Posts tagged with fiction in Blog Lost in the Stacks

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.

The concluding volume of Sandra Gulland's trilogy about Empress Josephine tells of her life during the time of Napoleon's empire and portrays her as a woman very much in love with her husband but heartbroken by her inability to conceive a child by him. He begins to listen to his scheming siblings in their plots to get him to divorce her and marry a young princess so he could have an heir to his empire. This trilogy, taken as a whole, is a masterful work of historical fiction.

Heresy is the first of a series of mysteries featuring the real-life 16th century philosopher and scientist Giordano Bruno. In 1583 Bruno goes to Oxford to uncover a conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth I. One of the fellows of the college is found dead, and this turns out to be the first in a series of gruesome murders. Will Bruno find the murderer and put an end to the conspiracy against the queen?

This is the second in Sandra Gulland's trilogy about the Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon, following The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B., which I reviewed previously. This novel covers the years 1796-1800, which are full of momentous events in Napoleon's life, including his victories in Italy, his Egyptian campaign, and his seizure of power in a coup d'état. Josephine suffers from the hostility of Napoleon's family and her inability to conceive a child by him.

In the latest entry in Alan Bradley's mystery series featuring twelve-year-old chemistry genius Flavia de Luce, Flavia finds the body of a murdered man in the river. It turns out he is the son of a vicar who was hanged for the murder of three of his female parishioners. But was the vicar really innocent?