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Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: Reading The Girl of His Dreams leaves you no choice but to reconsider what makes a mystery novel so good. Certainly there's no denying the appeal of a hard-boiled crime story, where more often than not a brilliant yet battered P.I. drives you white-knuckled to the edge of your seat, but Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti--at once exactingly inquisitive and disarmingly sensitive--bucks that genre convention entirely. Here, in Leon's seventeenth Brunetti mystery, is a man who investigates the tragic drowning of a young Gypsy girl relentlessly, yet--in his thoughtful meanderings through the streets and cafes of Venice--also struggles to understand the human warps and weaknesses that make his beloved city so vulnerable. In the end, it's this pure love and curiosity for life (and, I admit, his lusty appreciation of daily luxuries like prosecco, good coffee, or a burst of sunshine) that make Brunetti such a seductive hero--so much so that you're willing to follow him wherever he goes. --Anne Bartholomew

From Booklist

Starred Review Leon’s latest Guido Brunetti novel begins and ends with funerals—the first for Brunetti’s mother and the second for an 11-year-old gypsy girl whose body washes up in Venice’s Grand Canal. As he launches what he knows will be a fruitless investigation of the girl’s death, Brunetti is assailed by the ironies of police work in contemporary Italy, where corruption is rampant and where his boss, Patta, king of the bureaucrats, prattles on about multicultural awareness while trying to protect the well-connected from any exposure in the matter of an insignificant gypsy’s death. But just as Brunetti is incensed by the way his peers ignore the marginalized members of society, so is he appalled by the callousness with which gypsy fathers groom their young children for lives of petty crime. More and more in Leon’s remarkably rich series, crimes have no solutions, and the problems of daily life yield no answers. And yet, as Brunetti reflects on his loss of the “capacity for instinctive trust,” we feel just that kind of trust in Brunetti himself, in the idea of a man overwhelmed by a malfunctioning society who soldiers on, doing what good work he can and finding solace in small moments of love and tranquility. It isn’t much, but in lives bookended by funerals and filled with frustrations, it’s what we have. This series becomes less about crime and more about daily life with each new entry, and as it evolves, it becomes clear that Leon deserves her place not only with the finest international crime writers (Michael Dibdin and Henning Mankell, for example) but also with literary novelists who explore the agonies of the everyday (Margaret Drabble and Anne Tyler, among others). --Bill Ott

Amazon.com Review

Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane’s long-awaited eighth novel unflinchingly captures the political and social unrest of a nation caught at the crossroads between past and future. Filled with a cast of unforgettable characters more richly drawn than any Lehane has ever created, The Given Day tells the story of two families--one black, one white--swept up in a maelstrom of revolutionaries and anarchists, immigrants and ward bosses, Brahmins and ordinary citizens, all engaged in a battle for survival and power. Beat cop Danny Coughlin, the son of one of the city’s most beloved and powerful police captains, joins a burgeoning union movement and the hunt for violent radicals. Luther Laurence, on the run after a deadly confrontation with a crime boss in Tulsa, works for the Coughlin family and tries desperately to find his way home to his pregnant wife.

Here, too, are some of the most influential figures of the era--Babe Ruth; Eugene O’Neill; leftist activist Jack Reed; NAACP founder W. E. B. DuBois; Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson’s ruthless Red-chasing attorney general; cunning Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge; and an ambitious young Department of Justice lawyer named John Hoover.

Coursing through some of the pivotal events of the time--including the Spanish Influenza pandemic--and culminating in the Boston Police Strike of 1919, The Given Day explores the crippling violence and irrepressible exuberance of a country at war with, and in the thrall of, itself. As Danny, Luther, and those around them struggle to define themselves in increasingly turbulent times, they gradually find family in one another and, together, ride a rising storm of hardship, deprivation, and hope that will change all their lives.

“[An] engrossing epic. . . . A vision of redemption and a triumph of the human spirit.”
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About the Author
Dennis Lehane is the author of seven novels. These include the New York Times bestsellers Gone, Baby, Gone; Mystic River; and Shutter Island, as well as Coronado, a collection of short stories and a play. He and his wife, Angie, divide their time between Boston and the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Images from *The Given Day*

The Boston Molasses Disaster
The Boston Molasses Disaster, also known as the Great Molasses Flood, occurred on January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. A large molasses tank burst and a wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 mph, killing 21 and injuring 150. The event has entered local folklore, and residents claim that on hot summer days the areas still smells of molasses. (From Wikipedia).

Headline from the Boston Post, September 9, 1919
Rioters clash with National Guardsmen called in by Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge during a strike by Boston police officers.

Emma Goldman
"I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck."

Influenza
City officials in Boston were caught off guard when three civilians dropped dead of influenza in early September 1918. As September 1918 drew to a close, Boston had lost more than 1,000 citizens to the silent, relentless killer. The deadly influenza now posed a threat to the entire nation, and the world at large.

Calvin Coolidge
John Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933) was a Republican lawyer from Vermont who worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor. His actions during the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight; he became the 30th President of the United States (1923 - 1929).

The Boston Molasses Disaster

The headline from the Boston Post, September 9, 1919

Emma Goldman

Influenza Mask

Calvin Coolidge

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. A seasoned TV and film actor, Michael Boatman is an excellent choice for Lehane's historical fiction. Set in Boston at the time of the 1919 policemen's strike, the novel involves a range of characters including Babe Ruth and sundry African-American, Irish, Irish-American, Italian and Italian-American men and women. Boatman creates a clear and engaging persona for each and handles all the accents convincingly. His pacing helps draw listeners into the lives contorted by the social, economic and political turmoil of the era that Lehane describes so exquisitely. Fans of Mystic River will be swept into this full-bodied production. A Morrow hardcover (Reviews, July 7). (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Jesus returns at last in this 12th novel in the phenomenally popular Left Behind series, vanquishing his foes and ushering in a new millennium of peace and righteousness. Ray Steele is the only member of the original Tribulation Force alive to see it, however, since Buck Williams endures a bloody death in the opening pages. The novel’s pacing suffers greatly from its own foregone conclusion. Antichrist Nicolae Carpathia, once a fearsome and suave foe, is reduced to shrill hysteria in this installment, and seems more of a cartoon character than a credible instrument of Satan. And the final wars (there are four of them in quick succession) add no drama to the plot, since believers are by that point impervious to harm; neither the bullets from the Unity army or the supernatural lightning raining down from the sky can touch the Christian holdouts. It must have been difficult to imagine the words that Jesus would speak on such an occasion, but the authors’ cautious solution-to draw almost solely on the statements spoken by or about Jesus in the New Testament-feels wooden. However, the book is not devoid of humor, and fans of the series will enjoy the gentle, affectionate camaraderie that exists among the excited members of the ragtag brigade of believers. For readers who have stuck with this soap opera through thick and thin, there is a real emotional payoff in seeing the characters’ reunions with their loved ones who died during the Tribulation.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Back Cover

Unity Army destroys Petra. Armies amass at Megiddo for ultimate showdown. Cross-shaped lightning illuminates night sky.

Storm clouds gather over the Valley of Megiddo as the fiercest military battle in history is about to commence. The lone surviving member of the original Tribulation Force lies broken and bleeding. Can he rally one more time before the Unity Army annihilates Petra, killing the believers seeking refuge?

Antichrist Nicolae Carpathia vows a decisive victory, ensuring his ascension as divine ruler over the new world order. But in a blinding instant, a strange, shadowless light blankets the earth as the true Victor comes at last to claim His throne.

Glorious Appearing is #12 in the phenomenal New York Times best-selling Left Behind series that rocked the publishing world and made millions think seriously about the future and their places in it.

With special features relating to current events and end-times prophecy.

Dusty, on forced leave as a police officer, returns home for her twin’s funeral to find local authorities aren’t being upfront about her brother’s death. Her focus fixes on Shane, her brother’s best friend. Sparks fly and while Dusty finds herself sinking in deeper with Shane, the mystery of what happened to her brother, and an ever growing list of victims, grows even stranger.<

The greatest historians are vivid storytellers, Robert Lacey reminds us, and in Great Tales from English History, he proves his place among them, illuminating in unforgettable detail the characters and events that shaped a nation. In this volume, Lacey limns the most important period in England's past, highlighting the spread of the English language, the rejection of both a religion and a traditional view of kingly authority, and an unstoppable movement toward intellectual and political freedom from 1387 to 1689. Opening with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and culminating in William and Mary's "Glorious Revolution," Lacey revisits some of the truly classic stories of English history: the Battle of Agincourt, where Henry V's skilled archers defeated a French army three times as large; the tragic tale of the two young princes locked in the Tower of London (and almost certainly murdered) by their usurping uncle, Richard III; Henry VIII's schismatic divorce, not just from his wife but fr...<

Andrew Lang's Fairy Books constitute a twelve-book series of fairy tale collections. Although Andrew Lang did not collect the stories himself from the oral tradition, the extent of his sources, who had collected them originally (with the notable exception of Madame d'Aulnoy), made them an immensely influential collection, especially as he used foreign-language sources, giving many of these tales their first appearance in English. As acknowledged in the prefaces, although Lang himself made most of the selections, his wife and other translators did a large portion of the translating and telling of the actual stories. "The irony of Lang's life and work is that although he wrote for a professionliterary criticism; fiction; poems; books and articles on anthropology, mythology, history, and travel...he is best recognized for the works he did not write." Lang's urge to collect and publish fairy tales was rooted in his own experience with the folk and fairy tales of his home territory along the English-Scottish border. When Lang began his efforts, he "was fighting against the critics and educationists of the day," who judged the traditional tales' "unreality, brutality, and escapism to be harmful for young readers, while holding that such stories were beneath the serious consideration of those of mature age."

Amazon.com Review

Even though the excellent thrillers by John Lescroart--The 13th Juror, A Certain Justice, Dead Irish, and Hard Evidence are out in paperback--usually feature stirring courtroom scenes, where they really shine is out in the real world. His latest is no exception, as Mark Dooher, a high-profile attorney with links to the Catholic hierarchy of San Francisco, is charged with the brutal murder of the wife he had come to hate. Did Dooher do her? Lt. Abe Glitsky, whose own beloved wife is dying of cancer, is sure of it, but defense attorneys Wes Farrell and Christina Carrera--for different but equally hidden reasons--are certain he's being framed. You'll enjoy the tension and appreciate the intricate plotting.

From Library Journal

Mark Dooher has a successful legal career, a long-lasting marriage, charm, good looks, and money; but when he meets young, beautiful law student Christina Carrera, he wants her, too. The author of A Certain Justice (LJ 7/95) has Mark manage, through a series of devious manipulations, to rid Christina of her fiance, get her a job at his firm, and make her fall in love with him. But there is the troublesome matter of his wife, whom he cannot divorce because of his important professional relationship with the city's archbishop. Then his wife turns up conveniently murdered, and the resulting trial could turn out to be Mark's greatest challenge yet. This original, well-crafted page-turner is blockbuster material. Highly recommended.
-?Melissa Kuzma Rokicki, NYPL
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.