2012)  (Published as Lasting Damage in the UK)
• Kind of Cruel (2013)
• The Carrier (2014 in UK)

Note: Sophie Hannah is also an accomplished poet, see her website for more information on her poetry books.

“So,” Vail said, “William Shakespeare, white bread legend of national and international stature, wasn’t a white church-going Catholic but a black Jewish woman.” Okay, I can see that not sitting well with some. “But that was over four hundred years ago, and my job is to assess the threat as it stands now.”

“Fine. Fast-forward to the present. There’s considerable unrest among a rising minority base in this country. British society is under pressure from an Arab Islamic population that’s growing rapidly. And there’s a substantial population of disadvantaged minorities that are aligned against the white establishment, an establishment that supports the Shakespeare fiction through high-browed elitist organizations like the government backed British Shakespeare Academy.

“Given everything the government’s dealing with, keeping the peace, if proof emerged that Shakespeare was actually a minority woman, it’d almost be too much for the country to bear.”

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barksdale  (FEB 6, 2014)

Karen Vail finds herself in a different role and a different country in No Way Out, the fifth book in the series by Alan Jacobson. Karen, an FBI profiler, is sent to England to assist Scotland Yard in a theft of a key document that she finds out may show that Amelia Bassano Lanier, a woman who also happens to have been Jewish and black, actually was the author of all of the plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare. Karen, though soon realizes that something is just not correct with Gavin Paxton, the curator of the gallery that owns the Shakespeare document. She suspects that he may have been involved in the bombing attempt to destroy the document. She also doesn’t fully understand why Hector DeSantos is there (as Hector Cruz) and pushes him to tell the truth. He is slow to bring her into his covert operations which only annoys and fuels Karen more. He eventually tells her that she may be right about Paxton as they suspect he is Hussein Rudenko, a terrorist who sells deadly weapons to the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and other terrorist organizations. She is soon pulled into a very much different adventure that finds her traveling all over England and at times being on the wrong side of Scotland Yard that she is there to help. Overall, Jacobson has written an interesting well researched adventure.

There is humor in this generally fast paced book, especially with Karen and her misunderstanding of the “improper” English of the British.

As they reached the second landing, Reid said, “Oh—what was that about the guv’nor being a bad Frisbee player?”
Vail shrugged, “He said he’s been known to throw a wobbly.”
Reid snorted. “It means to throw a tantrum, have a fit.”
Vail stepped outside, into the rain. “Why can’t you Brits just speak English?”

I read some “action thriller” books, but over the years, I’ve been reading less and less primarily since they tend to be a bit too unbelievable and are not as much character based as I prefer. To me, the best thrillers keep me interested from start to finish and are so well paced that I can ignore how fast things occur and how ridiculous some of the circumstances and the character decisions are. No Way Out has a lot of these situations with Karen and Hector doing things that no person, no matter how well trained is likely to do. Jacobson obviously has experience and research on his side to present what appear to be accurate historical and present day accounts of England (only a few guns but a lot of video cameras everywhere!). This is somewhat of a balancing act however in presenting interesting and believable background that could, in the wrong hands, slow down the pace too much. For the most part, Jacobson keeps the story moving although it is a bit uneven at times. This story may not work for everyone but overall I can recommend this book, especially to those that really enjoy action thrillers.

As a first-time reader of this series,  I was missing some back story about Karen Vail, especially since she was really not using her profiler skills that much. I wondered whether any of the US characters were in other books and if I should know about past relationships. Nonetheless, a new reader can follow along and enjoy the story. I certainly enjoyed the book enough to order (at a discount) the first two books in the series so I’ll eventually know if I was missing any key back story about Karen and the other characters.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 56 readers
PUBLISHER:	Premier Digital Publishing (September 17, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Chuck Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Alan Jacobson
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	In the company of conspiratorial thrillers: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Bibliography:

• False Accusations (1999)
• The Hunted (2001)
• Hard Target (2012)

Karen Vail Series:

• The 7th Victim (2008)
• The Crush (2009)
• Velocity (2010)
• Inmate 1577 (2011)
• No Way Out (September 2013)

“The men crouch low, and with their gloved hands, as best they can, they clear the mud from the body.  But it is not a body, not really; it is only a heap of bones inside the remains of a uniform.  Nothing is left of the flesh, only a few black-brown remnants clinging to the side of the skull.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (FEB 2, 2014)

One of the aspects of this impressive debut by Anna Hope that makes me raise my hat is the effectiveness with which she handles its secondary thread. In italics interspersing the main story a page or two at a time, are little vignettes as British officials exhume the body of an unidentified soldier from the battlefields of Northern France, prepare it for a new coffin, and take it with due solemnity to its final resting place in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey. The vignettes, and the story that they enfold, span a five-day period leading up to November 11, 1920, the second anniversary of the Armistice. The First World War is over, but what has become of the survivors?

Each of the vignettes contains an anonymous figure — from a soldier assisting with the disinterment to a war widow bringing her child to watch the procession — real and dimensioned enough for the reader to feel for them, even as the camera moves on. They are emblems of countless stories that might be developed in their millions all over the country, although Hope has chosen to focus on only three. Three women, all coping with loss, all seeking a way to move forward. There is Hettie, a dance hostess at the Hammersmith Palais, whose brother has returned sound in body but damaged in his mind; she is looking for her life to begin, but the normal patterns have all been disrupted. There is Ada, a mother in her forties, the loss of whose son Michael has caused an estrangement between her and her husband. Unlike other parents, they have no information about their son’s resting place; is it possible the Unknown Soldier might be Michael himself? And there is Evelyn, an upper-class girl who has tried to bury herself in a munitions factory and then in a government office after the death of her boyfriend; for five years now, she has not permitted herself to love, and hardly even to live.

Hope juggles the three stories freely in short episodes spread over the five days. She also sketches some connections between them. Evelyn’s brother, for instance, a captain in the army who has come back with his own problems, turns out to have connections with both Hettie and Ada’s son Michael. There were times, I admit, when I was conscious of almost a romance-novel artifice in the writing. But no sooner would I register this than something would come along that was truly fine. To give but one example, there is a scene when Ada goes to consult a medium to find out about Michael. Historically, it is apt; the First World War brought a huge revival of interest in spiritualism. But Ada’s meeting with the medium turns out to be something else entirely, totally human and deeply moving.

This is a novel that is perfectly titled. Wake, as in the wake of a ship, or turbulent aftermath of some great passing. Wake, as in the ritual for the dead. And Wake, as in to awaken from sleep and dreams. All perfectly realized in this deceptively unpretentious novel. As always, I thought of a number of other books while I was reading. I almost immediately put aside the obvious comparison to Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series; Anna Hope has more penetrating ambitions. I certainly thought a lot about Sarah Waters’  The Night Watch, another rich exploration of the lives of women, this time in the shadow of the Second World War. But the comparison that increasingly stuck with me was of a different order entirely: to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. And that is a high compliment.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 18 readers
PUBLISHER:	Random House (February 11, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Anna Hope
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Soldier’s Wife by Margaret Leroy

Bibliography:

• Wake (February 2013)

“The heat, the heat. It wakes Gretta just after dawn, propelling her from the bed and down the stairs. It inhabits the house like a guest who has outstayed his welcome: it lies along corridors, it circles around curtains, it lolls heavily on sofas and chairs. The air in the kitchen is like a solid entity filling the space, pushing Gretta down into the floor, against the side of the table.

Only she would choose to bake bread in such weather.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (JAN 16, 2014)

Almost as though in reference to the title of her best novel, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2006), Maggie O’Farrell’s new one begins with a disappearance. One morning in 1976, in the midst of a heatwave, retired bank manager Robert Riordan, after laying breakfast for his wife Gretta, leaves their North London house, draws some money from his bank, and does not return. Within a day, their three grown children have all returned home to help their mother handle the crisis: Michael Francis from his house a few miles away, where he lives with his wife and two young children; Monica from a farm in Gloucestershire, where she lives with her second husband and, at weekends, his two children; and Aoife**, the youngest, from New York, where she is single with a boyfriend. Thus O’Farrell lays the groundwork for a book about family dynamics, not only Gretta, the absent Robert, and their grown children, but also the individual situations of the offspring, who will each confront and largely resolve their own personal crises over the four-day span of the novel. At this level, it is an extraordinarily well-constructed and heart-warming read.

Michael Francis is a bored high-school history teacher, who has had to give up his dreams of getting a PhD and becoming a professor, a circumstance that has cast a shadow over his marriage to his wife, Claire. Monica has gone from a failed first marriage to wed an antique dealer in the country, but has never felt at home in his deliberately unmodernized farmhouse or with his two girls. Aoife, by far my favorite of the three, is a free spirit, brilliant but severely dyslexic, a disability that she manages to hide from the photographer for whom she works in New York, her boyfriend, and even her family. I did wonder why O’Farrell chose to set the novel in 1976, apart from the fact that there was a severe heatwave in that year. I now see that it marks a particular point in the timeline of sexual liberation, which one gathers happened later in devout Catholic families than elsewhere. The stories of all three children are punctuated by something to do with sex or pregnancy, and what one might call the old morality will become an important factor in understanding the lives of Gretta and Robert.

This is a lovely story with moments of real beauty in its final pages. But it shows instances of carelessness that I don’t normally associate with O’Farrell. Some of these are verbal, such as the odd use of “both” in the quotation below, or confused similes such as a surprise that “rears up in front of you, like a cliff-edge you weren’t aware of.” Some are matters of transparent narrative convenience, like a priest who hears the name Riordan (surely not uncommon in Ireland) and just happens to reveal an important part of the back-story. And my empathy with Aoife was undermined by glossed-over details like how she could have obtained an American visa at the drop of a hat without the ability to handle any of the relevant paperwork. The publisher calls this “a perfect summer read.” Sure it is — but Maggie O’Farrell is capable of a whole lot more and although you will likely enjoy this novel, first-time readers may want to start with Maggie O’Farrell’s backlist to see her at her more nuanced and innovative best.

**”Her mother is the only one who can properly pronounce her name. Her accent — still unmistakably Galway, after all these years — strikes the first syllable with a sound that is halfway between e and a, and the second with a mysterious blend of v and f. She drives the name precisely between both ‘Ava’ and ‘Eva’ and ‘Eve,’ passing all three but never colliding with them.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 120 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (June 18, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Maggie O’Farrell
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

Bibliography:

• After You’d Gone (2000)
• My Lover’s Lover (2002)
• The Distance Between Us (2004)
• The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2006)
• The Hand That First Held Mine (2010)
• Instructions for a Heat Wave (June 2013)

“Physical pain, no matter how bad, was never the equal of mental pain.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (DEC 15, 2013)

The Sleep Room, by F. R. Tallis, is set in England in the 1950s. Dr. James Richardson is offered an opportunity to work with Hugh Maitland, a well-known scholar and “the most influential psychiatrist of his generation.” After he is hired, James travels to Wyldehope Hall, in rural Suffolk, a hospital with twenty-four beds and a narcosis room. Severely disturbed patients are given drugs to induce sleep for twenty-one hours a day. Nurses monitor the patients’ vital signs and rouse them at regular intervals for meals, bathing, and sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. James observes that the sleep room is run like a “factory production line;” the patients, who wear white gowns, resemble “compliant ghosts.”

Most of the story is narrated by Richardson, an insecure and intense young man who interacts with nurses and the occasional doctor, but spends much of his time alone or with his sleeping patients. It is unsurprising that his imagination soon starts playing tricks on him. He has upsetting dreams, hears strange noises, and notices that objects are disappearing or disturbed. Is there a supernatural explanation for these peculiar phenomena? We sympathize with the increasingly anxious Richardson as he grows ever more uncertain about the efficacy of narcosis and the wisdom of his remaining at Wyldehope. Fortunately, James finds much-needed solace in the arms of Jane Turner, a lovely nurse to whom he is deeply attracted.

Frank Tallis is a talented writer — his Max Liebermann series of historical mysteries is outstanding — who foreshadows the spine-chilling events to come by creating a creepy and sinister mood and setting his novel in a remote and forbidding locale. Tallis, an experienced clinical psychologist and an expert in the history of his field, educates us about bizarre and frightening treatments that were once routinely administered by respected medical practitioners. The conclusion is sure to generate controversy. Some will pronounce it clever; others (myself included) may find it gimmicky and contrived. Nevertheless, The Sleep Room is a compelling exploration of the nature of reality, the fragility of the human mind, and the arrogance of power-hungry physicians who cruelly exploit the men and women in their care.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Pegasus (October 1, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Frank Tallis
EXTRAS:	Writing The Sleep Room
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Vienna Secrets Vienna Twilight

Bibliography:

The Liebermann Papers:

• A Death in Vienna (2006) (Originally published as Mortal Mischief in Uk 2005)
• Vienna Blood (2006; 2008 in US)
• Fatal Lies (2009)
• Vienna Secrets (February 2010) (Originally released as Darkness Rising in UK Dec 2009)
• Vienna Twilight (2011)
• Death & The Maiden (2012)

Writing as F. R. Tallis

• The Forbidden (2012)
• The Sleep Room (October 2013)

Nonfiction:

• How to Stop Worrying (1990; 2009)
• Understanding Obsessions and Compulsions: A Self-Help Manual (1992)
• Changing Minds: The History of Psychotherapy as an Answer to Human Suffering (1998)
• Hidden Minds: A History of the Unconscious (2002)
• Love Sick (2004)

“Who is more of an outlaw than a saint?”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn (NOV 30, 2011)

Like its predecessor, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, Urrea’s sequel, Queen of America is a panoramic, picaresque, sprawling, sweeping novel that dazzles us with epic destiny, perilous twists, and high romance, set primarily in Industrial era America (and six years in the author’s undertaking). Based on Urrea’s real ancestry, this historical fiction combines family folklore with magical realism and Western adventure at the turn of the twentieth century.

It starts where the first book left off, and can be read as a stand-alone, according to the marketing and product description. However, I stoutly recommend that readers read The Hummingbird’s Daughter first. The two stories are part of a heroic saga; you shouldn’t cut off the head to apprehend the tale. You cannot capture the incipient magic and allure of Teresita without her roots in the first (and better) book. Urrea spent twenty years researching his family history, border unrest, guerrilla violence in the post-Civil War southwest, and revolution, so poignantly rendered in his first masterpiece.

At the center of both stories is the enigmatic and beautiful heroine, Teresita Urrea, named the Saint of Cabora by her legion of followers, when at sixteen, she was sexually assaulted, died, and subsequently rose from her coffin at her wake. She was denounced as a heretic by the Catholic Church but declared a saint by her devotees. An accomplished horsewoman and botanical shaman, she discovered the miracle of healing with her hands. Vanquishing pain and suffering with touch, Teresita has embodied her role with dignity, and sometimes despair, as she sacrifices her personal desires in order to combat social injustice and conquer disease.

Solitude is impossible, as she is followed by humble pilgrims and pursued by the Mexican government, greedy henchmen and dangerous lackeys. In the sequel, Teresita continues her journey and evolvement, with the primary question and theme of her life– whether a saint can find her life’s purpose and also fall in love. Along the way, she is entangled in conflicts between celebrity and simplicity, material wealth and spiritual wellbeing. Although she is idolized as a saint, she is, alas, human, with human emotions—such as lust, love, sorrow, pain, temptation. She makes mistakes, and is periodically confused and conflicted. It’s hard to be a saint when you’re made of flesh and blood and hormones.

After the Tomochic rebellion in Mexico in 1891, Teresita Urrea flees to the United States with her aging but ripe swashbuckler father, Tomas, known as Sky Catcher. She experiences romantic and cataclysmic love with an Indian mystic and warrior, eventually causing a serious breach with her father. When events spiral out of control, Teresita’s journey takes her further and further from her homeland.

From Tucson, to El Paso, St. Louis, San Francisco, New York, and places everywhere in-between, this sequel is a journey from poverty and pestilence to an unknown, glittering, bustling, and modern America, a place that offers new opportunities for immigrant Teresita—-prosperity, new romance, and celebrity. She is hunted by assassins, who claim she is the spiritual leader of the Mexican Revolution; harassed by profiteers, who want to arrange a consortium to exploit her healing abilities; and haunted daily by pilgrims everywhere, begging her to cure their ills.

Dickensian in scope, this ribald novel is peopled by the humble and the haughty, the meek and the mighty—pilgrims, prostitutes, yeoman, warriors, cowboys, vaqueros, royalty, revolutionaries, financial exploiters, gamblers, tycoons, corrupt politicians, drunks, rogues, and outlaws. It’s gritty, bawdy, tender, and tumultuous, and sometimes turgid, as it meanders down several long and winding paths. When it stalls at intervals, patience and the love of prose and colorful character will keep the reader fastened. This will appeal to fans of high adventure, mixed with folktale wisdom and mystical fantasy. Big, vast skies and rough and tumble travel, this is an unforgettable story of love, purpose, and redemption.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company; Import edition (November 28, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Luis Alberto Urrea
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Devil’s Highway Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction

Bibliography:

• In Search of Snow (1994)
• Wandering Time: Western Notebooks (1999)
• Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction (2002)
• The Hummingbird’s Daughter (2005)
• Mr Mendoza’s Paintbrush (2009)
• Into the Beautiful North (2009)
• Queen of America (December 2011)

The Border Trilogy Memoirs:

• Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border (1993)
• By the Lake of Sleeping Children: The Secret Life of the Mexican Border (1996)
• Nobody’s Son: Notes from an American Life (1998)

More Nonfiction:

• Wandering Time: Western Notebooks (1999)
• The Devil’s Highway: A True Story (2004)

“On one occasion in the 1890s, Lord Charles Beresford, a well-known rake, let himself into what he believed was his mistress’s bedroom. With a lusty cry of ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ he leapt into the bed – only to discover that it was occupied by the Bishop of Chester and his wife.”

Book Review:

Review by Vesna McMaster  (OCT 14, 2011)

What would the world do without Bill Bryson? One simply wants to sit at his knee with a huge grin and listen interminably. I’m an irredeemable skinflint and get all my reading material from the library, but At Home is one book I would seriously like to buy for myself. Considering I have almost no books apart from reference books, my Complete Shakespeare and a Bible I once found in a discard pile somewhere, that’s saying quite a lot.

The volume is in essence a long and amiable discourse on the marvel that was the Victorian era. It’s loosely based around (and supposedly inspired by) the Victorian rectory Bryson lives in. The chapters have titles like: “The Hall,” “The Kitchen,” and so on. The theory is that “houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.” However, apart from in the early chapters (notably “The Hall”) there’s little talk about anything prior to the Victorians. It’s the speed of change and the immeasurable vigor with which so many Victorians pursued their eccentricities and interests that really fascinates Bryson, and he re-tells it at the top of his engaging best.

The downside of the book may perhaps be that it has little structure. It is a little like swimming through thick soup, but oh such good soup! It’s the perfect book for sitting companionably of an evening. The urge to exclaim “Listen to this one!” and regale anybody within earshot with the latest snippet of fascinating information Mr. Bryson has dredged out of history for you, probably occurs about once every fifteen minutes. Which, incidentally, is the perfect interval for this sort of activity: any less and it’s startling, any more and it gets annoying.

The best thing about it is that it’s simply so shockingly knowledgeable. The bibliography alone goes on for 25 pages of dense text, with a further note at the bottom: “for Notes and Sources, please go to www.billbryson.co.uk/athome .”

Despite this, there are a number of curious little niches which harbour the oddest throw-away statements. Like the one that claims the dining room really came about because of the advent of upholstery, with the Victorians not really wanting people smearing greasy chicken over their expensive sofas. What on earth were all those Medieval dining halls doing, then, one wonders briefly? Or the later Elizabethan private dining rooms? Oh Billy, one thinks – but it’s such a lovely idea that a specialised room should be invented because people couldn’t quite envisage a table napkin that one quite forgives it.

These little anomalies only seem to add to the charm: they’re like “Easter eggs” in a computer game. The vast majority of the time, one is overwhelmed with gratitude at the sheer volume of reading and dredging that has been done to winkle these pearls of Victoriana from dusty obscurity. They range from the obscure (why forks usually have three tines: actually it’s never quite explained but apparently people have experimented with other numbers and it’s never quite right) to the monumentally important (such as the discovery of the sources of cholera and scurvy). Electricity holds sway over a whole chapter in “The Fuse Box,” and seems to hold a particular fascination for Bryson, as the “characters” who feature here pop up throughout the book. Perhaps it is not surprising, as without electricity so much of further development would simply not have been possible.

I would recommend this unreservedly to anybody, but actively prescribe it if you are feeling glum. Perhaps that’s why I’d like it on my shelf permanently. It’s cheering for three reasons. The unquenchable amiable spirit it’s written in, along with the sheer love of language and words that beams through the pages are two of these reasons – but any Bryson fan will already be familiar with these. The third is that the book will immerse you entirely in the day-to-day reality of Being Victorian. Which includes carrying 40 bucket loads of hot water upstairs nightly for a bath, having to take clothes apart and re-stitch them together for the laundry, refrigerating food (if one were so lucky) with ice brought over from lakes in the States, and countless other inconveniences and checks to daily living that we would simply never consider possible. The writing is so engrossing one’s arms almost ache with the weight of the water-buckets… only to look up and find that: joy! One can just turn the hot water on instead. If you think you’re bogged down with a tedious job or an unrewarding existence or poor working conditions, just read this. You’ll be skipping in no time.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 491 readers
PUBLISHER:	Anchor; Reprint edition (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Vesna McMaster
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Bill Bryson
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome by Alberto Angela

Bibliography:

• The Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words (1984)
• The Palace under the Alps and Over 200 Other Unusual, Unspoiled, and Infrequently Visited Spots in 16 European Countries (1985)
• The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)
• The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way (1990)
• Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1991)
• Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States (1994)
• Notes from a Small Island (1995)
• A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (1998)
• I’m a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away (1999)
• In a Sunburned Country (2000)
• Bill Bryson’s African Diary (2002)
• Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words (2002)
• A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)
• The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (2006)
• Shakespeare: The World as Stage (2007)
• Bryson’s Dictionary for Writers and Editors (2008)
• At Home: A Short History of Private Life (2010)
• One Summer: America, 1927 (October 2013)

“The eye sockets were sunken; the eyes protruded, a vivid blue; his flesh was a morbid gray. Long blond hair—almost white, albino-looking—hung over his eyes. Once he was forced to break from his labor to cough—and Andrew recognized the noise that had drawn him. The cough combined the bark of a sick animal with a wet, slapping sound. The skeletal man drew his hand across his mouth. Then he looked up. He locked eyes with Andrew.”

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen  (OCT 1, 2011)

Kicked out of his last American boarding school for drugs, Andrew Taylor’s father has sent him to England’s Harrow Academy to redo his senior year. It’s his last chance, and Andrew tries hard to follow the rules and not bring attention to himself. But author Justin Evans has other plans for Andrew in The White Devil, his latest thriller/horror novel that sheds light on the bullying and other nastiness that can go on at boarding schools past and present.

Andrew witnesses the murder of his friend, Theo, on a path near the school’s graveyard, but he can’t give all the details to the police. No one would ever believe that a ghost, for that is all Andrew can come up with for an explanation of the albino-type figure that killed his friend and then vanished.

Rumors abound of the Lot Ghost, a ghost that haunts the house-turned-dorm in which Andrew lives. But there’s much more to this mystery that’s gradually revealed. Andrew bears a strong resemblance to Byron and is cast as the lead in the school play about the Harrow alumnus, written and directed by Piers Fawkes, a poet and master at Lot. Andrew’s other confidante and love interest is Persephone, the only girl at Harrow, the daughter of the school’s headmaster. What Andrew can piece together is that his friends’ lives are in danger, and if he can’t find out the mystery with Lord Byron at its center, he may die as well.

Life at Harrow lies at the center of Evans’s tale. He combines the bullying and torrid relationships of the past with the goings-on in the present, moving easily between the two. Our hero, Andrew, with his resemblance to Byron, links the two eras together. There’s a chance he can solve the mystery of who the ghost is and why people are dying with the help of Fawkes, Persephone and a library researcher, but time may run out on him.

My only pet peeve with this book is that the author tries to do too much. Add in Fawkes problem with alcohol, a speech Andrew has planned for speech day and some of the story threads get dropped without becoming fully developed. That said, Evans does a nice job of pulling the reader into the story and maintaining enough tension and hints to keep one’s focus.

I have a penchant for books with boarding schools at their center as well as those with historical settings in part or in whole, so I enjoyed the story immensely. Part horror and part thriller, there are enough creepy, very realistic moments in the story to give out shivers. Evans has a talent for vivid descriptions too, and some weren’t so pretty. While I don’t think the novel has any profound messages to pass along, fans of historical settings, Lord Byron or boarding schools should give it a whirl. Just don’t turn out the lights if it’s late.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 44 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper (May 10, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Justin Evans
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss

Bibliography:

• A Good and Happy Child (2007)
• The White Devil (May 2011)

“The real meaning of retirement had come to him the first day. When it didn’t matter what time he got up, he could stay in bed all day. He didn’t, of course. Those first days, all his interest seemed petty, not worth doing. It seemed to him that he had read all the books he wanted to read, heard all the music he wanted to hear. He thought of closing his eyes and turning his face to the wall.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (SEP 25, 2011)

The brilliant and prolific Ruth Rendell continues to entertain us with her latest Inspector Wexford novel, The Vault. Although he is retired and has no official standing, Wexford, the former Chief Inspector of Kingsmarkham, is delighted when Detective Superintendent Thomas Ede asks for his advice concerning a puzzling case. The scene of the crime(s) is a two-hundred year old house in London, Orcadia Cottage. The current residents are Martin and Anne Rokeby, who bought the property for one and a half million pounds. One day, Martin decides to lift a manhole cover in the “paved yard at the back of the house,” curious to know what, if anything, is down there. Little does he realize that this deed would end up “wrecking his life for a long time to come.” It seems that some unknown person or persons had hidden four dead bodies, two male and two female, in this hole in the ground, along with forty thousand pounds worth of jewelry.

Ruth Rendell has always dug beneath the surface of her characters’ lives, and this time she reveals how retirement has, in some ways, diminished Wexford. Although he loves reading, long walks, listening to music, and spending time with his family, he misses being a detective. How could he be content when “it didn’t matter what time he got up?” Fortunately, Wexford’s affluent daughter offers her parents the use of a home in London, which they happily accept. Now that Wexford and Dora have places both in London and Kingsmarkham, they have more ways to keep themselves active and entertained.

The case of the four corpses proves to be just what the doctor ordered to make Wexford feel useful and involved. He examines the evidence, helps interview witnesses, studies the autopsy reports, and uses his superb instincts, experience, and impressive intellect to help solve what turns out to be a series of complex misdeeds and misadventures. Adding to the drama, another crime is committed that hits close to home, since the victim is Wexford’s daughter.

The author’s prose style is as crisp, fluid, and succinct as anyone writing today, and she creates a rich and realistic picture of life in urban and rural London. Her descriptive writing is precise and evocative. In addition, Rendell presents us with a fascinating and varied array of characters who are compassionate, altruistic, adulterous, desperate, vicious, and predatory. The mystery is challenging, even for someone as uniquely talented as Wexford. The Vault succeeds as a character study, family drama, police procedural, and whodunit. Ruth Rendell delivers the goods, as she has done so often during her long and legendary career.

Bibliography:

Inspector Wexford Mysteries:

• From Doon with Death (1964)
• A New Lease of Death (1967) (retitled: Sins of the Fathers)
• Wolf to the Slaughter (1967)
• The Best Man to Die (1969)
• A Guilty Thing Surprised (1970)
• No More Dying Then (1971)
• Murder Being Once Done (1972)
• Some Lie and Some Die (1973)
• Shake Hands Forever (1975)
• A Sleeping Life (1978)
• Put on the Cunning (1981) (a.k.a Death Notes)
• Speaker of Mandarin (1983)
• An Unkindness of Ravens (1985)
• The Veiled One (1988)
• Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter (1992)
• Simisola (1995)
• Road Rage (1997)
• Harm Done (November 1999)
• The Babes in the Wood (2003)
• End in Tears (July 2006)
• Not in the Flesh (2008)
• The Monster in the Box (2009)
• The Vault (2011)
• No Man’s Nightingale (November 2013)

Standalone Mysteries & Psychological Thrillers:

• To Fear a Painted Devil (1965)
• Vanity Dies Hard (1965)
• The Secret House of Death (1968)
• One Across, Two Down (1971)
• The Face of Trespass (1974)
• A Demon in My View (1976)
• A Judgement in Stone (1977)
• Make Death Love Me (1979)
• The Lake of Darkness (1980)
• Master of the Moor (1982)
• The Killing Doll (1984)
• The Tree of Hands (1984)
• Live Flesh (1986)
• Heartstones (1987)
• Talking to Strange Men (1987)
• The Bridesmaid (1989)
• Going Wrong (1990)
• The Crocodile Bird (1993)
• The Keys to the Street (1996)
• A Sight for Sore Eyes (1999)
• Adam and Eve and Pinch (2002)
• The Rottweiler (2004)
• Thirteen Steps Down (2005)
• The Water’s Lovely (2007)
• Portobello (2010)
• Tigerlily’s Orchids (2011)
• The St. Zita Society (2012)
• The Child’s Child (2012)

Collections:

• The Fallen Curtain and Other Stories (1976)
• Means of Evil (1979)
• The Fever Tree (1982)
• The Copper Peacock (1991)
• Blood Lines: Long and Short Stories (1996)
• Piranha to Scurfy: And Other Stories (2001)

Movies from books:

• Dead Lucky (The Lake of Darkness)
• An Affair of the Mind (1988)
• A Demon in My View (1992)
• Master of the Moor
• A Judgement in Stone
• La Ceremonie (1996) (A Judgement in Stone)
• Live Flesh (1998)