Venice, Italy
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Small Miracles
Gadriel, the fallen angel of petty temptations, has a bit of a gambling debt. Fortunately, her angelic bookie is happy to let her pay off her debts by doing what she does best: All Gadriel has to do is tempt miserably sinless mortal Holly Harker to do a few nice things for herself.
What should be a cakewalk of a job soon runs into several roadblocks, however, as Miss Harker politely refuses every attempt at temptation from Gadriel the woman, Gadriel the man, and Gadriel the adorable fluffy kitten. When even chocolate fails to move Gadriel’s target, the ex-guardian angel begins to suspect she’s been conned. But Gadriel still remembers her previous job… and where petty temptations fail, small miracles might yet prevail.
This was Tracy’s recommendationfor an uplifting read, and she nailed it. An adorable tale of petty sin, chocolate, and all the different kinds of love there are, all this with big Good Omens vibes (which are openly acknowledged at the end of the book). Nothing that will change the world of literature, but exactly the…
8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster
SLAVE. ESCAPE-ARTIST. MURDERER. TERRORIST. SPY. LOVER. MOTHER. TRICKSTER.
At the Golden Sunset retirement home, it is not unusual for residents to invent stories. So when elderly Ms Mook first begins to unspool her memories, the obituarist listening to her is sceptical. Stories of captivity, friendship, murder, adventure, assumed identities and spying. Stories that take place in WWII Indonesia; in Busan during the Korean war; in cold-war Pyongyang; in China. The stories are so colourful and various, at times so unbelievable, that they cannot surely all belong to the same woman. Can they?
This novel follows the 8 lives, supposed or real, of a woman who was a « comfort woman » during several wars or who interacted with them; who murdered a few men; who was a spy for North Korea in the South; who was a loving wife to a man who thought she was someone else. It’s…
Bologna, Italy
Modern Albania
Modern Albania offers a vivid history of the Albanian Communist regime’s fall and the trials and tribulations that led the country to become the state it is today. The book provides an in-depth look at the Communists’ last Politburo meetings and the first student revolts, the fall of the Stalinist regime, the outflows of refugees, the crash of the massive pyramid-loan schemes, the war in neighboring Kosovo, and Albania’s relationship with the United States. Fred Abrahams weaves together personal experience from more than twenty years of work in Albania, interviews with key Albanians and foreigners who played a role in the country’s politics since 1990–including former Politburo members, opposition leaders, intelligence agents, diplomats, and founders of the Kosovo Liberation Army–and a close examination of hundreds of previously secret government records from Albania and the United States.
Honestly not sure how I feel about this book. It was a great, instructive and well-written story… but it’s a story in which the US do no harm, written by an American, and I tend to be very very suspicious of cold war / immediately post cold war stories that don’t mention a US-backed anti-communist…