Reason for Reading: I loved Fingersmith; The Night Watch is currently on the shortlist for the 2006 Booker Prize.
Synopsis: Four restless Londoners, three women and a young man, deal with war-torn life in the 1940s, struggling to find happiness and love in a time when their normal problems are compounded by bombings and deaths.
Reason for Reading: It was on the Booker Prize Shortlist for 2005.
Synopsis: 18-year-old Willie Dunne has settled nicely into his young life - he’s got family he’s close to, he has a wonderful sweetheart, Gretta, who he’s hoping to start a life with together shortly, and while things in 1914 Ireland may not be that great, they’re certainly tolerable. In fact, Willie decides to enlist in the army for several months of training and fighting in order to prove himself a man, especially to his father, a policeman - a career path Willie is frustratingly too short to pursue. But the war doesn’t end, and Willie is destined to fight a long, cruel battle as he struggles to return home again.
Reason for Reading: Continuing on the big mystery kick I seem to be on lately.
Synopsis: It’s 1930, and Maisie Dobbs is working as a private investigator when a strange case falls into her lap. Sir Cecil Lawton vowed to his dying wife that he would attempt to find their son, a man that all reason indicates died over a decade earlier in the Great War; however, some shady psychics were willing to give Mrs. Lawton hope that he was still alive. Normally, Maisie wouldn’t agree to such a dubious case, but she requires Sir Lawton’s help as a lawyer in defending a poor thirteen-year-old girl accused of murder. Maisie must face her own demons with a visit to France, the place she served as a nurse during the war, but for cases that are supposed to involve nothing more than ghosts, there seems to be a solid enough presence out there that’s trying to kill her…
Reason for Reading: I initially noticed this one at a used bookstore, but wasn’t really intrigued by the war setting. After I saw the movie, though, which I really liked, I changed my mind.
Synopsis: America’s civil war has divided a nation in thought and on a personal level. The story is told in the alternating viewpoints of Ada, a delicate belle left to fend for herself on a farm, and Inman, a wounded soldier that doesn’t care about the cause anymore and just wants to return home. In the book, we see the struggle for survival, both in finding a way to live and finding a reason to want to live.
Reason for Reading: A group read for one of my Yahoo groups.
Synopsis: A lonely horticulturist volunteers to aid England’s war efforts of 1941 by moving to the country and leading a small group of girls in a potato-growing venture. While there, Gwen explores the possibilities of love with a poetry-reciting soldier, the lives of the young girls she is put in charge of, and a lost garden. Clearing away the tangle of weeds, Gwen is driven to interpret the story the garden and its creator have left behind.