Best of the Best 2019 Part 1: Classics Corner

Best of the Best 2019 Part 1: Classics Corner




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: It's that time again to discuss my favorite books that I read in 2019.

This year since I read so many in my main three categories, I am composing three separate lists.

The first list is for Classics Corner, those books that were published before 1999.

10. Jazz by Toni Morrison-A book that sounds as good as it reads. A love triangle between Violet Trace a mentally ill hairdresser, Joe, her salesman husband, and Dorcas, his 18-year-old mistress is written with repetitive phrases, call and answer sections, and rhythmic flow in writing much like the music of the title. Morrison's book also features three damaged people dealing with racism, death, parental abandonment, mental illness, and infidelity in forceful sometimes violent ways.

9. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett-

If you are going to the Apocalypse take this funny book with you. An angel and demon duo decide to prevent the destruction of Earth and involve themselves in the lives of the Antichrist. There are Bikers of the Apocalypse, adorable hounds of hell, prophets who are spot on with their prophecies, and a tape deck playing the Best of Queen over and over. Plus this is all over seen by Aziraphale, an angel that runs a used book shop and Crowley, a Bentley driving demon. What's not to love?

8. Daisy Miller/Washington Square by Henry James- These two novellas feature James’s gift of prying into the female psyche and questioning the roles of women. Daisy features the title character, an American flirt shocking her fellow expatriates with her passionate romantic manner with the locals. Washington is about Catherine Sloper, a shy woman controlled by her rigid father and falling in love with a man who might be a fortune hunter. Both are strong character studies of women trapped by society's constraints and rebelling against them in the only ways that they can.

7. Matilda by Roald Dahl- The crown jewel/gold standard in Dahl's impressive literary repertoire. Matilda is every book lover's hero, a young girl who finds escape from her abusive parents and headmistress through books. When both she and Miss Honey, her favorite teacher, are threatened, Matilda uses her massive brain power to fight back in an epic and satisfactory manner.

6. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle- When people are asked to name their favorite YA novels, this Newbery Winner often comes up and deservedly so. The book is an epic fantasy in which Meg Murray, her brother, and friends including the mysterious Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Who travel through a tesseract in search of Meg’s captive father. The book is filled with fascinating worlds like the rigid conformist Cazmatoz and brilliant characters like the Happy Medium. Above all it carries a strong theme of maintaining one's individuality against conformity.

5. Fear of Flying by Erica Jong- This controversial book from the 1970’s tells a sharp biting but truthful story about a woman seeking sexual liberation. Isadora Wing, a dissatisfied writer longs to escape her unhappy marriage by having an unattached affair. The book covers her affair and her past which involves her miserable mother, her hypocritical sisters, and her unstable first marriage to give us the whole picture towards Isadora's life and the choices she makes as she searches for her independence and personal happiness.

4. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton- The best of Wharton's literary canon takes a savage look at the upperclass New York society in the late 19th and early 20th century from the people longing to get in. Lily Bart is a 29-year-old socialite running out of time to marry a wealthy man and little prospects to do anything else. The book explores how gossip, scandal, and wealth can destroy a person and leave them destitute and bereft of hope.

3. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray- The O.G. of British Literary Bad Girls is none other than Thackeray's Becky Sharp. This book explores Becky's involvement with the Sedley and Crawley families in her attempts to climb to the top of wealth and society. Becky is an intriguing character as she flirts, steals, thumbs her nose, connives, lies, and possibly murders to get her way.

2. Middlemarch by George Eliot-Eliot’s magnum opus begins where most books of the time end with marriage but gives us the unhappiness when couples are incompatible. Dorothea Brooke, an intelligent altruistic woman marries an elderly man to get what she hopes is intellectual satisfaction and a life of meaning and significance. Tertius Lydgate, an idealistic doctor committed to research and service, marries a woman of great wealth and society but who is also completely vapid and materialistic. Eliot explores in great detail the unhappiness that Dorothea and Tertius encounter in their marriages and how they compromise the ideals that they once held for themselves.

The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker-The best Classic book I read this year covers a lot of ground. Through her short stories, poems, essays, and reviews, particularly her Constant Reader book reviews for The New Yorker, Parker skewered everything and everybody. She looked at everything from unhappy marriages, the flapper lifestyle, racism, sexism, gossipy matrons, womanizing playboys, strict parents, Capitalism, Socialism, European politics, religion, literary and theater snobs, celebrity culture, mental illness, alcoholism, art and literary movements, and her fellow writers and artists with a sharp witty acid tongue. Dorothy Parker was a writer who strove for the last word and quite often got it.




Honorable Mention: Bleak House by Charles Dickens, Holes by Louis Sacher, The Complete Raffles Stories by E.W. Hornung, The World of Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, We Were The Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte, and The Great and Secret Show (The Art Trilogy) by Clive Barker

New Book Alert: Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work: Seven Spiritual Practices for a Scientific Age by Rupert Sheldrake; Self-Help Book Thrives With Good Advice and Habits

New Book Alert: Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work: Seven Spiritual Practices for A Scientific Age by Rupert Sheldrake; Self-Help Book Thrives With Good Advice and Habits

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


Spoilers: Rupert Sheldrake's previous book, Science and Spiritual Practices described seven different activities that help Readers become more spiritually centered: gratitude, meditation, connecting to nature, relating to plants, singing and chanting, rituals, and pilgrimage.

In his follow up book, Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work, Sheldrake gives us seven more practices to strengthen our bodies and minds and replenish our souls.

It is a very helpful book that suggests how these practices can be implemented to give us a more centered and spiritual life. Even if the person does not use them often, Sheldrake's words provide some form of a take away that the Reader can use in their daily lives.


These practices are:

Sports-Most people don't equate sports with spirituality but Sheldrake thinks of it as one activity that requires the person to be in the present.

Some sports began with a spiritual connection such as the Olympics, which were designed to appease the gods.

The skills athletes learn in competition and play help prepare them for life. When athletes compete, Sheldrake writes, it helps them work out their aggressions, persevere through injuries, and learn and understand game theory and rules of combat.

Besides the practical skills, there is a deeper connection when people participate in sports. Athletes are often focused and practice mindfulness so they can pay attention to their goal or the other player's actions.

Sheldrake also writes about the flow or as athletes describe, being “in the zone”, a process which requires clear goals, immediate feedback, and a good balance between perceived skills and the challenges at hand.

This flow is revealed by speed movements and by working in a group.

Even if we don't play sports, Sheldrake believes that we can practice mindfulness and flow in any activity.


Animals-Like his previous book with plants, Sheldrake suggests that we can improve our spirit by communicating with nature. This time he focuses on animals. Humans can study the way animals move and interact with each other as a means of understanding our own potential as humans.

Even as far back as the days of hunter gatherers, people domesticated animals to help hunt for food. These animals, particularly dogs, may have played an important part in evolution because as time went on, they were used for work and companionship.

With that domestication and companionship, an almost telepathic connection developed between animals and humans. This is most prominently seen among pets and their owners. Sheldrake reasons that we have such deep connections with our pets because it is deeply habitual for humans to develop these connections. Also, love binds people to their furry and feathered friends.

In return, animals provide support, unconditional love, and sometimes assistance for people with physical and mental disabilities. Animals allow humans an emotional center and a strong telepathic link.

Through animals, we learn about humility, unconditional love, healing, intuitive sensitivity, mindfulness, joy through play, and an acceptance of death.


Fasting-This is one of Sheldrake's most provocative chapters as certain serious questions towards health are raised in favor of obtaining a spiritual connection.

In many cultures, people fast for seasonal or ritual reasons. Some of the First Nation Tribes of British Columbia had rituals where girls went into seclusion and fasted for four days after their menstrual period. The Bible features characters like Moses, Elijah, and Jesus Christ fasting before they communicated with God. In some Native American tribes, shamans fasted to induce dreams and prepare for their spiritual journey.

Ritual fasts were meant to be temporary and they were usually preceded and followed by a feast. The Catholic period of Ash Wednesday precedes Easter but is followed by Carnival or Mardi Gras. Judaism has Yom Kippur and Islam has Ramadan, both ritual fasts for atonement and detachment respectively.

Fasting enters the public consciousness nowadays as a form of protest. Mahatma Gandhi went on a hunger strike in prison protesting the British occupation in India. In 1981, Bobby Sands and 9 other Republican paramilitaries went on a hunger strike that lasted from 46 to 73 days. In 1917, Suffragists in the United States went on a hunger strike in Occoquan Prison and were force fed through a tube.

Nowadays, some medical professionals suggest fasting or abstaining from certain foods for health reasons. Weight loss is one of the more obvious reasons, but sometimes fasts are recommended for detoxification by removing excess harmful chemicals from the body. It also is used to develop a better memory and activate the brain.

For obvious reasons, this chapter and the next might be the most controversial. Sheldrake addresses these issues as well.

There might be benefits to fasting and abstaining from food. However, there can be just as many long-term negative consequences if it is done irresponsibly.

People should not fast if they are still children, have health problems, are pregnant, have an eating disorder or are already limited on the amount of food that they can eat.

Fasting is only recommended on a temporary basis for example during an allotted amount of days, during a specific ritual, and/or with the monitoring and advice of a medical professional.

However, a middle ground can be made instead of fasting entirely from food. One could simply make more responsible food choices and abstain from certain foods and drinks such as excess fats and sugars as well as eating smaller portions.


Cannabis, Psychedelics, and Spiritual Openings-Consciousness altering drugs have been used in various rituals for centuries. Ancient Egyptians and Greeks drank beer and wine in ceremonies to honor the gods, such as Dionysus. Cannabis was used by the Indian sadhus, holy men. Central and South American tribes took psychedelic mushrooms, cacti, snuffs, and other plant mixtures during rituals. In the 20th century, chemical psychedelics like LSD, mescaline, and ketamine were used particularly during the psychedelic 1960’s and many continue to do so.

Many people have taken psychedelic drugs to communicate with the spiritual world. These psychedelic experiences are caused by physical and chemical changes in the brain.

Many spiritual practices such as the Sufis and Rastafarians rely on cannabis as their religious practice. Now people are more aware of cannabis's health benefits for example chemotherapy, calming anxiety and seizures, and to improve concentration. Some countries like Canada have legalized it and many of the U.S. states have as well. (However, many Americans are trying to get it legalized on a federal level.)


Psychedelic drugs affect the neurotransmitter system in the brain by altering the dopamine and serotonin receptors. Many of the drugs such as MDMA, DMT, and LSD increase senses and give a sense of euphoria to the user. Users have reported synesthesia when two or more senses act at once (hearing colors or tasting words. Some see vibrations when they hear music).

Some drugs produced happy blissful feelings while others like DIPT produced negative consequences such as distorted sounds and threatening auditory hallucinations. 

Writers like Aldous Huxley wrote of their experiences with psychedelics describing the intense creativity and visions that they produced. Some spiritual practitioners to this day recommend psychedelics to achieve a higher level of consciousness and communicate with autonomous entities like ancestors and spirit guides.


As with the previous chapter, Sheldrake acknowledges the controversies involved in taking substances and offers warnings.

Do not take these substances if they are illegal. Some might be legal in some states or areas and dependant on how they are taken. Readers are advised to check local laws before they take any potentially illegal substances.

If you have mental health problems, these drugs will only increase them.Cannabis for example has been known to induce paranoia with some users. Hallucinations caused by psychedelics can be negative and frightening to someone who has Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder or any other such disorder.

Users who are inexperienced should only take a small amount. Above all, see a medical professional or a spiritual provider before taking any drugs.

There are alternatives to achieving these states without the use of such drugs. Many imaginative and creative people report visions to find solutions to problems and receive inspiration.

Some develop those connections through prayer and meditation. Even just having an alone quiet time can be enough to increase one's ability to visualize possibilities and develop concentration.

Everyone dreams and dreams often lead to inspiration and ideas. Some people dream more vividly and interpret their dreams in a journal. People can also practice lucid dreaming, a type of dreaming where the sleeper is aware that they are dreaming so they can control the events inside the dream.


Prayer- Prayer is similar to meditation, but involves conversations with a deity, gods, goddesses, spirits, angels, faeries, saints, and ancestors. Sheldrake writes that belief is important when it comes to prayer. “It is necessary to believe that there are beings to whom prayer can be addressed and that these beings
help,” he said.

Of course, the recipients of such prayer can vary. The Abrahamic religions pray to a single male deity. In Shamanic countries, deities include animal spirits, ancestors, Mother Earth, and a Great Spirit. Hindus pray to a wide variety of deities. Buddhists do not pray to Buddha for mundane things so they communicate with gods, goddesses, and other guardian spirits. Orthodox and Catholic Christians contact saints and angels for intercessions.

Different forms of prayer include gratitude, thanksgiving, contemplative, or to ask for something such as healing, protection, success, or on behalf of others.

Many religions also use repetitive mantras like the Buddhist Aum or the Jesus Prayer. The repetitions sometimes include objects like rosaries, prayer beads, malas, misbahas, or prayer ropes.

Part of prayer involves believing that our minds are transparent to gods and spirits. Some are not concerned with whether the deities know everything but whether they know what is being prayed about and that they can hear us wherever we are.

Some studies have been conducted to ascertain whether prayer has any effect on healing. 

One in Mozambique, featured researchers studying auditory and visual thresholds on sick people before and after they were prayed over for healing. This study found significant change in behavior. However, Harvard Medical Research featured prayer for people going through coronary bypass surgery. This study showed no significant results.

Keep in mind that prayer works for those who believe in it, similar to a placebo effect. Like someone given a sugar pill and told it's a miracle drug, those who believe in prayer believe that it works alongside medicine.


Holy Days and Festivals-Holidays and Festivals are good times to gather and celebrate important milestones. Cave paintings from Ice Age Europe show potential rituals of humans honoring seasons with animals.

Even the familiar week was instituted to honor heavenly bodies and deities.
Many religious days like the Jewish Sabbath, the Christian Sunday, and the Islam Friday are filled with ritual and ceremony to honor their deities.

There are also seasonal rituals to celebrate solstices and equinoxes. Many holidays like Christmas/Yule, Imholc, Ostara/Easter, Beltane/May Day, Midsummer, Lughnasadh/Lammas, Mabon/Michelmas, and Samhain/Halloween/Day of the Dead coincide with the seasonal harvest calendar. Islam festivals are tied to the lunar calendar which begins on the new moon. Therefore, many of the holidays like Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr move around throughout the year.

The benefits of these holidays include days off from work and school, time spent with friends and family, assisting the less fortunate, and lessening loneliness and isolation. They also activate a collective memory connecting current participants with traditions and ancestors.


Cultivating Good Habits, Avoiding Bad Habits, and Being Kind-The final practice explores the idea of virtues, morality, and ethics. All practices have some form of a code of morality in which we are encouraged to be kind, helpful, and to not hurt others or oneself. 

A survey conducted by several psychiatrists and influenced by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders studied various religious, spiritual, and philosophical beliefs to find common ground. 

The six most important virtues identified across the board are: Wisdom and Knowledge, Courage, Humanity, Temperance, Justice, and Transcendence. While these virtues varied in importance and practice, the basics were the same around the world.

There are conflicts between morality and altruism, Sheldrake writes. “Top down starting from society as a whole and bottom up, starting from the individual person,” he writes. 

Philosophers and thinkers have argued for centuries whether the whole human society is primary or individual acts are primary and whether large changes are needed or the smallest actions can make the biggest difference. However, both are needed to make a real difference. 

Individuals make society and society influences the individuals. Sheldrake explains various examples where no matter how individualistic we think we are, we are still a part of society. In fact some of the worst punishments are to be completely cut off from society such as being ostracized or out in solitary confinement.

Many of the vices such as the Islam eight vices of deficiency and excess, the Christian seven deadly sins, and the difficulties concerning addiction reflect the aspects of living a selfish life which involves harming others. Ultimately, these vices lead to harming oneself.

That social need influences laws of morality and ethics. We make these to show kindness and acceptance towards others and do not harm others. 

Many followings offer basic care towards others, such as the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them unto you.”) the Wiccan Rede (“If it harms none, do what thou wilt.”), or the Buddhist Eightfold Path (which includes Right Intention and Right Action.) All of these are meant to show kindness in the world.

Rupert Sheldrake's book is good to follow no matter what spiritual, religious, or philosophical path that you are in. Any Reader can find some advice that they can use to change their lives for the better.

Weekly Reader: Circe by Madeleine Miller; Homer's Odyssey Femme Fatale Gets Modern Makeover

Weekly Reader: Circe by Madeleine Miller; Homer's Odyssey Femme Fatale Gets Modern Makeover

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


Spoilers: There are many colorful female characters in Greek Mythology: Athena Goddess of Wisdom, Aphrodite Goddess of Love and Beauty, Artemis Goddess of Moon and the Hunt, Hera Goddess of Marriage and Zeus’s eternally jealous wife, The Muses Goddesses of the Arts, Atalanta the fastest mortal woman and the lone female of Jason and the Argonauts, Medea the beguiling witch that helped Jason get the golden fleece, Helen the “face that launched a thousand ships” and inspired the Trojan War, Cassandra who was given the gift of prophecy but was never to be believed, and many many others.

One of the most interesting is Circe, one of the fascinating female characters found in Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey. During his twenty year voyage home, Odysseus and his men become stranded on Aeaea the island of Circe, the beautiful beguiling witch. With a wave of her wand, Circe turns Odysseus's men into pigs but Odysseus remains pig free and forces her to change them back. She restores his men with the proviso that Odysseus remain and become her lover. After one year, Odysseus and his crew leave Aeaea and head to the sea for more adventures.

Madeleine Miller's novel, Circe tells the story of the seductive sorceress making her more than a byword for glamorous treachery. In Miller's capable hands, Circe becomes a fully formed three-dimensional woman of deep thought and feeling.

One way that Miller develops Circe's character is to insert her into myths in which she was absent. Since the Greek deities family ties are large, that is an easy thing to do. In fact, Circe's book becomes a veritable Who's Who Among The Greek Pantheon.

Circe is the fourth child of Helios, the Titan God of the Sun and Perse, the Naiad guardian of streams and fountains. Because of her yellow eyes and thin screechy voice, Circe is often bullied by her family particularly her older siblings, Pasiphae and Perses. She states that there wasn't a name for what she is, so everyone derides her as strange, ugly, and stupid. Circe is the outsider in her family.


Of course her families are marginalized as well. As Titans, they were the gods that Zeus defeated to win his position as the king of the Olympians. With the Titans considered outcasts, it's unfortunately natural that Circe's family would take their frustrations out on the family member who is stranger than the rest: Circe.

Because of Circe's outsider status within her family, she feels an affinity for others who are equally marginalized. She delivers nectar to an imprisoned Prometheus and bonds with Aeetes, her younger brother who is even more derided than she is.

When she falls in love with Glaucos, a sailor, Circe discovers her hidden power. The ill and injured Glaucos longs to be a god so despite family objection, Circe is able to use flowers created from the spilled blood of Kronos, the defeated Titan, to transform the man of her dreams into the god of his.

Unfortunately, Glaucos’s godification gives him a swelled head and he dumps Circe for Scylla, a doting nymph/fan girl. Using her brand new abilities, a jealous Circe transforms Scylla into a hideous sea monster. Scylla retreats to a strait across from the Charybdis whirlpool which both are traps for unwary sea travelers. (There is a reason why the Greek version of getting caught between a rock and a hard place is called “getting caught between Scylla and Charybdis.”)


After this incident, Circe reveals her abilities to her family and is exiled to Aeaea. It is apparent that Helios exiled her not because of concern for what she did to Glaucos and Scylla. He could care less about them. He is intimidated by his daughter having a power that he doesn't understand or know about. Once she is exiled, Circe learns for the first time that there is a name for what she is: pharmakis, witch.


Circe is a character of great emotion and intellect. Her emotions such as her jealousy towards Scylla causes her to do things that she later regrets. However, she has the intelligence to study sorcery and herbalism and use her abilities to turn others into their true selves. While getting exiled may seem like torture, for her it gives her a chance to be independent and explore her personal power. The exile actually makes her more powerful than if she stayed with the Titans.


While on the island, Circe has a very active love life. First, she gets involved with Hermes, the Trickster/Messenger God. When their relationship ends badly, they become sworn enemies.

Another lover is Daedalus, the architect and inventor. The two's mixture of art and invention, science and sorcery compliment each other. She is moved by the widowed Daedalus's devotion to his son, Icarus and is left desolate when the boy dies after flying too close to the sun and his remorseful father succumbs to grief shortly thereafter.

These relationships show Circe as someone who is receptive to the idea of love but is not ready to surrender the independence that she has fought for. In her exile, she has grown to love her studies of magic and how it provides with her own strength, power, and significance.


Circe also gets involved in the affairs of her siblings and watches as her sister, Pasiphae and brother, Aeetes become drunk with power. They use everyone even their children to get and remain on top. Circe watches as Pasiphae, Queen of Crete and wife of King Minos, gives birth to the Minotaur and explains the circumstances to the creature's conception. (“I f$#@-d a bull!”, Pasiphae declares plainly.)

The Minotaur is sentenced to the Labyrinth where he is neglected by everyone except his half-sister, Ariadne who later also rejects him to side with her lover, Theseus. Pasiphae uses the Minotaur as a killing machine. He is her means to gain control over gods and mortals, including her husband.

Aeetes also uses his daughter, Medea in a ruthless power grab. As King of Colchis, he is the holder of the Golden Fleece and is as cruel and neglectful of his daughter, Medea, as their father, Helios was to him and Circe. It's not a surprise that Medea would leave that toxic environment to join her lover, Jason. However, the younger witch, Medea is blind to her paramour’s flaws as they hide out on Aunt Circe's island (figuring fellow witch Circe would understand.). However, Circe recognizes Jason's vanity and how he dismissed Medea and realizes that he does not truly love the girl. Circe sees Medea will be miserable with him. Of course the myths of Jason and the Argonauts and the play, Medea prove her right when Jason dumps her to marry a princess leaving her to kill their children rather than letting them be exiled or sold to slavery.


Circe contrasts with her siblings because her power is internal. She doesn't seek out the trappings of wealth and privilege that Aeetes and Pasiphae have. She has her powers and her island and she is pleased with that. Unlike them, she is not in fear of an avenging enemy, a thieving hero, or a disloyal spouse. Circe is her own person.

Of course the emotional crux is provided during Circe's fatal meeting with Odysseus. Right before he arrives, Circe practices on a fleet of sailors, some which intend to rape her, by turning them into pigs. As for what happened to them, let's just say that Circe develops a fondness for ham of the sea.


Odysseus and Circe go through their typical meeting and dalliance, but Odysseus is hardly the hero of Homer's epic story. This is Circe's tale and Odysseus is much more sinister than is usually portrayed. When he tells of his adventures, it's clear that he loves the sound of his own voice. There is also a ruthlessness and deception in his manner which suggests instability and that he enjoyed killing and mind games far more than he admitted.

The book offers the theory that Odysseus isn't exactly in a hurry to go home and his 20 year exile might be more by choice than by the ruling of the gods.


This potential instability in Odysseus's character is confirmed when he returns to his home of Ithaca. When Odysseus's wife, Penelope and son, Telemachus visit Aeaea after Odysseus's death, they reveal how rocky his return was.

Since he spent so much time away, Odysseus was often restless and neglectful of his kingdom. He had PTSD from his voyages and often attacked his family in a frenzied state. He spent more time looking out at the sea in longing.

Instead of hero, Miller's writing subverts Odysseus's character and turns him into maladjusted sociopath.


Telemachus and Penelope aren't the only ones that Odysseus screws over. Before he leaves Aeaea, Odysseus gets Circe pregnant. She gives birth to a son, Telegonus and strives to protect him from the wrath of the gods particularly an irate Athena who was Odysseus's protector.

Circe builds a magical barrier around Aeaea to keep anyone from coming in but it also keeps anyone from going out.

Circe's protection does not sit well with Telegonus. His and Circe's relationship is strained because he longs for adventure and travel, things that his mother denies. While Circe is worried about her son, there is also an underlying desperation as if Circe wants to hold onto Telegonus because she feels the need for someone to love and respect her.

However, the more Circe tries to keep Telegonus near her, the more he pushes away. Circe then has to confront Telegonus, Odysseus's family, and her own past sins in some heady magical confrontations that require all of her abilities and strength.

Madeleine Miller wrote Circe as a very complex character, one of great feeling, longing, regret, and passion. She saw more femme than fatale, more soul than seductress, and more of an independent woman of great strength and power than the beautiful deadly witch of Homer.

New Book Alert: A Prison in the Sun: A Fuerteventura Mystery (Canary Islands Mysteries Book 3) by Isobel Blackthorn; Journey of Mystery and Self-Discovery Lead To Dark Story of Imprisonment During Franco's Spain

New Book Alert: A Prison in the Sun: A Fuerteventura Mystery ( Canary Islands Mysteries Book 3) by Isobel Blackthorn; Journey of Mystery and Self-Discovery Lead To Dark Story of Imprisonment During Franco's Spain

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: It's always interesting when mysteries are set during the protagonist's vacation especially at a beautiful island resort. It's as though things would normally be peaceful and sleepy in this island. By contrast, a violent murder or robbery is conveniently waiting for the amateur detective du jour to show up on the scene to solve it.

In reality, the odds of such a thing happening are slim but make for exciting reading especially when the vacation spot shares a dark history that is waiting to be explored and shared by our vacationing hero. If the protagonist learns something about themselves, as well as the location's past and solving the mystery, then it's so much the better.

In Isobel Blackthorn's latest mystery, A Prison in the Sun, we get two such interesting stories in the beautiful setting of the Canary Islands. The first story is about Trevor Moore, a ghostwriter who is incredibly miserable. His marriage ended when his wife left him for another woman. He is estranged from his children. He is also in a rut in his career. He is tired of writing blog entries, reviews, and books and getting no credit for them especially when one of his clients is nominated for a literary award for a book that he wrote. His best friend/colleague basically strong arms him to travel to Tefla, Fuerteventura, and write an original work.


Trevor hopes that he can get away from his problems and achieve literary success on his own right. What he gets instead are a few mysteries and a chance to dissect his own love life and sexual identity.


Trevor goes exploring through his new locale and sees an abandoned windmill and a hostel. “The village has a terrible history,” says Luis, a local physical trainer. But he won't elaborate.

Doing some online and in-person research Trevor learns that the hostel was used as a prison/labor camp for gay men during Franco’s presidency.

The history of the hostel is horrible, yet interesting but Trevor is not convinced that he is the writer for it. Shouldn't such a dark local history be told by a local author or at least one who has a passing acquaintance with the Spanish language, Trevor asks. Not to mention an author that's gay? Which Trevor insists that he is not even though he lusts after Luis’s toned handsome body and remembers experimenting with a male classmate in school.


While he suffers from writer's block and tries to ignore his confused sexuality, Trevor goes for a long walk on the beach and finds a backpack filled with several items including fifty thousand euros in rolled up bills and more importantly for Trevor, a manuscript. Not only that, but news reports state that a body washed up onshore. No points in guessing whether the body and rucksack are related.


Besides Trevor's story, we receive another interesting story, the one in the manuscript. That of José Ramos. José is a man living in Franco's Spain who tells of his estrangement from his family because of his sexuality and imprisonment for staring too long at another man. José is arrested, found guilty, disgraced, and sent to Tefla's labor camp.

At Tefla, José is forced to do hard manual labor with several other prisoners. He writes about them, particularly Manuel, a former prostitute turned lover to José.

As with many books which involve a historical and modern story, José and Trevor's stories converge commenting on one another as the modern Trevor learns from the historical José.

The mystery is mostly slight as Trevor continuously makes several errors such as trusting the wrong people and blurting out the wrong things at the most inopportune time. He is constantly on the run from drug dealers and gangsters that he envisions want the money in the rucksack. He also isn't particularly honest himself. He considers keeping the money even after he encounters the dead man's next of kin.

However, where the mystery is not as compelling, it's the change in Trevor's character that is the strongest aspect to this book.

Trevor starts out as a sad sack of a man given to cynical barbs out of his life, work, and current situation. When one of his clients wants him to write a tone-deaf and racially insensitive book about an indigenous Australian man, he sighs with relief that no matter how bad the book is, at least his name won't appear on the title page. “Being a ghost has some advantages,” Trevor says.

Trevor is the archetypal middle-aged man going through a mid-life crisis. He spends most of the book bemoaning his failed marriage, flaccid appearance, and dead-end job. It takes this trip to make him look at his life differently and seek to improve it. He signs up for a gym membership and works to develop his body. While he debates whether or not he is gay, he opens his mind up to the possibility accepting his erotic fantasies and romantic thoughts towards men, particularly Luis and his former schoolmate.

When he peers at José's story, Trevor shows real creative talent by translating and editing the manuscript. When he reads the opening of José telling his story to a bird, Trevor reinserts the bird in a few key moments understanding José's need to tell his story to someone, anyone, and uses the bird as a metaphor for José's wanting to fly free from a bigoted world.


Most importantly, Trevor learns to accept himself. When he reads about José and the other men, he learns about the consequences that they had to suffer for their sexuality. They faced imprisonment and torture. After their release, they were unemployed, isolated, and fell into alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution, and depression. They were declared pariahs in Franco's Spain which held rigid beliefs about what men should be and they did not include sleeping with other men. However, José did not deny who he was considering his love for other men to be as natural as any other love.


Trevor learns how to live with himself and his own desires. If José and the others can be honest with themselves while surrounded by imprisonment, ostracism, and possible death then so can he.

While Trevor continues making plenty of mistakes concerning the rucksack, he considers working on José's story to be his own atonement and legacy.

Ironically, reading and working on about José's life and imprisonment, gives Trevor the chance to free himself from his emotional prison.

New Book Alert: Gumshoe Blues (The Peter Ord Yarns) by Paul D. Brazill; Hard-boiled Detective Genre Gets Millennial Face Lift

New Book Alert: Gumshoe Blues (The Peter Ord Yarns) by Paul D. Brazill; The Hard Boiled Detective Genre Gets a Millennial Facelift

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: If you are a fan of mysteries, chances are you have come across the hard-boiled detective subgenre. Started in the 1920’s, these stories were popularized by such periodicals like The Black Mask and the Policeman's Gazette and were written by the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain. The stories usually involved a cynical tough-talking private detective solving a murder or missing persons case surrounded by the dark milieu of dangerous mobsters, corrupt politicians, sinister sociopaths, police forces who are useless or on the take, seductive sirens, and supposed pillars of society with particularly dark secrets. It's a dark world that the detective finds himself in and by the end of the investigation, his cynicism is clearly justified.



Since those days, many authors switched around, parodied, paid tribute to, and updated the genre with different levels of success. A recent variation of the genre is the Peter Order Yarns by Paul D. Brazill. Brazill transports the genre to England where he not only pays tribute to the hard boiled detectives but updates the genre to give it a postmodern Millennial sensibility making the hard edges even harder, the cynical detective even more self-aware, and filling it with pop culture references and technology to amuse modern Readers.


In his anthology, Gumshoe Blues, Brazill writes four stories that pits Ord, a former teacher turned private investigator, against Seatown, England's not-so-finest citizens as he tries to find some semblance of justice in his part of the world.


What makes this book is Ord himself. He has a sarcastic wit that will make the Reader smirk if not chuckle. In his first person point of view, Ord makes comments like “Some twat, somewhere, was playing a U2 song, over and over again, and all was far from quiet on friggin’ New Years Day.” Later he derisively refers to the members of U2 as “Bonzo, The Ledge, and their musically illiterate pals.”

He derides everyone and everything around him with the same detached cynicism mocking Seatown (“a fading one-whore town”),
his clients (Jack Martin a nightclub owner is described as “Despite his Newcastle accent, his nicotine-stained and brandy-brimmed voice still sounded more than a little like the tiger from Disney's The Jungle Book cartoon”) ,
the local characters (one man, Tuc, was so dumb that he received his nickname because “he tattooed a dotted line and the word 'Cut’ on his neck while looking in the mirror.”),
his ex-wife (Ord says he was married for fourteen years but he “don't (sic) remember breaking two friggin’ mirrors.”),
himself (“Jack Martin was hiring me because I was a sex-starved loser. The sort of bloke, in fact, that any resourceful, gold-digging stripper that recognized that I was ripe for the fleecing. Flattery will get you everywhere.”)
and everyone else he encounters. (While at a club promoting Super ‘70s night, Ord observes: “most of the clientele were knocking on seventy, too, which is why it earned its reputation as grab-a-granny night.”)

There is a hard edge to Ord's humor and the more the stories continue, his sarcasm seems more desperate. He is surrounded by a vengeful ex-wife and childhood friends who are unemployed and have no choice but to take on lives of crime.

This is a world where crime families such as the nefarious Ferry Family and Ronnie and Roger Kruger, the latter duo are obvious parodies of the real-life Kray Twins, rule the area.

In Seatown, alcoholism and drug addiction run rampant and married couples beat each other more than bed each other.

In a town that appears to be claustrophobically cut off from the rest of the world and the residents are often left to their own violent, hopeless, lawless devices, Ord's sarcasm becomes a defense mechanism. It's his means of retaining some sense and detachment from the hard edged world around him.

A striking detail about these stories is the realism behind the life of a private detective. In most fictional accounts, the detective may start with a theft or a missing person’s case but they always develop into a murder that puts the detective on the run from mobsters, career criminals, stalkers and what have you. Expect beautiful women (or handsome men depending on the detective's gender and sexuality), threats, breaking and entering, and car chases a-plenty. The detective almost always figures out whodunnit usually during a tense and potentially violent confrontation with the murderer in question.

The short stories in this collection show what life is really like for a private detective, i.e. that murder is rarely the case.

In the title story, the longest story in the set, “Gumshoe Blues”, Ord is hired to infiltrate nightclubs to learn which of the exotic dancers is having an affair with her clients. This assignment ends prematurely when he himself sleeps with one of the dancers. Ord is then hired to look for his ex wife's fiancée's father as well as to tutor and spy on the daughter of Jack Martin, a very wealthy and dangerously tempered client. He is also solicited to find a cheating spouse, a witness to a public indecency charge, and to ghostwrite Martin's memoirs.

The story, “Mr. Kiss and Tell” Ord moonlights as a store detective/shopping center Santa while he is hired to find a missing wife who disappeared after a domestic disturbance encounter.

In “Who Killed Skippy?” Ord is hired to mind the black (or is that white?) sheep of the criminal Ferry Family, Craig, an autodidact, who has a penchant for booze and senior citizen women. Craig then hires him to bury a kangaroo, one of several exotic animals that Craig was supposed to transport to a rich eccentric. However, the kangaroo was shot by a mysterious biker.

“The Lady and The Gimp” the final story features Ord hired to find his client's mother to resolve an inheritance dispute.

Most of the stories involve missing persons or catching or spying on wayward spouses or family members. Even when the case veers towards murder like the last two stories, there is a lack of suspense as the killers are easy to figure out by Ord and the Reader.

There are no exciting passages of car chases or thrilling escape attempts from the villain's lair. In fact, most of Ord's detective work involves interviewing locals and mere observation.

There are very few dramatic confrontations with the suspects and most of Ord's discoveries can be attributed to knocking on the right door or sheer dumb luck. Instead of his forebears who get beaten up and live to fight another day, when Ord gets hit usually because of his own foolishness or big mouth, it really hurts and he's out for the count for days.

While this may make this anthology sound boring, the truth is, it's rather refreshing to read. So many accounts glamorize the world of the private detective and make it appear to be more dangerous and sexier than it really is. What most books, movies, and shows don't reveal are the dull days that involve paperwork, cases that require minimal suspense, and trailing leads that don't go anywhere. There isn't a murderer behind every door and sometimes the solutions are either very easy to discover or are never resolved.

The Peter Ord Yarns give a realism to the life of a private detective that counters the glamor seen in other sources. In fact, Knighton’s book is so self-aware of that image that Ord mocks it. When Ord reveals that he began his career as a private investigator he “didn't harbor any romantic illusions that the profession would bear much of a resemblance to the lives of Marlowe and Spade, (he) had at least a smattering of hope that there might be a little silver screen glamor to the job. Over the years, the hope and (he) have barely been on nodding terms.”

Gumshoe Blues is a clever addition to the hard boiled detective genre by commenting and mocking it. It is also a tribute and a hard, cynical, sarcastic, sometimes love letter to the genre.

New Book Alert: Chance (Sydney Jones Series Book 2) by Carolyn M. Bowen; Suspenseful Plot Needs Better Writing

New Book Alert: Chance (The Sydney Jones Series Book 2) by Carolyn M. Bowman; An Exciting Plot Needs Better Writing

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


Spoilers: Carolyn M. Bowen’s Sydney Jones Mystery Thriller novel, Chance has the earmarks of being a good thriller. It has a suspenseful plot that veers into some personal drama for the protagonists. But it needs a tighter structure and better writing for it to be a truly great work.


Attorney, Sydney and her lover Secret Agent lover, Walker are about to settle down into a real relationship when stuff happens. Walker's ex-girlfriend turns up dead and his employers send him into hiding.

Left alone without any means to contact her boyfriend, Sydney discovers that she is pregnant right when she is given a particularly dangerous assignment. She decides to take on a case representing the American mistress of a member of the Chinese mafia. Of course this case puts her right on the mafia's target list and Walker has to deal with his own dangerous situation while hiding in the Caribbean.

Chance is your standard thriller and mystery plot with plenty of tense and suspenseful moments. There are car chases a plenty and enough dead bodies to fill a house party at the local cemetery. There are many chapters where Sydney and Walker are being followed by scary dudes. In one particularly tense moment, Sydney's son and housekeeper are stalked by someone after Sydney causing her to question her career and ability as a mother.

The main characters are well written. Sydney is a particularly admirable protagonist. She is always willing to help people and even though she has to face single motherhood, she compartmentalizes her life to commit herself to her job and to caring for her son.

Walker is also a great character. He is more cautious than Sydney, but he is still dedicated to his job. He also sincerely regrets his circumstances. He misses Sydney and wants to be part of hers and their son's lives, even though he is on the run. He is also something of a knight in shining armor protecting others like a young woman with whom he develops an emotional attachment.

Bowman also writes the supporting characters are a mix. The antagonists are your usual grab bag of mobsters, double agents, stalkers, and assassins mostly one-dimensional and interchangeable.

However, one supporting character that stands out is Nancy-Lynn, the aforementioned mistress. In most books, she would be a manipulative gold-digger/Trophy Wife. In this one, she is a sweet naive girl who realizes that she is in over her head and needs assistance to get out. The moments where Sydney helps Nancy-Lynn gain a new career and independence are genuinely heartfelt and touching.

However, the book has some serious drawbacks. It takes place over a large span of time almost two or three years, judging by the age of Sydney's and Walker's child. With some books a large passage of time is fine, but with a suspense novel it needs to be shorter and tighter. Characters discussing the same case for years might be true to life but stretches credibility in literature.

It doesn't help that the characters don't develop with what would be expected in such a long time. They are well-written but they are the same people in the same situation year after year. Surely, such a long time in passing requires a bit more depth.


The other problem is with Bowmen's writing style. It is almost all description and summary. The book has minimal dialogue. Instead it delves into summarizing events as though the book were an extended outline of ideas that Bowman had rather than an actual book. After awhile it gets repetitive to read paragraphs like

“His contact Euquerio meaning 'surehanded’ went straight to the point. Yes, the former agent was killed when learning about sources causing the medical illnesses at the embassy. His informant was the mistress was one of the top-ranking military commanders. She was found with him and taken to an unknown location for questioning. He wasn't sure what happened afterwards, but hadn't seen her in the bars she frequented. He suggested not looking for her, for if alive and found, she'd attract the government for him.”

The writing goes on like this. The phrase “show, don't tell” definitely comes to mind.


There is a lot with this book that could be salvageable: lots of suspense and some interesting protagonists. But the writing needs to improve before Carolyn M. Bowen and Sydney Jones can receive a second chance.

Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: The Boleyn Inheritance (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. X) by Philippa Gregory; One of the Best Books in the Series Covers Least Known of Henry VIII's Wives

Weekly Reader Philippa Gregory Edition: The Boleyn Inheritance (The Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series Vol. X) by Philippa Gregory; One of the Best Books in the Series Covers Least Known of Henry VIII's Wives

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Of the six wives of King Henry VIII, probably the least known are Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard.

Henry VIII first encountered Anne of Cleves when he observed her portrait by Hans Holbein. Liking the look of her, he proposed from a distance. No sooner than they were wed, than Henry derided her as “fat” and called her “the Flanders Mare.” They were married less than six months when Henry divorced her citing a previous betrothal between her and the Duke of Lorraine which declared her not free to wed. She agreed to the divorce and accepted the title as “The King's Sister.”

Katherine Howard, was sixteen and Anne of Cleves’ lady in waiting when the fiftyish Henry set his eyes on her. They were wed after Henry's divorce but their marriage lasted over a year. She was arrested with her lover, Thomas Culpepper and beheaded.

Told at face value, many would think of Anne of Cleves as ugly and Katherine Howard as stupid. But in her usual gift for writing, Gregory gives these two wives a lot of depth and character making them some of the best protagonists and this one of the best books in the Plantagenet and Tudor Court Series.

In many of the novels in the series, Gregory plays with the narratives. For example, The Virgin’s Lover and The Other Queen use male viewpoints. The Queen's Fool's narrator is a fictional character. With the Other Boleyn Girl, Gregory did the insurmountable task of making Anne Boleyn alternately detestable and fascinating. With, the Boleyn Inheritance, Gregory juggles three narratives of three different women all with their own agendas to be a part of King Henry's court no matter how dangerous it may be.

Anne longs to be free from her oppressive family particularly her mentally ill father, cold mother, and abusive brother. Her family are strict Protestants and they believe that Anne's marriage to Henry will not only ally England with Germany but permanently bring England into the Protestant religion. (Henry waffled his religious persuasion with his wives from Catholic with Katherine, to Protestant with Anne, back to Catholic sort of with Jane.)

However, Anne's brother may claim religion, but his actions suggest otherwise. He is physically and mentally abusive towards Anne and implied to be sexually as well since he constantly orders Anne to cover up to hide her body from men's lustful eyes including his own. Anne's family order her to wear plain tightly constrained gowns and covered hoods, that look frumpy and dowdy and cause her to be derided by the people around her.

However, once Anne sees her adopted home country of England and the freedom that women have as compared to her rigid upbringing, Anne does not want to return to Cleves and her family's cruelty. She looks forward to the independence that she hopes to get as Queen.

Kitty Howard also wants to fulfill family obligations and obtain romance and excitement. Kitty is cheerful, romantic, beautiful, and not entirely bright. She has been trained and educated to be a lady in waiting for the queen and can't wait to fill that role. Her Uncle Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk eyes her appreciatively and wants her to fulfill the family interests. If she catches the king's roving eye so much the better.

Kitty enjoys the attention that is bestowed upon her as a lady in waiting and then as Queen. She constantly itemizes and counts all of her material items no matter how high or low her status is. She also has qualms about marrying a man who is abusive, sickly, perverted, who three of his previous wives died, and is old enough to be her grandfather. She likes the material possessions, but not the man that she is married to and recklessly engages in her affair with Thomas Culpepper.

The third narrator is Jane Parker Boleyn, Viscontess of Rochford widow of George Boleyn and sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn and Mary Boleyn Cary Stafford. As Uncle Thomas describes her, Jane's name is a byword for lust, greed, and betrayal. She turned evidence on her husband and sister-in-law accusing them of incest and adultery resulting in their executions. Uncle Thomas recruits her to be Anne and then Kitty's lady in waiting and his palace insider.

Jane is a particularly one-dimensional villain without the fascination of Anne Boleyn or multi layers of many of the War of the Roses antagonists. Instead, she keeps justifying her earlier actions. She was trying to save her husband. She didn't think they were going to kill them. What else could she do? etc.

Jane never takes personal responsibility in her betrayal and has selective memory about those days insisting that she, George, and Anne were the best of friends laughing, hanging out together, and were the centers of the court. Jane insists that she was passionately in love with George who would have loved her in return if not for his jealous and conniving sister.

She chooses not to remember that in the Other Boleyn Girl, George spent a great deal of time trying to get away from her, had a male lover, and confided in his sisters about his unhappy marriage and their plans to seduce Henry. Jane instead was known to the Boleyn Siblings as a pest who was constantly listening through keyholes and stealing correspondences.

Not just Jane, but Thomas Howard has emerged as the true villain. He knows what to dangle in front of people and how to use them. He guarantees freedom for Anne, pretty things for Kitty, and an advantageous second marriage for Jane to get them to do whatever he wants. He is completely malicious and hateful and unfortunately like many villains, he gets no comeuppance. He abandons others to save his skin so he can live another day. (Unfortunately, he lived well into Mary Tudor's reign and remains a key player in the next two books.)

However while Jane and Thomas are detestable with few qualities that their predecessors had, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard more than make up for it by being outstanding. There are many chapters that show this but two passages in particular show the difference between the two in personality and in status.

The first passage happens right after Anne's arrival in England. She and her ladies in waiting, including Jane and Kitty, attend a bear baiting when a tall elderly stranger walks in and begins flirting with Anne. Anne is disgusted and bids him to leave. When he doesn't get the hint, he attempts to kiss her and Anne spits in his face. Kitty however recognizes King Henry from his arrival, stands, and says politely that she is a stranger and would this kind and handsome stranger show her around the kingdom.

This scene characterizes many of the traits that contribute to Anne's descent and Kitty's ascent. Anne was brought up very strictly and was not subjected to palace life. She would not be aware of such things as masquerades and courtly play.
Kitty's family was a central player in palace life so she has known all along that King Henry disguises himself and is pleased when people pretend not to recognize him.
This also shows Anne as willing and wanting to please the king up to a point. She is willing to argue and fight if she feels compromised.
Kitty is also given a chance to show that she is more than she seems as well. While she is still dizzy and frivolous, she has a sharp cunning side that is willing to play the game.

The other reason that this scene is important is that it foreshadows Henry's dislike for Wife #4 and favor towards Wife #5. By insulting and spitting at him, Anne's honest and forthright demeanor shows Henry as he really is: a foolish old man trying to win the favor of girls in their teens and early twenties. Anne is someone who doesn't act like a fawning courtier or tells him what he wants to hear. She is someone to tell him the truth. She is almost the voice of the people. For someone who had been spoiled, coddled, and surrounded by sycophants, yes men, mistresses, and an already revolving door of wives, the truth is the last thing Henry wants to hear. He would rather say that something is wrong with the wife than with him. Hence his mocking of her appearance and the impediment that he conveniently uses to discredit her.

Kitty however is from the family of fawning courtiers and sycophants. She knows what to say and how to say it. She knows that an older man likes flattery and wants to feel young. Put Kitty and Henry in modern day and they would definitely have a Trophy Wife/Sugar Daddy relationship. Kitty is the wild oat that an older man like Henry wants to sow and her family and she are just avaricious enough to let him have her.

The second passage shows a reversal of roles between Kitty and Anne. After Anne and Henry have divorced and Henry and Kitty have married, Anne makes an appearance at his Christmas party. Gone is the confused shy German girl with the frumpy clothing. Instead, she is dressed in a Renaissance-era gown and French hood. Where she was once mocked for her weight, instead she is seen as having strength and substance. While Kitty has the king's hand, she no longer wants it. Instead she retreats to the arms of her lover, Culpepper.

This moment reveals how much the women have changed over the book and what they consider as success. Anne has gained her independence. Because of the impediment that caused her divorce, Henry declared that she cannot remarry which is fine with her. She has thrived in England. She has her own estate and staff. She bonded with Henry's three children from his previous marriages particularly Prince Edward and has the love of the people. She has become the free beloved woman that she always wanted to be.

Kitty however has also revealed her true nature as well. It is difficult to truly hate her. She is a sweet, cheerful, frivolous, mental lightweight put in a situation in which she was unsuited. She spends all her days wearing gowns and jewelry, playing with her dogs and cats, laughing with her younger ladies in waiting, and being romanced by Culpepper. She is an eternal child who all along was much too immature and thoughtless to be the queen and in some ways she knows it too. She just doesn't articulate it. Instead she retreats into her vain desires and giggling girlfriends.

When she falls in love with Culpepper, it is almost Kitty's own declaration of independence to take a lover of her own. Ironically, this is where she gains some substance wondering if the king can have as many lovers as she wants, why does the queen have to hide her own feelings. She appeals to her own desire for romance and affection that Culpepper provides as well as the material goods Henry provides.

Of course, Uncle Thomas and Jane are there to manipulate Kitty and Culpepper’s affair so she can hopefully produce the spare to go with Prince Edward, the heir. Jane arranges Kitty and Culpepper to meet in private so they can have their liaisons.

Uncle Thomas knows that if they succeed, the Howards have a lock on the Tudor family. If Kitty fails, she is the type who is foolish enough to hang herself. He is not surprised when she gets caught and does what he does best: looks out for #1.

Jane, Kitty, and Anne handle the fallout of Kitty's arrest in their own ways. Jane is also arrested for arranging Kitty and Culpepper's affair.She feigns madness, to avoid execution. Though throughout the book, her stalkerish obsessive thoughts for George and her psychotic love and hatred for Anne Boleyn reveal that she was probably insane all along. She is surrounded by her guilty conscience and has run out of excuses to justify it.

Kitty however gains the grace and dignity that had been buried under the romantic schoolgirl frivolity. No matter what she did whether it was entering a room or addressing a dignitary, she practiced until she got it right. Resigned to her sentence, she does the only thing that she can do. She asks for a block in her cell so she can practice lowering her head upon it in front of the executioner. She wants to leave the world calm, graceful, and composed: traits that she never had in life.

Anne however emerges the ultimate victor. In an epilogue set after Henry's death, she is glad to have outlived him and most of the other wives. (Indeed she lived to see Queen Mary's coronation.) In her home and life that she has grown to love, Anne of Cleves has one of the best lines in the entire series: “I will own a cat and not fear being called a witch.” She has earned what most women long for: freedom.

The Boleyn Inheritance not only looks at Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard, but it makes them stand out as some of the best protagonists in the entire series. Philippa Gregory turned Henry VIII’s forgotten wives into women worth remembering.