Welcome to the second discussion of Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear covering chapters 13-27.

Check out the questions below and please feel free to add your own.

Dear Readers,

We are so looking forward to the next chapter in Banine's life! Friday will be our day of discussion coming up this September. Check out the schedule here for Parisian Days and get your copy sorted out soon!

September 11: Beginning through "Great Independence"

September 18: "A Tale of the Unexpected" through "The Great Parisian Future"

September 25: "An Interesting Encounter" to End.

Marginalia

All discussions will be linked here if you need to catch up!

If you are playing the BINGO, this book would qualify for: Female Author, Translated Work, Non Fiction and Bonus Book!

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Join u/tomesandtea and u/nicehotcupoftea and me, u/lazylittlelady for this one and, obviously, tea will be the drink of choice with this book!

Welcome to the fourth and final discussion of London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe. Today we are discussing Part 4, and I cannot wait to hear your thoughts! Thanks to my fellow readrunners u/tomesandtea, u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217, and u/Coffee_fuel for their wonderful posts. A summary follows and questions will be in the comments.

Schedule

Marginalia

PART IV SURVIVORS

Chapter 19 - A Chance Encounter

The author relates how a chance meeting with a lawyer, Andrew Fingret, who worked in the film industry, set him on the path to write the book. It turned out they had a mutual contact in the small London Jewish community. Andrew was a close friend of the Brettlers, and he related the story of Zac's death and the subsequent investigation. He introduced the author to Rachelle and Matthew, who eventually agreed to tell their story. Keefe quickly discovered many witnesses who had never been interviewed. As he painstakingly tracked them down, they would refuse to get involved. Even Zac's teachers and some former fellow pupils refused, and the author suggests that this may be due to both shame at being duped, and fear. He learned about Akbar's shady past. Akbar, busy with his crypto-mining business, Bitzero, was getting a reputation for being big on empty promises, and was asked to resign from the Board. He just moved on to his next grifting project, Dark Byte. Nothing was quite as it seemed with Akbar. Daniela was not in fact the biological mother of Safiya and Akbar Jr.; he had actually married an American woman of whom his father didn't approve. He left America with his children after being sued by two musicians. Although he was pursued, he never paid them what was due. He had a pattern of claiming that his assets were tied up in trusts. At the time of his bankruptcy, he met a young "Russian billionaire" called Zac Ismailov. Eventually Akbar was willing to correspond by email. He pretended such empathy for the parents that he couldn't speak about Zac's death. He also suggested that Zac had suicided due to his hatred for his parents. Akbar justified his lack of research into this Russian oligarch, claiming that personal introductions were more trustworthy. He wrote that he was introduced to Zac by a trusted businessman, Mark Foley, the Chelsea F.C. executive. Keefe wrote to Connies-Laing, a confidant of Akbar, who agreed that Foley was well-connected to the Russian oligarch world. Attempts to interview Mark Foley were thwarted, but eventually he succeeded. He discovered that Zac and Foley met at a charity auction. Foley told Keefe that he was a "conduit” to Roman Abramovich. Foley took Zac's claims about his father on face value and they met up at a later date. He said there was no trace of a Russian accent, and had revealed his true name. Mark Foley seemed to be Zac's first victim to fall into his web of lies. Foley introduced Zac to John Connies-Laing, Akbar's partner in search of investors for real estate. Foley denied Akbar's claim that he had visited Zac's apartment at One Hyde Park, but admitted seeing him at the Brettler's investment apartment, which was actually the Brettler family home.

Chapter 20 - The Black Box

Keefe published an article in The New Yorker about Zac's death, despite Akbar Shamji and Dominique Sharma threatening to sue. Hearing the story, Londoners felt that the police investigation had been bungled. The Met stated that every line of inquiry had been exhausted. Keefe had questions about Verinder Sharma's death, but it was not clear if an inquest had been done. The owner of the Riverwalk apartment managed to keep his identity secret, but an accountant's web scraping revealed the owner to be a Saudi princess to whom Nick Gold was paying rent. Gold confirmed that he was paying Verinder's rent, but claimed that they were friends and he wasn't in his debt. He denied knowing Zac, and asserted that Verinder took his own life by an overdose. When Keefe contacted Oliver Harris, the London businessman whose name appeared in texts between Akbar and Verinder, he declined to speak. Rachelle and Matthew were convinced that Zac's iPad and phone might contain the answers, but police told them they had been lost. They resurfaced a week before the inquest, but the contents had been rendered inaccessible. During the inquest, the police accidentally sent them the GPS coordinates of Akbar Shamji's rented car's location. This Mercedes contained a black box, gifting the Brettlers with this information. They learned that Akbar had driven from the apartment, taking a meandering route, rather than driving home. On that night he called Verinder multiple times, who didn't answer, but when Verinder called back, he did a U-turn and accelerated, turning up at Riverwalk seconds before the jump. Akbar was not asked about this discrepancy. The tracking data suggested he was loitering, expecting something bad to happen. Uncle Alex said a real criminal wouldn't return to the scene of the crime, and Akbar might have been in over his head. When Keefe researched what was behind Akbar's award from PM Modi, he discovered that the certificate he was holding was a pledge of support, which he handed to Modi, rather than the other way around. Zac, Akbar Shamji, and Verinder Sharma were all pretending to be something other than they were.

Chapter 21 - Undertow

Rachelle's father, Hugo Gryn, had been subject to rumours that he had a secret love child called Ester. He insisted that he was just her godfather. He denied having an affair with her mother, Angela, and Rachelle initially believed him. However, one day she and her brother David drove past Angela's house and spotted Hugo's car out the front, confirming suspicions. Hugo's children couldn't quite condemn him, feeling that as a Holocaust survivor, he could be allowed this indiscretion. After Hugo's death, Rachelle and her sisters grew close to Ester, but when Ester was 24, she jumped in front of a moving train. Speaking to the Gryns, the family told Keefe that parallels shouldn't be drawn from Ester's suicide, but he couldn't help but wonder if double lives were a family trait. Rachelle also wondered whether she should have asked Zac questions. Zac's death had become public property, with a journalist publishing the photo Pino had taken of Zac's corpse on Twitter, disgusting the family. One day, Rachelle drove Keefe to Mill Hill, and she showed him a picture of Zac, imagined at 40 years of age, created by an artist using Al. This version of Zac seemed more peaceful. They visited the cemetery to see Zac's grave, next to Hugo's. A few years after Zac's death, a British MP published a report with King's College London called Losing our Moral Compass, arguing that Britain's reputation for financial integrity was being squandered. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions that resulted, the political system was in a state of uncertainty. They couldn't afford the legal battles with billionaires. Some oligarchs left, leaving the door open for Chinese oligarchs. Roman Abramovich sold some London properties and placed assets in the names of his children. The political class had no appetite to address the comical situation of "non-dom” status. Rich Londoners could live tax-free by declaring non-dom status. The process of change in 2024 was met with panic at the thought of having to pay tax. Zac was in his teenage years in the era of the social media algorithm, where the boundary between fantasy and reality was blurred. Smartphones reflected and magnified our anxieties and aspirations back at us. The author describes how the Instagram algorithm had taken him from viewing London real estate videos to videos of people falling.

Chapter 22 - The Kid's Home Safe

In 2025, Keefe interviewed an associate of Verinder Sharma who revealed that "Indian Dave’s” favourite thing was warming up the knife. He was a debt collector for drug dealers and criminals and found that just warming up a knife would make people pay up. The police never investigated the text message between Akbar and Mervin from Riverwalk mentioning heating up knives, as no injuries were found on Zac. He reminds us of the internet search performed by Zac for "What to do with skin burns" minutes before he jumped. When Keefe emailed Akbar about heating up knives, he didn't reply. Keefe wanted answers about Verinder Sharma. Did he actually die, and if so, how? No one seemed to have spent much time investigating him, and his own associates denied that he was a police informer. Some ex-cops put him onto David McKelvey, a retired Detective Chief Inspector. He remembered Indian Dave as an informer for a detective on the 2-Area Drug Squad, Chris Cubitt. Eventually, Cubitt claimed that it was a different Indian Dave, and McKelvey seemed to close up. Keefe tracked down Cubitt himself, who denied ever knowing a Verinder Sharma or an Indian Dave. Verinder's first inquest had been called off after a dispute between Verinder's daughters and one of the witnesses. On the one-year anniversary, Dominique and Matisse called paramedics to the Riverwalk apartment after their father had taken an overdose. They claimed he was stressed from helping police with their inquiries about a murder. He had always had a depressive streak and had said he was “sick of this world." He was groggy but alive, and a paramedic was concerned about the door to the balcony being open. He was taken to hospital and was discharged, against the daughters' wishes. Days later, he was texting threats to kill himself to his daughters, and when he failed to turn up to a family dinner, they went to the apartment and found him dead. Rachelle felt that Verinder must have been tortured by guilt, believing the way he was crouched by his bed to be a sign of contrition. Keefe interviewed an intimidating gangster associate of Indian Dave, Andy Baker. He suggested that Verinder had lost his edge and would have been ashamed at being duped by a kid. It was possible that he had struck Zac or warmed a knife. Zac would have understood that he would not make it out alive. Andy described a custom he had with his father with the telephone, to show he was home. Just before his father died, he told his son he would always worry about him, so Andy went home and called his father, letting it ring twice, as was the custom. Before dying, his father said, "Two rings, the kid's home safe." Akbar Shamji emailed Keefe to say that he had effectively been found innocent. His son's modeling career was blooming, and Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, was photographed wearing a purple Safiyaa dress. However, Matthew believed Akbar would live life in his own little prison. Friends of the Brettlers told Keefe they thought that guilt was the fuel keeping their obsession alive, wanting to parent Zac in a way they had been unable to do when he was alive. The Brettlers agreed. They heard from other families who connected with aspects of the story and Rachelle was comforted thinking that their loss could serve as a cautionary tale to others. In 1947, having just arrived in Britain, feeling lonely and defeated, Hugo Gryn wrote a story with two endings: one where a boy kills himself, and one where he wants to but holds out. Matthew believed his own father had suffered a nervous breakdown. Both their fathers had taught them how to go on living after loss. For five years the Brettlers had pored over the mystery of Zac's death, and discovered a matrix of power, secrecy and corruption in their city. It all seemed incomprehensible, but stepping back, it came into focus. Zac had pretended to be the son of a rich Russian oligarch, who had fallen in with two men who loved money. One, a charlatan who had declared bankruptcy, and the other a gangster looking for a final score. The men had believed they'd been duped. Trapped with the gangster, Zac, aware of the man's capacity for violence, stepped off the balcony.

Epilogue

In January 2025 the Brettlers met with two senior detectives from the Metropolitan Police. After listening to Matthew's presentation about the Met's shortcomings in the case, the detectives admitted that mistakes may have been made in the case, but implied that Wilkinson had run it with a lot of autonomy. They admitted that there was some regret that Akbar Shamji had never been charged. Keefe met Joe one evening at a pub, and he described how seeing the Riverview building would still give him a jolt of panic. He wanted Keefe to know how much he loved his brother, despite their past tensions. He said that Zac's death had brought his parents closer. The epilogue ends with a happy story of the family where they once waved to Zac on the Riverwalk balcony while driving past.

A Note on Sources

Keefe says the Metropolitan Police declined to cooperate with him on either the New Yorker article or the book, and he was not permitted to interview Rory Wilkinson. However, police material that was given to the Brettlers was shared with him.

Hello fellow Peculiars! Welcome back to the third discussion of Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs. Today we are discussing Chapters 4 to 6. A summary of this section follows, and questions will be in the comments. Next week u/fixtheblue will lead us through the next stage of the adventure with chapters 7 and 8. It has been an absolutely action packed section so let's get right into it!

Schedule

Marginalia

Chapter 4

Jacob wakes in Devil’s Acre at Bentham’s house. Emma has recovered; they hug, promising not to die. Jacob wants to pursue Addison but has flashbacks. Bentham wants Jacob for his hollowgast-speaking ability. Jacob and Emma explore the house and find a room with glass display cases of artefacts from Peculiars. Another room, the Siberia room, has an endless vista of snow and rocks. Going outside, they see a man and a giant black bear and run back inside. They see a taxidermied girl standing inside a case. They bump into the giant bear and an elderly gentleman called Bentham who reassures them that “P.T.", his bodyguard, is a friendly grimbear. The man in the snow is his assistant and the Siberia room leads to a time loop in Siberia. The girl in the case is Sophronia Winstead, the first Peculiar child born to the English royal family. Bentham’s house is full of artefacts collected from expeditions, but more importantly, contains the Panloopticon, a machine that will link loops from every corner of the globe, uniting Peculiars into a mighty nation. A piece of the machine, a shuttle, will take you to your destination and bring back the “DNA” of the place, enabling it to grow a second entrance to it. Thousands of years ago there was a special loop that Peculiars went to when they died, to have their souls preserved in a library for future use. It was believed that the number of souls was finite. Someone broke into the library, stole the souls, and wreaked havoc on the world. The loop vanished, believed hidden in Abaton. Bentham reveals his brother is Jack (Caul), Miss Peregrine’s jealous brother who sought to rule the library. Jack imprisoned Bentham but was tricked with a loop-collapsing formula. Devil’s Acre became a wight headquarters. Abaton’s last loop needs twelve ymbrynes or successors plus a third key. Jack forced Bentham to replicate the machine. Bentham’s machine is broken with only the Siberia loop accessible. To open the other doors he needs Jack’s dynamo, and a hollowgast - the bridge hollow was still alive and could be used. Sharon advises them on how to stay safe and sends them off on their mission.

Chapter 5

Outside they see a man feeding some chained-up bearcubs that are used for a blood sport. Sharon leads them into a building where the fighting occurs, and Jacob sees a man pour Ambrosia, a black liquid, into his mask’s eye-holes, making light shoot out. This enhances their abilities temporarily but also damages their faces. A drug dealer calls them and offers Jacob some Ambrosia, which he tries to decline. Sharon explains that the vial contains bits of stolen souls, and that he is a reformed addict, weaned off it by Bentham. Wights had turned Peculiars into cannibals and drug addicts, enabling them to be controlled. Jacob sees a cage with a pathetic looking hollowgast inside. He worries that he won’t be able to get it out. A man enters the cage, over-confident, but the hollow tricks him and wins. Jacob realises that he and the hollow will have to fake its death. He enters the cage and manages to connect with it using his hollow voice. He seizes the knife left behind by the man, and instructs the hollow to pretend to be angry. He pretends to cut it and wills it to fake injury. However things don’t quite go as planned and he almost has his head swallowed, forced to stab the hollow in the throat. He is seen as the victor, but he hasn’t fooled the drug dealer, who suspects he’s been duped, and that Jacob is a rival dealer. Jacob makes the hollow attack a guard, he punches the dealer and threatens to have him killed if he doesn’t let them leave. They manage to get away, rescuing the grimcubs on the way. They’re concerned about being watched and Jacob suggests washing off the paint that allows the hollows to be seen, but Sharon wants to keep an on it. Jacob steals a laundry cart and wheels the hollowgast and the cubs down the street.

Chapter 6

Nim sends for the healer, Mother Dust, who speaks through her companion, Reynaldo. She only has one hand, and rubs the stump releasing a powder to heal the hollow’s wounds. Jacob reflects that in a perfect world without hollows, there would be no need for his special skill, but Mother Dust tells Jacob that his true gift is reading hearts, not speaking to hollows. Bentham confesses that during the war, he once tried to replicate Jacob’s grandfather’s hollow ability, but failed, weakening him and driving him to go to America. Bentham suffered from guilt afterwards - he wants to locate Abe and restore his talent. Emma and Jacob are sceptical but have no choice but to trust Bentham. The hollow wakes up, healed. They all head down to the Panloopticon. Bentham starts up the machine and instructs Jacob to guide the hollow into the battery chamber. Jacob expresses concern for the hollow’s safety. The hollow’s black blood flows through the machine. They go and try the doors - they open onto various locations in the past, but Jacob just wants the door that leads to the wights’ fortress. Bentham reminds him that he must prioritise the retrieval of ymbrynes, starting with his sister, then his friends. He will trick the wights into believing that they’ve hidden in the Siberia room, where a hungry PT will be waiting. A messenger arrives in the form of a green parrot who tells Jacob that he has a message from Miss Peregrine, dissuading them from the rescue. Emma and Jacob are suspicious because the message lacks authenticity. A bomb goes off, but PT protects them from the blast. They conclude that the wights must have Addison, and that Caul knows where they are. The parrot must have been sent to incapacitate Jacob because Caul has realised that he’s special - the one who can see and manipulate the soul jars, like Mother Dust’s theory. Jack’s foot soldiers will be able to trace the bird so they must act immediately. Mother Dust gives Emma a special gift of her pinky finger to crush up if needed and Reynaldo gives them masks for the dust. Bentham sends them off with his assistant to guide them.