The Virgin Cure (2011) by Ami McKay



Life in late 1800's New York City could be a brutal and lonely place.  Moth, only 12 years old, was sold by her mother to a wealthy for a small bag of coins.  Upon escaping from the brutality and cruelty of Mrs. Wentworth, Moth found herself on the street, hungry and endangered.  Another young teenager took her to a brothel operated by Miss Everett, who began to groom her for the highest bidder.  A young virgin was much prized.  A woman doctor befriended Moth, now called Ada Fenwick, encouraging her to leave the life of a prostitute.  Ada thinks that she can use the brothel and then get out.  The sexual morals of men at the time are shocking, especially as concerns STD's and The Virgin Cure.  The book kept me reading and comparing social stigma from then to present day.  Ami McKay is the author of The Birth House, an equally facinating book which looks at the sexual and reproductive lives of women over a century ago.

The Last Coyote (1995) by Michael Connelly



Of all Michael Connelly's mysteries, I liked this one the most.  It explained his tragic childhood and his efforts to solve his mother's murder.  His temper had him "off duty" and ordered to see a psychiatrist, who turned out to be a great ally for him and also allowed him the safe place to talk about his life and his 'mission'.  The volume is packed with action, colourful characters, and lots of suspence.  There is even a woman to whom he returns.

City of Bones by Michael Connelly (2002)

 

Though the descriptions of the dead child's injuries were heartbreaking, Michael has spun quite a yarn!  I found that his relationships were not well developed, and, indeed, he seemed rather untouched by the death of a fellow police officer.  This was surprising.

"On New Year's Day, Detective Harry Bosch fields a call that a dog has found a bone--a bone that the dog's owner, a doctor, feels certain is a human bone.

Bosch investigates, and that chance discovery leads him to a shallow grave in the Hollywood hills, evidence of a murder committed more than twenty years earlier. It's a cold case, but it stirs up Bosch's memories of his own childhood as an orphan in the city. He can't let it go. Digging through police reports and hospital records, tracking down street kids and runaways from the 1970s, Bosch finds a family ripped apart by an absence--and a trail, ever more tenuous, into a violent, terrifying world.






As the case takes Bosch deeper into the past, a rookie cop named Julia Brasher brings him alive in the present in a way no one has in years. Bosch has been warned about the trouble that comes with dating a rookie, but no warning could withstand the heat between them--or prepare Bosch for the explosions when the case takes a hard turn. A suspect bolts, a cop is shot, and suddenly Bosch's cold case has all of L.A. in an uproar--and Bosch fighting to keep control in a lawless and brutal showdown.






Drawing on the "precision-tooled twists" and "wellspring of authentically lurid detail" (Los Angeles magazine) that have made him one of the fastest-selling novelists at work today, Michael Connelly has written a riveting, hard-edged, and unforgettable thriller, proof that he is among "the most talented of crime writers" (with thanks from The New Yorker)

The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory (2006)



That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo (2009)

Ater reading The Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo, I was very disapointed in this novel.  It seemed cliche and weak.

Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos (2008)



Geek Girls Unite

Bitter Melon

Island Under The Sea by Isabel Allende

What a powerful and accurate writer Isabel Allende is.  This novel nade me a fan for life, as it tugged at every heartstring I have.

"Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, Zarité -- known as Tété -- is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, Tété finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and in the voodoo loas she discovers through her fellow slaves.
When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, it’s with powdered wigs in his baggage and dreams of financial success in his mind. But running his father’s plantation, Saint-Lazare, is neither glamorous nor easy. It will be eight years before he brings home a bride -- but marriage, too, proves more difficult than he imagined. And Valmorain remains dependent on the services of his teenaged slave.
Spanning four decades, Island Beneath the Sea is the moving story of the intertwined lives of Tété and Valmorain, and of one woman’s determination to find love amid loss, to offer humanity though her own has been battered, and to forge her own identity in the cruellest of circumstances."

-Goodreads-