Category Archives: Books

Five Stars for A Hostage To Heritage

Posted on by July 19, 2015
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7-20 Adair coverI can’t believe I haven’t already pro­filed this book on my Mon­day book blog. It’s one of my very favorites—not only mys­tery, but his­to­ry as well! My com­ments from Ama­zon and Goodreads fol­low.

Suzanne Adair has pre­sent­ed the read­ing pub­lic with anoth­er excel­lent his­toric mys­tery adven­ture. This book is Michael Stoddard’s sto­ry. He’s a British offi­cer in Amer­i­ca at the time of our Rev­o­lu­tion. The ear­li­er books in this series tell the sto­ries of Amer­i­cans dur­ing that time, and a few of the char­ac­ters appear in all of the books. They, and this one as well, show the con­flict­ing loy­al­ties of peo­ple in our past, includ­ing the Eng­lish Michael. Besides that, there’s the main sto­ry of a miss­ing young boy and how Michael and his sec­ond in com­mand worked toward find­ing the boy while also fol­low­ing their com­mand­ing officer’s orders. I won’t say more, don’t want to ruin the sto­ry for any­one.

High­ly rec­om­mend­ed to lovers of his­to­ry, and mys­tery. This book sat­is­fies on every lev­el! It’s a mys­tery with great char­ac­ters, sol­id his­to­ry, sus­pense, and emo­tion. It’s his­tor­i­cal fic­tion with reveal­ing atti­tudes and war-time dan­ger. It’s a char­ac­ter study with “real” fic­tion­al peo­ple who had a past and will have a future. It’s roman­tic sus­pense with antic­i­pa­tion. And final­ly, it’s emo­tion trans­ferred from words on paper (or, in my case, on Kin­dle) to the read­er.

I’ll send you to Suzanne’s Ama­zon page where all her books are list­ed (mys­ter­ies of our Rev­o­lu­tion in the South­ern states) and Suzanne’s web­site and blog. Her blog hosts guest authors with a wide vari­ety of books, often includ­ing give­aways. (Always inter­est­ing.) 

A Scottish Connection

Posted on by July 12, 2015
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US Womens Golf Leaders

US Wom­ens Golf Lead­ers

Our local news is all about the US Women’s Open golf tour­na­ment at the Lan­cast­er Coun­try Club—just a hop, skip, and jump away from my home. I real­ly should hon­or that by pro­fil­ing a golf­ing mys­tery that I’ve read. Except—I haven’t read any golf­ing mys­ter­ies. So, what’s my next best idea? Hmmm.

Golf, an ancient game, orig­i­nat­ed in Scot­land, right? And—I do have a book in my favorites file called, ta, da…What Hap­pens In Scot­land. No golf any­where. Not even a mys­tery. An his­toric romance, almost a bodice rip­per. So not what I usu­al­ly like. But, I read this book with great plea­sure.

7-13 What Happens coverHere is my five star review of What Hap­pens In Scot­land: “I absolute­ly had to get this book after I read a page or two. What’s not to pull a read­er in? Lady Geor­gette find­ing her­self, a respectable young wid­ow, in bed with a stranger. Although this is his­toric romance, there is def­i­nite­ly an air of mys­tery. Who is the bound­er? How did the lady find her­self in the sit­u­a­tion, where were her clothes, and why was there bro­ken glass all over the floor?

You’ve got to admit, with a begin­ning like that, where can the sto­ry go? I tell you, it improves! Not only is the action rol­lick­ing and filled with per­il, the unex­pect­ed twists and turns keeps a read­er up until the wee hours. I fin­ished this in record time, and wished it had been longer.

Okay, my review doesn’t tell you much. I’ll include the offi­cial blurb.

Jen­nifer McQuiston’s debut his­tor­i­cal romance, What Hap­pens in Scot­land, is a live­ly, roman­tic adven­ture about a wed­ding that nei­ther the bride or the groom remem­bers.

Lady Geor­gette Thorold has always been wary of mar­riage, so when she wakes up next to an attrac­tive Scots­man with a wed­ding ring on her fin­ger, it’s easy to under­stand why she pan­ics and flees. Con­vinced that Geor­gette is a thief, her maybe hus­band, James McKen­zie, search­es for her. As both try to recall what hap­pened that fate­ful night, they begin to real­ize that their attrac­tion and desire for each oth­er is unde­ni­able. But is it enough?
There are hid­den caves and mid­night horse rides, if I remem­ber cor­rect­ly, but nary a golf club in sight.

The Monday Book Blog

Posted on by July 1, 2015
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Hidden Body 4I’m not here—I wrote this last week. (Hey, a gal has to take time off once in a while.) Actu­al­ly, oth­er than a few days over the 4th of July, oh, and fam­i­ly vis­it­ing the end of July, I’ll be at Camp NaNoW­riMo. (That’s a fic­tion­al camp, quite prop­er for one who writes fic­tion.) I hope to fin­ish writ­ing a short sto­ry (that may become a novel­la if I don’t watch out). I call it Hid­den Body, and my big plans are to include it in a book of short sto­ries called—ta da— Hid­den Body and Oth­er Short Sto­ries. I even made up a cov­er. This may not be the cov­er I even­tu­al­ly use. But, would you buy a book that looked like that? Let’s say, would you down­load a free book that looked like that? (I hope to make it free.)

My sec­ond project for the month is to com­plete edit­ing For­got­ten Body.

Five Stars For Mr. Monk

Posted on by June 28, 2015
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I loved the TV show—now long gone. It ran from 2002 through 2009. The books with orig­i­nal sto­ries by Lee Gold­berg kept on going after the Monk show ran its course. Then Lee Gold­berg stopped writ­ing them after quite a few, and Hy Con­rad took over. I may have just read the final book of the series, since Mr. Conrad’s fourth book, Mr. Monk and The New Lieu­tenant, is his last one. He hopes some­one else will con­tin­ue, but when that one was pub­lished this year (2015) no one had yet stepped up.

So, here are my reviews of two of my favorite books—Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out by Lee Gold­berg, and Mr. Monk and The New Lieu­tenant by Hy Con­rad.

6-29 Mr Monk 1

6-29 Mr Monk 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My five-star review of the first was short: “I was a big fan of the Monk TV series, and I’m a big fan of Lee Goldberg’s Monk mys­tery series. This book is a neat com­bi­na­tion of Monk, his pho­bias, and up-to-the-minute cur­rent events! And you can just guess Monk’s thoughts about that dog with those irreg­u­lar mark­ings.”

I’ve just fin­ished read­ing the sec­ond book, and it deserves five stars as well. “Mr. Monk does not like Cap­tain Stottlemeyer’s new lieu­tenant. He’s new, for one thing. (Of course, the feel­ing is mutu­al.) How­ev­er, he and Natal­ie try their best. They now have their own detec­tive agency with lit­tle busi­ness. Natal­ie takes on a divorce case (with­out Mr. Monk’s knowl­edge, and def­i­nite­ly against his approval). Then there’s the mur­der case that wasn’t—until Monk declared at a man’s funer­al that he had been mur­dered. Now they are try­ing to save the Cap­tain with the same symp­toms while track­ing down a miss­ing client. Monk con­vinces Randy Dish­er to return. With all this going on, it isn’t only Monk’s OCD that con­fus­es every­one. This time Stottlemeyer’s life depends on Monk’s suc­cess.”

Both authors worked on the Monk TV show. Lee Gold­berg con­tributed to some shows and worked on dif­fer­ent series as well. Hy Con­rad was with the Monk show the whole time. Both authors give the read­er the authen­tic “Monk” voice. Gold­berg tends to give him more prob­lems with his mul­ti­ple pho­bias and per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­ders. Con­rad, writ­ing the sto­ries as Monk begins to improve (slight­ly) still shows them, but they are pos­si­bly a bit more mut­ed. (One reader’s opin­ion here.) Both authors present a humor­ous as well as nice­ly con­vo­lut­ed sus­pense­ful sto­ry.

I do hope this isn’t the last Monk sto­ry.

Five Stars For Scout And Ant Farm

Posted on by June 22, 2015
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Okay, that title is con­fus­ing, right? Total­ly does not make sense.

6-22 Ant Farm coverLet’s start over. My five-star book today is Ant Farm, a mys­tery that was, only this past week, pub­lished by the Kin­dle Scout pro­gram. The Scout pro­gram is rather new to Ama­zon. It’s a win-win for both writ­ers and read­ers. The writer who enters his or her book sub­mits a com­plete man­u­script and a cov­er design. The books accept­ed into the pro­gram are then pre­sent­ed to the voting/reading pub­lic with the cov­er illus­tra­tion and the nov­el begin­ning. Both Ama­zon and the author then await the vot­ing, or, as they call it, the nom­i­na­tions.

Vot­ing, you ask? What is this? Who votes? Or, nom­i­na­tions? How and why?

That’s where the read­er comes in. You read the offer­ings in a vari­ety of cat­e­gories. Let’s say that you find one begin­ning that makes you say to your­self, “Oh, I’d love to read that book!” Just click the link to nom­i­nate the book. (That’s the vot­ing.) Then sit back and wait for the best part—the e-mail from Ama­zon telling you if the book has been cho­sen for pub­li­ca­tion. If it has? You get an advance copy of the e-book, all for free. Of course, they hope you’ll review it.

The win for the author? Pub­li­ca­tion with an advance, a con­tract, and more author­i­ty than self-pub­li­ca­tion. For, after all, Ama­zon hopes to come out ahead as well.

I’ve nom­i­nat­ed four books so far. The first didn’t make it. The sec­ond was Ant Farm. I received my copy long enough before the offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion to allow me to read the book. Loved it. This is what I had to say about it:

“This is a Kin­dle Scout book, and, as one who vot­ed for it, I got a free copy before pub­li­ca­tion. And, I’m sooo glad. This is a thriller, but, I’d say, also a more tra­di­tion­al mys­tery, as it is a puz­zle as well. The puz­zle part is the plot, as nuanced and devi­ous as any read­er could hope for. The thriller part is the impend­ing dan­ger involved for the hero, his son, and assort­ed oth­er char­ac­ters (not to men­tion the vic­tims). The char­ac­ters are a mix of lik­able and some you real­ly hope see their come­up­pance. Of course, first impres­sions can be deceiv­ing. Anoth­er thing—the sur­pris­es nev­er stop! (Be warned.)”

I’ve nom­i­nat­ed two oth­er books as well. The third was accept­ed, so I’m wait­ing for that free book. The fourth is still await­ing the end of the 30-day nom­i­nat­ing peri­od. (A read­er is allowed a total of three books at a time, so I can go back to look for two more.) This is the link to the Kin­dle Scout pro­gram for both read­ers and writ­ers. And, in case you want to read this five-star book, here’s the link for Ant Farm.

 

Five Stars for A SUMMER IN EUROPE

Posted on by June 7, 2015
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A Summer in Europe

A Sum­mer in Europe

It’s been three years since I read this book, but I remem­ber it fond­ly, so obvi­ous­ly, it was mem­o­rable. At the time I reviewed it this way:

“This is a sim­ple sto­ry told in a won­der­ful and com­plex style. It’s long, but there isn’t an extra word any­where. The author, Mar­i­lyn Brant, leads the read­er in a jour­ney through Europe with Gwen­dolyn Reese and a group of Amer­i­can and British tourists. You know how you see descrip­tion of tourist spots and your eyes tend to jump, or glaze over? NOT in this book, because each descrip­tion is so ingrained with emo­tions that the very street (or canal) becomes an inte­gral piece of the sto­ry. Now, that’s writ­ing tal­ent! At the bot­tom, it’s a romance, but also a ‘com­ing-of-age’ (at thir­ty!). And def­i­nite­ly a sto­ry of adven­ture, mys­tery, every-day-life, age differences—but that’s what I brought to it. Maybe you will bring some­thing else.”

Okay, I loved this book. And so did almost all of those who reviewed it on Goodreads.

One of my favorite reviews starts this way: “Oh this book is like sit­ting in the sun in the mid­dle of a Roman piaz­za while eat­ing a big scoop of gela­to. It’s love­ly and some­thing to be savored. Just about the only thing I didn’t like about this book is that Gwen got to go to Europe for a month and I didn’t. Yeah, I’m pret­ty jeal­ous of this fic­tion­al char­ac­ter!”

I dis­cov­ered this review­er is Meg and she’s a book blog­ger. I had to look up her blog. It’s one I want to fol­low.

Anoth­er review by Mere­deth (anoth­er book blog­ger) starts this way: a”*yawns and stretch­es* Sor­ry, please excuse my sleepi­ness, I’ve just returned from a fan­tas­tic sojourn in Europe and I’m just a teen­sy bit jet-lagged…

“Dur­ing the sum­mer she turns thir­ty, Gwen­dolyn Reese – an unso­phis­ti­cat­ed and inhib­it­ed mid­dle school math teacher that pas­sion­ate­ly loves lis­ten­ing to musi­cal sound­tracks – expects to be try­ing on wed­ding dress­es, pick­ing out flow­ers, and plan­ning a wed­ding with her boyfriend of two years. But instead she is being shang­haied by her aunt’s S & M Club (S for Sudoku, M for Mahjongg – had you shocked there for a moment, didn’t I?) to trav­el on their five week tour of Europe.”
That’s two blogs I want to fol­low. Per­haps you will too.

Five Star Read — THE ANTEATER OF DEATH

Posted on by May 31, 2015
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Anteater coverNow, you have to admit—The Anteater of Death is an unusu­al name for a mys­tery sto­ry. Okay—crazy! But I tru­ly like it. It’s got a lot going for it.

A. The name attracts atten­tion. (Always good.)

B. The sto­ry lives up to the title. (Also good.)

C. The anteater (in a zoo, thank­ful­ly) is not only a sus­pect in mur­der, but has a devot­ed advo­cate in the hero­ine of the story—Teddy, the ama­teur detec­tive.

This was how I put it a cou­ple of months ago when I read The Anteater of Death:

The plot is full of unex­pect­ed twists, the char­ac­ters are most­ly known to eah oth­er (for gen­er­a­tions) and quite indi­vid­ual. The sus­pense is right up there, along with enough humor to fit the title. But there is also sus­pense to keep the read­er on the edge of her (or his) seat. The book starts and ends with a chap­ter in the anteater’s viewpoint—quite a bit dif­fer­ent than a human view­point. In between it’s Teddy’s sto­ry. She’s relat­ed to the wealthy zoo donors and work­ing at the zoo. And yes, there is death. Great sto­ry for those look­ing for the unusu­al sub­ject. Spiced with zoo and ani­mal infor­ma­tion.

Right now the Kin­dle ebook is $.99. Bet­ty Webb is the author. She has two oth­er zoo books, and a desert series of mys­ter­ies.

New Writers’ New Book

Posted on by May 24, 2015
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5-25-5th grade coverI’m one of the retirees who have been help­ing ten fifth graders who want to write. (When oth­er kids see us pass­ing through the school halls, they ask, “Are you the grand­mas?” Yep, that would be us.) This week we will deliv­er their fin­ished book. They will each get two copies—one to keep and one to give away to a favorite per­son. (Or, two to keep—their choice.)

All of the chil­dren wrote one, or more sto­ries, we edit­ed them, made sug­ges­tions, they learned that writ­ing is also rewrit­ing. Some illus­trat­ed their sto­ries. One cre­at­ed the cov­er. One boy was def­i­nite­ly writ­ing a book, but he man­aged to make a sto­ry out of the first two chap­ters. One of the girls seems des­tined to take Steven King’s place, but since she was also pro­lif­ic, we encour­aged one of her sweet sto­ries.

They accom­plished quite a bit in a half hour a week, espe­cial­ly since 5-25 5th grade kidsthere were sev­er­al late days for snow that seemed to always hap­pen on our Tues­day morn­ing at the school. They did their writ­ing on a com­put­er eas­i­ly using a hunt-and-peck sys­tem they had each worked out for them­selves. (Although it was easy to trans­fer their work, I real­ly do think it might be bet­ter to teach typ­ing skills before using the key­board. But I’m def­i­nite­ly of the old school—learned how to type in high school on a man­u­al type­writer.)

But, enough of that. I enjoyed work­ing with the kids. I’ve got to say, at least one inner city school is giv­ing the chil­dren lots of choice in their edu­ca­tion, for we could not have done this with­out some coop­er­a­tion from the over­worked teach­ers.

A Five Star Read-Under Any Title

Posted on by May 18, 2015
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Original Cover

Orig­i­nal Cov­er

The book is the first of the Perse­phone Cole Vin­tage Mys­tery Series tak­ing place in the ear­ly 1940s. The author is Heather Haven. I read this mys­tery a cou­ple of years ago. Was it called Perse­phone Cole and the Hal­loween Curse (the orig­i­nal title) or The Dag­ger Before Me? I don’t remem­ber. Was the cov­er the orig­i­nal one (pic­tured left) or the new one? Think it was the orig­i­nal, but, I read the book on my Kin­dle, so I’m not sure.

As I remem­ber the sto­ry, I like the first cov­er the best. Perse­phone (Per­cy for short) is big and beautiful—extra large size. She’s a sin­gle moth­er, liv­ing with the extend­ed fam­i­ly (space was a prob­lem) and help­ing her father in his detec­tive busi­ness. She’s deter­mined to suc­ceed at her first solo case. It’s in the the­ater, which is an added complication—since she doesn’t know that much about the­ater. But, she’s a good fak­er (she hopes). And so does the reader—pulling for Per­cy with every page.

There are so many great reviews of this title, I’d like to quote from a cou­ple of them:

Second Cover

Sec­ond Cov­er

Per­cy is cer­tain­ly not the stereo­typ­i­cal moth­er of the 1940s. She’s a tough woman with an atti­tude big enough to match her 5’11” frame. She pos­sess­es a sharp mind and an even sharp­er tongue. I love the way she han­dles peo­ple, men in par­tic­u­lar, who doubt her abil­i­ties as a detec­tive. Though she can be brash at times, Per­cy also knows how to turn on the charm when she needs to. I can just as eas­i­ly pic­ture her but­ter­ing up a poten­tial wit­ness with free food or rough­ing up a hos­tile one.

Here’s what anoth­er review­er had to say:

I found Per­cy engag­ing. I liked her mox­ie. Not exact­ly fem­i­nine, peo­ple “often remarked that between her wild hair, thin body, and daffy per­son­al­i­ty, she remind­ed them of a Dan­de­lion caught in a wind­storm.” (I like that word-pic­ture.) Per­cy does things like: “she popped a nut into her mouth and sep­a­rat­ed the meat from the shell with her teeth.” Haven offers delight­ful and “pun­ny” prose: “What col­or the inte­ri­or was sup­posed to be was dif­fi­cult to say. I’m going with drab.” Or how about this one—when Per­cy looks up at a man, we read: “It was nov­el, look­ing up to some­one not stand­ing on a steplad­der.”

And here’s my review:  Perse­phone Cole (Per­cy for short) is a female detec­tive in ear­ly 1940s New York dur­ing World War II. There’s great his­toric atmos­phere (sweaty because it’s a non-air-con­di­tioned heat spell) deal­ing with strange acci­dents in the the­ater dis­trict. She detects under­cov­er as a man­ag­er who doesn’t real­ly know that much about man­ag­ing, but she’s right up there with detect­ing, includ­ing gun-han­dling. The nice­ly con­vo­lut­ed plot kept me guess­ing, and the end­ing was whol­ly sat­is­fy­ing. Def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend­ed for read­ers of his­toric mys­tery (with sassy women).

I’m won­der­ing, why the title and cov­er change? I under­stand an author wish­ing to present the best face to her read­ers. And, since I do love this series, I hope it was a good choice. But I have to ask, which cov­er and which title do you like?

 

Does My Book Need a Vocabulary List?

Posted on by May 14, 2015
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5-14 Paper and penOkay, that’s a ques­tion I sel­dom ask myself. I write mys­tery (most­ly) tak­ing place in the cur­rent time, and in the coun­try where my books are sold. I don’t have any char­ac­ters speak­ing a for­eign lan­guage.

Oth­er books, often ones I read, are set in past cen­turies or oth­er coun­tries. They might have a list of names, or words that are unfa­mil­iar. That’s handy. There are oth­er instances that neces­si­tate word lists—often involv­ing unusu­al occu­pa­tions, or even hob­bies. But cozy, or almost cozy mys­ter­ies? Most read­ers know enough of the words used to describe recipes, needle­work, antiques, pets, and the var­i­ous occu­pa­tions of our favorite ama­teur sleuths.

Now, back to my ques­tion. One of my mys­ter­ies involves boat­ing. The fol­low­ing is a para­graph that may have non-boaters think­ing I must have missed a few gram­mar lessons in ele­men­tary school.

“The coiled anchor rode smelled musty, even though it was 5-14 anchorcom­plete­ly dry. Lit­tle col­ored plas­tic tags lay, woven into the fiber to mea­sure off the feet as the line payed out. Would I have to remove all that line to see if there was any­thing under­neath? Not tonight. Too much trou­ble. I flashed around the inte­ri­or one last time. There was a small piece of paper stuck low, under a few coils of the rope. I pulled it out.”

Did I mis­spell some­thing? I checked a boat­ing site from the Great Lakes. This is a sen­tence describ­ing how to anchor a boat. “When all the rode has been payed out, gen­tly back down on the anchor to set it in the bot­tom.”

RODE — anchor chain or line (rope) that attach­es the anchor to the boat

TO PAY OUT, or PAYED OUT — to allow the rode to uncoil and leave the anchor lock­er so the anchor is low­ered

Or, is that just too much? Per­son­al­ly, I think so. I don’t mind read­ing a book with a few things I have to infer from con­text. What do you think?