Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts # 51
by muffy
Fans of international spy thriller and historical mystery are no strangers to Boris Akunin’s popular Petrovich Fandorin series. Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog* is the first in a projected trilogy in which Akunin introduces to mystery lovers an even more memorable sleuth.
Set in 19th century, Sister Pelagia, a young nun in a remote Russian province is called on by her bishop to investigate the poisoning of a white bulldog whose noble mistress, Sister Pelgagia suspects, is to be the intended victim.
This highly unusual historical mystery is remarkable for its charm and its humorous narrative voice. Not to be missed!
*=Starred Review(s)
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #50
by muffy
Kirkus reviewer called Mistress of the Art of Death* “CSI meets The Canterbury Tales”.
The brilliant female forensic pathologist, Dr. Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar of Salerno, a short and short-tempered medieval coroner is hired in secret by King Henry II to find out who's behind the horrific murders of 4 Christian children in Cambridge. Less concerned about the murderer than the tax revenue he is losing while prominent local Jews stand accused and languish in the fortress, Henry wants them freed.
Aided by a eunuch escort and a Jew with an affinity for detection, Adelia must piece together the mystery of these hideous crimes among a long list of suspects before the killer strikes again.
Mistress is a skillful blend of historical fact and gruesome fiction that will surely entertain, and Franklin presents a fascinating character in Adelia, who is odd for her era and profession yet familiar in her flaws and complexity. Let’s hope we won’t have to wait long for the next in this new series.
For fans of Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael series.
Ariana Franklin is the pen name of British historical fiction writer Diana Norman. Her first stand-alone City of Shadows is set in 1922 Berlin, a women in an asylum claims to be the only survivor of the Czar’s family and the heir to the Romanov fortune.
* = Starred Review(s)
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #49
by muffy
AT LONG LAST!!! The much anticipated first novel from Peter Ho Davies, named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 2003 for his two award winning short-story collections The Ugliest House in the World and Equal Love, is finally here.
The Welsh Girl* is an ambitious and moving wartime romance. The story opens with the building of a POW camp for German prisoners in the remote Welsh countryside in 1944. 17 year-old Esther, pregnant after being rape by an English soldier, and Karsten, a German POW haunted by the loss of honor, are thrown together during his escape.
Adding texture and contrast to Esther and Karsten’s story is British army officer Rotheram’s difficult assignment to interrogate captured nazi officer Rudolf Hess, both of them haboring secrets and struggling with matters of honesty and honor.
“What makes this first novel …an intriguing read isn't the plot, …but the beautifully realized characters, who learn that life is a jumble of difficult compromises best confronted with eyes wide open.” (Publishers’s Weekly)
Read an interview with P.H.D. and an interesting piece in Michigan Today by Leslie Stainton.
* = Starred Reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #48
by muffy
Call Me By Your Name* is the “clear-eyed, bare-knuckled, and ultimately unforgettable” first novel by André Aciman, author of Out of Egypt: A Memoir.
Set in a cliffside mansion on the idyllic Italian Riviera, what is to be another relaxed summer of fun and sunshine for Elio and his family, becomes the erotic coming-of-age for this 17 year-old, with the latest in a string of visiting resident scholars invited by his father, a prominent expatriate professor.
From the moment Oliver steps out of the taxi, Elio found himself troubling attracted to the young, breezy, spontaneous and sexy American graduate student working on a book about Heraclitus.
"In his first work of fiction, Aciman describes Elio's anxiety, uncertainty, awkwardness, and, later, passion in incredibly vivid detail, leaving no thought process unexplored. The strong bond between the two characters is reminiscent of the bond between Ennis and Jack in Brokeback Mountain, where each finds in the other the one true love of his life."
*= Starred Review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #47
by muffy
Inspired by the 1922 sensational case of Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters, the British couple who were executed for the murder of Thompson’s husband, Percy, Leslie Margolin’s fiction debut The adulteress is “unusually sensitive and judicious”.
Young Alma was smitten when the much-older, world renowned architect Francis "Rats" Rattenbury left his wife to marry her. Soon they were forced to leave their comfortable lifestyle in Canada for Bournsmouth, England under a cloud of rumors. After Alma’s senseless automobile wreck that seriously injured their son, Rats hired 17 year-old Percy Stoner who could barely drive, to chauffeur her around. Before long, Alma has taken the good-looking and sulky Percy to bed. Rats, forever condescending, goaded Percy into retaliation and Alma found herself pregnant and at a crossroad.
Margolin, author of a true-crime study of the Snyder-Gray case Murderess! The Chilling True Story of the Most Infamous Woman Ever Electrocuted traces each stage of the adulterous couple's eventual descent into murder with surgical precision and Alma's turbulent emotions with understanding and compassion.
For readers of true crime and psychological thriller.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #46
by muffy
Starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, “this brilliant debut is a must read”.
Set in Chicago, The Blade Itself opens with a botched pawnshop robbery that would send young Evan to prison while Danny, his partner and childhood friend walks away and builds himself a respectable life. Seven years later, Evan is out and looking for payback. In an attempt to outwit Evan without succumbing to his past life, Danny devises a kidnap/ransom scheme that would bring on escalating collateral damage.
First time novelist Marcus Sakey sustains the almost unbearable tension throughout, right from the thrilling opening; and convincingly portrays the bonds and vulnerability of friendship. For reader of crime fiction and fans of Lee Child, George Pelecanos, and T. Jefferson Parker.
Born in Flint, Michigan and a former student at the University of Michigan, Marcus Sakey lives in Chicago with his wife and is now working on his second novel. He will be reading and signing in Ann Arbor at Aunt Agatha’s, 1:30 p.m. on January 20th, 2007.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #45
by muffy
If you just cannot get enough of the religious suspense genre, here is another one for you.
Oh yes, the Knights Templars are again in the thick of things.
In Julia Navarro’s Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud, when the unidentified body of a tongue-less man turns up in the ashes of a suspicious fire in the Turin Cathedral, home of the Holy Shroud of Turin, Marco Valoni, Director of the Italian Art Crimes Department, investigates.
Soon he is sure several shadowy, anonymous groups of powerful and wealthy men with ties to Legend of the Knights Templars are somehow involved, while his only suspect is already in the Turin prison. More importantly, a far more shocking crime is about to happen. It is up to Valoni and his crack team of investigators to stop it.
Julia Navarro is a well-known Madrid-based journalist who is currently a political analyst for Agencia OTR/Europa Press and a correspondent for other prominent Spanish radio and television networks. Her second novel is due out in 2008. Brotherhood is already a bestseller in Europe.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction First #44
by muffy
Followers of Ian Rankin’s Inspector John Rebus series might want to consider this one…
Bleeding Hearts is a first U.S. edition of a stand-alone, originally published in the U.K.(1994) under his pseudonym - Jack Harvey.
Michael Weston is a highly-paid and seasoned assassin, famed for his long-distant shot through the heart. Things did not go well with the last job – it was a set-up. Now he must find his double-crossing employer and at the same time, stay a step ahead of his archnemesis - an American PI named Hoffer.
Reviewers expect the nonstop action, copious violence and arcane details about weaponry and forensics will please thriller junkies, but it’s also "smart and inventive” enough to engage fans of the Rebus series.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #43
by muffy
Debra Ginsberg, commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered and the author of three books of memoirs, tries her hands at fiction.
Blind Submission revolves around Angel, a young woman with a passion for books who becomes the assistant to a famously demanding San Francisco literary agent and quickly finds herself overwhelmed in the maelstrom of the office.
Angel has a knack for turning mediocre manuscripts into moneymakers but when an
anonymous email submission takes on alarming similarities to the intimate details of her personal life and carries thinly veiled threats, Angel learns the lengths to which writers - and agents - will go to get a book deal.
“An affectionate skewering of the ludicrous side of the book business and a claws-out send-up of the perversities of power, Ginsberg's blithe blend of mystery, romance, and satire is smart, classy, and fun”. Starred review Booklist.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #42
by muffy
Michael Gregorio's fiction debut Critique of Criminal Reason is a compelling, highbrow historical whodunit set in 1804. Hanno Stiffeniis, a rural magistrate, was summoned by the Prussian king to Konigsberg, to aid his mentor and the great thinker Immanuel Kant in a serial murder investigation. Fear gripped the city, and added to the tension was the threat of invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte and a dark secret in Stiffeniis’ past.
With a twisty, fast-moving plot, pitch-perfect period detail and a psychologically complex protagonist, readers "can expect stunning and thought-provoking reversals before the last clue is deciphered". I will be anxiously waiting for the sequel.
Starred reviews in Publishers’ Weekly and Booklist.