City of Jasmine
With all the charm and excitement of an Indiana Jones film, Raybourn’s latest (after A Spear of Summer Grass, 2013) finds 1920s aviatrix Evangeline Starke stunned when her husband, Gabriel, thought dead for five years, resurfaces in Damascas.  As a member of an archeaological dig in the North African desert, he tells her he has discovered the lost relic of the Crusades housing a piece of the true cross.  But with the surrounding clouds of war, retrieving the relic and smuggling it out of the country may not be possible.  Although infuriated with Gabriel, in the midst of her Seven Seas flying tour accompanied by her eccentric aunt Dove and her aunt’s elderly parrot, Evie decides to follow her husband to find out where he has been and why he faked his death.  As they work their way across the desert to the relic, they are beset by postwar plots, counterplots, assassins, Bedouins, chicanery, spies, and pure adventure.  Raybourn’s meticulous detail and adherence to history enliven this book-group-worthy tale of epic love and lust. --Pat Henshaw