May Read 2019

Title: Elegy For Eddie
Author: Winspear, Jacqueline
Call Number: F
Book Description from amazon.com:
This book is about an investigation into the killing of a local man from Maisie's childhood neighborhood that leads the sleuth from her own doorstep to London's halls of power.
My Read:
Another good read of Maisie Dobbs's series.

April Read 2019/2

Title: A Lesson in Secrets
Author: Winspear, Jacqueline
Call Number: F
Book Description from amazon.com:
Private investigator Maisie Dobbs receives her first assignment from the British Secret Service in A Lesson in Secrets, the eighth book in Jacqueline Winspear’s award-winning mystery series. Sent to pose as a junior lecturer at a private college in Cambridge, she will monitor any activities “not in the interests of His Majesty’s government.” When the college’s pacifist founder is murdered, Maisie finds herself in the midst of sinister web of murder, scandal, and conspiracy, activities that point towards members of the ascendant Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei—the Nazi Party—on Britain’s shores. An instant classic, and sure to captivate long-time Maisie Dobbs fans as well as readers of Agatha Christie, Elizabeth George, and Alexander McCall Smith, A Lesson in Secrets is “a powerful and complex novel, one that will linger in memory as a testament to her talent and her humanity” (Richmond Times-Dispatch).
My Read:
Page 321--"She wondered abut happily ever after. Did it exist only in fairly tales, in stories for children? Or was there hope, really?..Was it that she did not trust happily ever after, that she was deliberately indifferent to the possibility? Or was happily ever after another one of time's secrets, waiting to be revealed on the journey? She smiled at the irony--the junior lecturer in philosophy struggling with a child's fairy-tale ending. Yes, time would give up her secrets. She just had to wait."
I think "happily ever after" is not as illusory as it sounds. It's the willing mind that would set the path on the journey. Happiness is not for pursuit; instead, it's a by-product of hardworking and determination for a better life.  

April Read 2019

Title: The Mapping of Love and Death
Author: Winspear, Jacqueline
Call Number: F
Book Description from amazon.com:

August 1914. As Michael Clifton is mapping land he has just purchased in California's beautiful Santa Ynez Valley, war is declared in Europe—and duty-bound to his father's native country, the young cartographer soon sets sail for England to serve in the British army. Three years later, he is listed as missing in action.

April 1932. After Michael's remains are unearthed in France, his parents retain London psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs, hoping she can find the unnamed nurse whose love letters were among their late son's belongings. It is a quest that leads Maisie back to her own bittersweet wartime love—and to the stunning discovery that Michael Clifton was murdered in his dugout. Suddenly an exposed web of intrigue and violence threatens to ensnare the dead soldier's family and even Maisie herself as she attempts to cope with the impending loss of her mentor and the unsettling awareness that she is once again falling in love.

My Read:

Page 62-63--"Extremes live within us all. The joy of association resides alongside the anticipation of loss. What is given will be taken, what we have is often only of value to us when it is gone."....."A map is a conduit for wonder, a tool for adventure. But it is also an instrument of power--and like all things, power has two faces."

Page 69--"When you are sitting in silence, you open the door to a deeper wisdom--the knowing of the ages. When you are walking, with the path to that wisdom already carved anew by your daily practice, you find that an idea, a thought, a notion, comes to you, and you have the solution to a problem that seemed insoluble."

Monthly Read 2019/3

Title: Among the Mad
Author: Winspear, Jacqueline
Call Number: F
Book Description from amazon.com:

It's Christmas Eve 1931. On the way to see a client, Maisie Dobbs witnesses a man commit suicide on a busy London street. The following day, the prime minister's office receives a letter threatening a massive loss of life if certain demands are not met―and the writer mentions Maisie by name. After being questioned and cleared by Detective Chief Superintendent Robert MacFarlane of Scotland Yard's elite Special Branch, she is drawn into MacFarlane's personal fiefdom as a special adviser on the case. Meanwhile, Billy Beale, Maisie's trusted assistant, is once again facing tragedy as his wife, who has never recovered from the death of their young daughter, slips further into melancholia's abyss. Soon Maisie becomes involved in a race against time to find a man who proves he has the knowledge and will to inflict death and destruction on thousands of innocent people. And before this harrowing case is over, Maisie must navigate a darkness not encountered since she was a nurse in wards filled with shell-shocked men.

In Among the Mad, Jacqueline Winspear combines a heart-stopping story with a rich evocation of a fascinating period to create her most compelling and satisfying novel yet.

My Read:

It's another good read in the Maisie Dobbs' series.

March Read 2019/2

Title: An Incomplete Revenge
Author: Winspear, Jacqueline
Call Number: F
Book Description from amazon.com:

With the country in the grip of economic malaise, and worried about her business, Maisie Dobbs is relieved to accept an apparently straightforward assignment from an old friend to investigate certain matters concerning a potential land purchase. Her inquiries take her to a picturesque village in Kent during the hop-picking season, but beneath its pastoral surface she finds evidence that something is amiss. Mysterious fires erupt in the village with alarming regularity, and a series of petty crimes suggests a darker criminal element at work. As Maisie discovers, the villagers are bitterly prejudiced against outsiders who flock to Kent at harvest time—even more troubling, they seem possessed by the legacy of a wartime Zeppelin raid. Maisie grows increasingly suspicious of a peculiar secrecy that shrouds the village, and ultimately she must draw on all her finely honed skills of detection to solve one of her most intriguing cases.

Rich with Jacqueline Winspear's trademark period detail, this installment of the bestselling series, An Incomplete Revenge, is gripping, atmospheric, and utterly enthralling.

My Read:

Another lovely read.

Page 261--"And she remembered Simon, that final day working with him, and his last words when shells began to rain down on the operating tent as they tried to save the life of another soldier:"Let's get on with it." I like the spirit of the words. 

Page 303--"with each new tune, something of the gypsy woman's life was commemorated--her vivacity in youth, her laugh, her wisdom, the fields she called home, and her wanderings along the country lanes. Then it was done, the mourning not confined to that which was dark and shadowed by loss but also rejoicing in the life that must go on." A life is taken, another will go on. It's life.

March Read 2019

Title: Maisie Dobbs
Author: Winspear, Jacqueline
Call Number: F
Book Description from amazon.com:

Maisie Dobbs got her start as a maid in an aristocratic London household when she was thirteen. Her employer, suffragette Lady Rowan Compton, soon became her patron, taking the remarkably bright youngster under her wing. Lady Rowan's friend, Maurice Blanche, often retained as an investigator by the European elite, recognized Maisie’s intuitive gifts and helped her earn admission to the prestigious Girton College in Cambridge, where Maisie planned to complete her education.
 
The outbreak of war changed everything. Maisie trained as a nurse, then left for France to serve at the Front, where she found—and lost—an important part of herself. Ten years after the Armistice, in the spring of 1929, Maisie sets out on her own as a private investigator, one who has learned that coincidences are meaningful, and truth elusive. Her very first case involves suspected infidelity but reveals something very different.
 
In the aftermath of the Great War, a former officer has founded a working farm known as The Retreat, that acts as a convalescent refuge for ex-soldiers too shattered to resume normal life. When Fate brings Maisie a second case involving The Retreat, she must finally confront the ghost that has haunted her for over a decade.

My Read:

It's truly an interesting and inspiring book. The mentoring relationship between Maurice Blanche, the mentor, and Maisie Dobbs, the mentee reminds me of those in ancient Chinese history. The Teacher discovered jewel in the Student. Together, they stroke spark and made huge impact in each other's life. Traits and character of Ms. Maisie Dobbs are intriguing and inspiring. It's especially good that it's a series featured a strong female character in a harsh period in human history. Really a good series to read. I enjoyed it very much.

February Read/2019/4

Title: Messenger of Truth
Author:  Winspear, Jacqueline
Call Number: F
Book Description from amazon.com:

London, 1931. The night before an exhibition of his artwork opens at a famed Mayfair gallery, the controversial artist Nick Bassington-Hope falls to his death. The police rule it an accident, but Nick's twin sister, Georgina, a wartime journalist and a infamous figure in her own right, isn't convinced.

When the authorities refuse to consider her theory that Nick was murdered, Georgina seeks out a fellow graduate from Girton College, Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator, for help. Nick was a veteran of World War I, and before long the case leads Maisie to the desolate beaches of Dungeness in Kent, and into the sinister underbelly of the city's art world.

In Messenger of Truth, Maisie once again uncovers the perilous legacy of the Great War in a society struggling to recollect itself. But to solve the mystery of Nick's death, Maisie will have to keep her head as the forces behind the artist's fall come out of the shadows to silence her.

Following on the bestselling Pardonable Lies, Jacqueline Winspear delivers another vivid, thrilling, and utterly unique episode in the life of Maisie Dobbs.

My Read:

Page 300--"She said nothing to Georgina about truth, about the instinct that had inspired her to seek Maisie's help. It was not the right moment to speak of the inner voice that instructs us to move in a given direction, even though we know--even though we know and might never admit to such intuition--that to continue on our path is to risk the happiness of those we hold dear."

Another good read in the series.