Posts by Vicki J Kondelik

As Venice lies in the grip of the acqua alta, the high tide that floods the city every winter, Commissario Guido Brunetti investigates a brutal beating at the home of an art historian and the murder of the director of the museum at the Doge's Palace. At the same time, he worries that he has not been a good father to his teenage son.

In this fourth entry in Donna Leon's mystery series set in Venice, Commissario Guido Brunetti investigates the deaths of three prominent Venetian businessmen, as well as their connection to eight young women who died when a truck crashed in the mountains of northern Italy. Meanwhile, his teenage daughter Chiara shows signs of following in her father's footsteps, as she becomes involved in the case.

Two time travelers from a future world arrive in 1815 to retrieve a lost manuscript and letters by Jane Austen. They are forbidden to change the past, but as they come to know Austen and her family, they decide to try to save her life. Whether they succeed or not, I will not say, but this is a suspenseful and thought-provoking novel, an intriguing combination of science fiction and Jane Austen spin-off.

Reading Austen in America is an in-depth study of Jane Austen's earliest American readers. Author Juliette Wells focuses on the 1816 Philadelphia edition of Emma, the only edition of one of Austen's works to be published in the U.S. during her lifetime. Only six copies of this edition are known to exist today. Wells writes about the lives of the original owners of these copies, and their reactions to Austen's novels and characters. Later she discusses two transatlantic friendships that developed through a mutual love of Austen's works.

The Duke's Children is the last novel in Anthony Trollope's Palliser series, about Parliamentary politics in Victorian England. It's a classical story of generational conflict, as the Duke of Omnium, former Prime Minister, struggles to come to terms with his three grown children's choices in love and politics.

In Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin, author of the Earthsea series and many other works of science fiction and fantasy, gives voice to a forgotten character from Virgil's Aeneid. Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus of Latium, rejects all her suitors because of a prophecy that says she's destined to marry a foreigner. When Aeneas and his fellow survivors of the Fall of Troy arrive in Latium, she knows he is the man she's meant to marry, but one of her suitors, Turnus, has other ideas, and they fight a war over her--a war she never wanted. Le Guin writes beautifully of ancient Italy, and especially of its religious rites and ceremonies.

Jane Austen in Performance is a study of Jane Austen's enduring popularity, from the 19th century to the present day. Author Marina Cano discusses such topics as the use of Jane Austen by the women's suffrage movement, Austen's popularity during and immediately after World War I, film and theatrical adaptations of her works, and fan fiction based on her novels.

This historical novel, originally published in 1936, tells the story of Luisa Sanfelice, an impoverished noblewoman in Naples, Italy, at the time of the French Revolution. When revolutionaries briefly take over Naples and overthrow the king and queen, Luisa, a woman of no strong political beliefs, inadvertently becomes a heroine of the revolution when she warns her revolutionary lover about a royalist plot to re-take the city. Much violence ensues, and Sheean's descriptions are not for the squeamish. But Sanfelice makes for a compelling read. The heroine's story has been told several other times, most notably by Alexandre Dumas.

Ancient Roman detective Marcus Didius Falco travels to Germany on a mission for the Emperor Vespasian, to discover what happened to a missing general and to negotiate peace with a powerful Druid priestess. The emperor's son Titus wants Falco out of the way because he has his eye on Falco's girlfriend Helena Justina. Is the barber who Titus sent along with Falco really an assassin? And will Falco have to give up Helena for the good of Rome? Unlike other books in the series, this is more of an adventure novel than a mystery, and it includes plenty of action in the forests of Germany.

In this third mystery in Donna Leon's long-running series set in Venice, Commissario Guido Brunetti investigates the murder of a transvestite whose face was damaged beyond recognition. It turns out that the victim was one of Venice's most prominent bankers, and Brunetti uncovers a scandal involving financial fraud and illegally rented apartments. Meanwhile, he longs to solve the case quickly to avoid becoming the next victim and to escape the heat of August in Venice and join his wife Paola and teenage children on vacation in the mountains. As usual with Leon, the book features Paola's mouth-watering meals, and Brunetti does some cooking for himself this time.