Historically Dead by Greta McKennan
Seamstress Daria Dembrowski is working her fingers to the bone to ensure that the (mostly) hand-stitched dresses and curtains are perfect for her client's appearance on My House in History. That's not quite enough to keep the bills paid, so she's still doing wedding dresses and the latest bride-to-be brings a very unwelcome visitor along to her fittings.
I love this series, which lets me vicariously experience a type of sewing I'm not likely to tackle myself. If My House in History was an actual show, we'd definitely be watching it at our place. The book develops some of the relationships that began in the first book and Daria and her friends are fun to spend time with. Too bad avoiding spoilers means I can't tell you what I loved most about the plot.
Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips
A mother rushes her four year old son towards the zoo's exit, trying to make it through the gates before closing time...then hears the gunshots and sees the bodies and starts desperately searching for a safe hiding place. After the first few pages of Fierce Kingdom, I was absolutely hooked. Joan is the most realisticly depicted mother I've come across in a long time. This was such a good book -- until it suddenly wasn't. I started to lose interest when the book switched from Joan's point of view to a different character. And I didn't like the ending.
I hate to say it, but the Amazon reviews were more fun to read than the last quarter of the book. How these readers imagine that Joan can just tell her hungry, exhausted preschooler to be quiet when they're hiding in the dark is beyond me. I'm guessing they've never spent a full day at the zoo with a very young child.
Disclosure -- I was provided with an advance review copy of Histocially Dead by the publishers. Fierce Kingdom is a library book.
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