Neal Stephen­son's massive, sprawling Baroque Cycle began with Quick­sil­ver, continued in The Confusion, and concludes with The System of the World.

1714: Daniel Waterhouse has been recalled from Boston by Princess Caroline of Ansbach, soon to be Princess of Wales, after the last Stuart monarch dies, so that he can intervene in the rancorous dispute between Newton and Leibniz over who invented calculus. The plot is too complex to summarize, but it's a glorious farrago of coun­ter­feit­ing gold coins, alchemy, Solomonic gold, …continue.

Neal Stephen­son's massive, sprawling Baroque Cycle began with Quick­sil­ver and continues in the aptly named Confusion. The book in­ter­weaves two novels, Bonanza and The Juncto, taking place between 1689 and 1702. Bonanza follows Jack Shaftoe, as he and other galley slaves in Algiers capture Spanish gold of particular sig­nif­i­cance to some highly placed alchemists, and make their way ever eastward, through Cairo, India, Manila, and Mexico. The Juncto deals primarily with Eliza, now a French duchess, and her remarkable financial derring-do.

The previous book concerned itself with …continue.

We saw Shake­speare in the Park's production of Twelfth Night at Seward Park last week, which prompted me to re-read this book.

Fifteen years ago, Theophilos, an agent of the Fool's Guild, then working in his guise as Feste the Jester, initiated the events roughly described in Shake­speare's play, and foiled Saladin's agent, Malvolio. Now the duke of Orsino is dead under suspicious cir­cum­stances, and Theo goes back, disguised as a German merchant.

Theo is witty, quick-witted, and po­lit­i­cal­ly astute, making for an engaging narrator of this medieval mystery.

Sugawara Akitada has been appointed as the governor of a remote northern province in feudal Japan. Aided only by a handful of retainers, he is beset by his own doubts and hostile locals. Winter is closing in and he must exert his fragile authority to rein in a mutinous baron, while also in­ves­ti­gat­ing some mysterious deaths and righting old wrongs.

Parker evokes the spare, stark beauty of Japan, in a well-written historical mystery.

Rudi Rosenharte is an East German academic, re­luc­tant­ly working for the Stasi, in the months before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Stasi are holding his twin brother, Konrad, hostage. Rudi's desperate to get Konrad and his family out, and he's recruited by British In­tel­li­gence.

Rudi ends up keeping four in­tel­li­gence services at bay, as he walks along an ever more precarious tightrope. The plot is, of course, im­plau­si­ble. The book brings the sheer nastiness of a police state to life, and shows the East German state collapsing as …continue.

As Dr. Watson famously said of Irene Adler, "To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman." Carole Nelson Douglas has parlayed Irene Adler into a series of books.

In Spider Dance, Irene and her friend, Nell Huxleigh, are in New York City, trying to find out who Irene's long-lost mother was. The infamous Lola Montez is the most likely contender. Holmes is also in town, in­ves­ti­gat­ing a grotesque murder at the Vanderbilt mansion. Inevitably, the two cases become tangled up.

Even by the standards of Sher­lock­iana, the plot is improbable: rogue Ul­tra­mon­tanes, lost …continue.

Molly Murphy, an early twentieth-century private detective, returns from New York to her native Ireland, in order to track down her client's long-lost sister. Along the way, she encounters a dead body in her cabin, rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies in Dublin, and (briefly) James Joyce.

Molly is engaging and quick-witted, with a contrarian streak that gets her into trouble. Bowen evokes the early 20th century from bustling New York to the social strat­i­fi­ca­tions of a liner, to British-occupied Dublin.

The book is marred by some elementary ge­o­graph­i­cal errors: the River Liffey, not …continue.

Steven Saylor is best known for his Roma Sub Rosa series of detective novels about Gordianus the Finder, set in ancient Rome.

Roma is a Mich­eneresque saga, spanning 1000BC to 1BC, in a dozen vignettes following the holders of an ancient amulet. Starting with a crossroads frequented by traders, it shows the evolution of Rome from a village to the great power of the Mediter­ranean, led by Augustus Caesar, the first of the emperors. It's an easy in­tro­duc­tion to much of Roman history, but the episodic nature of the story means that …continue.

This novel continues not long after The Far Side of the World left off. The Surprise stops off in Barbados, then chases an American privateer almost to England. Jack Aubrey, astute at sea, but a naïf on land, is hoodwinked into causing a run on the stock market, and brought to trial. Stephen Maturin finds that his wife has left him and that his former superior in Naval In­tel­li­gence has been sidelined.

O'Brian moves ef­fort­less­ly from a naval chase to the rural pleasures of Aubrey's cottage to …continue.

Uhtred, a Saxon warrior raised by Danes and the right-hand man of King Alfred the Great, returns home to Northum­bria to settle old scores. Settle those scores he eventually does, but not before he is betrayed by a man he trusts and sold into slavery.

Cornwell is best known for his long-running series about Richard Sharpe, an officer promoted from the ranks in the Napoleonic Wars, and for his battle scenes. Here he proves that he can write about 9th century swordsmen as well as he can write about …continue.