Anna, Duchess of Cleves: The King's Beloved Sister by Heather R. Darsie

Anna, Duchess of Cleves: The King's Beloved Sister by Heather R. Darsie

Author Heather Darsie takes an in-depth look at the fourth wife of Henry VIII, Anne of Cleves. She examines Anne’s childhood and relationship with her family, life in the Cleves court, and the accomplishments of Anne’s siblings, particularly Wilhelm and Sibylle. Darsie delves into the political climate of the Continent and issues that would shape Cleves as well as Anne’s marriage, focusing especially on Anne’s brother-in-law, John Frederick, Elector of Saxony, and his impact on Lutheranism.

304 pages.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

In this Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Doerr writes about the years leading up to and including WWII from the very personal perspective of two children who grow into their teens during the 1930's and 1940's.  Marie-Laure, who is blind, lives with her father in Paris, but evacuates with him when the Germans invade.  Her father helps her 'see' and navigate the world by building models of their neighborhood.  She is the embodiment of good and innocence, and has a great curiosity and love for learning. The orphan boy Werner, growing up in Germany, has a great knack for mechanical things, especially radios, that eventually takes him to an elite training school for German youth.  Following these two characters as they grow and develop allows Doerr to explore themes of the role of the individual in confronting evil.  I was most struck by his descriptions of how the average German citizens became entangled, little by little, in the promises and lies of Hitler's fascism.  Doerr is a master storyteller, and an expert at putting in the details of each scene to make it superbly real.  530 pages.

The Beggar King: a Hangman's Daughter Tale by Oliver Pötzsch

This third book in the 'Hangman's Daughter' series finds Hangman Jacob Kuisl being framed for the murder of his sister and her husband. On a ruse, he is lured to Regensburg, where he finds his sister murdered and is immediately arrested. The Hangman of Regensburg uses the same tortures on him that Jacob inflicts on those arrested in his town of Schongau, in order to get him to confess.

Meantime, his headstrong daughter Magdalena and her lover, Medicus Simon Fronweiser, run away to Regensburg to live with her aunt. When they get there and find her murdered and Jacob in gaol, they set out to find out the real culprit. They are taken in by beggars, helped out by the town head raftsman, and lured into complacency by an Italian nobleman.

This is another riveting tale of 17th century Bavaria, with all the medieval skullduggery any reader could hope for!



514 pages

The Legend of Broken by Caleb Carr

This was a rather random pick from the library shelves.  While certainly imaginative, this is a rather heavy-handed and pedantic allegory about pitting our natural selves against our materialistic selves.  Still, there are some interesting characters to carry along the basic plot - a developing battle between a group of outcasts, the Bane, who have been shunned by the city/fortress society because of physical deformities and short stature, and the Tall, the perfect people who dwell in the (not so perfect underneath) city of Broken.  Even the names are preachy.  Still, there were some interesting plot twists and Carr does a good job of vividly describing the locales of the story. Good triumphs in the end.  For avid fantasy fans only.  651 pages

The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy by Peter H. Wilson

A complex and indepth work, the book covers the period of the Thirty Years War (1618-1645) as well as extensively detailing the period immediately before the war. All the factions and nations involved are extensively profiled and discussed. Wilson also goes over much of the previous scholarship of the war in an attempt to make sense of the conflict's origins and causes. Well written and thoughtful the book does tend to get bogged down by an endless array of German princlings and locations. A good working knowledge of German geography would be useful to the reader. 851 pages.