All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

First of all, let me say that this book has been lauded in many reviews as a great book and is still on the New York Times best-seller list.  That said, I have to confess, that after two weeks and only getting through half of it, I gave up.  That is not to say that I will not try to read this book again.  I just might give it another chance later on.  That is what I did when I did not like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and see how that turned out.

This book is set in during World War II and involve two sixteen-year-olds, Marie-Laure, a blind French girl who lives with her father, who works at a Paris museum.  He buys her on her birthday each year a book in braille and builds a puzzle box of the city of Paris, in scale, so she can find her way around it in her mind.  The museum is home to many priceless art pieces, but one in particular is worth more that the others.  It is the Sea of Flame, a cursed gem, that is said to provide immortality to its owner.  When the Nazis invade France, the French box up the valuables and send them off to be hid.  The gem, however, they make three copies of it and send two of the copies along with the real one, off to different points to try to keep it safe.  Marie-Laure's father is one who is given a stone and they set off on a journey to find the man they are to give it to, who will get it out of the country.  By the time they arrive, he has left his home.  It is not far to her great-uncle's house in Saint-Malo.  Her uncle, an eccentric who never got over World War I, has a housekeeper who works for the underground.

Soon, Marie-Laure's father is sent back to Paris, but he leaves the stone and a puzzle box of the streets of Saint-Malo with her in the care of her Uncle and the housekeeper.  The book bounces back and forth between time periods and at one point, she is alone in the house, when a Nazi, whose purpose is to hunt down Europe's treasure's for Hitler, goes to the house to find the stone, with only Marie-Laure in the house that we know of, because she has heard from no one and is hiding with the stone.

The other teenager, is Werner, an orphaned German boy who, with his sister, Jutta, live with a sweet French woman and other children.  Werner is a self-taught intelligent young man, who figures out how to fix radios.  He learns math and mechanics from an old book, that is eventually taken from him by the Nazis, because the book was written by a Jew.  He builds a radio and the children all spend their evenings listening to it.  He can even get stations as far away as France, which how he and Jutta learn of what the Germans are doing to the French.  Jutta is against this.  But Werner does not know what to think.  His bleak future consists of working in the mines when he turns sixteen, but chance intervenes.  A Nazi official hears about his prowess and sends for him to fix his fancy radio, which he does, easily.  This official gets Werner enrolled in a Nazi boy's school where he is taught how to be a soldier as well as spending special time with a professor who is trying to make a better radio for the war.  His best friend, Fredrick, is a rich kid who, because of his position in society is sent to this school, even though he is as blind as a bat and cheats the eye exam to get in.  He is a dreamer who  loves birds and looks out for the unfortunate.  He is smart, but weak, and his ideals get him into horrific trouble that Werner cannot seem to protect him from, though he feels as though he should.  In one of the flash forwards, we see that Werner and two other soldiers are under a building with a broken radio in Saint-Malo, with the Americans coming and no way out.  It is here that his life intersects with Marie-Laure somehow.  I never got that far.

Don't let the fact that I didn't finish this book effect your idea of whether or not to read it.  Like I said before, it has garnered incredible reviews and maybe I was just not in the mood to read a book like this now.  If this overview of the book interests, by all means pick it up and give it a whirl.  I myself just might one day finish it too.

Valley of Silence: Book Three of the Circle Trilogy by Nora Roberts

This is the final book in the Circle Trilogy and I have to say they saved the best for last.  Maybe its because I can really relate to the bookish and curious nature of Moira and the cynical, sarcastic, been-there-done-it attitude of Cian.  This book will culminate in the ultimate battle against Lilith on the Valley of Shadows, where blood is soaked into the ground from when the gods battled against each other ages ago.

The people of Gael watch as Moira pulls out the sword of destiny, which determines if that person will be the ruler.  When she pulled it out, a streak of wild lightening flashed up her arm and through the sword into the sky, which heightens Moira's small amount of magical powers.  She works with Glenna to make them even stronger as the others continue to practice fighting.  At her coronation ceremony feast, one of Lilith's half-vampires shoots an arrow at her and Cian pushes her down and gets stabbed instead.  She declares, much to his discontent, that he is now Sir Cian.  It helps to cement the people to like and trust Cian more.  They decide to use the friendly dragons in the area, who have never had much to do with the people of Gael, but whom Larkin can talk to.  They plan to reign fire bombs and fire arrows from the skies.

Moira, tired of waiting for Cian to come to her goes to him and seduces him into taking her virginity, something he has refused to do, since they have no hope for a future.  He will live on after her and can not provide her with children.  They only have this short period of time together, before he will leave and go back to his world where he belongs. 

Lilith, meanwhile, sends her six-year-old vampire child, Davey, to have his first hunt.  He is protected from steel and wood by her magician's spell and goes out and convinces one of her men to leave the encampment to try to save him, only to be viciously killed.  Moira is having a hard time with her role as queen as she has to offer comfort to the families who have lost loved ones.  So, when her ladies-in-waiting demand to go and fight alongside their men, she gives in and lets them.

On a side note, there is one of the most sexy love scenes I have ever encountered in either a romance or vampire book and it involves mirrors.  I'd have never thought of it.  Hats off to you Nora Roberts for thinking outside the box.

The end of the book culminates in the battle and the secret weapon the six are planning to use to hopefully wipe out all of the vampires.  This was truly a satisfying read and a wonderfully grand ending to a very enjoyable trilogy.  These books, and this one in particular, will take you far away from your own world, into a magical one where anything is possible. 

A Marked Man by Barbra Hamilton

In this second mystery set in Revolutionary  Boston and featuring Abigail Adams, the Boston tea party has just happened and the colonists are awaiting the king's reprisal.  Abigail notices in the paper that a slave girl named Bathsheba has gone missing, leaving behind a young babe and a toddler.  Abigail knows in her heart that this woman would never leave her children behind and must be dead.  She is soon distracted from this by the arrest of Henry Knox, a bookstore owner and printer of seditious material, for the death of an Army officer and friend of the Governor's.  It is said that Henry and Lucy Fluckner, from the first book, whose maid was a target for a madman, were meeting and in love.  Sir Jonathan Cottrell tried to touch Lucy in a very inappropriate manner, in order to dishonor her into a marriage with him so he could get a lot of land in Maine from her father.  Henry gave him a black eye and threatened to kill him if he touched her again.

Cottrell, then went to Maine to oversee Mr. Fluckner's properties and try to get the people off the land to make way for new people.  The night he got back he was supposed to go to the Fluckner's ball where Lucy's father was going to announce her engagement to him, against her wishes, but he never showed up.  Instead, his body is found beaten and frozen on the ground outside the house the next morning.  Mr. Fluckner, not realizing the gravity of the situation and just wanting Henry away from his daughter, has one of his employees say they saw Henry in the alley that night with the scarf that was found on the scene.  Henry is to be tried in military court after being questioned on the Sons of Liberty and everything he knows, and then likely found guilty of murder and hung.  Luckily the weather is keeping the ship from arriving, giving Abigail Adams and her sleuth in arms (sort of) Lieutenant Coldstone.

Abigail, with the help of Lucy and her chaperone, Mrs. Sandhayes, help to figure out who was in the ball where and when in order to see who could have slipped out of the house to kill Cottrell, but this gets them nowhere.  Cottrell's servant, who didn't go with him to Maine because he was too ill, is found to have been poisoned by two actors from Barbados, where Cottrell was stationed and sullied a girl's reputation, who had committed suicide, and had to buy off her parents.  Needless to say, everywhere he went, Cottrell made enemies, but sorting through them and finding the killer is going to be tough.

As Abigail and Coldstone get closer their lives are threatened.  Coldstone is lured to a secret place and is shot and Abigail interrupts an intruder set on poisoning her food stores.  Cottrell is said to have been seen at a house rented by a mysterious Mr. Elkins, whom no one can find.  An inspection of the house results in the sense that someone has died there, but there is no proof of this, only an empty well in the cellar, used to keep wine cooled.

As time grows close for Henry's departure, Abigail finally realizes who the killer is, but may be too late to save her life or Henry's, as the most ingenious nemesis steps forward and shocks the reader with their identity.  I did not see the ending coming.  This book was a really great read and kept me on the edge of my seat.  As I flew through the last pages of the book, I was hoping for the killer to  be caught and taken in.  The ending will surprise you.  This series really delves into what life was like at that time in history (including the use of a French version of a chamber pot in church because the sermons are so long and having to deal with frozen laundry) and lets a woman, who in today's time could have been a lawyer like her husband John, or anything she wanted to be, but is put into the part of mother and wife.  This series lets her spread her wings and become something extra and lets her use her sharp mind to unmask killers.   By the way, Henry Knox and Lucy Fluckner were real people.  They will marry and have a ton of kids and fight in the war.  Fort Knox and Knoxville is named after Henry.

Quotes:

Honestly, I understand why ladies are never the heroines of anything, they simply cannot get away from their kitchens long enough to rescue anyone.

--Barbara Hamilton (A Marked Man p 281)

Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Marked-Man-Abigail-Adams-Mystery/dp/0425237087/ref=sr_1_17?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475501257&sr=1-17&keywords=a+marked+man

This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash

This New York Times bestselling author has written a novel about two girls and their lives during the time when Sammy Sousa was battling McGuire for the most home runs and beat Maris's record.  Years ago, their father legally gave all rights to being a parent to Easter and Ruby Quillby.  Wade was a minor league player who once played with Sousa and is now washed up.  Afterward, her mother began a quick spiral downward into drugs and depression until finally one day, when Easter was twelve and Ruby six, their mother overdoses on drugs.

They are then sent to a foster home to stay while their mother's parents in Alaska start the process of getting custody of them.  But Easter doesn't want to go to Alaska.  She's happy in Gastonia, where she has a safe home and a boyfriend, who knocks on her window and they spend time talking to each other all night.

Everything changes one night, when their father, Wade Chesterfield, who has been denied access to the girls, knocks on their window.  Easter thinks it's her boyfriend, so she opens it, only to see her father coming through the window.  Before she can stop her, Ruby runs to him.  Ruby doesn't remember that he was a bad father and husband to their mother.  Wade threatens to take off with Ruby if Easter calls the alarm, so she decides to go quietly with him.

But Wade isn't the only one looking for the girls.  A man hired by a mob boss who robbed an armored car and stole a lot of money, part of which Wade stole from him, when he was in his house doing construction repairs.  But this is also the story of Brady, Easter and Ruby's guardian ad litem, who knows Wade has the money and the bad guys are after them, but can't get the police interested.  They only care about the catching the mobster, not the lives of two innocent girls. The Brady had an unfortunate incident that got him booted off the police force and caused him to lose his family.  Helping these two girls becomes a mission for him.

Easter doesn't know what to make of Wade.  She feels so conflicted.  He left, but now he's back, but she knows that trouble is looking for them.  She wants to hold on to the resentment she has for her father, but she also desperately wants his love and attention.  This book will hit you in the gut when you think about what these poor girls have gone through and what their fate may be.  This is one not to be missed.

*Addendum: This novel won the 2014 Golden Dagger Award for Best Novel by the Crime Writers Associates.  This is a very high honor.

Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/This-Dark-Road-Mercy-Novel/dp/0062088262/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1477057014&sr=8-1&keywords=the+dark+road+to+mercy

Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez

In 2001, right before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Rodriguez, a hairdresser, joined an humanitarian aid group to go to Kabul, Afghanistan and try to help.  The country was in chaos after driving out the Russians, surviving the tribal wars, and the driving out of the Taliban.  When she arrives she's with doctors and such who are setting up clinics and doing "important things", but no one seems to know what to do with this woman with spiky dyed bright red hair that can't be contained under a scarf, until she goes to a big party held by aid group for everyone to meet each other, and when she is introduced as a hairdresser, a wild cheer goes up.  It turns out that the Taliban closed all of the salons because they believed they were brothels, which a few were.  Very few salons were open now and they didn't know how to do much.  One woman had to drive to Pakistan to get her hair colored, because no one in Afghanistan knew how to do it.  Soon she is swamped with requests to cut and do hair.

This is when she gets the idea to open up a beauty school to train Afghan women to do better hair (they didn't even have real curlers for perms and had the customer leave the solution in overnight, which resulted in frizzy hair) and to train new ones in the profession so they could earn their own money for themselves and their family.

Soon she is back home with her mean and abusive second husband and two boys, and she decides to call Paul Mitchell on a whim and they agree to send her whatever she wants.  They suggest she call other companies to donate items as well.  Soon the boxes start to arrive and there are so many she has to rent a storage shed.  While she gets up the courage to finally leave her husband, partly in thanks to the friends she made in Afghanistan and what she saw there, she finds out about an aid organization that plans to open up a beauty school and she offers to teach it.

The organization provides the salon and she has the materials to work with.  She is soon swamped with over a hundred applicants for her first class and she can only take twenty.  Her Dari is limited so she has to speak through her best friend, Roshanna, who teaches her much about the Afghan culture.  She is soon tearing her hair out trying to teach them about the color wheel that is essential to highlighting and coloring hair, when after days of this, she finally manages to reach one student, who explains it in her own way, and soon they are on their way to learning how to do hair.

Two of her Americanized Afghan friends are determined to get her an Afghan husband.  She thinks this is silly, after all, she has already failed at two marriages.  Soon, however, they find the perfect man, Sam.  Only he speaks very little English and already has a first wife with seven daughters.  After only knowing him for about twenty days, and being ten years older than he is, she marries him.  Things are rocky due to culture and language barriers.  In Afghanistan, men may hold hands or put an arm around another man walking down the street, but they don't hold the hands of their women, ever, or show affection.

When Roshanna's family has a man's mother asks for her to marry her son (it's the mother who finds the first wife in Afghan culture), they are thrilled, because, Roshanna had been engaged once, when the Taliban was in rule and they were afraid they would take her and marry her by force, they set up a marriage to a German Afghan.  After the marriage certificate is signed at the engagement party, unbeknownst to her family he rapes her and then leaves for Germany and the family soon finds out he has divorced her.  No one knows she is not a virgin.  Wedding are a very big deal in Afghanistan.  The women put on enough make-up and pile their hair up as high as possible on their head that they look like drag queens.  On the night of the wedding, there is a sheet put up between the two sexes, as men and women do not mingle at official parties.  On both sides, however, everyone is doing something beyond dirty dancing, it's so sensual.  Panic soon ensues, however, when the handkerchief is brought out with no blood on it.  She won't let him completely enter her because it hurts.  So, Debbie has a talk with her and cuts her fingernail to the quick and forces blood to come from her finger in order to smear it on the handkerchief.  Everyone is happy.

Finding funding for her second and third classes becomes hard, so Debbie opens up a beauty salon at her new home with her husband and hires the top four girls from her first class to not only work there, but to also teach the class, with the idea that in the future, these women would be teaching the classes themselves.  Each member of the class leaves with a complete kit to set up shop anywhere, including brushes, combs, curlers, curling irons, hair dryers, etc...Word spreads among the Westerners, as well as the Afghan women about the school and her salon and soon they are swamped with customers, including some men, who sneak in after hours, because it is illegal for a woman to do a man's hair, for a style and manicure.

While there are many problems that occur in her marriage, with keeping the beauty school open, and with some of the dangerous Afghan people who are still pro-Taliban, she keeps going determined to give these women their freedom to make it on their own and to finally have a say in the family's finances.  This program is changing the lives of not only the women but of the men in their lives

Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Kabul-Beauty-School-American-Behind/dp/0812976738/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479136574&sr=1-1&keywords=kabul+beauty+school+by+deborah+rodriguez

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

In 1998, when he was promoting Bag of Bones, a fan asked King, what happened to Danny Torrence and if he'd write a sequel.  Over the years, King would wonder what age Danny was and if he had become an alcoholic like his father, only he'd joined AA.  This book answers these questions and more.

Dick Halloran teaches a young Danny how to lock up the ghosts he still sees from the Overlook Hotel into lockboxes inside his head and how to close his eyes for five seconds and the vision he sees will be gone.  As he ages, he soon starts to drink to drown out the shining.  In Wilmington, North Carolina, he just about hits bottom and his wondering ways end, when he finds himself in Frazier, New Hampshire and meets Henry, an old man, with a little bit of shine to him, who runs the small train around the park.  Henry sets Dan up with a temporary job until he can get one at the local hospice as an orderly.  At the hospice, he becomes known as Dr. Death, because when the housecat would go into someone's room and lie on their bed, it would turn out to be their time to die and Dan would be called and he would ease them into the afterworld.  He can also see when people are dying by a number of flies on their faces. And he still sees ghosts, both good and bad.

Down the road, a young child, Abra, whose shining ability makes Dan's look like a flashlight compared her lighthouse, has hidden her talent from her parents so they wouldn't worry.  One night she was able to place herself in Iowa when a group of people, the True Knot, talented folks like herself are torturing a kid with and sucking the shining out of him, which makes them younger and stronger.  Most of them have been around for centuries.  Abra reaches out to Dan and writes on his chalkboard in his room about what has happened, and for a short while they carry on a conversation in this manner.  When Abra is twelve, she sees a picture of a dead boy in a circular of missing kids and contacts Dan again for his help.

The problem is that Abra was noticed by the True Knot that night and they are searching for her because they believe they can feed off of her for years and things have been lean lately.  Also, the boy they took the shining from had the measles, and one of them gets its and dies from it.  They need Abra's antibodies to cure them as well.  She is able to go inside the leader of the group, Rose the Hat, for a moment, but when Rose tries it, Abra pushes her out easily with a loud shout that causes an earthquake on her block.

Luckily, Abra's doctor is a friend of Dan's in AA and through him, Abra and Dan must convince her dad that they need to go after this group and kill them before they come and kill Abra.  They hatch a plan for Dan and Abra to switch brains so Abra will not be in danger, but it doesn't go as they hoped and Abra gets taken by Crow, Rose's man and he's taking her back to the campsite, where the campers they travel in are, at the ground where the Overlook Hotel used to be.  Dan hatches another plan, with the help of Abra's great grandmother, who is dying and goes out face the Overlook Hotel once again.  This time, maybe for the last time, if he survives.

Though this book was low on the scare factor (maybe I'm getting too old to scare easily?), King "shines" as the master storyteller he is and it was a really great read.  I was happy to find out what happened to Danny and to see others like him and watch as he becomes the teacher that Dick Halloran was to him.  It was also nice to have the closure to Danny's story that lots of us have been dying to read about and King does it in a very wondrous way.

Quotes

We’re all dying.  The world’s just a hospice with fresh air.

--Stephen King (Doctor Sleep p 67)

 Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Sleep-Novel-Stephen-King/dp/1451698860/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476884561&sr=1-1&keywords=doctor+sleep+stephen+king

 

Bless Your Heart, Tramp by Celia Rivenbark

In this first book of essays collected from Rivenbark's columns, she focuses on 50's Home Economics Advice, Marriage Tips, Lazy Men, Disney movies, Southern speak, snow, exploding grits, women who make crocheted bear can vests and hats, card shopping, and Congestion in the Cold Aisle.

There is a 50s home economics textbook out there includes a section on "Recommendations for a Successful Marriage".  "Textbook: Prepare yourself.  Take 15 minutes to rest so you'll look refreshed when hubby comes home...Mama Celia: Get knee-walking drunk.  You've earned it.  You've been with four kids under the age of 7 all day....Textbook: Have a delicious meal ready...MC: Order a big, expensive dinner-to-go from a nice restaurant and call hubby at work to tell him to pick it up...Textbook: Just before your husband arrives, clear away clutter and run a dust cloth over tables...MC: Drop-kick the Little Tikes crap into the yard and hide the smaller stuff under the couch...Textbook: Make the evening his. Never complain if he doesn't take you out to dinner or to other places of entertainment...  MC: Complain constantly and bitterly if he balks at taking you out at least once a week.  Withhold sex until he complies.   Textbook: Make him comfortable.  Arrange his pillow...MC: Place a pillow over his head and hold it there until he promises to do at least one household chore a month."

Some marriage rules: 1. "Never marry someone until you've established the perfect pizza ratio....Never marry a man who wants two slices one week and four the next....2. Never ask him for his opinion on colors, patterns, or textures...3.Accept that men are notorious for never completing a task.  If you ask him to clean the refrigerator, which is working beautifully, by the way, except that he will have the coolant coil replaced by the end of the day and all your meat will have spoiled....4. Women, shut up....Quit talking everything to death....5.Never go to bed angry.  Draw straws for the couch and resume fighting in the morning."

Disney movies can be more dangerous then they seem.  "I always thought that as long as it was Disney, how bad could it be?  Then, I started watching more closely.  Take "The Little Mermaid".  Sure, Ariel is pretty and smart and has a great set of pipes but what does she do?  at 16, she deliberately disobeys her doting father and tosses him and her adoring sisters aside like week-old flounder to chase after an older man whom she decides to marry just THREE DAYS after they meet.  Within mere hours of meeting Prince Eric, they're shackin' and her poor family back there "under the seaaaaaa is sick with worry."

In the South, a "Southerner can get away with the most awful insult as long as it is prefaced with the words "Bless her heart" or "Bless his heart".  As in "Bless his heart, if they put his brains on the head of a pin, it'd roll around like a BB on a six-lane highway."  Sadly, some Southerners are slowly stopping using southernisms like ya'll or addressing their elders properly.  "The properly reared Southern child responds to such a question with a 'Yes, ma'am, Miss Lura Mae, I surely would love some more of your delicious lemonade if it's not too much trouble.'  Of course, that is a bit long-winded, but we Southerners believe that a simple "yes" or "no" has a certain harshness in it that could be construed as, horror of horrors, rude."

Northerners make fun of Southerners and their fear of snow.  At the threat of a snowflake, schools close and the grocery store runs out of bread and milk.  "They love to say stuff like,'Geez, back home it'd snow 15, 18 inches and nothing shuts down.'  Well, that's because ya'll got the road equipment to handle regular snowstorms.  All we got is Bubba and Junior's four-wheel drive pick-em-up-trucks to help us out of the driveway and on our way  And the truth is they're probably not budging either because there's a good chance they've gotten likkered up and have gone off to fry a turkey in somebody's backyard."

Grits can be quite dangerous.  "A large pot of grits exploded and sent two people to the hospital...The grits were being prepared for a client appreciation party hosted by a Gainesville accounting firm when a large piece of the exploding pot hit one of the guests just as he was waiting for his heaping helping of fish and grits."  Kids today are prepared for tornadoes, hurricanes, and fires, but no one is training them in the preparedness of exploding grits.

Try buying a birthday card today in under five hours.  You can't do it.  The problem is that there is a card for every conceivable occasion or condition.  Such as: "We've Just Broken Up, Secret Pal...Now That You Know I'm Gay...I'm Glad You're My Doctor...So You've Had a Hysterectomy...Thanks for Covering for Me. (Who do you send this one to?  Your buddy who lied to your wife and said you were playing pool at his house instead of hanging out at Hooters quaffing pitchers and wearing Hooter Girls' orange shorts on your head?)..."Our marriage may not be exactly like everyone else's but that's OK.' What does that mean?  Is one of you inflatable?"

And finally, she looks at the cold aisle.  Do you need Extra Strength or Maximum Strength?  "...nighttime and daytime, caplets, coated caplets, enteric (who knows?) buffered, aspirin-free, with sleeping aid, without sleeping aid, effervescent, liqui-cap, caffeine-free, with cream and sugar, thin crust or hand-tossed...Did I want Co-Tylenol, Co-Advil or Co-Dependent Tylenol and Advil for the dysfunctional cold sufferer?....How often did I want to take this stuff? Every four hours, six, 12, 24?  I was leaning heavily toward Contac which boasted Severe Cold and Flu Maximum Strength Continuous Action for Adults.  Most adults would love continuous action."