Tuesday, July 14, 2026
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Christmas at the Women’s Hotel: A Biedermeier Story by Daniel M. Lavery
Saturday, November 01, 2025
A Writer's Life....Caroline Clemmons: Crafting the Perfect Western Romance Heroine: Inspired by Grit by Caroline Clemmons
Monday, August 04, 2025
Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
Historical novelist Laura
Shepherd-Robinson wanders into thriller territory with her newest book The
Art of a Lie, to be released on 5 August 2025 by Atria Books. Newly widowed
Hannah Cole is beset from all sides: her Piccadilly confectionery business Punchbowl
and Pineapple is foundering because women in business are socially unacceptable,
her suppliers are overcharging her, the shop assistants are acting up. Along
comes William Deveraux, a stranger to Hannah but who says he was friends with her
late husband Jonas Cole and wants to be of assistance to his widow.
Hannah is grateful for any
help he offers. When William suggests that an Italian delicacy called iced
cream would draw crowds to her shop and revitalize its reputation, she
immediately refines the old recipe he found and advertises the new treat, which
is a rousing success.
Hannah’s cousin, the executor
of Cole’s estate, finds a large sum of money in Cole’s bank accounts that
cannot be explained. Sir Henry Fielding, author turned magistrate, is trying
hard to promote the desirability of a publicly funded police force, which so
far no one wants. Fielding attaches the estate while he investigates Cole’s
business dealings more thoroughly, freezing probate and settlement. If the
money could be proven to be illicitly acquired, then Fielding can seize it to
fund his police force. Cole was found in the river, an apparent victim of a
street robbery, but Fielding learns enough about his shady business dealings to
suspect deliberate murder and decides to look more closely, asking questions of
the late Cole’s associates and relatives, including Hannah, that they would
rather not answer.
In the meantime Deveraux is
growing particular in his attentions to Hannah, despite her mourning status,
causing considerable gossip. She is busy experimenting with new flavors of iced
cream while ordering more cream and ice every day; she cannot keep the frozen
dessert in stock and the elite of the ton are dashing to her store.
Set in 1749 during the reign
of George II, readers familiar with the St. Cyr Regency mysteries written by C.
S. Harris which begin in 1811 will still recognize many of the people, places,
and conventions. Like Harris, Shepherd-Robinson’s deep scholarly research is
dauntingly impressive but never interferes with the unfolding of the story. The
annotated bibliography at the end offers more sources for the academically minded
to pursue.
Hannah is a force of nature in
a time when women were not allowed to be anything except servants, figuratively
and literally. Her strength of character and raw intelligence keep her one step
ahead of everyone else and allows her to deceive her ill-wishers and surprise
the reader again and again.
A fascinating read. It will be
on my best of 2025 list.
Starred review from Library
Journal.
·
Publisher:
Atria Books
·
Publication
date: August 5, 2025
·
Language:
English
·
Print
length: 304 pages
·
ISBN-10:
1668083094
·
ISBN-13:
978-1668083093
Amazon Associate Purchase
Link: https://amzn.to/46DIRFk
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
Saturday, July 26, 2025
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Short Story Wednesday: The Bloomin' Onion: Not Too Late This Summer by Larry W. Chavis
Take the time to go read Larry's short story. Fiction that takes the reader back to 1931 with a message that applies just as much today. Good stuff and worth your time.
Short Story Wednesday: The Bloomin' Onion: Not Too Late This Summer by Larry W. Chavis
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Sunday, September 08, 2024
Tuesday, September 03, 2024
Review: Tom Sharp: The Man And The Legend (A Novel) by Charlie Steel
Tom Sharp: The Man And The Legend (A Novel) by Charlie Steel is a book that is fiction based on factual history. Historical fiction, the read is crafted to highlight Tom Sharp’s accomplishments from the late 1860s through the next several decades as Mr. Sharp formulates his businesses and helps others.
The book begins during the Civil War
when Tom Sharp-is severely wounded in the service of the Army of the Confederate
States of America. His wounds are so severe, he is released from duty by
General Sterling Price. The General also arranges for Sharp to join a wagon
train heading west. Sharpe does not want to return to the south. He plans to
earn enough and have a high enough station in life to follow through on the
marriage pact with the Durrett family. It had been agreed that once he was well
established, he would marry 17-year-old Katherine. She barely knows him, but was
full of admiration for his going to join the Confederate Army.
It takes him some time to heal enough
that he can be a productive member of the wagon train. He eventually is and
finds various ways to help his fellow travelers even when not all of them
appreciate his efforts. As the group heads west on the Oregon/ California trail,
Sharp realizes more and more how much he does not know. He also realizes more
and more that it is time to leave the slowly moving wagon train and make his own
way west. Encountering the man called Tex is another lucky break that helps
make all of his dreams come true.
An interesting read, Tom Sharp:
The Man And The Legend (A Novel) by Charlie Steel, is a solidly good
blend of fact and fiction. While some author liberties are taken in the
fictionalization of dialogue in relationships and other matters, it is clear
that those fictionalizations and other details have a solid basis in fact.
Those interested in learning more on the man and his life will appreciate the nice list of subject resources found at the back of the book. Also appreciated are the numerous illustrations by Barabash Sviatoslav scattered throughout the 300 plus page read.
If you like westerns and western
history, Tom Sharp: The Man And The Legend (A Novel) by Charlie
Steel is a solidly good read. It certainly is well worth your time.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3TcKMJD
My reading copy came from the publisher,
Condor Publishing.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2024
Friday, August 23, 2024
Friday, April 12, 2024
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Historical Fiction with Libraries!
Monday, January 08, 2024
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: The Widow of Rose House by Diana Biller
Thursday, July 20, 2023
Bitter Tea and Mystery: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Monday, July 10, 2023
Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor
Dublin-born
Joseph O’Connor has written novels and screenplays and has won a number of
international literary awards. His latest book My Father’s House
(Europa, 2023) fictionalizes the heroic efforts of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty (1898-1963) and a small network
who in 1943 and 1944 smuggled Jews and Allied personnel out of Italy despite
the best efforts of the occupying Germans to stop them. O’Flaherty is credited
with saving some 6500 lives while risking his own. O’Flaherty’s exploits were
depicted in the 1983 television film The Red and the Black and in a
radio play called The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican.
Members of
the network found places in the Vatican and in Rome for the escapees to hide
while waiting for an opportunity to move into a more rural, and therefore
safer, area or to leave Italy. The network also collected donations to arrange
for forged passports and identity cards as well as transport costs. The book
focuses on Christmas Eve 1943, when the group had learned German vigilance
would be relaxed and moving around Rome unobserved would be easier. The goal
was to drop off hundreds of dollars in three different places to pass down the
line of individuals helping the fugitives to safety.
The measures
they took to protect all involved were extreme. Nothing in writing, everything
memorized in code. The network met weekly ostensibly as a choir and as a few of
them sang, the others would discuss next steps. Money was sewn into the lining
of clothing or stuffed into Christmas cakes. The couriers with the money
traversed the Vatican and Rome through the centuries-old underground catacombs.
O’Connor
paints a tense and frightening picture of occupied Rome, when one misstep could
mean torture and a slow painful death. The descriptive passages are sumptuously
composed, lavish with imagery. It’s easy to understand why O’Connor has won so
many literary awards. A section at the end explains how much of the story is
true (a good deal) and where the author took creative license. For fans of
historical fiction, historical thrillers, and World War Two novels and for
lovers of beautiful writing.
Starred
reviews from Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus.
·
Publisher: Europa Editions (January
31, 2023)
·
Language: English
·
Hardcover: 440 pages
·
ISBN-10: 1609458354
·
ISBN-13: 978-1609458355
Aubrey
Nye Hamilton ©2023
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
Friday, December 23, 2022
The Reading Room: Mother Daughter Traitor Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal: Reading Room Review
Saturday, November 19, 2022
Friday, September 23, 2022
The Reading Room: The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian: Reading Room Review
Monday, September 12, 2022
Bitter Tea and Mystery: The Lady Hardcastle Mysteries by T.E. Kinsey
Monday, August 15, 2022
Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: M, King's Bodyguard by Niall Leonard
It is January
1901 and the United Kingdom is undergoing cataclysmic change: Queen
Victoria is dying. Ascending to the throne at the age of 18 in 1837, most people
could not remember a time when she was not their queen. Prince Albert, the
Prince of Wales, calls Melville to Osbourne House, where the family is
gathered, to enlist his assistance for the arrival of Kaiser Wilhelm of
Germany, Victoria’s grandson and Albert’s nephew. There Melville meets
Steinhauer.
Plans for the
funeral have been in place for years. Melville’s job is to ensure the
anarchists running rampant in Europe do not converge on London and assassinate
any of the crowned heads paying their final respects. That many coveted targets
in one highly visible location would be irresistible to any dissident worthy of
the name, and Melville knows it. When he receives word of a credible plot to
kill the Kaiser, his clueless supervisor declines to provide back-up staff so
Melville enlists Steinhauer’s support instead. Locating and neutralizing a nameless radical
revolutionary proved more challenging than Melville expected. The would-be
killer leads Melville and Steinhauer on a chase across London from safe house
to safe house, into a high-class bordello, through a muddy river, around the
public gasworks, and down subway tunnels.
This fast-moving and action-filled narrative describes the
people and the city of 1901 in exquisite detail, conveying authentic sights,
sounds, and smells of a place from more than 100 years ago. Leonard certainly
did his research; the book has a sense of immediacy I would not have expected
in an historical account. I especially liked the description of Melville
sailing through the air during an explosion. The writing is wonderful.
Hints of the war to come are evident even in 1901. While Melville is forced to rely on Steinhauer, he never really trusts him, aware of the underlying discord between the new King Edward and the Kaiser. Later on in their lives they become adversaries. The final pages of the book lay the groundwork for Melville’s career in what would become MI5 as well as for a sequel to this very fine historical thriller. I am looking forward to it.
·
Publisher: Pantheon (July 13,
2021)
·
Language: English
·
Hardcover: 272 pages
·
ISBN-10: 1524749052
·
ISBN-13: 978-1524749057
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2022
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on
Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
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