THE TERROR by Dan Simmons ~ a mixture of adventure, survival, and horror, this is a well crafted and suspenseful novel that grips you from cover to cover. Two British ships have been looking for the fabled Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic in the 1840's. They become trapped in the ice for three winters - two in the same desolate place, and were not able to escape in the intervening short summer. Food and fuel are running low, and there is something out there, picking off the men one or two at a time. Inspired loosely by an historical mystery, of a lost British exploratory expedition.
THE ANALECTS by Confucius is a classic Chinese philosophy textbook, which praises family loyalty, learning, and hard work. Some of the thoughts are completely foreign to Western morality (such as family loyalty being more important than turning in a criminal) but interesting all the same.
THE HOUND AND THE FALCON by Judith Tarr ~ an omnibus of three fantasy novels which make up a trilogy:
The Isle of Glass
The Golden Horn
The Hounds of God
Brother Alfred, taken in by the monks of a quiet English monastery as an orphaned baby and foundling, has come to believe that he is elven rather than human. In the sixty years since he was found, he has not aged beyond looking like a teenager. He can read other people's minds, and has a magical talent for healing. Yet, though he does nothing but good with his life, he comes to have horrible, near-suicidal doubts of his worth, as the Church teaches that his kind is souless and evil. Alf is sent forth from the monastery on an all important mission of diplomacy to Richard the Lion Heart, then is swept into a life of adventure - always, always doubting his own value. Sometimes you want to scold him for his stubbornness and his failure to see his great worth, but Tarr makes you care deeply about him and about his friends.
BLACK LOTUS by Laura Joh Rowland ~ a mystery novel set in the 1690's in Japan under the Shogun. Samurai Sano Ichiro serves the Shogun as his sosakan-sama, a sort of special prosecutor/investigator (to try to find the nearest current day American equivalent). In this novel, Sano is sent forth to investigate the nefarious events surrounding a multiple murder and arson at the grounds of the temple of the Black Lotus sect of Buddhism. Sano has his hands full, as the investigation turns extremely difficult. He is aided by his wife, daughter of a top level judge, and trained (as some true life women of the samurai cast were) in both education and weapons as a man of that class was trained. The difficult investigation, and the pressure coming down from the court to solve the case quickly, put strains on themselves, their top retainers, and their marriage.
THE PILLOW BOOK OF LADY WISTERIA by Laura Joh Rowland ~ in Japan in the year 1693, under the shoguns ~ Sano Ichiro serves the shogun as a special investigator and prosecutor. He receives the most dangerous case of his life when the shogun's cousin and heir is murdered when having a liason with a high priced courtesan named Lady Wisteria. The woman has vanished, and an over-zealous judge has condemned all of the possible witnesses to death in an effort to increase his standing with the shogun. Evidence turns up implicating Sano himself, and he must solve the case quickly and prove who committed the murder - or he, his family, and all of his retainers will be put to death.
THE ROMANOV PROPHECY by Steve Berry ~ the Russian people, fed up with government corruption and the power of the Russian Mob, has voted for a return to the Czars. An American lawyer, an expert in Russian language and history, has been chosen as one of the people to work on checking out the backgrounds of living members of the Romanov family, and to see if there is anything to keep any of them from becoming the new monarch. When digging through the top secret archives, he finds a prophecy of Rasputin, written down by the last Csarnina, Alexandra, which indicates that someday heirs of she and her husband might one day regain the Russian throne, even though the family is doomed to die within two years if nobles kill the mystic. He also finds evidence that both Lenin and Stalin were afraid that one or more of the children might have escaped the slaughter of the royal family in Ekaterinburg. It is soon obvious, as Miles Lord escapes one assassination attempt after another, that someone in power does not like these findings. Will Miles survive long enough to find the truth? Who is trying to kill him and hide that truth? How did a royal child escape the slaughter, and how have they been hidden away in the near century since? Quite a nice little suspenseful historical whodunnit.
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