On Turpentine Lane by Elinor Lipman FIC Lip

Faith Frankel has recently moved back to her home town where she works in Stewardship at her former day school.  To be honest, she IS the Stewardship department.  She has a fiance, Stuart, who is currently walking across the country on a spiritual journey.  Said journey seems to involve a lot of partying and pictures with his arms around attractive women. While Faith can ignore these, she finds it harder and harder to ignore the fact that Stuart rarely returns her calls or texts.

Tired of living in a one-bedroom apartment, Faith purchases a charming 5-bedroom home on Turpentine Lane.  Despite all the things that need to be done, she falls in love with the house.  Until she finds creepy pictures of two babies in the attic...and the police come knocking on her door with a search warrant to search her basement.  What secrets does her new house hold?

Fortunately, Faith has a loving and supportive family (even though her father has moved out of the family home in order to become an artist) and the support of Nick, her office mate and head of Development for the school.  

I breezed through this book in four days - and this from someone who usually takes at least a week to read a book.  The characters are fun and easy to relate to, the setting in Massachusetts interesting and I found myself rooting for things to work out for Faith.  I've always enjoyed the authors books and this one is no exception.

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The Orphan's Tale by Pam Jenoff. FIC Jen

I have just finished putting a hold on another of Ms. Jenoff's books because I loved this book.  If you enjoy historical fiction put this one on your list!  This novel takes place during WWII.  It is the story of two women in danger from the Nazis who form a strong friendship.

Noa is only 16 when her parents throw her out of the house.  Not surprisingly they were upset to find out that she was pregnant - and the father is a Nazi.  With no other option she goes to a home and is forced to give up her baby.  Returning home is out of the question.  She gets a job cleaning a small railway station and in return she can sleep in a small room there.  One day she hears strange noises and looks into an abandoned boxcar.  There she is shocked to see it filled with babies who are either dead or dying in the cold.  Without really thinking about it she grabs a baby and runs.

Astrid is a Jew who grew up in a circus family.  But then she married a man whom she loved and moved to Berlin to settle in one place for the first time in her life.  Like Noa, Astrid is kicked out of her home - by her husband who is a Nazi officer.  He does it because of their mixed marriage which would no longer be tolerated by the Reich.  Did he kick her out because of love or hate?  She doesn't know.

They both have a lot to hide when they meet at a German circus.  A great read.

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The Mother's Promise by Sally Hepworth FIC Hep

 

This was a fast read - or maybe it just seemed that way because I read it in two sittings.  The book opens with Alice Stanhope meeting with her doctor to get the results of some tests - and the news isn't good.  She has ovarian cancer and she needs to begin aggressive treatment immediately.  The nurse, Kate, makes sure that Alice understands what is involved.  She offers to call someone to come be with her.  But Alice explains that she only has her teenage daughter, Zoe.  Her one sibling is an alcoholic brother who is useless.  Kate brings Sonja, a social worker, into the case to find some support for Alice.

As devastated as Alice is by the diagnosis, she is even more worried about Zoe.  Zoe suffers from a very severe social anxiety and Alice seems to spend most of her time trying to help Zoe get through  life.  When Alice ends up in the hospital, she and Zoe get support from unexpected places.

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The Wonder by Emma Donoghue FIC Don

Donoghue's previous book, Room, was a great book and this one was just as intriguing.  It takes place in the mid-1800's in a small Irish village - a place where people put out saucers of milk at night for the fairies.  So it isn't a surprise that they are instant believers when they find out that one of their own seems to be a miracle.  Anna is eleven and she appears to have been surviving for four months with no food and only a few teaspoons of water.  Soon the small cabin becomes a destination for locals and tourists alike.

A group of men decide they want to make sure that it is a miracle and not a hoax.  So they hire two nurses.  One is Lib Wright, an English nurse who had worked with Florence Nightingale, and an Irish nurse who is a nun.   The strategy is to have the women make sure that Anna is under surveillance every minute of the day.  Lib knows that Anna could not possibly be alive without eating for months.  She is sure they will discover how this farce is being pulled off - but after the first week she still has no idea.

I loved the historical background of this novel and the mystery that had to be solved!

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Circling the Sun by Paula McLain FIC Mcl

This is historical fiction which I always enjoy.  It is about a woman named Beryl Markham who led a life that was a lot more exciting than my life!  With her family she left England as a child and grew up in Kenya on a farm.  When she was young her mother took her brother and went back to England.  Beryl remained with her father.  She loved the outdoors and working with her father as a race horse trainer.  She resisted all attempts by her father to give her an education and become a lady.

When she was 17 her father's fortunes took a downturn and he lost the farm.  Because she didn't want to leave Kenya to go with her father she accepted a marriage proposal to an older man (she was 17) which was the first of many bad relationships.

Beryl not only became a well-respected horse trainer and later she broke records as a pilot.  It seemed as if there were very few calm times during her life.  One of the things that contributed to the turmoil was her passion for a safari hunter named Denys Finch Hutton.  It was complicated because he was involved in a long time relationship with a woman named Karen Bixen.  You probably don't recognize the name but she was a writer and under the name Isak Dinesen she wrote her memoir - Out of Africa!   So as I was reading this book I had a mental image of that movie.  (Mostly I was thinking about Robert Redford who played the part of Denys!!)
     A great read!

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Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng FIC Ng

James Lee was a professor who fell in love with Marilyn who was working as his assistant while she was pursuing her dream to become a doctor.  That dream fell apart when she became pregnant with her first son. They decided to get married.  Marilyn wasn't very close to her mother but she did invite her to come for the wedding.  Her mother was impressed that her daughter was marrying a professor - until she arrived and found out that he was Chinese.   In the 60's this still raised a lot of eyebrows.  They eventually have a daughter and another son.

When the novel begins we learn that their daughter Lydia is dead. She was 16, an honor student and with some 'help' from her mother is headed toward college and then medical school.  When Lydia went missing the police talk to the family members and want the names of her friends.  The police are shocked to find that she really didn't have any friends - and her family was unaware of that.

Her body is found in a lake.  Now they need to figure out if it was a suicide or a murder.  Lots of family secrets will have to be uncovered to find out the truth.

      This is a debut novel!   Can't wait for more.

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To Capture What We Cannot Keep by Beatrice Colin FIC Col

Caitriona Wallace, a young Scottish widow, is chaperoning two young adults, Jamie and Alice Arrol, on a world tour.  Their last stop is Paris.  On a hot air balloon flight over the city, Cait has a chance encounter with Emile Nouguier, a designer and engineer for the controversial Eiffel Tower.  Although they meet only twice, both are affected by their visits.

Once home in Scotland, Cait finds her life vastly constricted.  Left impoverished by her husband's death she finds her options are limited.  On the verge of accepting a marriage proposal from an older gentleman that would make her comfortable but miserable, Cait jumps at the opportunity to accompany Jamie and Alice back to Paris where Jamie plans to apprentice himself to Nouguier.

Cait yearns to break free from the strictures placed on her by society (is she destined to be a chaperone for the rest of her life?).  Emile has broken from the family tradition of running a glass factory and faces the disappointment of his mother.  Over time the two of them are drawn together but can their attraction succeed in a society that disapproves?

Told in alternating chapters from the point-of-view of Cait and then Emile, this story fairly quivers with what life in Paris in the late 1880s was like. From descriptions of the restrictive clothing women wore to how the public looked on the building of the Eiffel Tower, it was a fascinating look.  I could almost taste the metal in the air that was in constant use to build the tower.  The struggles that Emile and Cait faced in order to be together were also clearly drawn.

A good book that provides an inside look at a time I wasn't familiar with and the building of something I now take for granted.

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