The Dangerous Duke

Since Tommy is now in preschool I have been able to read more! I finished The Dangerous Duke, by Christine Wells in just under a week and a half!

Set in 1817, a Duke, Max, has only recently inherited the dukedom and had previously worked for the Home Office doing dirty work. Anything they want to keep unofficial. Whatever, he'd do it. He inherited the title of Duke only because of arson at the old Duke's... castle? Manor? House? Estate? I'm not sure of the right name. Either way, fire and people dying and now Max needs to find out who did it. The vicar knows where the suspected arsonists are and won't tell, so Max puts him in jail and seeks out the vicar's sister, Kate. She threatens to expose government secrets and claims she wrote them in her diary, she says she'll do it if her brother isn't released. Max steals the diary and kidnaps Kate.

Kate has been widowed for some years and has some pretty big self esteem issues stemming from her late husband's lack of interest and apparent disgust at her wanton passion. Kate has spent these years turning inwards, writing an imaginary lover in her diary.

Guess which diary Max stole? The government one never existed, which isn't a spoiler since you learn that in the first chapter, I believe.

Anyway, Max reads the diary and thinks Kate wants all that's in it so he tries to give it to her.

This book is very full of passion and it starts right off with it, no long slow romance here! Some books take you straight to the end with barely a kiss, not this one. I've read other books that were more or less the same way that weren't nearly as good. This one was done very well.

I also enjoyed the sub-plot between Jardine and Louise. Louise is Max's sister and Jardine is a co-worker of Max's. Jardine is even more ruthless than Max, Jardine will do things Max won't consider, or so the book tells us, we don't see Jardine doing a whole lot. Apparently they had tried to be together when Louise was younger, but Max said no, and Louise did anyway and got hurt helping Jardine with a mission. Or something. And now she tries to keep away from him but still loves him. I looked it up and there is a prequel to this book about them that I'm thinking has the backstory in full. But as yet no sequel. I would very much enjoy a sequel about them. Have Max and Kate as a subplot this time, maybe they have a baby or something. That would be a nice touch. The book is still new enough (2008) that it's still possible for there to be a sequel some day. I am going to see if the library has the prequel for sure, and maybe someday in the future if I remember I'll check if a sequel has been written.

This author has two other books that, as far as I can tell they don't have anything to do with this one. I'm willing to put them on my read list and will be keeping a look out for her books at future book sales.

A Child's War

This time I decided to go with a non-fiction book, A Child's War: World War II Through the Eyes of Children, by Kati David.

Basically the author, who herself was a child at that time, interviewed a lot of people who were also about her age and compiled their stories as a collection of shorts, each followed by a "how the war affected me" and "what I'm up to now" page.

A lot of the details were sparse, but that's understandable as these are the memories of children who were 4-10 during the war. Not 5-10 as the beginning of the book claims, as at least one of the children was 4 and I think another was about to turn 4 or had just turned 4. And these memories had been blurred by lack of knowledge at the time, age, and trauma.

It is not written as sadly as I had imagined it would be. I think, to really feel each one, you should stop after each story and contemplate it.

My edition has a hand written note in the beginning, this book had at one point been given by a grandmother to her granddaughter, and she writes that she is giving it to her granddaughter to help her understand those times, and in the hopes that she'll try to help make sure no child has to suffer in her own lifetime.

The Drifter

I chose to read The Drifter, by Susan Wiggs because Tommy starts preschool soon so I'll be able to become really engrossed in books again soon and so far Susan Wigg's books haven't been so engrossing that I would want to wait until Tommy was in school to read it. But this one was really good. In fact I would say it's my favorite so far. I could easily see this as a movie. It was predictable, but there was always a chance that what I predicted wouldn't be so. But I was right, everything I thought would happen did.

Basically, a man is accused of murder, he and the woman he's with take off. She becomes sick and needs a doctor, so he finds one. She just happens to be everything he's ever truly wanted, even if he didn't know what it was he wanted to begin with. But don't go thinking this book has cheating in it because it doesn't. The man and woman pretend they're married but all along you get the sense that he loves her like a sister, except for a few occasional moments. So stuff happens and he sticks around town longer than intended, but with a US Marshal on his tail he has no choice but to flee, but as he falls in love with the doctor he finds it increasingly hard to go.

And that's as much as I can say without revealing too much.