Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

Manhattan Beach
by Jennifer Egan

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Published: 2017
Publisher: Scribner
Genre: Historical, New York
Hardback: 448
Rating: 4

First sentence(s):
They'd driven all the way to Mr Styles's house before Anna realized that her after was nervous.

Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men.

‎Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished.

With the atmosphere of a noir thriller, Egan’s first historical novel follows Anna and Styles into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men. Manhattan Beach is a deft, dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world. It is a magnificent novel by the author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, one of the great writers of our time.

My two-bits:

Loved how this story is presented - to the point of feeling an ocean breeze with the characters at the beach and feeling the dark depths of the ocean when down under during a dive.

Got a sense of 1930s and 1940s in New York in relation to some shady business, war work efforts and women's plight.

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* part of Tournament of Books 2018 (here)

A Girl Like You by Michelle Cox

A Girl Like You
A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel
by Michelle Cox

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Just released: April 19, 2016
Publisher: She Writes Press
Genre: Historical, 1930s, Mystery
Paperback: 218 pages
Rating: 5

The Henrietta and Inspector Howard series:
A Girl Like You
book 2 -tba

First sentence(s):
Henrietta stole another look at her compact before she snapped it shut and hurried out from behind the bar.

Henrietta Von Harmon works as a 26 girl at a corner bar on Chicago's northwest side. It's 1935, but things still aren't looking up since the big crash and her father's subsequent suicide, leaving Henrietta to care for her antagonistic mother and younger siblings.

Henrietta is eventually persuaded to take a job as a taxi dancer at a local dance hall and just when she's beginning to enjoy herself, the floor matron turns up dead. When aloof Inspector Clive Howard appears on the scene, Henrietta agrees to go undercover for him and is plunged into Chicago's grittier underworld. Meanwhile, she's still busy playing mother hen to her younger siblings, as well as to pesky neighborhood boy Stanley, who believes himself in love with her and keeps popping up in the most unlikely places, determined to keep Henrietta safe even from the Inspector, if need be.

Despite his efforts, however, and his penchant for messing up the Inspector's investigation, the lovely Henrietta and the impenetrable Inspector find themselves drawn to each other in most unsuitable ways."

My two-bits:

I loved how this story transported me back into the 1930s by way of a mystery told by the perspective of a spunky gal who finds herself part of a murder investigation.

The descriptions of the times and settings pulled me in. I got an understanding of the lives of taxi dancers and burlesque club workers.

The main character, Henrietta, was engaging to follow along with her interactions with family members and others characters she encountered.

Also, loved the start of a friendship and working partnership between Henrietta and Inspector Howard. There is also a nice light touch of romance in the background.

About the author:

Michelle Cox has a B.A. in English literature from Mundelein College, Chicago. She is a writer of historical fiction but has also been known to dash off a mystery or two. While her heart might lie in the eighteenth century with Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy or in the crooked streets of Little Dorrit's London, she tends to write of a slightly more recent age, a time closer to the World Wars, when all was not yet lost and the last roses of summer were first coming into bloom. Ms. Cox lives with her husband and three children in the Chicago suburbs.

--~ Blog Tour Giveaway ~--
ENTER to win this book here
-offer ends April 30, 2016

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* review copy courtesy of It's Raining Books Blog Tour (details) sponsored by BookSparks