


Amelia Peabody and her cohorts may have been there only on the sidelines in Elizabeth Peters' Tomb of the Golden Bird, but Sally Beauman in The Visitors (Harper/HarperCollins, July 1, 2014) tells the tale from the point of view of an eyewitness, young Lucy Payne, who has been sent to Egypt to recover from typhoid fever. Her governess, Miss Mack, accompanies her. Lucy narrates the story, which includes the events during her stay in Egypt, her return to Cambridge, vacation in Hampshire and her eventual return to the Valley of the Kings.

Lucy and Francis bond nicely, because they are both trying to understand the adult world and their place in it. Lucy was only 11 years old when she first visited Egypt, and she spends the rest of her life dreaming about her time there, and in her old age she reminisces about it. But she revealed her memories reluctantly to curiosity seekers, because there are some things about those days she would rather forget.

The King Tut exhibition is in Kansas City for the summer, and then it will move on to San Diego. I am not sure where it goes after that, but if it comes back my way I won't miss it again.


His job is made difficult by the fact that there are rules for the British and different ones for the Africans, but he settles in well and he even meets a girl who attracts him. She is Vera McIntosh, a young Scottish girl who has also come to love Africa. She came to Africa with her family and an uncle, Dr. Josiah Pennyman, who has been forced to leave Scotland because he had wandering hands that he laid too often on his female patients.
British East Africa is where the pervert doctor comes by his just desserts, as he is found with a native Kikuyu spear in his back. Everyone believes that the native medicine man is his nemesis, and Justin Tolliver is expected to wrap up the case without much more ado. But Tolliver is still idealistic enough to believe that the British law should be applied equally to everyone, and he sets out to discover the truth, with the help of a tribal lieutenant, Kwai Libazo. The first thing they discover is that the spear is actually Masai––and the list of suspects grows.
Strange Gods is the first in a new mystery series, which entices us with the beauty and peril of the wilds of Africa, and set in the colonial days that are complicated by the imposition of a foreign culture on an indigenous people.
Continuing on this world tour of summer reading is going to take me to Spain; Barcelona in particular. Last summer I was reading The Summer of Dead Toys, by Antonio Hill, which ended in a cliffhanger, and I have been eagerly waiting for the next in the series. I don't have to wait much longer. The Good Suicides (translated from the Spanish by Laura McGloughlin; Crown, June 17, 2014) will be out soon.

Hill tells the stories from various points of view and then zigzags through twists and turns that will keep your pulse pounding. I have mixed feelings, because the saga closes again with an ending that leaves the reader up in the air so that we have to wait another year for some resolutions.

Chris Bohjalian's Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands (Doubleday, July 8, 2014) takes us back to a year ago, when there was a meltdown in a power plant in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Emily Shepard was a 16-year-old almost-senior in high school the day Reactor Number One exploded. Both of her parents worked at the reactor, and both were killed. What made this disaster even worse for Emily was that the disaster might have been Emily's father's fault. She worries that he might have been drunk.
Thousands of people were forced to leave their homes, the rivers and forests were destroyed and what isn't destroyed is at least contaminated. Since it happened on a school day, all the students were bused to a safe zone, where they would wait to picked up by any remaining family members.

In order to keep her identity secret, she takes on a new persona and survives by stealing. Her solace in this terrible time is the works of Emily Dickinson, which are balm to her aching soul. Eventually she makes a few friends, but she realizes that she can't outrun her past and can't hide forever, so she needs a plan. She has to decide between suicide and survival.
This story is a bit of an emotional roller-coaster and it will make you happy that it's summer in our world––and we can use garbage bags for summer detritus and not building materials.
I have a few more good summer reads to tell you about in a few days. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy more Material Witness suggestions.
I've been drooling over THE VISITORS for some time now. SUMMER OF DEAD TOYS and GOOD SUICIDES are both in my review stack as well. No way will I get to everything I have my eye on this summer but I sure am going to try!
ReplyDeleteBecky,
ReplyDeleteIf we had all the time in the world on our hands we would still have a TBR stack because there are so many wonderful books out there. I am still looking forward to reading some of the books I wished for last summer.