Romance!

Ah, romance. Quite a few serious readers scorn the romance genre as poorly written. But in the novel Frenchman's Creek, Daphne Du Maurier gives us great writing as well as romance. Dona, a noblewoman of the 18th century is feeling confined and weary by the relentless social life she has in London. On a whim she escapes to her family's country house along with her two children. Here, in beautiful countryside she feels peace and contentment. She also meets a Frenchman, a pirate who has been terrorizing the countryside. Both feel an immediate connection. There is love, adventure and a killing...  Du Maurier explores the themes of escape and women's lives when they don't live up to social conventions. The ending is bittersweet, both characters being deeply changed by their encounter. The descriptions of the Cornwall coast are wonderfully evocative. ML

A Lady's Code of Misconduct

A Lady's Code of Misconduct by Meredith Duran was surprisingly good! In this historical romance, I love that we have a female character with brains and it's not someone who is weak that minces words with men, looking for her strength. But a woman that takes the bull by the horns and makes life happen for her.

Crispin, the male character is so different too! He started off an unlikable jerk but ended up being an amazing man. I love his passion for life and for Jane.

The author has created a perfect love story. From sparks flying at the beginning to a slow growth of respect, protection, care, consideration, and love, the perfect couple is brought together as one. It's such a beautiful and interesting historical story. *JK*

What the Duke Doesn't Know

What the Duke Doesn't Know is a sweet and original regency romance that improves as it goes along. It is the second in Jane Ashford's The Duke's Sons series about the six sons of the Duke of Langford.
Lord James Gresham is the fifth son of the Duke of Langford and a captain in the navy when his ship is abruptly decommissioned. Now floundering around Oxford, James is trying to decide what comes next for him. While visiting his brother and sister in law, James is suddenly attacked by a young woman wearing breeches, brandishing a gun, and accusing him of stealing her inheritance.
Kawena Benson is the daughter of an English gentleman and his Polynesian wife. She has traveled all the way to England to search out Lord James and insist that he return her stolen jewels. When it is resolved that James doesn't have Kawena's gems, he offers to assist her in her quest and the two are forced into traveling together across England in their search. *JK*

The Dark Truth

Allison used to be Esme. She used to live in a crooked house in a remote town on the English coast. Then everything changed. She moved away, changed her name and tried to become anonymous. Things were just fine until her boyfriend Paul invites her to go to a wedding in her old hometown. She decides to go but is not prepared for the haunting nightmares that resurface. After 13 years the time has come for Allison to confront her past. The Crooked House by Cristobel Kent is a dark thriller about deep secrets and Allison’s search for the truth. You can run but you can’t hide. DB

The Viscount Needs a Wife

The Viscount Needs a Wife is a standalone regency romance filled with historic traditions. The author takes us on a journey through a difficult time in England when the country was in mourning and vulnerable, she weaves a timeless romance with intriguing characters for all to enjoy.

In this romance, Kitty Cateril feels trapped in the home of her late husband's family. When her best friend writes her about the local Viscount needing a wife, Kitty thinks this might be the answer to her problem. But does she want to marry without love? *JK*

Taught by Shakespeare

The year is 1590, and Queen Elizabeth’s Spanish Armada victory has done nothing to quell her brutal persecution of the English Catholics. Katharine de L’Isle is living at Lufanwal Hall, the manor of her uncle, Sir Edward. Taught by her cherished uncle to read when a child, Katharine is now a thirty-one-year-old widow. She has resigned herself to a life of reading and keeping company with her cousins and their children. But all that changes when the family’s priest, who had been performing Catholic services in secret, is found murdered. Faced with threats of imprisonment and death, Sir Edward is forced to flee the country, leaving Katharine adrift in a household rife with turmoil. A new tutor, (Will Shakespeare) upsets Katharine's equilibrium and adds to the household strife. A very different view of the bard, historical novel fans will love it. ML

Deadly Deception

Alys Clare lives in the English countryside where her novels are set, circa 1093. The series known as the Aelf Fen mysteries consists of six books. Featured is the healer Lassair, a young woman. The series explores an England where pagan ways are giving way to Christianity. Lassair is dynamic, having gone to a Christian school, but trained in the ways of her mystic healer family. There is always a mystery, but really, the novels explore living in a very different time from our modern mind set.
 At the start of Clare's sixth Aelf Fen novel, apprentice healer Lassair helps rescue a foreign woman and her infant son from a mob in Cambridge in the fall of 1093. When Lassair and the sheriff's man later go looking for the woman's missing family members, receding flood waters reveal a body that raises suspicions of murder. ML

One plus one of things going wrong!

Jojo Moyes new book, One Plus One, is a sympathetic story of a young single mom whose luck has run out. She is a likeable character who has lots of heart.Her husband has done a vanishing act, her teenage stepson is being bullied, and her math whiz daughter has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that she can't afford to pay for. That's Jess's life in a nutshell-until an unexpected knight in shining armor offers to rescue them. Only Jess's knight turns out to be  Ed, the obnoxious tech millionaire whose vacation home she happens to clean. But Ed has big problems of his own, and driving the dysfunctional family to the Math Olympiad feels like his first unselfish act in ages, maybe ever.
A good read for all you folks who like romance. ML

Happy Families

These lines in Lisa Jewell's new book The House We Grew Up In, perfectly set the stage for this story.
“They lived in a honey-colored house that sat hard up against the pavement of a picture-postcard Cotswolds village and stretched out beyond into three-quarters of an acre of rambling half-kempt gardens. Their mother was a beautiful hippy called Lorelei with long tangled hair and sparkling green eyes who treated her children like precious gems. Their father was a sweet gangly man called Colin, who still looked like a teenager with floppy hair and owlish round-framed glasses. They all attended the village school, they ate home-cooked meals together every night, their extended family was warm and clever, there was money for parties and new paddling pools, but not quite enough for foreign travel, but it didn’t matter, because they lived in paradise.”
This is a story of a family, but not that perfect family. The people in that perfect family gradually changed, as secrets, tragedy and mental illness visited them. Told from multiple points of view, we see the family struggle, grow and change. A mesmerizing read! ML

spoils of war

Jacqueline Winspear is a terrific historical writer. She writes about England during two world wars, and without blood or gore illustrates the terrible cost wars have, not only to young people dying but the ones at home who love and miss them. Readers who love the Masie Dobbs series will like her new stand-alone The Care and Management of Lies. Set during WWI, the story follows two young women, Kezia and Thea. Although Kezia is marrying Thea's brother, they have become estranged from their former friendship over Thea's involvement in the suffragette movement. When war comes, their lives, and indeed, the lives of everyone around them changes. Thoughtful and well written, this is a good read. ML

Murder in a Seaside Town

Broadchurch is the name of a TV series, new to the library. We have season one, all the episodes. The story is a murder mystery. A young boy is found dead on the beach in a small English seaside town. On the surface the town is sunny and safe, but its secrets give way under investigation. An abrasive police detective, an outsider, is another irritant to the townspeople. What really stands out in the series is the depth of character development and the stellar acting. Riveting!

Family Secrets

In Erin Kelly's new book, Burning Air, the McBride family, who have a upper-class privileged life, gather at their country home the first time since the death of their mother Lydia. There, secrets emerge, most shockingly a stranger in their midst who is plotting revenge on every member of the family for an imagined bad deed by their mother from years before. We gradually learn, as the tension mounts, just what happened so many years ago and how one lie created so much misery. Well written and compelling, this novel will hold your attention.

Gritty and Tough

Gritty and tough could describe John Harvey's new novel, Good Bait, or the characters in the novel. Switching points of view, two detectives work on related cases but never meet. When a 17-year-old Moldovan boy is found dead on Hampstead Heath, the case falls to DCI Karen Shields.  Karen knows she needs a result. What she doesn't know is that her new case is tied inextricably to a much larger web of gang warfare and organized crime which infiltrates  London society.

Several hundred miles away in Cornwall, Detective Inspector Trevor Cordon is stirred from his day-to-day duties by another tragic London fatality. Traveling to the capital and determined to establish the cause of death and trace the deceased's daughter, Cordon becomes entangled in a complicated situation of his own. Brilliantly plotted and filled with rich, subtle characters, John Harvey's latest novel reveals him once again as a masterful writer. ML

Fact or Fantasy?

In Graham Joyce's novel Some Kind of Fairy Tale,we are told a story from a few points of view. The beginning; Christmas day as an older couple sets down to a quiet and sumptuous meal. A knock on the door, it's their daughter Tara, disappeared for twenty years and presumed dead. Their shock turns to dismay and anger as she recounts her story. She was lured away by a man on a white horse to the land of fairy, and to her mind, gone six months. She does look amazingly young! Her brother who has mourned her passing,her boyfriend who was suspected of her murder and her parents try to cope with her insistence on the truth of her story. She is sent to a therapist who thinks she suffers from amnesia. Who is telling the truth? The writing is well done with multiple points of view. There is a twist of plot at the end that makes us wonder. I loved this combination of mystery and fantasy that seems realistic along with characters that are very well developed. I read this in one very late night! ML

A Journey

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is an unusual story by Rachel Joyce that has been getting a lot of interest lately and so I decided to give it a try.  It's not my typical read but I have to say I enjoyed the story which I can only describe as charming.  Harold, recently retired from the job he's had for many years, receives a letter from a past coworker and on his way to the mailbox decides he's going to walk 500 miles to deliver it in person.  With just the shoes on his feet (and not even his cell phone) he takes off, leaving his wife totally astounded!  There's much more to this story than I'm telling but that's basically the gist of it.  Join Harold on his unlikely pilgrimage.  SG

An Intellectual Puzzle

Semiretired Scotland Yard detective Peter Cammon is called to help an overwhelmed Dorset police department in Walking Into The Ocean. An apparent husband-and-wife drowning murder-suicide is not resolving cleanly since the husband's body has not been recovered. Meanwhile, an elusive serial killer is steadily moving up the picturesque English coastline, ever closer to this area, killing teen girls at a systematic clip. Don't miss this engrossing and complex debut, the first volume in a projected trilogy. Rich prose, literary allusion, and a strong nod to women's intuition provide a romantic touch to a crack police procedural. It's perfect for those who love travel and history mixed with crime. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals

Attention Downton Abbey fans!

Kate Morton's books feature intricate family secrets and puzzles, spread out over generations. She has a fine grasp of character and usually writes from the viewpoint of one or more persons. The House at Riverton features the dying thoughts of a woman who was a young servant at a great English country estate in 1914, just before WWI, and her involvment in a family secret she still thinks about. A young filmaker wants to do a movie about the family and interviews her, sparking her memories. Intelligent writing,rich in plot, this is a good read!ML

A coming of age story.

In The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey is inspired by Jane Eyre to write this tale of a orphan. Taken in by her uncle, Gemma Hardy is again left alone when he dies and his unfeeling wife sends her to a boarding school. At school she is little more than unpaid labor, but allowed to go to class. Our heroine is plucky though and finds people who care about her. When she is too old for the school she takes a governess position and falls in love with the owner of the estate. Sooo Jane Eyre! He of course has a secret but all things are made right in the end. A well written and satisfying read! ML

An elegy for a lost world

This love story set during WWII is a story of a lost world, pre-war England and a beautiful country house. Nineteen-year old Elise grows up in Vienna to a cultured and wealthy family. As the Nazi's gain power her family sends her to England to be a maid at a country manor. She struggles with her change in status and the sheer amount of work required of a servant at that time. As war comes to England the old ways of doing things change as well as her life. Romantic and touching, if you like Downton Abby you will love this novel, The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons. ML

Death, in the style of Jane Austen

P.D. James is one of England's premier mystery writers and usually sets her mysteries in contemporary times. In her new novel, Death Comes to Pemberley, she writes in the style and era of Jane Austen. We pick up where Pride and Prejudice left off, with Jane living at her husband's grand estate, Pemberley. When her flighty and disgraced sister and husband come to visit, a comrade of her husband is found slain in the woods. If you are a fan of mysteries or Jane Austen this will be an interesting read. M.L.