Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence

By Nicholas Terpstra
Johns Hopkins University Press

Founded in 1554 by a group of charitable women who called themselves the Compagnia della Pietà, the Casa della Pietà, or Compassion House, was built in Florentine to shelter girls who had been orphaned or abandoned by their parents. The goal of the home was to keep children and adolescent girls from turning to (or being forced into) prostitution in the absence of familial support, and to provide them with the possibility of a dowry and marriage. Despite these good intentions, only 202 of the 526 girls and women who resided in the home survived their stay. As Nicholas Terpstra repeatedly asks in Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence, “What was killing the girls of the Casa della Pietà?”

Terpstra sets out to solve this 456-year-old mystery using the limited documentation still available about the home, as well as other documents that discuss contemporaneous Florence. Throughout the text, Terpstra explores and elaborates upon various theories about what was killing the residents of Casa della Pietà, weaving these theories within the story of the home and the conditions of Florence of the era. In telling this story, Terpstra touches on topics such as the work available for adolescent girls, birth control and abortifacients (and the abortion debate), prostitution, and religious fundamentalism. Although the book is structured as somewhat of a mystery, Terpstra’s question about the fate of the residents is only one part of what is ultimately a social history of the Casa della Pietà and Renaissance Florence.

In terms of women’s history, the book is interesting in two ways. First, it discusses the challenges and options an orphaned or abandoned girl could anticipate facing at the time, even when external support was provided. Second, as was previously mentioned, a group of women established the Casa della Pietà. This was not the norm at the time. Although Terpstra warns against overly romanticizing these women, it is somewhat difficult not to, particularly when the author outlines the differences between the way the Casa della Pietà admitted girls and the way that contemporaneous shelters did, and when he compares Casa della Pietà under the guidance of Compagnia della Pietà to the way it operated once the founding members ceased their involved. As Terpstra notes, “these women challenged more than just the sexual politics of Renaissance Florence—they challenged its political and ecclesiastical establishment.”

The book contains fascinating, and sometimes shocking, information about Terpstra’s topic. I appreciated that Terpstra does not exclusively limit himself to the subject of Casa della Pietà, but uses the mystery of what happened to the home’s residents as a way to examine related issues. Admittedly, some of these discussions were less interesting to me than others. For example, although the section that discusses the textile work done by the home’s residents and the wool and silk industry in general is necessary to have as complete an understanding of the home as possible, I did find it difficult to get through because it is a topic in which I have little interest. This is my bias, however, and I appreciated the level of detail Terpstra demonstrated in this section when he turned this focus to topics that were more in line with my interests.

Overall, despite containing a few sections that were less interesting to me, the text puts forth considerable fascinating information. Perhaps most importantly, the text both taught me about a shelter I had never before heard of, and made me want to learn more about the topic and the social climate of Renaissance Florence and its impact on women and girls.

Review by Erin Schowalter

Murder Under the Bridge: A Palestine Mystery

By Kate Raphael

Political intrigue is a great backdrop for a mystery. Look at The Manchurian Candidate, The Third Man or any of Henning Mankell’s wonderful Wallander mysteries. A murder can highlight the struggles for power, the needs of the many versus the needs of the few, and the ways people hurt each other at both the micro and macro levels. If they are written well. If they aren’t, the work feels something like Murder Under the Bridge by Kate Raphael.

Set in modern day Israel and the Occupied Territories, Murder Under the Bridge opens with the death of a young woman found in a field near the wall between the two countries. Rania, a Palestinian police officer, and Chloe, an American peace activist, work together (or in parallel) to solve the case, which winds along both sides of the wall through various political ideologies and into human trafficking and war crimes. One of the most important aspects of a good mystery is that all of the pieces have to be put on the table, and then put together. The complexity of the crime is inverse to the number of subplots.

If the victim dies in a locked room from a bee sting when they aren’t allergic to bees, confining all of the players to a big country house focuses the narrative enough to allow the reader to follow the plot twists. When it takes five pages to get from one side of the city to the other, the crime can’t have too many twists, or the reader gets lost. Murder Under the Bridge falls into the second category. An unfamiliar setting, new characters, and a complicated murder with at least fifteen named characters present too many strands for Raphael to weave together coherently. There is not even time for an ending.

I wish Raphael had focused solely on Chloe, the character she cares the most about. Her scenes are dynamic, interesting, and fleshed out. As an outsider, Chloe would be a good introduction to the setting. Not one of the other characters does anything special, exciting, or interesting; everyone starts out as a cliché and ends the same way.

The scenes with Rania are rushed and poorly drawn. When the Israeli police officer was introduced as Rania’s partner, I was hoping that the narrative would focus on them and use their similarities as way for each of them—both very bigoted characters—to evolve. Instead, the longest, most lovingly written scene is of graphic sex that is only tangentially related to the murder. The discussion of finding the dead body is only half as detailed.

Perhaps a good mystery is hidden in this book. Right now, it’s stuck under the layers of useless detail, pointless scenes, and cliché.

Review by Taylor Rhodes

Cook the Books

By Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant
Berkley Publishing Group

Cook the Books is part of a series of mystery books (Gourmet Girl Mysteries) by mother-daughter writing team Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant.

Chloe is a graduate student in her mid twenties, who lives by herself and has a passion for food. She has an incredibly gorgeous best friend named Adrianna, who is married to a goofy but honest and lovable free-spirited (broke) man named Owen. They have a delightful little bundle of joy named Patrick, who happens to melt Chloe’s heart so much that she overspends and ends up in debt because she just can’t resist buying him all the expensive toys and clothes she sets her eyes on; he’s that adorable. Then there’s Josh, her ex-boyfriend, a chef, who left a year before for a better job in Hawaii and left her behind.

Did you get all this? If you didn’t it’s okay because once you start reading the novel, this will be retold in pretty much every chapter. Do you want to know what else is constantly repeated? The word “Josh.” It comes up in every other sentence. Of course there’s more to the novel: there’s murder, there’s cooking, and there’s a villain (or many?). More importantly, at the end Josh returns to make everything alright (because he’s perfect). But don’t worry, I haven’t spoiled the end; you can guess that one by the end of the fourth chapter.

The story itself is pretty bland but its biggest sin is mainly that it’s not very relatable. Chloe is supposed to be young, bright and independent, and yet she appears to be everything but. Why am I supposed to care about this character? She has no true interests other than her godson, the lives of other cooks and her ex-boyfriend. It probably doesn’t help that the novel is written with a significant amount of dialogue, which, for the most part, is heavily contrived. For example, Chloe’s employer, a serious man in his mid-thirties has just met new mommy Adrianna and all three of them are sitting down for dinner, his treat:

“And Adrianna,“ he said to my friend, “you especially should eat a lot, since you probably have no time to eat while taking care of a tiny baby, huh?”

This was not meant to be funny, or sarcastic (or creepy) but rather to portray what a great guy Chloe’s employer is! The entire novel is written in this type of dialogue, which aside from being annoyingly predictable, becomes overly repetitive.

Cook the Books is filled with bad cliches and references. The murder that sets motion to the core of the storyline leads to Chloe’s view to the “dark” side of cooking, the cutthroat competitive world of chefs. It’s in fact the same world described by so many other chefs, except that in this case, it’s overly dramatic.

The book cover includes a review blurb promising "snappy dialogue, puzzling murder and mouthwatering menus," which I guess is what fueled my disappointment, as I did believe it. In contrast to other mystery novels that portray unlikely heroines, Cook the Books didn’t hit the mark, It has no sparkle and the heroine lacks a sense of self and definition. It was difficult to really care. It could have been light, fun reading, if only it had been half as long. If I was to recommend the book, it I would assume pre-teens might not mind it, but I don’t know how memorable it would be.

There are some recipes added at the end of the book, which only adds to my confusion as to who the target group for this book is supposed to be. The recipes are courtesy of other authors and chefs. Some are easy enough to follow and make (the Baked Tomato Nests), and some (like the Grilled Ohio Lamb Steak) are meant for the serious cooks who strives to entertain. The Baked Tomato Nests are a cute and fast idea, and in fact, the recipe jumped out at me from one of the actual chapters of the novel, so there was a nice connection there. However, overall the recipes were not very innovative, and in a way, that echoes my overall impression of the book.

To put it simply: it didn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth, it needed spice (cayenne, Habanero, or even just plain old pepper)—it was just too bland.

Review by Jessica Sánchez

Angel and Apostle

By Deborah Noyes
Unbridled Books

Deborah Noyes’s Angel and Apostle, styled as a sequel to The Scarlet Letter, is a fascinating journey and an interesting effort to flesh out the life of a child attempting to live under the shadow of shame, guilt, and community exile. Set shortly after the ostracism of Hester Prynne we see the common adage that the “sins of [in this case the mother] shall be visited upon her children” is a fatalistic axiom that can be made real and that hangs heavy over the heads of Hester and Pearl her precocious and earlier-than-normal world-weary daughter.

Even as the townsfolk lay upon Pearl, the dubious title of “the child of the temptress”, and as much as the other characters of the small New England town would have it otherwise, she appears to lead a life where the consequences of her mother’s supposed social transgression are at the margins of her world. Pearl finds work within house of the sickly mother of a small blind boy, Simon, who she has befriended, and like the child of any time period, sees enthralling mystery and adventure in the countryside. This, for me, is a significant point of the book, the disallowing of the community and previous circumstances through which Pearl, first in New England and then in the “motherland,” seeks her own path and an ultimate sense of individual freedom.

Noyes does a remarkable job of weaving rich depictions of puritanical New England society as the backdrop for the affairs of a strong woman, her bold progeny and the lives of the sordid people that orbit in challenge. Angel and Apostle is a fulfilling next chapter in the darkly romantic or perhaps bittersweet tale of Ms. Prynne and Pearl. Upon finishing every good book, your heart sinks a little at the conclusion of such a wonderful tale but Noyes can rest assured that the humbling task that she assumed in writing a professed sequel to The Scarlet Letter was a riveting success. I am sure that, as I did, Nathaniel Hawthorne would find Angel and Apostle a delightful extrapolation on a master’s work built upon by another master in deliciously page-turning form.

Review by Brandon Copeland

Forbidden Passion

By Rita Herron
Forever

Forbidden Passion is a paranormal romance centered around the relationship of Dr. Marlena Bender and Sheriff Dante Valtrez. Set in the small Southern town of Mysteria, the book begins with Marlena returning home to confront her troubled past. Twenty years before, Marlena witnessed the gruesome deaths of her mother and sister at the hands of two men in the woods. She was saved by Dante, then a local teenager.

Haunted by the events of that day, Marlena has pursued a career as a scientist, studying the genetic reasons for violent behavior. Dante, too, is haunted by that day, but for different reasons. He knows the truth about the attack on Marlena’s family: they weren’t attacked by men at all, but by a pack of demons; a pack that Dante himself used to be a part of. Ashamed of his dark past, Dante has devoted his life to protecting the citizens of Mysteria from the demonic forces that prey on them. Despite Dante’s resolve to stay away from Marlena, the two are thrown back into each other’s lives when a serial killer begins stalking Marlena, leaving her tokens from his victims.

This is the third, and I would presume final, book in Rita Herron’s Demonborn series. It’s your typical paranormal romance: the two main characters fight their mutual attraction to each other for half the book before finally succumbing to temptation. There are a lot of demon-related killings, as well as a prophecy and a high-stakes “good versus evil” showdown. Herron keeps the action coming at a pretty fast pace, so even though Forbidden Passion isn’t revolutionary, it isn’t boring either.

The book revolves mainly around the mystery/thriller aspect of the plot, throwing in bits of sexual tension here and there. This makes it a good read for those who prefer their romance novels to be driven by story instead of sex. In the end, Forbidden Passion was able to hold my interest for the duration of the book, but it wasn’t good enough for me to want to read the other books in the series.

Review by Victoria Kroeger

Secrets of Eden

By Chris Bohjalian
Shaye Areheart Books

Like Midwives and The Double Bind, Chris Bohjalian's newest suspense novel, Secrets of Eden, was (no exaggeration) nearly impossible for me to put down.

Set against the beautiful backdrop of a small town in rural Vermont is the horrific murder-suicide of a local couple. Businessman George Hayward, who has a history of abusing his wife Alice, murders her while their teenage daughter, Katie, is out at a concert, and then turns the gun on himself. Holding the family—and the town—together immediately after the tragedy is Reverend Steven Drew, who baptized Alice the day she died and suspects that she foresaw her own death.

Enter Heather Laurent, the author of a book on angels who also lost her parents in a murder-suicide. Heather tries, along with Steven, to befriend the orphan Katie, and they all try to pick up the pieces. Having his own crisis of faith after the tragedy, Steven buries himself in Heather (literally) in an attempt to escape his own grief at the loss of Alice. The twist: shortly after Steven and Heather begin their affair, Steven becomes a suspect in George's death, which police believe was not a suicide after all.

To reveal more would be a spoiler. Although there is plenty of violence and sex in this novel—including within the church congregation—Bohjalian writes about it in both realistic and tasteful ways. Each section of the book is written from a major character's point of view (including the tough-as-nails county prosecutor, Catherine Benincasa), and it's difficult not to sympathize with each of them because they're so realistically human. Bohjalian excels at writing about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

Although Heather's new age persona got on my nerves, she was one of several strong female characters that Bohjalian is never afraid to include in his novels, and I find that to be gratifying. Even Alice, who was a victim, is revealed to have had secret and brave parts of her story.

As in life, nothing in Secrets of Eden is neatly resolved or as clear-cut as it initially seems. When the book ends, you're still left wondering who deserves the label of hero or villain. For this reader, that's part of Bohjalian's genius as a writer.

Review by M.L. Madison