Contemplating this review, I started off thinking that This Burns My Heart has all the hallmarks of great historical fiction. It takes place in an exotic location (South Korea) in an interesting time period (1960s). It has an ambitious female protagonist, Soo-Ja Choi, who wants to do great things. There is plenty of conflict for Soo-Ja — with her parents, her culture, her husband. The world outside South Korea is changing rapidly, while her culture seems mired in the past, smothering her. But after three attempts to read the book and 175 pages, I just found myself asking, “so what?”

There is no doubt that Korean culture in this time period was repressive and male-dominated. As a woman, Soo-Ja has some freedom, but she is still ruled by her father and eventually by her husband. Her first attempt to escape her father, by applying for diplomatic school, is thwarted. Her second attempt is more successful, at least at first. She decides to marry a rather shiftless young man that she can control, someone she will be able to manipulate to get her own way. Her father agrees to the union, but things do not turn out the way she planned.

So what? She made a mess of her own life, and while I understand that she was trying to find a way to do something better for herself, she picked a pretty lousy way to do it. It has the potential to hurt a lot of people. That’s not shocking; people have been screwing up their lives for centuries. This book just didn’t seem to have anything new to say about it.

Postwar South Korea should be an interesting place, but the book doesn’t really give me its flavor. There are some small details, tidbits about festivals and bean cakes, a walk through the market, but I never felt like I was there. When I compare it to something like The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, where I felt completely immersed in the sights and sounds and smells of  18th century Japan, this could have been South Korea, or it could have been Chinatown.

I really wanted to like this book, but I never felt swept away to another era, the way you do in great historical fiction. There’s nothing wrong with the book: the writing is fine, the story has potential, but it didn’t grab me. Three attempts was enough for me.

My copy of This Burns My Heart was an Advanced Reader’s Edition, provided free of charge.

Okay, we’ve got a special mid-week guest post this time around. M.J. Rose, author of The Hypnotist, is stopping here on her tour and she’s got a guest post about the inspiration for her latest story. This is an amazing guest post! Gave me the chills.

Check out more stops on the tour
Check our her website, mjrose.com
And keep an eye out for more information on Twitter at #TheHypnotistVirtualBookTour

M.J. Rose

If you go the Met, please go visit Perneb’s tomb. And if you see a little girl there with long blonde hair and a blue school uniform… ask her if her name is Veronica… and if it is, thank her for me.

This is going to be a tough review to write.

I can tell you how The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma begins. I could possibly even tell you what the Map of Time is. But most everything else I would want to tell you, I can’t tell you. It would spoil something. And this is the sort of book where you really don’t want the plot twists spoiled.

First thing I loved about this novel: the Narrator. This is not just any omniscient narrator — this one has a charming voice and a lovely way to tell a story.

“Assuming you stay until the end of this tale, some of you will no doubt think that I chose the wrong thread with which to begin spinning my yarn, and that for accuracy’s sake I should have respected chronological order and begun with Miss Haggerty’s story. It is possible, but there are stories that cannot begin at their beginning, and perhaps this is one of them.”

Andrew Harrington is a troubled young man and he is about to do something profoundly stupid. Fate is going to intervene and push him in an entirely different direction and it is an amazing, complicated and surprising journey. Set in Victorian England, H.G. Wells has just published The Time Machine and a little store-front business called Murray’s Time Travel has opened in London. Andrew and his cousin, Charles, hope to use their services to avert a tragedy.

The story spirals and explodes from there. We go forward in time, back in time, and sometimes we move in a relatively straight line. We’ve got The Time Machine and Dracula. We’ve automatons, amateur assassins, star-crossed lovers, greed and betrayal. There is violence and mayhem and true love — even a little sex. It is full of famous characters — H.G. Wells, Joseph Merrick, Jack the Ripper and Bram Stoker — and they all play a part.

“Yes, I know that when I began this tale I promised there would be a fabulous time machine, and there will be, there will even be intrepid explorers and fierce native tribes — a must in any adventure story.”

I wish I could tell you more about it! Unfortunately, anything I might tell you is bound to spoil some surprise that’s waiting for you in the winding paths of these pages. It’s a story that held my attention for 600+ pages and that is no small feat. I loved the way the story unfolded and I found myself wondering as we meandered along just how Palma would bring the tendrils of this story all together in the end, and I was not disappointed. It’s a terrific read and one I highly recommend.

For more information on Felix J. Palma, check out his website. My copy of The Map of Time was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

Susan Fletcher’s new book, Corrag, is historical fiction that does something I love: it takes an historical event and looks at it from a new angle, through the eyes of a new character. The story is based on the 1692 Massacre of Glencoe, where supporters of King William were responsible for the deaths of 78 members of the MacDonald clan, killed because of their delay in pledging allegiance to the new king. Corrag is an English witch who had lived among them, imprisoned in the aftermath of the massacre, and sentenced to be burned alive at the stake.

There are a number of things I loved about this book. Corrag herself is a fascinating character. She has lived in a way that modern people cannot even imagine. As a girl, she is forced to flee her home and she lives, quite literally, off the land. She eats roots and berries, she sleeps under trees, her only companion a stolen horse. She eventually takes up residence in a remote valley in a lean-to she built herself from branches and cow dung. She drinks warm milk right from the cow’s teat. Corrag accepts her lot and never acts as though she expected anything more. It was a constant surprise to me that someone could live so simply, in a way that most of us would find horribly deprived, and yet be so content.

The other main character is Charles Leslie, a Jacobite minister, traveling incognito and looking for dirt on King William. He learns of Corrag’s imprisonment and hopes she will be able to provide him with the evidence he needs. He visits her in the tollbooth where she is being held, ostensibly to bring her comfort, but mostly to pump her for information.

I love the way the story is told. Corrag’s tale makes up the main narrative (and she warns you up front that she tends to talk a lot). At the end of each chapter, Charles writes a letter to his wife back in Ireland. The contrast between Corrag’s stories and the way Charles views her in the beginning is so dramatic! He goes in expecting a wild, godless, savage and to some extent, that’s what he gets. She is completely outside his experience. He takes her dirty appearance as an indication of the condition of her soul. Did he not notice that she is being held in a dungeon, with little food and no access to soap and a bathtub?

Corrag’s stories about her life, the wilderness she lives in, her connection to the world around her — they are almost poetic. I loved reading them and found myself completely caught up. I was angry — really angry — with Charles Leslie for seeing her through his narrow, pious eyes. But as the stories continue, and he gets a little scolding from his wife, he, too, begins to fall under her spell.

The MacDonalds were good people and they did not deserve the fate that befell them. They took in their murderers, offered them their hospitality, and in return they were slaughtered, their wives and children left to die of exposure in the February frost, watching as their homes burned. But Highlanders are hearty people and enough of them survived to tell the tale, not that it made any difference to King William. There is an interesting history that surrounds their story and I thoroughly enjoyed this fresh look at it.

My copy of Corrag was provided free of charge by LibraryThing’s Early Review Program.

Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow is a fictionalized telling of the story of the Collyer brothers — two eccentric New York brothers from a wealthy family, living in a spacious brownstone on 5th Avenue.  They became famous, not for their wealth or their looks or their philanthropy, but for their compulsive hoarding.  It’s a tragic story and Doctorow’s fictionalized account is compelling reading, trying to give some background and insight into the lives of these famous recluses.

Homer and Langley Collyer were born in the early 1880′s.  Their father, Herman, was a well-known doctor; their mother, Susie, a former opera singer.  They lived privileged lives in a splendid three-story brownstone on 5th Avenue in New York City, across from Central Park.  Homer was a gifted pianist and played all his life, even though he lost his sight as a teenager.  Langley was a soldier in World War I, discharged after he was wounded, exposed to mustard gas.  He came home to find that both of his parents had died of the Spanish Flu and his blind younger brother was running the household.

Over the years, Langley’s eccentricities began to worsen.  He collected newspapers, buying every edition sold in the city every day, morning and evening, and then clipping and sorting the articles as part of his plan to create a singular newspaper edition that covered all the stories every likely to be told.  He could not buy one of anything: when Homer needed a typewriter, Langley bought a dozen different brands for him to try. He scavenged the city, looking for bits and pieces that he could incorporate into his grand designs.  With each setback — the loss of a girlfriend, the death of their longtime housekeeper, a run-in with city employees — his paranoia becomes deeper and his compulsions more dangerous.

Homer is a hostage to his brother’s lunacy, although he seems content.  Their world, always rather insulated, begins to shrink until they are all alone in their boarded up house.  They have no phone, no electricity, no water — once a week, they wheel 2 baby carriages to an old horse pump at the end of the block.  Everyone eventually leaves them.  Their long-time housekeeper, Siobahn, dies.  Their cook brings her son to live with them and for a while, Homer is immersed in the world of Harlem jazz clubs, but that also comes to a tragic end.  The replacement housekeepers, the troupe of hippies who moves in for a time, a reporter that Homer meets in the park – everyone, eventually, falls away.  Leaving the brothers to be buried under mountains of newspapers, books, car parts, folding chairs, typewriters, pianos, baby carriages and broken furniture.

Homer and Langley is a very fictionalized account and I am not sure I understand all the liberties Doctorow took.  He reversed the brothers’ birth order (Homer was actually the elder).  According to Wikipedia, Langley was the pianist in the family.  The brothers actually died in 1947, although in the novel, they live into the 1970′s.  Those changes aside, the book is a fascinating look at their descent into madness.   Doctorow does an excellent job of filling in the gaps, painting a mural of what their lives might have been like, the justifications, the crazy theories, the way that Homer is slowly drawn in by his brother’s mental disorder.

When police finally cleaned out the Collyer mansion, they pulled 130 tons of trash out onto 5th Avenue.  Although the brothers had substantial savings and investments, they lived in squalor, without basic utilities.  The salvageable items brought only $2,000 at auction.

I admit that I am obsessed with shows like Hoarders.  I am a terrible packrat (inherited that from my father), and I find that I have difficulty letting go of things.  I’ve read several books on organizing and decluttering your house, but the easy organization tips never address the root of the problem, why you gather things and why you find it hard to let them go.  I think I’ll be putting these pictures on my refrigerator as a reminder.

My copy of Homer & Langley was a Christmas gift from my sister.

Back in the late 1700′s-early 1800′s, Japan was closed to the world around them.  It was illegal for a Japanese citizen to leave Japan.  It was illegal for foreign citizens to enter Japan, except under the most strictly monitored conditions.  But countries around the world understood that Japan would be a lucrative market and trading partner, if only they could break through those barriers.  The Dutch East Indies Company (the VOC in Dutch) maintained a trading post in Deijma and fought hard to keep lines of communication open with Japan — and to keep their greedy European enemies away.  In The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a young Dutch clerk hopes to make his fortune — and return home to marry his beloved Anna — but his scruples get in the way.  It is a lovely, poetic book full of tragedy and hardship and great honor.

Jacob de Zoet is too honest to make a fortune trading in Japan.  All around him he finds graft and corruption, and even the men sent in to ferret out the corruption eventually succumb; life would be much easier for him if he were not so honorable.  To make matters more complicated, Jacob falls in love.  This love has even less chance of success than his engagement to the lovely Anna back in the Netherlands.  Miss Abigawa is a Japaneses midwife.  She is disfigured by a terrible burn, making her virtually unmarriageable, but her father is a wealthy Samurai and he has arranged for her to study medicine, inasmuch as a Japanese woman can in those days, and to continue her work as a midwife.  Jacob is captivated by her, but she also has more ominous suitors.

As with David Mitchell’s earlier work, Cloud Atlas, Thousand Autumns is subject to shifting storylines.  The first third of the book is Jacob’s story – how he came to Nagasaki, how he fell in love, and his rise and fall in the small circle of Dutchmen there.  The second third is Miss Abigawa’s story.  Her life changes drastically after the death of her father, and those changes are a reminder of how little autonomy women had in those days.  Her life was not her own; decisions were made by others for their own profit that left her bereft and there was little she could do about them.  Miss Abigawa also finds herself a prisoner of her scruples.  A bell ringing in the night forces her to make an agonizing choice.

The final third of the book tells the stories that come after — after Miss Abigawa and Jacob are separated, after an enemy assault on the VOC, after Jacob’s time in Nagasaki is finished.  There is both honor and sadness in these stories, and the honor will have to suffice, because happiness is in short supply.

I fell in love with David Mitchell‘s writing in Cloud Atlas.  I had never read anything quite like it and I resolved to find all of his books and read them immediately.  That didn’t quite happen, but they are still high on my To Be Read list.  There is a poetry to his writing – his descriptions are lovely, even when he describes very ugly things, and the picture he paints of Nagasaki is clear in my mind: buildings, gardens, beggars, courtesans and the smell of the sea and the sewage.

“Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries’ vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bathhouse adulterers; heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters’ sons sharpening axes; candlemakers rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etiolated lacquerers; mottled-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers…”

This is not a thriller or a mystery, but I found it very suspenseful.  There are multiple storylines and I was intrigued to see how they would come together and where they would end.  It’s also part of the mysterious “Dutch Connection” that has developed in my reading: as I have been spending a lot of time in Amsterdam for work, I have found that several of my recent books have had some connection to the Netherlands (or to brothels, as does this book). I found it a quick read, devouring the nearly 500 pages in three short sittings.  I will be recommending this to friends and readers at my website, and a few lucky family members may find it, bedecked in ribbons, under their Christmas trees.  This was truly a remarkable read.

What makes someone a freak?

It’s the question at the heart of The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno by Ellen Bryson.  The story revolves around P.T. Barnum’s American Museum and the “freaks” who entertained the masses there.  There were midgets and fat ladies, savages from exotic lands, musclemen and other oddities.  But what made them freaks, and what would they choose, if they could choose another fate?

Bartholomew Fortuno is the Thinnest Man in the World.  After a very unpleasant stretch in the tent circuses and traveling shows, he has found a home for himself at the American Museum.  He spends his day on-stage, showing his ribs and ankles to the paying customers, or sitting in tableau with his lady friend Matina, the museum’s fat lady.  His meals in the museum’s dining hall explain how he maintains his “gift”:

As usual, I counted out a dozen green beans, no more, no less, and placed them horizontally on my plate, along with a bit of horseradish to add zing.  After cutting each bean into thirds, I dipped a piece into the horseradish and popped it into my mouth, chewed twenty-five times before swallowing it, then started on the next piece.

Fortuno has his theories about his profession — he truly believes that his thinness is a gift, that it educates and enlightens the people who come to see him. He explains the difference between the True Prodigies, the regular Prodigies, the Exotics and the Gaffs.  He treats his performances as a higher calling, no matter what his fellow performers believe.

Their lives at the museum are less exciting than one might think.  They have their daily schedules, they have the little dramas of any group living in close quarters, they measure their worth in special performances and new costumes, with plenty of jealousy and gossip to go around.  All this intensifies with the arrival of a new act — an act so secret that she arrives under cover of darkness and is not housed with the rest of the performers.  Fortuno is fascinated, and when Mr. Barnum asks him to perform a small favor for him, he is sucked into the whirlwind surrounding their newest prodigy.

The novel explores Fortuno’s relationships with his fellow freaks as well as his past.  Is he naturally a Prodigy, or did he choose this?  I mean, a person can be naturally thin without subsisting on a dozen green beans a day.  And if it is a choice, conscious or unconscious, what would prompt a man to choose to be a skeleton?  Fortuno has to work out the answers to these questions while walking through the minefield of Mr. Barnum, Mrs. Barnum and the mysterious new exhibit.

I enjoyed the backstage look at life in a very high-end freakshow.  The were so normal and yet so unusual, the way they argued and envied each other, the way they had adapted to — and even grown proud of — a life on the fringe of society.  The mystery unravels slowly (sometimes too slowly), as Iell reveals her secrets and Fortuno deals with his past and his future.  He clearly did not see what he was getting himself into, even if the reader can sense his impending disaster.  He is a marvelous narrator, a man of such dignity, even in his odd circumstances.  I found myself rooting for him, hoping he could find a clear path.

Ellen Bryson‘s novel was inspired by a dream; Iell was a character in that dream and Bryson’s investigations led her to the story of Isaac Sprague, the living skeleton:

She knew immediately that he would be her narrator.  You can find more photos of Sprague’s cohorts here.

This is Bryson’s first novel, and is scheduled for release June 22nd.  My copy of The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortunowas an Advance Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

These days, we talk about Banned Book Week and we talk about censorship in school libraries, but in the 1500′s, they were serious about censorship. Get caught reading something on the Vatican’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books) and your prize was an appointment with the local Inquisitor. Based on the true story of Giordano Bruno — an Italian monk, excommunicated and on the run from the Inquisition — Heresy, by S. J. Parris, casts Bruno in the role of investigator, helping to solve a series of grisly murders while spying for Queen Elizabeth.

Giordano Bruno did, in fact, lecture at Oxford University in 1583, and many of the characters in the book are known to history as well. Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Francis Walsingham, John Underhill, John Dee — they all played a part in history, as well as in Heresy. Bruno accepts the invitation to a debate at Oxford to expound on his theories of an infinite universe of independently moving heavenly bodies (ahead of his time). He is also approached by Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth, and asked to do a little undercover work. The Queen is concerned about the possibility of renegade Catholics at Oxford. This was shortly after the publication of Regnans in Excelsis, the papal bull issued by Pope Pius V declaring Queen Elizabeth a heretic. There was good reason to believe that Catholic forces might make an attempt on the Queen’s life and strong measures were taken to discover and arrest them.

I was very much caught up in the history of the novel. I could add dozens of links, telling more of the story of Bruno’s life, the Pope’s declarations against the Church of England, the Inquisition and more. It is hard to imagine living in the political climate of those times — Bruno had actually been condemned for reading the work of Erasmus in the privy — when people could be tortured and condemned to death, simply for reading works the church had deemed dangerous. One of the great successes of this story is that characters on all sides of the debate seem sympathetic. While Bruno has every reason to consider himself an enemy of the Pope and the Catholic Church, he has serious reservations about arresting people because of their manner of worship, or declaring anyone who is Catholic a mortal threat to the monarchy. He is troubled by these issues throughout the book.

The mystery is an interesting one: a man is savaged by a wild dog in a locked garden. Who let the dog in? Who was the man meeting and why was he carrying a substantial sum of money? And why does the method of the murder seem so familiar to Bruno? The Rector, John Underhill, is primarily interested in saving the reputation of the college, and if it means a murderer goes free, so be it. But bodies begin to pile up and soon no one can discount Bruno’s theories. There are a number of interesting subplots, a little romance, and plenty of history to keep a reader entertained.

In life, Bruno was eventually turned over to the Inquisition and died a tragic death. On the 400th anniversary of his execution (he was burned at the stake), the Vatican declared it a “sad episode”, all the while defending his torturers as good Catholics who wanted to “promote the common good.”

S. J. Parris is the pseudonym of journalist Stephanie Merritt. This is her first novel — and I will be adding her to my must-read list. Good historical fiction is a special pleasure — educational as well as entertaining — and this was an excellent example. You can find more about S. J. Parris and Heresy at the publisher’s website, Doubleday.com.

My copy of Heresy was an Advance Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

Historically, a woman on her own has always been a woman at risk.  In some cultures around the world, a woman is still not permitted to own property, to have her own money, to walk along a city street in daylight without fear of reprisals.  In 1857, a widowed woman had limited options available to her, but Emma Cunningham was determined to make the most of them.  She enters into an arrangement with a handsome bachelor, Dr. Harvey Burdell, that may work to her advantage…but almost immediately you begin to wonder: who is taking advantage of whom?

31 Bond Street by Ellen Horan is an interesting bit of historical fiction, based on the celebrated murder of Dr. Harvey Burdell.  Horan takes a fair amount of liberty with this story, which is detailed in the Author’s Notes.  (I think that’s an excellent move — I don’t mind taking a bit of history and giving it a twist to make it a great story, as long as they acknowledge the twists.)  She fleshes out a number of characters, adds some interesting side plots, making for a very engaging read.

Dr. Burdell was a well-to-do bachelor dentist with a lovely home lower Manhattan.  Mrs. Emma Cunningham was a widow with two young daughters and financial problems.  She was running out of funds and would soon be on the street with her girls.  She does something that most women today would find humiliating — she went off to Saratoga for the summer to find husbands — for her girls and for herself.  She meets Dr. Burdell and eventually, he makes her an offer.  It was common practice for a gentleman to have a widow, usually an elderly woman, stay with him as a live-in house manager.  She would oversee the household staff, meals, entertaining, etc.  Burdell suggests that Mrs. Cunningham could have such a position in his home — and hints that other positions might be available as well.

Mrs. Cunningham immediately comes off as a gold-digger.  She is looking for a home and security, for a man of means to support her and her daughters.  She obviously tends to sink her claws deep into Dr. Burdell and establish herself permanently in his house.  But there are other factors at play.  Mrs. Cunningham still has some funds at her disposal and Dr. Burdell is involved in some shady business dealings.   Is she using him — or is he using her?

There are a number of  subplots running through 31 Bond Street — financial, romantic and political.  There are a lot of threads that lead the reader in different directions and keep you guessing.  The story itself was quite controversial at the time, splashed all over the newspapers, and Horan makes it an engaging read.

My copy of 31 Bond Street was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided by the publisher, HarperCollins.

Historical fiction can be challenging, both for writers and readers. It doesn’t take much — just a word, a name, a description — to bounce you right out of the story. In the Author’s Note at the end of Mistress of the Art of Death, Ariana Franklin says “It is almost impossible to write a comprehensible story set in the twelfth century without being anachronistic, at least in part. To avoid confusion, I have used modern names and terms.” Still, she manages to evoke a sense of the time that had me completely swept up in the story. It’s an excellent combination of a compelling story, interesting characters and the romance of an earlier time.

Mistress of the Art of Death is set in medieval Cambridge. Four children have been murdered in bloody, sadistic fashion and the local Catholic community is blaming the Jews. After beatings and lynchings, the Jews have holed up in the castle of King Henry II and Henry is none too happy about it; he depends on the income from his Jewish usurers and merchants. He decides to contact his cousin, the King of Sicily, to ask for help. The assistance comes in an unexpected form: Simon of Naples, a fixer and investigator for the King; Mansur, a eunuch; and Adelia — or more precisely, Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar of Salerno — a doctor of death.

Simon, Adelia and Mansur set out to clear the Jews of suspicion and solve the mystery surrounding these murders. No one is informed of their mission and they have no official standing, so they must rely on their wits and the friends they make to provide inroads and information. They are able to assist the head of the local monastery, Prior Geoffrey, with a rather personal medical problem, and he is an invaluable resource for them. He introduces them to Gyltha, who becomes their housekeeper, and her grandson, Ulf, who becomes Adelia’s chief spy-about-town.

Their killer is crafty as well as brutal. Although their investigation reveals the ruse he uses to lure the children to their deaths, the trio cannot get quite close enough to catch a glimpse. And Adelia is at a grave disadvantage: although in Salerno it is possible for women to study medicine, in England, a woman with medical knowledge would be condemned by the church and likely hanged as a witch. She has to be very careful who she confides in.

I found the story fascinating; it was Criminal Minds or CSI set in a time when people believed that disease was caused by demons and the church condemned the use of painkillers as heathenish. Adelia is a very modern woman — she is single (with no plans to marry), educated, independent. There is a constant clash between the Church, the King, scientific discovery and religious superstition. Adelia may bring a wealth of medical knowledge to the table, but she is ignorant of the local people and their way of life. She must rely on Ulf and his understanding of local life, that strange underworld that children inhabit, to provide the insights that move their investigation along.

Many reviewers disliked the romantic sub-plot, and I must admit that I was not thrilled with it myself. I would have liked to see Adelia be as modern about her love life as she was about her education, or see it dropped altogether. It seemed to diminish her in some way, by insisting that under all her modern notions, she was still just a maiden who could let love cloud her judgment. It was my least favorite part of the plot.

The story is based on the real-life tale of Saint William of Norwich. William was 12 years old when he was murdered, and his death was attributed to local Jews, who were alleged to sacrifice Christian children during their sacred rituals. The murder and the fact that the King and local authorities protected the Jews fueled anti-Jewish feelings among the peasant class and resulted in the attack on the Jewish delegation attending the coronation of Richard the Lionheart, son of King Henry II.

This novel was particularly well-suited to being an audio book. The reader, Rosalyn Landor, has a marvelous voice and a lovely accent. Many of the medieval terms and place-names were unfamiliar, so a good reader was a real asset. My copy of Mistress of the Art of Death was provided by my local library.