Beware of Women
This post will discuss two books. The Briar Club, by Kate Quinn, is getting a lot of attention partly because critics and readers like Kate Quinn and the other books she has written. The other new book is entitled The House Keepers, by Alex Hay. They both have a cast of interesting and capable women.
The Briar Club is set in the McCarthy era in Washington, D. C. When Grace March moves into an all women’s boarding house, the Briarwood House, she begins to have weekly dinner parties in her attic apartment so that the boarders can get to know one another. The cast of characters is very eclectic and they prove to be great fun. But true to Quinn’s style, there is a secret among the group and a mystery that must be solved, namely a murder on Thanksgiving Day. Even though Quinn enfuses her novel with witty characters and humerous antics, she also brings in historical events of the time. People Magazine calls the book “a sharply drawn, gripping novel.”
One of the residents at the Briarwood House is a baseball player with the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Philip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, founded the league when most of the professional baseball players enlisted in a branch of the armed services at the beginning of World War II. He sent scouts all around the country and Canada and Cuba to find women of athletic ability. His wife helped design the uniforms and sent the players to charm school! The initial league began with 60 players and grew over the years because people enjoyed the games. Something that was supposed to be a temporary fix during the war lasted until the mid 50’s.
The House Keepers is another book about a group of women, but in this book they are up to no good!! Set in the Harrod’s section of London in 1905, the story begins with a housekeeper who has been fired by her ultra rich and so so fancy boss, the lady of a grand city mansion. Dinah King may have worked ‘downstairs’, but she hatches a brilliant plan to take revenge on her former employer. She gathers a cadre of women to pull off a heist worthy of Ocean’s Eight. Last summer, The Washington Post named the book a must read for July and August.
