Wrap Up of 2018 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

I read 18 books for the Historical Fiction challenge this year. I signed up to read 25 books so I fell short of my goal. Here us what I read:

The Court Dancer by Kyung Sook Shin
The Masterpiece by Fiona Davis
Deadly Cure by Lawrence Goldstone
Vita Brevis by Ruth Downie
The Abbot's Tale by Conn Iggulden
Death in St. Petersburg by Tasha Alexander
The Painter's Apprentice by Laura Morelli
City of Ink by Elsa Hart
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Heretics by Leonardo Padura
The Romanov Empress by C.W. Gortner
Death on Delos by Gary Corby
The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey
White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
The White Mirror by Elsa Hart
Radio Girls by Sarah-Jane Stratford
City of Masks by S. D. Sykes

Favorite Book:  White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht

Second Favorite Book:  The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

Least Favorite Book:  Death in St. Petersburg by Tasha Alexander

The Court Dancer

The Court Dancer is the story of Yi Jin who spent her childhood in the Korean  royal palace in the mid 1800s. She worked both in the royal embroidery studio and as a court dancer from the age of 6 until the age of 23. When the French legate to Korea, Victor Collin de Plancy, announced that he had been ordered back to France, the King gave him Yi Jin as a gift, one that he could take back to France as a wife.

The story opens with Yi Jin and Victor at the harbor boarding the ship that will take them to France.  It then returns back to Jin as a child and tells how she came to the palace, learned her embroidery and dance skills, and her friendships with best friends Soa and Yeon and a friendship with a French missionary.  When Victor meets her he falls madly in love with her. Jin falls in love with his library. The story forwards again to Jin in Paris where she is always the center of attraction due to her asian looks. She continues with her love of books by translating Korean books into French. However, she ultimately has too many adjustment problems and Victor takes her back to Korea. 

This is a slow moving story. While the author has painted rich details of Korean royal court life, I feel that it could have been written in fewer pages. It seemed to me that it would take 4 or 5 pages to tell what could have been told in one page. I quickly got bored with the book, then action occurred and I got interested again, and then bored again. This repeated for me throughout the book.

I was somewhat disappointed with the book. While I looked forward to what would happen next, the story moved too slow for me. Interest in the plot kept me reading though.

3 out of 5 stars!

The Masterpiece

The Masterpiece alternates chapters between the late 1920s and the mid 1970s.  In the 1920s illustrator Clara Darden arrives in New York City from Arizona as an art student at the Grand Central School of the Art located in New York City's Grand Central Terminal.  She is a promising student and is quickly promoted to class monitor. When a teacher fails to show up for the second semester, Clara is given the class to teach.  While she teaches, she prepares her illustrations for a faculty show as well as for presentation to magazines such as Vogue.  At the school she meets and befriends fellow teacher Levon Zakarian. Levon becomes both her mentor and her downfall.  

Meanwhile, in 1974 Virginia Clay tries to obtain a job as legal secretary with no experience but is fired after the first day.  She is fresh off a divorce from a corporate attorney and thought that she had picked up enough information from listening to his conversations over the two decades that they were married to be able to do the job.  Her temp agency places her in the information booth at Grand Central Terminal tidying up, getting coffee for the others and refilling the stacks of timetables as needed.  While trying to find the bathroom on her first day on the job Virginia stumbles upon the Grand Central School of the Art which had closed during World War II and never reopened.  The space was never rented again and she was able to enter and look at some of the artwork that was left over from the students.

The Grand Central Terminal is the center of a big lawsuit to determine whether is should receive landmark status or be demolished and replaced with a high-rise building.  Virginia becomes enamored with the Terminal as she begins to see what the building was like when it was built. She also returns to the art school and sees an unsigned illustration that she likes and takes it.  Virginia then begins a quest to find out who the artist is. 

I loved this novel!  In fact, I read it in one sitting.  The pace was fast and the characters, all of them, were captivating, especially Clara Darden.  You could not help but feel emotion for a woman who left her family as a teenager, traveled across the entire country by herself, and entered art school as a serious student.  Most female students were looking for husbands but Clara wanted to be a working artist and an illustrator specifically.  Illustration was not considered art at the time. It was considered commercial.  She runs into strong male characters and holds her own.  Her boss at the school, Mr. Lorette, wanted to fire her as a teacher after the first semester and hid her illustrations at the faculty show because he disapproved of illustration as art. He did his best to quash her attempts to be a working artist. Levon Zakarian was both a competitor and a lover but Clara was able to understand him well enough to maneuver his movements.  

Virginia Clay was another strong woman and one that I was familiar with in the 1970s.  Divorce was just beginning to be common at the time and many new divorcees had no education or training for a job. These women had to take whatever job they could find and support their children on whatever amount of money they made. These women always made ends meet.  I don't know how they did it because it does not always happen to these women in the twenty first century. 

There is much to learn here about illustration as an art form.  You see it when it was popular in magazines and in advertisements before photography was used.  It was replaced by photography and had a renaissance in later decades but that history was not part of the book.  In the book almost all of the  working illustrators were men.  Women just were not given opportunities for this type of work. Clara Darden was an exception. I enjoyed reading about this part of art history. 

The Masterpiece was an entertaining  historical mystery novel and I rate it 5 out of 5 stars!

Deadly Cure

Deadly Cure is the first book by Lawrence Goldstone that I have read. It is both a historical mystery and a medical mystery novel.  It takes place in 1893 in New York City.

Physician Noah Whitestone is called to a rich neighbor's home to urgently care for their 5 year old son, Willard Anschutz, as his regular physician, Dr. Frias, was not available.  Noah finds the boy exhibiting the symptoms of morphia toxicity, with leg tremors, a rancid odor, extreme perspiration and dilated pupils.  Noah asked the boy's mother, Mildred Anzchutz, if he had taken any patent medications which were not regulated and were known to have morphine as an ingredient.  She said that he hadn't taken any but that he had been taking a blue pill prescribed by Dr. Frias for a cough. Noah doesn't believe that Willard was not on any patent medications but has to take her word so he gives the boy 2 drops of laudanum and leaves to see 2 more patients. When he returned to the house later that night, the boy had died. However, he was able to get 2 of the blue pills that Willard was taking.

The next day Noah stops by the Anschutz home to pay his respects to the family. Here he finds himself accused of wrongdoing in the boy's death.  After leaving the house he goes to the local hospital lab to do tests on the blue pill to determine what it is made of. Dr. Frias finds out he is testing the pill and threatens to yank his license.  Noah later meets a radical working for a newspaper who tells him the paper is trying to break the Patent Medicine Trust. This radical/reporter knew about Willard's death and the death of other children from patent medications. Noah wants to get involved with research for the publication in order to clear his name but knows there is a risk with being associated with communists.  He does it anyway.

Deadly Cure was spellbinding!  I was hooked from the first page and could not put this book down.  The book had a fast pace, fascinating characters and an intricate plot. However, what I found most interesting was how aspirin and heroin were initially introduced in the U. S. as patent medications. In their beginning forms these drugs killed people. Various German companies worked on what eventually became known as aspirin and heroin and while their products were not healthy they were marketed to the public by physicians who became wealthy by prescribing them.  This history was expertly woven into the story by the author.

5 out of 5 stars!

Vita Brevis

Vita Brevis is Ruth Downie's 7th Medicus historical mystery featuring Roman physician Gaius Petraeus Ruso and his British wife Tilla.  In this installment of the series Ruso has been sent back to Rome from Britannia with the promise of a waiting job.

After a few weeks without work, Ruso is given a job temporarily replacing a doctor named Kleitos who suddenly left Rome to care for an ailing relative.  Upon moving into Kleitos' home and workshop Tilla finds a barrel on the doorstep.  Inside is a dead body. Ruso and Tilla quickly realize Kleitos disappeared to escape debt collectors and isn't going to return.

Vita Brevis is different from the previous books in the series which were historical mysteries. This book is historical fiction because Ruso and Tilla are not working together to solve a murder. It is still great reading as the plot moves along quickly.  There is something lacking, however, in the 2 main characters as neither of them are using their sleuthing skills and Tilla is not using her herbalist skills at all. In addition, Tilla does not act like her usual strong woman self while she tries to be a submissive Roman wife. Ruso spends more time on Roman politics than being a physician. The feel of the book is different but it still is interesting reading as the reader gets to watch them learn how to maneuver the Roman way of life.  However, I am unclear why the author chose to change her winning formula for this series.

Some of the secondary characters we are used to seeing in the series are absent as they are still based in Brittania. Their absence is strongly felt as the new secondary characters introduced are not as compelling as the old ones.

All in all this was a great read even with the changes in the formula.  I look forward to the next book in the series.  

The Abbot's Tale

I read Conn Iggulden's Genghis Khan series and loved it. The Abbot's Tale is a new novel set in Anglo-Saxon England in the year 937. It is a stand alone novel.

Dunstan and his brother Wulfric are placed in Glastonbury Abbey as youths by their father so that Dunstan can recover from an illness. Their father soon dies and their mother is put out of the family home by an older stepbrother but funds are available for them to stay at the Abbey. They want to leave for they suffer frequent beatings and hate the monastic life but there is no where for them to go.  Dunstan eventually becomes a priest and after claiming to have been rescued by an angel from a tower scaffold he adds to his story by saying that he had a vision of a grand cathedral.  King Aethelstan believes these stories and makes him the Abbot of Glastonbury.  From here Dunstan begins his  lifetime of service to seven kings, all descendants of Aethelstan.  His tale includes his participation in wars, exile to Ghent, traveling to Rome to meet Pope John XII, being named Archbishop of Canterbury and building a cathedral in Canterbury.

While Dunstan had quite the career, I was not as enamored with this book as I was with the Khan series.  I thought that parts of the story were paced a little slow.  However, the author did show the reality of life in the 10th century which could be quite cruel for those living during that era.  That said, the book is an epic story full of royal kings, cathedral building, Viking invasions, and war scenes that show the birth of the English nation.

I guess my disappointment with The Abbot's Tale is due to how much I loved the Genghis Khan series.  It did not measure up to the Khan books. Perhaps that is not a fair assessment but I was expecting more from the book.  Note that the author found a manuscript that was never intended to be read and needed to be translated.  It had gaps in its plot.  The author filled in these gaps with his own writing, added chapter headings and it became The Abbot's Tale.  He stated "It is my hope that the result gives some pleasure and casts light on an exceptional mind of the tenth century." Whoever wrote the manuscript did have a great imagination.  Of that, there is no doubt. He created a vivid character in Dunstan and gave him a fantastical life.  Due to the pacing, I could not stay interested in the story.

Death in St. Petersburg

Death in St. Petersburg is the first book by Tasha Alexander that I have read. However, it is her 13th historical mystery novel and Death in St. Petersburg is the 12th installment of the author's Lady Emily Mystery Series.

Prima ballerina Irina Semenova Nemetseva is found dead outside the Mariinski Theatre midway through a performance. Her friend and understudy Ekaterina Petrovna Solokova, takes over her top role in the ballet and finishes the performance for the evening.  Ekaterina ultimately is appointed the principal dancer position in the ballet company and becomes a suspect. Lady Emily and her husband Colin, appointed by Queen Victoria to oversee events at the Russian Court for her, investigate the murder at the request of a friend of the victim.

The plot moved rather slowly in this mystery and I was bored from the beginning. The main characters did not impress me.  I felt they were boring too. The story of the ballerinas was exciting but there wasn't enough of that in the book to keep me interested. The ballet dancers as characters were much more interesting than protagonist Lady Emily and her husband, a regular series character.

I wonder if this book is a cozy mystery. That may explain my dissatisfaction with the book as there are very few cozy authors that I read any more.  I used to love the genre but it no longer satisfies me. The writing style of Death in St. Petersburg seemed like a cozy which means I should not fault it for being a genre that I do not like. Regardless, I could not wait for the book to end.

2.5 out of 5 stars.

The Painter's Apprentice

This is the first book of Laura Morelli's that I have read and I was quite impressed. The story was rich with the arts and forbidden love in 1510 Venice when it was fighting a big battle with the bubonic plague. It is the author's second novel in her Venetian Artisans series.

19 year old Maria Bartolini has been sent away from her father's gilding workshop to work as an apprentice under famous painter Master Trevisan for 18 months in exchange for learning how to use pigments. She prefers to work with gold leaves but works hard to learn how to paint with pigment all while pining for her home, family and her lover, a Saracen working in her father's shop as a gold beater. When she discovers that she is pregnant Maria tries to get in touch with her family but is blocked by barricades set up to stop the spread of the pestilence, the bubonic plague. The Trevisan family maid figures out Maria's secret and together with the family's boatman exhorts money from her to keep the secret from Master Trevisan. Other artisans have been jailed and then exiled for the same offense so Maria pays them until she can figure out how to handle her situation.

I love art, using gold leaves too, so the artistic backstory was fascinating for me. I also love the Renaissance period. The pairing of these two made for a great story. Add in a forbidden love story between an interracial couple and a plague and you have a plot that is hard to beat.

As an artist I loved reading all the details about the gilding process. I was amused when artists from other areas of Europe were brought into the story who talked about using a new background for their art - canvas. It was deemed revolutionary to those who were doing traditional paintings on wood. The use of oil paints as a new medium was also discussed but the guild the Venetians belonged to still mixed pigment from natural resources. I thought this was hilarious but truth be told it was during this era that the art world began to change.

Another major part of the story was the bubonic plague. It affected commerce, how the artisans were able to obtain supplies and maintain customers as the city fell victim to the plague block by block. Neighborhoods were boarded up so no one could enter or leave which meant food could not be delivered to those in quarantine. When someone got sick they were forced by the police to sail to a nearby island where most of them died and were buried without notice to their families.

The characters were awesome.  All of them. From Maria to her father, aunt, cousin, lover, boss, the maid, the boatman and the boss's wife, they all played their parts well.  The maid and boatman provided the story with the evil characters while Master Trevisan's wife was the typical rich and gossipy wife. Maria had an aunt who was a nun who did her best to get her to enter the convent.

The author used contemporary English with the exception of the character and place names which helped to make the book a quick read.  I enjoyed The Painter's Apprentice immensely and rate it 5 out of 5 stars.

City of Ink

City of Ink is the third book in the Li Du mystery series set in eighteenth century China.  In this installment of the series former imperial librarian Li Du is back in Beijing from exile.  He is working as the assistant to the chief inspector of the North Borough Office of Beijing's Outer City.

There are many new men in the city preparing to take exams for potential government positions when the wife of the owner of The Black Tile Factory and a man, who appears to be her lover, are found dead in the administrative office of the factory one morning. Li Du and his boss, Chief Inspector Sun, begin an investigation into their murders.

The murdered bodies were found on page 12 which meant that most of the book could be devoted to finding the killer.  I think that is important in a mystery.  I hate it when the crime doesn't occur until a third of the way into a book.

The author used setting descriptions to maintain the historical features of the novel but kept the dialogue mostly contemporary for a quicker read.  Some of the dialogue referred to a historical past but it was still contemporary. The reader certainly was able to get the feel of being in imperial China which showed the author's knowledge of the location and era.

City of Ink was much better than the second book in the series, The White Mirror. I think the reason is that City of Ink took place in Beijing and White Mirror took place while Li Du was on the road. In the first book in the series, Jade Dragon Mountain, Li Du was on his way out of Beijing into exile but there was alot of back story taking place there.  I think Beijing is the best setting for this series since the hero is, after all, a librarian. Li Du seems to be more in his element here.

City of Ink is a great whodunnit. I highly recommend it and give it 5 out of 5 stars!

The Essex Serpent

This is the first book by Sarah Perry that I have read. It is her second novel, a work of historical fiction set in London and Essex in 1893.

After Cora Seaborne's uncaring husband dies, she abandons her society life in London and takes a trip to Colchester and the coastal town of Essex with her 11 year old son and his nanny where she is free to pursue her personal interests in the natural sciences. She continues to see her former husband's physician who she initially feels affection for, affection that is returned. Here she first hears about the 300 year old legend of the Essex Serpent who has recently been seen roaming the local waterways. The serpent has been rumored by local residents to have killed a man. In Essex Cora meets the Reverend William Ransome and his wife Stella and becomes a friend of the family.

I read a positive review of this book last year but what made me pick this book up at the library is its gorgeous cover. We don't often see beautiful covers like this so I want to point out that it was designed by Peter Dyer using images from iStock and William Morris. Dyer is a graphic artist in London who has designed many book covers in his illustrious career.

I don't usually read straight historical fiction as I prefer historical mysteries. Historical fiction reads a little slow for me. However, I felt this book was even slower than normal for historical fiction. I was engaged in the plot during the first half of the book but completely lost interest at the halfway mark.  While I continued reading I was bored. There was very little plot movement or character development. I couldn't wait for the book to end and skipped some of the last 100 pages.

This book was disappointing. That old saying that you can't judge a book by its cover applies here.

Heretics

Elias Kaminsky traveled to Havana, Cuba in search of the story how his family's Rembrandt painting of Jesus came to be auctioned off in London 70 years after his grandfather Daniel landed in Havana in the late 1930s. Daniel Kaminsky, a Polish Jew, was sent ahead of his family to an uncle, Joseph Kaminsky, who was already living in Havana with the expectation that his parents and younger sister Judith would follow in a matter of weeks. 

Their ship, the Saint Louis, did arrive in Havana in 1939, but none of the 937 passengers were allowed to disembark and after a week of political wrangling they were sent back to Holland where the ship had originally set sail. However, while the ship was in Havana harbor Joseph hired a small boat to get near the Saint Louis in order to speak with his brother Isaiah Kaminsky. His brother mentioned that he had the painting and that he was going to be able to sell it so that the family could pay people off in order to exit the ship. Upon their arrival back in Holland they were placed in a refugee camp and later they were exterminated at Auschwitz. 

Joseph Kaminsky was a religious, Orthodox Jew but Daniel decided on the day that the St. Louis set sail from Havana with his family on board that he would no longer be Jewish.  He grew up in Cuba and considered himself to be Cuban instead of Jewish.  Daniel married a Catholic woman named Marta, even converting to Roman Catholicism only so that he could marry in the Catholic church as his non-practicing girlfriend wished, and they later emigrated to the U.S. and lived in Miami Beach where their son Elias was born.  Marta converted to Judaism while in Miami so when Elias was asked in the story whether he is Jewish he says yes, because his mother was Jewish.  However, Elias was not religious. 

The story followed Elias' search for his parents' story as well as the painting's story. He enlisted the help of former Havana police detective Mario Conde to help him in his search. The author alternated chapters between Elias' time and Daniel's time.

I had read Leonardo Padura's Havana Gold a few years ago and thought it was just OK. I wasn't sure if I wanted to try another book of his but the back cover blurb convinced me to buy this novel as the history of the Saint Louis ship in Havana harbor in 1939 is another one of the heart wrenching stories of the Holocaust.

You could not help but feel great emotion for the main characters, Joseph, Daniel and Elias Kaminsky. They all suffered from the one act of the Kaminsky family's death in Auschwitz. All were heretics in some form with Daniel becoming one by trying to deny his faith and Joseph breaking a commandment. A big one. The Sephardic Jew who posed for the portrait in the 1600s was probably the first heretic in the novel. 

I love family sagas and that's probably one of the reasons I loved this book. Daniel's changing emotions toward his faith tradition was compelling and the reader was able to get inside his head as he grappled with personal decisions when Israel became a nation and when he converted to Catholicism so Marta could have the extravagant wedding she always wanted. 

While the subject matter of the story is serious and the author wrote much emotion into this story, it still flowed effortlessly and was an easy read. If you are not familiar with the St. Louis incident in Holocaust history, you will find the book informative. At 528 pages it's a chunkster but I guarantee that you will love it. I certainly did.

The Romanov Empress

I received an advanced review copy of The Romanov Empress through the Early Reviewer's Program at Librarything.  I have read a few of  C. W. Gortner's prior novels and loved them so I was thrilled to get a copy of this book which will be published on July 10, 2018.

The novel covers the life of Maria Feodorovna, the wife of Tsar Alexander III, beginning at age 12 when her sister married the heir to the British throne to age 80 when she died. She began her life as Dagmar, a minor member of the royal family of Denmark. When the Danish King died childless, Dagmar's father ascended the throne and she became a royal princess.

When Dagmar married the Russian heir she knew little about Russia or politics.  She even had to change her Lutheran religion to the Russian Orthodox faith and her name to an orthodox name. While at first she reveled in the newness of luxuries that she never had growing up, she began to learn how to rule.  She used service in the Red Cross as a way to endear herself to the Russian people and attended every court party that was held, which endeared her to the Russian aristocracy.  Observation was her key to success.  She watched how her father-in-law, and later her husband, used power to their advantage.

When it came time for Alexander III and Maria Feodorovna's heir Nicholas to marry they had made a list of prospects for him to consider.  However, he had already fallen in love with one of Queen Victoria's granddaughters, Alexandra.  She was deemed unsuitable because she was unsocial. I found this part of the book fascinating because I have never read anything about Alexandra being an unsuitable royal bride. As the author continues Maria's story he is also telling Nicholas and Alexandra's story and shows how their ending was due to Alexandra's personality defect. Sorry for the spoiler but there is much more in the book about how her personality changed Nicholas early in their marriage which begs the question: would he have been a different ruler with a different wife.

When Maria's husband died after only 13 years as Tsar, the now Dowager Empress was an expert in Russian politics. However, her son Nicholas II would never listen to her advice.  He preferred to listen to his wife Alexandra and their mystic Rasputin. To not do so would invite a tantrum from Alexandra so Nicholas almost always gave in.  When he didn't give in, Alexandra viewed Maria as her competition.  Maria only sought to bolster her son's power by imparting her wisdom but Nicholas consistently ignored it.  When the Bolsheviks came to power, Nicholas easily caved to their demands, ignoring again his mother's advice. He even ignored her suggestion to negotiate the family's safe removal from Russia because his wife did not want the children moved as they had the measles.

Dagmar of Denmark grew up to be a politically astute and powerful woman, known to history as Maria Feodorovna. The only time her political instincts were wrong was when it was time to admit Nicholas and the family were dead and the Romanov Dynasty was over. Some say she knew it but being an Empress she was never going to publicly admit it. When she died in her home in Denmark at age 80, 4 of her 6 children had preceded her in death.

The Romanov Empress was a fascinating novel. I believe that since Alexandra did not fulfill her public duties as Empress, this book could be titled The Last Romanov Empress.  Maria did her job well. While Maria's husband died at the novel's halfway mark much of what we learn about Maria has to do with her relationships with her children, especially Nicholas and his dysfunctional wife. Much of what I learned through Maria's life is new history for me.

In the beginning of the novel Maria is presented as a typical girl. However, when the book opened her sister Alix is being betrothed to the Prince of Wales.  Dagmar/Maria complained at the time that Alix accepted the arranged marriage without question. She believed the proposal should have been declined because Alix did not love or even know the Prince of Wales.  Dagmar/Maria was considered to be rebellious and adventurous.  She didn't fit in.  Given the opportunities available to her as the wife of the Russian heir she began to blossom. I think she was a born ruler and would have made a fine king, tsar, emperor, etc...on her own.

Highly recommended!

Death on Delos

Death on Delos is the 7th Athenian Mystery by Gary Corby.  I was on a waiting list for 3 months to get it at my public library and finally picked it up this week.

The story opens with a heavily pregnant Diotima, priestess of Artemis, and her husband Nicolaos arriving on the Island of Delos so that Diotima can dedicate the annual offerings from Athens to Delos. There are 2 laws on Delos.  It is illegal to die there and it is illegal to be born there.  Violating these laws results in the entire island and everything on it needing to be resanctified for it is a holy place.

When the couple arrive they are accompanied by many warships.  The Persians are not far away and Athens believes the Delian Treasury is at risk.  Athens wants to temporarily remove the Treasury to Athens for safety.  However, the Delians feel betrayed by this plan and prefer to rely on their faith in their gods Artemis and Apollo to protect them. A Delian crowd gathers near the coast preventing the Athenians from moving forward without a fight. One Delian, Geros, gives a convincing speech to the crowd and gets them aroused against the Athenians and Pericles, their leader.  A day later, Geros is found dead of multiple stab wounds. It will now take weeks, maybe months, to sanctify the island for Diotima to be able to make her sacred offering.

Diotima and Nicolaos are known for their sleuthing skills and are asked by the Delians to determine who killed Geros.  I am always pleased when a murder mystery begins with the murder early in the plot.  Here, the murder took place on page 47 so we have the rest of the book to enjoy  figuring out whodunit.

Another plus is the common English language that the author has the characters speaking.  This is an ancient Greek mystery but aside from the character names, they are speaking English which makes the book a quick read. While the language is English, there is a ton of historical fact woven into the story which makes the book an authentic historical mystery.

Some of the historical facts are that the land on Delos has never been able to grow food.  That is why for centuries Delians relied on gifts to their deities from other Greek islands in order to survive.  Men used to urinate on vegetables in order to make them grow! This strategy did not work though. When a resident was about to die they were put in a boat and sent to another island. Pregnant woman were sent to Mykonos.

I have read all of Corby's Athenian Mysteries and loved them all.  I believe they are getting easier to read.  I remember stumbling over names and words in the first 2 books and don't know if I just got used to the series or if the author made some changes.  Of course, he could be a better writer with 7 books under his belt now.

I highly recommend this series to both mystery and historical fiction fans.

The Widows of Malabar Hill

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey takes place in 1920s India. As the inside cover blurb states it is inspired by a woman who made history as India's first female attorney and is the debut of a new sleuth.

Perveen Mistry is a solicitor in her father's law firm.  She cannot legally appear in court but can prepare contracts and wills and earns a major share of the firm's monies.  When the firm is appointed to execute the will of their client Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner with 3 wives, Perveen notices something unusual in the paperwork.  As a female, she is able to speak directly with the wives and sets out for their home on Malabar Hill.  She believes that they are being taken advantage of as all 3 of them have signed over their inheritance to a charity.  Then their guardian is murdered.

The first half of the book is Purveen's story.  She was harassed by men while attending the India government's law school and quit.  Purveen then falls in love with a man named Cyrus and their families allow them to marry even though the parents did not arrange the marriage. The mother-in-law was old-fashioned and forced Purveen into seclusion for 8 days during menstruation. Her husband found love elsewhere during these weeks and brought her a venereal disease. When she confronts him about it Cyrus beats her. A court case allowed a legal separation based on the 1865 Parsi Marriage Act which favored men.  The Act only allowed separation if a man committed adultery but sex with a prostitute was not considered adultery. Perveen did not know who Cyrus was sleeping with. This experience causes Perveen to dig for clues that will unravel the mysteries of the relationships between the widows at Malabar Hill as well as solve the murder.

This book was a page turner.  I read it in one sitting. While the main thrust of the novel began at the halfway point, the author had been alternating back and forth in Perveen's life so much that it did not seem distracting.

Perveen is a compelling female character. For a  woman of her era, she is quite modern in her thinking. Part of this comes from her marriage experience.  Another part comes from her mother.  Her mother, while a homemaker, grumbled over the strictures of the family's Parsi faith early in her own life.  Her mother encouraged her to get an education instead of marrying early.  She told Perveen that a time would come when women would be allowed to practice law fully and that Perveen should be prepared for this. When Perveen's marriage hit hard times over the seclusion issue, it was her mother who convinced her father to provide Cyrus and Perveen money for their own home.  She will be a wonderful sleuth for a series.

The book is more than historical fiction. It is also a murder mystery.  The murder of the wives' guardian occurs at the halfway point and the book then focuses on solving the crime.  The first half seems to be historical fiction and the second half is a mystery. This is a little unusual but the book reads seamlessly.

I enjoyed this novel and highly recommend it!

White Chrysanthemum

White Chrysanthemum is the debut novel of Irish writer Mary Lynn Bracht. It takes place in Korea in the early 1940s when Japan occupied Korea.  The Japanese soldiers routinely picked up young Korean girls and put them into the prostitution trade.  They were known as comfort girls.

Sixteen year old Hana has become a haenyeon like her mother and dives for fish in the sea to sell for a living.  Her younger sister plays on the beach while they work together. One day in 1943 a Japanese soldier wanders over to the beach on Jeju Island where they live and work. Hana sees him when she momentarily comes up for air and races under the water to reach her sister before the soldier notices her. 

Hana and her sister hide under the rocks but the soldier has noticed someone is there and calls out for them. Hana knows from her mother that she cannot be alone with a Japanese soldier because something bad will happen to her but she is also her sister's protector.  Hana comes out from behind the rock and is taken away.  Her father leaves home for a month to look for her but returns home alone. The family holds a forbidden ceremony to memorialize her death.  The ceremony ends with the dropping of a white chrysanthemum flower over the edge of the coastline of their village.

In the present time 77 year old Emi is overcoming a fear of flying in order to fly from Jeju Island where she has lived her entire life to Seoul where her children live. Emi plans to attend a Wednesday Demonstration as she always does during her annual visits. Her children do not understand why she feels driven to attend these events but support her anyway.

During the Wednesday Demonstration this year Emi finds out that a sculpture will be unveiled to memorialize the women who were captured and/or killed by the Japanese during their occupation of Korea. The organizers of the demonstrations want the Japan government to admit their wrongdoing. On the day of the unveiling 2 women are speaking. Emi moves closer to them and to the sculpture to see if she recognizes anyone. As she gazes upon the sculpture, Emi has a heart attack.

The chapters alternate between 1943 and the present day telling both the story of Hana and the story of Emi. As their stories unfold the reader gets the whole picture of what happened to Hana and her family as a result of her abduction. I was moved to tears by their experience. What both women became as a result of the abduction was gut-wrenching. 

The novel was written with suspense.  Each chapter ending had a surprise or an emotional dagger that kept me reading. In fact, I read this book in one sitting.  It kept me up past midnight! The 2 female characters were quite sympathetic, especially Hana as her story was told in painful detail. As a woman, it is impossible not to understand what she was feeling. With Emi, you knew she was trying to be brave but you did not know why. The writing concerning her emotions was done well.

The topic was interesting for a first time author who is not Korean.  I wonder why she chose this point in World War II history to write about. Regardless, she did justice to the women who were victims of the Japanese government with this story.

Highly recommended!

Salt Houses

Salt Houses is Hala Alyan's debut novel and it is terrific. The story follows several generations of the Yacoub family which originated in Jaffa, Israel and were displaced to Nablus, Palestine after Israel was created in 1948.  With the 1967 war they moved to Kuwait City and with each successive war they were displaced to Beirut, Amman, Paris and Boston.

The story opens in 1963 in Nablus, Palestine with the family matriarch Salma preparing coffee leaves to read for her daughter Alia who is about to marry Atef Yacoub. Salma sees in the dregs a drooping roof and houses that will be lost for her daughter and her future grandchildren but doesn't tell her daughter nor the women assembled what she sees.  Instead she says that she sees a baby coming in the first year.

Alia is a modern Arabic woman.  She does not wear a headdress like her sister Widad and her prayer life is fleeting when she is young.  She, Atef and her brother Mustafa are the best of friends and meet daily to smoke, drink and discuss the politics of the day.  Alia remembers a little about her family's life in the port of Jaffa on the Mediterranean Sea before the Israeli's forced them to leave and remembers her father never recovering emotionally from the loss. The family was middle class and did not end up in a refugee camp. They never would.  Their wealth would take care of them.

In 1965 Mustafa's visits to the local mosque change from being social to religious and political as an imam inspired him. However, when the war drums began pounding in 1967 Mustafa wanted to leave Palestine.  Atef called him a coward and off to war they went. In a few days they were in prison.  Atef never told his wife that it was his doing that kept them in Palestine and that Atef gave up Mustafa's name to the Israelis, who promptly killed him. 

After prison Atef moved himself and Alia permanently to Kuwait City to start a new life and a family of their own.  Each chapter focuses on a different family member at a different time in history to give the reader a seven decade history of this family.

Salt Houses is a different type of story about the displacement caused by war.  This family was wealthy and never ended up in a refugee camp. However, every few years they had to uproot themselves, find a house in a new city and somehow make it feel like home.

They placed importance on material possessions because there was nothing else permanent about their lives. Salma read Alia's coffee dregs in her first purchase as a wife in Nablus, a coffee set.  Salma cherished this set because the design pattern reminded her of the set her own mother gave her when she married, the set she had to leave behind in Jaffa.  This is typical behavior for the Palestinian diaspora; a girl receiving a piece of jewelry owned by an ancestor, etc...

I loved this family saga and while the story takes place in the past 70 years it is historical in that it shows the reader what life was/is like for the Palestinians.

The White Mirror

The White Mirror is Elsa Hart's second historical mystery featuring Li Du as an amateur sleuth. Li is a former librarian for the Chinese emporer and he is in exile.  The series takes place in 18th century China.

In this installment of the series Li Du has joined a caravan heading north and finds the dead body of an elderly monk on a path leading to a manor where his group is headed for the night. The owner of the manor, Dosa, seems to think that the monk, Dhamo, committed suicide over an obsession with the demonic world as an odd symbol was painted on his chest and an image of a mirror was painted on his face.  Li Du believes that the monk was murdered and that someone painted the symbol and mirror on the monk's wounds after he died from a stab wound in the lower abdomen.

Being stuck at the manor house due to a snow storm, Li Du uses his scholarly skills to investigate the circumstances surrounding Dhamo's death.  Some of the suspicious characters Li is stranded with include a female from Lhasa, a Roman Catholic priest and his Chinese translator, the 4th Chhoshe Lasa, Li's old colleague Hamza and a merchant familiar with the mountainous area surrounding them all.

The pace of the first half of this novel was slow.  Since there was more historical detail than investigation of a crime, I was thinking about calling this book historical fiction, not a historical mystery which it is advertised as being.  However, the pace picked up at the halfway mark when the investigation became primary to the plot.  It did take a long time to get going since the murder happened in the first chapter.

The author's knowledge of the geographic area is apparent as well as her knowledge of the era.  She provides the reader with meticulous details on everything from how to cross the Tibetan mountains both in winter and spring to the regional politics of Tibet and from the spiritual beliefs of the mountain people to Hamza's crazy tales on deducing facts.

The White Mirror was a fun read and I rate it 3 out of 5 stars.

Radio Girls

Radio Girls is Sarah-Jane Stratford's first historical novel. It covers the period of time between 1926 and 1932 when the BBC radio station was just beginning.

American Maisie Musgrave lands herself a job in London as a secretary at the BBC.  She is intimidated by her bosses and smart co-workers.  She has difficulty adjusting to the hectic pace of the job but is captivated by this new technology called radio and is thrilled to have this job.  Her insecurities are apparent to her primary supervisor Hilda Matheson who manages the groundbreaking Talks broadcasts where famous people are interviewed for 15 minutes. Everyone expects that Maisie will end up working solely for Hilda as she is doing well assisting with the Talks.

Hilda Matheson was a real person who worked for MI5 during WW1 and received the OBE later in life.  This book seems to be about her contributions to the broadcasting industry and the book has merit for presenting this history.

However, I can't say whether Maisie did or did not end up working for Hilda Matheson because I stopped reading. I have a rule that if a book does not capture my attention within the first 50 pages, I put it down. I gave Radio Girls a 70 page chance but could not get interested in the book.

The writing style was directed toward a British audience.  The dialogue between the characters reflected the slang terminology of the era and some of the words I did not understand. In addition, I did not understand what was meant by a number of sentences.  The way I defined words in some of the sentences could not be what the author intended as the result was nonsensical.

I was disappointed with Radio Girls.  I had high expectations for it based on the back cover blurb as well as other reviews that I read about the book. 

City of Masks

City of Masks is S. D. Sykes' 3rd Somershill Manor Mystery novel.  This novel does not take place in England as the first two books in the series did but rather takes place in Venice in 1358.

The story opens with a Prologue where the main character, Oswald de Lacy, finds the dead body of the grandson of his Venetian host, John Bearpark, an English ex-pat in Venice.  In the next 40 pages not much happens as de Lacy and his mother socialize with their host John Bearpark and his other guests.  Here de Lacy is coerced into nights of drinking and gambling with grandson Enrico and his friends, spending time with boring religious pilgrims Bernard and Margery Jagger, secretly staring at Bearpark's non-speaking young wife Filomena and dealing with the staff at Casa Bearpark. It is after these 40 pages that the body of grandson, Enrico, is found and the story continues with de Lacy being asked to investigate Enrico's death.

The excitement in the book begins with de Lacy's investigation but the author interspersed a few chapters about de Lacy's past from the earlier books in the series. These chapters have no bearing on the plot and I don't know why they were added.  De Lacy gets his first clue from his host who tells him that Enrico sexually preferred men over women. This confused de Lacy as Enrico had tried to get him to go to brothels with him. However, he trusts his gut and begins the investigation with the home's security guard who was not on duty the night of the murder and has since disappeared.

The author displayed her knowledge of medieval Venice in this novel. She portrayed the history of Venice at a time when it was at war with Hungary and how it affected commerce as well as everyday life for Venetians. The political powerhouses of the day were also depicted in realistic terms with their ability to put to death homosexuals upon only hearing an accusation, deciding which families could use the best ships for transport of goods as well as people, and deciding what crimes were worthy of investigation.

I feel that the setting should have stayed in England. This installment of the series was not as exciting as the earlier two, Plague Land and The Butcher Bird.  De Lacy's sleuthing skills were hampered by being in a foreign country.  He not only was unfamiliar with the physical layout of Venice but he did not understand the culture of the city and its people.  Part of what made his sleuthing skills superior in his homeland was his understanding of how his own people's minds worked.  Also, it is difficult to view this as a Somershill Manor mystery when the events taking place are not at Somershill Manor.

I would rate this book 3 stars of of 5.

2018 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

I am going to join this challenge again next year.  It runs from January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018.  Since I read much more historical fiction this year than expected I am going to go out on a limb and sign up for the Ancient History category.  Ancient History requires that 25 books be read.  Let's see if I can make it.