B- Reviews / Book ReviewsAmerican historical / djinn / Fantasy / found family / golem / Historical / Historical Fantasy / Historical fiction / immigrant / Jewish characters / Jewish-faith / Middle East / New York City / POC / turn of the 20th centuryNo Comments
In this enthralling historical epic, set in New York City and the Middle East in the years leading to World War I— the long-awaited follow-up to the acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Golem and the Jinni—Helene Wecker revisits her beloved characters Chava and Ahmad as they confront unexpected new ... more >
B+ Reviews / Book Reviews / Recommended Readsfound family / friendship / Historical / Historical fiction / London / social change / World War II2 Comments
In this witty, charming follow-up to the acclaimed Crooked Heart, the life of lies a small time scammer and her adopted son have constructed in London becomes endangered during the tumultuous final months of World War II. It’s late 1944. Hitler’s rockets are raining down on London with vicious regularity ... more >
B Reviews / Book Reviewsfamily relationships / Historical fiction / Historical-China / Jewish characters / Kaifeng Chronicles / marriage / Ming dynasty / novella / POC / scholarNo Comments
In late autumn 1630, Li Bing prepares to depart for Beijing to write the metropolitan examinations. Before he goes, he learns more about his heritage from his maternal grandfather and hopes to marry his childhood sweetheart Xiaoyun. However, political intrigue between his father and hers has the potential to derail ... more >
B Reviews / Book Reviews / D Reviews18th-century / Agent/Spies/Undercover / antihero / discrimination / fortune hunter / Georgian / Historical / Historical fiction / Ireland / marriage-of-convenience / prejudice4 Comments
Ireland, 1749. Dennis McDermott, a witty, charming and daring young man with shades of the Scarlet Pimpernel, lives two lives in eighteenth-century Dublin. Fashionable society idolises him as a handsome, rakish man of their world, never suspecting that he is the mysterious leader of the Irish underground whose nightly missions ... more >
Book Reviews / C- Reviews#ownvoices / 1920s / colorism / Dancer / dancer heroine / dual-timeline / First-Person / Historical fiction / Jazz Age / organized crime / POC / POC author / racism3 Comments
1925: Chicago is the jazz capital of the world, and the Dreamland Café is the ritziest black-and-tan club in town. Honoree Dalcour is a sharecropper’s daughter, willing to work hard and dance every night on her way to the top. Dreamland offers a path to the good life, socializing with ... more >
B Reviews / Book Reviewsancient-Egypt / cats / dysfunctional family / Egypt / family relationships / female agency / female leads / Historical / Historical fiction / POC / politics / religionNo Comments
King Tutankhamon is dead. The possibly-divine ivory cat Nefru is still (perhaps) putting a paw into royal Egyptian affairs.Lord Ay wants a royal wife-Tut’s widow, actually-to give him the blood-right to the throne. She flees marriage with him and finds long-lost relatives. Princesses Baketamon and Meri have both longed to ... more >