Into the Closets - a coming of age mystery!

Greetings, commies!
If you want to take a break from the depressing news, consider picking up this entertaining and insightful coming of age mystery Into the Closets set in the archive rooms of the Buckingham Palace. 

Synopsis:

A former Buckingham Palace employee recounts her time working at Buckingham Palace, through the eyes of her fictional character Aurelia Macintosh. With anecdotal observations of what really goes on at Britain's most famous residence, this novel, while a tale of fiction, draws an entertaining and enlightening portrait of life at the Palace the public rarely sees.

Aurelia goes to work for the Royal Collection, cataloguing the contents of several famous palaces. Her colleagues are a mixed lot of aristocrats, almost normal English people and foreigners. Security is a big issue in the palaces and when things start to disappear, they are all suspects.

The famous Holbein watercolour is stolen and Aurelia and her boyfriend Nick are asked to try to help finding the thief. But before they find any helpful clues they discover that Aurelia's workmates are not all what they seem, and their sexual preferences as well as their inherited problems can lead them into trouble. Above all the invaluable works of art in the palaces have to be protected from evil forces.

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My thoughts

To a recent art history grad, cataloguing artwork at the Buckingham Palace might sound like a dream job. Well, Aurelia Macintosh, the protagonist of the novel doesn't seem to think so. If you have read/watched "The Devil Wears Prada", you'll understand the predicament. A bright, serious young woman, who is apparently overqualified for the job, views it as a stepping stone. If anything, it's a flashy resume filler. A candid and open, someone socially awkward individual, Aurelia learns to navigate the world of her colleagues, learn to read between the lines and interpret subtle sneers. Her observation and analytical skills will come in handy when several pieces from the collection go missing. 

I have already read this author's historical novels set in Norway and Germany during WWII. This novel is semi-autobiographical, set in the 1990s. It's important to be mindful of the setting, because the world was different back then in terms of available technology, forensic tools as well as morals and sensibilities. It doesn't sound like a long time ago, but we're talking quarter of a century difference. The author does a good job keeping you in that period. You don't easily forget that the novel is set before the internet was at everyone's fingertips. LGBT individuals were more likely to hide their orientation from the world. Coming out could mean alienation from your family and unemployment. So many liberties and privileges that we take for granted in 2020 were still out of reach to many. 

The reader should be ready for many political discussions and references to the Parliament and the royal family. The title itself "Into the Closets" is such a loaded and intriguing title that evoke so many potential conflicts. I would not classify this novel as a straight up mystery. It's a coming of age story more than anything. A wide-eyed, sometimes overreaching Aurelia undergoes an emotional maturation process. 

We All Fall Down - a pandemic anthology

Greetings, commies!
If you are sick and tired of reading about COVID19 in the news, switch gears and read about a different pandemic that was a lot deadlier than the one we are facing now. We All Fall Down is an anthology of stories revolving around the plague epidemic in Europe, featuring some of the most eloquent indie voices in historical fiction. You may recognize some of these names!

Synopsis

Plague has no favorites.

In this anthology, USA Today, international bestselling, and award-winning authors imagine a world where anyone—rich, poor, young, old—might be well in the morning and dead by sundown.

Readers will follow in the footsteps of those who fought to rebuild shattered lives as the plague left desolation in its wake.

* An Irish woman tends her dying father while the Normans threaten her life and property—

* A Hispano-Muslim doctor fights the authorities to stem the spread of the deadly pestilence at great personal cost—

* A Tuscan street hawker and a fresco painter watch citizens perish all around them even as they paint a better future—

* A Spanish noblewoman lives at the mercy of a jealous queen after plague kills the king—

* The Black Death leaves an uncertain legacy to Dante's son—

* In Venice, the artist Titian agonizes over a death in obscurity—

* A Scottish thief loses everything to plague and repents in the hope of preventing more losses—

* Two teenagers from 2020 time-travel to plague-stricken London and are forever changed—

* And when death rules in Ottoman-occupied Greece, a Turk decides his own fate. 

Nine tales bound together by humanity's fortitude in the face of despair: a powerful collection of stories for our own time.

My thoughts
I am surprised that more reviewers did not mention the fact that the release of this anthology coincided with the corona pandemic. Perhaps, the Black Death is the last thing people want to read about. Toilet paper hoarders will probably feel a little ashamed. Even the title of the anthology is "We All Fall Down", taken from an English folk song, the message of the anthology is about rising up. I am already familiar with most of the contributors to the anthology, having followed their other works in various historical fiction groups. This anthology serves a dual purpose. In addition to giving you a collection of delectably literary yet readable stories about a particular tragic even in European history, it gives you a sample of each author's writing. If you haven't read their novel length works, maybe the short stories in this anthology will whet your appetite. This is what a pandemic looked like before globalization and social media, before diagnostic and curative advancements. That should put things in perspective. 

The Road to Montfaucon - a novel about the fire at Notre-Dame de Paris

Hello commies!

We are approaching the 1 year anniversary of the bizarre fire at Notre-Dame de Paris, one of the high profile Catholic landmarks. In light of my personal attachment to that cathedral, I wrote a mystical thriller The Road to Montfaucon. It weaves in the realities of modern urban life and fragments of Victor Hugo's celebrated novel. Special thanks to Jenna Meuer, the beautiful cover model who embodied the 21st century Esmeralda.

Synopsis
Modern Paris. The fire at Notre-Dame has unleashed an eerie force and awakened the ghosts of Victor Hugo's novel. Dr. Molendino, a jaded psychologist with a penchant for the occult, finds himself ejected from the clinical community for publishing controversial articles on the subject of past lives. To his colleagues he is a heretic, who compromises the prestige of the clinic.

After losing his job he immerses himself in private practice and research. Among his patients is Thomas Dimanche, a young journalist who suffers from dysmorphophobia and despite being handsome, considers himself hideous, avoiding human contact. Thomas makes a living by hosting a radio show called Parisian Toll, a criminal review, where he often features one of the city's most gruesome crimes -- the murder of an indie performer Annaïs Guybertot. The teenage girl was found strangled in the basement of an underground nightclub aptly called Montfaucon.

With help from an experimental drug, the doctor and his patient dive into a hallucinatory world where a deformed bell ringer and his arrogant master rival for the heart of a gypsy dancer.

Will they stop in time, or will they repeat the fate of Hugo's characters?