Belgravia

Title: Belgravia
Author: Julian Fellowes
Genre: historical fiction
 

Summary: Julian Fellowes's Belgravia is the story of a secret. A secret that unravels behind the porticoed doors of London's grandest postcode.
Set in the 1840s when the upper echelons of society began to rub shoulders with the emerging industrial nouveau riche, Belgravia is peopled by a rich cast of characters. But the story begins on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
 

Rating: Wonderful

Why I Like It: I really liked this book! It's from the author of Downton Abbey tv show. Now, I haven't read Downton Abbey and only watched one season of it, so I didn't have that much influence into this wonderful story, but I can see how they are similar (families vs their servants of great houses). What I enjoyed about this book is that we the reader knew the entire story and got to watch it unfold with the characters AND it has a pleasant ending, which I didn't necessarily think would happen as I was listening.
 

Other: audio
Reviewer: Avery

Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War

Title: Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War
Author: Pamela D. Toler PhD
Genre: Historical Non-fiction
Summary: Summary from Amazon:
HEROINES OF MERCY STREET tells the true stories of the nurses at Mansion House, the Alexandria, Virginia, mansion turned war-time hospital and setting for the new PBS drama Mercy Street. Among the Union soldiers, doctors, wounded men from both sides, freed slaves, politicians, speculators, and spies who passed through the hospital in the crossroads of the Civil War, were nurses who gave their time freely and willingly to save lives and aid the wounded.
These women saw casualties on a scale Americans had never seen before, and medicine was at a turning point. HEROINES OF MERCY STREET follows the lives of women like Dorothea Dix, Mary Phinney, Anne Reading, and more before, during, and after their epic struggle in Alexandria and reveals their personal contributions to this astounding period in the advancement of medicine.
Rating: Excellent
Why I Like It: I first saw the series1 & 2 on PBS. This book added so much more information about what it was really like during the war. The series is very good but it couldn’t include all of the details that this book covered.
Other: audio – easy to listen to
Reviewer: Patsy

A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW

Title: A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW
Author: Amor Towles
Genre: Fiction/Historical fiction
Summary: In 1922, 30-year-old Count Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors.
Rating: Very good
Why I Like It: The book is very different and contains many interesting characters and some surprises. Also, the backdrop of Russian history was interesting. It took awhile to really get into the book, but well worth it.
Other:
Reviewer: Kathy