Posts Tagged ‘historical fiction’

4.5 Stars – Damn Close to Perfection Plot Summary:  The first book of a graphic novel trilogy about Berlin, Germany in 1928.  This novel details the lives of ordinary citizens from a cross-section of German society in the months leading up to Hitler’s rise to power. Today’s review is over at TJ’s blog, Dreams & [...]

4 Stars – Brain Candy for a Lazy Afternoon Plot Summary:  First a factory is bombed, and then a man’s life is threatened.  Scotland Yard and Sherlock Holmes both sit in the intended victim’s house on the evening of his supposed murder, and most shocking of all, Holmes himself is accused of the murder when [...]

3 Stars – Like a Date With a “Nice” Guy Plot Summary:  The devil visits Moscow sometime in the springtime of the 1930s and he wreaks havoc.  His traveling companions include a talking black cat named Behemoth, a comely witch who never wears clothes, and a scruffy translator who wears a cracked pince-nez.  Most of [...]

4 Stars – Brain Candy for a Lazy Afternoon Plot Summary:  John Albano is feeling the heat from all sides during the summer of 1973 in New York City.  Cut from his Union job for a scuffle with the foreman, John is now scrambling to pay rent, bills, and child support to his poison pill [...]

5 Stars – It Kept Me Up All Night! Plot Summary:  San Francisco private detective Samuel Spade is visited by a gorgeous redhead who needs to have a man tailed.  When his partner is killed on the job, Spade becomes the prime suspect, and he must solve the case or take the fall.  Fortunately Spade [...]

3 Stars – Like a Date With a “Nice” Guy Plot Summary:  The daughter of a British officer grows up in India, and when tragedy erases her status in society, she returns to London and becomes a high-class streetwalker named Lady Beatrice.  She is recruited into an exclusive brothel known as Nell Gwynne’s, but her [...]

1 Star – I Couldn’t Even Finish It Plot Summary:  A rich woman with an obsession could be the downfall of civilization.  In 2057, the obnoxious Lady Schrapnel uses time-travel to send dozens of operatives back in time to research Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed by the Nazi’s during WWII, because she’s going to rebuild [...]

4 Stars – Brain Candy for a Lazy Afternoon Plot Summary:  Magic is alive and acknowledged in the 19th century, but in Amanusa’s little back corner of Austria it’s illegal for women to practice magic.  When a strange Englishman appears at her cottage and talks of her being a blood sorceress, Amanusa recoils from the [...]

5 Stars – It Kept Me Up All Night! Plot Summary:  The story we all know as “Alice in Wonderland” was inspired by a real little girl, Alice Liddell, and this novel tells her story in a blend of fact and fiction.  The real Alice was an unflappable, forthright child who grew up in pampered [...]

5 Stars – It Kept Me Up All Night! Plot Summary:  In the midst of the Great Depression when Texas was as dry as a bone, Ella Barron runs a boarding house and looks after her 10 year-old son Solly.  When the town doctor brings over a prospective boarder, David Rainwater, Ella reluctantly agrees to [...]