Posts tagged with fiction

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?

This is the first is a trilogy of novels about the Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon. Sandra Gulland tells her story in the form of fictional diary entries. This novel begins with Josephine's girlhood on Martinique and tells of her life in Paris during the French Revolution, her imprisonment during the Terror, when she narrowly escapes the guillotine, and ends with her marriage to Napoleon. The story continues in two other volumes.

Take a look at the 2019 Michigan Notable Book award winners.

The Magic Circle is a mystery/adventure novel about a younger nuclear security expert, Ariel Behn, who, in 1989, inherits a pile of ancient manuscripts which hold the key to a powerful secret. She also discovers the history of her own very complex family and their activities in Europe between World Wars I and II.

Labyrinth tells the story of two women, in two different times (1209 and 2005), and their quest for a secret of immense power. On an archaeological dig in the south of France, Alice finds two skeletons and a mysterious carving of a labyrinth on a wall, and begins experiencing visions of a past life. Her story is intertwined with that of Alaïs, a young woman in medieval Carcassonne, whose father is a guardian of one of three manuscripts that contain the secret of the Holy Grail. The plot is similar to The Da Vinci Code, but Labyrinth is much better written.

This is the first of a series of mysteries set in 1920s India, featuring Perveen Mistry, one of the first female lawyers in India. She investigates the murder of a man at the home of the three widows of a wealthy Muslim mill owner. The widows live in strict seclusion and will talk to Perveen, while they cannot talk to a male lawyer. In alternating chapters set a few years earlier, we learn of the traumas Perveen went through as a young woman, and her disastrous marriage. Author Massey conveys a wonderful sense of the various cultures and religions in 1920s India.