Posts by Vicki J Kondelik

Classicist Mary Beard writes, in two brief essays, about how the voices of powerful women in Western civilization have been suppressed though the years, from ancient times to the present day. She gives examples throughout history, from the ancient Greeks to the present.

Birth of the Chess Queen tells the story of the chess queen's evolution from the origins of the game to the present day. The queen was not always part of the game, and when she was first introduced, she was not the powerful piece she is today. Historian Marilyn Yalom discusses how the queen came to be the most powerful piece on the chessboard, and tells the stories of several strong real-life queens in the Middle Ages and Renaissance who influenced the evolution of the chess queen.

The Winter Ghosts is a beautifully-written novel about a young man whose brother was killed in World War I, who travels in the French Pyrenees in the hope that he will heal his emotional wounds. Stranded in a blizzard, he finds a remote village and meets a young woman who tells him a horrific story of the massacre of a Christian sect in the Middle Ages. But there is more going on than meets the eye. Time travel, ghosts, or the protagonist's imagination? It is up to the reader to decide.

In this mystery set in Venice, Commissario Guido Brunetti solves the murder of a young man, the son of one of Venice's noble families, who had been kidnapped two years ago and whose body was found in a field. His family had been involved in shady business dealings in eastern Europe. Was he murdered because of this? Or did his cousin, the new heir to the family business, murder him? As he searches for the murderer, Brunetti also wonders if his wife, Paola, is unhappy in their marriage because he spends too much time on his police work.

As catastrophic floods threaten to devastate Québec, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache finds the body of a murdered, pregnant woman. All the evidence points to her abusive husband as the killer, but there's not enough to convict him, and the woman's grieving father threatens to kill the husband. Meanwhile, Gamache faces damage to his reputation in social media, as a video emerges, seriously misrepresenting the actions which led to his demotion.

Prophecy is the second in S.J. Parris' mystery series set in Elizabethan England, featuring the real-life philosopher and scientist Giordano Bruno, who, in the series, works as a spy for Queen Elizabeth I. In this book, he attempts to foil a plot against the queen's life, which is being timed to coincide with an astronomical event.

In this entry in Camilleri's mystery series set in Sicily, Inspector Montalbano investigates two cases. In one, the young wife of a much-older merchant is robbed and sexually assaulted while depositing money at a bank. In the other, an abandoned building on a farm is used to store weapons, and two Tunisian farm workers are the prime suspects. Meanwhile, Montalbano is undergoing a crisis in his personal life, as he is torn between two women: his long-time girlfriend and a beautiful art gallery owner.

Emily, a young woman from an upper-class British family during World War I, falls in love with Robbie, an Australian pilot, to her parents' disapproval. When he's sent back to the war, she enlists as a land girl, working on farms while the men are away at war. She is assigned to take care of the garden at the estate of a reclusive old woman, and there she discovers a mystery related to the previous inhabitant of the cottage where she lives.

Parisian detective Aimée Leduc receives a visit from a Haitian woman claiming to be her half-sister. Just as she is about to tell Aimée more, she disappears, leaving an address behind. When Aimée goes to that address, she finds the body of a murdered scientist, and her supposed sister is the prime suspect. Two witnesses who are about to speak to Aimée are murdered, one by one. Can Aimée clear the woman she thinks is her sister?

In this caper novel and satire on the financial world, banker Verity Banks comes up with a plan to steal a billion dollars from the bank's electronic transfers to show her corrupt bosses how easy it is. Her mentor, Zoltan Tor, makes a bet with her, that he can steal a billion dollars before she does, without using a computer. But Verity's bosses have a scheme of their own. Will she defeat them? And can she and Tor deny their feelings for each other? Although first published in 1992, the book anticipates situations that led to the financial crisis of 2008.