I Shall Not Want by Julia Spencer-Fleming



Another cozy mystery with sparks flying between the newly widowed Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne and Reverend Clare Fergusson.  Clare always manages to turn up at the most inopportune times, putting herself in the middle of an investigation or conflict.  This novel deals with the timely topic of illegal immigrants to the US, hired to do farm labour for a reduced wage.  Russ' sister and his brother-in-law are also involved as their dairy farm is in financial trouble. Drugs, torture, and illegals make for a suspenceful read.

Out of the Deep I Cry by Julia Spencer-Fleming



Once again Police Russ Van Alstyne and Reverened Clare Ferguson inadveradly team up to solve two mysteriouse disappearance, one from the past and one from the present.  The lives of the inhabitants of Millers Kill are woven together by history and blood. Money donatted to reapir the roof of the Millers Kill Episcopalian Church is being taken from the free clinic establishes years ago by a townswoman who lost four children to a dipthiian epidemic in the 1920's.  She refused immunization, with terrible conseqencies.  And now a mother with an autostic child is refusing innoculation. This mother brings conflict and tension to the medical clinic.  This attention fiinds missing money.  Who is responsible?  And how is the truth revealed?

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

 

Those who carry the truth sometimes bear a terrible weight...


It is 1940. While war is raging in Europe, in the United States President Roosevelt promises he won’t send American boys over to fight.


Iris James is the postmistress and spinster of Franklin, Massachusetts, a small town on Cape Cod. Iris knows a lot more about the townspeople that she will ever say. She knows that Emma Trask has come to marry the town’s young doctor. She knows that Harry Vale, the town’s mechanic, inspects the ocean from the tower of the town hall, searching in vain for German U-Boats he is certain will come. Iris firmly believes that her job is to deliver and keep people’s secrets, to pass along the news of love and sorrow that letters carry. Yet one day Iris does the unthinkable: she slips a letter into her pocket. And then she does something even worse --- she reads the letter, then doesn’t deliver it.


Meanwhile, seemingly fearless American radio gal Frankie Bard is working with Edward R. Murrow, reporting from the Blitz in London. Frankie’s radio dispatches crinkle across the Atlantic, imploring listeners to pay attention to what is going on as the Nazis bomb London nightly. Then, in the last, desperate days of the summer of 1941, Frankie rides the trains out of Germany and reports what is happening. But while most of the townspeople of Franklin are convinced the war “overseas” can’t touch them, Iris and Emma --- unable to tear themselves away from Frankie’s voice --- know better.


Alternating between an America on the eve of entering into World War II, still safe and snug in its inability to grasp the danger at hand, and a Europe being torn apart by war, the two stories collide in a letter, bringing the war finally home to Franklin.


The Postmistress is a tale of three unforgettable women, of lost innocence, of what happens to love when those we cherish leave us. It examines how we tell each other stories --- how we bear the fact that that war is going on at the same time as ordinary lives continue. Filled with stunning parallels to our lives today, it is a remarkable novel.

Review by ReadingGroupGuides.com 

Strange Fits of Passion by Anita Shreve



Maureen escapes a marriage in which she is being physically abused.  She flees with her infant daughter and finds safety in a Maine coastal village.  Slowly she also finds love, but her husband is in the background looking for her.  This is a story of brave and loyal people, though they may not be wordly, they understand the world and human behaviour.

The Monster in the Box



With her precise prose and realistic cast of characters, Ruth Rendell presents Inspector Wexford as he nears the end of his career.  Only a few of the old guys are still working and a younger work force is coming on stream.  A suspicious man from the past has stayed in Wexford's mind over many years.  The possible serial murderer emerges again and Wexford is determined to find him quilty of murders.  Tangled in the intrique is the odd behaviour of a Moslem teenager and her parents, who seem contempory but there are fears that a forced arranged marriage looms.  However, considerably more than that looms.

Resistance by Anita Shreve



What a pleasant surprise!  I found this historical fiction novel to be accurate and authentic.  Ms. Shreve has written with a depth of understanding and compassion that I have not read in her other books.  Characters were neither right nor wrong, but trying to survive and be human in a time that was 'fou', a time that was robbing people of their humanity.  Well worth the read!  A gem!

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert Massie

Catherine the Great was a fascinating woman and monarch.  In spite of mastering the Russian language, she still spoke with a German accent.  Her rise to the monarchy involved a coup against her own husband, Peter 11, a very inept and immature man. Having witnessed the French Revolution and the American Revolution, she lived with one foot in the past and the other in the future.  Though she believed the serfs should be freed, she would not challenge the nobles.  She was a model for inoculation against smallpox, but still allowed blood letting. Her military battles were many and successful, as she learned from the generals.  An excellent rider herself, she inspired confidence in the Russian people.  This work of non-fiction showed Catherine as a passionate and sexual woman, who by her own admission could not live a day without love. Her taste in men ran toward those who were much less intelligent and educated than she, and decidedly younger as she aged. She was a cold mother, repeating the behaviour of Elizabeth toward her to her own daughter-in-law.  However, she was generous to her lovers, friends, and fellow monarchs.

Her development of art, education, and hospitals was very forward.  She did not believe in capital punishment or torture, though it existed in Russia, especially as practised by the military.  As well as the focus on Catherine, the author, Massie presents short histories of events in Europe at this time.  Catherine was well read concerning the Enlightenment, and kept on a correspondence with many scholars and thinkers, especially Voltaire. 

I was glued to my e-reader as Catherine's life unfoled, however, as I perused the referenences it was interesting that the author used no Russian sources, other than a translation of Catherine's own memoirs. Still, I am motivated to read and learn more about Russia's rich history.