Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly


London, 1888.  Jack the Ripper stalks the foggy streets of London's East End.  Fiona Finnegan and Joe Bristow are deeply in love, engaged, and saving every penny they can to open their own tea shop.  But dark events are at hand that will leave oceans and years between them.  When the Ripper strikes, murdering her mother, and Fiona's father is killed to stop his efforts to unionize the tea workers in Whitechapel, she is forced to flee London to New York to protect her baby brother, Seamie, leaving Joe and everything she knows behind.  An epic love story caught up in a whirl of history, lovers of historical fiction and family sagas will love The Tea Rose.  And when you're done with this page-turner, be sure to check out the rest of the trilogy, The Winter Rose and The Wild Rose!

Friday, October 21, 2011

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon


Honeymooning in the Scottish highlands in 1945 with her beloved historian husband, Frank, nurse Claire Randall is foraging for plants in the stone circle on Craigh na Dun when she hears the stones scream.  Hurled through the stone and back in time, Claire finds herself wandering in the remote Scottish country on the eve of the Jacobite rising, two hundred years earlier.  Rather abruptly kidnapped by a group of Highland raiders, who are themselves hiding from an English patrol, to dress young Highlander warrior Jamie Fraser's wounds, Claire finds herself inextricably tied to the MacKenzie clan - and Jamie. Unable to return to the stone circle despite all her best efforts, Claire must decide if she can face the future from the past.  A love story with astounding historical scope, Outlander is one of my absolute all-time favorite books.  Jamie will ruin all other fictional men for you (sorry, Mr. Darcy), and Claire's practicality, passion, and fierce devotion to those she loves will have you frantically turning the pages not just through this one, but through six more fabulously fat novels that take Claire and Jamie forward from the Rising to the American Revolution. The 20th anniversary of its original publication, don't let another year go by without adding Outlander to your must-read list!

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

The Long Song by Andrea Levy


This is the story of a slave woman, July, who was born on a sugar cane plantation in Jamaica at the beginning of the 19th century.  Although she lives through many hardships--slavery, violence, motherhood, a slave rebellion and the difficulties of life under newly-won freedom, the book describes the horrors of slavery with ironic wit. Humor makes The Long Song an enjoyable read.