A Doonesbury collection featuring cartoons from the 1970s.
A nice collection, with lots of politics. Many of the cartoons concern runaway housewife Joanie's struggle to get into law school.
I was an adult back then but I don't recall most of the political stuff the cartoons are lampooning which made them not that funny for me. Might be more amusing for someone who is more familiar with the subject matter.
Here is the Joanie Caucus cartoon from the back cover of the book.
Selected cartoons from "The President Is a Lot Smarter Than You Think".
Early Doonesbury cartoons from the late 1960s and early 1970s, there abouts. A nice collection, mostly enjoyable to read, though it was probably more funny at the time. Still I did like reading it.
Here are two early Zonker cartoons starting with when he was first introduced.
Welcome to planet Bloor. Where everyone is on the take and no one does an honest day's work and every fellow is out to cut the other fellow's throat. How is a self-respecting Terran diplomat supposed to cope and bring enlightenment and succor to the distressed natives?
Maybe Magnan, accomplished, senior diplomat, is able to handle the shifting and unstable alliances that is normal everyday life on Bloor. But for Retief, his assistant, hands off isn't his style. He wades in, both fists flying, and restores order, brief though it may be, as chaos quickly resumes as soon as his back is turned.
It is a hopeless mess, not only because of the unstable and quarrelsome locals, but even the diplomatic party from Terra is on the take and, of course, the greedy, treacherous Groaci are present too, looking to fill their pockets with whatever they can get their tentacles on. But Retief is no dummy and he knows how to deal with what is basically the lost cause of planet Bloor.
This has to be one of the most boring Retief stories I have ever read. New characters pop in and out of the story, about a hundred characters, most of whom make brief appearances and then are gone. There are four main jokes in the story, puns based on the locals' names; the facial expressions schtick, how everyone is on the take and how everyone, Terrans, locals, Groaci, and other assorted aliens are ready to start a brawl over the most trifling occurrences. The last half of the book is centered around the on-again, off-again battles at the spaceport, which was just mind-numbingly boring. I skipped so many pages, I couldn't be bothered to care about who was fighting who. The title character, Retief, who is usually the hero, is quite unheroic in this story and spends more time beating on people than I can recall him ever doing in any of the other Retief stories I have read.
At one point, I began to think Laumer was in the middle of some kind of mental breakdown when he wrote this. But when I got to the end, I started to think maybe it was all quite deliberate and that he was making a rather serious point. Even so, it didn't make it worth wading through all the fights and battle scenes.
Book 5 of the World of Tiers series
Five people have become stranded on the topsy-turvy Lavalite world. The main feature of it is its instability, with the landscape prone to shift quite suddenly.
Kickaha and his partner, Anana; Urthona and his hired thug Angus McKay, a man from Earth; and Red Orc are the five people stranded on this strangely active planet. Anana, Urthona and Red Orc are all Lords, seemingly immortal humans with advanced scientific knowledge and extremely inflated opinions of their own superiority. But at least Anana has climbed down of her high horse due to her loving connection with Kickaha, who is also from Earth.
How these five ended up stranded is not detailed. But life is harsh on the Lavalite world and the locals are primitive and dangerous. All five of the main characters end up being split up and held captive by the local tribal folks.
Urthona, who designed and populated the Lavalite world with his custom animal and plant creations and who installed the human tribes on it too, has a mobile castle there that slowly travels around the world. If any of them can get to his castle, they maybe able to find a way off the world. Anana also has a device that can open gateways to other worlds, but it is necessary to find the gateways first. Urthona and Red Orc both want the device but Anana is hanging on to it as a way to control Urthona and Red Orc.
Kickaha got separated from the others during a sudden flood and manages to make a connection with a different tribe. Anana ends up with a different group of savages. Urthona and McKay get captured together and Red Orc gets taken by a different group, who treat him very harshly. All five of the stranded people have one goal, to escape their various captors and find the a gate off the planet, and failing that, find Urthona's moving castle.
It would really help to have read the first four books in the series. Besides that, though, it just wasn't that interesting. We first get to read about Kickaha's time with the tribals that captured him in the most detail. Then Anana's ordeal. But Urthona's and McKay's are not gone into in much detail and Red Orc's just in passing. All we really find out about his captivity is that he was beaten and abused, even more than the other four.
However, I just felt like a stranger at a party where I knew no one. I never really connected to any of the characters, not even to the two heroes, Kickaha and Anana. And I got bored with reading about their struggles with the tribal peoples and began skipping those parts. Ditto their struggles with the mobile terrain. In the last part of the story, Anana and Kickaha build hang gliders and hot air balloons and we are told in detail how they do so. Descriptions of that process were about as interesting as reading a math problem.
Inspector Hemmingway, Book Two
Uncle Joe has decided that the best way to celebrate Christmas is to gather a group of people to spend a few days at his brother Nathaniel's country estate. Uncle Joe is either a half-wit or a joker because the people he invites seem to be chosen to irritate his elderly brother as much as possible.
One wonders why Nathaniel ever agreed to host this gathering as everyone seems to get on his nerves, including his nephew Stephen, who is a quarrelsome and angry young man and Nathaniel's heir presumptive. And there is Paula, Stephen's sister, who wants Nathaniel to fund a play she is frantic to star in, along with the play's author, Roydon. Roydon has been mislead by Paula into believing that Nathaniel is willing to back the play but when the old man sees it is a rather smutty and crude, he explodes in anger and refuses to have anything to do with it. Also included is Nathaniel's business partner, Edgar, who is on the outs with the old man due to some disagreement about the direction the business has been taking. About the only people there who don't upset Nathaniel are Maud, Uncle Joe's phlegmatic wife and young Matilda, who is a relative of some sort.
But Nathaniel's worries are soon over when he stabbed to death in his bedroom with all the ways into the room locked from the inside. So the police have quite a mystery on their hands, with lots of suspects and a puzzle to figure out a classic locked room mystery.
So this was quite an interesting mystery although the killer is quite apparent from time of the murder. The mystery is not so much who killed the old man but how it was done and why. Although the why becomes very clear once Nathaniel's will comes into the story.
I have a few quibbles with the story though. First, how very unpleasant the characters are. What a bunch of mean, nasty, rude people! So hateful and unkind they are to each other. Were people really like that in 1930s Britain? Which is when the book was written but not published until the 1940s. My second quibble is the romance story, which suddenly pops up at the very end of the story virtually out of nowhere. Especially since the female has a very good understanding of what a jerk her lover is. The third quibble I won't discuss because it would be a spoiler. But I must say it seems unlikely that the killer would have knowledge of this unusual method of murder.
Despite my quibbles, I still enjoyed the mystery a lot, mainly because I couldn't figure out how it was pulled off until the author revealed it at the end.
Side note: I'm not sure who Casca is, but I think it is one of the people who was involved in the assassination of Julius Caesar.
A Regency Romance.
Ludovic is the disgraced grandson of a wealthy lord. Ludovic is on the run from law, accused of murdering a man over the loss of his family heirloom, the talisman ring. Ludovic is assumed to be on the continent, safe from the English authorities. But one night, his teenage cousin Eustacie, who is running away from a marriage arranged for her, encounters Ludovic on the road. Ludovic is involved with the local smugglers and he and Eustacie have to escape the Excisemen. In the process, Ludovic is wounded.
Eustacie takes Ludovic to an inn that Ludovic has a good relationship with, since the innkeeper is part of the smuggling ring. The innkeeper treats Ludovic's wound and hides him from the Excisemen who show up at the inn looking for the fugitive.
Staying at the inn is Sarah Thane. Sarah quickly steps in to help Eustacie and Ludovic. Soon after Ludovic is treated and hidden, the man Eustacie was supposed to marry, Sir Tristam, shows up at the inn looking for her. He is surprised when she informs him she ran away because she didn't want to marry him. He reassures her that he has no interest in forcing her into a marriage she doesn't want. Sir Tristam also discovers that his disgraced relative Ludovic is at the inn, wounded and has been spending his time smuggling.
Ever since the murder, Ludovic, who knows he is innocent, has thought that Tristam was the murderer and that Tristam has the talisman ring because he is a collector of rare and valuable items like the talisman ring. But Tristam thinks that Ludovic is guilty and is surprised to find that he doesn't have the ring at all. It dawns upon them that the true killer is their relative, Basil, who also lives in the area and who also loves to collect valuable and rare items. All they have to do to prove it is find the talisman ring in Basil's possession.
But to do so means keeping Ludovic hidden while he heals from his wound, not only from the authorities but also from Basil. It also means gaining access to Basil's home and searching for a hidden panel that Ludovic remembers seeing in Basil's house when Ludovic was a youngster. But he can't recall exactly in which room the panel is to be found. Which isn't too helpful of him.
I have read this novel several times over the years and I enjoy it every time. It's fun and exciting and romantic and a bit silly and doesn't make a lot of sense. But it's still engaging and entertaining and it is what I call a keeper, a book I enjoyed reading so much that I know I will enjoy reading it again and again.
Here is a review by Dear Author.
According to the blurb on the cover, these cartoons are taken from Still a Few Bugs in the System. The copyright is from 1970, 1971 and 1972.
The book opens with the footballer, BD, getting a new roommate, namely Mike Doonesbury. From there it portrays the college lives of Mike, BD and Mark Slackmeyer, who is a militant student activist.
Here are the three of them together:
And here is Mark on his way to cause trouble on a campus:
Hard to believe that it has been over fifty years since these cartoons came out. Trudueau and I are both old now and those days are gone for good. But at least I can look back at that time through cartoon books like this. And younger people can laugh at our old timey antics.
Dannie and David have been together for several years. Dannie is a lawyer and David is a banker and the two of them have been focusing on their careers and not on their relationship. David has asked Dannie to marry him, but so far she has not said yes. But she finally agrees to getting married but no date for the wedding gets agreed to.
Dannie has a very realistic dream shortly after getting engaged where she finds herself in having a passionate sexual relationship with a handsome stranger. This man stirs her in ways she has never felt with David. She shakes off the feelings it created in her as just a dream, though.
That is until five years later when Dannie meets her best friend Bella's new lover, Greg, who she recognizes as the man from her dream. Dannie truly cares for Bella and also Greg seems very sincere in his attachment to Bella, so that dream must have been a lie, not a premonition.
Things become more complicated when Bella is diagnosed with a serious illness. Dannie just can't shake that dream about Greg five years ago before she ever met him. The dream haunts her and has prevented her from following through on her promise to wed David. But seeing Greg and Bella together pushes Dannie into hurriedly arranging her and David's wedding, as if that will cure the doubts that have troubled her for the past five years, doubts she buries and refuses to face about her love for the faithful, kind and understanding David.
This was an OK read. I did find it a bit dull towards the middle. And the character of the best friend, Bella, was little more than a device for the main character, Dannie, to react to. And poor David, all we ever hear about him is what a great guy he is and how well Dannie and he get along. Never really any good reason why Dannie is dragging her feet other than maybe she doesn't find him exciting. Well, I didn't find Dannie or her story exciting.
Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.
Lori is a lawyer who works with a company called Alliance. Alliance specializes in bringing together people who are looking for a temporary marriage with people who are willing to agree to being married for a few years in return for being well-paid. For example, Paul Wentworth. He was running for governor in California but as a single man, he wasn't polling well. Thanks to Alliance, who found Shannon Redding, a respectable woman willing to be his wife for a few years in exchange for a nice house and several million dollars in her bank account, Paul won the election to become governor.
Anyway, that how it usually worked. But Shannon fell in love with Paul and wanted to be his forever wife. Paul was not interested and they were divorced, as originally planned. Shannon never got over him.
It also didn't work out that way for Trina and Fedor Petrov. Fedor killed himself before the arranged marriage was scheduled to end and Trina inherited from his mother what should have been his fortune of over $300,000,000. And Fedor's father, a nasty piece of work, is not happy about being cut out of his ex-wife's fortune and is not above extortion, intimidation, and brutality to get his hands on the money.
And there is Avery, whose divorce ended exactly as planned, with both parties happy. Until the paparazzi snapped a photo of her celebrating her divorce at party featuring a male stripper.
Avery is pretty unfazed by the publicity, though. Still Lori includes Avery along with Trina and Shannon as Alliance's guests on a cruise to Europe, hoping it helps the three women adjust to their new circumstances better.
All the women seem to be having a good time on the cruise and even Lori makes a bit of a love connection with an attractive man, Reed, who appears to be just as attracted to her as she is to him. What she doesn't know is that Reed has deliberately targeted Lori and is being paid to discover everything he can about her. What wasn't in his job description was falling hard for the woman he is being paid to get close to.
This was a pretty good story. The best part was the cruise. But the three women are soon back on solid ground and Lori runs afoul of Trina's ex-father-in-law, Ruslan. Angry at losing his chance at his ex-wife's fortune, he makes violent threats at Lori. And the tone of the whole story just got a bit too grim, kind of took the fun away from it. The first part of the story was much more fun and enjoyable than the other part, where Ruslan is threatening to kill Lori in his attempts to get access to his ex-daughter-in-law, Trina.
This is the first book in Bybee's First Wives series.
Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.
Teenager Christopher Flynn told himself he didn't care. About his parents, about his schooling, about his future. When his reckless behavior resulted in people being injured, Chris was sent to a juvenile facility. Being locked up hardened Chris but it also made him realize that he never wanted to be in that situation again.
After doing his time, Chris went to work for his dad as a carpet installer. One of the boys from the facility Ben, who had been in his unit, came to work for his dad too, upon Chris's urging.
One day Chris and Ben are installing carpet in a vacant house when they discover a bag full of cash hidden underneath a floor. Now Chris wants nothing to do with the money but Ben, who comes from poverty, thinks Chris is nuts to leave $50,000 behind. Eventually Ben promises to leave the money be.
Unfortunately, that money belongs to two thugs who come to the house looking for it and find it gone. Neither Ben or Chris took it, but Ben told a friend, Lawrence, about the money. Lawrence was part of their group in the facility and a friend of both Chris and Ben, but especially Ben. The thugs track Ben down and torture him, trying to make him tell who has the money. Ben knows Lawrence took it, but refuses to tell the them who then kill him.
When Chris finds out about Ben's death, he immediately knows it is because of the money. He contacts Lawrence and together they come up with a plan to deal with Ben's killers.
This was a pretty good read, once the story moved away from the time in the facility. That part didn't interest me. But once Chris gets back into society and tries to live a decent life, it got a lot more interesting.
Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.
Book One of the Fionavar Tapestry
When a famous speaker invites five college students to travel to another world with him, they eagerly agree to come along. Of course, it turns out the man, Loren, wasn't quite honest with them. He wants these five people to help him steer his land through the difficult times that are arising.
An ancient enemy, who was imprisoned, has managed to break free of his bonds. Rakoth Maugrim's only desire seems to be to destroy everything. He was defeated in the past and locked away in a prison under a mountain. But now that Rakoth is loose, he is once more starting to wage war against the people of Fionavar.
But five young people of Earth are now on Fionavar and they will stand along side the beleaguered folks of Fionavar, helping in ways they never imagined and finding love and worth in the battle against the Unraveller.
This was an OK read, if overly detailed and way too long. I'm not a person who cares about mythology and I think a lot of this story is taken from Norse and Celtic mythology. I generally try to avoid stories based on mythology, of any kind. For someone who enjoys it, this is probably an interesting story. I was not the right audience for it and I was glad when I finally finished it. One thing I really didn't like was there are too many characters to keep track of, over 150 characters. Just too many gods and beings and objects to remember and I finally had to make a list in order to keep track of them all.
Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.
Shortly before the start of World War II, Rosalie Gilder and her younger brother Paul have left Europe and have fled to Shanghai, China, which was one of the few countries in the world that was willing to accept Jewish refugees. While on board the ship to China, Rosalie met a Chinese man, Chen Kai-rong. They struck up a friendship and a few years after arriving in China, she and Chen were married. To commemorate their union, they had a brooch made that combined a jade disk from the Chen family and diamonds from the Gilder family which came to be called the Shanghai Moon.
The Chens and the Gilders all suffered during the war and during the unsettled times after the Communist takeover of China. Rosalie died in China but her brother Paul eventually moved to the United States, as did Rosalie and Kai-rong's son, Chen Lao-li. During the years of turmoil, the brooch disappeared and rumors of its beauty and value have grown over the passing decades.
Lydia Chin is a private detective who lives in the New York City area. A friend, Joel Pilarsky, asks her to help a woman from Germany locate the relatives of the Gilder family, all of whom, except for Rosalie and Paul, died by the hands of the Nazis. A box of jewels was recently discovered in Shanghai, valued at several thousand dollars that belonged to Rosalie and Paul Gilder, and the woman, Alice Fairchild, wants to reunite these jewels with Gilder relatives. The box of jewels does not contain the Shanghai Moon which has been missing since Rosalie died in China. The newly found box of jewels were stolen by a Chinese official who is believed to had come to New York City to sell them. However, Lydia has barely begun her investigation when Joel is murdered. And it seems to be for more than just the Gilder jewelry, as rumors of the Shanghai Moon are once again popping up. Lydia decides to continue her investigation despite being fired by Alice Fairchild. Lydia has become intrigued by the Shanghai Moon and she is also set on finding the person who murdered her friend.
This was an OK read, although a bit slow. Much of it centers around the Gilders and the Chens in China in the 1940s. Some of the story is presented in the form of Rosalie's letters. Peoples letters in stories is one the things I most dislike reading. I just find them tedious.
The Lydia Chin detective series is a new one to me but is rather extensive. This book would probably be more interesting to those who are familiar with the series.
Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.
Richard Gordon started his professional life as a medical doctor but became famous for his humorous stories about life as a doctor. Doctor In the House was his first semi-autobiographical novel but he went on to write several more books about his life as a doctor. His doctor series went on to inspire film and TV versions.
In this first book, the author is telling the amusing story of his experiences in medical school in London, England. It is set in the years between the two wars.
The system used in England at the time is different from that used in the United States today. Gordon basically went from high school directly to medical school, if I am understanding his story correctly. He has a lot of fun pointing out the doctors, nurses, patients, his own and fellow students failings and foibles.
It was an interesting read, although I was a bit lost at times understanding what he was talking out. The period he was writing about is nearly one hundred years ago and in a medical and educational system foreign to my experience. It wasn't as amusing as I was expecting it to be, though. At times, his judgments of his fellow humans were unnecessarily harsh, in my opinion.
Climate change on a grand scale! Huge water spouts pumping water out of the oceans and sending back down over all the lands of the world in the form of torrential rains. But this is only the beginning of everything being turned upside down. It's a tale of a massive scale of death and destruction, but told from the prospective of a small resort town in America.
The first intimation of the changes to come, beside a strangely scented, glowing downpour, was when Molly saw a pack of coyotes taking shelter under the overhang of her house. She looked out at them and sensed they meant her no harm and so she stepped out to stand among them. They simply ran off into the woods. Her spouse, Neil, woke up after having a terrible nightmare, unusual for him. He wasn't one to give in to irrationality. Together, Molly and Neil turned on the TV to discover the experiences they were having were occurring everywhere and that communications were becoming iffy. A feeling of doom and menace permeated the atmosphere and stories of monsters and murder began to filter through the static that was destroying the airwaves.
Neil felt that their home was not a safe place for them to stay. So they packed up their car and headed into the nearest town, the small resort town of Black Lake. First they stopped at the home of their friend, Harry, which turned out not to be a good idea when they discovered Harry had killed himself and his reanimated corpse came after them.
After fleeing from zombie Harry, they continued on to Black Lake but things were just as crazy there. The locals are in various stages of succumbing to whatever doom has fallen upon the world and the only allies Molly and Neil are able to find are the neighborhood dogs who have organized themselves into a troop to protect the local kids. Molly and Neil try to talk the adults into making a stand against the unknown menace but soon realize they are on their own. That's when they set off into town with the dogs to located and secure any children in the town. Doing so, they face the otherworldly horrors who will use all their tricks and attacks to thwart them in their quest, including sending Molly's criminally insane father to attack her.
This was an OK read. Molly and Neil try to fight the horrors but mostly fail, barely escaping in time. The local people, except a very few, quickly fall under the malign influence and Molly and Neil are left alone to stand against the attackers. The ending was kind of lame, the attack just stops and the menace goes away, leaving everything in shambles and with a few people left alive to pick up the pieces.
Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.
A short story collection, the title comes from one of his most famous stories of himself as a child, probably mostly not true, but very funny nonetheless.
McManus's best stories are based (loosely, I am guessing) on his childhood. This collection also features stories based on his adult life as a writer and outdoorsman and they are amusing, to be sure, but not as outrageous and silly as stories he tells about his boyhood days of camping and fishing and having grand adventures.
I enjoyed the stories but this collection is short on the kid-life stories which are the ones I enjoy the most of his stories.
Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.
The scene: a small rural railroad town. A terrible train crash occurs near the town that kills several people, including the spouse of Sylvia, leaving her to raise her three daughters alone. One daughter, Helen, leaves town and has two daughters of her own, Ruth and Lucille. She returns to her home town and to her mother, Sylvia, after her husband abandons her. Leaving the girls with her mother, she kills herself.
Sylvia is an old lady and not the most affectionate of grandmothers. She drops dead and her dead husband's two elderly sisters move into the grandmother's house to take care of Ruth and Lucille. But they are spinsters and not used to children and so they send for Sylvia's nearest daughter, Sylvie.
Sylvie is a vagrant. She never settles for long in one place and her preferred mode of transportation is to simply hop on a freight train. She's a bum, in other words. Probably not the best person to be in charge of two young children. Once she moves back into her childhood home, she sort of takes care of the two girls. But meals are irregular and the kids are pretty much in charge of themselves. It's obvious that Sylvie is disconnected from reality in a way that is a danger to the children. Ruth accepts this strange neglectful parenting but Lucille, who has her feet more firmly planted on the ground than her older sister, wants out. She eventually moves in with one of her teachers, leaving Ruth to the erratic attentions of their Aunt Sylvie. Over time Sylvie draws Ruth into her vagrant lifestyle and they leave town together to avoid Ruth being taken away for her own good.
I didn't like this book. My sympathies were totally with Lucille and I found Sylvie creepy and selfish. The same with Helen who kills herself rather than try to raise her two daughters on her own. About the only thing I will remember about this book was how much I didn't like it.
Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.
Moore reminisces about her childhood and adulthood and her marriage and about food. The first two thirds of the book were very interesting but after her marriage ends, the rest of it was pretty boring.
Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.
Belle Murphy is only 25, blonde, wealthy and beautiful. But it's been a year since she had a hit movie, and Hollywood considers her a has-been. As does her current lover, Christian, your typical Hollywood hunk. But since he doesn't really love Belle, or anyone other than himself, it isn't a struggle for him to walk away and find some other woman to help him on his way to becoming a star.
Belle has fallen so low, given her wild ways and drunken displays, that in order to rehabilitate her image, she has adopted an orphan baby from Africa and has moved to England to star in a Shakespeare play, a role she got mainly for her star power and her willingness to perform nude. She meets an aspiring actor who quickly latches on to her, Niall. Niall is all about the classics and about the working class struggle and yet he finds himself quite enamored of Belle and her wild ways.
Which is bad news for his girl friend, fellow actor Darcy Prince. Darcy has been with Niall for quite some time and both have been failing to achieve the success they both desire. But Darcy has suddenly been offered a starring role in a new science fiction epic and is off first to Hollywood and then to Italy to prepare for the role, with all that entails: dieting, exercising, publicity shoots, product endorsements and the usual folderol. While in Hollywood, she notices Christian and instantly falls for him. And he knows she has landed a big role and he is not adverse to wooing someone who is set to become the next big thing. Then he also gets a part in the new epic and will be in Italy with his his new girlfriend, Darcy.
Things become even more complicated when Belle also lands a co-starring role in the movie and she too is going to be in Italy. Indeed, she and Darcy are staying at the same villa. Although neither of them know that they are both involved with Christian who "reconnected" with Belle on the set while he was wearing an alien costume that disguised his face.
And then there is Emma. Who ends tangled up in this drama simply because she is a nanny and is taking care of Belle's adopted orphan. Emma is probably the only regular person in the bunch, the only one who is just doing her job and who actually loves doing her job, taking care of children.
This was a fun and fast read and I liked it a lot. It's pretty silly and but it is fun and lively and I was well pleased with it.
Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.
Friends from college and ten years later, still friends. Except for one: lovely Portia who turned out to be lovelier on the outside than on the inside. After graduation, the gang lost contact with Portia. The other members of the gang are still very close and see each other virtually every day. Catherine and Si are single. Si is still looking for Mr. Right but Catherine pretty much gave up after a sad affair with a married man. Josh got married to newcomer Lucy and his wife is the now the fourth and much loved member of the gang. Portia is just an afterthought. Until a friend of Si's mention her. Turns out Portia is doing very well for herself and is the power behind a popular TV show. Which the three original gang members, thinking back on it, now realize is based on them! Which then leads them to considering getting back in touch with Portia. Meanwhile Catherine and Lucy have decided to open a bookstore together, with Catherine doing the bookselling and Lucy doing the snacks and beverages. And this is about when Portia comes back into their lives and brings up old feelings and old questions and new drama when it appears she is up to her old tricks.
This was an interesting story, although the Portia drama doesn't amount to much. Almost everyone gets their happy ending, even the villain, Portia. Except for poor Si, who gets diagnosed with a serious illness. The revelation of his illness to Josh and Lucy is the final chapter of the book so maybe the author felt she needed the added drama. I think the story would have been fine without that part though.
Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.
Eloise has come to Britain to track down the true identity of the Pink Carnation, a British agent who worked against Napoleon to gain important information about his war effort against Britain. Her search leads her to the Selwick family and she is given access to the diaries of Amy Balcourt, a young French woman who was sent to England as a child to save her life during the years of the French Revolution, when many of the nobility were put to death, including Amy's and her brother's parents. But her brother is now at home in Napoleon's court and Amy is traveling to France to join him. Amy is just as obsessed with discovering who the Purple Gentian, a famous British spy, was as modern-day sleuth Eloise is to discovering who the Pink Carnation was.
The story mainly centers on Amy and her adventures in France trying to track down and discover the identity of the Purple Gentian, who she desperately wants to join in the fight against Napoleon's ambition to rule the world. Meanwhile, the Purple Gentian is right under her nose. Richard Selwick, is a scholar and antiquities expert who has been advising Napoleon on some of the artifacts that have been brought to France from Egypt. Amy has written him off as a traitor to his country, not realizing Richard is using his position in Napoleon's court to gather intelligence for England and that he is the Purple Gentian, the famous English spy and the most wanted man in all of France.
This was an fair read, a bit silly and the subplot about Eloise too clearly the lead-in to a sequel. One thing I did appreciate was it was not a graphic story with explicit descriptions of sex acts. If that's what you are looking for in a romance, you won't find it in this story.
Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.
