LIONHEART by Sharon Kay Penman, 2011.
Sweeping chronicle of Richard the Lionheart's crusade to re-capture Jerusalem from the Infidel in 1190-1192, better known to history as the Third Crusade or the Kings' Crusade. Although Penman's novel is a dense, sprawling saga with an enormous cast of characters that could be very daunting to many, the author, using her impeccable research and flair for realistic dialogue and creating memorable characters, pulls it all together with her usual distinctive style and storytelling skills and provides the reader with a vivid and fascinating depiction of the era and those who lived it.
   Having read the author's previous novels on the Plantagenets, I was fully prepared for reading this one and anxious to see how she dealt with Richard I and his experiences in the Holy Land. Penman's narrative deftly moves from drafty castles in France to exotic palaces in Sicily to the hot plains of Outremer, giving the reader a wonderful sense of time and place. Her descriptions are lush and vibrant (you can hear the marketplace sounds, smell and taste the foods served at the banquets), she creates memorable scenes (the capture of Cyprus and the siege of Acre stand out), she makes each character an individual (although with such an amazing amount of names, I admit I did have to keep checking her cast list), and she quite remarkably manages to weave together her various plotlines into a whole tapestry. Not being a huge military history buff, I felt that she also kept a good balance between battle scenes and non-military manipulations and maneuvers.
   Penman knows her characters: she gives them foibles and flaws and human attributes, creating real flesh and blood people for the reader to care about. I enjoyed her portrayal of Richard--he strides magnificently through the story as a fascinating and truly multifaceted individual--a combination of courageous military man, caring husband, loyal son and brother, and strong leader who genuinely felt compassion for his soldiers, who led by example, and who believed that they were on God's mission to wrest the Holy Land back for the Christians. She shows him with a great sense of humor and playfulness, and I thought her depiction of his marriage to Berengaria of Navarre was handled very well. The lesser known character of Joanna of Sicily was interesting to me, as well as Henri of Champagne; Eleanor of Aquitaine's appearance was much too brief; Philippe of France does not come off very well, nor do any of the de Lusignans, but none of them are one note characters, she gives them depth and reasons for their actions.
   I learned quite a bit about the conflict in Outremer: between the Turks and the Europeans, the French and the English, the English and the Cypriots, etc. Quite a lot of information, but Penman informs the reader in a nice flowing narrative with a decent pace; I never felt overwhelmed by the amount of detail. Perhaps my only criticism would be that while the Infidel leader Saladin seemed ever-present, he never really came to life for me as a character, possibly because Penman kept him sort of off-stage. But this is a minor quibble. Overall, this was a vastly entertaining novel for me, and I'm looking forward to the author's next installment.

SWORN TO SILENCE by Linda Castillo, 2009.

I finished this novel in less than two days. Just could not stop reading, stayed up late at night hurriedly turning pages, and I don't usually do that anymore.
   Set in the Amish country of Ohio during the winter, I got pulled in immediately by the incredibly horrific murder of a young woman. With the discovery of a mutilated body in a cow pasture on a country road, the crime rapidly involves not only local police chief Kate Burkholder, but the entire small community of Painters Mill. The similiarities of the death reminds everyone of a series of murders that occurred locally 16 years earlier by the Slaughterhouse Killer, tremendously brutal incidents that the killer was never brought to justice for. Kate, who survived the terror and ran away from her Amish life to eventually become part of the criminal justice system and return to town as police chief, has a dark secret that involves those murders and the killer. With this new murder, and each one that follows, Kate begins to doubt the events that happened the summer she was fourteen, events that had damaged her whole family and sent her out into the "English" world.
   With only a small police force at her disposal, Kate discovers that she has huge challenges in finding out the truth of the killings, and that there are those who don't believe she is capable of handling the situation, including her own family. As the search broadens and more people become involved, Kate realizes it's only a matter of time before old secrets come home to roost, so she works quickly to discover the truth of these crimes. Help is brought in by members of the town council, several of whom have grudges against Kate. One of these outside cops is John Tomasetti, with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Identification, a rogue cop with disturbing issues of his own, so overwhelmingly bad that the OBCI is hoping this case will destroy him. Chemistry soon flares between himself and Kate, but although he is attracted to her, he has questions about what she's hiding. And Kate herself wonders if she can trust him? Tomasetti questions her motives and begins some digging on his own. But in a town terror-struck by a serial killer with a penchant for torture and mutilation, getting too close may not be an option for Kate and John. Who is he? What does he want? And why is he back after so long an absence? When Kate is terminated from her position, the game changes and stakes rise. An arrest is made, damning evidence is found, but it doesn't add up in Kate's mind, and her convictions lead her down a dark and frightening trail from which she may not escape.
   Castillo's novel is compelling, taut, intense, chilling, with horribly brutal descriptions and a lightning fast pace. Rapid-fire dialogue, well crafted scenes, a puzzling mystery, a couple of characters the reader cares about, and a truly edge of the seat climax adds up to a satisfying suspense thriller, the first of a series featuring Kate Burkholder. An excellent summer read.

HER HIGHNESS, THE TRAITOR by Susan Higginbotham, 2012.
A superbly done novel that recounts the tragic story of Lady Jane Grey, who became Queen of England for nine days in 1553, and was executed in 1554. Told through the alternating voices of Jane's mother, Lady Frances Grey, and her mother-in-law, Lady Jane Dudley, the reader is provided with a well researched and smoothly written narrative of this ever fascinating episode in English history. Higginbotham, a historian and lawyer, has sifted through the existing historical records and sources, drawn her own conclusions, and has presented a compelling account that is at once familiar and yet gives fresh insights into Lady Jane's disastrous life and times.
  Having read nonfiction works and other novels about Lady Jane Grey, I was curious as to how this author would impart the story, how different would it be. Telling it from the mothers' point of view proved to be an interesting way to tackle it, and as I read further, it became clear that she has created characters that are conflicted flesh-and-blood people, flawed humans who lived and loved and cried and experienced joy and suffered pain as real people. She convincingly dispels several myths: there are no totally one-note, monstrous, power-mad villains in this version (as the Duke of Northumberland is usually portrayed); Lady Frances is not a scheming child abuser here; the extraordinarily educated Lady Jane is more than a child victim, and Guildford Dudley is not a whining mama's boy. She has infused them with such emotion and vitality that I was completely engrossed, and read the story as if I'd never read it before. With her persuasive narrative, I could more fully understand Northumberland's motives, feel Frances' anguish over her husband Harry's actions, sympathize with Jane Dudley's heartbreaking choices, even like Guildford Dudley somewhat and like Lady Jane a little less. Scenes between the married couples are emotional and interesting, and her use of humor and ironic wit greatly adds to the appeal. With multitudes of characters, I feel she did an outstanding job in making so many stand out as personalities. Her treatments of King Edward VI, Katherine Brandon, Lady Margaret Douglas, and the Duchess of Somerset were wonderfully done. One scene that was very touching was the imagined meeting between the Duchess of Northumberland and the Duchess of Somerset at their husbands' graves--very realistic and satisfying without feeling artificial or maudlin. I very much liked her portrayal of Queen Mary; it seemed very true to life, quite natural, and in tune with what is known about Mary's life and reign. Higginbotham integrates historical events with ease, and I appreciated her inclusion of less well known family information in appropriate places: e.g., that Frances had a sister, Eleanor; that Margaret Clifford was also a Tudor heir; that Mary Grey was to marry another Grey (Arthur) as part of the Suffolk/Northumberland multiple marriage pact--which was totally ignored or changed in at least one other novel I read--and so forth. Details like that are interesting to me and can make or break a story sometimes for me, especially with an episode in history that I am so familiar with as a reader.
  Although I enjoyed Alison Weir's Innocent Traitor very much, her version of the story is perhaps more the traditional version, which is fine, but it seems so black and white, with Jane the victim, her characterizations of the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk and Duke of Northumberland are as ambitious, power-mad individuals who will not let anyone, not even their own children, thwart their ambitions for the throne, and the reader feels little sympathy for anyone but the highly victimized Lady Jane. Higginbotham is perhaps more adept at shading her characters, bringing out both the good and the bad qualities they possessed, making them more human and more sympathetic and relatable to the reader. I felt less so with Weir's portrayals.
  The author's research definitely is in evidence, she lists her main sources at the end of the book, and her author's note was an excellent read in itself. Any liberties she has taken with the story, as a fiction writer, she explains in her author's note. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it highly for its readability, factualness, wonderful characterizations, and for providing a fresh viewpoint on the story itself.

THE RICHMOND THEATER FIRE: EARLY AMERICA'S FIRST GREAT DISASTER by Meredith Henne Baker, 2012.

After hearing the author speak at the Library of Virginia, I had such high hopes for this book. It is an important work, as it's really the first complete chronicle of a disaster that shocked and shattered the citizenry of Richmond, Va.  Baker has put together an excellent monograph that definitely fills a void, and she is to be commended for that. I have been interested in the Richmond Theater Fire for many years, have read articles and done some research of my own on the subject and have found it fascinating. But I was not totally satisfied with this effort. Not because the research is flawed; it definitely is not. Baker has pulled together an amazing array of resources and all things considered, has written an excellent monograph on the disaster. Perhaps it was the organization, or maybe it was the writing, or maybe it was just the mood I was in, but the narrative didn't hold my interest beyond a certain point and left me rather unsatisfied somehow.
   On December 26, 1811, the Richmond Theater, filled with over 600 people including children, caught fire during a performance. Many important people, including the Governor, William Smith, politician Abraham Venable, Lucy Madison, a niece of James Madison, and others of all classes and colors were in attendance. Governor Smith and over 70 other people died, either in the conflagration or later from their injuries. It was a horrific tragedy and the worst disaster in America up to that time, and the city of Richmond was never the same afterwards, taking decades to heal.
    The events leading up to and including the fire, and those immediately after the fire, I found most interesting and devoured those chapters. Her depiction of the fire itself was extremely fascinating in its sheer gruesomeness and horror: how the fire began backstage and was not immediately handled; how ladies were hampered by their clothing and folks who sat in the expensive boxes found themselves virtually trapped inside; how people perished from smoke inhalation; windows were shattered for people to jump through, many being caught by bystanders; how people fell to the floor and were trampled or overcome by smoke. Baker's survey of the theatergoers was well done: the personalities that she highlighted were intriguing and good choices--Caroline Homassel, the Girardin and Greenhow families, Gilbert Hunt, Sally Conyers and Lieut. James Gibbon, etc.--but I wish there had been even more about the people involved. Even though Baker claims the list of the dead has expanded over the years and is continuing to be added to, I think it was a poor decision not to include in the volume at least the known list of those who died in the fire as engraved on the monument dedicated soon after the disaster. I wish she had done even more concerning the characters involved, was there not enough information? I would have preferred she expanded her text on the various characters and included more of them, their lives and personal dramas, as that was what I was most interested in. I needed more than what the author offered here.
   I enjoyed the book thoroughly through about the first four chapters, found them very readable and informative, but after that I simply lost interest. The later chapters were full of good information and details concerning the local fire department, sermons preached against theater-going, the drive to build Monumental Church in honor of the dead, and so on, but I simply found that I was not that interested in a lot of that.
   I have always enjoyed nonfiction works that read like fiction. Maybe that's my problem, that I really wanted to read more of a novelistic account of this awesome disaster.When compared with other nonfiction books on disasters like Walter Lord's A Night to Remember or The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough, this book's narrative was just not as compelling throughout nor did I feel the same sense of impending doom as with those books. However, that being said, I would certainly recommend it for anyone who prefers good solid nonfiction with a more academic bent and has an interest in historical disasters.

HERESY by S. J. Parris, 2010.

Billed as an historical thriller, this novel is set in the colleges at Oxford, England, in 1583, a dreadful and chaotic time in England, with a longing for a return to the Catholic faith an ever present danger. The main character, a fugitive Italian monk named Giordano Bruno, is a philosopher, scientist, poet, and magician, and is based on a real historical personage. In Parris' story, Bruno has traveled to Oxford in the party of a Polish prince who has been visiting Queen Elizabeth. Unknown to most of the other characters, Bruno has been recruited by Elizabeth's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, to gain information on the religious practices of the college officials, scholars, and other prominent local people. Bruno's friend, Sir Philip Sidney, nephew of the Queen's favorite Sir Robert Dudley, is also among the party.
   Bruno, considered a heretic and who managed thus far to escape the Inquisition, is in hopes of finding an ancient manuscript that will prove his beliefs that the universe is heliocentric. Clues have led him to believe that a copy of it was recently at the Oxford library before a general purge demanded by the government rid the library of controversial material. Bruno is hoping that somehow the book escaped and is hidden somewhere within the colleges. At first welcomed by the fellows, he soon learns that most of them question why he is among them and several become openly hostile towards him as the story progresses.
   But while Bruno conducts his investigation for Walsingham, a grisly murder occurs in the grounds. Bruno discovers fairly quickly that the academic community is caught up in a dangerous atmosphere that includes an underground network of spies, vicious intrigue, and a possible conspiracy against the queen, involving many characters, including a wealthy young student, the rector's well educated daughter, a nasty looking bookseller, the college librarian, and several other college fellows. More brutal murders occur among the Oxford fellows, and Bruno finds himself playing a game of cat and mouse with a fiendish killer. Someone seeks horrendous revenge in the name of faith, but which faith? Who is the real heretic in all this? And can Bruno control his own emotions and save the lovely Sophia, daughter of the college's rector from a gruesome fate? I found this an engrossing read, with plenty of historical interest, a good story with very atmospheric setting, and a relatively fast pace. It worked for me as both an historical and as a mystery.

"The Avengers" (2012): I took my son to see this the other weekend, and we had a great time with it--classic entertainment, good Joss Whedon script, super special effects, plenty of action and humorous banter between the characters. Okay, maybe the character development was somewhat lacking, but the movie more than made up for that in everything else it offered.
   This movie even had a plausible story: Thor's brother Loki is on another power trip, and has found a way to open a door into our world so that alien invaders known as the Chitauri can come through and take over Earth. Loki's prize is the powerful energy source called the Tesseract, but he first takes over the minds of several key characters (including Dr. Selvig) and puts them to work on his plans. Samuel L. Jackson's character Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. escapes Loki and his henchmen, and begins gathering the heroes together to fight the invasion as a team. Unfortunately, the Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man, the Black Widow, and Thor have to figure out how to work together first. Once that is accomplished, the fun begins, as they battle the invading aliens and their warships over Manhattan. Effects were superbly done, and the actors were really into their parts. Chris Evans and Robert Downey, Jr. did well set against each other and I enjoyed their banter, and Scarlett Johansson was interesting as Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow. Chris Hemsworth makes a great Thor, and Mark Ruffalo did very well as Bruce Banner, "who's always angry." There were great scenes between Iron Man and Thor fighting each other in the woods, with Loki looking on; Black Widow defeating her captors after she's called to work early in the picture; the Hulk annihilating Loki--"puny god," he mutters to himself; the battle over Manhattan with the mechanical lizard like warships slithering around and through the skyscrapers. Lots of action, explosions, chases, fighting--a wonderful feast for the eyes. Excellent entertainment on a Friday afternoon. My son and I both enjoyed it. Joss Whedon did a wonderful job with this movie, and my hope is that he will continue to do more of them.

ANNE OF CLEVES: Henry VIII's Discarded Bride by Elizabeth Norton, 2009.

When I was shelving bios the other day I found this title, shocked that I did not even know a recent biography of Anne of Cleves had been published. She has always been my favorite of Henry's multiple wives--not sure why--Because she was German? Not so pretty as the others? Somewhat socially awkward? She kept her head? I don't really know the reason, but I've always admired her in that she managed to survive her marriage to Henry and to outlive him and all the other wives as well, living long enough to ride along in her stepdaughter Mary Tudor's triumphant procession into London as Queen.
   Evidently, according to a promo in the back of this volume, Elizabeth Norton is writing a biography of each of Henry VIII's wives. If this account is any example, they should be fine for popular reading. In writing this biography of Anne of Cleves, Norton has used a number of primary sources, especially published state papers, and her secondary sources include works by scholars Retha Warnicke, Antonia Fraser, David Loades, and Alison Weir.
   How Anne became Queen of England is well known: Henry VIII, after Jane Seymour's death, began casting about Europe for a fourth wife, and after much looking around and due to political expediency, settled on Anne, a daughter of the Duke of Cleves. Unfortunately, the marriage was not a success for various reasons, almost all on Henry's side. Anne, for her part, realizing her frightening situation as the wife of such a king, agreed to a divorce and was able to live out her days as the "King's sister," receiving the largest divorce settlement in English history. I found the author's section concerning Anne's genealogical connections (especially to Henry VIII--they were distant cousins through the Plantagenets) and Anne's early family life interesting, but I was even more intrigued by what her life was actually like after Henry VIII died. Norton includes accurate details of Anne's relationships with her stepchildren, with Henry's last two wives, Catherine Howard and Katharine Parr, and her somewhat troubled financial situation (especially during Edward VI's brief reign). The idea that she might possibly remarry or move back to her native Cleves made for interesting reading, especially since I had always read that she wanted to remain in England and had no desire to return to Cleves. A helpful genealogical chart, notes, and index are included, and the insert of photographs added tremendously to the text. Agreeably written and fairly brief, I would recommend this as a good introduction to Anne's life. Anne of Cleves deserves a serious and extensive biography, but until that appears, this work is certainly adequate for most readers.