The Spy by Paulo Coelho

Like most of Coelho's books, a story about something seems to be about something else instead. Mata Hari, the spy, tells her story through letters written to her lawyer from her prison cell awaiting execution.  She is above all else a self made woman but at what cost?  Was it the time and barriers to women that forced her to become the "exotic dancer" that captured the imagination of Europe.  Was her promiscuous life really a way of finding power - or love?  Despite her reputation as a spy, it doesn't appear that she shared anything of importance with either Germany or France but she was still found guilty - of espionage? of challenging the rules of society?  What does Coehlo want the reader to think about her, about war, about what is sacrificed for what we think we want?  Hmmm.  Maybe it is just about Mata Hari.  Nah...

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

This is certainly a period piece - NYC - 1937 - a little Great Gatsby, a little Edith Wharton.  Roommates Eve Ross and Katey Content, out on the town, meet Tinker Grey - charming, dashing and apparently very rich.  What are the rules of civility when best friends are attracted to the same man? A tragic accident tips the balance in Eve's favor.  But is she the "winner"?  When Katey discovers a copy of George Washington's "Rules of Civility" on the book shelves in Tinker's apartment, she imagines it a sign of his cultured upbringing.  But as relationships develop and shift and war intervenes, new truths emerge and the book takes on a new meaning.  This focus on a unique time and a specific class of people is elevated by insight and grand language.

The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain

After her father's death, Riley MacPherson returns to North Carolina to settle the estate.  Her older brother Danny lives like a recluse in a trailer outside of the city.  Her older sister Lisa died decades earlier, a tragedy that had defined much of the life of the MacPherson family.  Lisa was a gifted musician whose kayak was found on the frozen river near Alexandria, Virginia where they lived.  She was only 17 and, although a body was never found, everyone assumed it was a suicide.  Danny carries a great deal of bitterness toward the way the family dealt with her death.  This along with his experiences in the Iraq War have left him estranged from his family and uninterested in helping Riley.
As Riley attempts to fulfill the directions of her fathers will, things don't seem to add up.  She finds documents and hears stories that don't quite match the family history she has always believed and is ultimately driven to find the truth.  This is a much lighter book than Necessary Lies but a good summer mystery read.

The Women In the Castle by Jessica Shattuck

In 1944, in a Bavarian castle, Marianne von Lingenfels makes a promise.  Her husband, good friend Connie, and other Resisters are all part of a plot to kill Hitler.  Recognizing the risk, the men charge organized, competent Marianne with keeping the wives and families safe if it should all go wrong.  The plot fails, the men are all hanged and the war goes on.  At the end of the war Marianne goes in search of the women left behind.  She finds two of them.   Benita, the beautiful and apolitical wife of Connie is living in the bombed out ruins of the city.  Marianne is also able to reunite her with her young son, living in a nearby orphanage.  Also seeking refuge in the castle is the enigmatic Ania and her three children. The castle and the surrounding community have suffered greatly in the war as did the women who have returned to the castle. Each carries with her secrets of the past - some they can leave behind - others they cannot.  Their stories continue through 1991 providing various perspectives of the people who lived through the war and then struggled to define who they were knowing what they had done to survive.  Readers who loved The Nightingale will love this as well.

Chasing Venus by Andrea Wulf

Subtitle: the race to measure the heavens
"Race" here is a relative term.  In 1716 Edmund Halley proposed a way to measure the solar system.  He figured out that the planet Venus would pass in front of the sun in 1761 and again in 1769.  By measuring the time and angle of the "transit of Venus" from multiple points on the planet, they could use mathematics to figure its distance from the sun and from that, the distance of all the other planets.  But this book is less about the math than it is the journeys. In 1761, Europe was at war, colonies were being won and lost, getting anywhere depended on ships and horse drawn carts and science had yet to become  SCIENCE.  It took years of gathering the support and finances necessary to make the needed astronomical observations.  They had to find ships that were kind of going in the right direction.  They fought weather and disease.  All the time knowing that to be accurate they had to do it again in 1769 for the math to work.  Hundreds of attempts were made in both years.  Only one man, Jean-Baptiste Chappe d'Auteroche, was able to view both transits and he died while finishing his notes.  Another Frenchman, Guillaume Le Gentile de la Galaisiere was gone so long chasing Venus that he was declared dead and all his belongings were sold.  Hundreds whose names you might recognize like James Cook (who went to Tahiti and had to buy back all the equipment that the natives took) and Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon (of Mason-Dixon line fame) were only marginally successful.  In the end, it was a grand world effort and it worked.  You have to wonder what they would think as the world hops on trains, cars and planes to watch a solar eclipse just to oh and ah and say we were there.  This book is not as engaging as her "Invention of Nature" but it is a pretty amazing thing to wrap your head around.