Every year at the end of July, the library in my hometown has a book sale. For a couple years I didn’t go, but the last two I’ve given up a summer day of sleeping in. Last year, I had to purchase a bag. This year, I limited myself to the amount I could carry to the car. I still came out with five.
The one I got that I’m still not sure about even months later is The Best American Travel Writing 2007 edited by Susan Orlean. I got it because at the time I was working on the posts for my Europe blog from my trip to England and Scotland this summer. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get around to reading this or if it will stay unread on my bookshelves or floor until I decide to get rid of it.
Getting Figures in Silk by Vanora Bennett was inspired by the fact that I bought and read Blood Royal two years ago. I thought it was good, and I’ve been wanting to read more of her books since. Figures in Silk is the story of sisters Jane and Isabel Shore. Jane becomes the mistress of Edward IV and Isabel is married into a silk dynasty. I am also a Philippa Gregory fan, so hearing the story of the Wars of the Roses from a different perspective than the nobility sounded interesting to me. I’m also writing my own historical fiction novel of the time period, and am constantly on the look out for both historical fiction and nonfiction that tells the story.
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer is the story of three Jewish brothers in Paris in 1937. One is an architect, one is an actor, one is studying to be a doctor. All are professions that will be forbidden to Jews when the Nazis take Paris in May 1940. It’s mainly about Andreas Levi, the architect, who arrives in Paris with a letter for a man he doesn’t know. Throughout the novel, Andreas gets to know the letter’s recipient, while World War II hovers in the background. I don’t know why I was drawn to this book because there’s a sense of mystery when one reads the blurb, and that’s not a genre I’m naturally drawn to.
Apparently, I was going through a mystery phrase in July because the next book is also a mystery. The English Monster by Lloyd Shepherd is about the aftermath of two families being murdered and left in the streets of Regency London. The public want answers for why and how it was allowed to happen. The search for answers however, starts two centuries earlier with a sea voyage and a young man who was on one of the ships owned by Elizabeth I, and how the ship was the first in England to trade in human souls. I don’t know much about Regency London, but I’m always looking for ways to spread my knowledge of London, and England in general, into the Regency period. This seemed like it would have a lot about how the commoners felt, so I decided to pick it up. I wasn’t sure what “human souls” referred to. Whether it was slavery or something else, but it intrigued me.
The last book I chose was Dark Angels by Karleen Koen. It turns out this is a prequel, so I don’t know if I’m going to read the rest of the Tamworth Saga or if I’m going to start with this. In any case, Dark Angels takes place in France and England in the seventeenth-century. It’s about Alice Verney and how she returned to England after two years in France and the mess of England in the world of Charles II betraying his own country. Alice retakes her position as lady-in-waiting and marries a duke. As a duchess, she’s at the centre of everything when a member of the royal family dies and poison is suspected. While Dark Angels doesn’t take place in a world I would usually read, the character of Alice Verney has many of the qualities I enjoy in a female character: brains, loyalty, and acting outside of what was expected for her as a woman in the 1600s.
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