Title: City of Dark Magic
Author: Magnus Flyte
Genre: fiction, a wee bit of paranormal, sci-fi and some time traveling too

Wow! What a great book! I actually stayed up until midnight one night reading this book- it was that good. Sarah Weston is a P.h. D. candidate in musicology who grew up on the tough streets of South Boston. She is hired to work at the Lobkowicz Castle in Prague to catalog and perform archival work on sheets of music penned by Beethoven. While in Prague, she learns of her beloved professor's "suicide" and vows to look into the circumstances of his death. While performing her job duties, she is surrounded by the drama of Czech politics and history and falls hard for the prince of Lobkowicz Castle. Alas, the castle has secrets of its own- a conniving U.S. senator with ties to the KGB, a 400 year old dwarf, and a drug that lets you see into the past. Read and you'll agree with me and the book jacket: "one of the most entertaining novels of the year."

Title: Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony
Author: Lee Miller
Genre: American history, non-fiction

Most Americans are familiar with the legend surrounding the Lost Colony of Roanoke: a small group of English settlers attempts to create a colony in the New World only to vanish under mysterious circumstances. Unfortunately, most history books gloss over Roanoke in a paragraph and it's on to the next fact.
Lee Miller digs deeper and comes up with a complicated, yet interesting theory. She theorizes that the Roanoke colonists were a Separatist group seeking asylum and a fresh start in the New World. Unfortunately, they were sabotaged by a member of the royal court who was the archnemesis of Sir Walter Raleigh. Lee Miller also theorizes that the colonists were kidnapped by the local Native American tribes, enslaved by them, and intermarried with them. She based this theory on reports of explorers in the late 1500s and early 1600s that came across "Indians with beards," "Indians with grey eyes," and sightings of Native Americans in English-style houses.
This is a fascinating aspect of American history and Lee Miller spent much time researching this, but the only fault with this book is her writing style. I had read other reviews online that criticized her writing style and I thought the reviewer was being harsh. Now I know what they were talking about. She sprinkles fragmented sentences throughout her paragraphs, like they were quick notes and ideas that were jotted down but not fleshed out. I don't know how this passed by an editor, but it drove me crazy and it took me longer to read this book because of it.

Title: The Dressmake of Khair Khana
Author: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
Genre: non-fiction

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana is an excellent and inspiring book! Afghanistan didn't become a household name in the United States until 2001 when U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban regime. This book tells what happened to Afghanistan when the Taliban took over in the mid-1990s. Afghanistan had been a Westernized, modern society from the 1950s until the mid-1990s. Women were allowed to wear a small head covering that could show their face and some of their hair. They were also allowed to wear Western clothes and pursue higher education and work outside the home. Once the Taliban took over, everything changed. Women had to wear the chadri, a full-length garment that covered them from head to toe. A wrist shown in public by mistake could mean prison or death. When women went out in public, they had to be accompanied by a male family member. A female shopper could not inquire after a male shopkeeper's family even if the two had known each other for decades. Work for women was forbidden as was music and dancing.
Women that were used to being busy and productive chafed under the restrictive regime. In this book we meet Kamila Sidiqi and her sisters who use their sewing skills to earn money for their family. The great part of this story is that Sidiqi sisters shared their sewing skills with women in their neighborhood; they never turned a woman away who  was need of work. Strict rules were set so as to not attract the attention of the Taliban. Kamila's neighborhood work soon led to a job with a foreign aid agency which helped her reach more of her fellow countrywomen.
I stayed up past my bedtime to finish this book and it was worth it. A must-read for any woman (or man) concerned with the issued that affect his or her fellow human beings. 

Title: A Working Theory of Love
Author: Scott Hutchins
Genre: fiction

I really don't know what to say about this book; it's not one I would have chosen to read but it was sent to me as a galley through Penguin's First Flight galley program.

Neill Bassett Jr. lives in San Francisco and works at at 3-employee startup company although he has no programming or IT experience. This startup, Amiante, is trying to create the world's first intelligent computer (a computer with emotions, humor, self awareness, etc.). Neill is involved because Amiante is giving the computer a "voice" using Neill's dead father's journals. On top of this eccentric project, Neill ponders why his marriage failed and tries to date two women at once and screws that up while uncovering a family secret.

Title: City of Women
Author: David R. Gillham
Genre: historical fiction, WWII

It took me about 100 pages to get into this book. I wasn't sure how I felt about the protagonist, Sigrid Schroder. She is aloof to her neighbors and coworkers as she maintains the facade of a good German soldier's wife, but she is really carrying on a passionate affair while her husband is fighting the Russians. Stuck in a loveless marriage and living with a rampaging mother-in-law, Sigrid easily falls into the passionate embrace of the mysterious Egon. But Egon has secrets of his own and with the roundups of Jews in Berlin, Sigrid is soon entangled in the underground network of saving Jewish lives.
I did enjoy reading Gillham's depiction of Berlin during World War II. As an American I'm used to books and movies from the American/Allied Forces view (the view of Berlin being bombed). Gillham did meticulous research on the everyday lives of Berliners and it shows

Title: Rocky Road
Author: Rose Kent
Genre: juvenile fiction

What's the next best thing to eating ice cream? Reading about it, of course! Especially when it's 100 degrees outside...

Tess Dobson's mother is driving her crazy. On a whim, Delilah Dobson is moving her two kids, Tess and Jordan, to Schenectady, New York to open an ice cream shop. In the middle of winter. Having been subject to the consequences of her mother's whims before, Tess is not very supportive of the move and the business venture. The Dobson family has suffered through evictions and multiple failed business ventures because of Delilah's "Shooting Stars." Once Tess gets to Schenectady, she learns that her mother's risk-taking, sloppy spending, fast talking, and mood swings have a name: bipolar disorder. Will the diagnosis ruin the ice cream shop's future or are the Dobsons in for a sweet future?

Title: The Island at the Center of the World
Author: Russell Shorto
Genre: non-fiction, American History, New York History

Staten Eylandt
Lange Eylandt
Breuckelen
Bronck
Jonker/Yonkeer

These Dutch names look strange to our American eyes, but we know them by their Angilcized versions: Staten Island, Long Island, Brooklyn, Bronx, and Yonkers. It has been said that history is written by the victors and this is especially true about the history of Manhattan before the English took over in 1664. What most Americans know about the Dutch rule of Manhattan has been reduced to a few paragraphs in our history books: Peter Stuyvesant, his wooden leg, and Indians. In this exhaustive and detailed book (it has the most impressive bibliography I have ever seen!), Russell Shorto takes us back to the discovery of Manhattan by Henry Hudson and explains how seemingly minor details in European history affected Manhattan as well. When the English took over Manhattan, the Dutch background of this important colony was reduced to almost nothing. Thankfully, the discovery and translation of 12,000 Dutch documents is changing the way Americans view New York history.

Page 28: "Upward mobility was part of the Dutch character: if you worked hard and were smart, you rose in stature. Today that is a byword of a healthy society; in the seventeenth century it was weird."
"The whole package- the Founding Father, the young and vibrant republic, the war for independence, the hard-nosed, practical populace that disdains monarchies and maintains a frank acceptance of differences- has a ring of familiarity to it..." Sound familiar? This was the Dutch republic declaring independence from Spain, but these values would emigrate to the Manhattan colony and become part of the American culture and government.