Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume

The narrator of this book is a loner, an outsider, and always has been. He lives in the house he shared with his now-deceased father, with whom he had never had much connection. One spring day he sees a flyer in a window about a dog in a shelter and upon realizing the mangy, one-eyed mutt is an outsider as well, adopts it.

The rest of the story is his “dialogue” with the dog about his life and their adventures. Early on, he realizes the dog becomes very aggressive around other dogs and generally keeps him leashed. However, one day in early summer on what was usually a deserted stretch of beach, the dog goes after a small dog and the little boy with it. The narrator (never named) manages to separate them and they rush home with the child’s mother yelling after them. When a police officer comes to the door, he hides the dog and lies about it being there. He packs up a few necessities and the two of them set off in the car. They avoid the main roads and drive aimlessly around the countryside for the next few months, camping out in the car and staying away from populated areas.

Spill Simmer Falter Wither is a sweetly sad tale about two of society’s misfits and the bond they seem to form. It made me ache to read it, but I couldn’t put it down.

CAS

The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure

This story is so much more than a taut thriller set in Nazi-occupied Paris – though it certainly is that as well. Lucien Bernard is a talented architect who loves his work. He has a wife and a mistress and is trying to make a living under the current regime. He is intelligent but not particularly introspective.  Then a wealthy businessman contacts him with a proposition: create the perfect hiding place for a Jewish friend of the businessman.

Lucien is not anti-Semitic, he doesn’t like the Nazis, but he’s not a fanatic. Money is tight and the commission would be a financial Godsend, but if he were caught or exposed, it would mean torture and death. This is too dangerous to consider. However, the creative side of his brain is truly challenged and temptation builds – especially as funds diminish - and he finally agrees to this onetime only commission.

Of course, it does not remain a onetime only and he continues to make brilliant, unique hiding places based on the architecture of each building. Until one fails fatally and he realizes he has become far more emotionally invested in the people and his work than just clever gamesmanship against the Gestapo. These are all high profile Jews the Gestapo has been seeking relentlessly. They know somehow, someone has been aiding them and the pressure to both capture the Jews and break up the conspiracy that’s protecting them is getting unbearable.

As danger is mounting and the stakes are getting higher Lucien is faced with making the ultimate choice: is he committed to this path he’s been traveling or will he, can he turn his back on it and disappear?

The setting of 1942 Paris makes the creation of Lucien’s crisis easily comprehensible, but The Paris Architect is also the perfect vehicle for examining one of life’s ultimate questions: when the essence of who I am is called out, how will I respond?

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Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart

I haven’t read a book that drew me in and entertained me so much in a long time. Despite being a novel, Girl Waits with Gun is based on facts. Constance Kopp and her sisters live a secluded life on a New Jersey farm in 1914. On a trip into town their buggy is struck by a car driven by drunken local businessman, Henry Kaufman. When Constance contacts Kaufman for payment to repair the buggy, she opens the door to a series of threatening incidents by Kaufman and his minions. While trying to simply get the money, she stumbles across dark secrets regarding Henry’s past and present as well as other family secrets. With an indomitable sense of rectitude and the aid of Sheriff Robert Heath, she follows the trails and unravels the evidence behind the mysteries. There is a surprising but true twist at the end to wrap up the story. 

Had I not known this to be based on historical fact, it would have been an entertaining story with far too many coincidences – but instead I found it a fascinating and irresistible reading experience.

CAS

The Other Daughter by Lauren Willig

Set in 1920’s London, Willig gives a behind-the-curtain peek at the world of the Bright Young Things of the time. Rachel Woodley has rushed home from her governess position near Paris to reach her very ill mother’s side. Unfortunately, she is too late and now is left to clean out their cottage and try to get on with her life. When she discovers a recent newspaper photo in her mother’s papers, she is shocked to discover that her father, whom she believed long dead, is not only alive but an earl with a wife and two children. Once she confirms that he truly is her father and that her mother had been lying to her for years, Rachel decides to find a way into her half-sister’s world and ultimately expose her father.

With the aid of a new acquaintance with his own agenda but the right connections, Rachel enters into a complex charade; but once in, she finds this new world is not as simple and lighthearted as it appears. Her motives become muddied as she gets to know Olivia and realizes her sister is not the enemy.

TheOther Daughter is more than a story about secrets kept and a longing for revenge, it’s about a young woman finding her true self and realizing she can choose who she really is and whom she wishes to become.

CAS 

Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal

Margaret (Maggie) Hope was born in England, orphaned as an infant and raised by her aunt outside Boston. A brilliant mathematician, Maggie delays her entry to graduate school to go to London, intending to close and sell the house her grandmother willed to her. The housing market is down and then World War II begins. Churchill has been elected Prime Minister and Maggie has decided to stay. Although her math skills are formidable, women aren’t given upper-level positions, and she becomes part of Churchill’s clerical staff. This still affords her access to highly restricted information and activities and soon her abilities are acknowledged. As she tries to adjust to life in wartime London, budding relationships, insane working hours and pressure, she becomes aware of a plot against the prime minister himself.

Mr.Churchill’s Secretary is a well written, fast paced novel that gives an exciting picture of wartime England and the machinations of a government under siege.

CAS

House of Velvet and Glass by Katherine Howe

Sibyl Allston lost her mother and younger sister on the Titanic three years before this story begins. Living in Boston with her father and younger brother, she is almost on the shelf of permanent spinsterhood when Benton Derby, a former suitor reappears in her life. Helen, her mother, had introduced her to Mrs. Dee and the occult world so popular at this time and Sibyl is turning to it more often to help her with her grief and other emotions about her loss.

Benton is a total skeptic regarding the paranormal and tries to convince Sibyl that it is all sham by exposing Mrs. Dee’s trickery. While agreeing about Mrs. Dee, Sibyl begins seeing visions in a scrying orb the false medium gave her earlier. Believing she is moving closer to seeing her mother and sister in its shadowy sphere, she and Benton are surprised at what is really happening and where her apparent “gift” might take her.

House of Velvet and Glass is an entertaining picture of the society of the time with its strict rules, fascination with the occult, and burgeoning scientific knowledge. 

I listened to this and found the narrator did very well with her presentation and making the various characters distinguishable. 

CAS

First Impressions by Charlie Lovett

Sophie Collingwood has just graduated from college when her uncle Bertram, with whom she shares an all-consuming love of books and literature, dies suddenly in a fall. He leaves his flat and library to Sophie, but when she comes to take possession, she finds the books were sold to settle his estate. She fixates on the manner of his death and the loss of his library as she takes a job in a rare book dealer’s shop.

When two men contact her, each searching for the 2^nd edition of an obscure collection of moral allegories by a little known 18^th century clergyman, things start to heat up. Does the book prove her favorite author, Jane Austen, plagiarized Pride and Prejudice? Sophie is determined to settle this question as well as prove her uncle did not die in an unfortunate accident. And what about the American professor on holiday and one of the book collectors – neither of whom she can dismiss from her thoughts and dreams?

A bit of literary history, modern day sleuthing, and romance all combine to make First Impressions fairly entertaining. Frankly, I expected better characterizations and a slightly more plausible story line from Lovett whose Bookman’s Tale (see July 2013) I really enjoyed. But the allusions to Austen and her works, as well as the historical sections, make up for many of the weaker points.

CAS

The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths

Forensic anthropologist Ruth Galloway, returns in the 7^th book in this series set in northern England. When a developer’s backhoe operator uncovers a downed World War II fighter plane with a body in it, DCI Harry Nelson calls her in to help. Initially assuming the body in the cockpit is the pilot, a bullet hole in the corpse’s forehead quickly changes that conclusion. As the corpse is identified, more, not fewer questions surface about the how and why and where of this body’s demise and where it was buried before being moved to the plane.

 Griffiths excels at bringing in eccentrically realistic characters that fit Ruth’s world beautifully. Ruth herself is humanly quirky enough to be frustratingly appealing. Her relationship with Nelson and evolution as a sometimes conflicted single mother give her character added dimension. The touches of history are worked into the story seamlessly and add another layer of depth to Griffith’s writing. The Ghost Fields, named after the designation given false airfields meant to mislead German aircraft during the war, is a well-told mystery and interesting story.

CAS

The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson

Kitty Miller is contented with her life as a thirty-something, single woman in 1962 Denver. She and her best friend Frieda are independent booksellers, she’s close to her parents – currently on an anniversary trip to Hawaii, and she hasn’t really thought much about her earlier hopes for a husband and family for a long time. Life is good. Then one night she goes to bed and the dreams start.

Kitty’s dream world is populated by Katharyn (Kitty when she looks in the mirror!) and Lars Andersson, a couple deeply in love with each other, their children, and their life in 1963 Denver. It’s as if Kitty has entered her what-might-have-been alternate universe! Night after night she finds herself drawn further into Katharyn’s world and begins to start functioning as Katharyn even as she is aware that it’s all a dream. But her interactions in this other world start affecting her life in the current one as both worlds demand more of Kitty/Katharyn as time passes. She feels the need to finally end these dream trips for the sake of her health and sanity but is no longer sure where she truly belongs and which is dream and which is reality.

The Bookseller is a debut novel and has some of the bumps often associated with such. Some characters are not well-drawn or consistent in their actions; the story doesn’t always flow well and certain segments strain credulity. That being said, I was pulled in enough to want to find out how Kitty’s story is resolved and am glad I stayed with it. The premise was intriguing and I believe Swanson’s writing shows potential. While this could have been a true psychological drama, as an engaging beach read it still makes the cut.

CAS

The Jesus Cow by Michael Perry

Place quirky characters in a small, rural town, add a calf born early on Christmas morning with the face of Jesus imprinted on its side and life gets more entertaining. Harley Jackson is trying to make ends meet on the surviving acres of farmland his father left him when his cow delivers the marked calf. As a subscriber to his late mother’s philosophy of living a simple, quiet life, which he knows will be impossible if this leaks out, his first reaction is how to avoid anyone seeing the calf.

He finally shares the news with his closest friend, Billy, who promises to keep the secret while Harley tries to figure out the next step. At one point, he even tries to cover the marking with black shoe polish! And then the female mail carrier sees the calf…

Before Harley is aware of the pictures going viral on social media, his yard is overrun and the world is arriving via the interstate. The secret is out and now his decisions are all about how to handle the ensuing chaos.

As event piles on event, Harley finds not only his own beliefs tested, but the true character of friends and acquaintances exposed as well – for good or not. Jesus Cow is laugh out loud funny in many places but is ultimately a thought-provoking allegory.

CAS

Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bojalian

The systematic slaughter of the Armenian Christians by the Turkish Muslims is a primarily overlooked piece of history. In 1915, under the guise of national security – Turkey was allied with Germany in WW I and accused the Armenians of siding with the British – an estimated 1,000,000+ Armenian men, women, and children were exterminated. Author Chris Bojalian has created a novel of great sensitivity and honesty without sensationalizing a topic that needs none.

Moving between contemporary America and 1915 Aleppo, Bojalian brings together a moving portrait of ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances and their attempts to try to fix or alleviate the horrors they find surrounding them. Sandcastle Girls paints a clear picture of lives and circumstances without excessively graphic descriptions and succeeds in making its points and telling its stories without driving the reader away. It was emotionally hard to read, but impossible to put down. 

CAS

Non-fiction follow up: Burning Tigris by Peter Balakian

Test of Wills by Charles Todd

I discovered Charles Todd when the first of his Bess Crawford series, A Duty to the Dead, which takes place during WWI, was released.  Test of Wills, the first of the Ian Rutledge series starts just after the war’s end. Rutledge has returned to his position as an inspector with Scotland Yard, but much changed by his experiences in the trenches. Suffering from what would now be diagnosed as severe PTSD, he hears the voice of dead Corporal Hamish MacLeod, whom he was forced to order executed for refusing to lead another attack on the German lines. His superior, Chief Superintendent Bowles, hates and fears Rutledge for his education, social status, and his uncanny ability to ferret out solutions to murders no one else can solve. Bowles doesn’t know how vulnerable Rutledge has become but senses something and is hoping to exploit whatever it is to either cause the Yard to let Rutledge go or drive him out.

Bowles sends Rutledge to handle the extremely sensitive murder of a much-loved land owner and retired Colonel possibly by his ward’s fiancé, a former Captain in the RAF, highly decorated and close to the royal family. There appear to be no good solutions as he struggles to resurrect the skills he took for granted before the war, solve the murder, and not set off a personal and political fire storm.

Todd shows great skill in developing a baffling mystery, creating a believable setting, and drawing characters that are multi-dimensional. I've already checked out the second Ian Rutledge mystery!

CAS

Murder on the Ile Sordou by M. L. Longworth

A murder mystery needs a dead body without an obvious killer, beyond that, it’s all in the presentation. M. L. Longworth recaptures the things I loved in my favorite (now dead) British authors: Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh. The settings are contemporary to the author’s time; there is a murder, but no grisly description of its occurrence; the characters, especially the sleuths, are well developed and believable. Longworth’s Antoine Verlaque and Marine Bonnet are so appealing I want to join them for a glass of wine and/or dinner!

In their fourth adventure, the pair is on a holiday on an island in the Mediterranean where a decades-abandoned luxury hotel has just reopened. Owners Maxime and Catherine Le Bon have invested everything in restoring the Locanda Sordou and it is vital that the first season be a success. When one of the small group of guests is murdered, Verlaque’s and Bonnet’s holiday ends. To add to the adventure, a major storm cuts off all outside contact. Murder on the Ile Sordou has everything I enjoy in this genre: a beautiful setting, good food and wine, clever conversation, and a murderer to catch. Très agréable.

CAS

Try the other Verlaque and Bonnet mysteries:

Death at the Chateau Bremont

Murder in the Rue Dumas

Death in the Vines

Wicked Autumn by G. M. Malliet

Agatha Christie enters the 21^st century with this new series. Max Tudor has been the vicar of St. Edwold’s in Nether Monkslip for three years. Prior to becoming an Anglican priest, he was a member of MI5 but became disillusioned and left the undercover world for what he assumed would be a quiet, affirming life in a sleepy English village. Not happening. Just as Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead was rife with the less-desirable emotions that led to violent ends, so is Max’s world.

The head of the Women’s Institute is the obvious victim early on: vain, bullying, overbearing, and ripe for murdering, but that doesn't spoil the story. I was ready to get her if the murderer didn't! Max pretty much gets roped into investigating – who wouldn't trust the vicar!

The story was a bit slow starting and there was a lot of character detail that I wasn't sure was required, but as the first book in a series, getting to know the locals will probably prove helpful. The identity of the murderer was a surprise with the clues only obvious after the solution – very well played.

Malliet handles the blending of the 21^st century (cell phones, forensics, relationships, etc.) with a small village with great finesse and intelligence. Nether Monkslip is a believable place in a modern world and Max Tudor an engaging protagonist. Wicked Autumn is a satisfying modern mystery in a comfortable, familiar setting.

CAS

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz

Sherlock Holmes is back and better than ever with the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate's authorization of the novel. London, 1890. 221B Baker Street. Dr. John Watson narrates as he and Sherlock Holmes submerge into a new world in this action packed adventure. An art dealer visits the famous duo — he is being terrorized by a wanted criminal in a flat cap. Sure enough, his family is attacked and the first murder occurs…

From London to the streets of Boston, this newly discovered international criminal conspiracy holds Watson and Holmes captive. They find themselves being drawn ever deeper into a plot where they hear "the House of Silk" What is it? Who is it?

I greatly enjoyed reading The House ofSilk and thought Anthony Horowitz did a very creditable job of bringing Holmes and Watson back to life! When I finished reading, I just wanted more. Since it had been quite a while since I had read any of the original Holmes stories, I downloaded several public domain eBooks and after re-reading "The Redheaded League," "The Copper Beeches" and other stories, was even more convinced that the portrayal of Holmes and Watson in The House of Silk was well done, the plotting intriguing and the detection convincing. It also held true to the “double mystery” that so many Sherlock Holmes novels contain. The crime they uncover put me in mind of one of contemporary writer Anne Perry's dark Victorian mysteries set in a London rife with hypocrisy and exploitation.

CAS

Love and Summer by William Trevor

Ellie, a convent-raised orphan, was sent to serve as housekeeper to Dillahan, a widower who tragically lost his wife and child. She ultimately married him and has a routine-driven life with him on their farm. She rides her bicycle from their farmhouse to the fictitious Irish town of Rathmoye once a week to deliver eggs and pick up necessities, and connect with the town’s locals. When a young photographer, Florian Kilderry, makes her acquaintance, love arrives quietly but inevitably. “…it was silly, all she had to do was to think of something else when he came into her mind. But now, when she tried to, she couldn’t.” (pg. 52) In prose as lyric as his native tongue, Trevor guides the reader through familiar emotions such as passion and disappointment. He creates verbal portraits with minute details - the old bowl for gathering eggs and the decaying wall where messages could be hidden - during one delicately evoked summer.

The other characters are gently but clearly defined and their stories not only move the main plot along, but add a depth and richness that is part of Trevor’s great talent. Strangely, I found myself harking back to a similar plot line: a decent but dull husband, an unconsciously discontented wife, an intriguing wayfaring stranger, and the heat of summer. But believe me, Love and Summer is as far from The Bridges of Madison County as the Mona Lisa is from my old refrigerator art. 

CAS

The Servants by Michael Marshall Smith

Mark is an unhappy 11-year old who has just moved from London to Brighton with his sick mother and hated stepfather. Missing his father and sad over the destruction of their family, he gets to know the old lady who lives in the basement apartment of the house. She shows Mark the servant’s quarters that remain under the house where the servants are seemingly going about their usual duties as if it’s still the early 1900’s. At first this order is reassuring to Mark with all the chaos of his real world above, but he comes to see that things are going wrong below stairs as well.

This book was easy to read and follow, and I loved the way Michael Marshall Smith captured Mark’s rage. I was able to sympathize with his character while still understanding that the situation was not quite the way it seemed. As the book progressed I became aware that Mark’s interactions with the old woman and servant’s quarters helped him to grow from a young child with selfish needs to one who could step outside of his comfort zone and understand that people and events from the past are always part of the present. The Servants is both a coming of age novel and a ghost story all wrapped together. I am not a science fiction reader, generally speaking, but this was more about believable interactions and characters and was a truly enjoyable experience.

CAS

Critical Mass by Sara Paretsky

Old secrets do not die as long as there exist those who know them. Long-hidden under layers of painful memories of the Holocaust and loss, V.I.’s friend, Lotty Herschel, asks for her help.Tied together by their shared Kindertransport experience, Lotty and Kitty have a long, strained relationship. Kitty’s mother, Martina, was a brilliant physicist at a time when women were grudgingly, if at all, allowed to work in the field. But the Nazi’s were trying to split the atom and initially accepted any workers, even a Jewish woman. Martina was last known to be transferred to a concentration camp. Kitty’s grandson, who apparently inherited his great-grandmother’s genius, had been reading her notes and has disappeared from the energy technology firm where he works. His mother, hopelessly addicted to drugs, has also gone missing after escaping a meth house where her boyfriend is found murdered.

The story moves through time and location – Europe in the 30’s and 40’s; Chicago in the present, but manages to move fairly smoothly through its transitions. Critical Mass is a thriller and commentary on society all wrapped in fascinating historical detail. I loved it.  

CAS

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

Chevalier has again brought to life a time and a place in history, in this case 19^th century Dorset, England. The real-life character of Mary Anning is portrayed with sensitivity and honesty and is easy to imagine. Mary was born to working class parents and received a limited education. Struck by lightning as a baby, she is viewed by many as slightly suspect. As her remarkable ability to spot dinosaur fossils in the cliffs near her home leads her into conflict with the scientific community as well as the church fathers, she struggles to make a living and receive the recognition she deserves.

RemarkableCreatures 

portrays an important period in both scientific and social history. Mary’s treatment personally and professionally reflect the denial by the educated upper class to believe anyone from the lower classes and any woman at all as capable of contributing to the intellectual canon. It is easy to feel Mary’s frustration, anger, and betrayal as her finds and scientific conclusions are attributed to others. This is not, however, simply a story of rage and lack of fairness, it encompasses her life in all its complexity. She finds herself in love with a totally unavailable man, learns to eventually trust and find friendship with fellow fossil hunter, Elizabeth Philpot, and to carve out a life not perfect, but livable.

CAS

Try some of Chevalier's other titles.

Readalike: Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland

Carthage by Joyce Carol Oates

Cressida Mayfield, 19 years old and the “smart one” in her family, was last seen with her sister’s ex-fiancé, Brett Kincaid. She is now missing, there are traces of blood in his car, and he is suffering from an alcohol-induced blackout. Kincaid is also an Iraq War veteran with severe injuries and PTSD.

Chronically an outsider, Cressida has grown up in the shadow of her sister Juliet’s persona: beautiful, well-behaved, and dedicated to Kincaid’s physical and emotional recovery. Her mother, Arlette, has always been frustrated by this child whose words and behavior were often incomprehensible to her. Zeno Mayfield is unable to accept his daughter’s death even after Kincaid confesses.

Oates has always been masterful at depicting the cracks that appear in individuals and families in times of great stress, loss, and suffering. The characters feel real and recognizable in their emotions and subsequent choices. I could only sit back and ache as I watched them grieve in solitude instead of coming together and sustaining each other.

The story takes some decidedly odd turns, but more can’t be said for fear of spoilers. Let it be said that in Carthage, Oates takes us down difficult paths that demand examination of our own values and ideas while trying to understand those of the characters in the story.

I have been a follower of Oates for 30+ years. She’s generally not easy, but she’s also not to be missed.      

CAS

Other Oates titles:

Because it is Bitter and Because it is My Heart

We Were the Mulvaneys

Do With Me What You Will