Nobody expects the Spanish In­qui­si­tion!

—Monty Python

They certainly do in the Madrid of 1623. The Spanish Empire is at its peak, ruling much of the Americas as well as the Low Countries. The Spanish In­qui­si­tion functions as an ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal secret police, defending the Faith against heretic­s—and Jews—and ensuring orthodoxy by keeping an iron grip on the hearts and minds of the Spanish people.

This book is the second in a series of novels about Captain Alatriste, a sword-for-hire. The novels are related in flashback by Íñigo, a 13-year-old at the time of …continue.

A small troupe of traveling players spend a few days in the Oxford of 1434 and are nearly framed for a murder.

Frazer evokes the sights and sounds of medieval Oxford during the Corpus Christi holiday, the hard life of traveling players, and the goings-on of a rich merchant's household. Amazingly enough, she almost completely avoids the colleges of Oxford. The mystery itself is thin and occupies little of the book, as the author prefers to con­cen­trate on the other aspects of her tale.

Moderately en­ter­tain­ing.

Brigadier-General Sir Harry Flashman returns in the twelfth volume of the Flashman Papers. Flashy is a cad, a rogue, a lecher, a toady, and a bully. His reputation for bravery is wholly undeserved, but he has suc­cess­ful­ly concealed that through an extremely long career, spanning much of the nineteenth century. Flashman reveals all in a series of extremely frank memoirs written in his old age, published long after his death by his "editor", Fraser.

Flashman has many un­de­sir­able qualities, but he has a knack for finding himself in …continue.

Dark Fire is set in the summer of 1540, a few years after Henry VIII es­tab­lished himself as the head of the Church of England. Matthew Shardlake is a London lawyer, who takes on a case defending a young woman against the charge of murdering her 12-year-old cousin. She refuses to speak and will be "pressed" by heavy weights until she enters a plea—or dies. In exchange for a temporary reprieve, Shardlake agrees to take on an in­ves­ti­ga­tion for his sometime patron, Thomas Cromwell, Henry's first minister. An alchemist claims to have discovered the …continue.

This book is blurbed by Dan Brown on the front cover; happily, The Dante Club is a much better book than The Da Vinci Code and Pearl is a much better writer than Brown.

The poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, their publisher, J.T. Fields, and the historian George Washington Greene are completing the first trans­la­tion of Dante Alighier­i's The Divine Comedy ever to be published in America. It is Boston in 1865, just after the Civil War. Two prominent Brahmins are murdered …continue.

This is the seventh volume of the Camulod Chronicles, Jack Whyte's sprawling retelling of the Arthurian legend. Whyte is consumed by the backstory of the legend, so much so that the sixth book The Sorceror Meta­mor­pho­sis ends with young Arthur drawing Excalibur from a stone. The first two books, The Skystone and The Singing Sword, tell of the founding of the Colony of Camulod by two far-sighted Romano-Britons, Caius Bri­tan­ni­cus and his brother-in-law Publius Varrus, who foresee the collapse of the Roman Empire. The third book, The Eagles' Brood, tells of their grandsons, Caius Merlyn …continue.

The first of three equally long volumes of historical fiction by Neal Stephenson, who is better known for his spec­u­la­tive fiction. This is a prequel of sorts to Crypto­nom­i­con, featuring the distant ancestors of the Waterhouse and Shaftoe characters.

Quick­sil­ver primarily takes place in late 17th century Europe, the baroque era where giants such as Newton, Leibniz, Hooke, and Huygens brought about a new un­der­stand­ing of the world. Daniel Waterhouse, a Puritan scholar, moves among them, knowing that he is not a good enough …continue.

I just listened to This American Life on the radio. I am con­tin­u­al­ly amazed at just how good this show is. They find so many compelling stories.

This week, Ira Glass in­ter­viewed Gene Cheek, who wrote a memoir, The Color of Love: A Mother's Choice in the Jim Crow South.

In the early 1960s, Cheek's divorced mother fell in love with Tuck, a black man. They lived in a small town in North Carolina, and the mis­ce­gena­tion laws were still on the books. They dated clan­des­tine­ly, but eventually their re­la­tion­ship become known. The police would stop by regularly to harass them. After she had a baby by Tuck, her …continue.