Posts by Vicki J Kondelik

Here Be Dragons is an epic historical novel set in thirteenth-century England and Wales. Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, Prince of North Wales, is married off in a political alliance to Joanna, illegitimate daughter of King John of England. Against all expectations, and in spite of an almost twenty-year difference in their ages, they fall in love. But when Joanna's father decides he wants to make Wales part of his kingdom, Joanna's loyalties are torn between the two men she loves most, her father and her husband. Penman paints a complex picture of both societies, the English (or, rather, the Norman-French) and the Welsh, and she draws you so deeply into her world that you don't want to leave.

In a Dark, Dark Wood, author Ruth Ware's debut novel, is a very suspenseful mystery. Nora, a reclusive writer living in London, reluctantly attends a party to celebrate the marriage of Clare, a friend she hasn't seen for ten years, in a creepy glass house surrounded by woods in the north of England. The party goes disastrously wrong and someone ends up dead. Nora wakes up in a hospital room, with no memory of what happened. Is she a suspect or a victim? Will she regain her memory in time to figure out what happened?

The Murder of Mary Russell is the latest volume in Laurie R. King's long-running series featuring an older Sherlock Holmes and his young wife Mary Russell. This entry in the series focuses on Mrs. Hudson, Holmes' housekeeper, and tells the story of her childhood as a thief and con artist in Victorian London, and of her first meeting with Holmes. I will not give away what the title means.

Cotton Malone, a former navy man and U.S. Justice Department agent, now a rare book dealer, searches for clues to the disappearance of his father in a submarine disaster off the coast of Antarctica, and finds evidence of a lost civilization, possibly thousands of years old.

Raiders of the Nile is the second in Steven Saylor's new series featuring his ancient Roman detective, Gordianus the Finder, as a young man. After journeying to see the Seven Wonders of the World in the previous volume, Gordianus has settled in Alexandria. But when his slave and lover, Bethesda, is kidnapped, Gordianus faces many adventures as he tries to rescue her. He encounters a gang of bandits, gets falsely accused of murder, and learns of a plot to steal the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great.

In this second book in Donna Leon's mystery series featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police, Brunetti investigates the murder of an American soldier in Venice. At first it seems that the man was the victim of a robbery, but Brunetti uncovers a conspiracy involving the dumping of toxic waste. It seems the Italian government, the American military, and the Mafia are all involved, and Brunetti risks offending the rich and powerful as he works to solve the murder.

Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici is the biography of an extraordinary Renaissance woman, the mother of Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of Florence in the fifteenth century. Lucrezia was a skilled businesswoman who influenced the policies of both her husband and her son, as well as being a poet and a patron of the arts. She was closely acquainted with some of the greatest Renaissance artists, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

Daughter of Venice is a novel about Donata, a young woman from a noble family in 16th century Venice, who has to enter a convent because her father cannot afford a dowry for her. She doesn't want to spend her life in a convent, so she dresses up as a boy and explores Venice, eventually falling in love with a Jewish man, who doesn't know who she really is. Will she tell him her secret? And will they be allowed to be together?

The Prophet is a mystery set in a small Ohio town about two estranged brothers, one a bail bondsman and the other a high school football coach, whose sister was murdered as a teenager. When another teenage girl is murdered, the wounds of the past resurface and the two brothers must work together to catch a killer.

The Rival Queens is an entertainingly-written biography of two powerful women in 16th century France: the ruthless Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France, who ruled the country for decades during the reigns of three of her sons, and her youngest daughter, the intelligent, courageous Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre.