The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch

 You might think a book about a hangman set in 1600's Bavaria would be a pretty grisly read. Instead, it has some of the most likable characters the Recommender has come across, as well as being a really good mystery that's intelligently written and has a dark sense of humor. The author, Oliver Pötzsch, is descended from a line of hangmen and knows how to tell a good story. What could be better? Jakob Kuisl's father was a hangman, as was his father and by all rights, his lovely, smart daughter Magdalena should eventually be the wife of the son of a hangman. As a boy Jakob had to help his father with some particularly gruesome executions at which time he vows never to make this his career.
We skip ahead and find Jakob, now an ex-soldier, wielding the executioner's sabre and tools of torture to earn a living in the town of Schongau and provide for his wife, Anna Maria, Magdalena and his young twins, Georg and Barbara. He is also a healer, a reader of advanced medical texts and savvy with herbs and potions. Jakob is a strong, thoughtful man, and capable of great bravery. He survives despite the double-standardism he deals with on a daily basis regarding the town's need for a hangman and its revulsion of him as being bad luck, and not fit to mix in polite society. His daughter is called "the hangman's wench"! Not the most pleasant time to be alive but one the author has brought vividly to life.
One day, a boy is pulled from the river. Things look bad. Someone goes for the town doctor and finds, instead his son, Simon Fronweiser, a young medical student. Alas, there's not much he can do. The town looks for a culprit. Who could do such a thing? The boy's father, a wagon-driver, suspects rival wagon-drivers. Then someone notices a mark on the boy's shoulder. A symbol. It looks to be a witch's sign! Of course! Now the towns-people remember! Peter, the boy, had been hanging out at the local mid-wife's house, along with several other children. She used herbs and potions. She's a witch! OK, maybe she delivered ALL the town's children over the years, but, hey, a witch is a witch.Years before, Schongau had been the site of a terrible witch hunt. What better way to solve your problems than by burning some unlucky women at the stake. Good times!
A contingent from the town go to take Martha, the mid-wife, into custody. The boy's father raises a studded stick to strike her. "I wouldn't do that" says a voice. It's Jakob, the hangman. Instead, she is taken to prison where she is to be tortured if she doesn't confess. By Jakob himself.
So begins this addictive story. Simon and Jakob are friends, Simon being an admirer of Jakob's vast medical library and knowledge...and of Jakob's daughter. Can this engaging trio find out who really killed the boy, and prevent any more killings or will Martha face the flames? This book is highly recommended. The Recommender LOVED the depiction of small town politics which haven't changed all that much since the bureaucracy of  1600s Bavaria. I LOVED Jakob, Simon and Magdalena who are all such complex, realistic and, yes, even endearing characters, I can't wait to read the next two titles which are now available in the USA! (Special thanks must go to the translator).   It is also the Goodwin Library's Book Club choice this month so there should a great discussion coming up next week!

Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson

In Maureen Johnson's "The Name of the Star", our protagonist, Rory, (short for Aurora) is a nice southern girl whose professor parents are taking a sabbatical leave to teach American law in Bristol, England. Rory is all set for adventure and doing her senior high school year at an English boarding school in East London called Wexford. She gets a little more adventure than she bargained for, as she arrives at Wexford in the midst of  a serial killer recreating Jack the Ripper's infamous crimes on the same dates, more than 100 years later! And the school is right in the classic kill zone, near Whitechapel.
This story grabs you right off, as we settle into Wexford with Rory, meet her extremely nice and proper room-mate Jazza, and the prefects which include the handsome, Ripper-obsessed Jerome (from the Boy's dorm across the green) and the ultra-annoying Charlotte. Rory is starting to enjoy herself, going to classes and getting to know the other students, some a bit odd, like Alastair, the boy she always sees in the library, reading in the dark. What's up with him? And the Ripper continues to capture everyone's attention, striking again and again as the public wonders who will be next and throw Ripper parties to alleviate the tension.
You might think this is just another serial-killer story and you might be wrong. That's something you'll need to discover for yourself, as Rory does.
Ms. Johnson is a very engaging writer and despite the murders her characters still find time to eat and laugh and fall in love. This is the first of a series... and one the Recommender thinks she's going to like!

The Pale Assassin by Patricia Elliott

I was first drawn to Patricia Elliott's  "The Pale Assassin" by it's beautiful cover, and I do appreciate attractive book designs. Set in the years and days leading up to the French Revolution and featuring a character called le Fantome and since the Recommender is all ablout that other Phantom I was intrigued by this one. Instead of living in the cellars below the Paris Opera, this Fantome lurks about spying on aristocrats. The book begins with him (real name Raoul Goullet) having been bested at gambling and humiliated by the marquis Sebastion de Boncouer. He later arrives at the marquis's estate to kill him but is, again, thwarted and vows vengence. Sebastion has a small child, a girl, Eugenie. This gives le Fantome an idea.  He will destroy the marquis AND his family.
10 years later, as Eugenie de Boncouer and her governess are making their way through Paris during a demonstration they are offered safety and a ride in a carriage by a gentleman. Raoul Goullet. Neither he nor Eugenie recognizes the other. Eugenie scrutinizes the man who has helped them. He is cold and pale and his hands are covered by black gloves. He studies the girl. Though he himself might not be attractive he has a great love for beautiful things and Eugenie reminds him of his collection of precious china figurines, the largest and most valuable in all of Paris.
He asks their destination and when Hortense, the governess, tells him... she notices a change in his eyes, for now he knows who Eugenie is. "He had been watching her older brother for some time, and now, fate had brought him the sister. She was young, now, but one day she would grow up. He had only to wait..."
Wait for what Eugenie will learn, later, as we get to know our heroine, a spoiled young aristocrat living at the estate of her elderly guardian, and mingling in upscale circles though those in the upper classes are growing increasingly nervous because change is in the air and the poor and downtrodden wish for equality and bread and jobs. Her brother and his friends have sympathy for the King and Queen but these are dangerous times and the guillotine has recently been invented and looms as a way to deal with enemies of the people. Eugenie is willfull and defies the common sense advice she recives to lay low and attends a party where she meets a very attractive aristocrat, Guy Deschamps, with whom she is much taken. What happens to Eugenie as she struggles to survive in a changing world and will she, her brother and his friends change with it or stay true to the crown, is something you will have to find out for yourself. The French Revolution was a thrilling time in history and the author captures the turmoil of the streets very well. This book is, of course, recommended and there is a sequel,and, yes, the Recommender does have some sympathy for Le Fantome, and will be looking forward to reading it...very soon!

Speaking of France and revolutions, Les Miz (or Les Mis, if you prefer!)opens tomorrow! The Daily Beast ran this today, the French Revolution for Dummies. Quite informative!

And, below, a quick French history lesson by way of youtube and the brilliant Peter Brooks film with a very long title which is often encapsulated as "Marat/Sade". It stars the Royal Shakespeare Company featuring Patrick Magee as the marquis de Sade,who, while imprisoned in an insane asylum, spends his time writing plays for the amusement of the asylum director, his family and guests who come to watch the inmates perform them. Ian Richardson is an inmate playing the radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat and a lovely young Glenda Jackson as another inmate playing Charlotte Corday, Marat's assassin. If you haven't seen it, it is one of the best plays of all  time with some pretty catchy brecht/weilian style music.

Shadowlands by Kate Brian

What is it with creepy teachers? This seems to be a theme in a couple of great books I've read recently (See "Break My Heart 1,000 Times" by Dan Waters). In this absorbing, fast paced story Rory Miller, an attractive teen girl, is taking a short-cut home from school through the woods when she is attacked. Attacked by Mr. Nell, the math teacher that all the kids thought was cool in a retro dorky kind of way. She struggles and manages to escape by running into the road and flagging down the car of Chris, a boy she always liked but who was once the boyfriend of her sister, Darcy. He rescues her and calls 911. Next thing, the FBI has shown up and informed Rory, her self-obsessed sister and her distant Dad that Mr. Nell is actually a serial-killer named Roger Krauss who killed 14 girls and she is the only one of his intended victims to have survived, and he never leaves a job unfinished so they will have to assume new identities and go into the witness protection program.

Leaving behind all they know, the Miller family find themselves in a beautiful, too good to be true beachy resort town. Will they be safe? Or will Mr. Nell/Roger Krauss track them down?  What happens to them on this new adventure makes for a gripping read and one you'll not be able to put down. The Recommender says read this one NOW!

Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff

(Love this cover!)

Hannah is just trying to get through the summer, one of the hottest on record.  She wants to be a happy, normal girl doing normal things... but that's kind of hard when she is consistently haunted by the ghost of her best friend, Lillian, and there's a serial killer loose in her home town requiring her to chaperone her sister, Ariel, and her friend, to and from summer school.
Lillian self-destructed, letting herself die bit by bit by not eating. Trying to be the perfect, popular girl. She and Hannah were inseparable, friends from childhood, the leaders and trend setters of their group of girls. Now Hannah doesn't know who she is anymore, and why is she suddenly noticing Finny Boone, a tall, muscular boy with bleached blonde hair and a penchant for petty theft and a reputation as a delinquent and a loser... but is there something more to him than those easy labels?
This is a book that grips you right from the start. It's a stay up all night reading till the end kind of story. The Recommender hasn't read one of  Brenna Yovanoff's books before but I am going to be sure to check out her other titles because she is a wonderful writer and Hannah is someone  you care about and want to spend time with as she tries to understand the secret of the Paper Valentine killer as well as what made Lillian want to die... and was she partly to blame? I won't give away any more of the story because this is a book you'll want to lose yourself in and uncover the mysteries of the hot, hot summer of murder, friendship, love and loss.

 

Dan Waters: Live and In Person!

A couple weeks back I attended a great Teen Author event at Emory College with my best girlfriend Joyce, and Friend of Friends Steve. It was the first year of the event and had some fantastic authors and there was great access to them allowing the readers and fans of these authors to actually get to tell them how much they love their books plus some excellent panel discussions. The main reason I went was to meet one of my very favorite authors, Dan Waters, whose latest book Break My Heart 1000 Times I reviewed here and who graciously consented to be interviewed here, as well. Dan was as gracious in person as he was in the interview. Here we are:

 

I'll be looking forward to attending this event next year!

Home Front Girl: Diary of a Girl Historian

Home Front Girl is the diary of Joan Wehlen Morrison written before and during the build-up to WWll and was discovered by her daughter, Susan Signe Morrison, after she died and then edited and published. The book is such a surprising and unexpected pleasure as the Recommender hadn't heard of it before coming across it in a list of recently released titles.
Joan is a wonderfully observant, funny and smart girl. It begins when she is 14 and takes us up to when she turns 20. The diary records her thoughts on her life and daily activities living in Chicago. And she is one busy girl. From a young age she wrote columns in school newspapers including an advice column. It is no surprise that she grew up to be a journalist and a professor who co-authored Mosaic: The Immigrant Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It and From Camelot to Kent State: the Sixties Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It.  Right from the start Joan records events like the Hindenburg zeppelin fire and the coronation of King George and applies them to how they affect her life, for instance "Coronation or no coronation...there was school today."
It often seems a slower, sweeter time. Joan walking home from a trip to the Art Institute and the library where she borrows a work by Kipling and writes: "Walked home along the lovely lake with elongated purple shadows along the sands. Still bright haired children playing. Still flowers no less vivid or sky less blue, sun like blood in the West. Oh, I felt the glory and the spring of Kipling's poem, "But as the faithful years return and hearts undaunted sing again". Isn't that a lovely thought- "hearts undaunted sing again"-though ever the years are long and hard-the Spring will always come and our hearts can sing again- oh how beautiful"
Is that not more beautiful than a text? She wrote this in 1937, when she was 14.
In school she takes Latin and German. She recites poetry and writes her own. She writes a multitude of observances on the boys who come and go through her school years, many funny, some angry and others poignant. She spends summers working at children's camps to earn extra money. She is tested for TB and found to be susceptible to it and has to be tested periodically. She receives a scholarship to the University of Chicago Jr. College. And then, there's the war. She chronicles events that lead up  to the start of WW ll. On Feb. 13, 1938 she writes about the US, England and France requesting Japan cut down on her navies. She talks to a boy in her class about war and death. "He seemed sure that there'd be another war (another, oh!) and he said he'd probably be killed in it. All the boys I know will be old enough to die in a war in 1940."
Joan is afraid of what the impending war will do to her life and that of her friends. She is a pacifist, which seems unusual for those times, and has many thoughts on what war does to the people of the USA and the other countries affected. I could go on and on, because this book is just so quotable... but really, you want to get a copy of Home Front Girl for yourself so you can curl up with it and let Joan take you back in time, as you see the world through the eyes of this appealing narrator.