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Emma is a courageous woman. She knows what needs to be done to help the people in her French village survive the German occupation during WWII. But she has no hope of being rescued by the Allies. She says that you can't eat hope.

The characters are drawn in fine line black ink on white paper but the colors are beginning to fill in the mystery. Unusual and intriguing.

Thank you to Kate Kreinkamp Clark for giving me this book to read at a time when I needed it most. The book demands self-inquiry and a gentle reckoning.

Many smaller stories flowing into the large tributary of this murder mystery make it interesting and very difficult to figure out. It feels as if the reader is being drawn into becoming an investigator rather than remaining an outside observer. The plot has so many offshoots. Every character has a complete story.

This book is as hopeful as it is heartbreaking. I am thoroughly inspired by the resilience of 15 year-old Charley who makes the best possible decision between bad and worse choices. He acts as responsibly as he possibly can and has compassion and empathy and intelligence and commitment that far exceeds the adults in his life.

Thank you to Kate Kreinkamp Clark for giving me this book to read at a time when I needed it most. The book demands self-inquiry and a gentle reckoning.

Thank you to Campmia for this wonderful book. It gives perspective to what has been a painful year.

This is the most unusual nonfiction book I've ever read. It reads like an intellectual's dream mystery novel. The book is filled with wondrous things: exquisite libraries, dusty archives in crumbling Italian palazzos, determined young art historians, an art restorer of baroque paintings and the discovery of a lost Caravaggio masterpiece. And it's all true. The names are the same as the actual protagonists.

I am enjoying the complexity of this book's structure and the way in which the story is revealed through first person accounts by different characters. It's an intriguing puzzle in which the personal becomes political... and what one person chooses to do may have international consequences. One suspects that "the whole truth" is yet to be revealed.

This book has such graphic descriptions of WWII suffering that it is difficult for me to read it straight through. The human suffering during the London blitz seems equal to the suffering on the field of battle. Starvation, deprivation, blind terror and the need to "carry on" no matter what. I don't know how they did it.

This book began innocently and seemed mildly entertaining. By page 147 it has become riveting and passages from the book, events and the characters invade my consciousness and disturb my thoughts even when I'm not reading it. Any person who has not experienced warfare (either as a combatant or a civilian victim) should not be allowed to declare or perpetrate war.

What a wonderful book! Can't stop reading it.

The beginning of "Murder in the Palais Royal" is so horrifying with Rene Friant being shot repeatedly by someone impersonating his best friend and partner Aimee Leduc, I had to put the book down for a day or two. Nevertheless, Aimee Leduc persisted! She's working against time and the flics and the killers to find out who is responsible and keep Renee safe (although she doesn't know where he is).

This book is difficult to read because it contains graphic descriptions of Gestapo torture and cruelty and reveals the impulse for self-preservation of the Parisian population during WWII. However, there were amazing, courageous, self-sacrificing exceptions to the norm. Watching the protagonist's transformation is what makes me continue on.

Even though I've just started reading this book, I've found that every page is filled with breathtaking truths. It's in my face. In my face. In my face. Once I've read this, there's no place to hide. No more going unconscious.

This book has me on tenterhooks, holding my breath and reading as fast as I possibly can.