Chopping Spree by Diane Mott Davidson

Chopping Spree is another installment in the Goldy the Caterer series. In this one, she is catering a meal for her college friend Barry Dean, who is subsequently murdered at the event. Among the suspects are Barry's fellow mall employees, his two girlfriends, and unfortunately, Goldy's assistant Julian. The cops think Julian is the killer and he's in jail--Goldy can't believe for a minute her trusted friend is guilty, so she starts snooping to try and figure out the real killer's identity.

Back in the mix are Goldy's best friend, Marla, her cop husband, Tom, and a bunch of obnoxious rich people that Goldy caters for throughout the book.

The mystery was solved in a pretty much out-of-nowhere way, but it made sense, just kind of Agatha Christie like in the "unfairness" to the reader.

I've been reading this series for three or four years now and I usually really enjoy the antics of Goldy. But this particular episode had a major flaw. Goldy's son, Arch, is now a teenager and he is totally disrespectful and rude to his mother. It is well-known to readers of these books that Goldy's ex-husband (Arch's dad) is a violent jerk who savagely beat Goldy before they were divorced. The fact that Goldy's son is so mean to her and has very little respect for her is upsetting. It is well known sociologically that women who have been abused once take abuse other times, it is also known that kids of abusers are bullies at times. But to me, Diane Mott Davidson, who has written so honestly about Goldy's experiences in her marriage and how she bravely got away from the ex, is dropping the ball here. To read about how Goldy lets her son treat her so badly is frustrating. And Goldy's new, sweet as sugar husband Tom is not very good at standing up for Goldy when Arch is nasty to her. Maybe the author is setting the stage for the next novel for the situation to come to a head, but the end indicated to me that maybe she isn't. Arch is sort of nice to Goldy twice near the end, so I'm not sure if the reader is supposed to be satisfied as Goldy was, with his behavior "change."

Hard Eight by Janet Evanovich

Wow, it is taking me longer and longer to read books lately. I keep thinking I'm going to hit a week where I blow through two or three books like the olden, pre-kid days, but then something always comes up--a night when I'm home alone and I plan to read the night away, one of my kids is a big cry baby about going to bed and it takes forever and by the time I'm done dealing with him or her, I'm exhausted and just flop on the couch and watch TV. But I did manage to read this 8th Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum book and it was terrific and fun!

I love her books, the parts about her Grandma Mazur and how she can't keep a car in one piece, it's hysterical. Bawdy and action packed is how I'd describe Plum books and they are a real treat.

In this one, a woman and her child are missing and Steph sets aside her usual bounty hunting to seek them out. As usual, she's helped by her buddies Ranger, the mysterious bounty hunter who is never short on cars, money, gadgets, or sexiness, and Morelli, her on-again-off-again fiance cop. I know it is common for women to like bad boys and go through that "phase" so the Ranger character is there to appeal to that instinct, but I've always been way too practical to like bad-asses, so I just say, I vote for Morelli!

Part of me wants to go check out the other 8 or so Plum books all at once, but I think the way that I space them out is better. I savor them more this way.

Stolen Innocence by Elisa Wall

This was the most incredible story. It is the autobiography of Elisa Wall, the young woman whose testimony put Warren Jeffs in prison. Elisa grew up in the FLDS, Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints--a polygamist cult.









She was forced at 14 to marry a 19 year old first cousin she didn't like and he raped her and abused her for 3 years until she met a young man who treated her right and helped her leave the cult and start a new life.









The story gives a vivid inside look at the community--the way the households with multiple wives function, the jealousies and politics going on in the family environment, the way some kids pit their mothers against each other or manipulate the father. It really is a no brainer that the set up of a family with more than one wife would be utterly chaotic emotionally--the human jealousy instinct has to be so strong, in spite of what any sister wife might tell you.









Elissa had tons of siblings of course, and 3 mothers. Then her mother was arbitrarily told by the prophet that she was no longer the wife of her first husband and sent to a totally different town to be married to a man with over a dozen wives. One of Elisa's sisters was married to Rulon Jeffs, a man in his 80s with 20 or so wives. AT age 18. The way women are treated in the FLDS is shocking and angering. They were told to "keep sweet" and put their troubles on a shelf at all times.









The part of the book outlining Elisa's marriage were particularly sad. She begged and pleaded to be excuses from her marriage at age 14. It was disgusting the way her stepfather, mother, and Warren Jeffs kept using their version of "God" to force her hand. Not to mention that the husband was a 19 year old cousin. Poor Elisa suffered 3 miscarriages and a still birth by age 17. Probably due to the fact that the close cousin relationship would indicate genetic difficulties resulting in the problem.






But Elisa's story has a happy ending. She met another young man who grew up in the cult who was also dissatisfied. They ran away together, got married, and have 2 healthy babies. Through the encouragement of older sisters who had already left the cult, Elisa reported her underage marriage and abuse and Warren Jeffs was arrested and convicted. He was sentenced to 2 5-life sentences, guaranteeing at least 10 years in prison, possibly more.



Sadly, Elisa's mother and two younger sisters remain in the FLDS at the time the book was published in 2008. Elisa and her older sisters put out missing persons reports on them, but their cult leaders simply surrounded them, took them to check in at the police station, and the police had to be satisfied with that legally. Elisa has also sued Jeffs, the church, and the UEF "church bank." If she wins the money, she will use it to help her foundation that helps other victimized young girls and women to escape the tyranny of the false prophets of the FLDS and help them be free.

Dr. Death by Jonathan Kellerman

The Alex Delaware mysteries by Jonathan Kellerman are some of my favorites. Alex is a child psychologist who lives with his girlfriend, Robin, who builds guitars and other stringed instruments. Alex's best friend, Milo, is a homicide detective for LAPD so Alex consults on cases with Milo when the criminal is especially mentally disturbed, or children are involved, etc.

In Dr. Death, Alex has a conflict of interest when Milo seeks his help. A doctor who offers people assisted suicide is found brutally murdered. Due to the violent nature of the crime, Milo thinks that Alex should help give a psychological profile of the killer. The suspect list includes the widowed husband of a woman who the doctor supposedly help commit suicide. Alex knows the family because after the mother's death, he treated the woman's daughter.

As Alex explores the family dynamic further, he knows there are darker secrets and the possibility that the murdered doctor didn't even help the mother die. There are three layers of mystery in this book--who killed the doctor, who helped the mother die, and what caused the mother's depression that lead to the suicide.

I thought this book was great, it had lots of twists and turns and the three mystery threads keep every chapter speeding along. The Alex Delaware mysteries are darker than a lot of my "fluff" series that I enjoy, and I like going into Kellerman's mind every so often and read the more grisly and intellectual mysteries.

My Life in France by Julia Child

So after reading Julie and Julia a few months ago, I had to read the other book that inspired the movie I loved, so I read Julia's account of how she got into cooking while living in France with her husband, Paul.

I love food and cooking and I think for some reason the idea of French food has always turned me off. Not in the snails and frog legs kind of turn off, but the idea that hoity toity people like French food and it's considered "classic" and so I didn't want to jump on that snooty bandwagon. But reading Julia's book, while French is a technical cuisine to prepare, it is really just another nationality of rustic, local tradition.

I enjoyed reading the tales of Julia and Paul finding their way in life as Americans stationed abroad in France and later Norway and Germany. It was the late 40s, early 50s, a time when Europe was rebuilding and the Marshall Plan was in place to boost Europe back after the war. Paul was in the diplomatic corps, but (IMO) a more fluffy job area helping with art, culture and basically propoganda projects. He was an artist and it suited him. Julia was bored so she went to culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu. After she started a cooking school with 2 friends and then they tackled the multi-year task of writing Julia's famous cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cuisine.

The parts about living in foreign countries and finding apartments and trying to make friends and the trips they took were great. So were the parts about cooking school. But writing about writing a cookbook got a touch boring after a point. I understand *why* writing the book took so long but argh, it was just pages and pages about how she had to test lots of recipes many times to figure out how American products would translate in the French cooking.

The book pretty much told the rest of Julia's life, even after she became well known and moved back to America and settled in Boston. There are short parts about the making of her TV show, but even though a TV show creation is more active than writing a cookbook, she goes into far less detail about that production. I wouldn't have minded hearing some of that minutae, since I'm sure the primitive TV production was quite a challenge at times for someone cooking live on camera.

This book is far superior to Julie Powell's, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. It makes me want to learn how to make a buerre blanc and crepes.

Prairie Tale by Melissa Gilbert

I am a junkie for a tell all book about a child star/former celeb. So I was jazzed when I saw that Half-Pint from Little House on the Prairie wrote a book.

LHOTP may have been a wholesome show, but Ms. Gilbert's life was nothing but. She was on drugs, slept around, went through divorce, tumultuous relationships, etc.

I am a huge fan of the LHOTP books, but I think the show is garbage in terms of faithfulness to the Ingalls novels. So I've never really liked the show as anything but mindless cheese. I think it is very interesting to read about the making of the show and how Michael Landon had a vicious temper and in spite of being famous for family TV shows and playing saintly characters on them, he was quick to scream at employees on set and left his wife and several children to be with his on -the-side girlfriend.

I thought the book was interesting as a life story goes. I wasn't a huge fan of Gilbert and her show to start with, so I wasn't let down by her tell-all book. What I mean is, I didn't have dislike for her before or after, but I didn't think she or the series or Landon were awesome, so hearing their flaws didn't bug me too much.

I think the biggest lesson from reading yet another child star Hollywood book is that they all have the same journey in a lot of ways--stage parents, drugs, too many lovers, and then they usually grow up, go to rehab, and find a good spouse. (Those of course are the happy endings.) I think sometimes kids in America think being a celebrity or an actor/performer is the be-all end all and something to strive for, but reading these types of autobiographies always makes me so glad I'm obscure.

Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear

I began reading the Maisie Dobbs series about 4 years ago. When I began, all I knew was that it was about a young woman detective in the 20's and 30's. With a name like Maisie, I had an impression before reading them, that it was going to be kind of a light, historical Nancy Drew-ish series.

Wow, was I in for a surprise. The Maisie Dobbs books are exquisite. They are mysteries, but they have many other layers that help them rise above that genre into the plain of simply great novels.

Maisie is not a fluffy blonde sleuth as I might have thought originally, but a brilliant psychologist and detective, a former nurse, and a woman who has suffered greatly in her life and risen above adversity in a way that is rare in her time period.

She is the daughter of "below stairs" types in England, a father who is a horse groom and a mother who was a maid. But the wealthy Lady that employed her parents saw a spark in the girl and sent her to a good school after Maisie's mother died. This lead Maisie to make friends in the upper echelons of society, as well as become more refined than her station might have allowed without the patronage of the wealthy friend.

After school, WWI broke out and Maisie served as a nurse in France. The horrors of war came too close at one point, nearly killing Maisie and her fiance, a doctor in the field hospital. Her fiance was left a shell of a man, unable to speak or take care of himself. He eventually passed away in a sanitarium in one of the volumes of the series.

So Maisie, trained by a Sherlock Holmes-like figure, a psychological detective Maurice Blanche. She worked as his apprentice and then began her own business when he retired.

Now that I've given a long background on this character, I am now brought to this newest installment in the series, Among the Mad. Maisie is called in on an important case, a man has threatened the government of England if money and assistance is not given to the WWI vets who are injured in mind and body and cannot find work. Working with Scotland Yard, Maisie follows all manner of leads to track down the madman who wants to unleash nerve gas on London if his demands are not met.

In addition to the general mystery story of finding the bad guy before it is too late, this book explores several interesting aspects of the era in London. Taking place in 1932 and into the New Year holiday of 1933, the Depression and issue of war vets with 'shell shock' are deeply examined. Maisie's psychology and nursing backgrounds lead her to several mental hospitals where former colleagues give her information about the mental injuries suffered by the WWI vets and how the horrors of the war affected them and continue to cause them problems over a decade later.

WWI is often the less written about war, because WWII had a much larger scope, a longer US involvement, and more tragic stories to tell. But WWI caused WWII and the war time trench conditions were very terrifying and horrid for the men who fought there for four long years. In the US, our men were only there about one year, and so we didn't have as many vets, or as many shell shocked victims as in England. The issues of WWI vets are a prevalent theme in the Dobbs series and I find it fascinating that it doesn't really matter what war it is, the horror of it is overall the same no matter what time period, or country of origin for the soldier.

There is also a plot thread in this book about Billy Beale, Maisie's loyal assistant. In a previous book, Billy's toddler daughter died of a childhood disease and in this book, Billy's wife, Doreen, still cannot cope with her grief. She finally becomes a danger to herself and must be put in an asylum. The first place she is sent is the stuff of horror stories, with medieval "treatments" that do more harm than good. Maisie is able to help Doreen get into a more modern facility, where talk therapy and more conventional methods are employed. But this plot adds a richness to the historical setting, showing how the 1930s were very much a time of transition in the field of mental health.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book as I always enjoy a Dobbs story, and I look forward to the next installment, hopefully soon!

Assault and Pepper by Tamar Myers

I've been reading Tamar Myers' Magdelena Yoder mysteries for about two years now (or is it 3?) and this one blew me away, mystery wise. I always enjoy these books, they're short, very witty, and Mags is a hilarious character to read about. She owns a lucrative inn in the PA town of Hernia, where the population tends to be either Amish, like Mags' ancestors or Mennonite, like Mags herself.

In this book, I would say that Myers really shook up the town of Hernia in a really big way. Normally the murder mysteries that occur are related to inn guests or other outsiders, so that the town characters themselves remain fairly unchanged. But in this book, Myers drastically changed the lives of four of the "regulars" in her books.

The mystery revolves around the murder of Mags' minister, Rev. Shrock. Magdelena always liked her Rev., although his wife Lodema was her nemesis. In this book, the Rev. is dead, Lodema goes off her rocker and is institutionalized, and the killer revealed was a huge surprise.

Unfortunately, my desire not to give the book away will lead to the fact that this review is suddenly cut a little short, since talking much about it will no doubt give it away to someone who likes Myers and hasn't read this one in the series yet.

Suffice it to say, I found the ending a big surprise, something that doesn't happen much in low key mystery series like this one. I don't always figure them out, but it usually isn't quite so shocking as this particular book. But yay for Tamar Myers! As I've said before, I like the series that go forward in time the best, and the deaths and arrests in this book will give some fresh blood and new plot lines to the series that should really shake things up and make it more interesting to read future volumes!

Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

Well.... I haven't written about this book yet even though I finished it a week ago, because I am not sure how I feel about it.

First let me say that I read the book AFTER I saw the movie. Very good thing. I adored the movie. It was 2 hours of bliss. I am glad I saw the movie first because I think I liked the book better than I would have had I not an image of Julie Powell via Nora Ephron's movie.

But this is a book blog, not a movie blog, so I'm just gonna get to the book. I love the idea. Julie Powell's cooking project is very interesting and fun to read about. But the rest of Julie? Not so much. She's kind of a big whiner. I think it is because she wanted to be an actress and ended up a secretary. She clearly believed herself better than her job. I understand that most people don't aspire to secretary-hood in their lives, but I just wonder why Julie thought she was SO awesome that she was having a life crises over the fact that she didn't like her job. She had her health, a nice husband who put up with her, income enough to buy all the stuff needed to make all Julia Childs' French food, friends, and family.

I know it is probably not fair to criticize a blogger/autobiographer for making something all about them, but somehow, Julie Powell did it in a very obnoxious way. I have read TONS of books by people writing about themselves, and Julie Powell did not succeed in the way others have. The best comic "blogger" style writing is self-deprecating. Take the late, Great Erma Bombeck. A really smart, clever woman, but she was always the butt of her own jokes in her books in a way that made you want to be her daughter, sister, next door neighbor, etc. Julie admits faults but at the same time seems to either not believe them or feel she's justified in them. I was pretty put off by her.

I know I may have readers of all political stripes here on this blog, so I am not in the business of making politics part of the discourse but I have to say one thing--Julie Powell, a self-avowed Democrat working for a government agency during the Bush administration, was very hateful and nasty toward Republicans. She made snide comments about the GOP as though it is common knowledge they have no style of dress, enjoy being mean or cruel, generally making them her personal punching bag on numerous occasions in the book. It's obviously a-OK for Powell to love her political views and think she's right, but I don't understand why a political ideal or view makes a person automatically horrible and unworthy of respect. I would be just as annoyed if she had been a Republican dissing Dems, it was a glaring example of Julie Powell's inherent unpleasantness. She even had an aunt in the book that she admitted to loving very much but STILL harped on the fact that aunt was a Republican as though that was like admitting that the aunt was also a criminal or something. Totally uncalled for and obnoxious. I guess given Powell's attitude, I should just assume she wouldn't want the likes of me reading her books, and therefore if I'm offended it's my own fault?

Whatever. Point is, I didn't like the book very much even though I was very excited to read it. The cooking passages were entertaining whenever she wasn't whining about something while writing about cooking.

I do, however, have Julia Child's memoir, My Life in France, on hold at the library and I dearly hope that it is NOT a disappointment.

Father's Day Murder by Leslie Meier

The Leslie Meier Lucy Stone mystery series is one of my all time favorite. Each title is holiday related, and this book obviously takes place around Father's Day.

Lucy Stone is a married mother of 4 in Tinker's Cove, Maine where she writes for the local newspaper. In this installment, Lucy's paper wins an award and she and her boss, Ted, win an all-expense paid trip to a week long convention in Boston. So Lucy packs off to go, leaving her kids and husband home to fend for themselves.

While at the conference, a man is murdered. The victim is the patriarch of a wealthy family that runs a newspaper syndicate. Lucy knows some of the family members because they vacation in Tinker's Cove, and her natural curiosity leads her to start researching the family and trying to solve the case.

The main reason I love Lucy Stone books is the mixture of the everyday middle class family interactions and the small town atmosphere with the mysteries on the side. This book was not quite as fun because she wasn't home during the majority of the story. But I did enjoy the descriptions of Lucy shopping at Filene's basement and visiting the Isabelle Stewart Gardiner museum while in Boston. I figured out the killer pretty easily, but I didn't mind, it was still a fun read.

Murder on Astor Place by Victoria Thompson

I'm so enthusiastic about this new series! Victoria Thompson has written a Gaslight series. the books take place in the 1890's in NYC. The main character is Sarah Decker Brandt, widow of a doctor and herself a midwife. She is from one of the 400--the NYC old money high society list of VIP families, but she's estranged from them and living on her own.

A young woman who lives in the boarding house where Sarah delivered her most recent baby is murdered and it turns out Sarah knows her from her former high society life. This leads Sarah to assist police detective Frank Malloy in unraveling the mystery of why a wealthy young woman from a good family is dead in a seedy boarding house.

The book was fast-paced and full of twists and turns. It was not light hearted--it was pretty dark and full of commentary on the social strata in that era of history in New York. Some of the dialogue was a bit heavy handed and cheesy but over all, the book was interesting and totally held my interest. I'm very much looking forward to the rest of this series.

Keepsake Crimes by Laura Childs

I've read nearly every book in Laura Childs' Tea Shop Mysteries series so I was interested to try her other series about scrapbooking. Normally I am not a scrapbooker, but I like books about shop owners, and their regulars and that type of thing, so I was sure I'd enjoy more of Laura Childs' writing.

I wasn't too disappointed. The Tea Shop books take place in Charleston, SC and there is a lot of that city and its high society lifestyle outlined in each book. The Scrapbooking series takes place in another great Southern city, New Orleans. The heroine is Carmela, a woman who is currently separated from her husband who is part of one of the city's "old money" families. Her husband, Shamus, has left her and his position at the family bank to find himself and live in the bayou taking photographs of nature. Carmela isn't happy about this, but she musters on, running her scrapbooking shop.

The mystery emerges during one of the Mardi Gras parades, when a notable member of the Pluvius krewe dies on one of the floats. He was poisoned, and the cops are interested in Shamus as a suspect. Even though she's annoyed at him for dumping her for his camera, Carmela is not ready to believe Shamus is a murderer, so she starts digging into the murder to clear his name.

The relationship between Shamus and Carmela isn't resolved, although it is clear that he still cares about her and she loves him. I hope that the author doesn't drag this out forever in the series!

Overall, the mystery was kind of silly, I guessed the murder motive in the first chapter after the guy was killed, but I liked the details about the city and the colorful New Orleans characters in the book.

A Catered Murder by Isis Crawford

Thus begins the reading of another new series about food and murder. This is about two sister, Libby and Bernie. Libby's a plump, down to earth soul who runs a shop "Little Taste of Heaven" and does catering in New Jersey. Bernie is her flashy sister who lands back in town after a bad break up with her LA boyfriend. Bernie is good with food, too, having jobs on her resume like food stylist, restaurant critic, and other related employment.

Bernie seems to be back in NJ for an extended stay, so she dives in, helping Libby with the shop and catering.

The sisters cater a high school reunion dinner honoring a local author who has a cult following for his romantic vampire novels. When the author is poisoned at the dinner, Libby is first a suspect, then her best friend. Libby and Bernie's father, Sean, is a retired cop and he guides the girls in some tips at solving the crime and clearing the names of the innocent.

Sean has some kind of disease, it isn't described by name, but he's in a wheel chair and it sounds like Parkinson's/Lou Gehrig's or something like that.

I loved the book. It's funny and extremely fast to read. There were about 9 recipes from the Vampire reunion dinner and lots of other good foodie moments. The mystery solving was fun as a team effort, too. Libby and Bernie worked together and separately, adding a dimension to the mystery formula that I liked. Also the "let's go talk to Dad" parts, where Sean dispensed advice and insight to his daughters was very like able, too. I'm definitely hooked on Isis Crawford's series and am looking forward to more of the sisters' sleuthing!

Next on deck: the first in a new series by the author of the Tea Shop Mysteries.

The Chocolate Bridal Bash by Joanna Carl

The Chocoholic Mysteries series is one I began reading right after my son was born, so over 2 years on this very cute series.

It is about a woman, Lee McKinney who lives in a resort town on Lake Michigan and works as an accountant for her aunt's Chocolade, or chocolate shop. There her aunt uses classic Dutch techniques to create wonderful chocolates for customers and mail order clients.

In past books, Lee began a relationship with a man in town and in this book, she's about to marry him. But her mother is being oddly reluctant to return to the small resort town, even though it is her only daughter's wedding.

It turns out that when Lee's mother was just out of high school she ran away from town on what should have been her wedding day, never to return. The groom in question was found dead of an apparent suicide that same time and Lee's mom never looked back.

Clues indicate that her mother's groom wasn't a suicide at all, leading Lee and her fiance to hunt down the truth so that her mother can feel comfortable in Warner Pier and their wedding can be a happy occasion.

I like three main things about this volume in the Chocolate series.

a) Lee got married. I like it when books continue on in chronological time in a reasonable way--I don't like it when romances in these books are all Nancy Drew/Ned Nickerson--nobody ages, and nobody commits. I don't even care that much if couples break up and get back together a few times before living happily ever after, but just don't have stagnant beaus that don't go anywhere.

b) the focus of the mystery didn't have anything to do with the actual wedding. I love a good "closed set" mystery or small town mystery where the hero or heroine stumbles upon a dead body and solves the crime. But I would find it very upsetting and incredibly unbelievable if there were murder involving Lee's wedding and she was able to put aside grief or stress and solve a crime and blissfully marry on the last page of the book. Good on Joanna Carl for coming up with a wedding related mystery without compromising the main character's happiness.

c) the book takes place in spring and there was a chocolate mold used by the chocolatiers that I loved the description of--bunnies playing jazz instruments! How cute would that be to put in an Easter Basket?

Next on the list: another new series w/recipes I've never dipped into before!

A Farewell to Yarns by Jill Churchill

This Jane Jeffry series is new to me. A friend recommended this one to me, or it was on one of those "if you like _ you'll like _" lists. Either way, I was pleased to add a new author to my rotation. Jill Churchill has two series, and this is my first Jill C. book to read.

A Farewell to Yarns is the second in the Jane Jeffry series, our library didn't have the first one. Jane is a widowed single mother of 3. In this book, she is working on a church bazaar Christmas sale with her friend and carpooling and other domestic things.

Her friend Phyllis who Jane hasn't seen in almost 20 years appears in town for a visit, her long-lost son Bobby in tow. Phyllis is found murdered shortly after, and Jane helps her cop friend Mel solve the murder.

The book was super short and cute. I liked it. I loved the realistic nature--Jane's a normal woman. She loves her kids, hates to do housework, is active in her church, but also lets the occasional cuss word fly. Totally like able, not a "Mary Sue" who is perfect and therefore pretty annoying.

I am very much a new Jane Jeffry fan and am looking forward to reading more books about her. She's got a crush on Mel, and I think Mel returns the favor. That did remind me a bit of Goldy Bear and her cop husband Tom, but that's OK, it's a natural segue way for an amateur sleuth character to have contact with mysteries if they're not with a cop or lawyer or something.

Next on deck, another episode in the Chocoholic series by Joanna Carl!

Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy

Maeve B. has been one of my favorite authors for almost 20 years. My mom discovered her when I was in jr. high or h.s. and she read aloud on a family road trip Binchy's book Firefly Summer. After I went and got the book myself and read it, and then every other Binchy in the library. I remember when Oprah's book club picked Binchy's book, Tara Road, I was so annoyed because suddenly my sweet Irish novelist was an OPRAH LADY.

But I digress...

I normally like straight novels mostly but I will devour any short story collection written by Binchy. She has a knack for making great story collections that surround one common theme. They're almost novels, but just with break away episodes. This one, Whitethorn Woods is about a little town in modern-day Ireland where there's a St. Ann shrine and wishing well in some woods outside the town. The local priest Father Flynn doesn't really believe in the shrine's 'powers' and it kind of annoys him that the people go so willingly to the wishing well to ask St. Ann for things but they don't go to church on Sunday. But he visits the shrine at the beginning of the book and prays to hear the needs of the people there.

Thus we get this fantastic story where we hear the stories of different people who either visited the well themselves or someone in their family did. The cool thing is, the stories are little couplets--two POV's of the same situation. Then on to the next. Of course there are still mentions of the town and the priest and other little connections from one story to the next as well. What you end up with is an interwoven tale of people's deepest secrets and hopes--many being answered. There are a couple darker stories, but 85% or more of them are happy endings or "it all worked out" type of scenarios.

This book was a sheer pleasure to read, and I'm so happy Maeve Binchy is still writing her books and bringing such rich people to life on her pages.

Shoots to Kill by Kate Collins

This is the 7th or 8th book in the series about Abby, a young law school drop out who runs a flower shop. She is dating a handsome guy who owns a restaurant and is a PI on the side. She has helped solve several murders in town.

Sometimes the Flower Shop books are lame, some are good. This one was in the middle. The plot of this one is how a young woman, Libby, returns home to Abby's town after being away at college. Abby once babysat for Libby, and Libby's a little....off.

Libby comes to town and basically tries to mimic Abby's life, she dyes her hair and copies Abby's haircut. She opens a shop with a very similar name and same decorative scheme across the street from Abby's, and even buys a matching car. Abby is livid and says Libby's up to no good, but of course, nobody, not even Marco the boyfriend, believes Abby's warnings.

Due to the whole "Single White Female" scenario, I found the first 80 pages of this book stressful. I didn't like it that Marco and Abby were fighting and nobody believed Abby about Libby. But once Abby is falsely arrested for the murder of Libby's mother, well, then everybody turned around and then they got down to business finding the mother's real killer and the book vastly improved.

When I read the first couple of these Flower Shop books, I was a little bored but now I enjoy seeing what Abby's up to, I like the two women characters who work in Abby's flower store with her, and there is a funny side plot about how Abby's mother makes odd art and craft projects and enthusiastically tries to get Abby to display and sell them in her shop.

I would like it if Abby and Marco's romance would move forward in some way, though. I don't care if they get engaged, married, move in together, have triplets, or a love triangle starts with a new guy, but it is getting boring with the current status.

Next Up: a book by one of my favorite non-mystery authors! I am insanely busy with VBS at church every night this week, plus staying up late with Mr. Bookworm on his work nights means that my reading time has been vastly reduced lately, but next week I hope to resume a more normal speed.

re: The questions

I actually googled "handle bar mustache detective with siamese cats" and found out that the series is Lillian Jackson Braun's "The Cat Who..." series.

The other books are by Jeanne M. Dams. The lead character is Hilda Swenson, a scandanavian maid in the 20's in South Bend, Indiana. Ms. Dams also has a series about a retired schoolteacher who moved to England.

Happily, our library carries all three of these series, so they're all on my list now!

Question for my Readers

There are two mystery series that I cannot for the life of me remember the titles/authors for--so i'm hoping maybe somebody here has read them and can give me a hand??

1. I read 1 of these--it was about a "below stairs" maid at the turn of the 19th-to-20th Century era. She would solve mysteries on her days off or something. They were quirky and short and I'm trying to find them again.

2. The other series was about a guy with a handlebar mustache and siamese cats. He lived in a lake resort town in the Great Lakes and had inherited a lot of money and so he lived in the chi-chi lake town and solved crimes. His cats "helped" by giving him ideas or signs like walking across newspapers, things like that.

If any of you know these books, let me know!! I'll be looking in other sources as well, so I'll post if I can find them!

The Covenant by Beverly Lewis

So it looks like the Amish book won out over the Flower Shop book in terms of which one I finished first.

I have tons of friends who read every book Ms. Lewis publishes, and I am intrigued by the Amish culture like a lot of people, so I gave this one a try. I have also read the first in another of her Amish series. This book is the first in the "Abram's Daughters" series.

Bookwise, this is a decent read. Not setting my soul afire or anything, though. It's kind of like a grown up Christian Sweet Valley High kind of thing. I could see the plot items coming a mile or two away, which was a touch annoying. Like the fact that the mother is pregnant--but she doesn't "get it" right away. She's had 4 kids. I don't buy not recognizing pregnancy. And the fact that her teen aged daughter is also pregnant--um, you both have the EXACT SAME SYMPTOMS and when it finally dawns on Mama that she's in the family way, why the heck didn't she turn to her daughter who's been sneaking out every night during Rumspringche (or however you spell it) and say, hmmm...wonder if she's also knocked up?

I guess I'll keep reading these, they're a little break from mysteries and sometimes I like that. I blew through pages 80-320 in about 2 hours minutes, it is not a real brain teaser. Definitely one-sitting books.

I will add the caveat that my personal opinions about the Amish are very strong--I don't like them. I think they're really screwed up from their theology on down to the way they treat their families. They're a glorified cult, if you ask me. The way they won't let kids be educated past 8th grade, the way that women are treated is appalling, and the fact they're discouraged from personal relationships with Jesus are all way wrong in my book. So I don't find their culture charming or romantic in spite of the nifty clothes and back to nature ways. I mean, I love the movie Witness as much as the next person, but over all, the Amish are pretty close-minded, intolerant, and cold hearted folks with the shunning and the hateful way they just slam the door on family members.

So I read the Amish books with a very different POV than some of the friends I know that like them. I do think that Lewis is honest about their lifestyle and mores, though. I didn't feel she pushed the Anabaptist life as ideal, she's just setting her story in their culture. So I see part of the conflict in these stories coming from the way the society is structured and I think that Lewis is doing the same, but I can't be totally sure. At any rate, she certainly isn't trying to convince her reader that Amish life is normal or sunshine and daisies 24-7. There is a heavy darkness that I get a feeling for when I read these books--that is a world that is super hard to function within.

The Thin Woman by Dorothy Cannell

This is the first in a series recommended to me by my friend Julie (shout out to Julie!!).

The mystery is not super fore-front here. I mean, there are mysterious happenings and whatnot, but it wasn't a cut and dried murder who-done-it.

But it was hilarious and cute and totally awesome so yay! New good series to read!

The story takes place in England where a woman named Ellie who is overweight and single decides to hire a man from Eligible Escorts to accompany her to a family reunion weekend. They pretend he's her fiance to make her feel better about her judgy relatives, and they end up in her uncle's will, living together for 6 months while she's required to lose 60 lbs and he has to write a book if they want to share an inheritance. I feel like I can't really say too much more without giving away too much more of the story in case anyone who reads this wants to read the book. It isn't complicated, so if I tell much, I tell it all!

It is obviously far-fetched that a this would all occur, but I loved it anyway. Ben, Ellie's faux fiance, is into her even before she gets skinny, and it's fun to watch for Ellie to miss that boat completely for a while until the light bulb goes off in her head.

I felt like this book was a little Bridget Jones-ish in a good way. Ellie's series is also going on my awesome list because it has nothing tense or depressing--everything is just easy. Nothing stressful like money troubles or too much conflict. Just a happy, funny, silly plot that made me chuckle and smile while I read it. I needed this book as it coincided with a very stressful, exhausting week in my real life. The Thin Woman is precisely what a book should be--an escape!

I am currently reading 2 different books, so I'm not sure which will get finished first and onto this blog...stay tuned to see if you hear about Amish people or flower shops next?

Mint Julep Murder by Carolyn Hart

Wow, I completely loved this book! I've read 6 or 7 in this Death on Demand series and some of them have been a touch dull, or at least left me a little bored. But this one was so good!

The series is about Annie Darling, a young woman who owns a book shop on a resort Island in South Carolina. She's married to the dashing, wealthy, handsome Max, who is a bit of a dilettante but he worships his Annie and is smart as a whip when it comes to helping her solve mysteries. The series regulars include Max's loopy mother, Laurel, and various customers who frequent Annie's shop.

Annie's shop, also called Death on Demand, is a mystery bookstore. She only sells mysteries, then she gets into mystery-related situations and somebody dies, etc. etc. You know the formula by now, right?

So in Mint Julep Murder, Annie is at a Southern Writer's conference in Hilton Head, where she's tasked with being an author liaison for five writers set to receive awards at the event. A publisher also in attendance says he's going to write a tell-all book about the 5 famous writers and, surprise! Someone poisons him at his own cocktail party.

This mystery was straight out of Agatha Christie in style and deftness. The 'closed set' if you will, the obvious list of suspects with good motive, the poison, and good back stories on all the suspects. It was great and even had a classic 'gather-everyone-in-a-room-and-talk-through-the-murder-till-you-point-a-finger-at-the-killer' ending. It seems most of the mysteries I've been reading in the past year or so tend to be the small town setting, which is fun, but the old fashioned weekend house party style of story was a welcome change.

Another great thing about the Hart series is that she mentions dozens of other mystery writers throughout her books. She name-drops famous literary detectives and authors numerous times throughout, making for a very fun way to beef up the old library list, at the same time!

As an aside, I finally got a good explanation of why I love mysteries so much, in case anyone ever asks me. A character in the book said that she wrote mysteries because they are a magnification of what happens when you let evil into yourself. She said that everyone in real life has fractured relationships and difficult people in their lives, but when you let evil in, you are allow yourself to hurt those people. Murder mysteries take that evil to the extreme end--the idea that these motives and reasons for killing someone come from a difficult relationship infused with evil. Mysteries aren't just about the clues and sleuthing, they're about justice and righting wrongs. Just as a reader can absorb a mystery novel and understand that hate and discontent and greed can lead the human nature to murder, he or she also has a passion for the who-done-it, the handcuffs clicking around the culprit's wrists. So mystery novels, whether the tame Nancy Drew or the grisly James Patterson, are all morality plays with a heart for justice.

Swimsuit by James Patterson

I have read literally every book this guy has published, except 3. 2 are those kids with wings series that don't make a lick of sense to me and the other is a recent one of his called Sail I think, which just annoyed and bored me so much I quit reading. In the past few years, I would say James Patterson has sharply declined in the quality of his books. His strongest, the Alex Cross and Women's Murder Club series, are getting lame and a lot of the stand-alones have started to feel like they were written on a long weekend with the TV on in the background.

There have been 3 I really enjoyed, one stand-alone called Beach Road and the first two in a new series about a widowed NYC cop with 10 adopted kids, Step on a Crack and Run for Your Life.

This all leads up to me having very low expectations for Swimsuit. The first half of the book was a very pleasant surprise because I liked it. It is a faced paced grisly thriller about a serial killer who is paid by a group of sick, twisted international millionaire perverts to make elaborate snuff films of his killings. The latest victim is a Midwestern pre-med student in Hawaii doing a magazine photo shoot. A former cop turned crime reporter from LA goes to Hawaii to cover the story and befriends the girl's parents. The portion of the book in Hawaii is really tense and tight and well-written. The pain of the parents is intense and heart breaking. Then the story moves from Hawaii to LA where the crazy killer shows up at the reporter's door demanding that the reporter tell the killer's story. He wants the reporter to write a best-seller documenting his horrific crime spree. Obviously such a cold blooded psycho is going to be done with this writer eventually and that's where the book falls apart.

The reporter is suddenly an action hero, chasing the killer around Europe, tracking down the perverts in the millionaire's club, and it got stupid, fast. I finished it because I had enjoyed the first part enough to want to know how it turned out, but the ending was almost a fantasy that didn't agree well with the original tone and texture of the story's beginning.

I hope Patterson shapes up soon, I might have to give up on him except for the Bennett series in the future. I read on his website that he's got 2 Alex Cross's coming up before the end of the year, plus a non-fiction thriller about King Tut, and a book called Witch and Wizard in December. That one intrigues me--I don't normally dig the supernatural genres, but in both this book and the most recent Women's Murder Club that came out earlier in the summer, there were some chapters of Witch and Wizard in the back. I read them and the preceding page said that "this is the book I was born to write." Hmm...I might have to read that one to see what all the drama is about!

As for what is next on the Book Geek's pile, let's just say I have 8 library books checked out and I'm 100 pages into the first of those and it is so fun I'm going to go read till my eyes won't stay open another second!

Alpine Advocate by Mary Daheim

This is the first book in the Alpine series about small town newspaper publisher Emma Lord. Mary Daheim also writes the Bed and Breakfast Murder Mystery series and I've read about 9 of those. The B&B books are kind of hit or miss for me--sometimes I love them and other times I just kind of slog through. This is actually the series Daheim wrote first, so my OCD way of reading things in order was a little messed up as far as publishing dates go!

These Alpine books take place in a tiny logging town near Seattle and the first book is about a murder in the local moneyed family. The mystery itself was pretty lame, I saw the motive for the murder after about 45 pages but nobody else figured that out in the book till the end. The killer was less obvious, in fact kind of popped out of nowhere, but it was a little frustrating to see the allegedly smart people missing the point so much. It was very heavy handed in the foreshadowing for the reader to notice that big clue, but stupid that nobody in the story was hit over the head with that same plot hammer!

I will keep reading this series though, because in my experience, in most series like these smaller, laid back niche mystery series, the first book always kind of stinks. They have too much back story to get to and too much groundwork for the town and lead characters so that the mystery part is pretty dumb.

Plus, I find it very relaxing to read these light "Murder She Wrote" type book series. They're always pleasant, have quirky townspeople, fun settings, and I like them for speedy bedtime reading. In this blog you'll see more Alpine, B&B, Tea Shop, Knitting, Needlework, Chocoholic, and numerous other series pop up quite often. Cause that's how I roll.

Stay tuned for: the new James Patterson book, Swimsuit...

2 Top Ten Lists

I think that a good way to introduce myself as a reader is to list my top 10 favorite books of all time. When thinking about this list I realized that I had really 2 categories that would apply--books for adults and books for children/young adults. I think that loving all these books, all but 3 read before I was out of high school, and most read multiple times, is a standard to which I judge most other books I read in some fashion or another. I know that no fluff mystery will hold up to the Baskervilles or the Orient Express and no Western tale is as profoundly beautiful as Lonesome Dove, but there are sparks and elements in each of these favorites that can be found in a lot of what I read day to day.



So, without further ado....



Kid/YA books: (in no particular order)



A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Anne's House of Dreams by LM Montgomery

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson

Autumn Street by Lois Lowry

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself by Judy Blume

Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg

The Trumpet of the Swan by EB White

Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder



Adult books (again in no order):



The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk

At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

The Last Convertible by Anton Myrer

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

The Crazyladies of Pearl Street by Trevanian

This book appealed to me initially because it reminded me of my all time top 10 faves of life--A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. This book takes place in the 30's and 40's in a tenement slum in Albany, NY. The narrator is Jean-Luc, a boy who is 8 at the beginning and 16 at the end. He lives with his mother and younger sister in this slum. His father is a con artist who ditched the family there and the mother has some kind of lung illness so that whenever she works she gets really sick if she overdoes it. So Jean-Luc takes care of the family by supplementing the welfare checks with whatever money he can earn doing odd jobs.

The first 1/3 of this book, I really loved it, the 2nd 1/3 I thought was OK, by the end I was really annoyed and just wanted it to be over.

I am not a fan of what I term "depressing" books--I do not enjoy stories of hardship and poverty and personal disaster. I get nervous feelings in my stomach reading about people who are broke or lose jobs or drink away paychecks. I don't find them inspiring if they turn out semi-OK in the end, because getting there is just too painful. The major exception to this rule is my adoration of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn because there is a spark in Francie Nolan that made me always think that she was going to get out just fine. And that book has a more happy ending than most, too. But this Pearl Street book was just too much sadness and woe at the end. The first half showed a lot of the pluck and making do stories of poverty that were kind of funny or upbeat. But then as Jean-Luc got older and his mother got more desperate, things got more depressing. Plus the mother is kind of a jerk, and he put up with WAY more than I wanted to read about in terms of her being really unkind and ungrateful toward him and others who tried to help her or her kids.

As for this one-named author, Trevanian...I'm not sure who the heck he is. I looked him up online and Trevanian is a pen name for some other guy and the jacket bio thing says Trevanian lives in the Basque country of Spain. But the bio online about the real man who wrote this book (he recently passed away) made no mention of his living abroad. But in this Pearl Street book, the Jean-Luc character reflects this entire story from the adult memory point of view and that adult lives in Europe at the end of the book--so is this a fiction within fiction kind of thing? Like, the author made up a writer named Trevanian, then he made up a life story for Trevanian to use in writing an autobiographical novel? In some ways, that's really cool but in other ways it makes my head spin just a tad. Probably because of my propensity to think too hard??

At any rate, this book had its moments, the literacy of it was fantastic--the vocabulary was really amazing and intelligent and that was a pleasure to read. But the overall feeling I had when I closed it was negative and depressing, so it didn't leave me feeling like I liked the book, even though if you had asked me the day I started it, I'd have said it was good.

C'est la vie, on to the next novel!!

Fer De Lance by Rex Stout

This is the most recent book I finished, Fer De Lance by Rex Stout. This is the first in the series of detective novels about the eccentric recluse PI, Nero Wolfe. Set in the 1930's, it pretty much follows the detective story template begun by Edgar Allen Poe with his masterful Murders at the Rue Morgue and perfected by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his Holmes canon.

The template used here is the first person account of the mystery told in the eyes of the brilliant detective's sidekick. In this case, it is Archie Goodwin, Nero's right hand man and personal errand boy. Wolfe is a hermit and he never leaves his house. He's a corpulent semi-drunk who keeps an obsessive schedule, is not shy about his genius levels, and he lets Archie do all his leg work on cases.

This first Wolfe novel is about the case of a man who is killed by a poisoned dart rigged to shoot out of the end of a golf club. The title refers to the type of snake venom employed in this murderous plot. The character of Nero Wolfe is softened somewhat by the admiring terms used by Archie--would a book in the first person by someone as arrogant and insufferable as Wolfe be appealing? Or would a 3rd person account also make Wolfe more unappealing? I think the note of the sidekick POV keeps the detective and his foibles in check.

I'm a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes and I love the extra tidbits in the lore of Holmesian speculation. One thing I've read in more than one place is that Nero Wolfe is sometimes considered to be the illegitimate son of Sherlock Holmes. I like that idea--Wolfe is in 1930's NY so the time line works out fairly well, and it sure would account for Wolfe's addictive personality and general superiority complex.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I'll be hitting this series up again soon.