Summer Pleasures

Essex, Karen. Stealing Athena (Doubleday June). Essex braids the story of Aspasia, the lover of Pericles who constructed the Parthenon, and of Mary, Countess of Elgin, whose beauty and fortune facilitated her husband's deconstruction and export of its beautiful marbles. Read with Susan Nagel's The Mistress of Elgin.

Greenwood, Kerry. Two treats: Phryne Fisher, the Emma Peel of the 1920s, in Queen of the Flowers(Poisoned Pen). This lively series with its Art Deco has been taking Barnes & Noble by storm along with independent bookstores. It's anchored in Melbourne, Australia. Baker Corinna Chapman's second case, Heavenly Pleasures,focused on a landmark Melbourne building, contemporary cooking and crime. So what if chocolate is bad for you? Start with Earthly Delights.

Johnson, Jane. Tenth Gift (Crown May). For Mary Stewart readers, a time-slip tale of a modern Englishwoman who comes into an old diary and the story of the woman who wrote it, of 17th Century Cornwall, a needlewoman of genius who was kidnapped by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery in Morocco. Turns out she's an ancestor of our 21st Century gal.