fencing

Ella Shane #4

A Fatal Reception is the fourth book in Kathleen Marple Kalb’s series featuring Ella Shane, an opera singer in New York City in the early 1900s, and the first with its new publisher, Level Best Books.  This is an excellent series, so I was disappointed to hear that the original publisher had dropped it and very glad when it found a new home.  Ella, a mezzo soprano “trouser diva” who sings male roles and is an expert swordswoman, is a wonderful protagonist.  She’s an orphan, the daughter of a Jewish mother and an Irish Catholic father, who grew up in the tenements of the Lower East Side, and was rescued from a life of poverty when a famous singer discovered her voice and trained her for opera.  Ella observes both her parents’ faiths, lighting candles for the Jewish Sabbath on Friday nights and going to Mass on Sundays, and she has never forgotten her origins, and helps the poor people of the tenements whenever she can. read more