Posts tagged with fiction in Blog Lost in the Stacks

A beautiful story following a 1742 Guarneri del Gesú violin and the men (and boys) who loved her.

In the latest entry in Alan Bradley's mystery series featuring Flavia de Luce, a twelve-year-old chemistry genius in 1950s England, Flavia returns to England after being expelled from a boarding school in Canada and finds out her father is ill with pneumonia. Her sisters give her a less than warm welcome, and to get away from the house, she carries a letter from the vicar's wife to a wood-carver, only to find the man dead, hanging upside-down from his bedroom door. She conducts her own investigation of the murder, and finds a connection between the murdered man and an author of children's poetry, who also died mysteriously.

The Unwilling Vestal is a historical novel, originally published in 1918, about Brinnaria, a young girl in ancient Rome who is forced to become a Vestal virgin after she refuses to marry the man her father has chosen for her. During her thirty years of service as a Vestal virgin, she is determined to stay true to the man she loves and marry him at the end of her service. But her rejected suitor threatens to have her accused of breaking her vows, and the emperor Commodus (who may be familiar to you as the villain of the movie Gladiator) will go along with the accusation unless Brinnaria proves her innocence. The Unwilling Vestal still reads well, and is full of fascinating details about ancient Rome.

The House of the Vestals is a collection of nine short mystery stories featuring Steven Saylor's ancient Roman detective, Gordianus the Finder. The stories are meant to fill a gap between the first two books of the series, and they introduce some of the regular characters. They illustrate many fascinating aspects of Roman society, including the theater, the belief in ghosts, and holidays.

A Great Reckoning is the latest entry in Louise Penny's popular series, set in the tiny Québec village of Three Pines, featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, who comes out of retirement to lead the Sûreté Academy. When the brutal former head of the Academy is found murdered in his rooms, Gamache becomes a suspect. Meanwhile, Gamache's wife Reine-Marie and her friends find an old map of Three Pines buried in a wall, and Gamache enlists the help of four young cadets to help solve the mystery of why the village has been erased from all official maps of Québec.

Jade Dragon Mountain is a beautifully-written mystery set in 18th century China. Exiled imperial librarian Li Du investigates the murder of a Jesuit astronomer in a city on the border between China and Tibet.

This unusual historical novel tells the story of the 17th century painter Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the first women to have a successful career as an artist. The author intersperses Artemisia's story with her own experiences in Florence during World War II, and creates a dialogue between herself and Artemisia.

In this mystery set in ancient Rome, private informer Flavia Albia is called to the scene when a dead body is found in a chest which is being put up for auction. At the same time, she helps the man she loves, Manlius Faustus, with his friend's political campaign. When a second body turns up in the chest, she realizes there might be a connection between the murders and the election.

In the third of Steven Saylor's series of novels set in the ancient world, Roman detective Gordianus the Finder receives a message saying his former tutor, now living in Ephesus, is in great danger. He travels to Ephesus and discovers a plot by King Mithridates to kill all the Romans in the kingdom. Will Gordianus prevent the massacre from taking place?

Murder in Passy is part of a long-running mystery series set in Paris in the 1990s, featuring private detective Aimée Leduc. When Aimée's mentor becomes the prime suspect in the murder of his Basque girlfriend, her investigation leads her into the world of Basque terrorists and a kidnapped Spanish princess.