Histories of the Saints: Bold and Inspiring Tales of Adventure, Grace, and Courage by Carrie Wallace with illustrations by Nick Thornburrow, Workman Publishing Company, 2020. 

A wonderful collection of the lives of the saints for children and young at heart of numerous saints over the ages. The stories are a mixture of legend and fact but it is the illustrations by the video gamer Thornburrow that are wonderfully on the dark, eccentric side at times that will allow children to enter the stories.

Passion By Design: The Art and Times of Tamara de Lempicka by Kizette de Lempicka-Foxhall, revised edition. Abbeville Press Publishers, 2020. 

A wonderful intro to this Polish Art Deco artist through the reminisces of her daughter, Kizette. The Russian Revolution, World War I, the jet set, monarchies, fashion, style, Paris, Italy, Hollywood, Houston, New York and Cuernavaca. 

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz, Harper Collins Publishers, 2020. 

Two murder mysteries in one with one giving insight into the other…four murders in all!!! Author of Magpie Murders. A good ride in the style of Christie.

Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College by Jesse Wegman, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2020.

The framers of the Constitution battled over it. Lawmakers have tried to amend or abolish it more than 700 times. Millions of voters, and even members of Congress, misunderstand how it works. It deepens our national divide and distorts the core democratic principles of political equality and majority rule. How can we tolerate the Electoral College when every vote does not count the same, and the candidate who gets the most votes can lose?

My Policeman: A Novel by Bethan Roberts, Penguin Books, 2021.

When Marion first lays eyes on Tom - her best friend's big brother, broad, blond, blue-eyed - she's smitten. And when he comes home from National Service to be a policeman, Marion, a qualified teacher, is determined to win him. But Patrick, a curator at the Brighton Museum, is also besotted with his policeman. Through Marion's and Patrick's dual narratives, their painful, tragic story is a tale of wasted years, misguided love and thwarted hope, at a time when the country was on the verge of change and so much was still impossible.