Essex Dogs: A Novel by Dan Jones
Whenever I’m at a bookstore, I seem to be drawn toward historical fiction more than any other genre. A month or so ago, I was browsing a table full of books when this one caught my eye. I’d never seen historical fiction set in The Hundred Years War, and the blurb made this sound like a “band of brothers” type of story — a company of men called the Essex Dogs who fight like hell, not for fame or riches or country, but for each […]
Royal Inbreeding and Other Maladies by Juliana Cummings
Royalty was supposed to rule by divine right and meant to preserve their bloodline, but in their zeal to do so lay the seeds of the madness and maladies that plagued many royal houses. It’s always fun to read about mad royals. Removed by time and societal changes, they don’t feel real enough to be sorry for, and so you can fully indulge in ogling at the bizarre stories without shame. And with unlimited money and power at their disposal, there’s a lot of bizarre […]
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
I forget how I found out about The Personal Librarian but as I read about it, knew it was perfect for my book club. Historical fiction – Check, Talented woman – Check, About a library and books – Check. We haven’t met up yet so I don’t know the other’s reactions but I found it a fascinating read that delivered on the promises of the book blurbs. Author, Pam Jenoff, has this to say, “An extraordinary tale that is both brilliant historical fiction and an important […]
The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones
A Lowcountry Bride by Preslaysa Williams
Bone White by Ronald Malfi
Alexander the Great by Phillip Freeman
Nero: Matricide, Murder and Music in Imperial Rome by Anthony Everitt and Roddy Ashworth
Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James
A Stab in the Dark by Lawrence Block
The Killing Kind by John Connolly
Shōgun by James Clavell
Nobody's Angel by Jack Clark
A Murder in Hollywood: The Untold Story of Tinseltown's Most Shocking Crime by Casey Sherman
Village in the Dark by Iris Yamashita
Nestlings by Nat Cassidy
Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland
The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age by Michael Woolraich
Rain, rain, go away. I thought my reading count looked too low and then I realized I didn’t do leftovers for February, so here’s Feb-March combined. The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and Rise of the Tudors ***** Jones is such a talented historian. Gets all the important stuff of the Wars of the Roses in great detail and lets the story entertain. His Templars book will soon be on my radar. A Lowcountry Bride**** Had to read this for a library […]
Food in England: A complete guide to the food that makes us who we are by Dorothy Hartley
Put simply, this book is the first and last word on absolutely everything to do with traditional English (and British) cooking. I sought it out after a reference to it in, of all things, Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s The Long Earth. That small reference was enough to entice me, but did not prepare me for the sheer scale of Hartley’s work. Published in 1954, it’s a magnum opus that’s as much about cookery as it is about history, and traditional country life. For example, […]
Emperor of Rome by Mary Beard
A few months ago, there was a meme going around asking folks how much they thought about the Roman Empire. Rome has been kind of a curiosity to a whole subset of men this generation. As sea levels rise, fascism marches, and prices gouge, men tend to be more conservative and look to the “old ways.” They conveniently leave out the fact that homosexuality was widely practiced, as well as a fact that their odds of being a slave were substantively higher than being a […]
