Readers’ Picks

For most Americans, Henry VIII is remembered for his six wives. But during Henry’s reign — 1509-1547, the state took on a new, oppressive meaning, beheadings and burnings signaled frequent shifts in royal interests, monasteries were closed and priests and nuns turned out to beg for survival. Against this background, English historian and lawyer C. J. Sansom has created five crime novels centered around Matthew Shardlake, a hunchback lawyer, whose skepticism, humanism and determined search for truth reflect the growing intellectual concerns of the period. In “Heartstone,” Sansom’s newest book, Queen Parr asks Shardlake to investigate the suicide of a young teacher, whose two pupils were orphans overseen by Henry’s notorious Court of Wards. Shardlake’s investigation takes place against the threat of a French naval invasion. Shardlake is splendid in his pursuit of justice: His body may be deformed, but he continues to climb John Donne’s “cragged and steep hill” where “truth stands.” In the Tudor world of duplicity, self-enrichment and state terror, he is singular. This is a terrific read. — Leon Graham We take the jet age for granted, forgetting how air travel has changed in our times, how not so long ago we climbed the exterior rolled-up stairways (as in clips of Western dignitaries visiting fledgling African states) to enter planes such as Lockheed’s beautiful Constellation, a huge and graceful plane with propellors and a triple tail that cruised at 300 bumpy miles an hour. But World War II drove jet technology into civilian life and Sam Howe Verhovek’s “Jet Age: The Comet, the 707 and the Race To Shrink the World”describes the people, the culture and the tragedies that shaped the way we fly today. The tale is packed with visonaries like Sir Frank Whittle, the British inventor of the jet engine (photographed examining his slide rule) and Boeing’s Tex Johnston, a skilled test pilot who sold the industry on his company’s 707 with daring stunts and cowboy charm. The story is hilarious, too, with an account of the first mile-high club duo, naked and unceremoniously dumped into icy waters, and considerable space is given to the ire of pilots’ wives at the notion of stewardesses accompanying their mates on every flight. Most dramatically, Verhovek follows the fateful course of the deHavilland Comet, the elegant and awfully flawed British jetliner that raised the hopes and the fears of adventurous and well-heeled travellers the world over. You may never fly again without thinking of these people and their vision and nerve. — Marsden Epworth