The Maid’s Secret—the last book in the Molly the Maid series—features a wedding, a heist, and long-held family secrets. It’s a wonderful goodbye to our favourite maid and an excellent cast of supporting characters: Mr. Snow the hotel manager, Cheryl the delinquent maid, Mr. Preston the former doorman and Molly’s grandfather, Angela the bartender and friend to Molly, Detective Stark, and sweet Juan the fiancé.
Molly and Juan are quietly planning their city hall wedding when they are derailed by the filming of an Antique’s-Roadshow style tv show called Hidden Treasures. The Regency Grand Hotel is hosting the event and staff are invited to bring in their treasures for review. Turns out one of the trinkets Molly brings from her Gran’s collection is worth millions. Before Molly can wave a duster, her rags-to-riches story becomes a media sensation and she’s the target of an art heist and death threats. Poor Molly. Luckily, Gran’s diary comes to the rescue in more ways that one.
There are 4 books in the series and they are all heart-warming whodunnits. Check out NitaProse.com for the scoop.
The Break is a heart-breaking debut novel about the trauma of missing and murdered women. The story is set in Winnipeg’s North End and begins with Stella, a young Métis mother, witnessing a rape from her baby’s bedroom window. It’s winter, she is shaken, she has two young kids asleep (then crying), and she does call the police but is otherwise too frozen to take action.
The police take their time to respond and by the time they do, Stella feels ignored and dismissed by them and her white husband, who’d prefer to believe it was gang related and not their business. That said, one of the policemen, Officer Scott, is a Métis. He works to understand what is happening with this crime but never truly learns the full story.
Told through a series of shifting narratives, Vermette introduces the reader to Stella’s Kukum (grandmother) and her aunties (Lou, a social worker, and Cheryl, an artist). We are also introduced to Phoenix, a teenager who has slipped away from a young detention centre, and her uncle, a local drug dealer/gang member, both of whom are known to Lou and Cheryl’s children. Then through a series of connections we come to understand the true scope of this tragedy, the number of women who’ve died, and the intergenerational grief that continues to haunt this family.
This is a sad and shocking book to read but it also offers insights into the non-fiction stories about missing and murdered Indigenous women, the landfill search for the remains of First Nations women in Winnipeg, and “Every Child Matters.”
Tana French is masterful. Faithful Place (first published in 2010) feels like it should be a Netflix crime series because the dialogue and characters are so vivid. Frank Mackey is a Dublin cop who is called home by his sister Jackie because a neighbourhood builder has dislodged a suitcase from the chimney of a derelict building. The suitcase belonged to Frank’s long-lost girlfriend Rosie. Twenty years ago Rosie went missing. The pair were to meet and run away to London together to work as roadies. Rosie never showed and everyone has always assumed she skipped town, just not with Frank.
Frank’s homecoming to Faithful Place is not celebrated. Yes, the suitcase is a bad omen, but Frank is estranged from his family, and on top of that he has become a cop. There’s hardly a more despised profession in Faithful Place.
Faithful Place is a fictionalized neighbourhood in Dublin near the Liberties. It’s a poor neighbourhood where everyone is suspicious of the cops and prone to gossip. Growing up in the 1960s and 70s meant small, cramped flats, basic meals, a hardy dose of Catholicism and no shortage of alcoholism and childhood violence.
Frank’s scrappy and shrewd older brother questions Frank’s motives for returning. Frank’s younger brother Kevin is keen to fall in as Frank’s sidekick again, and the sisters Carmel and Jackie are all about keeping the peace. This is a novel about long-brewing resentments, sibling rivalries, class conflicts, adolescent flirtations and grudges, and all the ways we misjudge those closest to us. Faithful Place is a captivating read. It’s dark, tragic, and there’s little redemption for any of the characters but it’s also funny, poetic, and full of genius storytelling.
Gosh I liked this book. Hamnet is a fictional account of William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, who died at age 11 in 1596, most likely from the plague. The story has very little to do with the Shakespeare we know and much more to do with the women in his life: his mother, his wife, his two daughters, and his mother-in-law.
The first part of the story moves between two different times: Shakespeare falling in love with Agnes, an unsettling, free-spirited young woman who keeps a kestrel and wanders the woods. Shakespeare, through the ill-dealings of his father, is sent to tutor Agnes’ step brothers. He is intimidated by her strapping younger brother who acts as her protector from the village and the step-mother. But Agnes has her eye on Shakespeare and the pair devise a way to ensure they get married. The narrative shifts back and forth between this time of optimism and present day 1596 when Hamnet is struggling to help his twin Judith through a fever. She has suddenly fallen ill and nobody is around to help. The grandparents are out, his older sister is off running errands, and his mother is absent (Agnes is at the farm with her brother who has asked her to come manage her swarming bees). The two narratives crash together with Agnes coming home from the fields and discovering Hamnet fraught with worry and Judith on death’s door.
The second part of the novel moves us through the family’s despair at losing Hamnet. Shakespeare retreats to the playhouses of London and Agnes abandons the plan for her and the children to join him there. It’s impossible to hope that Judith will survive the dirt of London, and it’s impossible for Agnes to return to life as usual.
I liked that this book is very much about the women vs. Shakespeare himself. There is darkness, tension, and the intensity of living through plagues set in parallel to the herbology and wisdom of women, the bonding and bickering, plus the love and grief of the women in this novel.
If you like historical fiction, twist on familiar plots, or award-winning literary fiction, then this is for you.
It reminds me of James by Percival Everett in its retelling of a seemingly familiar story. It has the “don’t let the wool be pulled over your eyes,” draw of By Any Other Name of Jodi Picoult, the dark tension of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, and it has the brilliant writing of females characters like The Women by Kristin Hannah.
By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult is a fictionalized account of Emilia Bassano’s life from age 13 to 76 (1582-1645). As a young girl, she is a ward of English aristocrats who school her on languages, history, and writing. But at age 13, Emilia is contracted to Lord Chamberlain as his mistress in exchange for her family’s long-term contract as the Queen’s musicians. Emilia is young, an Italian Jew, highly educated, and an aspiring playwright. It’s just not a place and time for women to flourish. Emilia has little say in her life; she is unable to write professionally, or to publish her plays and poetry. She is a dark beauty in contrast to the white, powdered faces fashionable in court. And, she has to hide her Judaism. The thesis of the story is that the Shakespeare we laud today was no playwright. He bought plays from those who wished to remain anonymous and published them in his name. It was a business proposition that suited both parties, but a mistake for modern-day fans to attribute so much praise to him.
The modern-day story interwoven with Emilia’s is that of Melina, a descendant who is also an aspiring playwright. Melina’s challenge is that of being a woman in a field still dominated by white men (playwrights, producers, funders, reviewers). Her attempt to get a play produced is marred by sexism and her own mistakes in how she presents herself.
By Any Other Name is a thought-provoking novel about attribution: false representation, ghostwriting, and allonyms (pen names).
Whether you read it as fiction only, or as an exploration of the mythology that has sprung up around Shakespeare (a man who managed to write 37 plays alone while simultaneously being a full-time actor and producer), Picoult weaves in a lot of doubt about the providence of Shakespeare’s work. Other playwrights and poets of the time reference each other and were lauded publicly at the time of their death or buried in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey. They left behind books and manuscripts in their wills. Yet Shakespeare left none. It was a time when writers collaborated and edited and finished each others’ works, whereas Shakespeare is said to have written alone. His plays humanize Jews, at a time when anti-Semitism was the norm. He never spent time in court, in the military, reading law, visiting Italy or Denmark, or playing music, or educating his daughters. Yet his plays and sonnets are ripe with details about music, courts, and law. His female characters are rich, spirited, and educated. Yet he did not educate his own daughters.
There are naysayers. And there are theories that multiple writers collaborated and published under the name Shakespeare. Regardless, novel or not, Picoult reminds us that women writing in Elizabethan times, doing science, crafting medicines, playing music and writing plays for home performances paved the way for women writers today. The main premise of By Any Other Name is that just because there is an absence of evidence (of women writers and playwrights) doesn’t mean there is evidence of absence.
Graveyard Shift: A Novella is about a random group of night shift workers who all take their smoke break in the local cemetery. But one night they discover a newly dug grave. The cemetery was decommissioned so who or what is the new grave for and why was it dug in the middle of the night?
A deep sense of foreboding descends on the group, who eventually disperse. But curiosity gets the better of two of them who catch sight of the grave digger returning.
The mismatched group of five each have their own strengths, and they call upon each other to solve the mystery.
Part horror, part thriller, part ghost story, this creepy novella is perfect for a campfire read.
Well, I spotted this at the library and did not realize it is the second book of a series. That said, it’s a good twisting mystery with a fun-loving amateur sleuth (and I could piece together most of the backstory). It reminds me a bit of Susan Juby’s Helen Thorpe series.
Annie Adams is settling into her new, rural England home that she’s inherited from her recently deceased aunt. Backstory: Annie’s aunt was murdered and Annie figured out the murder, which is how she inherited the house, which was contested by another descendant.
You know the drill. Quaint English village sees its weird share of murders. Young woman at a loss finds herself at the centre of the drama. There’s a love interest.
In this version, Annie encounters a fortune teller, Peony Lane, who holds secrets to a mysterious car crash in 1967 and Annie’s aunt’s involvement. But Peony Lane ends up dead in Annie’s house, which kicks off a series of unfortunate events that help unravel secrets from the past. And luckily enough, the love interest is the local cop.
How to Solve Your Own Murder is the first book in the Castle Knoll Files. I unknowingly read book 2 first. In short, Annie is tasked with solving the murder of her great-aunt Frances in order to claim Frances’ inheritance. If Frances’ step son solves the murder, then he inherits. And if either of them fail, then Oliver the property developer gets his claws into things and a golf course is on its way to quaint village of Castle Knoll.
The story alternates between Frances’ teenage past—where her murder was predicted by a fortune teller—and the present day where Annie discovers and reads Frances’ background story in diary entries, along with all of Frances’ suspicions and research into who her own murderer will be. The structure is great because it allows the reader to piece things together with Annie while also getting some insights directly from Frances’ perspective.
There is a whole cast of quirky (and suspicious) characters, all with connections to Frances and to a past murder. Like all great mysteries, Perrin laces this one with red herrings and twists and turns.
A Court of Thorns and Roses is a fantasy romance series that is wildly popular. I have resisted reading it until now. And although romance is not my favourite type of read, this was a fun escape into a terrifying magical world of warring faeries.
Feyre is the sole provider for her family. She hunts in the woods and sells what she can to feed her father and two sisters. One day in early Spring, she is faced with killing a wolf that is hunting the only wildlife she has seen in days. If she kills both the deer and the wolf then it will be a game-changing act for her family.
Turns out the wolf was a faerie in disguise, one sent by a high lord who turns up at Feyre’s and demands retribution. Feyre is dragged off to his lands, not as a slave, but as a guest. It’s all alarming to her (and perhaps obvious to the reader that she is going to fall in love with this guy).
I can totally see why fans are crazy for this series. I’m mildly interested in book 2 but get the sense that it will be full of angst and melancholy.
The author website has all the books, and info on her other series, so if you’re into a slightly spicy fantasy series then I’d start here.
Kristin Hannah is the author of The Women, which I really enjoyed. The writing here is also exceptional. The Nightingale is the story of the Rossignol sisters who struggle to survive in France during the German occupation in WWII.
Vianne is the elder sister, married, and with a young daughter. Her husband is a prisoner of war and she has a German officer billeted in her home. Not by choice.
Isabelle is the defiant younger sister whose ideals lead her to play a key role in the Resistance. Rossignol means nighingale and she is the Nightingale, a sought after thorn in the side of the Germans. The Nightingale is helping Allied pilots, shot down in France, escape over the Pyrenees.
One sister has everything to lose and the other has nothing to lose. The difference drives them apart, but they each risk their lives for the other.
Having just been to Northern France to the D-Day beaches and through the towns south of there that were occupied, The Nightingale illuminated my experience of those bombed out villages and the stories of resistance that remain at the heart of French culture.
This is a great audiobook if you want to hear the pronunciation of the French villages and character names.
