All The Frequent Troubles Of Our Days

I heard about All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days - The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler (#1,043) on the radio.  The author, Rebecca Donner, is a relative of Mildred Fish Harnack, the subject of this book.  I wondered why I had never heard of Mildred or her story before.  

There are several reasons, really, which Rebecca Donner discloses here.  Some of the information about her was Classified by the American government until just recently, and most of the letters, photographs and family records were purposely destroyed after Mildred's execution by her sister Harriette, who encouraged other family members to do the same.  Mildred's original sentence to six years of hard labor for her clandestine activities by the German Court during the War was personally overridden by Hitler himself.  He ordered her execution by beheading instead.  What kind of a person could provoke so much personal animus and yet remain unfamiliar to most of her countrymen?

Mildred met her future husband Arvid Harnack while she was lecturing at the University of Wisconsin in her home state.  Arvid was in the States pursuing his doctorate on American Labor Unions, and soon was pursuing Mildred as well.  They married and returned to Germany so that she could earn her own doctorate at the University of Berlin.  Their arrival there coincided with the rise of Hitler, and they both became embroiled in efforts to stop him.  All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days documents how they did this, with the aid of a young American boy, son of an Embassy employee, as their courier.

Equal parts fascinating and horrifying, Mildred herself had powerful connections, but didn't come across as particularly sympathetic to me in her Communist leanings.  By the time of her death, she had well and truly left America behind, and American Intelligence was happy to return the favor.  They concluded her execution was "justified".  That said, no one deserved to suffer the fates she and her comrades in the cause to overthrow Hitler endured.  The swift turnaround from a democratic society to a police state happened so easily and so quickly in Germany; could it happen here?

The President's Daughter

I'm probably one of the few people in American who didn't read Bill Clinton and James Patterson's original collaboration, The President is Missing.  But I did come across The President's Daughter (#1,042) at the library and found it hard to put down.

Matt Keating was defeated in the last election, but decisions made during his administration come back to haunt him when his teenage daughter is kidnapped by a terrorist.  Enemies, both old and new, make a terrible situation even more difficult to deal with, but Matt Keating, as a former SEAL, is determined to leave no stone unturned in rescuing his daughter Melanie.

This was a fast-paced thriller, told from multiple points of view.  The writing was seamless, although much of the source material on the daily workings of the White House and security details obviously came from Mr. Clinton.  It does an admirable job of entertaining the reader and keeping him or her glued to the page.  If political thrillers are your thing, this book is just the ticket!

It's A Wonderful Woof

I had to wait way past Christmas to read Spencer Quinn's latest Chet and Bernie mystery, It's A Wonderful Woof (#1,041) there were so many holds on it.  Although there are a number of silver bells, a helpful elf, and wreaths, there's still an intriguing mystery at the heart of the story.  Quinn's even thrown in a bonus snowstorm!

If you're a regular reader of this series, you probably won't be surprised that Bernie, the human half of this detective duo, is not a huge fan of Christmas, aside from his son Charlie's enjoyment of the holidays.  In fact, he's more a Scrooge sympathizer. So when a potential client shows up unannounced at his door offering a large amount of cash, Bernie feels free to turn down someone he has no intention of working for.  But in the spirit of the holidays, Bernie throws the job to one of his competitors.  Chet, of course, is fine with whatever Bernie decides, because that's how partners roll.

When Victor's mother calls Bernie, frantic, because Victor didn't show up to light the Hannukah candles the night before, Bernie begins to suspect that he was right to turn down the shady job.  But is Victor's disappearance tied to it?  Could the legends about an abandoned Spanish mission out in the desert be true? Is there a lost treasure?  Someone obviously thinks it's worth killing for...

An interesting bit of art history here, along with a dangerous case with a little bit of romance mixed into the brew make for entertaining holiday reading anytime of the year.  And could Chet possibly have a canine rival or two?  Not if this alpha dog has anything to say about it!

The Heart Principle

In Helen Hoang's romance The Heart Principle (#1,040) Anna Sun is not having a good life.  She had a brief period as an internet sensation playing her violin, but now she finds herself unable to play.  There is no joy in it, and all she can hear are the mistakes she's making.  When her picture-perfect boyfriend Julian (thoroughly approved of by her close-knit Chinese family) announces that he wants an "open relationship" it's the final straw for Anna.  Her on-line friends egg her on, and suggest "revenge sex" via a series of one-night stands.  Anna determines to do this and posts her profile on dating sites.

Enter Quan Diep, who sees and responds to Anna's dating profile.  He is also determined to get back into a normal dating life through a one-night stand.  When Quan shows up for their date, Anna sees a tall, tattooed stranger climb off his motorcycle.  Anna isn't sure she's ready for this.  Or for their second, third or fourth attempt to consummate the deal.

Read this book for the steamy sex, and yes, there's plenty of that!, but savor it for the depictions of the difficulties an autism-spectrum person must endure every single day to function.  Quan's struggle with life-altering surgery make Anna and Quan a pair to root for against all odds.

The story of Anna and Quan makes for one of the best, most thought-provoking books I've read in a long time.  For Helen Hoang, it's personal.

Falling

 I've finally come up for air after reading debut novelist T.J. Newman's thriller Falling (#1,039).  With 149 souls aboard, Coastal Airways Flight 416 has taken off from LAX on a routine flight to New York's JFK.  What Captain Bill Hoffman doesn't find out until after he's airborne is that terrorists have taken his wife and two young children hostage.  The terrorists contact him in the cockpit and give him a choice: either crash the plane or his family dies.  What follows is a nail-biting ride.

Without giving too much away, the ending is in doubt right up until the end of this tense drama.  Which impossible choice will Bill make?  Where is he supposed to crash the plane?  And what is the mysterious Plan B the terrorists claim to have on board Flight 416?

One final question: has someone optioned this book to be made into a movie?  I sure hope so!  If thrillers are your thing, don't miss Falling.

The Vanishing Half

Brit Bennett's novel The Vanishing Half (#1,038) explores the consequences of one identical Black twin passing as white in the turbulent days of the late Twentieth Century.  Stella is the twin who one day vanishes from New Orleans and her sister Desiree's apartment with no notice, nor any means of contacting her.

Desiree and her mother must deal with the anguish of uncertainty, not knowing Stella's fate.  Did she disappear on purpose, or did she meet a more sinister fate?  Desiree herself disappears from their tiny Louisiana town of Mallard, where the lighter your skin, the higher your social standing is in this still "colored" town.  When Desiree returns unexpectedly with an ebony-skinned daughter in tow, she must help young Jude cope with a place that judges her solely on the color of her skin.

When Jude earns a scholarship to Stanford, it sets in motion a chance meeting between Jude and her long-lost aunt Stella and a cousin she didn't know she had.

Acceptance, ambition and rejection are all explored through the prism of Stella and Desiree's lives.  It makes for engrossing reading.  That is, up until the end of book, where the story just seems to fizzle out.  Maybe that's the point; nothing in life is ever fully resolved.  I'm left ambivalent about whether or not I liked this book.  You'll have to read it for yourself to judge.