You know those people you’ve read or heard about? The ones whose stories fascinate–either because of the glamour or sadness or power or whatever it was that made them famous? Are you like me and always wondering who’s behind the facade?  (Are you wishing I’d stop asking questions?)  I love finding out more, getting some of the backstory, so to speak, and one of my favorite ways to do that is through historical fiction.

THE AVIATOR’S WIFE by Melanie Benjamin tells the fascinating story of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and peels away much of what we thought we knew and fills it in beautifully with who she really was.

Here, In Melanie’s own words, is her story behind the book:

What was I thinking, writing a novel about Anne Morrow Lindbergh?

That is a question I asked myself every time I sat down to work on The Aviator’s Wife.

For Anne Morrow Lindbergh guarded her privacy fiercely and, at times, I felt she was eluding me just to make that point! My other heroines—Alice Liddell in Alice I Have Been and Lavinia Warren Stratton in The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb—gave up their secrets easily, almost eagerly. Anne, however, did not.

But that was what attracted me to her story in the first place—because of how elusive Anne remains to this day. She is known in fragments but never completely. Some are aware of her child’s horrific kidnapping and murder. Others remember her chiefly as the shy, pretty bride of the most heroic man of his time. Many women revere her as an early feminist writer.

But few know her entire story, including her major accomplishments as an aviator in her own right, her grit and determination, her inner strength. Always she seems willing to stand in the tall shadow of her husband, Charles Lindbergh. And it was her marriage that fascinated and obsessed me; this marriage between two extraordinary and very different individuals under the relentless glare of the spotlight. This operatic life they led, through dizzying heights of accomplishment and celebrity to the devastating lows of what Anne always saw as the price they paid for flying too close to the sun.

It seemed to me, as I studied her, standing always slightly behind her husband, that there was a sly smile, a gleam in her eyes that she was always suppressing; a secret strength hidden from the world and even, at times, herself. This was the Anne Morrow Lindbergh whose story I wanted to tell. It’s time for Anne to step out from behind her husband’s shadow once and for all and be the heroine in her own epic story.

This compelling, powerful novel will give you an understanding of and appreciation for the real Anne Morrow Lindbergh–and she is so much more than you’ve ever thought.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on this gorgeous book and I knew immediately that it would be my January pick!  Cathy Marie Buchanan pulls you into the world of these girls in Belle Epoque Paris and you don’t want to leave them.

“1878 Paris. Following their father’s sudden death, the van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Without his wages, and with the small amount their laundress mother earns disappearing into the absinthe bottle, eviction from their lodgings seems imminent. With few options for work, Marie is dispatched to the Paris Opéra, where for a scant seventeen francs a week, she will be trained to enter the famous ballet. Her older sister, Antoinette, finds work as an extra in a stage adaptation of Émile Zola’s naturalist masterpiece L’Assommoir.

Marie throws herself into dance and is soon modeling in the studio of Edgar Degas, where her image will forever be immortalized as Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. There she meets a wealthy male patron of the ballet, but might the assistance he offers come with strings attached? Meanwhile Antoinette, derailed by her love for the dangerous Émile Abadie, must choose between honest labor and the more profitable avenues open to a young woman of the Parisian demimonde. 

Set at a moment of profound artistic, cultural, and societal change, The Painted Girls is a tale of two remarkable sisters rendered uniquely vulnerable to the darker impulses of ‘civilized society.’ In the end, each will come to realize that her salvation, if not survival, lies with the other.”

Buchanan’s characters are so real, so human, so tender that you’ll want to hold them close and help them find their way and her prose will bring you right into the ballet, Degas’ studio and both the beautiful and the gritty Paris of the late nineteenth century.

THE PAINTED GIRLS is out this week–be the first to pick it up because people will be talking about it!

I know we usually talk novels here with a few non-fiction books thrown in, but I have to step off my well trod track to tell you to RUN don’t walk to get THE SMITTEN KITCHEN cookbook for anyone you know who loves to cook. Or eat.  It’s written by Deb Perelman who writes the charming blog by the same name.  I feel like I know her from her chatty commentary and I want to be her friend.

This is written for people with real lives (translation–not Martha Stewart) who love good food, want to eat well (translation–not tons of processed food but also not totally opposed to yummy things like, say, butter).  I first heard about this book on Facebook when a friend mentioned it.  I promptly went to the blog and then immediately ordered one for my sister for Christmas (Shhh, don’t tell her) and one for myself.  When it arrived, I made myself a cup of tea, started paging through it, and immediately tossed out the dinner menus I had planned for the week (yeah, I’m that woman.  I plan out my menus at least a few days in advance.  But, lest you think I’m uber-organized, I can never find my keys.).

The first thing I made was a lovely, comfort-foody Butternut Squash and Caramelized Onion Galette.  OMG.  It was amazing the next night too.  Next week I’ll be making the Cranberry Crumb Bars with Mulling Spices (doesn’t that just sound like Christmas?) and the Sweet and Sour Brisket for the night my parents arrive.  Christmas morning will likely include the Cinnamon Toast French Toast casserole (that I can put together the night before) and I can’t wait for New Year’s Day when I’ll be serving New York Breakfast Casserole.

These are just a teaser to the delights that reside inside this book.  So, buy it for yourself or buy ot for someoen who you hope will cook for you.  Whatever you do–just BUY THIS BOOK.  And maybe an apron.

Since it’s the holidays, what are some of your favorite holiday food memories?

I generally like surprises. Always have (well except for when my kids were teenagers and it was the middle of the night. Not so much then.). And I sometimes feel that I’ve reached the age of not getting many, of feeling like, meh, whatever, surprises happen to younger folks and that’s okay. But I still like them.  So you can imagine how tickled I was to recently get to read and review two books that were full of all the right kinds of surprises.

Starting with–both were told from a male’s point-of-view.  And it made me realize how rarely it is that I find that.  And how utterly refreshing it was.

First up was Juliette Fay’s THE SHORTEST WAY HOME.  I loved the voice, the characters, the honesty with which Sean, the main character, faced his past, his demons, and who he wanted to be.  Sean finds himself somewhere entirely unexpected which leads him to consider all sorts of surprising directions his life could take.  It’s sweet and funny and I wanted to curl up in his world.

“Sean has spent twenty years in Third World war zones and natural disaster areas, fully embracing what he’d always felt was his life’s mission. But when burnout sets in, Sean is reluctantly drawn home to Belham, Massachusetts. There, he discovers that his steely aunt, overly dramatic sister, and quirky nephew are having a little natural disaster of their own. When he reconnects with a woman from his past, Sean has to wonder if the bonds of love and loyalty might just rewrite his destiny.”

The second book was even more surprising to me–again, in all good ways.  Danny Wallace’s CHARLOTTE STREET is edgy, quirky, laugh-out-loud funny and full of sweetness, too.  It opens with some familiar situations–feeling stuck in your own life, seeing (via Facebook) that the one who got away is not only not stuck but having her best! day! ever! . . . and not always handling such things with grace.

“Jason Priestley (no, not that Jason Priestley) is in a rut. He gave up his teaching job to write snarky reviews of cheap restaurants for the free newspaper you take but don’t read. He lives above a video-game store, between a Polish newsstand and that place that everyone thinks is a brothel but isn’t. His most recent Facebook status is “Jason Priestley is . . . eating soup.” Jason’s beginning to think he needs a change.

So he uncharacteristically moves to help a girl on the street who’s struggling with an armload of packages, and she smiles an incredible smile at him before her cab pulls away. What for a fleeting moment felt like a beginning is cruelly cut short—until Jason realizes that he’s been left holding a disposable camera. And suddenly, with prodding and an almost certainly disastrous offer of assistance from his socially inept best friend Dev, a coincidence-based, half-joking idea—What if he could track this girl down based on the photos in her camera?—morphs into a full-fledged quest to find the woman of Jason’s dreams.”

Both of these books explore the what-ifs that, if we’re lucky, sometimes determine the course of our lives and all the ways that surprising choices can lead us to unexpected people and love and a satisfaction we never dreamed of, but looking back, seemed almost inevitable.

You can’t lose with Sean or Jason . . . and that’s something you can expect!

I don’t know about you, but there’s something about the cooler fall weather that makes me want to drink tea, make soup in my crock pot and spend quality time on my sofa under a quilt with a good book or three or four. It’s even more perfect when I have a new book in a historical suspense series I flat out adore. Tasha Alexander’s Lady Emily (and the uber dashing Colin Hargreaves!) is the perfect companion.

The seventh book in the series, DEATH IN A FLOATING CITY will be out next week, (if you want to start at the beginning, I’ll list them all at the end)–so you can order it now.  I was extra excited about this book since it’s set in Venice and just a year ago I was there.  I love love love Venice and know I’ll get to revisit it all over again through Tasha’s story.

“Years ago, Emily’s childhood nemesis, Emma Callum, scandalized polite society when she eloped to Venice with an Italian count. But now her father-in-law lies murdered, and her husband has vanished. There’s no one Emma can turn to for help but Emily, who leaves at once with her husband, the dashing Colin Hargreaves, for Venice. There, her investigations take her from opulent palazzi to slums, libraries, and bordellos. Emily soon realizes that to solve the present day crime, she must first unravel a centuries old puzzle. But the past does not give up its secrets easily, especially when these revelations might threaten the interests of some very powerful people.”

All the books in this series are set in gorgeous cities and places, so along with the characters (have I mentioned I adore them?), I get to travel, too–to London and Paris and the French countryside and Turkey . . .

They are smart, full of twists and turns and surprises, lush and romantic . . . I’m starting to gush and I’m not ashamed.  If you want to start at the very beginning, it all started with AND ONLY TO DECEIVE.

“For Emily, accepting the proposal of Philip, the Viscount Ashton, was an easy way to escape her overbearing mother, who was set on a grand society match. So when Emily’s dashing husband died on safari soon after their wedding, she felt little grief. After all, she barely knew him. Now, nearly two years later, she discovers that Philip was a far different man from the one she had married so cavalierly. His journals reveal him to have been a gentleman scholar and antiquities collector who, to her surprise, was deeply in love with his wife. Emily becomes fascinated with this new image of her dead husband and she immerses herself in all things ancient and begins to study Greek.

Emily’s intellectual pursuits and her desire to learn more about Philip take her to the quiet corridors of the British Museum, one of her husband’s favorite places. There, amid priceless ancient statues, she uncovers a dark, dangerous secret involving stolen artifacts from the Greco-Roman galleries. And to complicate matters, she’s juggling two very prominent and wealthy suitors, one of whose intentions may go beyond the marrying kind. As she sets out to solve the crime, her search leads to more surprises about Philip and causes her to question the role in Victorian society to which she, as a woman, is relegated.”

The others are, in order:

A POISONED SEASON

A FATAL WALTZ

TEARS OF PEARL

DANGEROUS TO KNOW

A CRIMSON WARNING

I promise, you’ll fall in love with Lady Emily.  You can thank me later.