The Last Jew

The Last Jew covers the life of Yonah Toledano of Toledo, Spain.  When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella he remained behind, having missed the last boat out of the country.  He was 15.  The novel is a story about the Spanish Inquisition where Jews either had to convert to Catholicism or leave the country.  Those that converted, the so called "new Christians," were still in danger of being accused of heresy, a crime punishable by death.

Yonah witnessed the death of his father and brother during the 3 month period that they had to leave within and vowed to his father that he would always remain a Jew.  Yonah changed his name and frequently changed jobs.  When he felt that he was in danger of being exposed, he left the job. He worked as a farm worker, seaman, shepherd, armorer and finally apprenticed as a physician.

You really get an idea of what life was like during this time period.  The author well-researched the history and it shows. I felt sorry for this character who had to keep running away from potential trouble.  It reduced his life to basic terror.  While I know that many people lived this way at the time, it is hard to come to grips with it as a modern person.

I did not know much about the Inquisition before reading this novel and my curiosity has been peeked.  I would love to read more about this era both in historical fiction and non-fiction.  

Highly recommended.

The Black Widow

I am a big fan of Dan Silva and The Black Widow is his 19th novel in the Gabriel Allon spy series.  The Black Widow begins with master spy Gabriel Allon putting off becoming chief of Israel's intelligence service in order to do one more operation.  ISIS agents have attacked France's Jews and killed Allon's friend Hannah Weisberg.  The man running ISIS has taken the name Saladin and Allon has decided to put a live agent in the caliphate in order to destroy it.  He recruits a young female doctor for the job who will pose as a possible ISIS recruit.  She will be a black widow - a woman who becomes radicalized after losing her boyfriend to an attack from the West.  The recruit will travel from Israel to Paris to Greece then to Raqqa and eventually to Washington DC while performing her mission.

The Black Widow is one of my favorite installments of the series.  Here we get to see how a spy is recruited and trained. Also, Allon's personal life has changed as he now has two kids and he is beginning to see how his life will change when he becomes the head of the Office, as the intelligence service is called in the series. These are interesting character developments which we don't get to see too often.  Our Gabriel Allon is moving on with his life.

This book is a thriller writer's thriller. There was so much suspense that it kept me reading until I finished its 500+ pages in one Sunday morning.  It has been a long time since I have had the luxury of reading a thriller this good.

If you have never read a book in this series I highly recommend that you give it a chance.  They all move fast and have a good balance between exposition, rising tensions, and action.  I doubt that you would be disappointed.

The Last Chance Olive Ranch

The Last Chance Olive Ranch is Susan Wittig Albert's 25th China Bayles cozy mystery.  In this installment of the series there are two separate plots which are unrelated to each other.  China Bayles and her business partner Ruby Wilcox are scheduled to teach a workshop at the Last Chance Olive Ranch the next day. However, China's husband and ex-cop McQuaid gets a phone call advising that a killer he put on death row has escaped and has killed 2 people already.  He suspects that he is on the killer's list of people to exact revenge from.  China does not want to go to the workshop so that she can stay home and keep her husband safe.  However, she is talked into going and finds herself involved in a dangerous matter at the ranch where 2 characters battle for ownership of the ranch.

I have read the entire China Bayles series and this is the first time that China's activities and those of her husband were not related to the same plot.  I did not feel that it took anything away from the story though.  I know and love all of the characters in the series and they are strong enough to carry separate plots on their own.  Both plots were complex and interesting.

When you love a series you come to love the characters.  The sad part about finishing a book is that you have to wait another year before the author can write and publish the next book and separation anxiety sets in.  That just shows the strength of the series though.

The Last Chance Olive Ranch has alot of information on the almighty olive which was fun to read about.  There is also some suspense with the chapters alternating between China's story and McQuaid's story.  All in all, this was another great read from Susan Wittig Albert.

The Empress of Tempera

The Empress of Tempera by Alex Dolan begins with protagonist Paire Anjou watching a man stab himself to death after sobbing in front of a painting in the window of the Fern Gallery where she works.  The  Empress Xiao Zhe Yi, Seated was painted on wood with tempera paint by an artist named Qi and was on loan from an unknown source.  Paire, while being in shock from watching a man kill himself, was surprised to see the painting in the gallery as the gallery was hosting an exhibition of works by her boyfriend Derek Rosewood.  Hundreds of people from all over the world come to the gallery and obsess over the Empress's stare and clothing, including Paire.  The painting is stolen, stolen again and stolen a third time as Paire researches the painting and the artist's histories.  She sets in motion a plethora of crimes by others as they bribe, steal and kill in order to possess the painting.

The story shows the dark underside of the art world. It is also about art history and the family secrets of those who are trying to possess the painting.  Paire's own family background is a part of the story which was interesting to read about.  Nobody seems to be whom they say they are which gave the novel a lot of suspense.  The plot was complex with many twists and turns.

I loved this second novel by Mr. Dolan.  He is a new author for me and I will be following him in the future.

Shelter

Shelter is a family saga about 2 generations of a Korean American family in America.  Kyung Cho is a husband and father of one son with financial problems due to not being able to live within his means.  After considering selling his house and moving back in with his wealthy parents who he does not get along with, tragedy strikes his parents and they become dependent upon him.  Kyung tries to re-enter their lives as he takes care of them but he is rejected and does not know why.  He believes that he is doing his duty as a Korean son.

Shelter shows the cultural differences of Korean Americans.  The way they think about family life, community life, and religion is clearly shown.  While the author was born in South Korea she was raised in North Dakota by her immigrant parents just as Kyung was.  She obviously knows what she is writing about here.  The story moved along at a good pace and much of the tension was between how differently Kyung perceived his duties compared to what his parents actually expected of him.

This was a lovely debut novel from Jung Yun and I am looking forward to reading more from her.

The Vatican Princess

I read C. W. Gortner's first novel The Tudor Secret and liked it.  After seeing The Vatican Princess on my public library bookshelves I knew that I would have to get caught up with reading his other books.  I knew nothing about the Borgia family before reading this and was not sure if I would like it as much as other historical mysteries from the Tudor era. It did not disappoint however.

Lucrezia Borgia is growing up in a household owned by the widow of her father's brother Adriana de Mila.  She had left her mother Vannozza's care when she was seven.  Lucrezia is her father's favorite child and he decides that she should be educated and sends her to school, a rarity in the 1490s.  Pope Innocent VIII has just died and Lucrezia's father, Rodrigo Borgia, is soon elected to the papacy as Pope Alexander VI.  With Lucrezia's great education she becomes her father's pawn in the marriage market in an effort to gain him power.

While much of this story is about her family, it is seen through the eyes of an innocent Lucrezia.  She is used by her father and brothers throughout her father's papacy in order to gain money and power for the family. Everything that they do is all for the family.  Lucrezia is completely devoted to her father and brothers until she learns their true natures.  After that she only desires happiness, but not at the expense of the family of course.

I found it amazing that a priest who openly acknowledged his four illegitimate children could become Pope. While Pope he allowed them to violently play the political scene of the times.  In fact, Lucrezia's brother Cesare was Machiavelli's inspiration for his book The Prince.  The Borgias certainly earned their reputation in history and I enjoyed reading about them.

Salem's Cipher

Salem's Cipher is Jess Lourey's debut novel and it is a fabulous start to what I hope will be a long writing career.  I loved this book which I believe is going to be a series with Salem Wiley as the main character. She is a cryptanalyst, able to decipher codes.

The story opens with the mothers of Salem and her best friend Isabel "Bel" Odegaard being kidnapped.  The mothers were also best friends and Salem and Bel grew up together.  After being contacted by the police about the crime the two of them meet at the scene of the crime where Salem finds a note that her mother wrote years ago.   The note was hidden in a wooden box that Salem had made for her when she was a child.  The note references a Dr. Keller who is a curator at a local museum and gives them a clue to look at a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi called Judith Slaying Holofernes.  After examining the painting Salem finds some words written deep within the painting.  Dr. Keller is vague about how he knows the mothers but gives them enough clues to send them off to Salem, Massachusetts in a search for the truth about what the mothers were up to.  As Salem and Bel follow numerous word and number puzzles they are led to travel  cross country all while being followed by men who are trying to kill them.

This was a wonderful story.  The puzzles that the women, in particular Salem, had to solve were difficult.  I had no idea how they were going to be figured out.  As an aside, the truth of the story involved the first woman presidential candidate just days before the General Election.  This added a nice element. Also, it is always great to see a novel with alot of strong female characters.  There are 5 here so you know the book was written by a woman.

Simply fabulous!

A Change of Heart

This is the first book of Sonali Dev's that I have read. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the book.  I just could not get into it.

The back cover blurb summarizes the story "Dr. Nikhil 'Nic' Joshi had it all - marriage, career, purpose.  Until, while working with Doctors Without Borders, in a Mumbai slum with his wife, Jen, discovers a black market organ transplant ring.  Before she could expose the truth, Jen was killed.

Two years after the tragedy Nic is a cruise ship doctor who spends his days treating seasickness and sunburn and his nights in a boozy haze.  On one of those blurry evenings on deck, Nic meets a woman who makes a startling claim:  she received Jen's heart in a transplant and has a message for him.  Nic wants to discount Jess Koirala's story as absurd, but there's something about her reckless desperation that resonates despite his doubts.

Jess has spent years working her way out if a nightmarish life in Calcutta and into a respectable Bollywood dance troupe. Now she faces losing the one thing that matters - her young son Joy.  She needs to uncover the secrets Jen risked everything for; but the unforeseen bond that results between her and Nic is both a lifeline and a perilous complication"

After reading 100 pages I did not know any of the above other than that Nic was an alcoholic cruise ship doctor.  So, I stopped reading.  My rule is that if I cannot get hooked after reading 50-100 pages, I put it down.  Alot of verbage was wasted on descriptions of Nic's alcoholic state which did not interest me and I did not see anything developing in the story. Better luck with the next book.

The Killing Ship

This is my first time reading Simon Beaufort and I was not disappointed. The Killing Ship is a short novel with only 217 pages but alot of action is packed into its pages.  It takes place in Antarctica where a group of scientists are spending the summer doing research.

With 10 days left to finish their research, marine biologist Andrew Barrister turns down a request from his co-workers to take a long hike to view the scenery on Antarctica's remote Livingstone Island. No one is supposed to leave the station on their own due to hazardous conditions.  However, a few leave but do not return.  No one knows if they were together or went out on their own.  A crew is dispatched to look for them but one hears gunshots and another sees a ship.  It is too late in the season for ships to be in the region so it is a suspicious arrival.  Then one of the scientists discovers that their food and supplies have been sabotaged and there is not enough food to go around until their rescue ship comes to pick them up.  As they leave the station to search for their crew members the scientists run into killers on the island who are pursuing them for reasons unknown.

I loved this story.  It was very fast paced and suspenseful.  The ending was surprising and a little shocking too. Psychological thrillers are my favorite mystery subgenre for a reason.  They are engrossing with each chapter ending with suspense and characters who are so shocked by their circumstances that they begin to lose reality.  The Killing Ship aptly fits the bill.  Highly recommended!

Dragon Springs Road

Dragon Springs Road is Janie Chang's second novel.  It takes place in early twentieth century China and follows the childhood of Jialing from age 7 when her mother abandons her through age 21.

Jialing and her mother reside in the Western Residence on Dragon Springs Road.  On the day her mother left Jialing, she burned incense and sat with the fox spirit who has lived in their courtyard for centuries.  She promised to return but after 3 days she had not returned yet.  Jialing does not leave the Western Residence because her mother told her never to do so.  She is Eurasian and is not accepted by society.  A new family soon moves in to the recently vacated Central Residence and Jialing meets a friend her age, Yang Anjuin. Anjuin becomes her best friend and introduces her to Anjuin's grandmother, Grandmother Yang, and Jialing is hired as a bondservant to do housework in the Yang home in exchange for food and the few coins Jialing's mother left her. Jialing continues to sleep in the Western Residence where she talks daily with the fox spirit and continues to wait for her mother to return.

When a new white family moves into the Eastern Residence Jialing befriends their daughter Anna Shea.  She soon learns Mrs. Shea is unhappy living in Shanghai and takes it out on her husband and daughter with abusive behavior.  After Anna mysteriously dies the Sheas move and a group of teachers from a local Christian school move in.  Jialing is offered an education and the Yangs agree to let her attend in exchange for money.

Jialing grows into adulthood, always relying on advice from the fox spirit and always looking for her long lost mother to return.

There is alot more to this story than what I summarized.  I found it to be engrossing and read it in one sitting.  I loved the characters.  Jialing and Anjuin are sympathetic characters as is Jialing's fox spirit friend.  The story moves along at a nice speed with Jialing having to deal with alot of obstacles including racism.  I have always been attracted to Asian fiction which is one reason why I loved this story.  However, I must say that this is one of the best books that I have read in awhile.

The Confessions of Young Nero

I read a few good reviews of this novel and decided that I had to read it.  I found it to be engrossing and read all of its 500+ pages in one sitting.  I became curious to find out what parts of the novel were historical and what parts were fiction and embarked on some research into Nero's life.

The novel begins with a 3 year old Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus being thrown into a lake by his uncle Emperor Caligula to drown as a sacrifice to the goddess Diana.  He is saved by a woman and returns home where he is being raised by an aunt. He did not know his mother, who had been sent in exile after his birth, or his father.  His father had been killed.  As Lucius learns his family history he becomes aware early in life that it is better to be cruel than dead.  He watches as his relatives scheme and poison each other in order to gain power.

Lucius/Nero is fascinated by the arts and athleticism and pursues both of them as he learns to navigate the politics of Rome.  His harshest tests come from his mother whose goal is to control the empire even if it means assassinating her son.

Lucius, later known as Nero, is obviously traumatized by the betrayals he experienced in his early life and became a harsh ruler because of it.  The novel covers his life from age 3 to 25 with a promise of a part 2 from the author in her Afterword.

The era is extremely well researched. Everything that I learned from independent Internet research into the Roman Caesars was on display in the book.  However, the author presents a different Nero.  His true interests are quite ordinary and he does not shy away from them even though it is not seemly for an Emporer to participate in them. In the end he does not care what others think because he is the Emperor and if the old rules do not work for him, he changes the rules.

This is a very entertaining book and I cannot recommend it more highly.

The Seventh Plague

I am a fan of James Rollins' Sigma Force novels.  The Seventh Plague is his 18th novel in the series and his 23rd novel to date.  The inside front cover blurb summarizes the novel as follows:

"Two years after vanishing into the Sudanese desert, the leader of a British archeological expedition, Professor Harold McCabe, comes stumbling out of the sands, frantic and delirious, but he dies before he can tell his story.  The mystery deepens when an autopsy uncovers a bizarre corruption: someone has begun to mummify the professor's body-while he was still alive.

His strange remains are returned to London for further study, when alarming news arrives from Egypt.  The medical team that had performed the man's autopsy has fallen ill with an unknown disease, one that is quickly spreading throughout Cairo.  Fearing the worst, a colleague of the professor reaches out to a longtime friend: Painter Crowe, the director of Sigma Force.  The call is urgent, for Professor McCabe had vanished into the desert while searching for proof of the ten plagues of Moses.  As the pandemic grows, a disturbing question arises:  Are those plagues starting again?

Before Director Crowe can investigate, a mysterious group of assassins leaves behind a fiery wake of destruction and death, erasing all evidence.  With the professor's body incinerated, his home firebombed, Sigma Force must turn to the archeologist's only daughter, Jane McCabe, for help.  While sifting through what's left of her father's work, she discovers a puzzling connection tying the current threat to a shocking historical mystery, one involving the travels of Mark Twain, the genius of Nikola Tesla, and the adventures of famous explorer Henry Morgan Stanley.

To unravel a secret going back millennia, Director Crowe and Commander Grayson Pierce will be thrust to opposite sides of the globe.  One will search for the truth, traveling to the plague ridden streets of Cairo to a vast ancient tomb buried under the burning sands of the Sudan; the other will struggle to stop a mad genius locked within a remote Arctic engineering complex, risking the lives of all those he holds dear.

As the global crisis grows even larger, Sigma Force will confront a threat born of the ancient past and made real by the latest science-a danger that will unleash cascading series of plagues, culminating in a scourge that could kill all of the world's children. . . decimating humankind forever."

I expected alot from this story but was disappointed.  I found myself skipping pages because I was only interested in the part about the ancient past.  This was not a thriller for me at all.  First of all, this is not your typical Sigma Force novel.  Some of the series' dominant characters had small roles and the storyline was not a usual Sigma Force plot.  Second, the subplot involving the assassins did not fit well with the rest of the story and neither did the subplot about the genius in the Arctic. I think the author should have stuck with the main plot and run with it.

Very disappointed as James Rollins is one of my favorite authors.

The Last Days of Cafe Leila

I received an ARC of this book through the Early Reviewers Club at Librarything. It is a story of three generations of the Yadegar family in post-revolutionary Iran.

Zod Yadegar has written his daughter Noor in California asking that she return home to Tehran where he runs the family business Cafe Leila.  She agrees to come and brings along her angry teenage daughter Lily.  Noor, a nurse, notices her father appears to be ill but is not aware how sick he is.  She soon learns he has terminal pancreatic cancer and decides to stay longer than the week she had originally planned to stay.  This, of course, upsets Lily who did not want to come to Tehran anyway.  While she is there, Noor gets reacquainted with longtime Cafe Leila employees Naneh Goli, Soli, and Ala who have always been considered family.

The family saga alternates between Noor's family problems, Zod's marriage and family life with Noor's mother Parvaneh, and Zod's parents Yanik and Nina who emigrated to Iran from Russia and opened Cafe Leila. Yanik and Nina created a tight family bond that begins to fall apart after Zod forced his children to leave Iran when they became college age and the country became too dangerous to live in. However, when Zod's kids return 30 years later the family bond appears to still be alive.

The setting of the restaurant and food is prominent.  All life problems seem to be solved by working hard to create an inviting place for their customers.  While Iran has changed over the years, Cafe Leila has not changed one bit and offers its customers a respite from a quickly changing society.

I loved this debut novel by Donia Bijan. The characters were loveable and I enjoyed reading about the history of this family through each generation's stories. The descriptions of the food served at the restaurant not only made me hungry but was also historical to the family.  Yanik brought his mother's recipes with him went he came to Iran.  Every aspect of this wonderful book is family related.

Highly recommended.