The Spy by Paulo Coelho

From the best-selling author of The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho's new book is about espionage, tragedy and a story of a woman who wanted to create her own life.

Told through Mata Hari's final letter while in prison, The Spy is the unforgettable story of a woman who dared to fight against traditions and created a life of her own imagining. It is with this unique spirit that helped set course what would be a life that would later be intertwined in espionage at the height of the panic during WWI. A great fictionalized snippet of what could have happened in the final moments of the once famous dancer that came and went in history as both enchanting and dangerous.

If you want to read The Spy by Paulo Coelho, pick up a copy at The Ocean City Free Public Library.

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Fault Lines by Nancy Huston

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2008, Fault Lines takes an interesting narrative approach and follows four generations of a family counter-chronologically. Family secrets start to unravel as each generation's character is revealed. We first meet 6 year old Sol, a coddled spoiled brat of a character, as he and his family are on a trip to Germany to revisit a long-lost relative. Huston then introduces the reader to the other generations; his father Randall, grandmother Sadie, and great grandmother Erra. As each character's story unfolds, you can see how each narrative weaves into one. The last section, which centers on Erra, is the most eye-opening one and is the final piece of the novel's puzzle. I don't want to say much more because it'd be giving too much away, but suffice it to say, it's a pretty intense (and sad) read.

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"A Banquet of Consequences" by Elizabeth George

Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley mystery series is probably one of my favourites in the style of English detective stories. It's the series that I keep returning to, when I slip into a reading rut and can't focus on reading something new, particularly to the first book in the series A Great Deliverance. While there are lots of decent mystery series circulating now, the first book in George's Lynley stories has a certain grim insistence about it that keeps drawing me back to it. And in her latest contribution to the series, George has written a story that in many aspects parallels her first--however, these parallels did not become immediately apparent until the climax of the story. One of the things that I like best about Elizabeth George's writing is that she realises that a lot of times, the supporting characters can have better story potential than the main title character. She uses this to her advantage in almost all of the Lynley seri...

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