34. Strange Images of Death

By:  Barbara Cleverly
Rated: 4.5 Stars
From:  Library
Format:  Hard Cover Book

I have been following this author ever since her first novel The Last Kashmiri Rose hooked me in 2008.  While this is not, in my opinion, one of her best, it's still an engaging mystery with some delightful secondary characters from previous  mysteries making an appearance.  Witty dialogue is this author's forte along with interesting settings that are of course, set in a period that I particularly enjoy.

Publisher's Summary:

Since Scotland Yard detective Joe Sandilands was going to drive down to the French Riviera for a vacation, he agreed to drop his niece off at a chateau along the way for a visit with her father. But when the pair arrive at the chateau, they find recent vandalism has caused an uneasy atmosphere among the guests. A troubling crime committed just before their arrival leaves a clear message that more violence is to come. To allay panic, Joe agrees to stay on and root out the guilty person. But, despite Joe’s vigilance, a child goes missing and an artist’s beautiful young model is murdered in circumstances eerily recreating a six hundred-year-old crime of passion.

Helped and hindered by a rising star of the French Police Judiciaire, Joe must delve into a horror story from the castle’s past before he can tear the mask from the diseased soul responsible for these contemporary crimes.

35. The Big Burn

By:  Timothy Egan
Rated:
From:  Library
Format:  Hard Cover Book


Publisher's Summary:

In THE WORST HARD TIME, Timothy Egan put the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl at the center of a rich history, told through characters he brought to indelible life. Now he performs the same alchemy with the Big Burn, the largest-ever forest fire in America and the tragedy that cemented Teddy Roosevelt's legacy in the land.

On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in an eyeblink. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men -- college boys, day-workers, immigrants from mining camps -- to fight the fires. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them.

Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force, through the eyes of the people who lived it. Equally dramatic, though, is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen. The robber barons fought him and the rangers charged with protecting the reserves, but even as TR's national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by those same rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service with consequences felt in the fires of today.

THE BIG BURN tells an epic story, paints a moving portrait of the people who lived it, and offers a critical cautionary tale for our time.

33. Queen by Right

 By Anne Easter Smith
Rated 5 Stars
From:  Library
Format:  Book

Library Summary:

  The story of Cecily of York, mother of two kings and the heroine of one of history’s greatest love stories.Anne Easter Smith’s novels are beloved by readers for their ability “to grab you, sweep you along with the story, and make you fall in love with the characters.” * In Cecily Neville, duchess of York and ancestor of every English monarch to the present day, she has found her most engrossing character yet.History remembers Cecily of York standing on the steps of the Market Cross at Ludlow, facing an attacking army while holding the hands of her two young sons. Queen by Right reveals how she came to step into her destiny, beginning with her marriage to Richard, duke of York, whom she meets when she is nine and he is thirteen. Raised together in her father’s household, they become a true love match and together face personal tragedies, pivotal events of history, and deadly political intrigue. All of England knows that Richard has a clear claim to the throne, and when King Henry VI becomes unfit to rule, Cecily must put aside her hopes and fears and help her husband decide what is right for their family and their country

31. The Groovy Greeks

By Terry Deary
Illustrated by Martin Brown
Rated 4.5 Stars
Format:  Small Paperback book, 136 pages

I discovered these books in a National Trust bookstore somewhere in England back when I used to travel over there every couple of years or so.  I loved the snarky way they were written and such an easy way to learn about history in a short, succinct, and interesting way.  If you're into snark that is. :)

Product Description

"The Groovy Greeks" is full of fab facts about the hip and happening Greeks - who hung out all over 2000 years ago. This book tells you who had the world's first flushing toilet and why dedicated doctors tasted their patients' ear wax.

32, The Savage Stone Age

By Terry Deary

Illustrated by Martin Brown

Rated 5 Stars

Format:  Small Paperback book,

Publisher's Summary:

Information on nasty Neanderthals, awesome archaeologists and curious cave paintings. Find out about the truth of Stonehenge and what suffering scientists do with Stone Age poo.