NY: Viking, 1999.
A few avid fellow readers have been urging this book on me for some time (we often start conversations with “What? You haven’t read that yet?!”) but I’ve just now gotten around to it. I wish I hadn’t waited.
Geary, Rick. The Saga of the Bloody Benders.
NY: NBM Comics, 2007.
Geary’s graphic documentary “Treasury of Victorian Murder” series is a guilty pleasure, the sort of thing you almost don’t want to admit you enjoy reading. They sometimes range into folklore and myth, but this volume is solidly historical, set in Labette County, Kansas, in the southeastern corner of the state, in 1870-73.
Renault, Mary. The Last of the Wine.
NY: Random House, 1956.
This was the first of Renault’s historical novels set in the classical Greek world, and it’s still arguably her best, encompassing life in Athens and in the Aegean during the latter stages of the Peloponnesian War.
Bowen, Rhys. Royal Blood.
NY: Berkeley, 2010.
Okay, so it’s late in 1932 and Lady Georgiana, living on tea and toast because her family’s broke and she has no way to earn a living, gets drafted by her cousin, Queen Mary, to go and represent the family at a royal wedding in a castle in Transylvania.
Smith, Jennifer E. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight.
NY: Little, Brown, 2012.
Seventeen-year-old Hadley Sullivan of Connecticut is not having a good day. Being very reluctantly packed off to London by her mother to act as a bridesmaid in her father’s second wedding, she misses her flight at JFK by four minutes.
Rankin, Ian. Tooth and Nail.
NY: St. Martin, 1992.
Detective Inspector John Rebus of the Borders and Lothian Police (i.e., Edinburgh) is as thorough a Scot as you can find, but in this quite mature third novel in the series he has to go and deal with those foreigners down in London, and it’s not a pleasant experience for him.
Lippman, Laura. Every Secret Thing.
NY: HarperCollins, 2003.
Six years ago, when sort-of best friends Alice and Ronnie were eleven years old and were sent home from a birthday party in disgrace, they kidnapped an infant from someone’s front yard on the spur of the moment. The baby died and the girls went to juvenile prison until they were legal adults.
Bowen, Rhys. Royal Flush.
NY: Berkeley, 2009.
As Bowen’s fans know by now, Lady Georgiana of Glen Garry and Ranoch, half-sister of the Duke of Ranoch, is trying to live in the family’s London townhouse on beans, tea, and toast. She’s a granddaughter of Victoria and 34th in the line of succession, but she’s still basically penniless.
Abercrombie, Joe. Red Country.
NY: Orbit, 2012.
It’s kind of hard to believe that The Blade Itself, Abercrombie’s first work of robust, “real world” fantasy, appeared less than six years ago. Now, with the sixth volume set in his uncomfortable, hardscrabble, magic-fueled but vey human world, he has become a highly-regarded fixture in the field with glowing reviews even from professional readers who don’t ordinarily venture into this kind of thing.
Crombie, Deborah. Necessary as Blood.
NY: Bantam, 2009.
This is the 13th novel in the mystery series starring Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid of Scotland Yard and his (once professional and now domestic) partner, Inspector Gemma James, and I think it’s one of the best. This is largely, I think, because there’s rather less digression about purely family matters
