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Title: The Heir
Author: Grace Burrowes
ISBN: 9781402244346
Publisher: Sourcebooks/2010
Pages: 448
In this historical romance, I liked some of the secondary characters rather well. With an independent minded heroine, the housekeeper Anna Seaton, there are some good dialogues between her and Gayle Windham, earl of Westhaven, son and heir to the duke of Moreland. He is trying to escape the machinations of his father to get him married. He chooses to live in his London house in the sweltering heat and is literally hit by Anna, who thinks he has designs for a housemaid. When she realizes her mistake, she tends to him, taking care of all his needs. Inevitably they are attracted to each other but Anna has her secrets and she refuses to marry him. Gayle Windham is determined to marry her..
As romances go, it is good. At places it does not seem very smooth but the storyline keeps our interest alive. His brothers are kind of weird but they do lighten it up. The duke too is lovable in his own way. And Morgan, the housemaid wins our heart. I liked Anna and of course, Gayle. Their chemistry is good. What more does one need from a romance? For all those romance lovers, who don't mind steamy scenes, it is a good read, for a cold winter day or night...
Title: Virgin Widow
Autor: Anne O'Brien
ISBN: 978-0778303756
Publisher: Mira/2010
Pages: 624
Book Description: Anne Neville is the heiress and daughter of the greatest powerbroker in the land, Warwick the Kingmaker. Trapped in a deadly tangle of political intrigue, she is a pawn in an uncertain game, used by the houses of Neville, York and Lancaster alike.
In England’s glittering, treacherous court, not all wish to see the Neville’s raised high. The Earl of Warwick’s ambition and pride lead him into an attempt to depose the Yorkist King; his treason forces his family into exile.
Humiliated and powerless in a foreign land, Anne must find the courage and the wit to survive in a man’s world.
My views:
Anne O'Brien is not very well known, although she was married to Richard III. Here here story is told in such a manner that we are drawn into the political intrigue and treachery. Earl of Warwick uses his own daughter to further his own selfish interest. Edward Lancaster, a volatile person, even though married to Anne, doesn't treat her well. He is totally influenced by Margaret of Anjou. She does not allow them to get close to each other. Anne, at a young age 14 year, faces too much tribulations. Yet she does not give up. She knows she has to carve a niche for herself. Medieval England comes alive for us. It is a tome of a book. But that did not deter me from reading it at two sittings. It is a must read for history lovers. Anne's thoughts might have been fictionlised by she has been given a great voice here. It seems as real as the history of that time. Maybe it is, if she had been given a voice at that time.
Title: Tallgrass
Author: Sandra Dallas
ISBN: 978-0312360191
Publisher: St. Martin's Press/2007
Pages: 320
Book Blurb:
During World War II, a family finds life turned upside-down when the government opens a Japanese internment camp in their small Colorado town. After a young girl is murdered, all eyes turn to the newcomers. Rennie has just turned thirteen, and until this time, life has been predictable and fair. But the winds of change are coming and with them, a shift in her perspective and a discovery of secrets that can destroy even the most sacred things.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My views:
Told in the voice of Rennie, Tallgrass takes us right into the middle of small Colorado town. When Japanese start arriving, people have mixed feelings. Most people don't want the Japanese there but they can't go against the Goverment. Anything goes wrong, the people at the camp are blamed. Only Rennie's family seems to sympathise with the Japanese. Her father hires a few Japanese men, to help with his beet farming and he too faces antagonism.
Rennie's sister has gone away and her brother has joined the army. o she turns to Japanese people for friendship. When things seem to have settled down a bit, a body of a young girl is found, all eyes turn to the internship camp. Rennie learns her lessons in the hard way. Nothing is what it seems, even her parents have kept some secrets from her.
Tallgrass coovers the dilemma in a young girl's mind, and the bigger picture of what is right or wrong. Did the government do the right thing by opening up internship camps for the Japanese people? I wasn't aware of this and this book made me look up more material on the subject.
Title: Drawing in the Dust
Author: Zoe Klein
ISBN: 9781416599128
Publisher: Pocket Books/2009
Pages: 360
Page Brookstone, an American archeologist, has been living in Megiddo, Israel, digging it for the past 12 years, the same things everytime. She wants to find something new. She is somehow dissatisfied with her life. An Arab couple contacts her to dig under their house in Anatot, outside of Jerusalem, as they feel something/someone moving in their house. Theu can also see the ghosts. Page refuses at first, but something intrigues her, when she goes to their house on a whim. She decides to dig it, although her boss Norris is against it. Along with the Arab couple, their nephew Walid and a couple of young girls, Page digs and finds artifacts, murals, jewellery, which indicates that they have stumbled upon the grave of the Prophet Jeremiah, along with an woman, Anatiya, about whom no has known anything till date. . When they dig deeper, they find a coffin, which contains the couple in embrace, assumed to the prophet and Anatiya.
However, more important than the coffin are the scrolls, apparently written by Anatiya, documenting her life, her journey toward the prophet, their love for each other and final rest in each other's arms.
Some people don't want the scrolls to be revealed to the world but Page is determined that they come out and she does it with the help of her close friend and few others. While translating the work, Page feels a deep peace coming over her. She accepts her past secrets and is now ready to accept love, although there are obstacles.
Zoe Klein has created a fictitious character in Anatiya but she is very much real for the reader, and her thoughts in the form of poetry is eternal. Love transcends everything. Zoe has also tried to balance the various cultures, religions, in a very mature way. She is not judgemental and that is what is the most wonderful thing about the book. Reflective at places, meditative at times, the passages enhance the book. Anyone who has read and loved The Red Tent by Anita Diamant will love this book too. It is a keeper.
For a Salon post, I always write a review. Today is no exception.
Title: Child 44
Author: Tom Rob Smith
ISBN: 978-0446402385
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing/2008
Pages: 448
I read Child 44 during the 24-Hour-Readathon and hadn't come around reviewing it till today. Set in the Stalinist Soviet Union of the 1950s, this novel covers a lot of grounds. As a crime fiction novel, it excels despite dragging at times.
When Leo Demidov, a war veteran finds a body of a child on the tracks of a train, he knows that it is a murder. But who killed the boy? Then he finds similarities between other killings of young children. When he goes to the State, no one is prepared to listen to him. Infact the State goes into such a mode so as to deny those killings related to each other.
Leo is convinced that it is a serial killer and has to trace the numerous murders so as to get to the murderer. The State is a stumbling block but he does not let it deter him. He is helpless yet determined even though he know it may destroy his family life.
It is so horrifying that a State can deny and hide the crimes, doing nothing to catch the killer. And in a way very realistic too when I see our own power that hide facts and go to any length to prevent the truth to come out. Has anything changed?
Tom Rob Smith has done a great job and one also gets glimpses of the Soviet Union of that period. With great descriptions, my interest didn't waver at any point of time. It might be a difficult read, what with child killer roaming free, yet well worth reading. The starkness and bleakness only enhances the horror.
"Yet Strongbow did appear, entirely naked.
Or rather, naked of clothes."
~~Page 52
Title: Sinai Tapestry
Author: Edward Whittemore
ISBN: 9781882968220
Publisher: Old Earth Books/2002
Pages: 310
Sinai Tapestry, is the first book of Jerusalem Quartet. And speaks of a middle east which is not easy to understand at first glance. Pegged as fantasy reality, it totally works that way. Skanderbeg Wallenstein, a fanatical Trappist monk from Albania, comes across the oldest bible, which question every belief all have held. He knows it discovery would lead to chaos and hides it again. However, he writes a bible, forging the old one.
Many strange characters connect to each other and we have here is story which is fiction yet so real. In Sinai Tapestry, characters move from place to place; and also through time itself - and history - somewhat in improbable and implausible ways; but they are well conceived, and well rendered for us, even if as larger than life. If we take two of the characters, Plantagent Strongbow and Haj Harun, this is what we find:
Plantagenet Strongbow, is the twenty-ninth Duke of Dorset, and is a great swordsman, botanist, and explorer; he disappears in the Sinai in 1840, and reappears forty years later as an Arab holy man who has written a thirty-three volume study of Levantine sex, and who becomes the secret owner of the Ottoman Empire. He is seven-feet seven-inches tall.
And Haj Harun, a former antiquities dealer and stone carver of winged lions during the Assyrian occupation of the Holy Land, a proprietor of an all-night grocery store under the Greeks, a waiter under the Romans, a distributor of hashish and goats under the Turks, is a man who has been able to do all these things and to live in all these places because he is at least three thousand years old.
"When I want to daydream," he says to Strongbow, "I gaze at one of my antiquities and pretty soon I'm slipping back in time and seeing Romans and Babylonians in the streets of Jerusalem."
The novel is not an easy read and unless one trully concentrates it appears incomprehensible. But once one gets into it, the mysticism gets into the spirit of the reader. Islam, Christianity and Judaism, all three religions seem to merge and we get the best of the three. The description of the places and the people, the houses, all these engross us. Jerusalem comes so alive. It made me want to visit the place.
Author: Catherine Coulter
ISBN: 9780515127218
Publisher: Jove/2000
Pages: 352
1811, London, England.
Spenser Heatherington is a well-known womanizer, a confirmed bachelor, is very happy with his life. When Helen throws him to the ground and sits on top him, and he is ready to be her lover. But Helen doesn't want that. She wants him for a partner in the pursue of a magic lamp.
They both have their own opinions on discipline, and they fall in love. When Spenser asks Helen to marry him, she refuses because she is already married to a spouse who has disappeared. But the pursue of that mythical magic lamp keeps them in close proximity and Spenser is even more determined to marry her.
Coulter has written a witty, humorous story filled with odd eccentric characters. A amazon of a heroine and a sarcastic hero make it a perfect read.
Author: Betina Krahn
ISBN: 0553565222Publisher: Bantam books/1994
Pages: 516
Lady Antonia Paxton, a beautiful young widow helped destitute young widows marry well. She planned and trapped London's richest young bachelors in compromising positions with her protegees and forced the bachelors to marry the concerned woman. Remington Carr, ninth Earl of Landon, had strong views on women's rights. If hel had his way, all women would have work for a living and marriage wouldn't neccessary. He was the most eligible London bachelor. Antonia's victim wanted him to help them by trapping the young widow from her shemes.
When both meet in the halls of Parliament, and a wager is made by Antonia. If Remington subjects himself to two weeks of "women's work," Antonia will do two weeks of "men's work." Remington has to take in the wager and dutifully turns up at Antonia's place and finds himself at the mercy of 12 doddering old widows, all taken in by Antonia at one point or the other. However, he sticks to the badger, despite being discomfited by the thought. Slowly he learns the problems faced by the women folks and also learns to love those strange old women.
Antonia and Reminton are attracted to each other but due to some misunderstanding Antonia pulls away. And then Remington challenges her too do her bit. THat is take the wager for doing two weeks of men's work. With quirky funny characters, and different settings, this book is a rollicking fun. A romance set in historical times and yet speaks about emancipation of women. A modern thinking powerful Earl can bring about that change. One reason, I liked this book.
