The King's Ransom

Hold onto your hats!  Janet Evanovich has a new series with recovery agent Gabriela Rose jet-setting around the world in pursuit of purloined objects of all sorts.  In The King's Ransom (#1,354) culturally important objects including the Rosetta Stone and a solid gold Egyptian coffin have been stolen.  Although the British Museum might have called on Gabriela to aid in its recovery, this time it's her ex-husband Rafer and his charming but clueless cousin Harley who pull her into it.  Harley's head of an investment bank which recently insured every single one of the missing objects.  Strings are being pulled, but he and Rafer have no clue by whom, but they do know that Harley is in danger; his predecessor was shot dead on the street just outside the bank.  Can Gabriela help?

Gabriela doesn't want to, but of course she finds herself in the middle of a dangerous caper.  First it's the Rosetta Stone, which she snatched out from under the noses of the mysterious cabal.  There she meets Ahmed, a skilled and dangerous operative for the Egyptian government whose real prize is the golden coffin.  Soon it's off to Egypt and a wild ride through the desert.  Harley's abduction makes the stakes impossibly high as the trail leads to Florida and back to Europe.

Love the characters in this series!  Gabriela has skills!  Rafer and Ahmed play off each other in a Will they? Won't they? dynamic.  Harley is just plain goofy, but a welcome addition.  Hope this series is as successful as Stephanie Plum!

Aphrodite

 Aphrodite (#1,353) is the second in the Regency Goddesses series by D.G. Rampton, and much of it takes place at a Christmas house party.

April Hartwood is stunningly beautiful. Things weren't too bad in rural Cornwall where she grew up, but now that she has moved to London with her newly engaged mother and her fiance, men's reactions to her can be downright embarrassing.  For her part, April's just anxious to get her mother happily married off to the man who adores her, and go back to managing her heavily mortgaged estate of St. Maw.  Too bad her domineering grandmother has other plans for her - marriage to the Duke of Claredon.  Or is that really her grandmother's plan?

You'll have fun finding out the answer in this clever romance.  Can't wait to read Aurora, the last book in this delightful series.

Artemesia

 Artemesia (#1,352) is part one of the Regency Goddesses series by D.G. Rampton. which I downloaded on my Kindle to take on a recent trip with me.  It appealed to me because it was a light Regency romance similar to those written by Georgette Heyer, the Queen of this venerable genre.  It was just the ticket.

Artemesia has been brought up by her uncle on a country estate where she is perfectly happy to spend time with her friend in the surrounding woods and fields.  She has not the least interest in going to London or having a Season to launch her into Society.  But her uncle has determined he is not doing his duty by Artemesia, so he insists on bringing her to town.  But all does not go smoothly; she has never understood the scandal surrounding her mother, or the identity of her father.  She is about to find out...

A fun romp with a happy ending never in doubt.

Three Bags Full

"Soon to be a major motion picture!"  That's how the blurb for Three Bags Full (#1,351) by Leonie Swann begins the GoodReads review.  While that is apparently true, it's Ms. Swann's other quirky mysteries which caught my attention.  This is an early book of hers and is now enjoying a resurgence in popularity.

When a shepherd is killed in a remote Irish village, there is much speculation about the perpetrator and the motive, but not a lot of activity to actually solve the mystery.  But the sheep in his flock want to know.  Led by the feisty Miss Maple each sheep contributes his or her bit to the pool of knowledge as they weave the facts together.  After all, their fates depend on it...

There is now a second book in this series, and I look forward to reading it, too.  One piece of advice: if you have never read Three Bags Full, do yourself a favor and skip the intro by A.J.Finn.  It's been added to the reprint of the original.  If you want to have all the plot points and twists explained to you in excruciating detail before you have the pleasure of reading it for yourself, by all means read Finn's intro.  I stopped well before I finished it with a distinct air of relief.  It reminded me of when I was a junior in high school and my class was assigned Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.  Fortunately for me, I had already read it on my own.  Our teacher (who was a graduate student at Harvard) began the first class on the book by announcing "The minister did it."  Way to disincentivize a class of teenagers whose only interest might have been the smutty speculation!  Save yourself that disappointment and forge ahead on your own with Three Bags Full.  After all, you can always go back and read the analysis afterwards. 

The Book of Lost Hours

If you don't normally think of yourself as a science fiction reader, you might want to give Hayley Gelfuso's novel The Book of Lost Hours (#1,350) a try.  The action begins when Lisavet Levy's father, a watchmaker, puts her inside the mysterious time space to save her from the Nazis on Kristallnacht.  She never sees him again.  She grows up mostly alone, learning about the books on the walls of shelves in this place.  But it isn't totally safe; she sees uniformed men searching the shelves and destroying certain books.

Years go by until Lisavet meets Ernest, a young American, and falls in love.  Book is their story as they deal with the consequences of destroying or preserving memories.  Lisavet is eventually forced back into the outside world by a brutal and powerful American agent working for a secret government program.  Given a new identity, she meets Ernest again but must keep life-changing knowledge from him.  It's a difficult dance. 

There are some interesting ideas here about the space/time continuum.  Could it work like this?  An intriguing premise.

The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped America

I've been meaning to read Matthew Pearl's book The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped American (#1,349) for quite some time.  I'm only just now getting around to it, but the timing has proven to be perfect, since we are also watching Ken Burns' The American Revolution on television.  I've been amazed at how the stories dovetail.  It's all part of the arc of the American imperative for western expansion and the European politics which aimed to limit that growth with both sides using the native Indians to further their own purposes.

Jemima Boone was close to her legendary father Daniel Boone who never met a boundary he didn't want to push.  He had brought his family to Boonesboro in Kentucky despite warnings from both the British authorities and the Indians themselves, who understood that Kentucky was part of their sacred hunting grounds as set apart by the British monarch.  Neither stricture made much of an impression on Daniel.  Jemima and two other daughters of the fort's other leader were captured from their canoe in plain sight of the settlement in July of 1776.  When the Indian leader of the expedition recognized Jemima as Daniel Boone's daughter, his prize became even more valuable as a bargaining chip.  It set off a series of events which influenced the very outcome of the American Revolution itself and the trajectory of new nation in its greed for new territory.

Pearl's background as a historical novelist infuses this non-fiction work with all the page-turning suspense of those thrillers as he explores a little-known aspect of our common history.

A Ferry Merry Christmas

What's Christmas without a Debbie Macomber book to give you the warm fuzzies of a holiday romance?  This year it's A Ferry Merry Christmas (#1,348).  Ms. Macomber says she based her story on a rare occurrence: one of the Puget Sound ferries stranding on a sandbank.

Avery Bond is taking the Bremerton ferry to meet her brother in Seattle for the Christmas holiday, their first without their beloved Grams who raised them.  To sweeten the pot, Reid has made them a reservation at her favorite seafood restaurant overlooking the Sound.  

To the trio of Navy submariners aboard, something is sounding off about the ferry's engine, but frankly, Harrison is more interested in the cute brunette aboard.  Avery wants nothing to do with him at first because she's been burned by a two-timing Navy man.  Harrison persuades her to give him a chance for as long as it takes the ferry to reach Seattle.

In the meantime, her brother and his sister are awaiting the ferry's arrival at the Seattle terminal.  Reid recognizes Kellie from a workshop she gave at Microsoft and they wind up spending the time together as well.

Yes, there's no mystery about what's going to happen here, but it's always entertaining to watch the romance (in this case, the romances!) unfold.  Something warm to put you in the mood for the holidays!