The Burning Chambers is an epic historical novel set in 16th century France during the wars between the Catholics and the Huguenots. The daughter of a Catholic bookseller falls in love with a Huguenot soldier who wants peace between the two sides. But too many people wish to continue the fighting, and the lives of the hero and heroine are endangered. There is also a mystery about the heroine's origins, and a murderous noblewoman wants to have her killed. Author Kate Mosse has a great...
This young adult novel, set during a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793, seems especially timely today. Young Mattie Cook struggles to survive in the fever-stricken city after her mother gets sick. With the help of Eliza, a freed slave, Mattie learns to nurse the sick and help the children orphaned by the fever, and becomes a stronger person. The novel is filled with details of life during the epidemic, some of them quite similar to today's pandemic.
The Shadow of the Wind is a complex, multi-layered novel set in Barcelona in the 1940s and 1950s. A young boy, Daniel, the son of a bookseller, visits the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, an enormous labyrinthine building filled with books. His father tells him to choose one book and adopt it. Daniel becomes so fascinated by the book that he decides to read everything by the author, Julián Carax, only to find out that someone is systematically destroying every copy of Carax's books. Daniel...
If your only experience with A Tale of Two Cities was of being forced to read it in high school, it's definitely worth re-reading. It's a wonderful novel set during the French Revolution (unusual for Dickens), with unforgettable characters such as the good-natured rogue Sydney Carton and the bloodthirsty, villainous Madame Defarge.
This historical novel tells the story of Napoleon's stepdaughter, Hortense de Beauharnais, her disastrous marriage to Napoleon's brother Louis, and her love for another man. It provides an unusual perspective on the major events of Napoleon's reign.
The Long Call is an outstanding mystery by Ann Cleeves, best known for the Shetland and Vera series. This is the beginning of a new series, featuring Matthew Venn, a gay police officer in the seaside resort area of North Devon, England. Matthew lives with his husband, Jonathan, who runs the community center. He has left the strict evangelical Christian community in which he grew up. As he is standing outside the church during his father's funeral, Matthew receives a call about a dead...
Murder on the Champ de Mars is part of a long-running mystery series set in Paris. A young Romany man approaches detective Aimée Leduc and says he has information about the murder of her father. As fans of the series know, Aimée has been searching for her father's murderer since the first book in the series. When Aimée goes to meet the young man, he is murdered in front of her eyes, but she never gets a good look at the killer. This book also tells of the tragic history of the Romany...
