The Printed Page

If you’ve stopped by lately you might have noticed that posting is almost non-existent but reading has gone over the top. I swear I’m logging on every day or every other day to update the ‘Just finished…’  box on the side bar. And you may have noticed that some of June’s and most of July’s books were either a favorite author and/or favorite series. Review books are down to less than a trickle which means I’ve been able to devote my time to some serious pleasure reading and moving books into the archive folder on my Kindle. Day 6 of August brings book #6 for this month and #100 for the year.

The Queene’s Christmas draws readers into the magnificent realm of Elizabeth Tudor and the magic of her Court at Yuletide, circa 1564. But in the intoxicating sixth novel of Karen Harper’s celebrated Elizabeth I series, the Twelve Days of Christmas are murderously interrupted when the Dresser of the Queen’s Privy Kitchen is found hanged and trussed like the peacock he’d been fashioning for the holiday feast. With foul play afoot in her Court, Elizabeth does her royal utmost to track down the poor man’s killer while striving to salvage the joy of Christmas. Doomed to suspect even her most trusted courtiers, she is nevertheless determined to vanquish the Christmas culprit-who will not only strike again but has targeted Her Majesty as his ultimate prey.

Read: 18 books (14 eBooks) DNF’d: 4 Pages read: 7,476

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DNF @ pg. 27

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The Poison Diaries by The Duchess Of Northumberland and Maryrose Wood

In the right dose, everything is a poison. Even love . . .

Jessamine Luxton has lived all her sixteen years in an isolated cottage near Alnwick Castle, with little company apart from the plants in her garden. Her father, Thomas, a feared and respected apothecary, has taught her much about the incredible powers of plants: that even the most innocent-looking weed can cure — or kill.

When Jessamine begins to fall in love with a mysterious boy who claims to communicate with plants, she is drawn into the dangerous world of the poison garden in a way she never could have imagined . . .

His Last Letter: Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester by Jeane Westin

They were playmates as children, impetuous lovers as adults-and for thirty years were the center of each others’ lives. Astute to the dangers of choosing any one man, the Virgin Queen could never give her “Sweet Robin” what he wanted most-marriage- yet she insisted he stay close by her side. Possessive and jealous, their love survived quarrels, his two disastrous marriages to other women, her constant flirtations, and political machinations with foreign princes.

His Last Letter tells the story of this great love… and especially of the last three years Elizabeth and Dudley spent together, the most dangerous of her rule, when their passion was tempered by a bittersweet recognition of all that they shared-and all that would remain unfulfilled.

The King’s Codebreaker by Andrew Douglas

In the summer of 1643, while bloody war rages across England, scholarly Thomas Hill receives an unexpected summons from the King, and travels reluctantly from his home in Romsey to the royal court at Oxford, leaving his widowed sister and her daughters to fend for themselves. Having learnt that his predecessor was murdered, he takes over as the King’s cryptographer. There is evidence of a traitor at court, and when a message is intercepted, encrypted with the unbreakable’ Vigenere square, Thomas thinks it will reveal his identity. His suspicions are confirmed when his old tutor and lover are viciously murdered, he is run down in the street, his room is ransacked, and he is thrown, on a false charge, into the notorious Oxford Castle gaol, where he contracts gaol fever. To reveal the identity of the traitor, and save himself, Thomas must break the unbreakable’ cipher. That will not, however, be an easy task. The King’s Codebreaker is the first in a trilogy of Thomas Hill stories. The second, Blessed Rain, is completed, and the third, Quicksilver, is underway.

The Courier’s Tale by Peter Walker

Reginald Pole, diplomat, friend of scholars, cardinals and artists, and cousin to Henry VIII, is first seen stealing into the Medici chapel at dead of night to catch a forbidden glimpse of Michelangelo’s masterpiece of funerary sculpture. But as the king’s representative in Italy, and an admired scholar himself, it falls to him to make the case for Henry’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon. And it falls to the hapless Michael Throckmorton to become Thomas Cromwell’s courier to Pole in Rome. In Peter Walker’s imaginative novel, in which two worlds, increasingly opposed, are beautifully evoked, we see these famous events that saw England become a Protestant nation through the eyes of the luckless courier. The dubious privilege of being courier to Cromwell and the King, makes of Miuchael Throckmorton’s life a tragicomedy of endless journeys back and forth between England and Italy. And even though in time he becomes the loyal friend of the disgraced Pole, who can never risk returning to England while Henry lives, this is no compensation for the childhood love who appears to have been lost along the way.

The Bookseller’s Sonnets by Andi L Rosenthal

A mysterious package from an anonymous artifact donor arrives on the desk of Jill Levin, the senior curator at a Holocaust museum: a secret diary, written by the eldest daughter of St. Thomas More, legal advisor to and close friend of Henry VIII. As Jill and her colleagues work to authenticate this rare find, letters arrive to convey the manuscript?s history and the donor?s unimaginable story of survival. At the same time, representatives from the Archdiocese of New York arrive to stake their claim to this controversial document, hoping to send it to a Vatican archive before its explosive content becomes public. As the process of authentication hovers between find and fraud, and as the battle for provenance plays out between religious institutions, Jill struggles with her own family history, and her involvement in a relationship she fears will disrupt and disappoint her family.

The Trophy Bride’s Tale by Cyrilla Barr

Prudenza, an innocent convent-educated adolescent, the trophy bride of a silk merchant – subjected to increasing cruelty and harsh treatment at his hands. Even so, she tries to be a good wife within the social constraints of Renaissance Italy. The Trophy Bride’s Tale is based on a true case of domestic abuse, murder, and criminal justice in sixteenth-century Florence. Cyrilla Barr’s imagination and scholarship combine to illuminate a footnote in history: the story of a young mother convicted of killing her husband.

Using archival documents as the framework of the narrative, and with attention to historic detail, Barr adds life and spirit to the story of Prudenza Cecchi. The tale begins as she is led to the scaffold, choosing to sacrifice her own life to save her children.

Barr’s foray into fiction demonstrates that the gender policies of domestic abuse in 1549 are familiar and relevant today. Prudenza’s story is both a lament and a testament to love, determination, and personal power.

The Pindar Diamond by Katie Hickman

In a small town on the Italian coast, a mysterious woman washes ashore. She is crippled, mute, and clutches a bundle to her chest – a baby the townspeople insist is a real-life mermaid. It can only bring bad luck; they pay a troupe of acrobats to carry mother and child away.

In the bustling trade center of Venice, merchant Paul Pindar is the subject of his colleagues’ concern. Since his return from Constantinople, they have found him changed; raging over the loss of his beloved, Celia, he has gambled away his fortune at the gaming tables. But when a priceless blue diamond surfaces in the city, Pindar recognizes the opportunity to regain everything he has lost – including, perhaps, the woman he loves.

City of Veils by Zoë Ferraris

When the body of a brutally beaten woman is found on the beach in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Detective Osama Ibrahim dreads investigating another unsolvable murder–chillingly common in a city where the veils of conservative Islam keep women as anonymous in life as the victim is in death.

But Katya, one of the few females in the coroner’s office, is determined to identify the woman and find her killer. Aided by her friend Nayir, she soon discovers that the victim was a young, controversial filmmaker named Leila. Was it Leila’s connection to an incendiary Koranic scholar or a missing American man that got her killed?

Chapter and Hearse (Booktown Mysteries, book #4) by Lorna Bennett

Mystery bookstore owner Tricia Miles has been spending more time solving whodunits than reading them. Now a nearby gas explosion has injured Tricia’s sister’s boyfriend, Bob Kelly, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, and killed the owner of the town’s history bookstore. Tricia’s never been a fan of Bob, but when she reads that he’s being tight-lipped about the “accident”, it’s time to take action.

The Unexpected Son by Shobhan Bantwal

A shocking letter from India sends middle-aged Vinita Patil reeling in Bantwal’s (The Dowry Bride) absorbing latest. Living in New Jersey, contentedly married for almost 25 years to Girish, a mechanical engineer with whom she has a daughter, Vinita learns that the illegitimate child she believed was stillborn in India, is alive, suffering from myeloid leukemia, and desperately in need of a bone marrow transplant. Vinita’s brother, Vishal, who’d orchestrated the deception and arranged for the baby’s adoption, fesses up that Vinta’s son, Rohit Barve, is a chemistry professor at Shivraj College, the college where Vinita met Rohit’s playboy father, Som Kori, who’d refused to marry her. Vinita and Som’s coming from different linguistic groups vying for control of the border town of Palagum, made their union impossible. After Vinita finally meets her grown son, she’s disturbed to learn that Som and Rohit’s adoptive father are still embroiled in the violent territorial conflict, a situation that adds suspense to the story. This inspiring testament to a mother’s enduring love makes for a fascinating tale and provides a window into an equally fascinating culture.

The Perfect Alibi by Phillip Siegel

The seventh installment in this bestselling, critically-acclaimed series opens with Mike Daley representing a tattooed record store clerk in a lawsuit against the manufacturer of her vibrator – the ‘marital aid’ failed to turn off at a critical moment, and Mike the ex-priest is forced to brave his embarrassment and demonstrate the faulty on/off switch for a skeptical judge.

Things quickly take a darker turn, however, when Mike and Rosie learn that their sixteen-year-old daughter’s boyfriend has been arrested in the beating death of his father, a Superior Court judge. Bobby Fairchild claims that he found his father’s body after returning home from a date with Grace. The police contend that his parents’ acrimonious divorce sent the boy over the edge – they found him at the scene holding the bloody hammer that was used to kill his father. With their daughter as Bobby’s only alibi, Mike and Rosie take the case and uncover a sex scandal that will take them into the homes of some of San Francisco’s most prominent citizens.