43. Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare

#1 The Last Hours - Shadowhunters

listened on Libby/borrowed from library

narrated by Finty Williams

Unabridged audio (21:22)
2020
592 pgs.
YA Fantasy
Finished 4/27/2021
Goodreads rating: 4.47 - 53,658 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: turn-of-the century London

First line/s: "Lucie Herondale was then years old when she first met the boy in the forest."

My comments: Twenty hours listening to the mesmerizing happenings in the Shadowhunters' world, where a new group of 16 to 18 year olds use their newly honed Shadowhunter skills to fight demons and learn more about downworlders.  Cordelia Carstairs and her brother, Alastair, arrive in London to join their Shadowhunter family of cousins, aunts, and uncles who live there.  James and Lucie Herondale, children of Tessa a Will, along with Cordelia, are the protagonists in this story.  Because Tessa is half demon, James and Lucie are adapting to living with the quarter demon blood they have, untried and untested because no other half demons have ever had children.  Matthew Fairchild is James's best friend and parabati, brother to Charles, who is now engaged to Grace, James's long time love - although it is a magical attachment that he is unaware of.  Christopher and Thomas Lightwood, cousins, round out the group of friends.  Characters are really well done and memorable, and the only questions you have about them are questions that have been left intentionally unanswered by the author.  So much will happen in book two!  I really, really liked this.

Goodreads synopsis:  Chain of Gold, a Shadowhunters novel, is the first novel in a brand-new trilogy where evil hides in plain sight and love cuts deeper than any blade. .

          Cordelia Carstairs is a Shadowhunter, a warrior trained since childhood to battle demons. When her father is accused of a terrible crime, she and her brother travel to London in hopes of preventing the family’s ruin. Cordelia’s mother wants to marry her off, but Cordelia is determined to be a hero rather than a bride. Soon Cordelia encounters childhood friends James and Lucie Herondale and is drawn into their world of glittering ballrooms, secret assignations, and supernatural salons, where vampires and warlocks mingle with mermaids and magicians. All the while, she must hide her secret love for James, who is sworn to marry someone else.
          But Cordelia’s new life is blown apart when a shocking series of demon attacks devastate London. These monsters are nothing like those Shadowhunters have fought before—these demons walk in daylight, strike down the unwary with incurable poison, and seem impossible to kill. London is immediately quarantined. Trapped in the city, Cordelia and her friends discover that their own connection to a dark legacy has gifted them with incredible powers—and forced a brutal choice that will reveal the true cruel price of being a hero

54. A Reliable Wife - Robert Goolrick

I read this one!  The only one I could find was Large Print.....
2009, Algonquin Books
291 pgs.
Adult Historical Fiction with a more than touch of mystery...
Finished August, 2015
Goodreads rating: 3.24
My rating: 4
Setting: Winter , 1907, rural Wisconsin

First line/s:  "It was bitter cold, the air was electric with all that had not happened yet."

My comments:  This book was not at all what I expected, and I read it all in one long sitting (a great day to spend inside when it's 110 degrees outside). I enjoyed the surprises and the way they were added to the story. Although I can't define "normal" sexuality, desires, self-admiration, self-loathing, and religious fervor, I do think the author goes a little over the top here and there. The time period and setting added another layer of unexpectedness, as I don't read a whole lot of historical fiction and know very little about the state of Wisconsin. On the whole, I enjoyed reading this book very much. 

Goodreads synopsis:  Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for "a reliable wife." But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she's not the "simple, honest woman" that Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious, haunted by a terrible past and motivated by greed. Her plan is simple: she will win this man's devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on, though, is that Truitt a passionate man with his own dark secrets has plans of his own for his new wife. Isolated on a remote estate and imprisoned by relentless snow, the story of Ralph and Catherine unfolds in unimaginable ways. 
With echoes of "Wuthering Heights" and "Rebecca," Robert Goolrick's intoxicating debut novel delivers a classic tale of suspenseful seduction, set in a world that seems to have gone temporarily off its axis.

51. Brooklyn Bridge - Karen Hesse

Illustrator: Chris Sheban
For: Middle Grades
Published: September 2008
225 pgs.
Rating: 5/5 Tops
Read and finished: Oct. 9, 2008
Endpapers: Map of Brooklyn with important places noted. I referred to this map often.

Five years since Karen Hesse has written a new novel, and it was well worth the wait. I can hear kids saying, "I don't get it", and I'll say...."you're not supposed to get it yet. You will, soon, and it'll be worth it."

There are two major and one minor alternating storylines happening. You could remove the minor one with no problem - I almost wish it wasn't included, but I guess I can see why it is. This minor story line happens at the end of most chapters, and is a quote from one of the newspapers of the time (New York Times and Brooklyn Daily Eagle) about Coney Island. For example: "Leaving the worries of the world outside the gate, visitors come to be entertained and to become part of the entertainment." -- The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Coney Island becomes almost a character in the story, a setting that drives our protagonist's feelings in many ways - desire, envy, jealousy, and, I guess, selfishness.

Joseph Michtom (rhymes with victim) lives in 1903 Brooklyn. Born there, the eldest son of Russian immigrants who have been lucky and "struck gold", he lives with his parents, baby brother and 10-year old sister in a crowded apartment in an apartment building in a Brooklyn neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else. His parents have created the first TEDDY BEAR, after they read about Teddy Roosevelt's refusal to shoot a bear, and it's an insant, overnight success. This throws the entire family into a bit of a turmoil, since they all have to pitch in and help.

There's a large extended family, three paternal aunts who live on the lower east side of Manhattan and, for some reason, refuse to cross the bridge to Brooklyn, a maternal uncle who is a "free thinker", and many, many interesting immigrants that the family befriends. There are many, many intriguing sideplots, including Joseph's sister Emily's opportunity to run a community library at their home, their baby brother Benjamin's almost fatal case of grippe (that's what my own grandmother used to call it when I got the flew as a kid!), different ways that hard-working people can help others, and buying and owning real estate in turn-of-the-century New York.

The third storyline is about the various abandoned/runaway/lost/exploited kids that live under the Brooklyn Bridge. Throughout the story we get to know these kids in eloquent, interesting short blurbs, and the reason is finally revealed at the end of the book.

Wow. Talk about weaving a book together! A quickish read, but much fodder for deep thinking and lots and lots of historical happenings thrown in (sheep and a shepherd in the park in Brooklyn in 1903, the Brooklyn Superbas baseball team - ever heard of them? immigrations from Russia, citizenship, and of course, Coney Island the way it used to be.