Competing romances, slippery spies, and the horrors of the Blitz combine in an exciting mystery/adventure.
It's 1940 in London, and a family of locksmiths with a sideline in theft pulls off another job for the Crown.
When Electra McDonnell and her family got caught trying to steal jewels, their choice was prison or working for the handsome, enigmatic Major Ramsey. Ellie’s attracted to the dashing aristocrat, but so far their relationship has remained professional and sometimes antagonistic. Ramsey wants Ellie’s Uncle Mick but has to settle for Ellie when he needs to remove a locked bracelet from the arm of a woman found dead in the Thames. Unlocking the bracelet is easy, and Ellie’s able to provide some insight into Myra Fields’ station in life from her clothing. A search reveals a camera in the bracelet, a clock key, and a bag of jewels hidden in the lining of a sable coat. Ellie’s first job with Ramsey—in A Peculiar Combination (2021)—gave her a taste for danger, and she’s more than willing to help uncover an espionage ring that’s taking photos of juicy targets for the Germans. To Ramsey’s dismay, Ellie calls on family friend and romantic interest Felix Lacey for help with a crooked pawnshop owner. Family contacts help track down the source of the jewels and lead to a boardinghouse where Myra lived. Ellie, with Ramsey masquerading as her husband, pretends to be Myra’s cousin in order to look for clues. Once the German bombing commences, they push even harder to roll up the dangerous spy ring even as Ellie continues to look into her mother’s conviction for murdering her father, a crime she denied to the day she died.
Competing romances, slippery spies, and the horrors of the Blitz combine in an exciting mystery/adventure.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-2507-8050-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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