The Lion Women of Tehran

Marjan Kamali's latest novel, The Lion Women of Tehran (#1,247) follows the friendship of two women who meet in Tehran when they are seven in the 1950s.  They live through tempestuous times in Iranian politics while negotiating their own paths through different social strata.  It makes for an interesting read.

Elli's family comes down in the world when her father dies, and she is forced to move from a mansion to the lowest part of town.  Her mother cannot cope with the change in circumstances, but Elli finds a warm substitute family when she meets Homa, a bright and engaging neighbor.  They become fast friends, competing to be the best, especially at school.  Homa's ambition is to become a female judge in a Persian society that is gradually opening up to women.  Elli isn't so sure what she wants out of life.

As the girls grow older, and enter university, Homa is drawn into political action.  Elli is more concerned with the young man she has met.  Homa's activism will eventually embroil both of them in danger from the Shah's Secret Police.  As Elli dutifully follows her husband to America as he takes up a teaching post at a New York University, Homa is jailed in Tehran.  The circumstances don't come to light until many years later, when Homa reaches out to Elli to shelter her daughter from a worsening situation in Iran.

Betrayal and heartbreak are at the center of this story, as the status of women in Iran deteriorates in the radical Islamic state which follows the Shah's ouster.  Much of the background will be familiar to you if you are old enough to have read the headlines of the time.  Ms. Kamali's novel puts a human face on that time and place in history.

What You Leave Behind

I think Wanda M. Morris just keeps getting better and better with each succeeding book.  What You Leave Behind (#1246) is her third novel.  This one is set in the Gullah Geechee culture of Georgia's Golden Isles.

Deena Woods' life is on a downward spiral.  She's lost her beloved mother, her job at a prestigious Atlanta law firm, her marriage and her home, all within a few months.  She's come back to her childhood home in Brunswick, Georgia and a dead-end job.  Her father has remarried, and Deena feels uncomfortable with his new wife, so she spends a lot of her time driving aimlessly around the area.  One afternoon, she stops by a wide expanse of marsh and beachfront.  When she gets out of her car for a few breaths of fresh air, she is confronted by an old black man armed with a gun.  He orders her off his property after demanding  to know who sent her there.  Deena is thoroughly confused, but his threats are real, so as she tries to get away from him and his dog, she trips over a root and knocks herself out.  When she awakens in Holcomb Gardener's trailer to a barrage of questions about her purpose in coming there, she can't answer them.  Gardener allows her to leave, but on her way out, she is chased by a black SUV back to town.  Deena is determined to find out what is going on and why the old man kept saying he would never sell his land.

The more she digs, the stranger things become.  Someone in Brunswick and beyond is cheating poor people, black and white, out of their properties by using a legal loophole.  "They" are making tons of money, and don't take kindly to interference, as Deena soon finds out.

There's a bit of a woo-woo factor here, but I thought it enhanced the atmosphere of the book and its emphasis on Gullah-Geechee culture.  A little bit of romance and lots of redemption here. And the legal loophole at the heart of the story is unfortunately, very real, as Ms. Morris explains.  Highly recommended!

Glorious Exploits

Glorious Exploits (#1245) by Ferdia Lennon made it all the way to Greece with me, since it's set in ancient Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War, but I was so busy I never had time to read it.  I picked it up the other day, intending to sit back for an enjoyable read.

Apparently, the Booker Prize winners who contributed the cover blurbs saw something in this book that I did not.  I don't consider a character who haunts a quarry where the captured Athenian soldiers are imprisoned in order to beat a few to death with a club each time hilarious fun.  I was so unamused by the first several chapters written in a contemporary Dublin accent that I put it down.  Frankly, I'm sorry I read that far.  It's your time to waste.

How To Age Disgracefully

I love Clare Pooley.  Furthermore, I think I've convinced the members of one of my book clubs to love her, too, after they read Iona Iverson's Guide to Commuting.  Now Ms. Poole's hit literary gold again with a wonderful London Senior Citizens' Social Club with a most unlikely cast of characters in How To Age Disgracefully (#1244).  Besides the intrepid band of seniors, these include a middle-aged woman venturing back into the working world after a long hiatus, a bunch of adorable preschoolers from the day care center that shares their building, and assorted cops, robbers and drug dealers. Even Clare Pooley herself admits to not knowing what was going to happen to them all, but she managed to work it all out in humorous, heartbreaking and totally unexpected ways!

When the ceiling of the Mandel Community Center meeting room collapses during the initial meeting of the Senior Citizens' Social Club, taking out one of its members, everyone else bands together to prevent the City Councilors from razing the building and erecting a posh luxury apartment tower in its place.  But where are the people who use the Community Center on a regular basis supposed to go?  The Council rep has no answers but tells them they'll need to raise a hundred thousand pounds in a ridiculously short amount of time to have any chance of saving it.  The Council certainly didn't count on septuagenarians rising to the challenge.  Cake, anyone?

I cannot recommend Ms. Pooley's work highly enough.  If you're old enough to join the Senior Citizens' Social Club yourself, you'll appreciate these folks making themselves thoroughly seen again!

Death On The Tiber

In Lindsey Davis' Death On The Tiber (#1,243) Flavia Albia is settling nicely into her life with her second husband.  In fact, she's strolling the Tiber waterfront with Tiberius Manlius Faustus as he searches for the perfect marble column for a temple he's refurbishing.  But nothing is ever simple in their family.  Tiberius is recognized as a former city magistrate and is called over to inspect what a river dredger has brought up.  It's the body of a woman.  So why are the Emperor's Special Units interested?  They don't seem to care about the woman herself, but rather the man she was allegedly seeking in Rome.  But when it turns out the woman was from Britannia, Albia takes a personal interest.  Especially when she discovers that the man in question is a long-ago enemy of hers.

Gang warfare is about to break out again in Rome after the funeral of one of its long-time leaders.  Turf wars over territory, leadership and horse racing are a daily occurrence with the fearsome special imperial troops stationed within the city take a role in suppressing activities with their own violence.  Suddenly, Rome isn't safe for anyone...

I just love this mystery series set in the reign of Domitian.  Flavia Albia is independent, snarky and determined to face up to her ancient adversary as the men in her life do their utmost to keep her safe.  I really wish I could see Albia's mongrel Barley dancing on the back of their household donkey Mercury!  It apparently stops the foot traffic in the Roman markets!

The Fellowship Of Puzzlemakers

I can't do without my daily fix of the New York Times Crossword puzzle.  So much so that when my local paper (yes, I still read a physical newspaper!) stopped carrying the NYT crossword, I found out I could subscribe to the Games app of the NYT.  I haven't looked back since!  With that said, how could I not be intrigued by a novel with the title The Fellowship Of Puzzlemakers (#1,242) with a nod to jigsaw puzzles on its cover?  

Samuel Burr has cleverly centered his tale of an orphan left on the doorstep of a mansion inhabited by a group of older puzzlemakers, all busily contributing their earnings from their various pursuits to a communal purse.  Young Clayton Stumper has been happy in this intellectual cocoon, but when Pippa Allsbrook, the women who has raised him as her own dies, she leaves him with a string of clues which she promises will lead to his true identity.  Brogue-wearing Clayton seems older than his actual age and is reluctant at first to leave the only home he has ever known in pursuit of the wider world.  Yet this is what his beloved mother wishes for him, so he follows the first clue to London...

The plot jumps between Pippa's story and Clayton's search for himself as the reader is invited to solve the clues along with Clayton (mastery of these clues is not required on the part of the reader!) which adds to the fun.  It's a lovely book about the many kinds of love, even if you are not a particularly keen puzzle-solver yourself.  Highly recommended for those looking for something different in a "feel good" book.

Fugitive Telemetry

Murderbot is back in Fugitive Telemetry (#1,241) by Martha Wells!  Now that Murderbot has found a more permanent home guarding Dr. Mensah on Preservation Station, it's been there long enough to be thoroughly bored.  And snarky.  It's not allowed to freely access the station's many feeds (It did promise not to.), but nobody will leave it alone long enough to hunker down and watch its favorite media feed The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.  How else is it supposed to figure out human behavior, except through watching soap operas?!  That is, until the day a murdered human is found on Preservation Station.  Can Muderbot assist?  Of course it can in this murder mystery!

Such a fun read, if you like snarky characters.  Murderbot is one of the best, and its internal dialog makes me laugh out loud, especially when you totally agree with it.  I've noticed one interesting thing about this Martha Wells series - Murderbot is a construct, not human, yet you can't help but relate to it.  In fact, I always think of Murderbot as a she, but in talking about the book with my husband, he refers to the Murderbot character as he.  Ms. Wells uses they/them pronouns in referring to other constructs in the books.  I guess it's up to you to decide what to call Murderbot internally once you form an attachment.  I know I'm looking forward to further adventures!

The Demon of Unrest - A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

In the Acknowledgments section of Erik Larson's best-selling book, The Demon of Unrest - A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War (#1,240) he jokingly claims that one of his early reviewers now possesses "a truly effective doorstop".  While he's not wrong about it being a literally weighty tome, he isn't giving his multitude of readers credit for reading this fascinating narrative of a myriad of people places and things which contributed to the start of the Civil War.  Central to this is examining what led to the South Carolinians firing upon Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.  His conclusion?  Slavery was the root cause.

That is still controversial today, according to sources at my local library, and the proliferation of confederate flags on display all around us.  Yet it was all done to preserve a way of life and an economy based on cotton, dependent on an enslaved force to do the actual work so that the upper class could practice their notion of "chivalry" in comfort.  Abraham Lincoln did not begin his term in office as an abolitionist; his desire was to let the states who wished to secede over the question of slavery maintain their economic status quo (including slavery!) and peacefully rejoin the Union.  It didn't work out that way...

I had no idea who many of the people were who played significant roles in instigating the Civil War, or those who worked equally diligently to prevent it.  Who knew a rogue Supreme Court justice would be accused of treasonous behavior for "aiding and abetting" the enemy - i.e. the Secession States?  Or that Florida helped turned the tide toward secession?  Or that certifying the vote for Lincoln's presidency would upend American politics in a way akin to the Trump/Biden January 6th debacle?

As always with Erik Larson's books, he buries some interesting information in his chapter Notes, so be sure to check these out.  Prepare to settle in for a long and enlightening read.