The Shadow of the Wind

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, 487 pages

Ooh, this was a really great book- expect to see it as a future book club pick.  Daniel is a young man living with his father in post-Civil War Barcelona, Spain.  For his birthday, his father takes him to visit a mysterious place- the cemetery of forgotten books.  Here Daniel finds a wonderful but mysterious book that piques his interest and shapes the rest of his life.  This was a very beautifully-written book that I found is the first in a series, and the audiobook is read by someone with a very good Barcelona accent.

Burial Rites

Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent, 314 pages

This was a well-written, well-researched, beautiful book about a nineteenth-century execution in Iceland.  Agnes is sentenced to wait out her last months before being executed for murder, on a farm where the farmer's family comes to hear her side of the story and see that nothing is quite so black and white.  This is an excellent book for book clubs- there is alot to discuss and alot to learn about another country and another time.