Posts by Vicki J Kondelik

Midnight in the Piazza is a delightful art mystery written for children ages 8-12, even though anyone can enjoy it. Thirteen-year-old Beatrice Archer moves to Rome when her father gets a job there, and she falls in love with the turtle fountain in the piazza outside her apartment. Then one night she sees someone trying to steal the turtles from the fountain. Beatrice and a new friend, an Italian boy who speaks English, decide to investigate, and they discover a ring of international art thieves.

Scottish journalist Alan Taylor writes about his friendship with Muriel Spark, author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, during the last decade and a half of her life. We learn about her life in rural Tuscany, her estrangement from her only son, her complex feelings about her native Scotland, and the teacher who inspired the character of Miss Brodie.

In this World War II thriller, a parachutist falls to his death in a field outside Farleigh, the stately home of Lord Westerham and his daughters. The dead man's uniform leads people to believe he is a German spy, sent to contact a traitor at Farleigh or in the nearby village. Lord Westerham's middle daughter, a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, works with an MI5 agent who is a family friend to discover who the traitor could be.

Ancient Roman private eye Marcus Didius Falco investigates a mystery involving his dead brother Festus. It seems that Festus, who died in battle, might not have been such a hero as everyone was led to believe. When a soldier who had accused Festus of involvement in a shady business deal is found murdered, Falco becomes the prime suspect. To clear his name, he must work with his estranged father to find the real murderer.

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.