Shortly after our March 4, 2020 book club meeting, the Rice University campus began preparing to shut down in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The rest of the spring Women’s Club activities were canceled or postponed as a result. By April, we were emailing book suggestions for other members to read while self-isolating.  Here is the list of our recommendations, in the order they were suggested. New additions are added each month.

• The Meaning of Names by Karen Shoemaker – fiction, German farm families in midwest during WWII, 1918 Flu
• Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl – essays from New York Times opinion writer about family, nature, and growing up in the South
• The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick – fiction, a widower finally cleans out his wife’s closet a year after her death, finds a charm bracelet he didn’t give her, and pursues clues to learn more about the woman he loved for decades.

Mystery series and stand-alone novels (this was a great discussion!) Note: Agatha Awards recognize well written mysteries without explicit sex or violence.

Stand-alone mystery:

• Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen – the first known serial killer in America, a charming man who targets many young women attracted to the World’s Fair in Chicago, has some gruesome aspects of how he created the perfect killing and disposing environment
• Honor Above All by J Bard-Collins – Pinkerton detective, Chicago, 1882, lots of detail about the architecture and the new skyscrapers

Mystery series:

• Louise Penny – books set in Montreal
• Maureen Jennick, mysteries set in Canada
• Ellis Peters
• Sarah Rosette, short mysteries set in England
• Alexander McCall Smith, starting with the Sunday Philosophy Club. Nothing captures the charm of Edinburgh like novels featuring the insatiably curious philosopher and female detective Isabel Dalhousie. Whether investigating a case or a problem of philosophy, this richly developed amateur detective is always ready to pursue the answers to all of life’s questions, large and small.
• Sujeta Matthews mystery in Bombay, explores role of women in 1920s
• Alan Bradley. Read his titles in order as the heroine ages: girl chemist stumbles over dead bodies in England around their tumbledown manor, post WWII
• Margaret Maron, The Bootlegger’s Daughter is first in series set in North Carolina; her other popular series features NYC detective Sigrid Harald
• Lee Childs, Jack Reacher. intellectual crime solver, moves around the US
• MC Beaton’s Agatha Raisin and Hamish McBeth characters, both series set
  in England – read in order! Also a third series, set in Victorian England.
• Rhys Bowen, NY, Ireland, Londin settings
• Rebecca Yount
• Donna Leon, takes place in Venice, character is Brunetti
• Melinda Mullet, short and light series set in whiskey business locationa
• Robert Parker, Light and funny, Boston setting – don’t read the new ones by someone else
• Harry Kemelman, Rabbi mysteries, very cleverly written
• Dick Francis, horse racing background
• G. M. Malliet
• Aaron Elkins
• A-Z series by Sue Grafton
• Stevie James
• GK Chesterton series
• Tony Kellerman, New Mexico Navaho detective series
• Alexander McCall Smith, The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency series set in Botswana
• Linda Castillo, series about a sheriff, set in Amish country
• Peter Lovesay (anything by him!)
• William Shaw, two favorite series: one set in London in the 1960s, the other is set in the modern day and features a woman detective who solves crimes on the Kentish coast
• Kerry Greenwood, (Australia) Miss Fisher historical mystery series
• Georges Simenon (French) Inspector Maigret mystery series
• Dorothy Sayers (Great Britain) Lord Peter Wimsey; The Nine Tailors is probably her best

More ‘gory’ mystery series:

• Happy Reif
• Jo Nesbo
• Peter Robinson – Inspector Banks series
• Suzanne Brockman (Navy SEALS & FBI character series)
• Peter Robinson
• Ann Cleeves (Vera Stanhope and Shetland Island series)
• P. D. James
• Henning Mankell (Sweden)
• Elizabeth George
• Deborah Crombie
• Julia Spencer-Fleming
• Julia Keller
• Marjorie Eccles
• June Thomson
• Parker Bilal (Egypt)
• Abir Mukherjee (India)
• Karin Fossum (Norway)
• J. A. Jance (Joanna Brady series)
• R. Jonasson (Iceland)
• Sara Paretsky
• Jacqueline Winspear
• M. J. Arlidge, first in series is Eeny Meeny
• Kathy Reichs (known by some for the TV series Bones, but her books are better)

Historical Fiction favorites:

• Louis L’Amour, The Walking Drum – in 1176, a betrayal in Armorica (Brittany/Gaul) sends Kerbouchard across Europe and the Russian steppes, through Constantinople and into the Valley of the Assassins as he searches for his father who is rumored to be dead.
• Stephen Lawhead, Byzantium -set in the 12th Century (like L’Amour’s Walking Drum) – Aidan travels is selected for an important delivery to the Emperor of all Christendom, but shortly after leaving their Irish monastery, the group is attacked by Vikings. Another travel book, Aidan finds friends and enemies from northern Europe through desert mines before reaching Byzantium
• Newton Frohlich, 1492 – Christopher Columbus alters his name and religion as he seeks a sponsor from either Portugal or Spain. He’s confident he knows how to find a new route to China; lots of details about characters like the Caliph of Granada, Ferdinand and Isabella, and the Inquisition’s role leading up to Columbus’ first voyage.
• Elizabeth Camden, The Empire State Series – 1900s, New York
  • A Daring Venture: biochemist trained in Germany had her early career cut short as she fled a personal scandal; she is now keeping a low profile in New York while focusing on the science of reducing cholera by introducing chlorine in a new sanitation system that is loudly denounced and rejected by local residents and businessmen.
  • A Dangerous Legacy: telegraph operator caught up in the AP v Reuters competition helps uncover political corruption in the bid for a Nicaragua versus Panama Canal route; simultaneously, her brother is focused on developing a valve that pumps water up to the top floors of New York apartment buildings so the poorest residents no longer need carry water in buckets BUT he’s being thwarted by an uncle who claims he owns the patent.
  • A Desperate Hope: mathematical genius and early female CPA is charged with determining a fair market value as the government purchases rural homesteads and farms (how many windows, doorknobs, orchard trees?) prior to flooding the Catskills to create the reservoir required to help quench New York City’s growing thirst.
• Bernard Cornwell, the Last Kingdom/Saxon stories (800s, Uhtred the Saxon/Danish warrior) and the Grail Quest series (1300s, featuring archer Thomas Hookton). For stand-alone titles, try Stonehenge: a Novel.
• Ken Follett dives deeply into the lives of laborers and town and church leaders in a fictional crossroads town set in Marlborough, Wiltshire. The books can be read independently.
  • Pillars of the Earth (12th Century, building a cathedral)
  • World without End (about 13th century; the plague, quarantine, covering faces with a cloth!)
  • A Column of Fire (14th century)

Summer suggestions; authors and titles, any genre:

• The Recipe: A Story of Love, Loss, and the Ingredients of Greatness by Chef Charles M Carroll and John David Mann – fiction, but the reader SO wants it to be a biography or autobiography. There are just enough cooking terms to inform, not so many that you get lost in the details.
• Louisa May Alcott – we discussed Jack and Jill, a Rose in Bloom, Eight Cousins, and other books beyond Little Women.
• Hsiao Li-Hung, A Thousand Moons on a Thousand Rivers – if you liked Louisa May Alcott, explore this similarly-styled novel of family and male/female friendships, and disappointment in first love, set in Taiwan. It was an instant best-seller in China when published in 1981.
• Gene Stratton-Porter, naturalist and novelist – we discussed Freckles, Laddie, A Girl of the Limberlost, and The Keeper of the Bees.
• Orson Scott Card, Enchantment – an adult fairy tale set in and around Kiev and a college town in the U.S. where the protagonist is a professor of Slavic languages

The “Russian” reading list (many thanks to Natalia for starting it after we discussed Enchantment by Orson Scott Card)

• Yevgeny Onegin by Alexander Pushkin; 1820s romance and more; Petersburg, Moscow and country estates
• The Winter Queen or He Lover of Death by Boris Akunin; two Tsarist-era thrillers
• The Women of Lazarus by Marina Stepnova; interwoven generational tales of Soviet and post-Soviet women in the same family – scientists to ballerinas, various settings
• Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak; 1905-1945, complex plot around central figure, Yuri Zhivago, and his lovers. May be confusing to follow at first; Pasternak’s characters have three names and he changes how he refers to them by using variations on one or more of these three names even in the same chapter. Book originally banned in Russia, now part of standard 11th grade reading list there.
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy; 1870s, St. Petersburg, Italy, back to Russia, lots of trains – ill-fated romance and consequences
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn; WW II, 150 pages, Russian soldier captured by Germans, escapes, but when he makes it back to Russia is sent to a Stalinist work camp; the story was immediately popular in Russia when it came out in a 1962 magazine, Novy Mir. The new author – a math teacher in a provincial town outside of Moscow – gained international name within one week.
• Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev; 1860s Russia, 200 pages, dive into a country torn by unrest, peasants against masters, young generation against old, fathers against sons
• The Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn; 1960s Russia; semiautobiographical novel set in a Soviet cancer ward shortly after Stalin’s death. Book was banned in Russia and only printed elsewhere
• The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn; similar to investigative journalism in book form; story of Russia’s penal system and police terrorism; uses real names (or initials when necessary for protection); he interviewed or used the notes and memoirs of 227 witnesses/prisoners for this expose. After completing his manuscript, he hid parts the book in various locations to wait for the eventual death of the remaining witnesses so they would not be held accoutable. In August 1973, a Leningrad woman cracked under 120 sleepless hours of continuous questioning and revealed where she had hidden the part entrusted to her. She then committed suicide. The author rushed other notes and parts of the book to Paris for publication, first appearing to the public in December
• The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and Terror-Famine by Robert Conquest; this thoroughly researched history details Stalin’s genocide through starvation aimed at the peasants of Ukraine
• Enchantment by Orson Scott Card; a time-travel fairy tale for adults set in Kiev and the Carpathian forest of Ukraine near Poland – Baba Yaga versus a Slavic languages grad student and a local princess, also provides an excellent example of 1970s Jews in Kiev and their migration to other countries – how the grad student’s family initially fled to the U.S.
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles; 1920s Moscow, Russian count sentence to house arrest in the Metropol by a Bolshevik tribunal
• The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer; family secrets come to light; fiction set in WWII Russian refugee camp in Nazi-occupied Poland and present day
• The Huntress by Kate Quinn; WWII and afterwards includes fictional members of the Night Witches; Nina is a female Russian pilot from Siberia when she is trapped behind enemy lines and targeted by Nazi murderess known as “the Huntress,” Ian is a war correspondent and Nazi hunter seeking the Huntress after the war, 17-year old Jordan is a high school student in post-war Boston when her widowed father brings home a new/old bride. Caution: this book has a LOT of sex scenes.
• Michael Bulgakov:
  • If you decide to read only one of his books, then this one is the best: The Master and Margarita – fantastical, funny, and devastating satire of Soviet life combines two distinct yet interwoven parts, one set in contemporary Moscow, the other in ancient Jerusalem, each brimming with historical, imaginary, frightful, and wonderful characters. Written during the darkest censored days of Stalin’s reign, and finally published 25-30 years later in 1966 and 1967, it’s one of the best 20th century Russian classics.
  • A Dog’s Heart –  through surreal, often grotesque humour, Bulgakov gives an ingenious new twist to the “Frankenstein” parable, in a new translation of one of the most popular satires on the Russian Revolution and on Soviet society.Having been scalded by boiling water earlier that day, and with little chance to survive the severe winter night, a stray dog is left for dead on the streets. Lamenting his fate, he is ill-prepared for the chance arrival of a wealthy professor who befriends him and takes him home. However, it seems the professor’s motives are not entirely altruistic—an expert in medical experimentation, he sees his new charge as the potential subject for a bizarre operation, and implants glands from a dead criminal in the dog. The resulting half-man, half-beast is, as to be expected, a monstrosity, yet one that fits in remarkably well with Soviet society.
  • The Fatal Eggs – As the turbulent years following the Russian revolution of 1917 settle down into a new Soviet reality, zoologist Persikov discovers an amazing ray that drastically increases the size and reproductive rate of living organisms. At the same time, a mysterious plague wipes out all the chickens in the Soviet republics. The government expropriates the invention in order to rebuild the poultry industry, but a horrible mix-up quickly leads to a disaster that could threaten the entire world. This H. G. Wells-inspired novel by the legendary Mikhail Bulgakov is the only one of his larger works to have been published in its entirety during the author’s lifetime. A poignant work of social science fiction and a brilliant satire on the Soviet revolution. \
  • A Country Doctor’s Notebook – Part autobiography, part fiction, this is his early work. In 1916 a 25-year-old, newly qualified doctor named Mikhail Bulgakov was posted to the remote Russian countryside. He brought to his position a diploma and a complete lack of field experience. And the challenges he faced didn’t end there: he was assigned to cover a vast and sprawling territory that was as yet unvisited by modern conveniences such as the motor car, the telephone, and electric lights. Bulgakov candidly speaks of his own feelings of inadequacy, and warmly and wittily conjures episodes such as peasants applying medicine to their outer clothing rather than their skin, and finding himself charged with delivering a baby—having only read about the procedure in textbooks.

WWII and other war, soldier, spy themes:

• Neal Bascombe, The Winter Fortress – a military and scientific history of the race to build the atom bomb, which in Germany’s plan required huge quantities of heavy water, produced solely in Norway at a single plant in Vemork. The only way to thwart the Nazi plan was to sabotage the supply, requiring  telemark skiers to endure harsh winter conditions while hiding from the Gestapo manhunt (another attack had failed but tipped off the Germans). The telemark team is composed of men who can pass for native if found and they are trained in Scotland. The plan is conceived by a  Norwegian physics professor who knows the plant layout. Spies and saboteurs inside and outside the plant are also at work, and the German scientists are shown as intense researchers with families, focused on the science without considering its application. The story takes place in Norway, Germany, England, and the U.S.
• Neal Bascomb, Hunting Eichmann – less rugged in terms of physical hardships than The Winter Fortress, but equally intense and very fast-moving.
• David Howarth, We Die Alone, a WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance
• David Howarth, The Sledge Patrol, A WWII Epic of Escape, Survival, and Victory
• Marjorie Herrera Lewis, When the Men were Gone – a novel based on a true story; 1944, Brownwood, Texas, a female assistant principal does the unthinkable to keep Friday night football going for her high school players in the midst of WWII.
• Pam Jenoff, The Orphan’s Tale – set in WW II, two women with secrets that would lead to their  incarceration or death flee to a circus to escape the Nazis. One is a seasoned trapeze artist, the other is a Polish immigrant with few skills beyond cleaning and cooking. The only way the circus will accept her is if she can learn the trapeze act in six weeks for their first performance of the year. The circus also hides other workers who live in fear of being discovered by the Nazis.
• Viola Shipman, The Heirloom Garden – two families find each other in a thriving garden behind a high fence. One was devastated by loss in WWII years, the other is trying to regain its footing following the soldier’s return from Afghanistan.
• Robert Crais, Suspect – Maggie is a military dog whose handler is killed in an IED incident in Afghanistan; Scott James is an LAPD cop whose partner was killed in an ambush. Both Maggie and James are emotionally crippled with PTSD and are given one last chance: each other. If they can’t get past their fears and injuries, they will be mustered out. While they begin to develop trust in the world around them, they are also trying to find out why James and his partner were ambushed; they may not live long enough to be mustered out.
• Rodger W. Claire, Raid on the Sun – exciting account of an Israeli attempt at crippling Iraqi nuclear ambitions.

DVD Series about great literature – look for used copies of The Great Courses like these on Amazon, eBay, etc.

• Classic Novels:Meeting the Challenge of Great Literature by Arnold Weinstein.  Also available via Audiobook
• Classics of American Literature by Arnold Weinstein.
• Classics of British Literature by John Sutherland.