by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 17, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Alka Joshi is a debut novelist who used her mother’s life and her imagination to create The Henna Artist. It’s a very strong story that entranced me from moment one. In a nutshell, our heroine is Lakshmi and the time is 1950s India. Women still aren’t treated like...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 28, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk is a stroll down memory lane, created by Kathleen Rooney. If you’re curious about the life of women in various decades of the twentieth century, this is for you. Especially if you love melodic language and poetry. Lillian is 84, or...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 22, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Well-loved Turkish author Ayşe Kulin illustrates another angle on the early years of World War II in her 2002 book Last Train to Istanbul. (Translated to English in 2013.) The story is set partly in Turkey and partly in the Nazi-occupied French cities of Paris and...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 18, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
The Language of Threads is a continuation of Gail Tsukiyama’s excellent book Women of the Silk. I’m glad to have read both in sequence, which immersed me in the main character’s entire life. In the first book, Pei is taken from her small China village, sold to work...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 12, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
M.L. Stedman creates historical fiction based around a unthinkable choice in The Light Between Oceans. Set in the years between the World Wars and along the coast of South West Australia, it’s a unique period piece. And the choice its main characters make reverberates...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 11, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
In Women of the Silk, a 1991 book from Gail Tsukiyama, times are hard. It’s China in the late 1920s and especially in the small villages nature and politics affect everyone. Our main character is a young girl named Pei. As the story opens, she’s about six, and her...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 10, 2021 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
Author Kerry Greenwood introduces a new mystery heroine in her 2012 book, Cocaine Blues. Phryne Fisher is different from a typical late 1920’s female sleuth in many ways. First, she’s based in Melbourne, Australia instead of the more typical New York, London, or...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 26, 2020 | RELAX: Historical Fiction, RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
C.J. Sansom creates an unlikely hero in his character Matthew Shardlake. In Dissolution, the time is Tudor England, and Shardlake is a lawyer working in the service of Thomas Cromwell. He’s just two degrees from King Henry VIII. But he’s still just a lowly guy charged...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 21, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Reading two books about two boys in very different eras and situations warmed my heart at the start of this cold, dark winter. I began Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis with my 10-year-old granddaughter. And then I started The Absolutely True Diary of a...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 6, 2020 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
The Arctic Fury, the latest from Greer Macallister, is a hybrid of adventure and courtroom drama. The story centers around Virginia Reeve, who leads a group of women north into Canada and towards the Northwest Territories in 1853. If you look on a map today, you see...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 16, 2020 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
In The Sandcastle Girls, Chris Bohjalian crafts a skilled and sad historical fiction novel. It centers on the little-known Armenian genocide around the time of World War I. Tragically, the Ottoman government expelled and mass murdered 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 30, 2020 | RESIST: Social Justice
In between longer reads, I often pick brief Audible Originals or other short audiobooks. This group of three #ownvoices reads are about women whose lives illustrate the realities of being black and brown in a difficult world. Proof of Love by Chisa Hutchinson...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 11, 2020 | RELAX: Historical Fiction, RESIST: Social Justice
The Nickel Boys is the third Colson Whitehead book I’ve read. It’s a joy to watch his skill as a writer improve each time. Of course, two of the three won Pulitzer Prizes, so I’m not the only one noticing. And this book evoked a range of emotions from cheers to jeers...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 4, 2020 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Reviewing Jubilee by Margaret Walker, a classic piece of historical fiction, is a daunting thing. Walker crafts a story, “inspired by the memories of her maternal grandmother, Elvira Ware Dozier.” (see source below) The main character is Vyry, a woman born on a...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 13, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Carol Rifka Brunt created a debut novel with a huge emotional wallop. Tell the Wolves I’m Home hits the pain of teen years, family tensions, grief, and a looming virus. It’s set in the 1980s, when AIDS was just coming into the national consciousness. June, our 14-year...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 2, 2020 | RELAX: Historical Fiction, RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
Author David Morrell skillfully blends history and mystery in his 2013 novel, Murder as a Fine Art. Morrell uses real-life historical figures and inserts them into likely situations. Plus, he bases events on the history surrounding their lives. In addition, he...
Recent Comments