Not Quite the Complete (I Hope) Second Half of March

Accumulating my little reviews and publishing them twice a month is boring me.  So here are a few books I finished reading since my last post.

Lara McClintock is wondering why a famously reclusive millionaire would contact her and ask her to buy a piece of Etruscan art on his behalf.  She meets him and is satisfied that he wants her to represent him because no one would imagine that he's behind the purchase.

But purchasing the elusive Etruscan piece is not that easy.  It's owned by a dying man in a wheelchair  who is selling off his art to finance a trip to a secret Etruscan admiration group.  Except that he doesn't really want to part with any of his things.  He's found dead shortly after Lara visits him.  At least one of his Etruscan pieces is missing  -  and turns up in the trunk of Lara's car.

There's a lot of back and forth with the piece.  It's like a game of 'hot potato'.  Lara puts it in someone else's car, then it turns up in her hotel room.  No one wants to get caught with it because it doesn't seem to be legal.  No one has purchased it since the dead man's father purchased it, and he may not have done that legally.

There are a lot of fakes around:  fake Etruscan pieces and fake people.  The Eturscan Chimera was a fun read, but my head was spinning by the end of the book.  

I am not a Romance reader.  Yes, I enjoy a bit of romance in books, but I don't want it to be the focus of the story.  However, after reading so many enthusiastic reviews of The Grand Sophy, I bought it and read it.  It was great fun!

Sophia Stanton-Lacy arrives to stay at her Aunt Elizabeth's in London while her father is overseas on business.  He hopes that she'll find a husband while he's away.  

Sophia (The Grand Sophy) has been living in Spain with her widowed father.  She has quite a reputation for unconventionality and she sets her aunt and uncle's lives spinning.  She gallops her horses in the park, drives her own carriage pulled by spirited steeds, she carries a loaded pistol (of ladylike proportions), and she can take care of herself.  Woe to those who think she can't.  Or shouldn't.

Although she's only about eighteen, she is perceptive and adept at problem solving.  She sees that her cousin Cecilia has made a mistake by throwing over a terrific man for an oblivious and poor but handsome poet.  Her cousin Charles has engaged himself to a very proper (in her own mind) woman who believes that correct behavior is everything and that fun is suspicious.  No one is with the ones they love, so Sophy decides to fix things.

The ending is like a Marx Brothers movie.  This person enters from one door while another exits by another, a box of ducklings intent on escape appears, an Italian greyhound dances around, a grand Spanish woman cooks in the kitchen, the poet wanders abstractedly about looking for his muse.  But Sophy accomplishes her mission.  As Shakespeare said, all's well that ends well.