THE VATICAN CHRONICLES SERIES: The Mystery of Julia Episcopa; The Anonymous Scribe; Silent Mistresses

THE MYSTERY OF JULIA EPISCOPA (The Vatican Chronicles #1)
JOHN I. RIGOLI & DIANE CUMMINGS
Kindle edition (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$5.99 available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In ancient Rome, a woman flees for her life. Her enemies are those she once called 'brother'.

Hidden beneath her blue cloak are secrets men will kill for—forgeries that prove the newly self-appointed bishops are not followers of the way, but pretenders who have seized power and will stop at nothing to shape this new religion to their own ends. Now, Julia—a woman who had once walked with Mary Magdalene and taught alongside Paul must preserve the legacy of the apostles in the face of terrifying danger.

Two thousand years later, classical archaeologists Valentina Vella and Erika Simone are tasked with advising the newly-elected Pope on the historical legacy of women in the early Christian period.

The women stumble across an ancient parchment buried deep in the Vatican archives, a document that has clearly been altered. They find themselves on the trail of a woman who may have been the first woman Bishop in the Catholic faith. To reveal Julia's legacy will put them in the cross-hairs of a venomous Vatican battle for power and supremacy; to stay silent would make them complicit in an ancient heresy and would betray the teachings that Julia sacrificed her life to defend.

The Mystery of Julia Episcopa weaves seamlessly between modern day Rome and the politics of the Catholic church, and the times and life of a 1st century Roman noblewoman who rose to be a dominant force in the early Christian movement.

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My Review: I wonder if I'll ever get tired of Vatican-skulduggery stories. I hope not. Archaeology plus ancient history equaling a black eye for one of the greatest forces for evil ever devised by man...christianity as a whole is what I mean...in a present hag-ridden by its rotting zombie corpse never palls.

Two modern archaeologists, Erika and Valentina, discover suppressed evidence of a woman bishop's existence in early christian days. Setting out to discover what they can about her is obviously going to be fraught...the catholic church is hostile to the merest whisper of women in positions of power, triply so in its own hierarchy...and more dangerous than even that baseline because their funding comes from a mustachio-twirling baddie in the form of Cardinal Ricci, a Central Casting Villain of the most amusingly OTT sort.

The generally christian-positive message of Julia Lucinia Aquiliana coming to be Julia Episcopa is tied up with the most famous moment in Roman history: Vesuvius erupting and burying Pompeii in 79CE. It acts as the major, defining moment of the past timeline in the novel, and in the present as the moment these two woman archaeologists understand what they have on their hands: The literal smoking...gun, you should forgive, in the quest to prove women have been calculatedly written out of church history.

This being my own assumption about history more broadly, I'm all invested and on board.

Still and all, this is a literary pleasure for me, and its positive religious overtones put me off.

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THE ANONYMOUS SCRIBE (The Vatican Chronicles #2)
JOHN I. RIGOLI & DIANE CUMMINGS
Kindle edition (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$5.99, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: When the lie is two thousand years old, who, exactly, will the truth set free?

While analyzing parchment fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls, grad student Susan Bauer pieces together text that indicates the existence of a stolen Secret Temple Scroll that was penned decades before the gospels. If discovered, this document could free the Jewish people from the centuries’-long blemish that they are responsible for Yeshua’s death.

It could also turn Christianity on its head.

From the basement of the Israeli Museum to a basilica in a picturesque French village to the ruins of Herculaneum, ex-Mossad Yigael Dorian and blacklisted archaeologists Valentina Vella and Erika Simone journey on a transcontinental chase, dodging thieves, kidnappers, cardinals, and enlisting mobsters to uncover the truth behind this rumored scroll.

It is the writer of this document, however, who has the final word in a mesmerizing depiction of life in the Galilee alongside Yeshua.

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My Review: I got a lot less invested in the Intrepid Sleuths' archaeological skulduggery when we moved into territory that presumes the figure at the center of the lunatic belief system we call christianity was a living breathing human being.

There exists no shred of evidence of this. Inventing one for this story was a step past my personal suspension-of-disbelief line.

It is a testament to the writing chops of the authorial duo that I was compelled to keep reading, and that I give this story three whole stars. I am mightily opposed to everything this entry in the series is presenting, and irked by the certainty that some will think it's probable it represents some kind of truth. No matter; honesty insists that I rate it on its storytelling merits. Three stars.

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SILENT MISTRESSES (The Vatican Chronicles #3)
JOHN I. RIGOLI & DIANE CUMMINGS with Lisa Cerasoli
Kindle edition (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$5.99, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: A Vatican Bank cover-up. A devout whistleblower. A Church with everything to lose.

Sister Maria Caruso was sent to the Vatican Bank to modernize its systems—not to unearth secrets worth killing for. But when a €30 million discrepancy leads her to a web of hidden accounts, she stumbles onto something far more dangerous than embezzlement.

The money was only the surface. What it concealed runs far deeper. For decades, powerful men within the Church have used secret funds to protect private sins—names that must never be named, affairs that break more than vows—a history the Vatican is willing to bury—along with anyone who gets too close.

As Maria begins to pull on the thread, she becomes a target. Trapped inside the very institution she once trusted, her only weapon is the technology the Church has long dismissed. Her only choice? Stay silent and survive—or expose the truth and risk everything.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Okay. We're switching gears. No more archaeology, now we're in computer forensics and accountancy.

I quit caring. The Banco Ambrosiano scandal took place in my adulthood and, as I thought then, represented an iceberg's tip of the real story.

While nice enough to read as a mystery, the topic was not what I expected it to be or wanted to read about. The authors, as assisted, turned out a run-of-the-mill crime story with stakes I just could not invest in. Three stars for competency. None for my personal enjoyment.

BRIGHT OBJECTS, shiny start to a promising new career

BRIGHT OBJECTS
RUBY TODD
Simon & Schuster
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A young widow grapples with the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime comet and its tumultuous consequences, in a debut novel that blends mystery, astronomy, and romance, perfect for fans of Emma Cline’s The Girls and Ottessa Moshfegh’s Death in Her Hands.

Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St. John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible to the naked eye.

As the comet begins to brighten, Sylvia wonders what the apparition might signify. She is soon drawn into the orbit of local mystic Joseph Evans, who believes the comet’s arrival is nothing short of a divine message. Finding herself caught between two conflicting perspectives of this celestial phenomenon, she struggles to define for herself where the reality lies. As the comet grows in the sky, her town slowly descends further and further into a fervor over its impending apex, and Sylvia’s quest to uncover her husband’s killer will push her and those around her to the furthest reaches of their very lives.

A novel about the search for meaning in a bewildering world, the loyalty of love, and the dangerous lengths people go to in pursuit of obsession, Bright Objects is a luminous, masterfully crafted literary thriller.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A debut novel from a very accomplished author, one whose best gift is the deft touch of characterization. I felt very connected to Sylvia from the get-go, her fuddled and bewildered survivor's guilt, her unostentatious revenge-seeking against the one responsible for her loss, and her deep but unwilling fascination with a charismatic local cult leader.

The lovely patterns Author Todd weaves among these strands, spinning her threads from the ever-renewed internal structures of loss, guilt, sadness, and outrage, don't sag or drop. They're sometimes not as harmoniously tinted as a veteran writer might choose...the mother-in-law in particular is rather paler than I'd expected, Theo the astronomer a bit too intense...but these are quibbles. Not a line out of place, not a word (even when a not-American word crops up) wasted or obscured.

The lack of a full fifth star on my rating isn't because of some sense of disappointment. I got what I wanted. The plot...revenge-driven widow struggles to cope with her loss and her survivor guilt will catch me in its web every time...is consistent, is finished with an appropriate, yet unexpected, ending. What bothered me, and this is really a very *me* thing to be tangled up in, was the comet. A comet, one on a path to get this close to Earth, is not going to go undetected for very long. We're motivated, since Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked Jupiter so very hard in 1994, to go looking for these kinds of objects.

Okay, so that's a half-star lost. A tiny smidgeon of the tarnish on my shiny loving cup of pleasure also traces to Theo and his own warping loss. It's a trope I find painfully Writerly, is the Conjunction of Damaged Souls. Theo's issues were understandably similar to Sylvia's; his response to her darkness was believable. His discovery of her, in Australia, where he happens to be for the confirmation of a career-defining discovery, is what rings false to me. As always I want this kind of other-directed man to exist; I suspect he isn't to be found in a man about to ascend to the heights of his ambitions. I also see the facile characterization of Joseph Evans, and honestly, since he's such a bell-end of a grifter, I just don't care.

Quibbles and crotchets aside, everything Author Todd does in this story fits. The mystery plot, the way it's rooted in the ugliness of revenge, the focus of the two leads on their personal quests, all works as a whole. The manner in which the ending's made manifest felt satisfying to me. I'm struggling with myself not to spoiler it (though I really want to!) because experiencing the event blind is a pleasure enhancer.

Tyro author does a fine job, will most likely do better next time, and very much deserves your treasure and time.

BLUE-SKINNED GODS, one of my favorite 2021 demonstrations of social progress

BLUE-SKINNED GODS
S.J. SINDU
Soho Press
$26.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

FINALIST FOR THE 34th Lambda Literary Award—BEST BISEXUAL FICTION! Winners announced 11 June 2022.
GBH's virtual book club, BEYOND THE PAGE, features Author Sindu discussing this story and answering audience questions FREE Register at the link for tonight's 7p EST event!

The Publisher Says: From the award-winning author of Marriage of a Thousand Lies comes a brilliantly written, globe-spanning novel about identity, faith, family, and sexuality.

In Tamil Nadu, India, a boy is born with blue skin. His father sets up an ashram, and the family makes a living off of the pilgrims who seek the child’s blessings and miracles, believing young Kalki to be the tenth human incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. In Kalki’s tenth year, he is confronted with three trials that will test his power and prove his divine status and, his father tells him, spread his fame worldwide. While he seems to pass them, Kalki begins to question his divinity.

Over the next decade, his family unravels, and every relationship he relied on—father, mother, aunt, uncle, cousin—starts falling apart. Traveling from India to the underground rock scene of New York City, Blue-Skinned Gods explores ethnic, gender, and sexual identities, and spans continents and faiths, in an expansive and heartfelt look at the need for belief in our globally interconnected world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A child is fed a diet of lies by his parents and all the adults around him. They seek many things from their lies, and he seeks only his truth.

Come for the writing, stay for the story...the sentences are lovely things, shining and glowing with the light of inspiration. The story's the one we all need to hear at this juncture, the one about the abuse of religion in service of religiosity and greed. The cost to this genuinely beautiful soul, Kalki, is so huge...the relationships he can not save are all built on the sand of lies.

What makes this story so extraordinarily resonant is that we're all surrounded by lies all day every day. Yes, it's true, Kalki's lies are costly to those he's lying to...not being a god and still trying to heal people is wrong...but he told the truth he had been sold all his life by the liars he was raised by and among. Kalki, unlike all the rest of us, has the weight of the literal world on him, has expectations of miracles mounded on him. That's his excuse for buying into the lies he's surrounded by. What's yours? What's mine?

The questions that this brutally honest look in the mirror of a story raises are urgently in need of everyone's answers, delivered with the honesty and the anger that Kalki uses as he does the absolutely unthinkable, the unbelievably god-like thing and takes control of his life: He forgives.

Being able to forgive is, I honestly believe, the single most important quality in a healthy person's happiness. I see it in stark relief as this novel winds its coils around my heart. Kalki, wronged on every level, betrayed and abandoned on every side, used and abused and ripped off...he forgives. And that is the most beautiful thing available for a mortal to do, to give. Come and be healed: Read BLUE-SKINNED GODS.

DIRTY LITTLE ANGELS, a bitter draft of honest and unflinching observation

DIRTY LITTLE ANGELS
CHRIS TUSA
Livingston Press
$8.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Set in the slums of New Orleans, among crack houses and abandoned buildings, Dirty Little Angels is the story of 16-year-old Hailey Trosclair. When the Trosclair family suffers financial hardship and a miscarriage, Hailey finds herself looking to God to save her family. When her prayers go unanswered, Hailey puts her faith in Moses Watkins, a failed preacher and ex-con.

Fascinated by Moses' lopsided view of religion, Hailey and her brother Cyrus begin spending time at an abandoned bank that Moses plans to convert into a drive-through church. Gradually, Moses' twisted religious beliefs become increasingly more violent, and Hailey and Cyrus find themselves trapped in a world of danger and fear from which there may be no escape.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: The thing about receiving author-supplied DRCs is that one never knows whether they're the author's own files or the typeset and formatted files the publisher sells on ebook sites. Luckily for me, I'm acquainted with this publisher so I asked for and received a tree book copy of it.

When you start reading this bitter, sour-faced story of a family's complete collapse, you're expecting more Southern Gothic. Failed fathers, hate-stuffed mothers, frail, failing children, all the usual trappings...set in New Orleans, a place that (to me) reeks of failure on a generational time-scale...and what more fertile ground can there be for a teenage girl to discover the nasty, brutish, short nature of most of humanity's lives.

Hailey is desperate. She's trapped in a web of emotional blackmail and the sticky sap of rage and blame in a marriage that failed the test of character. She's savvy, sensing the sap is slowly turning into amber as pressure and heat build in her parents. Not very surprisingly, she opts to try putting her faith in the christian god. She's from the South, and it's a space hag-ridden by the manifold evils of that religion's ripeness for exploitive behavior. Of course Hailey falls in with an abusive, evil preacher called "Moses" (how original that alias is!) whose plans are just loopy enough to seem visionary to a desperate girl.

The problems that the adult reader sees instantly Hailey sees as positives...the idea of a drive-through church is simply ludicrous...but only long enough to discover that Moses is not there to help her but to use her. It's a horrible realization and it's an angry world that popped Hailey up, so it's no surprise how she ends up behaving in the end.

It's not a long story, and it's not a cheery one, but it's very tellingly presented as a slice of life. Hailey's growing into her full power of womanhood doesn't, in the end, break the mold set by her unhappy family.

It takes a fucking sledghammer to the whole structure.

If you're up for a bracingly told, frankly and honestly observed coming-of-age story set in an iconic if still catatonic since Katrina location, this is a story you'll love. I did.