Second Fiddle, by Rosanne Parry

Second Fiddle is a story of adventures in exotic locales. From the outside it may seem that this is always true of military family life. It is accurate that I have lived in six countries and four states. And I have the annoying habit of being able to trump just about anyone’s extreme temperature stories, having lived in both one of the hottest cities in the world, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and one of the coldest, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. But the appeal of exotic travel chronicles only part of the experience. The constant moving of military families is an important theme in Second Fiddle and the book does a great job of capturing the sense of loss, while at the same time, even the thirteen-year-old characters appreciate that they are also receiving a gift.

As the main character, Jody says near the beginning, “The upside of being a military kid was that you got to see a lot of cool places. The downside was that every time you made a friend, you had to move away.” And her friend Vivian adds, “My mother thinks I’m having this great international experience, but changing schools all the time is just the same horrible experience over and over.”

Jody and her two friends Giselle and Vivian live on an American Army base in Berlin in 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They are brought together by their love of music and they travel by train each week to music lessons in East Germany with Herr Muller. They are scheduled to attend a music competition in Paris and they all know it will be their last time to perform together as they are all moving away. On their way home from a music lesson they witness an attempted murder and the adventure begins, sending them across international borders as they desperately try to save the life of a young man.

Without their musical connection the three would not have been friends at all, as Giselle’s father is a general and the base commander, while Jody’s father is enlisted. Jody feels she can’t invite the general’s daughter over as even the adults in the enlisted housing area wouldn’t like it. Of course, parents’ ranks shouldn’t make a difference to the children, but this book accurately reflects that they do.

Author, Roseanne Parry based Second Fiddle on her own life experiences as she says that she moved to Germany in 1990 with her soldier husband. While the details of girls’ adventures can at times seem melodramatic, the book does a wonderful job of capturing the feel of military life. She mentions details that I recognize or have heard from my children and other people. For example, impending doom in the smell of moving boxes; the constant absence of Jody’s Dad; Jody not minding moving so much when she was younger; finding the question of where are you from impossible to answer; living in one place for three years for the first time and feeling unnatural in knowing her way around; and also remembering the time of an event in your personal history from where you lived (“I was seven so it must have been Missouri”).

Second Fiddle is an exciting older children’s adventure that sneaks in some history about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Cold War. Try it if you are interested in the military lifestyle and the people who lead it.  I also recommend it for military families, both older children of around ten and up and their parents. It will be a great start for conversations about the lifestyle.

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The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi

Blister rust. Cibiscosis. Genehack weevil. Plant and human diseases mutate quickly in the 23rd century, where genehacking by the powerful calorie companies runs the economy. Staying ahead of the plagues can cause otherwise honorable people to justify acts they would never believe they were capable of committing. Major cities, including New York and Mumbai, were drowned as the planet heated; the capital city in Thailand is protected by levees and pumps. Fossil fuels were mostly spent out generations ago. Most power is now human- or beast-created and stored in springs; computers are driven by treadle; radios are hand-cranked. Bicycles, ships, and dirigibles provide transportation.

Anderson Lake manages the SpringLife kink-spring factory in the capital city of Thailand. Megadonts, huge beasts of burden that have been genehacked from elephants, power the factory. SpringLife kink-springs, when finally manufactured, should hold and disperse many more joules than regular springs. This huge factory, with its workers, its megadonts and their handlers, is failing, though Anderson keeps it running. It’s a cover for his real purpose in Thailand. He works covertly for AgriGen, a calorie company based in Des Moines. He’s in Thailand to figure out how the kingdom is growing disease-resistant crops independently of the calorie companies. Potatoes, tobacco, and other nightshades flourish in the markets in Thailand—how can that be when most natural plants succumb to the diseases that thrive and mutate in the age of genetically modified produce of AgriGen, PurCal, RedStar, U Texas and other calorie companies?

Emiko is a windup girl—one of the New People—a genetically modified humanoid “born” in a crèche in Japan and bred to serve her master. She began her life as a kind of secretary for her owner, Gendo-sama, but after he brought her to Thailand on a business trip, he discarded her; dirigible fare back to Japan is exorbitant and Gendo-sama, who had once told Emiko she was beautiful and perfect, found it more economical to simply purchase a newer model once he got back to Japan. As an unnatural species, Emiko is illegal in Thailand, but Raleigh, her new owner, pays bribes to the Environment Ministry to keep her in his club.  She earns her keep as an entertainer in a sexually humiliating show for the pleasure of the patrons of the club. For the most part, Emiko can blend in with humans, though her engineered stutter-stop motions give her away, and her specifically designed small pore structure, fine in cooler Japan, causes her to overheat in Thailand.

When Anderson meets Emiko, Emiko reveals a vital clue to him about the plague-resistant foods, and he tells her something that changes her life forever—and ultimately leads to a rebalancing of power between the Thai government and the calorie companies.

Anderson and Emiko are just two of the many complex characters in the richly-developed Thai kingdom of the future that Bacigalupi has created. Anderson’s assistant, Hock Seng, a “yellow card” refugee from an environmental disaster in Malaysia, has plans and secrets of his own. The head of the White Shirts, the Environment Ministry enforcers, Jaidee Rojjanasukchai and his lieutenant, the unsmiling Kanya Chirathivat, play their parts in this dense and detailed world. Trust and loyalty, kamma or karma, love, regret, and identity are themes that run throughout the novel. Religious beliefs and practices—Christian and Buddhist—have evolved also with the changing environment. The world described in The Windup Girl seems frighteningly possible as we ignore environmental concerns and allow corporations to patent seeds and genes.

The Windup Girl is novel that can be read multiple times without losing its surprises. It’s one of the best novels I have read in many years. It tied with China Miéville’s The City & the City (also a great novel) for the 2010 Hugo Award for best novel.

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The Coffin Trail, by Martin Edwards

This is the first in a satisfying cozy/police procedural mystery series set in England’s Lake District. It’s my favorite kind of case—a cold case!

Daniel Kind, an Oxford history professor, returns to his childhood vacation spot of Brackdale after many years’ absence. Enchanted by the peace and quiet of country living, he decides to relocate there with his girlfriend, Miranda. He becomes intrigued by an unsolved mystery from years before, in large part because his now-deceased father had been the investigating office on that case. Also, the prime suspect had been a friend of Daniel’s in his childhood— an autistic boy who had conveniently died soon after the crime, the ritualistic murder of a young woman.

Meanwhile, DCI Hannah Scarlett of the Cold Case Squad, who had worked under Daniel’s father years before, gets an anonymous tip about the very same case and begins digging. Things get complicated when her longtime boyfriend emerges as a suspect and Hannah’s official investigation collides with the amateur sleuthing of Daniel, with whom she feels an instant connection.

Daniel’s amateur sleuthing also complicates his relationship with his girlfriend Miranda, and he too senses the chemistry between himself and DCI Scarlett. These issues are left unresolved, with the promise of further romantic complications to come in future installments.

The mystery at least is resolved, with a nice twist at the end. I appreciated the juxtaposition of Hannah’s official “police procedural” investigation with Daniel’s personal interactions with suspects.

This series will appeal to readers of Elizabeth George’s Thomas Lynley/Barbara Havers series and Peter Robinson’s Alan Banks series.

If you like this series, try also Peter Lovesey’s Peter Diamond series, Susan Hill’s Simon Serallier series, and Stephen Booth’s Ben Cooper series.

WRL owns the book and the ebook of this title.

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American Vampire V.2 by Scott Snyder and Rafael Alburquerque

Sometimes it’s good to hit the reset button. Bram Stoker didn’t invent the vampire, but he carved the archetype: a creature of power, terror, and ruthlessness hidden under a veneer of charm. Vampires have been popular recently, both in fiction and movies, but the trend has been to smooth over their edges, making them suave, stylish, even glittery, in a way that doesn’t sit well with many fans of horror.

Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque decided to go back to basics. In Skinner Sweet they re-created the vampire, one who commands visceral fear, not existential angst, who is bloodthirsty, vicious, and brutal. And then they threw in a twist: their vampire would be uniquely American, born and bred in the Wild West. As such, he would not be like any of the vampires that had come before him. Unlike all the European vampires, Sweet is unaffected by exposure to the sun. As the character himself explains “Sometimes, when the blood hits someone new, from somewhere new, it makes something new. With a whole new bag of tricks.”

The first story begins in Nevada, during the construction of the Boulder Dam (now called the Hoover Dam). As the construction expands, so does the vice in nearby Las Vegas. Where there is vice and money, there is blood, and where there’s blood, there’s vampires. Sweet, living under the name Jim Smoke, is running a brothel called the Frontier. In life, Sweet was a murderer and a thief, with a knack for riling up pretty much anyone he interacts with. As a vampire, he’s even worse. When a man turns up drained of every drop of blood after dating one of Sweet’s girls, the law begins to take an interest. But do they have any idea who, or what, they are dealing with?

Pearl Jones, a vampire created by Sweet in Volume 1, is still struggling to come to terms with the consequences of her new life. Desperate to live as normally as possible, she shuns her vampire side, feeding on blood without killing. But she is forever tied to Sweet, and the people who want him dead have decided that she just might hold the key to getting rid of him for good. Pearl, along with her husband Henry, is also featured in a shorter second story in this volume. Although each of the stories has a conclusion, the reader is always somehow left feeling like none of the stories actually end. They are just pieces of a larger narrative that slowly builds with each vignette.

Snyder’s writing ratchets up the tension, and the angularity of Albuquerque’s drawings enhances the sharpness of the vampire’s bite. For the first volume, Snyder approached Stephen King with his idea for Skinner Sweet wanting a forward, but King was so enthused with the character he ended up guest writing the origin story himself, based on Snyder’s outline. If a stamp of approval from one of the biggest American horror writers wasn’t enough, American Vampire won the 2011 Eisner and Harvey Awards for Best New Series. Recommended for fans of horror and westerns.

Check the WRL catalog for American Vampire.

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Bayou, Volume 1 by Jeremy Love

If you asked people what they think of when they hear the term “American mythos” many would undoubtedly call to mind Cowboys and Indians and other aspects of the Wild West, unaware of the vibrant and complex stories and traditions of Southern Folklore. Bayou is a beautifully-rendered Alice in Wonderland-style fairytale set in Mississippi during the Depression. It is a uniquely Southern world, filled with mud and Spanish moss, concurrently embracing and fighting against the legacy of slavery.

The story centers on Lee, a young black girl, who is friends with Lily, the white daughter of the woman who owns the farm where Lee and her father live. Lily is snatched and swallowed by a monster from the bayou, named Cotton-Eyed Joe, and Lee’s father makes a convenient suspect for the local law officers when she is reported missing by her mother. In an effort to get her friend back, and free her father before he gets lynched, Lee follows the monster into the brackish water, and finds herself in an alternate but parallel world. The inhabitants of this world are human-like, but their physical bodies have been replaced by various characters drawn from Southern myths. She meets Bayou, a swamp dweller who, despite his giant stature, is cowed into submission by the Bossman and his lackeys through their brutal enforcement of the law. Despite his fear, Bayou sees the need and determination of Lee to find her friend Lily and decides to help her, although not without trepidation.

Any story that starts with a lynching and exposes the varied responses of people to such brutality isn’t going to pull punches. But what is most chilling about its narrative is that Bayou doesn’t make the humans into caricatures. The people in the normal world are just that: normal. They are all believable products of their time and environments, and that is clearly reflected in the social interactions between the characters. Young and old, black and white, rich and poor, everyone seems to know who is in power and the potential consequences of any action that might upset the current balance. In the parallel world, characters are taken to their extreme with Jim Crows, Golliwogs, and Confederate officer hounds, but it’s the similarities rather than the differences between the two worlds that are most striking.

Bayou’s injections of race, religion, poverty, and the blues contribute to an important and uniquely Southern voice in fantasy and graphic novels. The storyline and imagery can be disturbing and unsettling, but these aspects give meaning and power to the book’s message. Both written and drawn by Jeremy Love, the use of color enhances the atmosphere, bathing the images in deep gold, dusky pink, and brownish-green. Recommended to readers of fantasy, graphic novels, and southern fiction.

Check the WRL catalog for Bayou

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The Injustice System, by Clive Stafford Smith

So a businessman and his son go into a downtown Miami hotel suite to meet with a potential client who might help boost their meager income. Instead, a man with whom they have a dispute steps out, shoots the father in the knee, drags the son up some stairs, then shoots him execution-style. The father escapes, gets out the door, and bangs on the door across the hall, leaving blood in the hall, but the import-export businessman in that room doesn’t hear a thing, including the shots that then kill the father. Neville Butler, who has been held hostage in the room since before the father and son arrived, is then released.

Following Butler’s call to the police, British businessman Krishna Maharaj is detained. After waiving his Miranda rights, he makes inconsistent statements to the investigators, who hold him long enough to discover that his fingerprints are in the hotel room, and Maharaj is arrested and charged with first-degree murder for the executions of Dwight and Duane Moo Young, former associates and now rivals for Maharaj’s Caribbean newspaper. The case goes to trial. Maharaj, a flamboyant millionaire, hires the lowest bidder, Mark Hendon, as his attorney. The trial proceeds in a swift and orderly manner, except that the presiding judge is replaced after three days of testimony. Based on fingerprint evidence, a ballistics expert’s identification of Maharaj’s gun, and Neville Butler’s testimony, Maharaj is given life in prison for Dwight’s murder, and the death sentence for Duane’s.

After several years, the case comes to the attention of Clive Stafford Smith, an attorney specializing in capital cases. On his own, taking time away from his fledgling non-profit practice focusing on Louisiana death penalty cases, Smith begins reviewing the case, and this open-and-shut case turns out to have been far more complex than the trial transcript would indicate. His early investigation turns up boxes of evidence and interview materials that hadn’t been made available to the defense, prosecutors’ notes indicating that they instructed the detectives and their chief witness how to perjure themselves, and witnesses that prove that Maharaj wasn’t even in Miami at the time of the killings. Some of his basic rights—over and above their violation of his Miranda rights—were not explained to him or put into practice. Forensic evidence was questionable, but Maharaj’s trial attorney didn’t cross-examine, and even rested without calling a single witness. Confident that the reams of documentary evidence show that Maharaj did not receive a fair trial and that his counsel was (to put it mildly) incompetent, Smith heads into the appeals process.

But door after legal door is slammed in Maharaj’s face. The appeals courts won’t consider new evidence—it wasn’t presented in a timely manner and appellate courts don’t try the facts of the case. Each attempt to reopen the case takes months, if not years, to litigate, partially because a prosecutor won’t accept plentiful evidence that her colleagues convicted an innocent man. When he’s finally granted a new trial, Smith can’t introduce all the new evidence and Maharaj is again found guilty. But because the jury doesn’t prescribe the death penalty, Maharaj’s future opportunities for appeal are severely limited—capital cases usually get at least a cursory glance. Based on all the trials and appeals that go before, Maharaj’s last chance—a reprieve from Florida Governor Charlie Crist—is denied.

Unfortunately, as Smith details, Maharaj’s case is only one example of the miscarriage of justice that capital crimes nearly always involve. From personal experience and well-documented cases, Smith demonstrates that each individual misstep in the justice system that Maharaj experienced is echoed across the country, even in non-capital cases. Part of it is the culture, and he shows that from the patrol officer to the US Supreme Court, the fundamental conservatism of the law is geared towards convictions, not justice or even truth. The real poverty of this view is that convicting the innocent allows the guilty to go unpunished.

Smith’s writing is urgent, and his construction of the story maximizes both the drama and the documentation of his fundamental thesis. As he breaks the case down, the depth of the law enforcement and judicial errors becomes appallingly clear. The parallels he establishes between Maharaj’s case and convictions across the country point to the idea that the American justice system has reversed its supposed ideal. At the same time, his admiration for Maharaj (which is echoed by everyone from business associates to prison guards) as a man shines through. Even after being in prison since 1987—including 10 years on Death Row—Maharaj remains kind, gentle, and positive.

This is a timely book. States have begun to revisit their commitments to the death penalty after subsequent investigations and trials have freed other innocent people from Death Row. It is increasingly likely that people known to be innocent were executed anyway. If someone heeds Clive Stafford Smith’s plea to come forward and exonerate Krishna Maharaj, it would be a miracle; if others use his case to strengthen their calls for an end to the death penalty, it would be a huge step to ending the gaping flaws in our (in)justice system.

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Mystic City, by Theo Lawrence

Global warming has caused the melting of Antarctica and the rise of sea levels across the globe. The once prosperous, show stopping city of Manhattan now finds itself a series of submerged buildings and canal-lined streets. The city is divided between those who live in the Aeries (enormously tall high-rise buildings) and those forced to live down below, in the Depth, existing on raised sidewalks and dilapidated abodes. The Aeries is home to the wealthy elite, including all those in positions of political power. The Depth is the refuge of mystics, those with supernatural abilities, who once helped to build the incredible city itself. After a “mystic spurred bombing” the mystics were forced out of the Aeries for the protection of those without power. What remains is an uncomfortable and unwelcome balance between those above and those below, each fearful of what the other’s actions could bring.

This is the world in which Aria Rose exists. The daughter of one of the most powerful and richest businessmen in the Aeries, Aria has grown up in the lap of luxury. Now, on the dawn of one of the most important elections in the city’s history, Aria finds herself engaged to Thomas, the son of the only family in the Aeries whose wealth and power rivals her own. Once they’re married, their families will be united and control all of the Aeries. But from the first page, all is not as it appears. Aria has suffered memory loss after overdosing on a drug called “Stic,” a drug she does not remember buying or taking. She also can’t remember a single moment spent with Thomas, not to mention falling in love with him. But she can remember almost everything else. The story itself takes turn after turn after turn as Aria begins to learn more about the people who inhabit the Depth below, her family’s lust for nothing but power, and the strange but gorgeous rebel-mystic, Hunter. Reminiscent of a three-way Romeo and Juliet tale set in a futuristic dystopian world on the brink of rebellion, Mystic City is sure to appeal to a variety of readers.

Check the WRL catalog for Mystic City

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Spirited Away

I don’t usually watch Anime, but my daughter enthused about Spirited Away, so we sat down on the couch to watch it together on her laptop. That became a nudging, pushing, “Turn the screen this way” experience for  both of us, so I was very pleased to discover that my library owns it on DVD. The library copy usually has several holds, so I had to wait. But it was worth it! This movie proves that a great story is a great story, no matter its format.

Ten-year-old Jahiro is unhappy about moving to a new house in a new town with a new school. As they are driving to their new home her father decides to take a short cut and the road ends at a strange, abandoned building. Jahiro doesn’t want to enter, but her parents seem strangely compelled. A short while later, without realizing it, they have entered a new world, peopled with odd, grotesque spirits. Jahiro is terrified, but her parents are unaware that anything is wrong and are soon trapped. From here the story gets compelling and creepier and creepier. Jahiro will need help to navigate this world and save her parents. But who is really her friend, and who is pretending to help her for their own ends?

I enjoyed the snippets of Japanese culture, that may have been so ingrained in the creators’ minds that they didn’t realize that they were showing something that might be different in other places. For example, on several occasions I noticed that in the midst of drama and action and danger, the characters stop to take off their shoes before going inside. Even in an emergency they can’t imagine running into a bathhouse with their shoes on.  Other details were also intriguing, such as the night clothes and driving on the left.  To me this shows that the creators were portraying what they saw around them, and not what an outsider might think a place is like.

This movie was animated the old-fashioned way with drawings, rather than being computer generated. I found the animation painterly, rather than the gaudy, flashing, flatness of some Disney movies. I loved the details – I could even recognize the bushes in the background and name hydrangeas, daphne, camellias and rhododendrons (not a quality appreciated by my family in the middle of a movie!).

My library’s double disk set included a Japanese documentary about the making of the movie. At the time the documentary was made in 2001 Spirited Away was the highest grossing film in Japanese history. It was dubbed into English without changing the original animation at all, which is unusual.  The English language version won the Academy Award for an animated feature in 2003. The director, Hayao Miyazaki had his sixtieth birthday while Spirited Away was being made, but he still wrote,  drew and directed for it. The documentary shows a meeting when they are working on a scene where Jahiro needs to give a pill to a dragon to save it. Miyazaki asks, “Has no one given a pill to a dog?” When it turns out only one person has even owned a dog, he mutters, “Pathetic!” and takes them all to a veterinary hospital to see all sorts of dogs dosed. I think this attention to detail shows all the way through this gripping, exciting and usual movie.

I recommend Spirited Away for everyone! It is suitable for children, but the gripping story, creepy events, great art and wonderful music will entertain young and old, even those who never watch this sort of thing.

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The Judas Field, by Howard Bahr

Shell shock. Battle fatigue.  Soldier’s heart.  As early at the 1600′s it was known as Swiss Disease.  In the 1860′s some even called it “nostalgia,” thinking that simple homesickness could account for the disorientation, straggling, malingering, alcoholism, “cowardice,” and desertion that plagued the Union and Confederate armies.  In Howard Bahr’s novel of the Civil War, the debilitation follows a small group of comrades back to their Mississippi hometown, where they continue to relive their war experiences.  Those experiences gradually center on the heartbreak of the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee.

Cass Wakefield and Roger Lewellyn enlisted in the rebel army in those heady days when it appeared that the war would be over by the end of the summer of 1861.  Serving in the Army of Tennessee, they fought at Shiloh, Stones River, Chickamauga, and the Atlanta Campaign, along with the dozens of smaller actions and skirmishes throughout those years.  They saw men die in every conceivable way, from the gruesome to the mundane, losing comrades at each step of the long march that brought them to Franklin.  They also picked up a boy, a toughened orphan named Lucifer, who they promptly renamed Lucius.  On his own, Lucius would adopt the name Wakefield and become mascot, comrade, and fellow sufferer in the line of battle.

Now, twenty years after the war, Lucius is addicted to laudanum, Roger carries the deep psychic wounds of an artist confronted with butchery, and Cass uses alcohol to numb his pain.  All three, and most of the men of their town, wander the streets in the middle of the night like ghosts in search of a place to haunt.  But when Alison Sansing, daughter of their regimental commander and sister of the dashing Perry, asks Cass to help her recover the bodies of her beloved father and brother, he agrees to accompany her to Franklin.

What Alison, one of Cass’s oldest friends, doesn’t tell him is that she is dying of cancer and this trip is the final obligation of a life filled with her own pain and heartbreak.  As their train rolls through the Southern countryside, she begins to see the landscape through which the men of her acquaintance marched and fought.  And Cass begins to recall and relive both painful and humorous episodes from his soldiering life.  It isn’t until they reach Franklin that they discover that both Lucian and Roger have followed them, and their emotional journey becomes a volatile one.

Howard Bahr is a rare combination of historian and author, skilled at gently and gradually exposing details of the soldier’s life and their direct battle experiences at places like Franklin while exploring the deeper battles hidden in human memory.  His writing is both insightful and evocative, with a perfect balance between description and psychological depth, while his characters are fully realized in all their glory and agony.  It’s not for nothing that his novels have been named Notable Books by the New York Times.  (Hey, Pulitzer people: were you asleep?)

For a historical account of the Union’s commander at Franklin and Nashville, check out Benson Bobrick’s Master of War.  Robert Hicks’s Widow of the South is a fictional account which details the life of Carrie McGavock, whose house was a Confederate hospital and who almost singlehandedly dug up and reburied Confederate dead on her own land.

Check the WRL catalog for The Judas Field

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Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett

The building of cathedrals in Europe was often a multi-generational task, a labor of love and worship that illustrates the tenor of those times.  Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth is its own labor of love and worship, although in a different way.  As he explains in his introduction, the book was a huge departure for him.  Known as an author of thriller— including Eye of the Needle, one of my favorites —Follett took a risk writing this book, but based on the way readers have embraced it, his risk paid off.

Pillars is the story of one cathedral and the events of the nearly forty years it took to build.  It centers around five people: a cleric, two artisans, and two from the ranks of the nobility.  (An additional character from the peasantry probably would have made the plot unwieldy, but Follett deals with that problem early on.)  During the period he writes about—1123 to 1174—there was an international struggle to determine whether kings ruled with the blessing of the church, or whether the church existed under the protection of the kings.  That struggle trickled down to the local level, where philosophy yields to the daily fight for land and money.  At the same time, guilds were exercising their economic power by restricting membership, enforcing apprenticeships, and setting fees for specific jobs.  Both church and nobility feared the repercussions of a wealthy educated class, but the guilds were also limited by the need for armed protection and desire for religious approval.  At various times power shifted among the three, but no single one emerged victorious.  But struggles were not limited to the competing factions:  clergy maneuvered amongst themselves for power and income, nobles conspired against each other to increase their holdings, and the guilds evolved through trial and error that produced losers and winners.

Follett’s span of the 12th century begins with the tribulations of Tom Builder, a mason whose job is unexpectedly terminated, forcing him to take to the roads with his family, searching for work.  Like the peasants of his time, he is helpless in the face of lawlessness and misfortune, until every day becomes a quest for survival against the slow starvation overtaking his family.  After his wife dies in childbirth, Tom becomes involved with Ellen, a mysterious woman who lives in the forest with her son Jack.  When Tom’s path crosses that of the newly-elected Prior Philip of the Kingsbridge monastery, both their fortunes begin to rise.

Philip is a motivated, intelligent, and inspired man whose dedication to the church manifests itself in his desire to revive the fallen fortunes of the monastery with a plan to eventually build a cathedral.  But the opportunity presents itself sooner rather than later, and the project is underway. Philip is an innocent in many ways, but no more so than in his belief that his sincere efforts on God’s behalf are respected and shared by other clergy, including the driven and ambitious Waleran Bigod, who is destined to become his bishop.  However, he becomes adept at his own kind of politicking and makes several enemies along the way.

One of them is William Hamleigh, the would-be Earl of Shiring, which encompasses Bishop Bigod’s diocese and Prior Philip’s growing town.  Hamleigh’s family rose to the earldom during the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maud.  William is a brute who does not hesitate to use force and treachery, even cold-blooded murder, to achieve his aims.  But his inability to think beyond the short term hampers him, and he is easily manipulated by the bishop for his own ends.  He’s not a subtle character, but William also serves a valuable role in the story, demonstrating the effort and expense it took to maintain the military force that an earl was required to bring to the king.

When the story begins, William’s anticipated marriage to the Lady Aliena, daughter of the current Earl, is broken off.  Her father did not want to force her into a political marriage, and the humiliation leads the Hamleighs to denounce the Earl and seize his holdings. When William gains the upper hand, he rapes Aliena, kills her protector, and scars her younger brother.  But Aliena will not accept that as the last word, and her determination, cleverness, and willingness to take risks give her opportunities to rise above the merely social standing she would have had as a noblewoman.  Her success also illustrates the power that the trade associations— both among merchants and among skilled craftsmen—could wield.

Finally, there’s Jack, the unusual son of the outlaw woman Ellen, adopted by Tom Builder and put to work on the cathedral site.  His intelligence and insight not only make him a valued craftsman, but allow him to develop a friendship with Aliena.  They also bring him to the attention of Prior Philip, who is determined to bring Jack into the monastery, but at a high cost to Jack.  Jack is also a vehicle for Follett to explore Continental culture from pilgrimages to Moorish influence in Spain to the revolutionary design of French cathedrals.  The vision he brings back puts the crowning touch on what ends as a glorious building.

Follett’s description of the various styles and the engineering feats it took to build these enormous buildings is done lovingly and with a real sense of awe. It makes the reader long to turn to an illustrated source that captures in images what Follett has described for us.  And my next entry will talk about that very thing.

Check the WRL catalog for Pillars of the Earth in regular print, as well as audio, a television mini-series, and e-book.

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The Bagthorpe Saga, by Helen Cresswell

Have you ever wondered how British humor can be so consistently different from American humor? After all, the two countries share a language and much culture. Re-reading the Bagthorpe Saga by Helen Cresswell, I suspect the difference may persist because the training starts very young in dry, witty, ridiculous British humor.

The Bagthorpe Saga started in 1977 with Ordinary Jack. It continued for over 20 years with ten books chronicling the bizarre, but highly entertaining Bagthorpes, including Bagthorpes Abroad (1984) and Bagthorpes Haunted (1985). It was made into a T.V. series in 1981, which is looking dated now, but the books are still hilariously funny.

Eponymous Jack is certainly ordinary, far too ordinary to live in his overwhelming and extraordinary extended family. His three siblings are “genii” with multiple talents they call Strings to their Bows. His prima donna father writes scripts for the BBC while his mother writes an Agony Aunt column for her Problem people. His only ally is his mongrel dog, Zero, although he sometimes collaborates with his foppish Uncle Parker. Capricious and stubborn Grandma, Selectively Deaf Grandpa, along with precocious and out-of-control cousin Daisy round out the family. Other characters, like the put-upon cleaning lady Mrs. Fosdyke come in and out of the stories. Helen Cresswell managed to take the mickey out of over-scheduled children and helicopter parents before the terms were invented, because Ordinary Jack is the hero and the rest of the Bagthorpes are obnoxiously pretentious.

The humor is both dry and slapstick and relies a lot on wordplay. These books manage to be laugh aloud hilarious and also make comments about human nature.

I was surprised to discover that my library owned this older British series at all, and I was delighted to discover that we own three of the series on CD. I was even more delighted with Clive Mantle’s dry delivery. His sonorous and grave voice was a wonderful foil to the books’ over-the-top humor. In fact, I often thought he sounded like a commentator for a BBC nature documentary—ponderous, serious and reverberating.

Try Ordinary Jack or any of the Bagthorpe Saga for a quick and light read that may make you laugh out loud. Although it is a children’s series, I recommend it for fans of the absurd British wit of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or Monty Python.

Check the WRL catalog for Ordinary Jack in book form.

Check the WRL catalog for Bagthorpes Unlimited in book form.

Check the WRL catalog for Ordinary Jack in CD form.

Check the WRL catalog for Bagthorpes Unlimited in CD form.

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Postmortem, by Patricia Cornwell

Postmortem is Patricia Cornwell’s first medical thriller featuring Dr. Kay Scarpetta and homicide detective Pete Marino, set in Richmond, Virginia. I tried to keep my reading confined to the audiobook in my car, but I found myself taking it to bed with me every night and not falling asleep until I’d listened through at least two CDs per night. I hadn’t read a “coroner” story or watched very many TV shows (no more than a few CSI episodes) on this topic of forensic pathology since one of my old favorites, Quincy, M.E., starring Jack Klugman, in the late 70s to early 80s, so I’m delighted to rekindle my odd fascination with the gory details of autopsies and forensic investigation. I don’t feel bad about this considering that Cornwell’s tales seem to have taken up permanent residence on the bestseller lists. I’m pretty stoked that I’ll now be able to read or listen to more than 20 books in the Kay Scarpetta series, and I’ve also now discovered a number of other writers of suspense-filled medical thrillers to add to my reading list.

Scarpetta is a strong, female leading character (Quince was quite the chauvinist, as I recall). In this first novel, she’s obviously up against male characters who think she does not belong in her position as Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia. She also has to gain the confidence and respect of her sidekick, detective Pete Marino, who reappears throughout the series. The pairing of a medical expert with a legal or police professional seems to be a very effective device in this style of literature, one that has proven successful in a number of series and TV shows. I really enjoyed the character development in Postmortem. Pete and Kay don’t get along well at first, but over time they recognize each other’s unique talents and slowly develop an awkward rapport tinged with sarcasm and a bit of humor that promises to develop further into the series. The ending was unpredictable and the inevitable dangerous situation the characters get themselves into could not have been resolved without their loyalty to each other and teamwork.

The medically fascinating details in these books showcase some of the latest technological advancements in forensic pathology through the years. Some might find it odd to deal with Cornwell’s older books and the now-obsolete computer technologies and medical practices, but others may enjoy it, sort of like opening a time capsule. Her latest novels continue to incorporate modern techniques and equipment being used in the real world of medicine, virtual autopsies for example.

This review is not for those who are already loyal fans of Patricia Cornwell. It’s to alert readers newly interested in fast-paced medical thrillers that we have her series of books in the library just waiting for your discovery! Check the WRL catalog for Postmortem, in print or in audiobook on CD.

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The Colonial Williamsburg Tavern Cookbook, by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

The downtown location of our library is a short walk from Colonial Williamsburg, the famous living history museum and re-creation of 18th century American life. An entire Colonial American town has been restored and re-created, and the interpreters wear authentic dress as they go about the many tasks carried out 300 years ago, such as the blacksmith working in the smithy. Our location leads to some amusing librarian anecdotes such as seeing Thomas Jefferson with a powdered ponytail and knee breeches coming in to check his email on the public computers. We also get odd reference questions on chilly, rainy nights such as “Where is my car parked? I know I left it by the field with the cart horses.” (And with the help of a tourist map and some local knowledge, my colleague was successful with that question).

Colonial Williamsburg is a great tourist attraction and tourists must be fed, so there are many restaurants, including re-creations of three historical taverns:  Christiana Campbell’s Tavern, Chowning’s Tavern and King’s Arms Tavern. The Colonial Williamsburg Tavern Cookbook was published in 2001 by Colonial Williamsburg’s governing body, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, to share the tavern food with interested cooks who have visited the taverns or those who live far away and can’t make it to Colonial Williamsburg. It doesn’t have actual authentic recipes. As the blurb says, “no need to to run out and get some suet in which to cook your mutton over the open hearth.” Rather, they created  ”foods suggestive of the past but that suit modern appetites” that were “inspired by old recipes from eighteenth-century Virginia.” They say that to create the tavern meals and the book they researched ”Deeds and other court records, insurance policies, estate inventories, comments in diaries and letters, financial accounts, newspaper advertisements, architectural details from surviving buildings and archaeological evidence [that] shed light on the lives of the individuals who kept these taverns and the customers who frequented them.”

The first section is Appetizers and First Courses, which is standard for many cookbooks, but the introduction points out that in Colonial Virginia the hosts and guests would have sipped punch or wine before their main meal, rather than eaten appetizers. It goes on to Soups, Salads, various types of meat, and most importantly, several types of baked goods and desserts.

I tried making King’s Arms Tavern Apple Cheddar Muffins as apple and cheese was not a combination that I was familiar with, but it sounded good. The recipe said to “serve at once” and this was good advice as they were warm, soft, rich and moist— mmmmmm. I used the scrag ends of Dutch cheese from the back of the fridge which gave them an intense cheese taste. Once they had gotten a bit stale I revived them in the microwave and added butter. One of my colleagues tried cutting one in half and toasting it. She said this refreshed it nicely and “it tasted much more cheesy.”

With lots of great recipes and dozens of crisp, color photos of both the food and Colonial Williamsburg,  The Colonial Williamsburg Tavern Cookbook will be of interest to cookbook enthusiasts as well as those interested in Colonial times.

Check the WRL catalog for The Colonial Williamsburg Tavern Cookbook

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On the Island, by Tracey Garvis Graves

Every summer, I gravitate toward at least one light beach read, but I don’t typically select Romance novels. On the Island caught my attention when a library user asked for it at the reference desk months before the print edition became available; the e-book had already become a bestseller.

Initially, I suspected it as a controversial storyline with a potentially inappropriate romance between an attractive female teacher and the sixteen-year old boy she is to tutor at his wealthy family’s vacation home on a Maldives island.  My verdict is that the romantic relationship is handled tastefully and might even be considered a soft read (although I haven’t read enough in the Romance genre to judge authoritatively).  There are interesting details about the characters and the plot that make this page-turner far more than a teenage boy’s “hot-for-teacher” fantasies come true.  T.J. recently survived cancer, Anna is not a sexual predator, and the two develop their strong friendship and survival bond long before any romance ensues.  You’ll have to read the book to find out how long they are on the island and whether or not they act on the attraction as mutually consenting adults.

The student and his tutor leave Chicago together, flying later than the rest of the family, and experience delays that result in a last-minute chance to fly on an unscheduled chartered seaplane.  They are the sole survivors washed up on an uninhabited island after their obese pilot dies of a heart attack and crashes in the Indian Ocean.  Some unbelievable coincidences seemed contrived to conveniently benefit the stranded castaways’ chances of survival, but I enjoyed the book without worrying over them too much.

On the Island is safely a fun novel that can be read in a single beach day or weekend.  Reading about this novel helped me learn a new word: robinsonade, a genre label for desert-island fiction named after Robinson Crusoe, of course.

Check the WRL catalog for On the Island.

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Doors Open, by Ian Rankin

Mike, Robert, and Allan, just regular guys bonded by a mutual interest in fine art, very uncharacteristically plot to pull off an art heist during Scotland’s Doors Open Days from the National Gallery’s warehouse in Edinburgh, Scotland.  The crime requires enlisting the help of an immature but very talented art student to paint forgeries and a handful of professional thugs, including a former classmate of Mike’s, to disable guards and hold hostages.  All goes as planned until elements beyond their control spiral them into rather deep trouble.  New and unexpected dangers are at every turn.  Loyalties thought to be rock-solid unravel, with cops and mobsters over their shoulders constantly, sparking up their nerves like firecrackers fused and ready to ignite.

Mike’s software company had made a bundle but he was seeking the kind of thrills he’d discovered money couldn’t buy.  He far too much enjoys the illicit power of concealing a firearm that he never loads.  Allan’s a bored banker who’s lost his wife’s affection and respect, yearning to stop feeling so spineless.  Robert, an aging and ambitious art expert, comes up with the big idea to liberate a number of paintings from storage, convincing his art-appreciating buddies that they should have them.

Not the type I usually read, but picked because I’m intrigued by art theft.  I enjoy high-suspense heist films such as Oceans Eleven and The Thomas Crown Affair so I figured this book would be interesting.  I didn’t immediately like its main characters who take foolish risks by turning criminal out of disenchantment with their lives.  But I was soon fully engaged and couldn’t wait to find out what would happen.  Playing the audiobook in my car, I caught myself slowing down or taking longer routes, flying through the eight discs totaling ten hours.

Those who love fast-paced suspenseful crime reads will enjoy this book right up to the ending.  There’s a nice Scottish flavor to the narration of the audiobook, and James MacPherson gives distinctive voices to each personality.  The character of Detective Ransome is not as fully developed as fans of Rankin’s retired Inspector Rebus series may expect, but Doors Open is a fine stand-alone.

I delightedly discovered that the story was earlier published as a serial in the New York Times Magazine, with an mp3 recording of Chapter 1 read by Ian Rankin still available online in The Funny Pages/Sunday Serial.

Check the WRL Catalog for Doors Open in Audiobook format on CD,  in print or in large print.

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A King’s Cutter, by Richard Woodman

While many readers are familiar with Patrick O’Brian and his tales of adventure on the high seas during the Napoleonic Wars, told in his Aubrey and Maturin series, there is an armada of less-well-known writers whose fiction set in the days of sail is equally realistic and thrilling. One of my current favorites is Richard Woodman, who writes the Nathaniel Drinkwater series. The series begins with An Eye of the Fleet, but I find the second book, A King’s Cutter, an equally good starting point for the series.

The appeal of Woodman’s series is both in the setting and characters. Woodman has a firm command of naval history and his descriptions of shipboard life and the mechanics of sailing a large vessel all ring true. The battle scenes, while not overly graphic, do not ignore the terrible casualties and the precariousness of life in these actions. From a historical perspective, Woodman does an excellent job of portraying the political struggles and infighting that affected, often if negative ways, the lives and careers of those in the British Navy. There is also an element of espionage in the stories as Woodman explores the intelligence battles between the British and the French during the 1790s to the early 1800s.

Woodman’s main character, Nathaniel Drinkwater, offers an interesting study to readers. Coming from a modest background, Drinkwater served in the British fleet during the American Revolution, but despite his work there never received the promotions due him. Woodman makes clear the ease with which a promised honor can slip away when your patron dies or ends up in political disgrace. Drinkwater has the misfortune to have had both happen. Nonetheless, he manages to eke out a living serving on various ships and finally makes his way onto the cutter Kestrel, which is involved in clandestine operations on the French coast. Torn between his affection for his wife and family and his love of the sea, Drinkwater comes across as a fully-realized character, and his honesty and good nature make him an attractive lead. Time spent in his company is time well spent.

Check the WRL catalog for A King’s Cutter

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The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson

Psychologists call it “family of origin“.  Really, they’re the people on whom you imprinted: those who gave you your adult world view or against whom you rebelled.  But if you believe there’s such a thing as a “happy family“, you were born in a test tube and raised in a cave by wolves.  Some families are less weird than others, that’s all.

Setting aside all physically abusive families, the Fang family is perhaps the weirdest one I’ve ever read about.  Caleb and Camille are artists, MacArthur Geniuses, grant winners, gallery darlings.  Their medium? Human confusion and anger.  Their canvas–any place they can set people against one another or cause distress.  Like Sasha Baron-Cohen, they find the outer limit of what people will tolerate, then push them past it.  Unfortunately, they decide to use their children to create the chaos they engender.

Annie and Buster, or “Child A” and “Child B” as they were known in the art world, are now grown.  Annie is a successful actor on the verge of her breakthrough into Oscar contention when a director calls for an unexpected topless scene.  Annie’s response puts her on the Web and into the tabloids, and her response to that causes her to flee Hollywood.  Buster is an unsuccessful novelist working as a freelance writer.  When he’s severely injured in the course of writing an article, he reverts to a Fang-style escape and runs for cover.  Both wind up at their parents’ home, the one place they swore they’d never return.  But.

Well, Camille and Caleb have a project on their calendar, so they take off to the big city.  And on the way they…disappear.  Their bloodstained car is found at a rest area, but no sign of them.  Bitter and suspicious, Annie spots it as another panic-inducing art piece.  Buster wavers between Annie’s view and believing that Camille and Caleb are dead,  Together, brother and sister grope their way through the following days, uncertain how to continue their own lives.

Interspersed in the current-day stories are titled pieces from the Fang family’s career, giving the reader a picture of their methods and results.  The projects become stranger the deeper the story goes, and as A and B become more integral to the work, the projects become more manipulative of them, to the point that Caleb and Camille become passive bystanders in the situations they force the children into.  With each revelation, Annie’s fierce independence and Buster’s uncertainty become more understandable.

Kevin Wilson is scarily creative when it comes to envisioning the Fang art, perhaps even more so in developing his storyline.  He also raises a lot of questions that make excellent fodder for contemplation and discussion.  What is Art?  What is an Artist?  What is a family?  What is child abuse?  At what point can a person be described as “grown up”?  So much packed into a beautifully written, imaginative book that it’s no wonder it made so many “Best Book of the Year” lists.

Check the WRL catalog for The Family Fang

Also coming soon as a Gab Bag for reading groups

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The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller

Here’s my take on a book coming out in August.  I got it as an advance reader copy.

The world as we know it ended nine years ago.  A virulent disease wiped out the world’s population, with the exception of a few people desperately hanging on to the remnants of civilization or roaming the country determined to steal those remnants.  Pockets of the afflicted are still around, quarantined and feared by the healthy.

Hig is a pilot, a grieving widower, a hunter and fisherman, a dog owner, a lover of books and poetry.  He lives at an old Midwest airport designed as the centerpiece of a community of nouveaux-riches pilots, where he tends to his 1956 Cessna, hunts deer, and scouts out interlopers from the air.  His sole neighbor is Bangley, a tough man determined to protect his territory or die trying.  Bangley continually tests Hig, pushing him to find his weak points and bullying him out of them.  Hig’s weaknesses? Caring about the community of contagious families within flying distance.  His reluctance to shoot people.  His dog Jasper.  His memories of the time before.  The innate trust that Bangley believes will kill them both one day.

His desire to go anywhere, to be anywhere but that old airport.

When the chance arises, Hig decides to fly off in the direction of a voice transmission he’d picked up years before, seeking a new face, a new place, a new something that will divert him from his grief and give him a shot at regaining his sense of humanity.  Loaded down with fuel and supplies, he takes off and leaves Bangley behind.

And meets other people.  The problem is that those people are also trying to protect their territory.  They don’t know that he’s looking for companionship or salvation, and he may be dead before he can communicate that to them.  He must balance his essential self with everything Bangley has drilled into him to weave his way through these encounters.

Heller uses the first person to tell this story, giving an immediacy to the adrenaline of Hig’s mortal encounters and the range of emotions he feels towards Jasper, Bangley, his wife, and all the things of the prior world that he misses, along with the complicated thrill Hig still gets from flying.  From the details of ambushing a raiding party to the feel of tickling fish in a mountain stream, Heller puts the reader into Hig’s unenviable place and finds the slightest glimmer of hope in a world that is barely holding on.

Check the WRL catalog for The Dog Stars

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