Nevermore
opened with the re-reading of a classic:
Brideshead Revisited by
Evelyn Waugh. British officer Charles
Ryder is stationed at Brideshead, the family seat of Lord Marchmain. Before the war, Ryder had become acquainted
with Sebastian, the heir, and his sister Julia.
Ryder is from an affluent but not titled family, and he becomes
fascinated with the lives of the Marchmains, a Catholic family among the
largely Protestant nobility. Our reader enjoyed it just as much the second time
around.
The
Strings of Murder by Oscar de Muriel is set in Edinburgh in
1888, where a violinist is found murdered inside a locked room. With the Jack the Ripper’s murders in London
still fresh in everyone’s mind, the police try to avoid panic and enlist the
help of a former Scotland Yard detective to team up with a Scottish inspector
to solve the case. There’s a bit of the supernatural in this mystery, but what
impressed our reader the most was the masterful way de Muriel evoked the sense
of time and place.
The
next book up was Nellie Bly by Brooke Kroeger. Bly was one of the first women reporters and
was known for her fearlessness. Our
reader was fascinated with her undercover work in an asylum where she chronicled
the horrific conditions. Her book, Ten
Days in a Mad House, led to reform in mental health laws and institutions.
Finally,
there was Hiding Ezra by Rita Sims Quillen, a novel based on the
experiences of a relative during World War I.
Ezra was drafted, but allowed to come home because his mother was dying.
After her death, he stayed to try to take care of the desperately poor family
and was therefore declared AWOL. The
consequences at the time could be extremely harsh: some were executed as
deserters. The book does a splendid job of evoking the region and its people,
and our reviewer enjoyed it. Quillen is a local author, best known for her
poetry. This is her first novel, and has
been very well received.
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