Reviews

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The Age of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone by Mariel Gabriel is a lush portrait of the burgeoning world of modern art, especially in Paris, in the early 20th century.  If you love Paris, if you love…

The entry below is being cross-posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Compliments of Hamilton and Sargent: A Story of Mystery and Tragedy on the Gilded Age Frontier by Maura Jane Farrelly is a perfect book for someone who revels in the process of researching a story, over and above being swept…

The entry below is being cross-posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. After the Last Border by Jessica Goudreau should be required reading for people who fear or loathe strangers coming to the United States to avoid persecution, war and chaos in their home countries.  The author tells of two such women, weaving…

The entry below is being cross-posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The Mountains Sing , a first novel by Vietnamese poet and author Nguyen Phan Que Mai, is a saga about the Tran family, against the backdrop of 20th century Vietnamese history, is told from two perspectives. First is that of grandmother Dieu Lan,…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah by Charles King is a delicious mix of history and music, against the backdrop of 18th century England.  George Frideric Handel had grown up in Halle, Germany, worked…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall is one of the most captivating works of fiction I’ve read in a long time. (I thank my reliable source Beth G. for the recommendation.)  Set in rural England, this is a story of…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Lost and Found: Coming of Age in the Washington Press Corps by Ellen Hume captures the idealism of a young reporter, from her early days as a cub in California, moving to the L.A. Times and its Washington Bureau, and…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The Known World by Edward P. Jones , published in 2003, is a richly woven saga set in antebellum South between 1840 and 1860. The central focus is the Townsend family headed by Augustus and Mildred, who are freed former…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Kingmaker by Sonia Purnell, author of A Woman of No Importance, is another display of the author’s mastery of biography. In this scrupulously researched and documented chronicle, her subject is Pamela Churchill Harriman, a too-often-dismissed woman of consequence. A woman of power…