No talkie

Sejent's Reveal



The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (TBR)

"Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit partying, and sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch tells the story of four Londoners--three women and a young man with a past--whose lives, and those of their friends and lovers, connect in sometimes surprising ways. In wartime London, the women work--as ambulance drivers, ministry clerks, and building inspectors. There are feats of heroism, epic and quotidian, and tragedies both enormous and personal, but it is the emotional inner lives of her characters that Sarah Waters captures with absolute truth and intimacy. Waters describes with perfect knowingness the taut composure of a rescue worker in the aftermath of a bombing, the idle longing of a young woman for her soldier lover, the peculiar thrill of a convict watching the sky ignite through the bars on his window, the hunger of a woman prowling the streets for an encounter, and the panic of another who sees her love affair coming to an end. At the same time, Waters is in absolute control of a narrative that offers up stunning surprises and exquisite turns, even as it depicts the impact of grand historical events on individual lives."

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón


Barcelona, 1945—just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday 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 volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, 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 one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love. And before long he realizes that if he doesn’t find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.

Bluecat's reveal

In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant (TBR)



Synopsis
1527. While the Papal city of Rome burns - brutally sacked by an invading army including Protestant heretics - two of her most interesting and wily citizens slip away, their stomachs churning on the jewels they have swallowed as the enemy breaks down their doors. Though almost as damaged as their beloved city, Fiammetta Bianchini and Bucino Teodoldi - a fabulous courtesan and her dwarf companion - are already planning their future. They head for the shimmering beauty of Venice, a honey pot of wealth and trade where they start to rebuild their business. As a partnership they are invincible: Bucino, clever with a sharp eye and a wicked tongue and Fiammetta, beautiful and shrewd, trained from birth to charm, entertain and satisfy men who have the money to support her. Venice, however, is a city which holds its own temptations. From the admiring Turk in search of human novelties for his Sultan's court, to the searing passion of a young lover who wants more than his allotted nights. But the greatest challenge comes from a young blind woman, a purveyor of health and beauty, who insinuates her way into their lives and hearts with devastating consequences for them all.

morsecode's reveal:

A Sundial in a Grave: 1610 by Mary Gentle



"It's about sex, and cruelty, and forgiveness."

Thus begins a sweeping historical adventure about two dueling swordsmen and the plot to kill a king in the grand tradition of Dorothy Dunnett and Alexander Dumas.

The year is 1610. Continental Europe is briefly at peace after years of war, but Henri IV of France is planning to invade the German principalities. In England, only five years earlier, conspirators nearly succeeded in blowing up King James I and his Parliament. The seeds of the English Civil War and the Thirty Years War are visibly being sown, and the possibility for both enlightenment and disaster abounds.

But Valentin Rochefort, duelist and spy for France's powerful financial minister, could not care less. Until he is drawn into the glittering palaces, bawdy back streets, and stunning theatrics of Renaissance France and Shakespearean London in a deadly plot both to kill King James I and to save him. For this swordsman without a conscience is about to find himself caught between loyalty, love, and blackmail, between kings, queens, politicians, and Rosicrucians -- and the woman he has, unknowingly, crossed land and sea to meet.

AceofHearts' book is:

An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears



From the Publisher
We are in Oxford in the 1660s - a time, and place, of great intellectual, scientific, religious and political ferment. Robert Grove, a fellow of New College is found dead in suspicious circumstances. A young woman is accused of his murder. We hear about the events surrounding his death from four witnesses: Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; Jack Prescott, the son of a supposed traitor to the Royalist cause determined to vindicate …+ read moreWe are in Oxford in the 1660s - a time, and place, of great intellectual, scientific, religious and political ferment. Robert Grove, a fellow of New College is found dead in suspicious circumstances. A young woman is accused of his murder. We hear about the events surrounding his death from four witnesses: Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; Jack Prescott, the son of a supposed traitor to the Royalist cause determined to vindicate his father; John Wallis, chief cryptographer to both Cromwell and Charles II, a mathematician, theologican and inveterate plotter; and Anthony Wood, the famous Oxford antiquary. Each witness tells their version of what happened. Only one reveals the extraordinary truth.

An Instance of the Fingerpost is a magnificent tour de force: an utterly compelling historical mystery story with a plot that twists and turns and keeps the reader guessing until the very last page

Xeyra's reveal is:

The Food Taster
by Peter Elbling



When the starving peasant, Ugo DiFonte and his eleven-year-old daughter Miranda are snatched from their farm by the despot Duke Federico Basillione DiVincelli, Ugo thinks life can't get any worse. He is sadly mistaken. The Duke orders Ugo to be his new foodtaster, a hazardous job made even more so by the Duke's many enemies.

Ugo quickly acquaints himself with the tools of his profession: poisons, antidotes, and every type of cuisine. Thus equipped, and with his own much needed wit, imagination, and, most of all, coraggio (guts), he attempts to survive a series of deadly intrigues, all the while trying to protect his strong-willed daughter from her own adolescent desires and the lustful cravings of powerful and dangerous men.

Veering from sumptuous descriptions of the food Ugo must taste but cannot enjoy, to lavish portraits of the court and its residents, Ugo's first person narrative gives us a finely detailed account of the High Renaissance from a peasant's perspective. He also shows us the little seen underbelly where poverty, disease, and cruelty are the order of the day.

Filled with moments of tenderness, unexpected humor, and painful candor, The Foodtaster is the story of a man rising to the occasion, and in doing so, finds his true purpose in life.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/4843605

geisha's reveal

Affinity by Sarah Waters

In late September 1874, Margaret Prior makes her way through the pentagons of London's Millbank Prison, a place of fearful symmetry and endless corridors. This plain woman on the verge of 30 has come to comfort those behind bars, several of whom Waters brings to instant, sad life. And our Lady Visitor plans to take her role dead seriously, having recovered from two years of nervous indolence in her family's Chelsea house. One person, however, makes her job a passion. Opening an inspection slit (or "eye" as these devices are known), Margaret hears "a perfect sigh, like a sigh in a story." Peering inward, she's confronted by the most erotic of visions--a woman turned toward the sun, caressing her cheek with a forbidden violet: "As I watched, she put the flower to her lips, and breathed upon it, and the purple of the petals gave a quiver and seemed to glow..."

Selina Dawes may indeed have the face of a Crivelli angel, but this medium is in for fraud and assault, her last session having gone very badly indeed. Suffice it to say that the first full encounter between these two very different women is enthralling. "You think spiritualism a kind of fancy," Selina riddles. "Doesn't it seem to you, now you are here, that anything might be real, since Millbank is?" And soon enough Margaret receives several viable signs of the supernatural: a locket disappears from her room, flowers mysteriously appear, and her dazzling friend knows everything about her. Strangest of all, Selina seems to love her.

As Margaret records her weekly prison forays, her own past comes into focus, notably her plans to travel to Italy with her first love (who is now her sister-in-law). But her current journal, she convinces herself, is to be very different from her last one, which "took as long to burn as human hearts, they say, do take." Meanwhile, Waters offers a narrative two-for-one, placing Margaret's diary cheek by jowl with Selina's chronicle of her pre-Millbank existence. This dispassionate, staccato record initially suggests that we can separate truth from desire. Or can we? What Waters's haunting creation leaves us with is a more painful reality--that knowledge and belief are entirely different things.

link to BC: http://bookcrossing.com/journal/5922042

Breeze's reveal is:

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (TBR)



From amazon.ca:
Set in 12th-century England, the narrative concerns the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge. The ambitions of three men merge, conflict and collide through 40 years of social and political upheaval as internal church politics affect the progress of the cathedral and the fortunes of the protagonists. "Follett has written a novel that entertains, instructs and satisfies on a grand scale," judged PW.

From Breeze: I know this isn't a new book, but I've heard a lot of good chatter about it lately and can't wait to read it myself!

Elsi's Reveal is:

The Secret Magdalene by Ki Longfellow



Book Description:

Raised like sisters, Mariamne and Salome are indulged with riches, position, and learning—a rare thing for females in Jerusalem. But Mariamne has a further gift: an illness has left her with visions; she has the power of prophecy. It is her prophesying that drives the two girls to flee to Egypt, where they study philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy in the Great Library of Alexandria.

After seven years they return to a Judaea where many now believe John the Baptizer is the messiah. Salome too begins to believe, but Mariamne, now called Magdalene, is drawn to his cousin, Yeshu’a, a man touched by the divine in the same way she was during her days of illness. Together they speak of sharing their direct experience of God; but Yeshu’a unexpectedly gains a reputation as a healer, and as the ill and the troubled flock to him, he and Magdalene are forced to make a terrible decision.

This radical retelling of the greatest story ever told brings Mary Magdalene to life-not as a prostitute or demon-possessed-but as an educated woman who was truly the "apostle to the apostles."

Krin's reveal is:




Sister Noon by Karen Joy Fowler

"Set in San Francisco in the Gilded Age, Sister Noon is a period mystery that showcases the wickedly wry and deliciously subversive talents readers expect of Karen Joy Fowler.

Lizzie Hayes, a member of the San Francisco elite, is a seemingly docile, middle-aged spinster praised for her volunteer work with the Ladies Relief and Protection Society Home, or "The Brown Ark". All she needs is the spark that will liberate her from the ruling conventions. When the wealthy and well-connected, but ill-reputed Mary Ellen Pleasant shows up at the Brown Ark, Lizzie is drawn to her. It is the beautiful, but mysterious Mary Ellen, an outcast among the women of the elite because of her notorious past and her involvement in voodoo, who will eventually hold the key to unlocking Lizzie's rebellious nature."

GateGypsy's reveal

Empire of the Sun



He is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him...

In Empire of the Sun, J.G. Ballard has produced a mesmerizing, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches, which blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint. Rooted as it is in the author's own disturbing experience of war in our time, it is one of a handful of novels by which the Twentieth Century will be not only remembered, but judged.

<-- this book is a fictionalized account of the events experienced by the author during WWII Shanghai, China. (And, a fantastic book, I'll have you know, and coincedentally one of the 1001!)[/QUOTE]

SpiderChic's reveal is:



Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett

'The year is 1527. Hans Holbein makes his first visit to England to paint Thomas More, courtier, scholar, patron, and his family. More's splendid house on the river in Chelsea is at the centre of Tudor society, frequented by distinguished astronomers, artists, politicians, men of religion, and many others.
Two visitors to the great house find themselves irresistibly drawn to Meg Giggs, one of More's foster daughters. John Clement - dark, tall, elegant - is a man of compelling presence and mysterious background. The other man is Holbein himself - warm, ebullient, radical and a painter of a great renown. Meg finds herself powerfully drawn to these two wildly contrasting men. She will love one, and marry the other.'

VeganMedusa's reveal: