Posts by Vicki J Kondelik

This is a biography of the famous scientist Marie Curie that focuses on her relationship with her two daughters, Irène and Ève, who led fascinating lives in their own right. Irène followed in her mother's footsteps as a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, and Ève became a pianist, author, and humanitarian. It is a perfect read for Women's History month.

This is a charming, heartwarming mystery novel about Vera Wong, a widowed Chinese woman in her sixties who finds a dead body in her tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown and decides she will do a better job than the police at solving the crime. She rounds up four suspects, and then makes friends with them, cooking them delicious Chinese meals. Which one of her four new friends is a murderer?

This is a wonderful historical mystery and thrilling courtroom drama, inspired by actual events, about Martha Ballard, a midwife in 18th century Maine. When a dead body is found in a frozen river, Martha identifies the dead man as a prominent resident of the town, who was accused of rape. She defies the court system to find justice for the rape victim.

The Appeal is a brilliant mystery novel, told in emails and text messages, about a community theater group in a small town in the UK. They launch a fundraising appeal for cancer treatment for their leader's granddaughter, and tensions arise, leading to murder. Two law students sift through the correspondence to discover the truth of what happened.

This is the first part of an immense 2800-page novel which continues the adventures of the four musketeers--Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d'Artagnan. As the young French king, Louis XIV, comes of age, the musketeers help restore Charles II to the English throne and become involved in the intrigues of the French court.

Shutter is a thrilling, suspenseful novel about Rita, a Navajo woman who is a forensic photographer and who can see and talk to ghosts. Her unique ability helps her when investigating crime scenes, but she has to keep it secret. The ghost of a murder victim haunts Rita and insists that she find her killer, or she will make Rita's life a misery. The murder story is interspersed with the story of Rita's childhood on the Navajo Reservation and her relationship with her grandmother.

Dance Hall of the Dead is the second book in Tony Hillerman's best-selling mystery series featuring Navajo policeman Joe Leaphorn. (It can easily be read without having read the first.) Leaphorn investigates the disappearance of two boys, one Zuñi and one Navajo. The strength of Hillerman's writing is in his descriptions of the locations in New Mexico and Arizona, and of the religion, mythology, and ceremonies of the Navajo and Zuñi. A beautifully-written book!

This is the first in a mystery series set in Bangalore, India, in the 1920s, featuring Kaveri Murthy, an independent-minded young woman with a passion for mathematics and crime-solving. Recently married to a doctor, Kaveri attends a party with her husband's colleagues. The party soon becomes a crime scene, and Kaveri and her husband must find the killer before the wrong person is executed for the murder.

In this highly entertaining Victorian mystery novel, the heroine, the American-born Frances Wynn, Countess of Harleigh, is engaged to her beloved George, her partner in crime solving, when a mysterious woman shows up, claiming to be married to George. He denies it, but then the woman ends up murdered in Frances' garden. Can Frances and George clear their names and go on with their wedding?

This is a delightful mystery novel set in Victorian England, featuring Frances Wynn, an American heiress who married a British aristocrat, and whose husband was murdered in the first book in the series. In this one, she goes to a country house owned by the family of her partner in crime-solving, to attend her sister's wedding. A series of accidents happens to the guests, but Frances realizes they're not accidental at all. Who will be the next victim?