House of Spies (Gabriel Allon #17)

House of Spies by Daniel Silva is the seventeenth book featuring Gabriel Allon, a Mossad agent who was first recruited after the terror at the Berlin Olympics. Since then he has been a top agent who wants nothing more than to be a paint restorer and spend quiet time with his family. If only the world would allow it.

Gabriel is now the head of the office. Most chiefs stay in Jerusalem and run things from a desk. But Gabriel has a personal reason to need to catch the ISIS terrorist calling himself Saladin. One of his bomb killed a friend in Paris. Gabriel will join his team in Europe to track any trace of the terror mastermind.

Christopher Keller, ex-SAS, will give the team a criminal element needed to catch a criminal. Keller has been living in Corsica working for a mafia don and has connections to the underside of Europe.

Silva is an amazing writer who grabs readers with the first paragraph. His characters are compelling, his plots sometimes a bit too close to our current reality, and his twists and turns are the work of a master planner. Anyone who likes to read needs to read a Daniel Silva book. Start at the beginning with The Kill Artist or read his stand along spy masterpiece TheUnlikely Spy.

Silva, Daniel. (2017). House of Spies. New York: Harper.

Uprooted

Uprooted by Naomi Novik is a well-crafted, brilliantly delivered fantasy story set in the times of fairy tales.

Every ten years in the valley next to the corrupted wood, a girl is picked to serve the magician who lives in the tower. Agnieszka is sure that her friend Kasia will be picked. He always chooses the pretties girl. Even the girls from the other villages couldn’t compete with Kasia. She has been training to serve the magician, known as the Dragon.

No one knows how the girl will serve the dragon. But at the end of each ten years, those girls come home and almost immediately move away. Kasia and Agnieszka have promised that they will still be best friends after they are separated for a decade.

When all the girls of the village are lined up, the dragon appears. But he does not pick Kasia. He chooses Agnieszka. And they are off to the tower before the shock can wear off. He always has to pick a girl with magic if one presents herself. Of course, Agnieszka has no idea she has magic… Nor does she know how to cook or do any other domestic things that Kasia has been trained for.

Novik has created a great story. It has all of the elements of a great fairy tale. This is a must read!

Novik, Naomi. (2015). Uprooted. New York: Del Rey.

The Sea Hawk

The Sea Hawk by Brenda Adcock is a time-traveling pirate adventure.

Dr. Julia Blanchard is a marine archeologist working on the Georgia coast. She and her team are slowing exploring and excavating the ship they are calling the Georgia Peach. She knows it is not the safest plan, but she has to get one more look at the ship. She takes her boat out and anchors to the buoy. But the shadow of another boat looms above as she is diving.

Once her friends realize she is missing, Julia is floating near the marker buoy hoping for a rescue. Unfortunately, a storm is coming in. Rescue boats will not be sent out until it passes. At which point Julia will have been blown away from the sight of the wreck.

Just when Julia is starting to give up hope, a ship come by. When she is brought on board she is sure it is some kind of reenactment. But it soon seems like she is actually back in the 1800s.

Before Julia can get comfortable on her strange rescue ship, that ship is attacked by pirates. Julia is taken captive by a female pirate named Simone Moreau on her ship Le Faucon de Mer. The very ship Julia has been excavating.

Adcock has written a great tale of romance set in two different time periods, perfect for anyone who like stories of swashbuckling female pirates.

Adcock, Brenda. (2008). The Sea Hawk. Nederland, TX: Yellow Rose Books.