I've finished three very good and very different books recently that I'd like write about, but it's really hard during the work week to come up with a thoughtful post, so I'll try and work on them over the weekend. Tonight I'll stick with something easy and share my recent library finds instead. I've been on a roll with library books--but specifically interlibrary loan books--almost every book I've brought home in the last six months or so I've read cover to cover. My track record is not so good, however, when it comes to books from the public library (I'm spoiled for choice, I think). I do have a nice, reasonable size pile, though, only four books. I should be able to keep these over my break from work, so hopefully I'll get a few of them read.
Helen Hollick's The Forever Queen is a nice, chunky historical novel set in 11th century England. It's based on the life of Emma, the Queen of Saxon England who was married to two kings and the mother of two more. I don't always like to travel that far back in time, but I do like reading about strong female characters/women. I always like flipping through my library books and reading bits and pieces--interestingly there are several pages of recommendations and comments including two pages from bloggers!
I'm very excited about Andrew Winer's The Marriage Artist and am tempted to start reading tonight. I believe it has a contemporary setting but flashes back to pre-WWII Vienna. The Vienna angle is what caught my attention but that era is also of great interest to me. "Two mysterious deaths unlock one man's past and another's future in this moving tale of art, love, and history."
A coworker suggested The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault to me. "The dusty files of a venerable dictionary publisher . . . a hidden cache of coded clues . . . an unsolved murder in a gritty urban park--all collide memorably in Emily Arsenault's magnificent puzzle, an ingenious suspense novel, and an exploration of definitions of words, of who we are, and of the stories we choose to define us." She knows my tastes pretty well--how did I miss this one? It does sound right up my alley.
Have you ever flipped through those scrolling book lists on Amazon's book pages that show titles similar to whatever you happen to be looking at? Do you ever scroll through them looking for ideas? That's where I found Craig Nova's The Informer. This is a spy novel set in 1930 Berlin. I'm curious about this one as the investigator in the story is named Armina, which sounds like a feminine name--somehow unexpected for the period and place.
Even with such a small pile, choosing just one to read (at least to start with) is still a dilemma!