21. Family Tree

By Barbara Delinsky
Rated ★★★★

From the blurb: "The old and illustrious New England Clarke family has a new member, and she is not what the family envisioned. Elizabeth Clarke, a beautiful daughter born to Hugh and Dana, possesses definite African American traits."

"As Dana's family history and fidelity are questioned, Hugh, who thought he was above racism, now wants his wife to find out the truth about her heritage. While Dana searches for her father and Hugh's family pressures him to find out for certain if the child is indeed his, Hugh must confront the truth about himself, his family, and their racist attitude while also trying to reconcile his own attitude toward his daughter."

This book makes you think about how you would react if this had happened in your family.

20. In Pursuit of the Green Lion

by Judith Merkle Riley
Rated A++

This book is a sequel to A Vision of Light. Married now to Brother Gregory (Gilbert de Vilers) Margaret, is living with the insufferable, penny pinching in laws She is carving out a life for herself and her daughters despite the hostility and greed of her in-laws. But when Gregory is captured in France and held for ransom, Margaret knows she must take action—her in-laws are too tight with money to be of any use—so she teams up with her old friends Mother Hilde, the herbalist, and Brother Malachi, an alchemist on a quest for the secret of changing base metals into gold. Together, the trio plan to rescue Gregory and bring him back to London, where he and Margaret can start a new life away from his meddling family.

And thus begins a wild adventure across fourteenth-century Europe. Murderous noblemen, scheming ladies, truculent ghosts, and a steady stream of challenges plague the journey. Margaret will need not only her special gift of healing, her quick mind, and her independent spirit but the loyalty of her friends and the love of her new husband to carry them all safely home.

19. The Persian Boy

by Mary Renault
Rated B

I thought the end of this book would never come. My problem with it is that I read the first half, read two other books and then came back to it. Bad idea.

The story is told from the viewpoint of Bagoas, a young eunuch and a real historical character who became Alexander's servant and lover following the conquest of Persia. Essentially this is a love story: not just between Alexander and Bagoas, but also Hephastion one of his generals and boyhood friend, lover, and battle companion. In the author's note at the end of the story Renault points out that history bears out the fact that Alexander was bi-sexual but leaned heavily to the homosexual side of his nature.

I recently watched a televised version of Alexander's life on the History Chanel. In that program they mentioned that Alexander and his army covered approximately forty thousand miles (mostly on foot) in twelve years. Taking into account that this army was fighting battles, and conquering nations all the way, I can't see how Alexander had time to date girls or the energy left to conduct a romance. This may have been a simple case of making do with what was readily available.

Renault portrays Alexander the Great as being handsome, charismatic, brave, usually fair and just, and a brilliant military strategist whose Macedonian warriors are willing to follow him to the ends of the earth. Putting together Renault's book and the History Chanel biography of him, I am totally impressed. He was truly a remarkable man.

18. All Passion Spent

Vita Sackville-West
Rated C

Blurb from back of book "Having surrendered of her life to the exemplary, if often hollow fulfillment of her marriage, to the expectations of her statesman husband and the demands of her children, Lady Slane finally, in her widowhood, defies her family. She dismisses the wishes and plans of her six pompous sons and daughters for her future, and instead retires to a tiny house in Hampstead, where she chooses to live independently and free from her past. There she alters, and not without some success, the course of her personal history. There, too, she recollects the dreams of her youth and at last, with one last "strange and lovely thing, " acts upon the passion she forfeited seventy years earlier to the narrow conventions of a proper Victorian marriage."

After reading the first few pages of this book I was entirely in sympathy with Lady Slane as she declares her independence from her pompas and patronizing children. However by the time I finished this book the only characters I liked were the landlord, the handyman and the french maid. As I read it slowly dawned on me that Lady Slane had a mean streak that had remained hidden under her personna of gentle, scatterbrained and submissive wife and dedicated Mother.

17. Natural Born Charmer

By Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Rated A+++

Chicago Stars quarterback Dean Robillard is driving to Tennessee when he spots a headless beaver walking down the side of the street.

Once again this author has come through for me in a big way. She is a genius of creating a comic situation and giving it depth and a touch of pathos. She has a talent for drawing the reader into the story so the reader feels emotionally invested in the outcome. There is far more than the relationship between the main characters. There is a broken family that tries to find its' way back. There is a child who finds her way back to her father and a man who has to find forgiveness in his heart for a mother that would never ask for it.

16. A Vision of Light

by Margaret Merkle Riley
Rated A+

From the blurb on back of book "An appealing novel about Margaret of Ashbury, a 14th-century Englishwoman, who is inspired in a ``vision of light'' to write her memoirs and tell a woman's story. Unable to write, she hires Brother Gregory to record her memories. He is contemptuous of her ambition, but hungry enough to accept her offer."

Gregory is a clerical scholar, who desparately wants a profound spiritual experience, intellectualizes constantly about it, whereas for Margaret, she simply lives it. He tries to control and force it, while for Margaret it is a gift of the ability to heal.

Margaret stays in hot water with her neighbors, her client's and eventually she attracts the notice of the church. She is saved by an rich and elderly merchant whom she marries. What started out as a marriage of convenience turns into a real love match and it is he who encourages Margaret to tell her story and also to learn to read and write. But when he dies Margaret has to face once again that a women without the protection of a husband during this period is extremely hazardous.

The book alternates between Margaret's and Gregory's clashes in their present and her telling of her past. I loved the medieval setting and where Margaret is describing life as a midwife in London. I really liked Brother Gregory because even from the beginning you knew that Margaret was going to poke holes in all his pet theories on the superiority of men and how inferior the minds of women were.

15. Fire From Heaven

by Mary Renault
Rated B-

Fire from Heaven is an historical novel of Alexander the Great's life from his birth through the death of his father when Alexander was a young man.

This novel deals only with the period before he became king. He grew up in one of history's great dysfunctional families. His father and mother did not see eye-to-eye. Part of the reason was that his mother was probably overly politically ambitious. She reminded me of the Queen in Dororthy Dunnett's Race of Scorpions, the one with no nose.

Also another part of the problem was that his father, Phillip was of the old spartan school of thought and engaged tutors for him that stressed harsh living conditions and semi starvation as a way of toughening up and building character in young men. His first teacher was the harsh Leonidas, a relative of Olympias, perhaps her uncle.

Leonidas was replaced with Lysimachus, who taught Alexander to play the lyre, and taught him an appreciation for the fine arts of music, poetry, and drama. Later on he studied under Aristotle.

Alexander was a sensitive and a slightly built and effeminate boy Alexander liked drama, the flute and the lyre, poetry and hunting. In order to survive this rough upbringing Alexander developed a tough shell and as he grew older independence of both of his parents. However he couldn't have been all that sissified because he was commanding troops in Byzantium at age 16 and was king at 18.

While Alexander was indisputably a great leader Renault's somewhat over the top depiction of him had me rolling my eyes in several places. You knew he had to be bright, probably precocious and must have been dripping with charisma in order to accomplish all the things he did as an adult. But I thought that Renault made him out to be just a little bit to perfect as a child. I personally would have liked him better if he had he taken time out from walking on water and spilled his milk or fell down and skinned his knees once in a while when growing up. It was interesting to read about what it might have been like to have had Aristotle as a tutor

14. Sharpes Tiger

by Bernard Cornwell
Rated B

In the year is 1799 in what I think is the first novel in this series and Richard Sharpe is just beginning his military career. An inexperienced young private in His Majesty's service, Sharpe becomes part of an expedition to India to push the ruthless Tippoo of Mysore from his throne and drive out his French allies. To penetrate the Tippoo's city and make contact with a Scottish spy being held prisoner there, Sharpe has to pose as a deserter. Success will make him a sergeant, but failure will turn him over to the Tippoo's brutal executioners -- or, worse -- his man-eating tigers. Picking his way through an exotic and alien world. Sharpe realizes that one slip will mean disaster. And when the furious British assault on the city finally begins, Sharpe must take up arms against his true comrades to preserve his false identity, risking death at their hands in order to avoid detection and thus to foil the Tippoo's well-set trap.

13. The Hamiltons : two novels

by Catherine Cookson, Rated A

When I spotted this book on my library's list of new books this month I thought that "gosh, this author must be at least 100 years old!" And I was right. Or at least I would have been right had she not died in 1998 at age 92. Her first book was published when I was 15 so let me just say that this author and I go back a long way.

Hamilton is the story of Maisie, a lonely little girl who was born with one arm considerably shorter than the other. Her Father left the family shortly after she was born and her Mother blamed Maisie and alternated between neglecting her or treating her with cruelty. Maisie invented an imaginary companion to whom she could pour her heart out. He first appeared to her when she was about seven years old while on a visit her doctor said to her "Let us use our horse sense" and at that moment Maisie saw a great horse galloping past him and all the time looking at her, its eyes full of knowledge and its lips drawn back as if in laughter. Soon after, Maisie adopted the name Hamilton for her new and secret companion. Of course, she couldn't talk about Hamilton to anyone -- but she could write about him. And write she did, with results that would eventually broaden her horizons far beyond the confines of the small town where she had spent her lonely girlhood. Hamilton would continue to play a supportive part in Maisie's life for years, as she deals with the adult problems of work, love,and marriage and builds a life for herself.

Goodbye Hamilton picks up where Hamilton leaves off. By the time Maisie reaches her early thirties, she's escaped a disastrous marriage and become a bestselling author with her very first book: all about Hamilton. This book begins when she's about to be married again, this time to a man loves and appreciates her for the person she is. And Hamilton, in turn, marks the occasion by taking a wife himself, an elegant (and equally imaginary) mare named Begonia.

But her life continues to have it's ups and downs but Maisie is a survivor and somehow finds the strength to overcome each tragedy and this book ends with Maisie once again reinventing herself and moving on.

12. Lords of the North

By Bernard Cornwell, Rated A+++++

"Lords of the North" is Cornwell's third and most dramatic volume in the Saxon Chronicles. A breathtaking adventure, this is the story of the creation of modern England, as the English and the Danes become one people by sharing language and fighting side-by-side.

In this book Utred has been released from Alfred's service and has returned to Cumbria to persue his blood fued with Ivar Ivarson, the man who killed his Foster Father and to claim the land that rightfully should be his from his birth Father whom was also murdered.

But Utred, never known for his tact, has made a lot of enemies. Soon he is up to his neck in plots and subplots by the newly proclaimed King of Cumbria and the priests who have their own agendas and finds himself betrayed and sold into slavery. Rescued by Alfred who needs Uhtred's services to solidify the Christian Saxons' hold on Britain, Uhtred once again finds himself at the frontlines of battle with the land-hungry Danes. This battle ends in a thrilling midnight raid on an impregnable Danish stronghold, thus establishing Saxon rule in the north, as well as the south.

It seemed to me like this book had a lot more funny moments and wry humor than The Last Kingdom or The Pale Rider. I continue to be amazed by the passion for relics that the church had during this time and the gullibility of the people who fell for i†. I especially enjoyed the Danish interpretation of some of the Christian beliefs and bible stories.

How wonderful that this is going to be a "series" instead of a "Trilogy" I am so not ready for the adventures of Utred to end.