Looking for Your Next Book

1800's, Bangor, Maine. Three women struggle to survive and thrive in a male-dominated world. Maude Richmond is bright young girl who wants to become a doctor like her father, but, because she's female, it won't be possible. So she does the next best thing - she becomes a midwife and by choice she elects to help the 'fallen' girls. Fanny Abbott is one of Maude's patients. A young girl who has been completely taken advantage of - seduced and abandoned.  She gives birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. Fanny knows that she needs to find work, but the prospect is made doubly hard with a baby in tow, so she asks her sister to look after the child while she looks for work in the city.  She'll send for the baby as soon as possible.  But that good time never seems to arrive as Fanny flounders about trying to find work.  Finally she manages to get a job ... running the day-to-day business of a brothel ("Pink Chimneys") - and sends for her daughter, now a young wom...

CLASSICS WEEK Prior to this the only thing I've read by Mary Shelley was Frankenstein and so I thought I might broaden my reading horizons by checking out some of her other works.  Given the premise here and how sci-fi it seems, I thought this might be a good place to start. The Last Man narrates the story of, well, the last man on earth. Set in Shelley's future (now almost our past), a plague has wiped out all of humanity save for one man. The book doesn't start with the last man, but rather it spends a great deal of time spent of reflection and philosophy.  This is slow going.  Seriously slooooooowwwwwww going. I can't imagine any modern reader getting through this purely for the sake of reading enjoyment.  English majors and literature students may have to suffer through, and I can imagine the kinds of papers one might have to write, examining the general philosophy of the day and how Shelley's book challenges that thinking.  Frankly, I struggled to get thr...

VAMPIRE WEEK  It is the mid-1800s in Mexico, just across the border from Texas. Nena is a rancher's daughter and she's seen plenty of terrible things in her young life already.  Her home, and the family ranch, is constantly threatened by the white men of the north looking to grab as much land as they can get. But even more frightening than the men from the north are the strange creatures that roam the ranch at night, with razor sharp teeth and sickly grey skin.  Nena was attacked by these strange beasts nearly a decade ago and she still has terrors at night when she tries to sleep. Nestor was in love with Nena and, believing she died in the attack, he's wandered, working from ranch to ranch, trying but failing to let Nena go. When the United States attacks Mexico in 1848, Nena and Nestor encounter one another again. Nena is healer or nurse, trying to prove to her father that she is independent and doesn't need to be married off. Nestor is a member of the auxiliary caval...

  Boston in the 1800's. Sisters Tabby and Alice are on the run as they've just escaped their cruel, abusive aunt and uncle. They choose to split up so that they can reduce the likelihood of being found and Alice leaves Tabby to hide out in a cemetery for awhile.  There, Tabby meets Eli, an old caretaker at the cemetery. The two develop a respectful bond and Eli comes to think of Tabby as a daughter and likewise, Tabby thinks of Eli as the father she didn't have and she helps him with his caretaking and grave-digging work. Tabby meets Caleb who is at the cemetery to bury his father. He finds her beautiful but he's engaged and Tabby doesn't want to encourage him despite her own feelings. They remain good friends and they will need one another's help  when each is in danger. Tabby discovers that she can communicate with the dead - an ability that may prove useful as a secret organization is currently robbing graves in order to experiment on the bodies. But her abil...