Queen Victoria might be missing from the PBS schedule, but you can find her on the library shelves. Drawing from Victoria’s own correspondence and other documentation of her life, Lisa Worley (Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces) recreates the 24 days in Victoria’s life that defined Victoria as a daughter, mother, widow, and sovereign. I had a whole different impression of Victoria after reading it.
4.19 stars on Goodreads, 4.7 on
Amazon
The book begins in 1875, ten years after the assassination
of Abraham Lincoln, when Mary Todd’s Robert has begun legal proceedings to have
his mother declared insane and committed. Elizabeth, the oldest sisters of Mary’s
four sisters, calls the sisters together to try to help Mary even though they
have all been estranged from her for some time. Chapters go back and forth
between sisters and 1875/1876 and earlier years to learn the back stories of
all the sisters. I sometimes found it difficult to keep everything and everyone
straight.
I love a good mystery and time travel romances. This, the first of a series of five (so far),
combines both genres. Kendra Donovan, a
rogue FBI agent, goes to a party at Aldrich Castle in the 21st
century bent on murder. She enters a
stairwell and emerges during a party in the same castle in 1815. Fortunately for Kendra the owner of the
castle, the Duke of Aldrich, is very open minded and he accepts her as his
American ward. A murder takes place on
the grounds of the castle and the Duke and Kendra, with the able assistance of
Bow Street Runner Sam Kelly, set out to solve the crime. Without the aid of 21st century
technology, how is Kendra going to accomplish that?
There have been five titles in this series and the EPL library has all of them.
3.75 stars on Goodreads, 4.4 on Amazon
Hedy Lamarr was so much more than a famous actress. She was also a brilliant, self-educated scientist who no one took seriously. Hedy began life in Austria as Hedy Kiesler and married a Nazi arms dealer. After her escape to America, she not only became a film star, she co-invented a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes. The technology was hidden away by the military until it became the backbone for today’s Bluetooth technology. Hedy and her partner, who never benefited from the invention as the patent had expired, were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.
If you enjoyed reading and learning about Hedy, you might want to check out Marie Benedict's only novels about Benedict's women. The Eastpointe library does not have all of Benedict's book but one of the reference librarians will be happy to request it for you from an area library.
3.76 stars on Goodreads, 4.4 on Amazon
Lawyer
Dannie Cohan has a five-year plan for her life, and she is right on track to
achieve it. On the night her boyfriend proposes, she goes to sleep and
wakes up, in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and
beside a very different man. The date on the TV news is December 15, 2025, five
years in the future. Dannie wakes again and is back in 2020 in her
own apartment. The dream feels like more than a dream, but Dannie doesn’t
believe in visions. That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when Dannie
meets the man from her long-ago vision. Reviews called this a book to read in
one setting and I did just that.
3.87 stars on Goodreads, 4.3 on Amazon
