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?
   

Virtual Poetry Circle: TERMINUS by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Join Savvy Verse and Wit's Virtual Poetry Circle, every Saturday. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. 

Here's my choice this week -

 Terminus BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

It is time to be old,

To take in sail:—

The god of bounds,

Who sets to seas a shore,

Came to me in his fatal rounds,

And said: “No more!

No farther shoot

Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.

Fancy departs: no more invent;

Contract thy firmament

To compass of a tent.

There’s not enough for this and that,

Make thy option which of two;

Economize the failing river,

Not the less revere the Giver,

Leave the many and hold the few.

Timely wise accept the terms,

Soften the fall with wary foot;

A little while

Still plan and smile,

And,—fault of novel germs,—

Mature the unfallen fruit.

Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,

Bad husbands of their fires,

Who, when they gave thee breath,

Failed to bequeath

The needful sinew stark as once,

The Baresark marrow to thy bones,

But left a legacy of ebbing veins,

Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,—

Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,

Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.”

 As the bird trims her to the gale,

I trim myself to the storm of time,

I man the rudder, reef the sail,

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:

“Lowly faithful, banish fear,

Right onward drive unharmed;

The port, well worth the cruise, is near,

And every wave is charmed.”

from The Poetry Foundation

This poem, which I found today, expresses how I felt on walking out of my place of employment after umpteen years, announcing my retirement and the death of my mother, on the same day.

How well said, for all those who wondered Why? Why would you do that? The first six lines expressed my sentiments. It was time to go and "mature the unfallen fruit."

Waiting on Wednesday: An Historical Novel and a Psychological Thriller

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine to introduce new books that we are waiting to be released.

Here are two to wait on, to be published February 10, 2015 by Simon and Schuster and Touchstone.

Amherst by William Nicholson is described as : a novel about two love affairs set in Amherst—one in the present, one in the past, and both presided over by Emily Dickinson. Sounds interesting, right?

Crazy Love You by Lisa Unger is about a childhood relationship that becomes dangerous for one of them when they become adults. The psychological thriller is described: Darkness has a way of creeping up when Ian is with Priss. Even when they were kids, playing in the woods of their small Upstate New York town, he could feel it.

What new books are you waiting to be published? 

First Chapter: Enter Pale Death by Barbara Cleverly

First Chapter, First Paragraph is hosted weekly by Bibliophile by the Sea. Share the first paragraph of your current read.

My current read is a book from the library by an historical mystery novelist whose books I've enjoyed before.This one doesn't disappoint either.

Published December 2, 2014 by Soho Crime.

First paragraph:

Prologue

England, April 1933 

"Gingerbread? You're sure it was gingerbread she asked for, Gracie?" 

The odd request was the very last thing a housekeeper wanted to hear at this moment. Mrs. Bolton stood in the center of the heaving kitchen overseeing her troops with a discipline firm enough to have impressed the Duke of Wellington himself. But, ever alert, the Iron Duke would, like her, have had his attention snagged by an unexpected detail. 

Book description: One morning before dawn in the stables of her country estate, Lady Truelove meets a violent death in an encounter with a dangerous horse. Classified as “death by misadventure,” this appears a gruesome accident. But Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands suspects foul play

Would you continue reading?

Sunday Salon: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

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.

Got a new book for review, thanks to St. Martin's Press!


The Nightingale

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah seems to be an historical novel of WWII and is described as " an epic love story and family drama set at the dawn of World War II....the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France."

What's new on your bookshelf?

Cozy Mystery Books for Winter

On a cold winter weekend, what better than some cozy mystery reads. Here is what I've read and am reading so far...

Arsenic and Old Books

To be released January 27, 2015; thanks to Berkley for a review copy. This is the first in the Cat in the Stacks mystery series that I've read and I hope to read others now that I've been introduced to the Maine Coon cat Diesel and his owner, librarian Charlie Harris. Diesel doesn't solve mysteries but he keeps his owner company while his owner, Charlie, does.

A Bite of Death

Read this as an e-book in the Dog Lovers Mystery series. I loved this one, the third in the series, as I did all the others I've read. Made me want to own a Malamute, in spite of the fact I probably am not alpha enough.

Now I'm reading

Darned If You Do

a Needlecraft Mystery, to be released officially on February 3, 2015. I enjoy that all these mystery novels are stand-alone reads, and can be read out of order.
 

New Cozy Mystery Series

I am always curious about new cozy mystery books and amazed at how prolific mystery writers are to come up with new settings and characters for a new series. Here are a few new ones.

By Hook or By Crook: A Lighthouse Library Mystery by Eva Gates is a new series that is due out on February 3, 2015. Set in a lighthouse library on Bodie Island on the Outer Banks, a librarian gets involved in the loss of a rare first edition Jane Austen and the murder of the chair of the library board. The setting grabs me.

Well Read, Then Dead: A Read 'Em and Eat Mystery by Terrie Farley Moran was published August 5, 2014. Set in a bookstore cafe on Fort Meyers Beach, the cozy has the two cafe owners solving a crime.

Death Is Like a Box of Chocolates: A Chocolate Covered Mystery by Kathy Aarons is the first in a new series that was published September 2, 2014. A photographer is poisoned by truffles in a bookstore and chocolate shop in Maryland, and the owners become amateur sleuths.

Any of these new books grab you?