Posts by Vicki J Kondelik

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?

This is a fantasy novel about Addie, a young woman in 1714 who makes a deal with a devil-like figure for eternal life, only to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Three hundred years later, in 2014, she finally meets someone who remembers her. Why does Henry, the bookseller, remember her when no one else does? You will find out in this poignant, beautifully-written novel.

In this exciting, suspenseful mystery, Detective Inspector Harbinder Kaur investigates two murders that are tied to another murder that took place over twenty years ago, when a group of friends at a London school killed a classmate. The story takes many twists and turns, and several of the leading characters are suspects.

This epic novel tells the story of three important figures of the French Revolution: Camille Desmoulins, Georges-Jacques Danton, and Maximilien Robespierre, from their childhoods to the tumultuous events of the Revolution. Mantel has a unique and compelling writing style that draws the reader into the world she writes about.

This is a biography of the playwright and feminist activist Olympe de Gouges, who was the author of pamphlets and other literature in support of women's rights and the abolition of slavery during the French Revolution. She was ridiculed and dismissed in her time, but later recognized as a pioneer of feminist theory, and had a great influence on later advocates for women's rights. The book has its flaws, but it is practically the only biography of this important figure available in English.

In this creepy novel of suspense set in 1920s Paris, American private investigator Harris Stuyvesant searches for a young woman, an artists' model, who has gone missing. His search takes him to a theater producing realistic horror plays and the studio of an artist who creates art objects out of human bones. He also encounters many famous people from the literary and artistic world of Paris at the time, including Hemingway, Picasso, Cole Porter, and the surrealist artist Man Ray, who plays an important role in the plot. Not for the squeamish, but a perfect Halloween read!

Magpie Murders is a clever mystery within a mystery. It begins with Susan Ryeland, an editor for a London publishing house, reading the last manuscript by a recently deceased mystery author. Then you read the manuscript along with her: a classic English village mystery in the style of Agatha Christie. Frustratingly, it cuts off just before the solution is revealed, and the rest of the book returns to the present day as Susan searches for the missing chapters. Soon enough you learn that the author of the manuscript was murdered, and Susan has to find the real-life murderer as well as the pages that will reveal the murderer in the fictional world.

In this mystery, one of a series set in Gilded Age New York, Prudence MacKenzie, a judge's daughter turned detective, and Geoffrey Hunter, a former Pinkerton agent, search for two missing children--a brother and sister--in the streets of New York. They learn that the missing girl has been sold into prostitution, and, with the help of historical figures such as Jacob Riis and Nellie Bly, attempt to rescue the children. The book paints a detailed portrait of life in New York in the 1890s, from the parlors of the wealthy to the sordid streets and alleyways of the tenements.

Helen Castor tells the story of Joan of Arc in the context of her times. The book is a history of the part of the Hundred Years' War in which Joan played a major role, and it begins with the English victory at Agincourt in 1415. Castor writes about the political factions, and shifting alliances, in France at the time, and about how Joan's appearance at the French Dauphin's court, followed by her victory at Orléans in 1429, changed the course of the war. She also writes compellingly and movingly of Joan's trial. For biographical information about Joan, look elsewhere, but this book is excellent as a history of her times.

Matrix is a beautifully-written historical novel by Lauren Groff about the medieval abbess and poet Marie de France. Marie is cast out of the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine, her sister-in-law, because she is considered unmarriageable, and sent to a remote abbey, where she eventually becomes the abbess and creates a utopian community of women, while struggling against harsh conditions and opposition from the church authorities. Groff writes in a poetic style that draws you into Marie's world.