"The Historian"

I had been driving through heavy traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike and expected even heavier drive time delays ahead as I returned to Virginia Beach after a week in Connecticut.  I decided that I should make a pit stop at the last station on the Turnpike and fill up on gas and visit the ladies' room.

I had been listening to the CD of Crichton's "Next" as I drove and had just finished Ross' "Miss Julia Stands Her Ground" while in visiting my friend in New Haven.  In other words, I was about to be out of books!

On my way into the ladies' room, I noticed a book perched on top of one of those tall cigarette ash trays.  I yellow sticky note had been attached t the front announcing, "I am not lost.  I am a FREE BOOK!" 

"Hmmmm, a bookcrossing.com book," I thought as I snatched it on my way into the ladies' room.  When I opened the cover, I saw the bookcrossing.com label and knew that I had just temporarily acquired my next read, "The Historian" by an author with whom I was unfamiliar, Elizabeth Kostova.

Bookcrossing.com books are left behind for others to find and then enter their location online so that they can be tracked as they travel from reader to reader.  It was a bookcrossing.com book that had introduced me to Michael Connelly on a plane trip from Portland, Oregon, to San Diego, so I had high expectations.

As soon as I arrived home, entered my find into the bookcrossing.com site and discovered that it had been purchased at the airport in Italy for a cross-Atlantic flight.

Had I know the premise of the book was vampires, I probably would have left it for the next observant reader, but I was already deep into the book and too engaged before I realized the context.  However, I love history and  mystery and the book weaves the two together convincingly and in such a way that you find yourself reading until late into the night (not a good idea given the subject).

If you love a good story and enjoy history and travel and a good mystery, then I urge you to track down a copy of "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova.  You won't be disappointed!