The Poisoned Pilgrim

The Poisoned Pilgrim by Oliver Potzsch

This is the latest book in the Hangman's Daughter series.

I think this is a great series of historical fiction and Potzsch ends his books with a tour guide of the town (or locale) where the book takes place.  He points out the buildings that still stand that were featured in his novel and gives you good insight into the historical events that transpired.

This book takes place in 1666 at and around the monastery at Andechs. As always, he covers what passed for medicine at the time but also gives us insight as to the advancements in science and the experiments that were being done at the time.  We also get to meet an automaton which were apparently all the rage in the more cosmopolitan areas of the era.

I highly recommend this series but start at the beginning so you get the full benefit of the character development over the course of the four books.

A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows

A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows: An Outlander Novella by Diana Gabaldon

This is a novella that is a companion to the Outlander series.  It follows An Echo of the Bone.  I am going to have a hard time waiting for the next book in this series to be published.

This book answers the question of what happened to Roger MacKenzie's parents during World War II causing him to become orphaned.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It was a great teaser of what is to come in the series as well as answering a question that has been hanging out there a bit.

Lord John and the Private Matter

Lord John and the Private Matter by Diana Gabaldon

This is Book 1 in Gabaldon's Lord John series.  This started out as a off-shoot novella alongside the Outlander series.  The novella became a novel and then it became a series in it's own right.

It isn't quite as engaging as the Outlander series but I wish that I had read this book in it's proper place with the Outlander series.  It's weird to go back in time, so to speak, and try to remember what was going on in the Outlander books at the time of this book.

I enjoyed the historical information about the LGTB community at the time and I will keep reading these books and see where they take me.

Wolf Hall

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

This is a book of historical fiction about Thomas Cromwell.

During the reign of King Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell began working for Bishop Woolsey.  After Woolsey's fall from favor and then his death, Cromwell began to work for the King.  He was a man of extremely low birth who had become educated depsite his upbringing.  He was a soldier, a baker, a book keeper, an attorney, an importer and a finder of things, people and information.  He spoke many languages and his past was a mystery.  The mystery of his life was something that Cromwell used to his advantage.  Others made assumptions and he made no effort to correct them.  Because of this, he was a much feared man.  He was able to melt into a background and be virtually invisible while he gleaned information from what he heard and especially what he saw.  Cromwell was a great reader of people and used the information from watching to his advantage and the advantage of those he worked for.

This book takes us through King Henry's battle to annul his marriage to Katherine of Arragon, his courtship of Anne Boleyn and a bit past the birth of his daughter Elizabeth.  At the end of the book, relations between Henry and Anne are strained.  She had had several miscarriages and failed to produce the male heir that she promised. We meet Jane Seymour and find that her family estate is titled Wolf Hall.  Her presence in the life of Anne Boleyn and the random meetings with Thomas Cromwell are intriguing teases.  I'm not sure that it made sense to name the book Wolf Hall though.

I really enjoyed this book.  It seems well researched with regards to the King, the Boleyns as well as Thomas Cromwell and Cardinal Woolsey.  As always, I enjoy the results of research done with regards to how people lived.  The day to day lives of people and what they ate, wore, did for work and how their houses were laid out.  This book is medium sized at 672 pages.  I felt like the author used her time wisely.  The story really didn't drag on other than the fact that an inordinately long time was spent with Anne dragging her feet and Henry wrestling with the whole religious community but that really did take a long time so it was historically accurate.

Mantel continues the saga with her next book Bring Up the Bodies.