Lauren Willig: Band of Sisters

This is a slightly different book for Lauren Willig, as it’s more straight up history than romance or mystery.  It’s about a group of women, Smith College alums, graduating right before WWI, who form a relief unit and head to France to help the victims of the war in the French countryside.  They set sail for Paris in the summer of 1917, with ideas of what Paris will be like wildly out of sync with wartime Paris.  One girl is planning to buy her trousseau.

The two central characters are Kate, a scholarship girl at Smith who has been working as a French tutor, and Emmie, a wealthy daughter of a politically active suffragette.  The two had been best friends at Smith – Emmie’s sweet goofiness balanced by Kate’s practicality.  Kate wears a pretty big chip on her shoulder, though, and it often gets in the way of the friendship.  When they arrive in Paris, everything is topsy turvy. read more

Serena Kent: Death in Avignon

This was a delicious slice of armchair travel – I have never personally been to Provence, but I think my new life goal might be to get there.  Serena Kent’s British heroine, Penelope Kite, has started over in Provence after a divorce and seeing her children out of the nest.  She’s rehabbed a gorgeous old stone farmhouse (I’m assuming it’s gorgeous, because, by the sound of the book, everything in Provence is gorgeous). She lives a pleasant life walking into the village for croissants, eating lots of incredible sounding meals, drinking wine that sounds just as luscious, practicing her cello, and oh yes – she has a flair for detection. read more