I so enjoyed recalling the books I read last year (although my list was NOT a complete one) that I'm going to try to make entries here to share what I've read... with brief comments about what attracted me to it, and whether it lived up to my hopes and expectations. (Hardly likely, because I can be soooooo hypercritical. But I'm not always!!) And when Blogger eventually figures out how to make this blog part of the "new" Blogger, I'll even put index tabs on it for BOOKS!
If you are in the US you aren't so likely to have read things by Penny Vincenzi, I think. She's wildly popular in Britain and Australia so far as I can tell. She's an English Barbara Taylor Bradford kind of writer.
While in Missouri for family and funeral, I read Old Sins-- it was set in the 1940's to 1990's (more or less) and involved a cosmetics company in competition with Revlon, Estee Lauder and that prided itself on actual biological and chemical improvements. Some of the family members were not above fabricating information in their personal or professional lives, thus wreaking havoc down the line. Very absorbing with lots of apparent inside knowledge about business, makeup... and nice reminders of landmarks in England. Personally, I liked being reminded of trends in the 50's and 60's. The history is incorporated very naturally and is never didactic or distracting. (My edition didn't have this hot contemporary cover, though... in fact the cover of mine was more like the one below.)
No Angel is apparently the first in a trilogy (at 800+ pages each, that's a LOT of imagination and family) about the Lytton Family... Starting in pre-wwI London and sprawling to the war front, the country and I'm not sure where all else, its main character is Celia Lytton, a suffragette sympathizer from the get go. Class, historical events, passion and publishing all get plenty of attention in this one.
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