Reviews by Joy E. (Rockville, MD)

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The Lies I Tell
The Lies I Tell: A Novel
by Julie Clark
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. (4/18/2022)
Suspense novels require tension, anticipation and uncertainty. The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark supplies all of those. But if you look under the covers just a little, you find that like Lewis Carroll's Alice, you have to believe six impossible things, if not before breakfast, …more
Two Storm Wood
Two Storm Wood: A Novel
by Philip Gray
What Went On in Two Storm Wood? (12/19/2021)
Philip Gray's novel Two Storm Wood provides all the misdirection and moral ambiguity that you could want in a mystery.

Immediately after the World War I armistice, Amy Vanneck travels from England to France to get answers about the fate of her fiancé in the last months of …more
The Latinist
The Latinist: A Novel
by Mark Prins
Turning the Tables on an Ancient Myth (10/13/2021)
The Latinist by Mark Prins is an academic novel, featuring the power relationship between a male Oxford don and his promising female student and protégé. It is also is framed as a re-envisioning of the Apollo and Daphne myth—an ardent lover and a resistant maiden. The …more
The Lost Notebook of Edouard Manet
The Lost Notebook of Edouard Manet: A Novel
by Maureen Gibbon
Looking over the shoulder of an important artist (6/25/2021)
Art critics and museum docents work hard to interpret painter's masterpieces, but often they have little written material to guide their understanding. Maureen Gibbon has tried to get inside the head of modernist painter Edouard Manet by creating a fictional lost notebook …more
Smalltime
Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob
by Russell Shorto
An Offering You Can't Refuse (2/23/2021)
This mash-up of memoir, history, and sociology is entertaining and enlightening. Russell Shorto demonstrates, through the history of his family and hometown, that the mythic big gestures and bloody violence of the mob portrayed in The Godfather books and movies are not the …more
Migrations
Migrations: A Novel
by Charlotte McConaghy
Prescient Tale of Extinction (4/15/2020)
Reading Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy during this period of life-changing events is chilling. The book is set in a time when climate change has led to extinctions of most forms of wildlife, which is shifting life for many people all over the world. Although Corvid-19 is …more
The Women with Silver Wings
The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II
by Katherine Sharp Landdeck
What Did You Do in the War, Granny? (12/29/2019)
The Women with Silver Wings is a nice addition to the growing library of books about unsung women doing nontraditional jobs very successfully, especially during World War II. Women pilots were not allowed in the U.S. military until the 1970's, but more than one thousand …more
Actress
Actress
by Anne Enright
Actress stays too long on the stage (11/25/2019)
Actress starts out strong and I thought I would love it, but as it dragged on, not so much. The writing in the beginning is compelling. The many anecdotes, set in the present and the past, are interesting on their own but I am not sure they make up a finished book. The …more
The Seine
The Seine: The River that Made Paris
by Elaine Sciolino
When a River is More than Water (9/20/2019)
From the source of the Seine (la Seine, always feminine) in Burgundy to its ultimate destination in the English Channel, Elaine Sciolino takes us on a glorious journey. We visit people living on house boats, barge operators, nearby vineyards, chateaus, and most of all, the …more
The Shadow King
The Shadow King: A Novel
by Maaza Mengiste
Mythic Tale of a Forgotten War (6/25/2019)
The Shadow King is a beautifully written story of the war fought by the Ethiopians against the invading Italians in 1935. Mostly known by Westerners for the unsuccessful plea for help by Ethiopia's leader Haile Selasse to the League of Nations, this war was a lopsided and …more
Travelers
Travelers: A Novel
by Helon Habila
So Many Reasons to Leave Your Home Country (5/12/2019)
In a beautifully written series of six interwoven stories about African refugees in Europe, Travelers by Helon Habila is an effort to put a human face on the mass movement of people seeking peace and safety. As the stories fold into each other, the characters suffer ever …more
D-Day Girls
D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II
by Sarah Rose
The Courageous Women Who Became “D Day Girls” (3/28/2019)
D Day Girls is a readable introduction to the women who served in the UK Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during World War II. For anyone who has read earlier histories of the brave activities of the SOE, this book does not add a lot of new material. A new …more
The Last Year of the War
The Last Year of the War
by Susan Meissner
Last Year of the War (11/11/2018)
The Last Year of the War is at its best when it tells the story of Elise Sontag's experience as the child of a German immigrant falsely accused of being a Nazi sympathizer during World War II. Unlike the mass incarceration of Japanese families in the U.S., individual German …more
Sold on a Monday
Sold on a Monday
by Kristina McMorris
Sold on a Monday (8/9/2018)
Sold on a Monday has a good premise—down-on-her luck mother puts her children up for sale. Who was she? Why did she need to do it? Who would buy someone else's children? Ah, the makings of a good tale of the anguish and poverty of the Depression.
But wait, what about these …more
Eternal Life
Eternal Life
by Dara Horn
Eternal Life by Dara Horn (11/26/2017)
As Dara Horn imagines in her new book, Eternal Life, living forever is starting over again and again, losing your family in one life and popping up in another place with a new life. Like all her books, this one is grounded in Judaism. The first son, the one his mother, …more
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