Sunday Salon: Historical Fiction and Mystery

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week. Visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also visit It's Monday: What Are You Reading hosted by Book Journey, and Mailbox Monday.

Two uncorrected proofs arrived from Harper Collins which I am looking forward to reading.

John the Pupil

John the Pupil by David Flusfeder is to be released March 3, 2015. 

It's described as "a medieval road movie, recounting the journey taken from Oxford to Viterbo in 1267 by John and his two companions, at the behest of the friar and magus Roger Bacon, carrying a secret burden to His Holiness Clement IV. The holy trio are tried by thieves on the road and tempted by all sorts of sins – and by the sheer hell and heaven of medieval life. ‘John the Pupil’ reveals a world very different and all too like the one we live in now."

A Dangerous Place

A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear will be released March 17, 2015.

Spring 1937: Maisie Dobbs returns in a story of political intrigue and personal tragedy: a brutal murder in the British garrison town of Gilbraltar leads the investigator into a web of lies, deceit and danger.

Am on the last few pages of a book from my own collection, bought at a library sale:

The Art Thief

The Art Thief by Noah Charney was published September 18 2007 by Atria Books.

It's about three simultaneous art thefts - a Caravaggio altarpiece from a church in Italy, a 20th century modern masterpiece from a vault in Paris, and another modernist painting just purchased for over six million pounds from an art gallery in London.

The book is worthy of a reader who is a chess master, as the plot is a challenge to follow and to keep all the pieces in mind. Math, figures, and art history, art forgery and events are put together in a complex pattern. Nevertheless, I had a good time trying to follow along. And the humor lightens it up here and there.

Next, I have to decide - read one of my library finds or one of my own books?
   

Mailbox Monday: Two Thrillers and The Art Thief

Visit Mailbox Monday, hosted by Vicki, Leslie, and Serena, to see other bloggers' mailboxes each week.

Thanks to the publishers for Advance Reader's Copies of the two thrillers:

Uncaged: The Singular Menace

Publisher description:
#1 New York Times bestselling Prey author John Sandford and Michele Cook debut a high-octane young adult thriller series.
 Shay Remby arrives in Hollywood with $58 and a handmade knife, searching for her brother, Odin. 
Odin’s a brilliant hacker but a bit of a loose cannon. He and a group of radical animal-rights activists hit a Singular Corp. research lab in Eugene, Oregon. The raid was a disaster, but Odin escaped with a set of highly encrypted flash drives and a post-surgical dog. When Shay gets a frantic 3 a.m. phone call from Odin—talking about evidence of unspeakable experiments, and a ruthless corporation, and how he must hide—she’s concerned. When she gets a menacing visit from Singular’s security team, she knows: her brother’s a dead man walking.

What Singular doesn’t know—yet—is that 16-year-old Shay is every bit as ruthless as their security force, and she will burn Singular to the ground, if that’s what it takes to save her brother.

Remains of Innocence

Publisher's description:
Sheriff Joanna Brady must solve two perplexing cases that may be tied together in New York Times bestselling author J. A. Jance’s thrilling tale of suspense that brings to life Arizona’s Cochise County and the desert Southwest in all its beauty and mystery. 

An old woman, a hoarder, is dying of emphysema in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In cleaning out her house, her daughter, Liza Machett, discovers a fortune in hundred dollar bills hidden in the tall stacks of books and magazines that crowd every corner. 

Tracing the money’s origins will take Liza on a journey that will end in Cochise County, where Sheriff Joanna Brady is embroiled in a personal mystery of her own. A man she considers a family friend is found dead at the bottom of a hole in a limestone cavern near Bisbee. And now there is the mystery of Liza and the money. Are the two disparate cases connected? It’s up to Joanna to find out. 

 Bought at the library book sale:

The Art Thief

Publisher description:
In "The Art Thief," three thefts are simultaneously investigated in three cities, but these apparently isolated crimes have much more in common than anyone imagines. A dizzying array of forgeries, overpaintings, and double-crosses unfolds as the story races through auction houses, museums, and private galleries -- and the secret places where priceless works of art are made available to collectors who will stop at nothing to satisfy their hearts' desires.
What's new on your book shelves?