Historical Fiction
“The Black Hand: A Barker & Llewelyn Novel,” by Will Thomas
(2008, Touchstone, 289 pages, $14, paperback)
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At last, I find a new story and cast of characters after my own heart — albeit with a Sicilian dagger.
This is the fifth in a series of historical mysteries set in England in the 1880s. The heroes, Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn, would have been contemporaries of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson (no relation to yours truly, although that happens to be the same name as my father, and my grandfather was a doctor — of veterinary medicine). Also, Barker and Llewelyn bear a surface resemblance to the venerable duo.
But while Holmes shows his remarkable mental acumen (e.g., concluding people’s activities from pet hair on a pant-leg) regularly throughout a story, Barker, who plays the lead sleuth in this series, spends much of this story, at least, teaching his apprentice, Llewelyn, about the sociology of London’s underworld.
And that’s just fine with me.
Adventure, Historical Fiction, Mystery, New in Paperback, Review, Suspense, Uncategorized
A work of fiction half-populated by historic figures can be frustrating, fascinating, or both. E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel “Ragtime,” for instance, gave Harry Houdini a fictional role, and must have driven a generation of readers to libraries — this was two decades before Google — to learn the sordid real-life tale of the architect Stanford White, his lover Evelyn Nesbit and her jealous husband Harry Thaw.
>It can be entertaining or it can be irritating to separate the things that really happened from the things the author invented.
Among the characters in Salman Rushdie’s new novel are Niccolò Machiavelli and his secretary Agostino Vespucci; as well as Akbar the Great, ruler of the Mughal Empire from 1556 to 1605, and his wife Jodhabai, whose existence and identity is debated.
This is the time “before the real and unreal were segregated forever,” and in “The Enchantress of Florence” (Random House, $26), Rushdie makes Jodhabai a creation of Akbar; the emperor has many wives, but he turns to his imagination to find the perfect woman. But Jodhabai is not the title enchantress.
The story of that woman, an extraordinary beauty and powerful sorceress, brings a handsome blond traveler to Sikri, Akbar’s stately pleasure dome in the Mughal empire of India. Read the rest of this entry »
Allison Weir, New York Times bestselling author of Innocent Traitor, will be at Davis-Kidd Booksellers at 6 p.m. Wednesday to talk and sign her new novel “The Lady Elizabeth.” Davis-Kidd is at 387 Perkins Ext.
Any book about the Tudors requires a bit of squinting when you turn the page. With Henry VIII, and later his daughter Mary, you never know 
when a head and neck will part or a heretic will burn.
It’s not a spoiler to anyone who knows a little British history or who follows the work of actresses Cate Blanchett or Helen Mirren that the red-headed, illegitimate title character of Alison Weir’s book “The Lady Elizabeth” eventually ascends to the throne of England. That takes a little of the edge off the intrigue because no matter how real the threat of the axe, we know the blade misses the future queen of England.
But that wasn’t the case for her mother, Anne Boleyn, which drew me to my first Tudor encounter this spring with “The Other Boleyn Girl” by British author Philippa Gregory.
Anne Boleyn’s fate is well-known, but my history was fuzzy on what became of her brother George or sister Mary.
While in both books, most of the dialogue is imagined, the characters are based on real people. I’m much more comfortable in a historical novel genre then memoir because it’s clear from the beginning that while these are real people whose lives are well-documented, conversations and feelings are from the authors’ imaginations. Both authors take care to stay within the boundaries of what is believable and possible. Read the rest of this entry »
“Indiana Jones and the Sky Pirates”
By Martin Caidin
First published December 1993, Bantam reissue April 2008
Paperback, $6.99
311 pages
Just in time for this week’s release of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” Bantam has reissued a series of adventure novels based on the George Lucas movie character.
I came across five of them in what could be called the “slush pile” of books considered inauspicious candidates for reviewing in TheShelfLifeBlog.com.
I’d had my fill of reviewing books outside my reading “comfort zone,” and wanted something I was pretty sure to enjoy — at least not to actively dislike.
My modest expectations were not disappointed by this book by an accomplished British aviator whose earlier novel, “Cyborg,” was developed into the “Six Million Dollar Man” and “Bionic Woman” TV series.
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Books on Film, Historical Fiction, Mystery, New in Paperback, Review, Science fiction, Suspense
OK, I haven’t read this one, don’t even remember if I heard of it, so I’m of little help here. But I bet some of you had different ideas about what book best represents Georgia…
The 50 States of Literature series sidles up to the ATL with “Leaving Atlanta” by Tayari Jones. The debut novel is set in the late ’70s-early ’80s during the Atlanta child murders (29 would be found dead) and is told from the perspectives of three fifth-graders in a community living in fear.
It got some great reviews when it was published in 2003, and Jones was a finalist for the Pushcart Prize, but I don’t think I can read this one. Being a mom, I just have a hard time reading books about things like this…
Any other suggestions for a book representing Georgia?
First sentence: It was Edwin who wanted to build a new house.
Love affairs, architecture, fame, feminism, scandal, arson, murder, despair. The true-life story of the ill-fated love between Mamah Borthwick Cheney and famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright is so rich with sexy topics it’s hard to believe it’s barely more than a footnote in most Wright biographies.
It’s even harder to believe it took so long for a writer to mine the story for a novel, but Nancy Horan does it beautifully in her debut work, ”Loving Frank.”
The book took seven years to research and write, and Horan’s meticulous fact-finding and storytelling was rewarded with a spot on the New York Times Bestseller list and an interest from book clubs when it was only out in hardcover. With the release of the paperback today, it will likely become the next book club favorite.
While much is known about Frank Lloyd Wright — his genius, his flamboyance and his ego — Horan chooses to tell the story through the perspective of Mamah Cheney, an intelligent, well-educated woman who embraced feminism and was not content to idly watch her life float by in the genteel Chicago suburb of Oak Park in the early 1900s.
This we know is true: Mamah (pronounced MAY-muh) and Edwin Cheney commissioned a house from Wright. As it was being constructed, Mamah and Wright fell in love. They each abandoned their families — he with six children and she with two — and lived together in Europe for awhile. Edwin Cheney divorced Mamah, but Wright’s wife, Catherine, refused to believe it was more than a fleeting affair and would not grant a divorce. When they returned to the states, they set up house on the Wright family land near Spring Green in Wisconsin. Here is where Wright would build the famous Taliesin for Mamah, and where she would die a few years later at the hands of a crazed, disgruntled worker, who set fire to Taliesin and axed those trying to escape.
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