THE GREAT PEARL HEIST : LONDON'S GREATEST THIEF AND SCOTLAND YARD'S HUNT FOR THE WORLD'S MOST VALUABLE NECKLACE
by Molly Caldwell Crosby

In the summer of 1913, a pale pink pearl necklace was bought by a London broker. (It was worth more than the Hope Diamond.) News of the sale spreads around the world enticing both jewelers and thieves. En route from London to Paris, the necklace disappears.
Sounds like an intriguing book, right? The subtitle certainly seems that way. Nope. Many reviewers said that it's fast-paced, a thriller, rich, and evocative. Nothing of the sort. My terminology is: dull-witted, slow, boring, and flat. I felt as if I was reading somebody's history report. 
Since the author has written two previous books, I thought this would be somebody to follow. No way. After sloughing through seventy-three pages, it was time to return the book to the library.
Not recommended. 

FORMER PEOPLE : THE FINAL DAYS OF THE RUSSIAN ARISTOCRACY
by Douglas Smith

There have been many books written about the Romanovs but not so with other families of the Russian aristocracy. Douglas Smith centers primarily on two: the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns and what happened to them from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 up to the Stalin era.
I, alas, only reached page 93 and it's quite a hefty book. There's way too many details, too many characters that you can't get your head around, too many footnotes and it all becomes quite dizzying. Even the directives for the black-and-white photographs are misleading and incorrect. I have read plenty of excellent histories on the Russian people and this one doesn't even come close.
Not recommended.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS : THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS
by Robert Gottlieb

Charles Dickens was the "father" of ten children. I placed quotes around father because he really wasn't much of one. He loved them when they were young but as they got older, his interest dissipated. Dickens was an even worse husband to his long-suffering wife leaving her for a much younger woman.
Great Expectations is set up in two parts. The first section describes the lives of the children (in chronological order) while Dickens was alive while the second part is after Dickens died.
I never got to the second part because I became very annoyed with one of the chapters talking about Henry Fielding Dickens who was the eighth child and the sixth son. What bothered me was the ricocheting of the names Henry and Harry. The first paragraph said Henry and the next said Harry. When I first read the name Harry, I didn't know who it referred to. I thought perhaps that it was another son or a friend. Nowhere in the entire chapter does the author explain Harry. If he was known as Harry and it was said so early on, no problem, but it wasn't. I found it to be very poor editing which is very surprising since Robert Gottlieb was the editor of The New York Review of Books for many years. There were other problems with the book and I just lost interest.
A much better biography on Charles Dickens and his family written by Claire Tomalin is the one to read.
Not recommended.

MARIE CURIE AND HER DAUGHTERS : THE PRIVATE LIVES OF SCIENCE'S FIRST FAMILY
by Shelley Emling

Marie Curie is probably the most famous female scientist that ever lived. She received two Nobel Prizes: one for physics and the other for chemistry. Her discovery of radium and how it could be used was an enormous breakthrough. Ironically, it started out curing people of cancer and in ten years, it was making people sick. Radium eventually killed Marie along with many others.
She had two daughters: Irene and Eve. Irene would follow in her parents' footsteps and become a physicist herself. Not so with Eve. She loved the arts and was an accomplished pianist and then became a writer.
Unfortunately, I didn't finish the book because I struggled with the prose. It's very dry and plodding. Don't believe any of the reviews. It's certainly not page-turning, exhilarating, nor riveting. 
Not recommended.

CAVEAT EMPTOR : THE SECRET LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FORGER
by Ken Perenyi

In Latin the phrase caveat emptor means "let the buyer beware." I would say the definition for this book is "let the reader beware."
Ken Perenyi was an art forger for over forty years and was never caught. This is his story. Alas, I didn't get any further than page sixteen. The writing is horrible and juvenile. It probably would have been much better if somebody else had written about him and had the writer's touch.
It's pretty dismal.
Not recommended.

THE STRANGER IN OUR HOUSE : GROWING UP WITH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS : A MEMOIR
by Kathy Hoffstadter-Thal

I waited an awfully long time to get this book from the library and it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. The author is the daughter of two Holocaust survivors from Hungary. Her father is quite the narcissist and psychotic. He doesn't give a damn about his family including his wife and treats them all miserably. Most of the time, he doesn't talk to any of them except with demands. He lives his life as if he is still in the army with regulations and rules that they all must abide by. It's a very disturbing read made worse by the fat that it's riddled with misspellings and punctuation errors. 
Not recommended.

JASMINE AND FIRE : A BITTERSWEET YEAR IN BEIRUT
by Salma Abdelnour

This is a nothing book. The author (who currently lives and works in New York) moves back to Beirut where her family is from to write about the country and the food. She is a blogger and it's like you're reading it. Every chapter is a different month (like a diary) and it's boring. She gives incessant details about the cuisine and what she does every minute of each day. Who cares?
Not recommended.