Saplings by Noel Streatfeild

July 17, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 2009. Originally published 1945. 377 pgs. Purchased.  In 1939, the four Wiltshire children enjoy an idyllic summer holiday with their parents, a middle-class couple from central London. Their holiday – and, in fact, their comfortable lives – ends with the children being informed that the two oldest, Laurel and Tony, will be sent to boarding school while the two younger children, Kim and Tuesday, will be sent with Nannie to live with their paternal grandparents. […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: Noel Streatfeild

You Would Have Missed Me by Birgit Vanderbeke

July 15, 2019 by Christina

Print – fiction. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Peirene Press, 2019. Originally published 2016. 154 pgs. Purchased. The early 1960s, a young girl arrives in West Germany from East Germany with her parents. The family is settled into a camp for displaced people where the little girl befriends a family unit consisting of a woman and two men, who instruct the little girl to refer to them as her aunt and uncles. Her parents attempt to sever this […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fiction, German, Germany, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Birgit Vanderbeke

Assumed Obligation by Kara Louise

July 12, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Lulu.com, 2008. Originally published 2007. 244 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. In this sequel to Assumed Engagement, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy are headed to Paris with plans to dedicate a portion of their honeymoon to visiting and learning about a school for the deaf. A tenant of Darcy’s has adopted a deaf child, and both Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam are eager to set up a similar school at Pemberley to aid their tenant and others in Derbyshire. Meanwhile, […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Austen Inspired, Europe, Fiction, France, United Kingdom • Tags: Kara Louise

Don’t Look Back by Karin Fossum

July 10, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the Norwegian by Felicity David. Mariner Books, 2005. Originally published 2004. 320 pgs. Purchased. Near the base of Kollen Mountain, a little girl leaves her friend’s home after a sleepover and sets out with her toys, including a baby buggy, for the short walk home. Along the way, the little girl encounters neighbors who hastily say hello as they head to work until one man stops to offer her a ride home. A few hours […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Awards and Prizes, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Glass Key Award, Norwegian, Scandinavia, Translated • Tags: Karin Fossum

This Place Holds No Fear by Monika Held

July 8, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the German by Anne Posten. Haus Publishing, 2015. Originally published 2013. 272 pgs. Purchased.  In 1964, a Viennese man named Heiner is called to Frankfurt to testify at the war crimes trial of former SS officials and guards from Auschwitz. Heiner was deported to Auschwitz in April 1942 for his membership in the Austrian Communist Party, and his testimony about typing death records in the prisoner’s infirmary is crucial to the prosecutor’s case. As […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, German, Germany, Holocaust, Poland, Translated • Tags: Monika Held

Niccolò Rising by Dorothy Dunnett

June 24, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Gordon Griffin. Whole Story Audiobooks, 2013. Originally published 1986. 26 hours, 16 minutes. Purchased. Set in Bruges in 1460, the first book in Dunnett’s eight-partThe House of Niccolòseries introduces readers to Claes, a teenaged dyer’s apprentice who was raised from the age of ten by his employer, Marian de Charetty. Claes believes himself to be the legitimate son of Simon de St. Pol of Kilmirren, a Scottish lord who claims Claes (or, Nicholas van der […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Audiobook, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Italy • Tags: Dorothy Dunnett, Gordon Griffin

The Lower River by Paul Theroux

June 19, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Houghton Mufflin Harcourt, 2012. 323 pgs. Purchased.  In the forty years since Ellis Hock left the Peace Corps, his family’s tailoring business in Medford, Massachusetts became a victim of globalization; his wife filed for divorce; and his only child refuses contact with him until she needs money. Now, Hock has decided to return to the remote section of Malawi known as the Lower River where he spent four years serving in the Peace Corp. Hock quickly learns, […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Africa, Fiction • Tags: Paul Theroux

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

June 17, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the Swedish by Steven T. Murray. Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2003. Originally published 1991. 280 pgs. Purchased. On a cold January night, an elderly Swedish farmer awakens in the middle of the night to an eerie feeling. As his eyes and ears adjust to the faint light cast across the remote landscape, the farmer realizes the back window of his neighbor’s home has been broken into. Hurrying next door, the farmer finds his neighbor bludgeoned to […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Awards and Prizes, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Glass Key Award, Scandinavia, Swedish, Translated • Tags: Henning Mankell

The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon

June 14, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Davina Porter. Recorded Books, 2002. Originally published 2001. 55 hours, 30 minutes. Library copy. The fifth book in Gabaldon’s Outlander series opens right at the conclusion of the proceeding book: Brianna and Roger have reconciled at the clan gathering in the colony of North Carolina where the Frasers have traveled to see Jamie’s Aunt Jocasta marry Jamie’s co-revolutionist from Culloden. The wedding, however, is interrupted by the arrival of the local magistrate, who proceeds to arrest […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Chunkster, Fiction, North America, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Davina Porter, Diana Gabaldon

The Orange Grove by Larry Tremblay

June 10, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the French by Sheila Fischman. Peirene Press, 2017. Originally published 2013. 160 pgs. Purchased. Twin brothers, Ahmed and Aziz, live near an orange grove established by their grandfather. The orange grove provides Ahmed and Aziz with a shaded, safe place to play-act, as young children are ought to do. When a bomb falls on the grandparents’ house, the people living on the other side of the mountain – people that Ahmed and Aziz have been […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Fiction, French, Middle East, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Larry Tremblay

Broken Harbor by Tana French

June 7, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Penguin Books, 2013. Originally published 2012. 450 pgs. Purchased. First introduced in Faithful Place, Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy returns as the main detective in the fourth novel in French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. Known for his high closure rate, Scorcher is his supervisor’s go-to guy for training new murder detectives and for cases that are sure to attract attention from the news media. Hence why Scorcher ends up serving as the primary investigator into the death of Patrick Spain […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Ireland • Tags: Tana French

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

May 24, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Nan A. Talese, 2019. 337 pgs. Purchased. In McEwan’s alternative 1980s London, the British lose the Falkland War and Margaret Thatcher is pushed out of a power by a resurgent Labour Party led by Tony Benn. These events are minor, though, to the fact that Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, was never subjected to chemical castration for being a homosexual in the 1950s. As a result, Turning never committed suicide and the computer revolution of […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Science Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Ian McEwan