The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise
This is a very charming novel! Each of the quirky characters has his or her own storyline and the writer has you routing for them all. This book will make you smile, and quite possibly giggle, while reading it, but also will tug at your heartstrings. I highly recommend it!
Rated of 5
by Nancy D. (West Chester, PA)
A Breath of Fresh Air
Take a cup of tea or a glass of wine, settle into your favorite chair, and be prepared to lose yourself in a wonderful little book. This book will make you want to skip your commitments so you can read another chapter, and then you will want to visit the Tower to soak up the atmosphere.
Rated of 5
by Ann D. (CLEARFIELD, PA)
Ever After
Julia Stewart has wrapped the sadness of Bathazar and Hebe Jones' personal loss in what I found to be a fairy tale for grownups.
The Tower provides the backdrop for this story. Its staff and their families live is the spotlight of hundreds of daily tourists and the haunting presence of its former residents.
Beefeater Jones and his wife live with a one hundred eighty-one year old tortoise. One day the wife leaves and ever-so-slowly the tortoise does, too.
The Tower Menagerie is re-established by the Queen, who sends her many exotic animals there. Some of the towers new inhabitants go missing, some roam freely, some terrorize, and others befriend their caretakers.
'The Tower, The Zoo and The Tortoise' provides a great deal of humor. Each page has you wandering with all of the exotic characters as your guides.
Rated of 5
by Tricia D. (Woodland Hills, CA)
The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise
This was really my kind of book! I loved the unique characters and their problems while mixed along with the historical facts of London Tower itself. There was everything in this book I needed: romance, humor, mystery, empathy, slapstick, and even anger. Being an animal lover, the tales that were provided about the animals themselves, helped attach me to the story even more. If you're looking for something a little different to read, this book is a MUST!
Rated of 5
by Kitty H. (Pasadena, CA)
Don't Miss This One
Refreshingly different and delightful are the words that come to mind to describe 'The Tower, The Zoo, and the Tortoise'. It is every bit as charming as the book cover illustration. Anglophiles and lovers of British comedy will rejoice. This story is funny, poignant and totally unique. The colorful characters who inhabit the Tower of London in the 21st century are sure to delight.
P.S. I read this story shortly after finishing 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' and 'The Girl Who Played With Fire' by Steig Larsson. The contrast was like the light at the end of the tunnel. I'd give a 5 to all three, but what a difference!
Rated of 5
by Martha P. (Issaquah, WA)
History made fun
A truly delightful romp through history! If only learning could always be made this pleasurable. Each character imparts his own knowledge of the Tower of London and all it's ghosts, beheadings and royal goings-on. Animals for the menagerie provide more fodder for stories from the past. And all this with a love story or two in the midst of everything. Lovely British humor and overall a wonderful read.
Rated of 5
by Mark O. (Wenatchee, WA)
Lost and Found
All readers know that reading takes us places we’d never likely visit. "The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise" takes us inside the Tower of London, a place so saturated with history that ghosts ooze out everywhere. The arrival of a menagerie of animals (gifts to Queen Elizabeth, from all over the world) falls to the responsibility of one of the Tower guards, a Beefeater. These exotic animals are lost, uprooted from homes in jungles and plains, and now housed in moats and towers. In fact, this book is a story of losses. Some of these losses are terrible (a child), sad (a marriage), life-changing (a calling) or bizarre (the things left behind on the London Underground). But the opposite of lost is found and the London Underground's Lost Property Office seems a mirror of life. Things thought irretrievably lost can be found again: happiness, purpose, and life-long mates, whether one is human or albatross.
A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
read more
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
read more
Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
read more
British Parliament asks Amazon to clarify why it pays $9 million in income tax on $23 billion of UK sales.(May 20 2013) Amazon will be called back to give further evidence to members of the British Parliament "to clarify how its activities in the U.K. justify its low corporate...
Full Story
of 5
by Sarah H. (Belford, NJ)
