"THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE" / BY ALAN BRADLEY
If you like mysteries with very little gore and plenty of chuckles, you will enjoy this "sit back and just have fun" book. But while you're laughing, you'll also pick up little snippets of knowledge, from chemistry to stamp collecting. And, to top it all off, you'll fall in love with the book's 11-year-old heroine/scientist, Flavia de Luce. So put this book on your list of summer vacation reading.
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"THE DANGEROUS LEGACY" / BY ELIZABETH CAMDEN
For me, this book presents a mixed bag. The plot has more than enough complications to keep the story moving but also seems too contrived. The love story throughout also has too many highs and lows with little breathing room between. But with all this, I learned about the importance of the telegraph (this takes place in the early 1900s, before we had telephones), the political manipulations around the building of the Panama Canal, and the powerful domination of the ultra-rich. Try it - you might like it.
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"THE SILENT PATIENT" / ALEX MICHAELIDES
This is a mystery story with a deeply psychological focus - a therapist working with an inmate (an accomplished artist) in a contemporary English mental facility. There are, of course, the inevitable convoluted twists and turns of a thriller throughout the book. I was fascinated with the story and was glad to have the leisure to read the book in just a couple of days without a lot of interruptions (always a bother when you're in the midst of trying to solve a mystery).
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"ALL THE LITTLE HOPES" / BY LEAH WEISS
This coming-of-age story takes place in North Carolina at the time of WWII, narrated chapter-by-chapter by Lucy and Bert, two adventurous girls in their early teens. Although the plot comes primarily from the fertile imagination of the author, she weaves in a variety of historical facts. Among them, beeswax contracts during the war, blue ghost fireflies and purple honey, German POWs working local farms, as well as Bavarian folklore. There's even a hoecake recipe at the end, plus one for a German marble cake.
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"LORRAINE HANSBERRY: THE LIFE BEHIND 'A RAISIN IN THE SUN'" / BY CHARLES J. SHIELDS
This is an extensive and intense biography of the young playwright, Lorraine Hansberry, the author of the award-wining play "Raisin in the Sun." She was the first Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway. At the time, she was only 28 years old. It was less than six years later, in 1965, that she died of pancreatic cancer. This biography chronicles Hansberry's early life growing up in Chicago, through her years of interest in Communism, and eventual recognition as a dynamic playwright.
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"THE SPANISH DAUGHTER" / BY LORENA HUGHES
This mystery, set in Ecuador in the 1920's, has more than enough twists and turns to keep you guessing throughout. After a death at sea, that prompts a woman to take on the disguise of her drowned husband, you (the reader) will find all sorts of other deceptions pile one on top of another until the final pages. And, while you're reading, you might find yourself learning some of the workings of a cocoa plantation and get a hankering for a nice hot cup of chocolate now and then.
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"THE LADY BREWER OF LONDON" / BY KAREN BROOKS
This is a lengthy (almost 800 pages) novel that takes the reader to England during the 1400s - a time when ale was the primary drink of choice, as water was considered (and was) dangerous. Set in southern England and London, our heroine becomes a "brewster" in order to provide a home for her younger siblings, as their parents had died. What follows is a long series of trials, joys, disasters, misunderstandings and treachery - along with an up-and-down love story. A formidable tome, with plenty of action.
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"THE LOVE SONGS OF W.E.B. DuBOIS" / BY HONREE FANONNE JEFFERS
Another formidable book of nearly 800 pages - a novel, but unlike books with warm-and-fuzzy characters and a limited story line. This is a serious treatise on America's long and troubled history of slavery and its aftermath, told in a series of generational stories of the black experience as lived in a fictional small town in Georgia. Many of the stories are harsh and raw, hard to read, hard to imagine. And yet, life and love continue to flourish as the stories unfold. Hard to forget.
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