The Thirteenth Tale

The Thirteenth Tale. Diana Setterfield. Atria Books. September 12, 2006. 406 pages (Source: Purchased from BetterWorldBooks.com)

First sentences:  It was November.  Although it was not yet late, the sky was dark when I turned into Laundress Passage.

Plot: All children mythologize their birth... So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's colletion of stories, which are as famous for th myster of the missing thirteenth tale as they ae for the delight and enchantment of the twelve that do exist.

The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself - all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret.  Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life.  She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain.  Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.

As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized.  It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.

Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity.  She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children.  Diana Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfifed back upon the shore of your everyday life.

My thoughts:  I don't know where to begin with this one.  This is an amazing author.  She kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time!  Once I thought I had the mystery solved but I was wrong.  I like that in a good story.

I struggle with reviews on how much to tell without spoiling it for a potential reader.  Margret is what I would consider an introvert.  She helps her father in his book store, she reads, and writes a few books.  She is called upon by Ms. Winter to write the correct version of her life because she has told many false stories over the years.  Come to find out her story isn't one she would have wanted known while she still had lots of life to live.

While listing to Ms. Winter's story Margret is dealing with her own life issue of being a twin.  Her sister dying in infancy.  She feels the loss deep into her bones.  She is grieving for the other half of herself that she never new.

I will be looking for more books by Diane Setterfield!

Last Light

Last Light. Terri Blackstock. Zondervan. October 2005. 381 pages. (Source: Audio library book)

First sentence: Deni Branning stepped down onto the tarmac, pulled out the handle of her carry-on, and glanced back up at her dad.

Plot: In the face of a crisis that sweeps an entire high-tech planet back to the age before electricity, Deni Branning's career ambitions have vanished. She's not about to let her dream of marriage go as well.

But keeping it alive will require extraordinary measures. Yesterday's world is gone. All Deni and her family have left is each other and their neighbors. Their little community will either stand or fall together. But they're only beginning to realize it - and trust doesn't come easily.

Particularly when one of them is a killer.  

Best-selling suspense author Terri Blackstock weaves a masterful what-if novel in which global catastrophe reveals the darkness in human hearts - and lights the way to restoration for a self-centered world.

My thoughts: An EMP is something that hubby and I used to fear.  We stockpiled and prepared for a disaster of this sort.  Ten years later nothing happened so we used up most of our stores and sold things we never really used.   Now I am wondering if we have done the right thing.  The struggles that these families went through were some of the very things we were concerned about at one time.  

Though my family is not as spoiled as these poor folks were I know we should still have had problem dealing with this hard life day in and day out.  I don't think that much of this was too far fetched.  In fact I found most everything to be very believable except maybe the gas powered generators and tillers not working.  Why would they not work. 

Great lessons for any Christian the way that God works to provide for us in our time of need.  Even though we may not see it in the moment.  Anyway it was a really good read and I hope to come across Restoration #2 in the near future.

Ripper

Ripper. Isabel Allende. Harper. 2013. 496 pages. (Source: Audio library book).

First sentence: Mom is still alive, but she is going to be murdered at midnight on Good Friday.

Plot: The Jackson women, Indiana and Amanda, have always had each other. Yet, while their bond is strong, mother and daughter are as different as night and day. Indiana, a beautiful holistic healer, is a free-spirited bohemian. Long divorced from Amanda's father, she's reluctant to settle down with either of the men who want her-Alan, the wealthy scion of one of San Francisco's elite families, and Ryan, an enigmatic, scarred former Navy SEAL.

While her mom looks for the good in people, Amanda is fascinated by the dark side of human nature, like her father, the SFPD's Deputy Chief of Homicide. Brilliant and introverted, the MIT-bound high school senior is a natural-born sleuth addicted to crime novels and Ripper, the online mystery game she plays with her beloved grandfather and friends around the world.

When a string of strange murders occurs across the city, Amanda plunges into her own investigation, discovering, before the police do, that the deaths may be connected. But the case becomes all too personal when Indiana suddenly vanishes. Could her mother's disappearance be linked to the serial killer? Now, with her mother's life on the line, the young detective must solve the most complex mystery she's ever faced before it's too late.

My thoughts:  I liked this book despite the slow start for me.  There were may characters to be developed and introduced.  I think the more characters there were the more likely you would not figure out the crime too early in the book.

Recent murders in the San Francisco area is trying to be solved by a group of online people in a game called Ripper.  One Amanda Jackson heads up the group and has an inside connection of sorts.  Her father was in law enforcement, Deputy Chief.   When the murders hit close to home, her mother's fiance, things get tense.  Then Amanda's mother is kidnapped.  It's a race against the clock to find her before midnight on Good Friday.

There was some bad language in this one as I am finding is common in all Allende novels.  Over all a good suspenseful read.

Flowers in the Attic

Flowers in the Attic. V. C. Andrews. Pocket Books. 1979. 389 pages. (Source: purchased from Betterworldbooks.com)

First sentence: It is so appropriate to color hope yellow, like that sun we seldom saw.

Plot:  Such wonderful children. Such a beautiful mother. Such a lovely house. Such endless terror!

It wasn't that she didn't love her children. She did. But there was a fortune at stake--a fortune that would assure their later happiness if she could keep the children a secret from her dying father.

So she and her mother hid her darlings away in an unused attic.

Just for a little while.

But the brutal days swelled into agonizing years. Now Cathy, Chris, and the twins wait in their cramped and helpless world, stirred by adult dreams, adult desires, served a meager sustenance by an angry, superstitious grandmother who knows that the Devil works in dark and devious ways. Sometimes he sends children to do his work--children who--one by one--must be destroyed....

'Way upstairs there are

four secrets hidden.

Blond, beautiful, innocent

struggling to stay alive...

My thoughts:  This was a suspensful read.  It's hard to say that something like this was enjoyable as it was stressful at times.  I found myself hoping and praying that an old man would die soon so that these children could run in the sun and enjoy life.  But it wasn't to be.  These were bright children  ages from 5 to 14.  Their mother bought them everything that money could buy except their freedom.  A home to call their own.

I am looking forward to the next one as I want to see how these children fare in a life.  I can't go into much detail or it will be a huge spoiler!  If you like mystery or drama you will like this one.