Death Comes to Pemberley

by P.D. James
3 Stars
Historical Fiction
Setting: England
291 pages
Published 2011

Ellie's Review

P. D. James, who is a renown mystery writer, combined her skills with the world created by Jane Austin in Pride and Prejudice.  Death Comes to Pemberley looks at the life of Elizabeth and Darcy six years after they were married.  Their happy life at Pemberley is disrupted when Lydia arrived unexpectedly to announce a murder.  James was creative in putting her murder mystery genre into the story so many people loved.  If you look at it from a mystery standpoint, it was an entertaining read.  I learned more about the life of that period through the thoroughly researched details included.  However, if you want to see more of the love between Elizabeth and Darcy, you will be disappointed.  I do absolutely love Pride & Prejudice and will probably just reread it the next time I long for Mr. Darcy. This is the first novel by James I have read, and I probably will not read any more of her works.  If you like James' other novels and Jane Austen, this is probably a great read for you.  

If you are an Austen fan, I suggest Shannon Hale’s novel Austenland (4 stars). 

Book Summary
It is 1803, six years since Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on their life together at Pemberley, Darcy's magnificent estate.  Their peaceful, orderly world seems almost unassailable.  Elizabeth has found her footing as the chatelaine of the great house.  They have two fine sons, Fitzwilliam and Charles.  Elizabeth's sister Jane and her husband, Bingley, live nearby; her father visits often; there is optimistic talk about the prospects of marriage for Darcy's sister Georgiana.  And preparations are under way for their much-anticipated annual autumn ball.

Then, on the eve of the ball, the patrician idyll is shattered.  A coach careens up the drive carrying Lydia, Elizabeth's disgraced sister, who with her husband, the very dubious Wickham, has been banned from Pemberley.  She stumbles out of the carriage, hysterical, shrieking that Wickham has been murdered.  with shocking suddenness, Pemberley is plunged into a frightening mystery.

Inspired by a lifelong passion for Austen, P. D. James masterfully re-creates the world of Pride and Prejudice, electrifying it with the excitement and suspense of a brilliantly crafted crime story, as only she can write it.

Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution

by Michelle Moran
5 Stars
Historical Fiction
Setting: France
446 pages
Published 2011

Ellie's Review

Although I've never toured a Madame Tussauds wax museum, I've walked past the NY location numerous times not knowing how this tourist attraction claimed its name.  Who is/was Madame Tussaud? 

I stumbled upon this novel and soon became engrossed in the French Revolution, which is a war I previously did not understand nor not have an interest in.  This historical fiction tale tells of the French Revolution from a girl who makes wax sculptures of famous people in her uncle's salon - this tourist stop started long before I had realized.  She mingled with both sides of the war and was brought into the midst of it.  I learned so much about this turbulent time for France, and I loved being engrossed in this wonderful woman's life.

If you enjoy historical fiction, this is an amazing read!  I'm excited to read other historical fiction novels by Michelle Moran.

Book Summary
Spanning five years, from the budding revolution to the Reign of Terror, Madame Tussaud brings us into the world of an incredible heroine whose talent for wax modeling saved her life and preserved the faces of a vanished kingdom.


Smart and ambitious, Marie Tussaud has learned the secrets of wax sculpting by working alongside her uncle in their celebrated wax museum, the Salon de Cire.  From her popular model of the American ambassador, Thomas Jefferson, to her tableau of the royal family at dinner, Marie's museum provides Parisians with the very latest news on fashion, gossip, and even politics.  Her customers hail form every walk of life, yet her greatest dreams is to attract the attention of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI; their stamp of approval on her work could catapult her and her museum to the fame and riches she desires.

Ellie's Review of Michelle Moran's novel Nefertiti

The Passion

by Jeanette Winterson
3 Stars
Historical Fiction
Setting: Europe
176 pages
Published 1987

Ellie's Review
This was beautifully written novel about the many different aspects of passion set during Napolean's reign, and I loved how she spun in little bits of fairy tale. I really liked the first section and while I enjoyed the other three sections, they weren't as gripping.

Book Summary
Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice's compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meet their singular destiny. In her unique and mesmerizing voice, Winterson blends reality with fantasy, dream, and imagination to weave a hypnotic tale with stunning effects.

The Birth of Venus

by Sarah Dunant
4 Stars
Historical Fiction
Setting: Florence, Italy
403 pages
Published 2003

Ellie's Review
If you liked Pillars of the Earth or The Other Boleyn Girl, you should read this. Set in Florence, Italy in the 1500's, The Birth of Venus is a wonderful historical fiction novel wrapped around the art of the time. I was fascinated by the story plus I loved learning about the art and treatment of women at this time. Just to warn you, this does have some sex scenes.

Book Summary
Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities.

The Distant Hours

by Kate Morton
4 Stars
Setting: England
562 pages
Published 2010

Ellie's Review
The Distant Hours was an enjoyable read that ended up about a fascinating mystery; however, a mysterious letter doesn't intrigue me in the beginning as much as the foundling in Morton's The Forgotten Garden. I loved the descriptions of the castle in this book. I raced through the last 100 pages as the brilliant plot unfolded, but before that I found some slow parts.

Book Summary
A long lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a great but moldering old house, where the Blythe spinsters live and where her mother was billeted 50 years before as a 13 year old child during WWII. The elder Blythe sisters are twins and have spent most of their lives looking after the third and youngest sister, Juniper, who hasn’t been the same since her fiance jilted her in 1941. 

See Ellie's review of Kate Morton other books: The House at Riverton and The Forgotten Garden.

The Forgotten Garden

by Kate Morton
5 Stars
Setting: Australia, England
645 pages
Published 2008

Ellie's Review
This was a great book with an intriguing mystery about a foundling. Throughout the book, Morton carefully solves one part of the mystery while presenting other small mysteries. Readers are hooked! She jumps between three time frames without being confusing, which is a hard effect for authors though many try. I highly recommend this novel for a book club - readers love it and have a lot to discuss.

Book Summary
A foundling, an old book of dark fairy tales, a secret garden, an aristocratic family, a love denied, and a mystery. The Forgotten Garden is a captivating, atmospheric and compulsively readable story of the past, secrets, family and memory from the international best-selling author Kate Morton. 

See Ellie's reviews of Kate Morton's other novels: The House at Riverton and The Distant Hours.

Book Club Information
Click here to see a video of Kate Morton talking about The Forgotten Garden (no spoilers).


Discussion Questions

1. Christian said the following about “The Golden Egg” fairy tale, “The characters in the story are all doing what they think is right.  It’s just that it can’t have a happy ending for all of them.”  In The Forgotten Garden, who do you think had a happy ending?
2. Lady Montrechet convinces Eliza not to travel to New York with herself and Rose.  She convinces Eliza that lying to make someone happy is a good thing.  Do you agree?
3. Discuss what parts of Nell’s true story were never discovered by Cassandra.
4. Ruby said the following about not having children, “You make a life out of what you have not what you’re missing.”  Nell admits to herself she has focused too much on her missing late husband and child.  Who else focused on what was missing? 
5. Did Hugh and Lil make the right decision when they kept Nell? (question from katemorton.com)
6. On the night of Nell’s twenty-first birthday, her father Hugh tells her a secret that shatters her sense of self. How important is a strong sense of identity to a person’s life? Was Hugh right to tell her about her past? How might Nell’s life have turned out differently had she not discovered the truth? (question from katemorton.com)
7. Is it possible to escape the past, or does one’s history always find a way to revisit the present?  (question from katemorton.com)

Crone: The crone is a stock character in folklore and fairy tale, an old woman who is usually disagreeable, malicious, or sinister in manner, often with magical or supernatural associations that can make her either helpful or obstructing. She is marginalized by her exclusion from the reproductive cycle, and her proximity to death places her in contact with occult wisdom. As a character type, the crone shares characteristics with the hag.  The word "crone" is a less common synonym for "old woman," and is more likely to appear in reference to traditional narratives than in contemporary everyday usage. 

The House at Riverton

by Kate Morton
3 Stars
Setting: England
599 pages
Published 2006

Ellie's Review
I actually give this 3 1/2 stars. I enjoyed this 1920s novel set in England - it had some nice family and romantic parts in the plot as told by the maid. Even though the ending had a nice twist, the fact that a mysterious death is told about at the beginning and you find the true story out in the last few pages a bit cliche. It was very enjoyable and great to curl up with and read all in a weekend.

Book Summary
Summer 1924 - On the eve of a glittering society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again.

See Ellie's reviews of Kate Morton's later novels: The Forgotten Garden and The Distant Hours.

This was published in Europe under the title The Shifting Fog.

Click here to watch a 4-minute video of Kate Morton talking about The House at Riverton (no spoilers).

The Shadow of the Wind

by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, translated by Lucia Graves
4 Stars
Setting: Barcelona, Spain
487 pages
Published 2003

Ellie's Review
This is a beautifully written book! The plot of this mysterious book is so well laid out that at the end I could see how carefully the details were planned from the beginning, yet it wasn't predictable. I really enjoyed this both for the writing and the plot, which doesn't happen often for me.

Book Summary
Barcelona, 1945—Just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes one day to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again.

Daniel’s father coaxes him to choose a book from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the book he selects, a novel called The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last of Carax’s books in existence.

See Ellie's review of Zafon's book The Angel's Game.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

by Thomas Hardy
4 Stars
Classic, Historical Fiction
Setting: UK
592 pages
Published 1884

Ellie's Review
While I really enjoyed Jane Austen's books where the girl always ends up happily ever after with her love, Hardy's view of what girls go through was fascinating. Sometimes life sucks. I contemplated giving this book five stars, but I was a bit disappointed in the ending. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and was sad that it ended.  This gave me a lot to think about.

Book Summary
Thomas Hardy's penetrating look at the sexual hypocrisy of Victorian society attracted strong barbs (and numerous readers) when first published. Today it is revered for its subtle character portraits and resonant symbolism.

The original title was Tess of the D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented.

The Angel's Game

by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, translated by Lucia Graves
4 Stars
Setting: Barcelona, Spain
531 pages
Published 2005

Ellie's Review
This was a surprisingly good book! I really enjoyed the writing - the language is beautiful and Zafon is simply talented. Graves did a wonderful job translating the novel from Spanish.  On top of that, the plot is really, really good. It's nicely dark and twisted but nothing to give me nightmares.


Book Summary
In an abandoned mansion at the heart of Barcelona, a young man, David Martin, makes his living by writing sensationalist novels under a pseudonym. The survivor of a troubled childhood, he has taken refuge in the world of books and spends his nights spinning baroque tales about the city’s underworld. But perhaps his dark imaginings are not as strange as they seem, for in a locked room deep within the house lie photographs and letters hinting at the mysterious death of the previous owner.

See Ellie's Review of Zafon's novel The Shadow of the Wind.

The 101 Dalmatians

by Dodie Smith
4 Stars
Children's, Classic
Setting: England
184 pages
Published 1956

Ellie's Review
The 101 Dalmatians is a splendid story from dogs' perspective.  Even though I pretty much have the Disney movie memorized, this plot had enough differences to keep my attention. It's very witty and enjoyable especially if you fancy dogs.

Book Summary
Pongo and Perdita have a litter of 15 dalmatian puppies. Cruella De Vil takes a fancy to the puppies and tries to buy them from their human owners, Roger and Anita. Cruella wants to get ahold of those puppies, as well as more puppies, to make herself a lovely dalmatian skin coat. Cruella hires some thugs to kidnap the puppies and hold them at an abandoned mansion. Now Pongo and Perdita must use an animal communication system to help find all the puppies.

See Ellie's review of I Capture the Castle, also by Dodie Smith.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
4 Stars
Historical Fiction, WWII
Setting: Guernsey
274 pages
Published 2008

Ellie's Review
This was a delightful read - the authors did a great job with creating a novel solely from letters amongst the characters. I learned new things about what Europe went through in World War II.

Book Summary
January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb….

Authors' Information
Mary Ann Shaffer worked as an editor, a librarian, and in bookshops. Her life-long dream was to someday write her own book and publish it. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was her first novel. Unfortunately, she became very ill with cancer and so she asked her niece, Annie Barrows, the author of the children’s series Ivy and Bean, as well as The Magic Half, to help her finish the book. Mary Ann Shaffer died in February 2008, a few months before her first novel was published.

Inkheart (Inkheart #1)

by Cornelia Funke
3 stars
Children's, Fantasy
Setting: Italy
548 pages
Published 2003

Ellie's Review
I was excited about the book in the beginning and the middle, but by the end I was ready for my next book. It was nice, but I don't think I'll read the others in the trilogy.

Book Summary
Twelve-year-old Meggie learns that her father, who repairs and binds books for a living, can "read" fictional characters to life when one of those characters abducts them and tries to force him into service.

Bridget Jones's Diary (Bridget Jones #1)

by Helen Fielding
5 star
Setting: UK
271 pages
Published 1996

Ellie's Review
I laughed out loud so much in this book! This is a great fluffy, chick book, but I liked the heroine better than I did in the Shopaholic series. I could definitely relate to Bridget in so many of her ideas and wacky situations. I love the parallels to Pride and Prejudice throughout.

Book Summary
Helen Fielding's devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud account of a year in the life of a thirty-something Singleton launched a genre and transcended the pages of fiction to become a cultural icon.

Emma

by Jane Austen
4 stars
Classic, Historical Fiction
Setting: England
474 pages
Published 1815

Ellie's Review
Emma is a great read, but I think Pride and Prejudice is still my favorite Austen. This did have wonderful character development.

Book Summary
Beautiful, clever, rich - and single - Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protegee Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen's most flawless work.

The Uncommon Reader

by Alan Bennett
3 stars
Setting: England
120 pages
Published 2007

Ellie's Review
This is a very quick and easy read that's also humorous. It's a cute plot about the Queen of England getting hooked on reading.

Book Summary
The eponymous reader of Alan Bennett's good-natured novella is none other than England's own Queen Elizabeth, who pursues her incorrigible corgis into a mobile library parked near Buckingham Palace, discovers the world of serious literature, and forsakes her duties for the pleasures of obsessive reading. Guided by a former kitchen employee, Her Majesty dives headlong into the works of Thomas Hardy, Marcel Proust, Nancy Mitford, and other literary icons -- while distressed advisers, fearing a constitutional crisis, scheme to divert her from her newfound passion.

Sense and Sensibility

by Jane Austen
3 stars
Classic, Historical Fiction
Setting: England
409 pages
Published 1811

Ellie's Review
I enjoyed this book, but it's not my favorite Jane Austen. Since I wasn't a big fan of one of the male characters, I wasn't too excited about a female character falling in love with him. Other than that, the contrast between the two sisters was really interesting. This made for a good book club discussion.

Book SummaryMarianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love—and its threatened loss—the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.

A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens
4 stars
Children's, Classic, Fantasy
Setting: England
86 pages
Published 1843

Ellie's Review
I have seen the play many times but enjoyed the book even more! If you can find an illustrated copy, read that version. This was a help to get me into the Christmas Spirit.

Book Summary
A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future.

The Alchemist

by Paulo Coelho
4 Stars
Setting: Spain, Egypt
167 pages
Published 1988

Ellie's Review
The Alchemist is a quick read with some powerful messages that I think everyone would like (even my dad liked it). This was my second time reading it, and I learned different things than before. From this read, I'm trying to live in and enjoy the present rather than living in the future or past.

Book Summary
This story, dazzling in its powerful simplicity and inspiring wisdom, is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom points Santiago in the direction of his quest. No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles along the way. But what starts out as a journey to find wordly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure found within. Lush, evocative, and deeply humane, the story of Santiago is an eternal testament to the transformation power of our dreams and the importance of listening to our hearts.

Rebecca

by Daphne du Maurier
5 Stars
Classic
Setting: England
441 pages
Published 1938

Ellie's Review
I absolutely love this book! It reminded me of Jane Eyre since it's a romantic suspense novel set in the past.

Book Summary
Working as a lady's companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Life begins to look very bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding Mrs Danvers.