Breakdown, by Sara Paretsky

Good. As usual, I was pretty annoyed by V.I. at times, but it's very fun to watch her careening around a city I know pretty well, getting irritated at traffic and some of the same stupid things that irritate me.

This is about a group of teenage girls doing some sort of vampire ritual in a cemetery at night when they happen upon a dead body. And then things get crazy: between a FOXNews-like local network, rabid right-wingers trying to dig up dirt on the Democratic candidate for Senate (or House?), and her supporters trying to keep their private lives private. There's a lot of stuff about a large mental hospital that houses the criminally insane, an old law school classmate, Vic's ex-husband...and WWII, sorta.

Down These Strange Streets (ed. by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois)

Lots of weird short stories. Some good ones, some....not so good. Some of my favorite authors disappointed me, but I found a few new potential authors to check out. Best in the book is the last one, set in Alaska during World War II. Some other intriguing concepts, but as I read the book over the course of 3 months at lunch times at work, several of them have slipped my mind.

Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay

Wow! The horrifying hook in this book about the Holocaust is that is tells the story from the point of view of a ten-year-old Parisian girl named Sarah rounded up with her parents by the French police in 1942. Because she doesn't know what is going on around her, she locks her little brother in a hidden cupboard in their house, sure that she'll be back in just a few hours to let him out.

Of course, she isn't back in just a few hours, or days, or weeks.

This story is interspersed in the story of Julia, an American researching this event for a French magazine as she navigates the pitfalls of her marriage and family. That part was far less interesting to me.  I did end up feeling a little gypped in the end because I wanted to hear more about Sarah's life and less about Julia's. In the end, my outlook on the French didn't exactly improve.

A Lost Adolescence : Surviving the Blitz, by Joy Aavang

Self-published and not without some problems, but a well-told story of what it was like living with bombs dropping regularly. I was never transported back in time as a good writer can do, but it's good to have this documented. And because I know the author passing-well, I could hear her voice telling the stories.

Blackout, by Connie Willis

Ooooh, frustrating: it's not until the last page that I realized that this is part one of the story. Now I have to wait six months to read the rest of it! Gah.

Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada; translated by Michael Hofmann; afterword by Geoff Wilkes

Very, very interesting. Written just after WWII, and taking place in early parts of the war (beginning when Germany invaded France and moving forward about two years), it focuses on the people who live in one apartment building in Berlin and how day-to-day life twisted in upon itself under the Nazi regime. It takes awhile to realize, but it's really about the lengths people go to live with themselves. Reading this along side "Crime and Punishment" would be fascinating.

Astonishingly good, with some clunky translation in parts. And the afterword is quite helpful as well.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer (on CD)

Disclaimer 1: I tried reading Foer's Everything Is Illuminated which sounded wonderful...till I tried read it. Gave up; too weird.

Disclaimer 2: I wouldn't have read this book with my eyes. It's also very weird. But the narrators are excellent in this version, and I was hooked on the kid...the main character.

The kid, Oskar Schell is precocious in the extreme. At age 9 he knows far more than he 'should' about many things, including the death of his father in the World Trade Center tragedy. Oskar discovers a key in his father's closet months after his death, and spends the next several months searching for the owner of the lock based on some very slim evidence.

Interwoven in the main story are the stories of Oskar's grandmother and grandfather--separate stories but both equally sad and poignant that also begin with bombs, bombs that were dropped on Dresden over 60 years ago.

Wonderful stories, really fabulous characterizations of all the very different people. This is probably the first book I've ever read that made me think that living in New York City might not be such a bad thing.

Turncoat, by Aaron Elkins

Not one of the series titles, this one is about the impact of World War II on the French, and takes place in the mid-1960s. Pretty good mystery.

Loot, by Aaron Elkins

Another new character, Benjamin Revere, is introduced in this book. I like this art guy better than Elkins' other art guy; he's just more real for some reason.

The hook here is that a friend of Ben's, a local pawnshop owner, asks him to come look at a painting someone just brought in to be pawned; he thinks it might be a 'real' painting. Next thing Ben knows, his friend is beaten up, dies as a result, and the painting has disappeared. In researching it, he finds that it disappeared during World War II, probably one of the many artworks the Nazis appropriated from their rightful owners.

Ben follows the trail to Austria, then to St. Petersburg, and eastern Europe...and also discovers himself falling for the niece of his friend who shows up to help him figure out why her uncle was killed.

Fun story, lots of history, and good characters