53. Glamorous Powers

By Susan Howatch
Rated ★★★★★


This is the second book in the Starbridge series and one of my favorites. I love Jon who is rather aply described in a later book as “an old pirate.” This description fits him to a tee, especially Captain Jack Sparrow has come along and pretty much sold me on pirates.

Jon Darrow, an Anglican priest and abbot with psychic abilities, has a vision that he interprets as God's instruction to leave his religious order, a monastery that has been his home for seventeen years. . "In this witty, wise novel, the question 'Does God exist?' is always understood and, true to life, ambiguously answered,"

51. Glittering Images

by Susan Howatch
Rated: ★★★★½


No reread adventure of mine would be complete with including the six Starbridge novels. (actually seven because I am going to include the first novel in her St. Benet series which I feel should rightly belong in the Starbridge series. ) While I will usually do not read books that have a religious agenda, these books have found a place in my heart and a permanent spot on my keeper shelves.

Charles Ashworth a protegee of the Archbishop of Canterbury is sent to investigate the possibly scandalous conduct of Alex Jardine, a bishop who criticized his superiors position on marriage and divorce. He does not expect however to find himself falling in love. His encounters with the hypnotically enigmatic Jardine and his unusual household forces Charles and the reader on an agonizing exploration of the psyche behind the seemingly flat character of a superficial clergyman.

Some of this story is just a tad melodramatic but I overlooked that because I liked the overall story so much.

50. Secrets in the Heather

By Gwen Kirkwood
Rated:★★★

A new family saga from the well-loved Scottish author. When the woman orphaned Victoria Pringle believes to be her great-grandmother dies, Victoria is offered a job in the kitchens of the Pringle family, tenants of the Laird of Darlonachie. But times are changing, both above and below stairs, and Victoria must face up to new choices, and come to terms with a long-buried secret in her past.

I love family sagas. The problem that I had with this one is that it's about the fifth book in a series and this is the obnly one that my library system has. It's a pretty good story but I was too far behind to really enjoy it.

At Some Disputed Barricade

By Anne Perry
Rated DNF

I returned this book to the library unfinished. I found that I could no longer deal with life in the trenches of WWI. I fully intend to check this book out again and read it but I needed a break. Maybe in July.

49. Angels in the Gloom

By Anne Perry
Rated:★★★★


"Angels in the Gloom is a saga of love, hate, obsession, and murder that features an honorable English family - brothers Joseph and Matthew Reavley and their sisters, Judith and Hannah. In March 1916, Joseph, a chaplain at the front, and Judith, an ambulance driver, are fighting not only the Germans but the bitter cold and the appalling casualties at Ypres. Scarcely less at risk, Matthew, an officer in England's Secret Intelligence Service, fights the war covertly from London. Only Hannah, living with her children in the family home in tranquil Cambridgeshire, seems safe." "Appearances, however, are deceiving. By the time Joseph returns home to Cambridgeshire, rumors of spies and traitors are rampant. And when the savagely brutalized body of a weapons scientist is discovered in a village byway, the fear that haunts the battlefields settles over the town - along with the shadow of the obsessed ideologue who murdered the Reavleys' parents on the eve of the war. Once again, this icy, anonymous powerbroker, the Peacemaker, is plotting to kill." "Perry's kaleidoscopic new novel illuminates an entire world, from the hell of the trenches to the London nightclub where a beautiful Irish spy plies her trade, from the sequestered laboratory where a weapon that can end the war is being perfected to the matchless glory of the English countryside in spring. Steeped in history and radiant with truth, Angels in the Gloom is a masterpiece that warms the heart even as it chills the blood."--BOOK JACKET.

48. Nineteen minutes

By Jodi Picoult
Rated:★★★★

I expected this to be a powerful book but I was still almost floored by it. The subject matter couldn't be more topical but more than that I think it's the randomness of the different school shootings that really disturbs me the most. It was kind of like when I read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and realized that no matter who or where you are this kind of thing could happen at anywhere. Below is the blurb from the book jacket:

"Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens - until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing but also come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest friendships and families." "Nineteen Minutes asks simple questions that have no easy answers: Can your own child become a mystery to you? What does it mean to be different in our society? Is it ever okay for a victim to strike back? And who - if anyone - has the right to judge someone else?"--BOOK JACKET.

47. One Perfect Rose

By Mary Jo Putney
Rated: ★★★★


This is one of the better romances I have read, and it is certainly the best in the "Fallen Angel" series. Below is from the library site:

Stunned when his family physician tells him that he only has a few months to live, Stephen Kenyon, Duke of Ashburton, escapes Ashburton Hall and temporarily leaves his responsibilities behind to wander the countryside anonymously as he tries to sort out his feelings and reconcile himself to his apparent fate. However, when his heroic rescue of a young boy results in his becoming part of a traveling theater company, he meets the compelling Rosalind Jordan.

46. In A Sunburnt Country

By Bill Bryson
Rated: ★★★★★


I love this author. When I grow up I want to be a travel writer and he is my inspiration.

From the summary on my library site:

Taking readers on a rollicking ride far beyond packaged-tour routes, IN A SUNBURNED COUNTRY introduces a country where interesting things happen all the time, from a Prime Minister who was lost at sea while swimming at a Victoria beach to Japanese cult members who managed to set off an atomic bomb unnoticed on their 500,000-acre property. Leaving no Vegemite unsavored, readers will accompany Bryson as he dodges jellyfish while learning to surf at Bondi Beach, discovers a fish that can climb trees, dehydrates in deserts where the temperatures leap to 140 degrees, and tells the true story of the rejected Danish architect who designed the Sydney Opera House. Published just in time for the Olympics, IN A SUNBURNED COUNTRY provides a singularly intriguing, wonderfully wacky take on a glorious, adventure-filled locale.

45. Dream When You're Feeling Blue

By Elizabeth Berg
Rated: ★★★

A Rita Hayworth look-alike and her sister keep the home fires burning for young men going off to fight WWII in Berg's nostalgic tale of wartime romance and family sacrifice.

This was an OK book but not one I would particularly recommend. I liked the detail about the era because it was my childhood so it was a nostalgic read for me. However, I did not think the relationships were particularly realistic. I think that Berg prides herself on being an edgy author and I think that she has tried a little too hard with this novel and sacraficed some realism in the process. I thought the ending was from way out in left field somewhere.

44. Pied Piper

By Nevil Shute
Rated: ★★★★★


It is the summer of 1940 and in Europe the time of Blitzkreig. John Howard, a 70-year-old Englishman vacationing in France, cuts shorts his tour and heads for home. He agrees to take two children with him.

But war closes in. Trains fail, roads clog with refugees. And if things were not difficult enough, other children join in Howard's little band. At last they reach the coast and find not deliverance but desperation. The old Englishman's greatest test lies ahead of him.

I love this author.