Author: Barbara

Avid reader/reviewer of historical romance and historical mysteries.

Death In St. Petersburg by Tasha Alexander

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Victorian Era (1837-1901)Leave a comment

Death in St. Petersburg: A Lady Emily Mystery (Lady Emily Mysteries)Death in St. Petersburg: A Lady Emily Mystery by Tasha Alexander

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Series: Lady Emily
Publication Date: 10/10/17

Okay, I admit it – I loved the book! The writing is superb and the descriptions put you right there with the participants. I love Emily and Colin – what a strong, loving, caring, and supportive couple they are! What threw me was having to constantly stop and sound out the Russian names. Normally with unusual (to me) names, I just decide what they are going to be and call them that whether it is correct or not. For some reason, I couldn’t do that with this book – maybe it was because I was loving the book and wanted to get the names correct.

Colin Hargreaves travels all over in his role as a spy in support of the crown. Lady Emily usually stays home worrying about him and entertaining herself with solving her own mysteries. However, when he is sent to St. Petersburg, Emily also gets an invitation to visit her friend in St. Petersburg. She knows Colin won’t let her go with him, so she leaves the day after him – and sends him a missive letting him know she is on her way and letting him know that she can stay with her friend while she’s there or she can stay with him – whichever he prefers. Of course, he wants her with him!

Colin spends his days and often long into the night working on his mission while Lady Emily spends her time with her friends and attending various entertainments. Then, there is the opera. Swan Lake featuring a new ballerina in the dual role. She is flawlessly beautiful and graceful beyond compare – so – finding her dead body, covered in blood, directly after the performance is really shocking. Add a fabulous stolen Faberge Egg underneath her body and you have a real mystery on your hands.

Lady Emily has been asked to investigate the death, by a friend of the victim, because they have no confidence in the state’s investigators. The suspects and motives are legion. Is it an old love, a current love or one of the many wealthy and high-ranking men who want to be her lover? Investigating in a foreign land isn’t easy, but Lady Emily solves the case, and the perpetrator may surprise you.

I like that the chapters switch between the current time (January 1900) which is told in the first person by Lady Emily and the earlier years told from Katenka’s point of view. Seeing the friendship between Katenka and Irusya Nemetseva in those earlier years is very nice. They give you a real feel for what it must have been like in ‘the state system’ in place in Russia at the time.

There are many political undercurrents in the case and any one of them could have bearing on the case. Then, add in the delightful Sebastian Capet (from earlier books) and you have a real mystery. Who stole the egg? Is that why the dancer was murdered? Was she involved in political intrigue? Was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time? You’ll just have to read the book to see.

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did!

“I requested and received this e-book at no cost to me and volunteered to read it; my review is my honest opinion and given without any influence by the author or publisher.”

 

 

Twelfth Night With The Earl by Anna Bradley

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Regency Era (1811-1820)2 Comments

Twelfth Night with the Earl (The Sutherland Sisters, #3)Twelfth Night with the Earl by Anna Bradley

Barbara’s Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Series: The Sutherland Sisters #3
Publication Date: 11/14/17

A delightfully entertaining holiday read. It is full of sweet love and redemption. While this book doesn’t feature any of the Sutherland’s, it does feature one of the characters we met in the last book, Lady Charlotte’s First Love. I liked Ethan in that book even though he was somewhat presented as a bad boy. You knew he had a good soul because of the way he stood up for Lady Charlotte. I was so glad to visit with him again in this book and learn his story.

You just have to like and smile at Ethan Fortesque, Earl of Devon, from the beginning. It is almost Christmas, he’s in his cups and he’s on his way from London to his country seat, Cleves Court in Cornwall. He’s thinking about all of the bad things that have happened in his life and especially about his wastrel father and he has this conversation with himself. “Too much . . . . earling? Earlishness . . . ? Lordshippery … .?” You can tell he has a good sense of humor.

Ethan had vowed never to set foot in Cleves Court again. He wanted to let it molder into the ground, to put it and everything in it from his mind forever. He thought his father had closed it up two years ago just before he died, but has just recently learned that it had been left it up and running. Ethan doesn’t care that it is almost Christmas – he wants it closed and closed now!

He’s tired and cold as he approaches his childhood home. He expects to find his old housekeeper and maybe one or two other servants in residence. Imagine his surprise when he arrives to a brightly lit home with carriages in front and the sound of Christmas carols wafting out to him. Well, he’ll put a stop to that right away – how dare they have a party in his house, without his permission.

Theodosia (Thea) Sheridan, has loved Ethan since they were children. She wants, above all else, to help him learn to deal with his pain and to learn that he cannot run from it. She knows that closing Cleves Court won’t quiet his demons – they’ll follow him wherever he goes if he doesn’t deal with them and make peace with them. Her challenge is to get him to stay at Cleves Court long enough to realize that and to make his peace.

You’ll meet three delightful imps in this story – Henry and George who are ten-year-old twins and Martha their six-year-old sister. They are orphans who are staying at Cleves Court while the orphanage is being repaired. These three have impishness and mischievousness fine-tuned to an art. Maybe they are just what Ethan needs to push him along the way to deal with his ghosts.

I hope you’ll give this lovely book a read. It is so much lighter and sweeter than the other two books, Lady Eleanor’s Seventh Suitor and Lady Charlotte’s First Love, in the series. It truly is a lovely holiday read.

“I requested and received this e-book at no cost to me and volunteered to read it; my review is my honest opinion and given without any influence by the author or publisher.”