audiobook

Conclave

Filed Under: Books Read

Conclave

Conclave by Robert Harris, Roy McMillan
Published by Audiobooks on September 22nd 2016
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

The Pope is dead.
Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election.
They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals.
Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.

Many years ago, my brother and I saw a play called Hadrian the Seventh, which was based on a book by the same name. The gist of the story is that two members of the Roman Catholic church visit a pathetic Englishman whom failed at becoming a priest; they make him a priest and take him back to the Vatican where he is elected Pope. Instead of having control over this rather pathetic fellow, he goes on to have his way with the Roman Catholic church. So any time I read a book about the Vatican I always think of Hadrian the Seventh.

Robert Harris has taken another tack, which has been written about before but Harris does such an excellent job that you really won’t mind. Using current day politics of growing place the third world, race and ethics Harris takes us through the election of a Pope. As we all know the Roman Catholic church is going faster in the third world than it is in the “old world”, so as the Vatican prepares to pick its newest Pope there are a lot of unknowns. It appears that the former Pope did somethings that no one was aware of until after his death.

A good read, but not something I see happening.

Promise Falls Trilogy

Filed Under: Books Read

Promise Falls Trilogy

Broken Promise by Linwood Barclay
Published by Recorded Books on July 28th 2015
Series: Promise Falls #1
Format: audiobook
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

From the New York Times--bestselling author comes the first novel in an explosive trilogy about the disturbing secrets of a quiet small town.
After his wife's death and the collapse of his newspaper, David Harwood has no choice but to uproot his nine-year-old son and move back into his childhood home in Promise Falls, New York. David believes his life is in free fall, and he can't find a way to stop his descent.
Then he comes across a family secret of epic proportions. A year after a devastating miscarriage, David's cousin Marla has continued to struggle. But when David's mother asks him to check on her, he's horrified to discover that she's been secretly raising a child who is not her own--a baby she claims was a gift from an "angel" left on her porch.
When the baby's real mother is found murdered, David can't help wanting to piece together what happened--even if it means proving his own cousin's guilt. But as he uncovers each piece of evidence, David realizes that Marla's mysterious child is just the tip of the iceberg.
Other strange things are happening. Animals are found ritually slaughtered. An ominous abandoned Ferris wheel seems to stand as a warning that something dark has infected Promise Falls. And someone has decided that the entire town must pay for the sins of its past . . . in blood.

I have seen good reviews for Linwood Barclay’s books so I decided to give them a try. I chose the Promise Falls Trilogy for starters. The third book Twenty-Three is not available to me yet. No matter…
The first book Broken Promise started a little slow for me, but it did pick up. The story-line is very good and well plotted. The characters were interesting and I enjoyed that we were getting the story from different perspectives. At the end of Barclay’s wrapped up the story very nicely leaving a few dangling story lines for the next book in the trilogy.


Far From True was even better, the plot tighten up and Barclay made better use of his characters in this book. The twists and turns were better. At the end of the book Barclay has done it again wrapped up some of the dangling story lines but one and that is hopefully what the last book, Twenty-Three will do when it is released November 1 of this year.

I am looking forward to it…

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

Filed Under: Books Read

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith
Published by Macmillan Audio on April 5th 2016
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

A masterful new story charts the circuitous course of the sole surviving work of a female Dutch painter.

This is what we long for: the profound pleasure of being swept into vivid new worlds, worlds peopled by characters so intriguing and real that we can't shake them, even long after the reading's done. In his earlier, award-winning novels, Dominic Smith demonstrated a gift for coaxing the past to life. Now, in The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, he deftly bridges the historical and the contemporary, tracking a collision course between a rare landscape by a female Dutch painter of the golden age, an inheritor of the work in 1950s Manhattan, and a celebrated art historian who painted a forgery of it in her youth. In 1631, Sara de Vos is admitted as a master painter to the Guild of St. Luke's in Holland, the first woman to be so recognized. Three hundred years later, only one work attributed to de Vos is known to remain—a haunting winter scene, At the Edge of a Wood, which hangs over the bed of a wealthy descendant of the original owner. An Australian grad student, Ellie Shipley, struggling to stay afloat in New York, agrees to paint a forgery of the landscape, a decision that will haunt her. Because now, half a century later, she's curating an exhibit of female Dutch painters, and both versions threaten to arrive. As the three threads intersect, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos mesmerizes while it grapples with the demands of the artistic life, showing how the deceits of the past can forge the present.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I picked up this book, I thought that maybe Sara de Vos was a real person, now I know she is a composite of Dutch women painters from the 1600’s – silly me! This was an absolutely charming story, rather bittersweet.

Dominic Smith has with a mixture of history and deft storytelling woven the lives of three people into a wonderful story of love, loss and redemption. I enjoyed Edoardo Ballerini reading of this book, I felt he was perfect.