Credit: Mary Ellen Tarman, Masonic Village at Elizabethtown Resident
Grab a warm drink and blanket, and enjoy these picks by the volunteers at the Grand Lodge Hall Library in Elizabethtown!
PERSONAL by Lee Child
Lee Child’s novel Personal features the intrepid Jack Reacher in this 19th book in the series. The plot in Personal is exceptional for the detail sometimes lacking in earlier novels. Reacher is “recruited” to help track a sniper who is suspected of planning an assassination. The action takes place in France and England which is a departure from the usual places we expect to see Reacher. Having been responsible for the suspected sniper’s imprisonment, Reacher was a logical choice to investigate.
FAMILY JEWELS by Stuart Woods
Stuart Woods’ Family Jewels (published April 2016) is a fast paced novel featuring Stone Barrington. This book represented a relief from some of Woods’ other books about Barrington. There was a noticeable reduction of wealth flaunting and description of female liaisons. There is not much of a plot but the story was entertaining and an improvement, in this editor’s opinion, over Scandalous Behavior (published Jan 2016) which overwhelmed with sex scenes and tasteless displays of money to the exclusion of a decent story.
NO MAN’S LAND by David Baldacci
David Baldacci crafts a great plot! His newest work is No Man’s Land featuring CID investigator John Puller. This series began in 2011 with the novel Zero Day. Baldacci was looking for a hero involved in the military and named his main character in honor of the most decorated Marine hero Chesty Puller. The plot in No Man’s Land focuses on Puller’s investigation into the disappearance of his mother over thirty years ago and a parallel plot of an “army experiment” gone wrong as a superhero soldier is released from prison. It would be hard to find anything to criticize this book. It has satisfying entertainment value.
THE YEAR AT THRUSH GREEN by Miss Read
Miss Read’s (Dora Saint) books about quaint English village life are satisfying reading. The description of the daily lives of the familiar characters going about their recreations and business has great appeal. The Year At Thrush Green begins with the snows of January and goes month by month through to the following December.
All the favorites are present in this delightful account including Albert Piggott, Dotty Harmer, Nellie Piggott at the Fuchsia Bush restaurant, Harold and Isobel Shoosmith and others. Although it was written in 1996, the story is timeless.
RUSSIAN HISTORY AND FICTION
Anything about Russia appears to be the “flavor of the moment” with all the attention in the news about election hacking and more. We have two new Russian histories to recommend.
Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs by Douglas Smith published in November recognizes the one hundred year anniversary of Rasputin’s death on December 30, 1916. Smith has written five books on Russian history and this book promises to be the most definitive account of Rasputin’s life to date.
The Romanovs by Simon Montefiore recounts the history of 20 Tsars and Tsarinas from 1613-1918. Although the book numbers 784 pages, the reviews were very positive and there is a lot of palace intrigue, corruption, madness and more to make lively reading.
Red Sparrow is a fiction account of two spies who come together in classic spy vs. spy style. The author, Jason Matthews, was a CIA field operative for 33 years giving credence to the narrative. This is the first book in a planned trilogy about the covert activities of Nathaniel Nash for the CIA and Dominika Egorova for Russian intelligence.
Red Sparrow is slated to be a movie featuring Jennifer Lawrence and Jeremy Irons and will be released November 2017.
The second book in this series Palace of Treason is also in our library.
A SECRET GIFT by Ted Gup
Before Christmas in 1933 during the depression, an anonymous ad appeared in a newspaper in Canton, Ohio. A man named B. Virdot offered to give $10 each to 75 families in distress who would apply to him through letters. In 2008 the man’s grandson, Ted Gup the author of this book, discovered the letters in a trunk and resolved to determine how this mystery fit into his family. He learned B. Virdot was his grandfather and at that point his investigative journalism instincts took over.
Some letters have been included and Gup was able to follow up to present day with families who were helped. He also discovered secrets about his grandfather’s childhood as a Romanian Jew and how he re-invented himself upon immigrating to the United States.
THE NAMES OF OUR TEARS by P.L. Gaus
Amish fiction appeals to many of our readers. We have a new Old Order Amish mystery by P.L. Gaus titled The Names of Our Tears which takes place in Holmes County, Ohio. Murder and drug dealing are investigated with the plot extending to an Amish community in Pinecraft, Florida.
As a bit of information about the author, Gaus was born in 1949 in Athens, Ohio. He began writing mysteries in 1993 with the encouragement of Tony Hillerman. He is retired as a Professor of Chemistry at The College of Wooster, where he was Chairperson of the Chemistry Department. He was educated at Miami University (B.S.) and Duke University (Ph.D.).
