Invitation to join our upcoming Book Read

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Invitation to join our upcoming Book Read

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1vintage_books
Bearbeitet: Mai 30, 2009, 4:24 am

Fictional mystery book, centered in the 11th century in England. Jewish History and persecution is touched on during the book.

***Our book group offers: Prizes and the Author will be Participating!***

About this book
From The Washington Post
It's hard enough to produce a gripping thriller -- harder still to write convincing historical fiction that recreates a living, breathing past. But this terrific book does both, and does it with a cast of characters so vivid and engaging that you'd be happy to read about them even if they weren't on the track of a sexually depraved serial child-murderer.

Mistress of the Art of Death opens with a clever takeoff on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which introduces the central players, a group of pilgrims returning from the shrine of the newly canonized St. Thomas à Becket: a prior and a prioress (from rival abbeys); two knights, lately returned from the Crusades; an overweight but very shrewd tax collector; a gaggle of citizens; and three Gypsies, who are in fact secret investigators sent by the king of Sicily to discover the truth behind a series of gruesome murders near Cambridge.

Four children have been found dead and mutilated. The Jews of Cambridge have been blamed for the murders, the most prominent Jewish moneylender and his wife have been killed by a mob, and the rest of the Jewish community is shut up in the castle under the protection of the sheriff.

More details here: Mistress of the Art of Death Book Group Read.