Rainy Day Reads

Challenges: Around the Year in 52 Books: A mystery This books centers on the disappearance of Bernadette. Through documents and chapters written by her daughter Bee, we follow the lead-up to the disappearance and slowly start to figure out why she would leave her family.  Once upon a time Bernadette was a famous architect, but due to certain events it seems she has gone a little mad. Not enough for serious concerns perhaps, but just enough to be labelled the kind of quirky the neighborhood could do without. In my opinion Bernadette seems to think herself above the people in her social circle, and practically considers herself at war with the other mothers at the school. When Bee claims her prize for getting top grades all year she announces that she wants a trip to Antartica with her parents. They reluctantly agree and we follow the preparations for this trip. Bernadette has over the years developed some form of social anxiety and has essentially outsourced her l...

I picked this up on a whim at the library. I think I have said a few times that I don’t really like reading crime/mystery novels, so you might wonder why I would pick this up, since it is blurbed as such. It’s because I’m a sucker for historical fiction. Especially ones that involve some sort of riddle or mystery. This book isn’t really historical fiction, as it is set in present day, but it is based on one of the most persistent conspiracy theories out there; the fact that some of the Romanovs survived the execution in 1918. The theory is largely based on the fact that the bodies of the son, Alexej, and one of the daughters, often believed to be Anastasia, but there is no certain proof, were not found along with the other bodies. However these last missing bodies were found in 2007, 3 years after the publication of this book, finally laying the Romanovs and the conspiracy theory to rest.   This book is about an American lawyer, Miles Lord, who has come to Russia to ...