I love the English countryside, and London holds a special place in my heart. When I selected this book for a First Impression Review, I was excited thinking that is was going to be one of those special books filled with intrigue and set in familiar places. Well I must say I was more than mildly disappointed. Charles Finch's book, featuring Charles Lennox, read like something rejected by Young Adult readers, but perfectly suitable for the geriatric gentry.

Ian shows us what living in a fishbowl is truly like as he briefly views the residents' stories unfolding on the 27 floors of the Seville on Roxie. I found this to be a great story which made me laugh out loud and wipe a few tears from my eyes.

Complete with a flip book...can't sat I've seen one of those in a while...Brandley Somer hooked me from page one. His book is well written. The characters are well developed. I will be recommending this to my friends as soon as it is available to them,

Being a huge Chagall fan, I was excited about getting to review this book. I have seen many of his works in the US and in Europe. Soutine, however, was completely unknown to me. Meisler chronicles the life and times of the artists of Paris and the huge impact that anti-Semitism made on those artists.

Except for a fair amount of repetition, Meisler writes a good art history book, lacking almost all of the artwork. I spent a great deal of time going back and forth from the book to Google which was very distracting. I blame the editors here. Meisler did his home work, they needed to theirs.

Auntie tells Brigid, the narrator of this novel, the tale of the "Great Forgetting" and the people of the pillaged town who would never know joy. Brigid loved the retelling of this story only to find that she and her family were doomed to live in just that place.

Natalie S. Harnett writes a novel set in a desperate area of the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. Over generations families tried to eke out a living from dangerous mines run by ruthless owners. Brigid's family was one of them. They were cursed just be being poor and without an easy escape from the only fire in their lives. The coal mines burned and consumed the houses they lived in and the very air they breathed.

In her book, Illuminations, Mary Sharratt has crafted novel about the life of Hildegard von Bigen. Having known a little about St. Hildegard, I was eager to read this book. The story flowed, but in the end, I was left wanting more. This, in itself, is not a bad thing. I did a little research on my own, which proved to me that Scharratt had done her homework. Illuminations could have included a great deal more of Hildegard von Bingen's writings, but was a very good as it is.

Christopher Moore weaves an irreverant tale of mystery surrounding the Paris art scene of the late 1800's. In Sacre Bleu, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, when sober and upright, joins his young, aspiring artist/bread-baker friend, Lucien Lessard, in an attempt to discover the truth about The Colorman and his body-hopping muse, Julliette.

The story is riddled with attempts at humor. I actually laughed out loud a few times, but alas, too few. Too often, they produced only groans.

Moore includes many famous artists and samples their work as part of the story line. That part worked well.

I was not familiar with Chrisopher Moore's previous novels. Knowing what I know now, I would not have chosen this book to review.

I wanted more from Prophecy especially since I hadn't read Parris' first book, Heresy.

Tudor England has been written about for hundreds of years, but the real life of Giordano Bruno was itself a mystery to me. I did a little research and found that there could have been more depth to the character of Bruno in this novel. That being said, Parris did a good job of providing a plot that held my interest, a cast of colorful characters and the hope that there is more to come.

Julia Stewart has wrapped the sadness of Bathazar and Hebe Jones' personal loss in what I found to be a fairy tale for grownups.

The Tower provides the backdrop for this story. Its staff and their families live is the spotlight of hundreds of daily tourists and the haunting presence of its former residents.

Beefeater Jones and his wife live with a one hundred eighty-one year old tortoise. One day the wife leaves and ever-so-slowly the tortoise does, too.

The Tower Menagerie is re-established by the Queen, who sends her many exotic animals there. Some of the towers new inhabitants go missing, some roam freely, some terrorize, and others befriend their caretakers.

'The Tower, The Zoo and The Tortoise' provides a great deal of humor. Each page has you wandering with all of the exotic characters as your guides.

A beautifully written novel, not just about war, The Lotus Eaters captures the beauty of the country and its people during the horror of the Vietnam War. Helen Adams, an ill-equiped American photojournalist, who when faced with the reality of combat, decides to stay and do the work that no one else feels she is cut out for. Once committed, she may never go back.

By getting a close tight shot the camera can capture the soul of its subject. Tatjana Soli has done just that in her character development, and the drama staged between them. Her use of prose frames each scene in a way that will draw the reader in only to "to forget all thoughts of return.

This is a fabulous read and Tatjana Soli is an author to watch.

Enrique Joven has written what promised to be an exciting read, but fell short of the mark. This novel is loaded with names and dates important background to the story, but also with references to the internet and and "e-dialogue" which I found to be annoying. The characters are underdeveloped and the dialogue between them is flat. I started to be hopeful for some level of redemption with about 75 pages to go only to be let down at the end.

Somehow I was drawn to this book; perhaps it was because of my background and interest in medicine. Abraham Verghese has written a wonderful novel filled with the passion only a true physician can describe.

He has taken us back to a time and place where the study and practice of medicine was undertaken because of the hunger for knowledge, the dedication to the patient, and the love of the craft. The doctors and staff of the Missing Hospital quite often learned by doing and found that the patients in the area were not necessarily textbook cases.

Love for medicine is not the only subject that Verghese's novel touches on. He tells a tale of love for God, the strength of family and the plight of the poor in a third world country. Most importantly, he writes of the closeness of twins born connected physically then separated and yet forever remain undivided in mind and spirit.

Lawrence Hill has crafted an incredible piece of historical fiction with the passion he obviously feels himself. He brings Aminata Diallo to life and from page one you are swept away with her as she tells her story, one you are not likely to forget.