My book club is partially to blame for my slower reading progress this fall. All of our selections have been quite lengthy, and I am not the type of person who can read more than one book at a time. One of those lengthy selections was James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird. This historical fiction novel tells the story of Henry Shackleford, a young slave in the Kansas Territory in the late 1850s who finds himself in the company of Old John Brown – more […]
The viscount and the playwright
Margaret “Maggie” Delamere makes a comfortable living as the popular playwright of the most successful burlettas (because the theatre doesn’t have an official licence, every line of all the plays has to be sung by the actors) at the Imperial theatre. In the past, she’s never had any problems getting new ideas or getting her plays finished on time. Now, with the Imperial’s board of directors and the audience clamouring for the sequel to her most popular play yet, Maggie is suffering from a terrible […]
A historical romance with masks
This is the first in a new series by Lorraine Heath, featuring the Hellions of Havisham. The first of these Hellions is Nicholson Lambert, the Duke of Ashebury. He lost his parents in a gruesome train accident and was sent to the country to be raised by the Marquess of Marsden. Along with him were the Earl of Grayling and his twin brother, orphaned in the same accident. Their parents appointed the Marquess of Marsden their guardian, unaware that Marsden was driven pretty much out […]
In a room with Jefferson, Wilson, Truman, and Ike, but generally mistaken for a waiter.
The first I remember hearing about James K. Polk was in my high school US history class. He was described as the greatest president you’ve never heard of, and probably the only president to achieve every goal he set for his administration. Now, I don’t typically speak very highly of my high school history classes (the teacher was given a relatively small canvas on which to paint the picture of history, and he painted with the broadest of brushes), but in this one instance, at […]
Not even Sarah Vowell could spice up the Puritans for me
I was not quite as enamored with this one as I was with Assassination Vacation. I don’t blame Vowell — she does her best here, and quite a few lines made me laugh out loud — it was just not a gripping subject for me. “I’m always disappointed when I see the word ‘Puritan’ tossed around as shorthand for a bunch of generic, boring, stupid, judgmental killjoys. Because to me, they are very specific, fascinating, sometimes brilliant, judgmental killjoys who rarely agreed on anything except that […]
Sisters of Predestination
The second book in this series about Tudor England starts with execution of Lady Jane Grey. The story alternates between Jane’s sisters Mary Grey and Katherine Grey. Mary is misshapen and used as a doll or pet by both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, and Katherine is pretty and flighty. The character of the narrator is court painter Levinia Teerlinc. Katherine spends most of the book in the Tower of London, having married without Queen Elizabeth’s permission, and possibly mixed up in a plot to […]
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