I have several biographies of Leonardo da Vinci in my to-be-read pile (including Martin Kemp’s Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Walter’s Isaacson’s Leonardo Da Vinci) and wanted to review some of the artist/scientist’s work before embarking on the biographies. Martin Kemp is an expert on the life and works of da Vinci, so this book is a great introduction. I’ve seen some of…

A Newlywed’s Guide to Fortune and Murder is the sixth in the Countess of Harleigh cozy mystery series, set in London in 1900. In this story, the reader finds Frances, the Countess of Harleigh sponsoring the dowager Viscountess Winstead’s niece for presentation to Queen Victoria. The Viscountess has been out of sorts for some time, and Frances is certain someone is trying to poison the dowager.…

La Vie, According to Rose, Lauren Parvizi’s debut, is a thought-provoking novel that covers a lot of ground. 
First, it’s a heartfelt story of self-discovery coupled with grief and family issues. Rose, the eldest daughter of an Iranian man who escaped Iran just as the Shah was deposed in the 1979. My family was living in Iran at the time, so the events leading to the events leading to the Islamic…

Andrea Bartz continues to explore complicated female relationships in her works, laced with suspense and sinister overtones, which expand the usual range of emotions women generally have in fiction. I always enjoy seeing what she’s cooked up between her female characters. The Spare Room differs from Bartz’s other works in that it incorporates the pandemic and its sequestering of people which…

Queen Clytemnestra, happily married to Tantalus and with a newborn son, is devastated when Agamemnon, a rival to the throne of Mycenae, retakes the throne, kills her husband and son, then forces her to marry him. She has three children by Agamemnon, two daughters (Iphigenia and Electra) and a son, Orestes. She vows to protect the children born from her new husband and hides her earlier marriage.…