Reported by Jeanne
First up in Nevermore
was Lisette’s List by Susan Vreeland.
The story begins in 1937, when young bride Lisette has to move from her
beloved Paris to a tiny village in Provence in order to take care of her
husband’s grandfather, Pascal. She finds
compensation in hearing Pascal’s stories of the great artists: he had been a pigment salesman and knew
artists such as Pizarro and Cezanne who had gifted him with paintings. Then
World War II begins, and Lisette’s world is again turned upside down as the
Nazis invade. Our reader proclaimed it
to be an excellent novel, especially for those interested in art, but with a
wide ranging appeal.
The next book was A Land
Remembered by Patrick Smith, another historical novel but this one begins
in 1858 in Florida when Tobias McIvey decides to start on new life on the
frontier. The novel follows several
generations of the McIvey family as they struggle through hardships to become
wealthy and influential. The book covers
a century of Florida history and has won numerous awards since its publication
in 1984. Our reader especially
appreciated the attention to environmental detail.
Blood on Snow
by Jo Nesbo centers on Olav, a hitman who is hired to take out a special
target—the crime boss’s wife. Olav knows
it’s a very dangerous assignment from the start, as he will likely be
eliminated by someone else because he knows too much. Once he started shadowing his victim, another
complication surfaces: he falls in love with her. Our reader said Blood on Snow was very
different from Nesbo’s usual work, almost poetic. He loved it.
Nonfiction was well
represented with Vanished by Wil Hylton. In 1944, a B-24 went down near
the island of Palau in the Pacific with eleven crew members. Despite the large size of the plane, the
wreckage was never found. Sixty years
later, Dr. Pat Scanlon, a diver with an interest in locating WW II planes, took
up the challenge to find out what became of the plane and crew. Our reader said
it was interesting and noted that she read it for the mystery and not its
literary quality.
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