Books Completed in August 2025

 Fan Service, Rosie Danan
Alex Lawson's never felt at home at her dad's place in Florida, where she's been ridiculed for his conservation efforts. The only place she feels at ease is online, where she creates a detailed website for her favorite television series The Arcane Files. But when she meets the star, Devin Ashwood, in person at a convention, a thoughtless remark he makes afterward turns her off him and his character, a werewolf who's also an FBI agent.

Years later, Devin Ashwood, the series over and looking for a new role, wakes up in a field nearly naked, and discovers from a news report that cameras caught him transforming into a werewolf. Everyone else thinks it's a promo for a revival of the series, but he realizes that somehow he's become a werewolf like the character he played on television and searches for a way to reverse it, finding Alex's detailed website. Not knowing she's the young woman he unwittingly insulted years ago, he travels to Florida to meet her. And to her surprise, she agrees to help him.

This is an engaging fantasy-romance with some hard truths about the traumas of child actors and bullied people who don't fit in.

  The Highwayman: A Longmire Story, Craig Johnson
Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear arrive in Wyoming's Wind River Canyon to help Rosey Wayman, an old friend of Walt's recently transferred to the area. She keeps hearing a mysterious radio message from a Highway Patrolman requesting assistance—except this Patrolman died years ago in a fiery crash. Wayman's supervisors think she's going nuts, so Walt and Henry need to figure out who's playing a prank on her—and, if it's not a prank, what's going on.

Great little novella with what seems like a supernatural twist—but it will keep you guessing until the end.

  Before Dorothy, Hazel Gaynor
Annie Kelly and her sister Emily, daughters of Irish immigrants, move to the bustling city of Chicago in the late 1800s to work at Marshall Field as salesgirls; Annie meets wealthy John and marries well, Emily falls in love with practical Henry Gale, who wants to homestead in Kansas. Annie tries to talk her out of it, but Emily and Henry are married, and he moves to Kansas to start a family farm while Emily waits until Annie's daughter is born to join him. A daughter named Dorothy.

This is the story of "Auntie Em" and her life before and then after Dorothy came to live in Kansas. Gaynor weaves a credible story about the homesteaders on the prairie, their early crop successes, and then the drought that came to ruin all their hopes of success. Becomes a vivid portrait not only of a woman trying to make her niece feel safe and loved, but of the Dust Bowl that scoured the land, ruined lives, and killed.

  For the Love of the Bard, Jessica Martin
Miranda Barnes, writer and literary agent, writer of young adult fic under the name of Hathaway Smith, is still smarting from bad reviews of her last novel, in which she killed off a popular main villain. She goes home to her parents at the little town of Bard's Rest, which revolves around Shakespeare and the town's annual Shakespeare festival, to complete the next novel in the series. Next thing you know, she's not only been roped into directing one of the festival plays by her actress mother, but she keeps encountering Adam Winters, the new town vet and the guy who ditched her on prom night to go with her older sister Portia, a hotshot lawyer. (Her younger sister Cordelia—sense a theme here?—is the town's favorite baker.)

Enjoyed the story and the characters. There's a sequel about Portia out as well. Wonder if Cordelia will get matched next?

  Writing Black Beauty, Celia Brayfield
This is not just the story of Anna Sewell and her family—her mother and aunt were also writers in "the domestic sphere" as was expected of women in their day—but of the growing movement of rights for animals, whose fate in the late 18th/early 19th century was grim: carriage and wagon horses beaten to death in the streets, vivisection, kittens and puppies drowned after birth. Alternating with the story of Sewell and her family is the story of a public becoming aware of the feelings and treatment of animals. Both an interesting story about Sewell's health problems and a little-known history of animal rights.

  Sweet Music, S.R. Morton
This book is the literary equivalent of watching Bob Ross painting shows. Really, nothing happens. Reverie Vyse, a faerie, and her best friend Cerise (also a faerie) run a bookstore and cafe. Decan Jarris applies for the job of barista after their current barista has to leave. He's a whiz at his job and soon business picks up even more. But Decan's deepest wish is to be a successful musician, but he's been beat down by doubts. His love of Reverie helps him accomplish that. Basically, the whole story is about moral support. It's very sweet.

Horrified to see in a published book the misuse of the word "phased." It should have been "fazed." Also, Decan (and sometimes Reverie) "smirk" too many times when a smile is supposed to be gentle or heartfelt. "Smirking" is sarcastic and is often used to hurt the person being smirked at, and is used correctly very rarely in this book.

  Why to Kill a Mockingbird Matters, Tom Santopietro
After a short overview of Nelle Harper Lee's childhood, the book goes into the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird and the praise and notoriety the novel gained. then covers the making of the film before addressing other topics such as "Is To Kill a Mockingbird racist?", Harper Lee's descent into privacy, the publication of Go Set a Watchman and the hue-and-cry over the revelation that Atticus Finch was racist himself, and the continued relevance of the novel and the film in the 21st century. A natural for any fan of To Kill a Mockingbird. I had to read it after meeting Mary Badham in person!

  All the Feels, Danika Stone
College freshman Liv Walden, still smarting from the death of her father (who hooked her on the science-fiction universe of Starveil), is devastated when Matt Spartan, the hero of the Starveil universe, is killed in the latest film. Her best friend Xander, who dresses in steampunk fashion, tries to placate her, and her mother is determined that Liv's fandom obsession won't hurt her grades. Secretly, Liv creates another identity to start a campaign to bring Matt Spartan back, ropes Xander into helping her, and is astonished when the movement not only gains speed, but becomes a nationwide campaign.

I bought this because the second half of the book takes place at DragonCon (although I was giggling like crazy when Liv is looking at a panel schedule in July, since the D'Con schedule usually isn't up until two weeks before the con), and it does a good job capturing the frenetic madness taking place at five host hotels and the Atlanta Merchandise Mart every Labor Day weekend. It does a less good job explaining how Liv actually got her mom's permission to go to DragonCon (since her mom screamed at her because she failed calculus—although why in the frag did Liv take it in the first place? there's no math requirement in college, especially for someone who's studying the visual arts like she is, unless you're going into a math or science field). Or if they ever worked it out about her mom's busybody boyfriend whom her mom inappropriately shared private information with? Seems Mom was suddenly okay with fandom when she found out Liv could get a job in it!!!! And Xander with his "dearest" is simply too precious for words.

  Cranston Through Time, Sandra Moyer and Jent Cullen Ragno
Then and now photos from my old home town, including my high school, the old coal mine at Garden City Shopping Center, and even "the bad boys school" at Sockanossett.

  Frozen Heat, Richard Castle
This is #4 in the "Nikki Heat" series, supposedly written by the "Castle" of ABC television fame. Basically, the Nikki Heat books are Castle stories under a different name and a couple of tweaks. Kate Beckett becomes sexy Nikki Heat, Castle morphs into magazine journalist Jameson Rook (Castle/Rook, get it?), Ryan and Esposito are Raley and Ochoa, Laney Parish turns into Lauren Parry. Rook even has an actress mom; the only character missing is Alexis, and Captain "Montrose" has been replaced by the ineffective Captain Irons.

In this outing, the frozen body of a woman in her 40s is found in a suitcase that is inscribed with Nikki Heat's initials; this is because the suitcase belonged to Nikki's mother, who was murdered on Thanksgiving Eve years earlier and who's the reason Heat became a cop. Soon Heat and Rook are not only on the trail of the anonymous corpse's killer, but also finding out more about Cynthia Heat's death.

This is a complicated mystery that nevertheless contains many inside jokes: I’m convulsed by the names of a pair of detectives on loan to help solve the murder: Detectives Malcolm and Reynolds. Jameson Rook, Castle’s avatar, even has the line: “I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something I like about Detectives Malcolm and Reynolds." (On Firefly, Nathan Fillion played Malcolm Reynolds.)

Books Completed Since February 1

  (not quite) Mastering the Art of French Living, Mark Greenside
I confess, I read this doing research for a piece of fanfiction. I don't know if I got much information out of it, but it was fun to read, if I thought the anecdotes were overlong, but Greenside inadvertently gave me the title I needed for the story.

Basically it's a fish-out-of-water story of what happens when Greenside decides to spend part of each year in Brittany. He loves the French lifestyle eventually, but has to navigate around different traffic regulations—his story about getting into his first accident in France is rather jaw-dropping—getting permits, renting a car for the part of the year he's in France, getting repairmen to work at his house, etc. Luckily he has some very patient French friends who help him, since the French legal system is legendary for its strictness and complicated procedures (how true that is I don't know, but I have read this in more than one book).

If you've always wanted to live in France but wanted to check out the pitfalls, you might want to read this book if just for some chuckles.

  Crayola: A Visual Biography of the World's Most Famous Crayon, Lisa Solomon and Crayola LLC
This is a book best found half price or on remainder, but if you've been, like me, a Crayola junkie since childhood, it's a delight. It contains the history of the Binney & Smith (now Crayola, LLC) company, who made a product now known around the world (they also created the first dustless chalk). The majority of the book is a history of the current and some of the past colors, and trivia about the older colors ("flesh," of course, became "peach" in the 1970s when some kind souls pointed out that not everyone had pale skin, and "cadet blue" was first called "Prussian blue" but was finally changed because kids didn't know where Prussia (part of Germany) was any longer, etc.).

Of interest are old full-page Crayola advertisements and projects done with Crayola crayons by professional artists. Color junkies, rejoice!

 The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry
This looked like a mystery story so I picked it up. And I have to say Perry writes a compelling tale with complex characters. But it's not really a mystery story, it's a psychological one set in 1893 England. There is an old legend on the Essex coast that a monster exists in the shadows, and suddenly dead bodies begin to turn up on the shore. Cora Seaborne, a widow with an intense interest in the growing science of paleontology, believes the "monster" may be a prehistoric life form that still survives, so she arrives at the seaside in the company of her overprotective maid Martha and autistic son Francis to check out the rumors. There she's introduced to William Ransome, the local vicar, and his vivacious wife and their lively children. Ransome insists there's no "serpent" or "monster," and hates that his parishioners believe in the old tales, but a few dead bodies on the shore and a mysterious sound put the whole small town on edge. This turns villager against villager until the mystery of the sound is finally revealed. Ransome and Seaborne have a romantic moment, and at the close of the book it looks like she's about to insinuate her way into his life the way she insinuated herself into the life of a talented surgeon—and then basically forgets him—during the story.

That's all that I took away from the story. There's also a do-gooder rich couple who help the poor, and a medical friend of the talented surgeon who sticks with him through his most difficult hours, and Martha hooks up with a radical protestor. I kept reading because the prose was excellent, but the fact that basically "they discover that ________ is the source of the sound and everything else was just people's imaginations and so we see what rumor and paranoia do to a formerly close-knit community" was rather a letdown.

 The McMasters Guide to Homicide: Murder Your Employer, Rupert Holmes
This is the first in a planned series of mysteries written by the multi-talented Holmes, who has done two previous books, a television series called Remember WENN, Tony- and Edgar-award winning plays like The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Accomplice, and much, much more—but of course he's best known for his bestselling late 70s-early 80s rock song "Escape" (known to most people as "the Pina Colada song").

Think of the McMasters school as Hogwarts for homicide. That's the hook in this delightfully diabolical, tongue-in-cheek novel in which people attend a university to learn how to commit the perfect homicide; the twist is that the person must really need killing and there is no other way to keep them from continuing to ruin other people's lives. You follow our main protagonist Cliff Iverson, the young Englishwoman Gemma Lindley, and Hollywood actress Doria May as they seek to rid the world of an overbearing employer who caused the deaths of two of Cliff's friends, a woman who's building her career by blackmailing Gemma, and the Howard Weinstein-like monster movie producer who holds Doria in servitude for turning him down. Half the story follows their training on the "god only knows where" McMasters campus (which reminds you more than a little of "the Village" in The Prisoner television series, which is no accident), and then they're let free to pursue their final exam: killing their bete noires. Filled with more twists than a Six Flags roller coaster, more clever quips than Bob Hope's stable of writers could manage, and more double crosses than a game of tic-tac-toe, it's a wild ride full of unexpected turns, incredible training sequences, and a big dollop of sly humor, with all sorts of references hidden in the text.

Rupert's almost finished with the second volume, Murder Your Mate, and I can hardly wait to see what he comes up with. But first, a re-read...!

  A Book, Too, Can Be a Star, Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Jennifer Adams
I'm a Madeleine L'Engle completist, which means I had to get a copy of this charming children's picture book that simply tells the story of how L'Engle as a child began to write and dream and eventually published both adult and young adult books, but finally came to fame for writing the now immortal A Wrinkle in Time. The artwork is lovely as well. I have Voiklis' children's biography of her grandmother and wish someone would do an adult version!

  Rivers of London: Deadly Ever After, Ben Aaronovitch, Celeste Bronfman, Andrew Cartmel
In the newest of the graphic novels taking place in Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" universe, Beverley Brook's sisters Olympia and Chelsea, goddesses in their own right, are attending a gathering in the woods when they remove an invisibility charm from a mulberry tree growing there. Unfortunately it frees the angry spirit of a Victorian fairy-tale illustrator named Jeter Day. The next thing they know, Day's spirit is invading people and forcing them to re-enact fairy tales. With the aid of Abigail Kamara and her friends the talking foxes, the pair must rectify this error without letting Thomas Nightingale or his apprentice Peter Grant know what happened.

This is a fanciful, if lesser effort in the "Rivers" series. The story is a little slight and frankly Olympia and Chelsea are not that compelling as main characters. Abigail also seems drawn a bit older than she is and it throws the story off a little. Still, another peek into Aaronovitch's magical world until the next real book comes out.

 True North: Travels in Arctic Europe, Gavin Francis
I knew this was the book for me from the blurb: "In this striking blend of travel writing, history and mythology, Gavin Francis offers a unique portrait of the northern outposts of Europe." And boy, what a book—I thoroughly enjoyed Francis' journey.

He begins in the Shetland Islands, following the stories of the earliest explorers who went north looking for "Ultima Thule," including St. Brendan. He then continues to the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard, and finally Lapland, telling each region's myths and history, along with a portrait of the people who live there (most of whom long for warmth, but grow homesick and return) and the natural features and native birds and animals. He explores the areas mostly by hiking, but also takes the rare aircraft and travels by ship as well. His writing is beautiful, not flowery but very evocative and descriptive; it's a pleasure to read and certain descriptions, especially of the tough inhabitants who remain living there, stick in your mind long after you're done reading that portion. If you dream of cold weather and Arctic exploration, this is definitely the book for you!

  CSI: Grave Matters, Max Allan Collins
The fifth in Collins' series based on the original CSI series. Once again, the team is working two cases: Rebecca Bennett insists her mother's death was probably foul play on the part of her stepfather, and she convinces the sheriff's department to dig the body up for an autopsy. But when Grissom, Sidle, and Stokes open the casket, a different body is contained in it instead. In the meantime, Catherine and Warrick are summoned to an eldercare facility, where their own assistant coroner, David, feels there's something suspicious about the death of Vivian Elliot, a woman who was recovering quite rapidly from surgery until she was found dead; they also discover from the head of the facility that more deaths of elderly women seem to be occurring than usual.

Collins has the characters down pat—you can hear Petersen in Grissom's dialog, Fox in Sara's, etc.; you could practically convert each of his CSI books into a television movie. And as always, the two cases have a connection to each other, but Collins works it so skillfully that you don't expect it until it happens, and the getting there is suitably complicated. CSI fans should enjoy, and they work well as a forensics mystery as well.

  Beach Read, Emily Henry
January Andrews writes bestselling romance novels, but after her father dies and she learns a terrible family secret, she doesn't believe she can write another "happily ever after" tale again. She retreats to the family lake cottage in order to clean and sell it, only to discover that renting the cottage next door is Augustus Everett, her old college rival, who writes deep, meaningful novels, the kind that make the bestseller lists. Turns out Gus is also suffering from writer's block, and once they begin talking to each other, thanks to the local bookclub, they come to an agreement: Gus will spend the summer writing something with a happy ending and January will write a serious novel, and each will teach the other about the successful ingredients of their craft (so January will take him to fluffy rom-com settings and Gus'll take her on his interviews with a cult member).

This book did make me cry. There are themes of betrayal and secrecy woven through the tale, so it's more than your usual fluffy rom-com stuff. The relationship builds naturally and the supporting characters (even a couple of less savory ones) are realistic. I enjoyed this one.

  Testament of Trust, Faith Baldwin
This is the third of Baldwin's nonfiction books which cover a year in her life, but, rather than only discussing the seasons and her home, she talks about issues of faith, belief, and love. While I don't find these as compelling as Taber's "Stillmeadow" books, they contain much food for thought about relationships, positivity, and the folly of negative thinking.

  Bonk, Mary Roach
After reading Gulp, I wanted to investigate more of Roach's science books. Once again she writes with a light touch while imparting loads of information.

This book is, if you hadn't guessed from the title, is about sexuality, and each chapter focuses on a different study of human sexuality, from impotence ("ED") remedies to analysis of orgasm to the role of the clitoris in sex, all the way to an absurd chapter about how pleasurable sex among pigs produces more piglets. There's an examination of the early research of Alfred Kinsey as well as the later work of Masters and Johnson, how early treatments for "hysteria" were just doctors diddling their patients, and a doctor who reconstructs penises.

Roach has a nice, easygoing way of approaching science topics, People who like their science texts completely serious should avoid, however.

  My Name is America: The Journal of Brian Doyle, A Greenhorn on an Alaskan Whaling Ship, Jim Murphy
This is actually one of the better of the "Dear America" books devoted to male historical characters. Brian Doyle has run away to sea to make life easier for his older but sickly brother Sean Michael; their hard-working father often comes home drunk and Brian argues with him instead of keeping silent, so he leaves to give his brother peace. He signs on the whale ship "Florence" and is thrown bodily into shipboard life. Onboard he meets all sorts of people, from York the profane one and Nathaniel, who is devoted to his Bible. The captain has very bad luck in locating whales in warm Hawai'ian waters (this takes place in 1874, when whales were starting to be overfished), so they head north into the Arctic, only to be caught in the winter ice.

The story is grim and uncompromising, but never reaches the level of despair that proliferates when Barry Denenberg writes one of these books. Instead it is realistic in that even in despair it retains some small bit of hope. Recommended with the usual warnings about mature (death, etc.) subjects.

Books Completed Since September 1

  Love on the Brain, Ali Hazelwood
This is another one of Hazelwood's science-based rom-coms and it's a lot of fun, if not quite as good as The Love Hypothosis. Bee Konigswasser is a neuroengineer; her spiritual guide is Marie Curie (she even has a popular Twitter account called "What Would Marie Do?"), and she's just been offered her dream job, working on a project developing a helmet operation system for NASA. Except she'll have to work with Levi Ward, the hot guy she met in graduate school and who's never given her the time of day. They're archenemies, and that's it. Still, Bee wants to work on the BLINK project so badly she's willing to put up with "the Wardass." But when she turns out for her first day at work she finds she and her partner Rocio have no equipment.

It's a rom-com so you know what happens eventually, but in the meantime there are complications. Our heroes have their quirks—Bee is secretly searching for home (and a cat of her own), she has a peripatetic twin sister currently in Europe, her lab partner for the BLINK project is an offbeat conspiracy theorist, oh, and she faints when she gets stressed due to low blood pressure, and Levi has an overbearing gung-ho family tied to hunting and the military who think he's a loser even though he's a PhD because he's not in the Army (where do people dig up these crazy parents?—why do they even have kids if they're not going to love them as they are?). The climax to this story contains an element of suspense that was not part of Love Hypothesis.

BTW, I had no idea that it was so gruesome to get into graduate school! (See also Blame it on the Brontёs below.)

  How Y'All Doing?, Leslie Jordan
I fell in love with Leslie Jordan after watching the sitcom The Cool Kids—even if it wasn't as good as I hoped—with Jordan as one of a bunch of retirees in a Western senior center (sorry, not liking him as well in Call Me Kat; he'd be the only reason I watched). After reading this book, I'm even more besotted: this is funny—his chapter on Ronnie Claire Edwards (whom everyone knows as prudish Corabeth Godsey from The Waltons) alone is worth the price of the book—and also touching (his tales about his dad). There's the story of how Debbie Reynolds called his mother, how he ended up being famous for hymn singing, his love of horses and how he worked with them for a while, and more. This book will make you laugh and cry. Enjoy!

  The Way I Heard It, Mike Rowe
This is an adaptation of Rowe's entertaining podcasts akin to Paul Harvey's classic radio feature The Rest of the Story, where Rowe relates unknown tales about celebrities and other names in the news: the Jewish man who played music by Jewish composers directly into the Nazi lines;  the story of a Titanic survivor, or a man who invented a unique new tool, or a devoted husband and wife who wrote spicy letters to each other every day they were apart—in all, 35 tales about people you never knew, or thought you knew.

After each tale, Rowe tells his story, about his childhood, young adulthood, and how he got initially involved with The Deadliest Catch and then was given his own series, Dirty Jobs. If you love little unknown bits of history, or are a Mike Rowe fan, or both, this is the book for you.

  Go Hex Yourself, Jessica Clare
Regina Johnson needs a job, and when she sees one that looks like she will be working on her favorite geeky card game, Spellcraft, she jumps at the chance. Instead she finds she's to be employed as a witch's familiar to Drusilla Magnus, an elderly woman who's clearly infatuated with all things Roman and who is clearly dotty—who believes in witchcraft anyway? "Reggie" is sure she can cope with Ms. Magnus and her fantasies, especially for $25K a month, since she has her parents' debts to pay off; it's the woman's handsome nephew Ben that's going to be the problem.

Basically, this is rom-com with magic, with a broody male protagonist who cultivates his bad rep and a female protagonist who has trust issues because of her dreadful parents, who basically have gotten her into debt by hacking into her accounts and running up bills on her credit cards. Drusilla is basically wacky old lady who's lived for centuries and is bored. Plus Reggie has a flaky gay roommate named Nick—who rates people's characters based on who they resemble on the series The Golden Girls—who's obsessing over a new flame, and there's a cat named Maurice who has his own secrets. It's cute. Some spicy sex. And a different witch's discipline than the usual Celtic goddesses. Probably best if you're a Golden Girls fan (I'm not; have never even watched it), but also for fans of stories with a magical twist.

  The Shelf, Phyllis Rose
I picked this up for a dollar at Dollar Tree and it was actually an entertaining read. Rose, already an avid reader, decided to explore books as she hadn't before: she picked a row of fiction books at a local library and decided to read all of them, "off road reading." In this way she reads a Russian epic by Mikhail Lermontov along with The Phantom of the Opera, Rhoda Lerman, an author who wrote surprising books and now writes nonfiction about Newfoundland dogs, and from the nearly 800-page tome Gil Blas to the detective thrillers of John Lescroart. There's also an excellent chapter about how when women write domestic fiction it's considered "their place" but when men do it, it's considered notable and extraordinary, and another chapter about how books are culled from libraries (considering my recent complaints about our local public library having been horribly culled of books, this one hit the spot).

I wouldn't go out of my way to buy this book, but I did find it an entertaining read.

  Blame It on the Brontёs, Annie Sereno
So here I am deep into another rom-com; this time about English professor Athena Murphy who's run into a roadblock with her university position: she either has to publish a book related to her discipline or she'll lose her tenure. She decides to dig out the truth about C.L. Garland, a popular writer who's done a series of spicy novellas about classic literature couples, someone she discovered lives her her old home town of Laurel, Illinois. But guess who's back living in Laurel: the man who broke her heart, Thorne Kent, who's given up his law practice to run a bakery/coffee shop. She can get through this, she's sure, even with working for some extra cash as a waitress at Thorne's business. But there's no way what they felt for each other in the past isn't going to come bubbling up in the present.

This is a nice enough rom-com; it revolves around literature and the protagonists are amiable enough. There's also an undercurrent in what's going on with Athena's separated parents about being true to yourself, and the fact that Athena and Thorne's story leads some other folks into happy relationships. But it's also one of those books where you want to shake at least once of them. Thorne has a good reason for what he's done, and Athena is supposed to be his best friend; why not let her in on it? His excuse is that he doesn't want some personal info to come out. So you love her, have sex with her, and still can't trust her? Also, this is the second book in a row where the female protagonist has a flaky gay friend (actually, in this case it's her brother) who gets hysterical at the least thing. And yet another small town with small businesses with cutesy poo names. I'm finding this in my cozy mysteries, too. Plus I've never understood the fascination with Wuthering Heights; from all that I can figure out, Heathcliff and Catherine had a very toxic relationship, so why is it considered so romantic?

Between this and Love on the Brain I am damn glad I am not an academic.

I had to admit I laughed during the bits with Athena's fake boyfriend Sergei. I was less enchanted with the Murphy pet pug, and I usually like a dog in a story.

  Christmas Past, Brian Earl

  Shenanigans, edited by Mercedes Lackey
This is the newest collection of Valdemar short stories. I missed the previous one, Boundaries, and noticed two things about this one: the books are now trade paper, which I hate, and this one, at least, seemed to be based around a single theme (pranks), which the previous collections were not.

I had mixed feelings about this collection. Most of the stories were okay or good. I quite enjoyed the opening story was about a pair of hertasi (sentient lizards who act as servants) who outsmart three highwaymen; "All Around the Bell Tower," told from the point of view of a youngster who seems to be autistic and who sees visions, which features Herald Wil; and the annual story featuring Lena at the Temple of Thenoth, which always focuses on animals (this time it's a dog) and also the annual story about the Iron Street Watch guards, this one featuring a very perceptive chicken.

I also enjoyed the two stories that had love stories between older people in them, "Love, Nothing More, Nothing Less" and "One Trick Pony," and a Herald-based detective story, "Of Ghosts and Stones and Snow."

Several stories are about deliberate or accidental pranks at the Collegium, most are sort of fluffy. My least favorite was "Trap Spell," which I found pretty blah.

Books Completed Since February 1

  Paper Son, S.J. Rozan

Lydia Chin is stunned when her mother calls her to help a family member, and to bring her partner Bill Smith, whom Mrs. Chin hates, along. She's more astonished to discover she has family in the Mississippi Delta. Because the U.S. government once set restrictions on Chinese immigrants, her great-grandfather's brother had come over as a "paper son," with fake papers saying he was another man's son so he could gain entry, and he ended up founding a grocery store in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Now a descendant of this brother, Jefferson Tam, has been arrested for killing his father. Anyone, Lydia's mother believes, who is related to her husband's family, cannot be guilty. Therefore, Lydia (and Bill) must head to Clarksdale to clear his name and find the real culprit.

 

Bill, who's from the South, fares much better than streetwise Lydia when they arrive. She's surprised to find that there are (or were at one time) many Chinese grocery stores in Mississippi because they were the only ones who would serve black customers. As the investigation deepens, Lydia discovers that what's going on is all about family...including some long-held secrets.

Besides being a great mystery in an unusual place for our protagonists, there's a lot to think about concerning racism in the past that still affects people today and how a single choice in the past can set up tragedy in the future. Plus it's great to see Lydia, with her urban upbringing, trying to understand what makes a small Mississippi town tick.

 

  The Happy Hollisters and the Cuckoo Clock Mystery, Jerry West

In entry 24 in the series, Joey Brill the brat actually does something wrong that has a good result: his throwing rocks at the windows of the Trading Post damages some imported cuckoo clocks, leading the children (Pete, age 12, Pam, 10, seven-year-old Ricky, and Holly, age 6, plus 4-year-old Sue) and their parents on a trip to the Black Forest of Germany, following the rhyme on a piece of paper they find in one of the broken clocks. It turns out a priceless golden cuckoo clock vanished from a German museum, and the verse just may lead them to it!

 

It's funny reading these now seeing how casually Mr. and Mrs. Hollister can just pick up tickets and take the kids off to Europe. The neighbors are always happy to take care of the Hollister pets, and Mr. Hollister can always count on his assistants at the store to keep everything running smoothly. And once again it's kind of part mystery, part Rick Steves tour of the Black Forest, though not so intense as the books about Denmark and the other about the Netherlands.

 

Stuff that makes you know this was written in the past: Pete gets really excited because the car Mr. Hollister rents is a Mercedes-Benz! Now those cars are all over the road.

 

The question never answered: Did anyone punish Joey for the cuckoo clock damage? Really, that kid belongs in reform school or in therapy.

 

  Death With a Double Edge, Anne Perry

This is Perry's fourth book in her series about Daniel Pitt, son of Special Branch head Sir Thomas Pitt and his wife Charlotte, who were the protagonists of Perry's first mystery series, and so far the best, possibly because both elder Pitts are involved. It begins slowly, when Daniel is called to identify a body he believes, due to the coat the person was wearing, is his fellow solicitor, Toby Kitteridge. To his relief, but also to his consternation, the body is instead that of Jonah Drake, one of the elder partners at fforde-Croft and Gibson, and he has been savaged by someone wielding a large knife or sword. Daniel and Kitteridge, as well as their superior Marcus fforde-Croft, begin investigating as they know it will reflect badly on their law office, and soon they are fairly sure the murder has something to do with one of Drake's prior cases, one that was still unsolved although Drake was able to get the court to acquit the accused, Evan Faber, the son of famed shipbuilder Erasmus Faber, the latter who's using his special skill to demand favors from the government.

As I said, starts off slowly and then the plot speeds up as more deaths occur and Daniel, Kitteridge, and even Pitt and Charlotte attempt to put clues together. The last eight or nine chapters pull into high gear as we get a glimpse into the crime and what the criminals are willing to do to keep their secrets hidden. While I had a feeling an introduced character was significant to the story, I had no idea of the plot twist that would make this character be more significant than it appeared at first!

Miriam fforde-Croft, who has been Daniel's sleuthing companion in the previous three books, is in Europe studying for a medical degree which she cannot get in England (the Dutch being more enlightened in women's education in 1911), and only appears near the end, but Daniel's work with Kitteridge, and in a small part with Roman Blackwell and his mother, and especially with his own parents more than makes up for her absence. If you read the series, and have read the Charlotte/Pitt books (mention is made to several of the books, chiefly to the first, The Cater Street Hangman), you will surely love this one.

 

  Re-read: Murder Must Advertise, Dorothy L. Sayers

It was only a step from extracting a quotation from this book to wanting to re-read it. The television production, starring Ian Carmichael, which showed on Masterpiece Theater back when I was in college, was my first exposure to Sayers and Lord Peter Wimsey. I bought the book—not just the book, but the whole series of books, having been besotted at once, and this one is still my favorite.

An advertising copywriter at Pym's Publicity, an ad agency, is killed in a supposed accidental fall down a staircase in the office. A suspicious letter having shown up in the man's desk leads Mr. Pym to find someone who can do a discreet investigation. Enter Lord Peter, posing as wide-eyed, polite but nosy Mr. Death Bredon (Peter's two middle names) who soon comes to believe the death was no accident. He also found out the copywriter was hanging out with a group of Bright Young Things, the wild British youth of the years between the wars, who were into thrills, fast cars, alcohol and lots of drugs, and soon insinuates himself in that crowd. At the same time, Wimsey's brother-in-law, Chief Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard, is trying desperately to figure out where all the dope is coming from.

 

Sayers, who worked for an advertising agency for nine years, not only creates a topping mystery, but nicely skewers the advertising business as she does so, creating a collection of memorable characters at Pym's, including "Miss Meteyard of Somerville," who appears to be an avatar of Sayers herself.

You don't need to have read the earlier books in the series, but they're all excellent as well (well, Five Red Herrings is a tad dull) and you'll find out more about Peter's family (including his delightful mother the Dowager Duchess), his impeccable manservant Bunter (who seems to be on holiday in this volume), and his other adventures. (Oh, and if you've only seen the Ian Carmichael TV version, do read the book—characters had to be concatenated for television, and scenes excised, so there are more situations, and a climactic cricket game that finally puts Wimsey on to the murderer.)

  Spying on the South, Tony Horwitz

Having read Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange and having a copy of Blue Latitudes and Confederates in the Attic, I was tempted to buy this book when I saw it at Costco just after Horwitz's sudden death a few days after it was published. If you're like me, when you hear the name "Frederick Law Olmstead," you think of his wonderful landscaping milestones in North American history: Central Park and Prospect Park in New York City, Mount Royal Park in Montreal, the "Emerald Necklace" of parks in Boston, and Biltmore Estates in Asheville, North Carolina, just to name a few. But before Olmstead became a full time designer of parks, he was a correspondent for the then-new "New-York Times." As the factors that led to the U.S. Civil War grew and became uglier, Olmstead, under the pen name "Yeoman," made two tours of the South in the 1850s. he wished, he indicated in his first piece for the "Times," to publish a a series that was as close to unprejudiced as possible about the Southern side of the fast-emerging conflict, and intended to interview, rationally, slave owners. After all, slavery had been a common human practice since time immemorial. Were the stories of the brutality of its practice being exaggerated? But once he made the actual trips, he not only found out things were worse than Northern readers imagined, but that he couldn't keep his feelings out of the way slaves were treated in the supposedly "civilized" places he visited.

Horwitz retraces Olmstead's path on his second trip in 1853-1854 from Baltimore around the edge of the slave states all the way down to Texas, with side trips to Lexington, Nashville, New Orleans, and even to Mexico, and reports on the working-class people he meets along the route: barge workers in Ohio, old plantations, Cajuns, African-American churches, "mudders" who race trucks, landmarks like the Alamo, and finally on a mule-back trail ride with a muleskinner who does his best to make Horwitz give up.

In general I enjoyed this book because of the different people he met, but as someone who's lived in Georgia since 1984, I find it a bit hard to believe that it was so difficult for him to meet normal people on his route. Or did he and just not include them in his book because the people who had boat races and ate alligator meat and believed weird theories were just more interesting to write about? I've met everyone down here from good ol' boy elderly men who think women only work for "pin money" to groups who do their damnest to help everyone, and it seems the majority of people he talked to were offbeat and ate weird food.

By the way, I was amused that I picked this up to read after enjoying Rozan's Paper Son. He did actually go down to Mississippi and found out about the Chinese stores in small Mississippi towns.

 

  Anything for a Laugh, Bennett Cerf

When Cerf published two collections of jokes and tall tales, he thought that was that, and it was why, in the introduction to this second collection (with a third collection coming out soon), he declared that the third "will be the last books of this sort that will bear my name for a long time to come."

 

Oh, Bennett, had you only known in 1946 what you realized in the 1970s! For I wore out my paperback copy of Laugh Day until it literally fell apart, and bought The Sound of Laughter, and many other older Cerf collections up until this very day, and never got over my amusement for them. Naturally, this book was published a few generations ago, and a lot of the familiar celebrity names in 1946, which I know but anyone born after, say 1980, probably have never heard of, and so these stories won't be as funny. Several more rely on humor we try to eschew today. But I have to say I enjoyed Anything for a Laugh just as much as I enjoyed Laugh Day as a teen (even if I didn't know who the heck Toots Shor was back then), and I'll probably keep collecting Cerf humor collections until they or I are no more. Here's to you, Bennett!

 

  The Mitford Murders, Jessica Fellowes

I picked this up the day poor James had to go to Urgent Care with his infected foot (and shipped off to the hospital a day later), and didn't resume reading it until February was a few days old. It's the story of Louisa Cannon, who lives in a poor part of London with her mother, a washerwoman, and her sponging layabout uncle, who taught her how to pickpocket and now, that she's outgrown her childish figure, seems to want to sell her body as well. She escapes by literally fleeing his clutches off a train, helped by a friendly police detective Guy Sullivan, and gets back heading to a job interview as a nanny's assistant for the Mitford family. Sullivan has been brought to Hastings by a death on the train; the very obvious murder of Florence Nightingale Shore, goddaughter of the nurse hero of the Crimea and a nurse herself. When Nancy Mitford, almost of age, and eldest of the children that Louisa will be tending, discovers that Louisa was on the same train as Shore, her curiosity leads her to encourage Louisa to "help her" look into the crime. Headstrong Nancy gets her way, and soon they are embroiled in the crime far more than they should be.

Aside from the fact that I'd really never heard of the "infamous Mitford sisters" (except knowing the title of the book Nancy later wrote, Love in a Cold Climate—they were an eccentric bunch as children as well as adults: Deborah married the Duke of Devonshire, one became a communist, another was so enamored of Hitler that she shot herself (unsuccessfully) when Britain declared war on Germany, and a fourth married British Fascist Oswald Mosely), I enjoyed this 1920s-set tale written by Fellowes, who also wrote for Downton Abbey. It has the feel of a book written at the time without the casual racism and the worst of the classism, one of those stories where the background is as enjoyable as the story. I guessed the identity of the murder right off from what I thought was a very obvious clue, but Fellowes provided so many red herrings that I doubted my guess for much of the book. Louisa and Guy are both enjoyable characters, and while Nancy gets the lion's share of the attention in this volume, Fellowes tries to distinguish each younger sister as well. The three (so far) sequels focus on Louisa and the next three eldest daughters as they "enter society."

The one thing that bothered me is that this is based on a real murder case and Fellowes uses the actual names of the people involved in the case (not just the victim but her friends). Her choice of the murderer, then, was a little bit uncomfortable, since the actual case was never solved.

 

 Re-read: Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge, Gladys Taber and Barbara Webster

This fourth collection of Taber's Stillmeadow books forms a change of pace from chapters comprised from her magazine articles along with new, bridging narrative; instead these are letters exchanged between Gladys and her friend Barbara, also an author and the wife of Stillmeadow book illustrator Edward Shenton, during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Gladys has Stillmeadow, her 17th century Connecticut farmhouse in which she and her best friend garden, cook, and raise cocker spaniels along with the occasional Irish setter and a cat or two. Barbara and Ed live in Chester county, Pennsylvania, in an 18th century farmhouse, Sugarbridge, with a Great Dane named Duke and Barbara's horse, Chief. Gladys and Barbara are kindred spirits who, in their correspondence, address their various household happenings along with the events of the world (Gladys already worried about the affect nuclear bombs will have on the world) and the beauty of their respective countrysides. Gladys chats about the wise farmer next door, George, who has helped her and Jill so many times; Barbara reports on the elderly couple who live nearby who occasionally bring her treasures and how she wishes she could do something just as nice for them. Through both women's eyes we see the blooming spring, the busy summer, the contemplative autumn, and the frigid but festive winter, the funny actions of Gladys' spaniels, and the offbeat personality of Barbara's Dane. Beautifully written, with a sweet coda by Ed Shenton.

 

Sugarbridge was for sale in 2014; here are some photos of the house. I notice it is located on "Shenton Road"!

 

  Re-read: The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin

I read a lot of reviews of this book that started with "Huh! What has she got to be unhappy about? She has a great husband with a good job, two cute kids, a nice apartment in Manhattan, no money worries!" Indeed, Rubin comments about this herself. On a bus one morning, she wondered if she was "wasting" her life. "But too often I sniped at my husband or the cable guy...I lost my temper easily, I suffered bouts of melancholy, insecurity, listlessness...I had everything I could possibly want—yet I was failing to appreciate it... [M]y life wasn't going to change unless I made it change."

This book is the story of her year's project to make herself happier. This included rejecting impossible goals (like "I can be happy if..." followed by some magical target), setting goals she could reach, trying to improve her mood by being nice and/or helpful to others, looking deeply into herself to figure out what was making her unhappy, and realizing she had to change; she could not change anyone else. She set basic commandments, listed her own personal "secrets of adulthood," and each month concentrated on something she wanted to improve: health, relationships, spending, parenting values, etc.

But, you say, what if I don't want to improve some of the things she did? Well, that's fine. Each project should be tailored to you. One of her commandments is "Be Gretchen." The person reading the book has to be themself. You have to realize what you want to improve...in a year, or maybe only in six months, or perhaps you'll take more than a year. It must fit you. And if something doesn't work, you didn't fail. It just didn't work. There's no wrong way to do it.

Helpful even if it's just to get some prompts into how to look into yourself.

 

  Creating Sherlock Holmes, Charlotte Montague

This is one of those gift books that you frequently see on the remainder table, but it had vintage photos in it, and it wasn't expensive, so I couldn't resist. I have at least one of these for Sherlock Holmes, but this one is the story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (filled out, of course, with summaries of all the Holmes stories). Usually the books are about Holmes with brief biographical data on Conan Doyle, so this was a novelty. It talks about his family, his other books, his service during the Boer War, his relationships with both his first wife Louise and his second wife Jean, his involvement with real crimes, and his involvement with spiritualism. In addition, the legacy of Holmes is considered, from adaptations of the stories for film and later television.

 

  The Four Tendencies, Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin didn't train as a psychologist; she was a law student who went as far as passing the bar and clerking for Sandra Day O'Connor before she realized what she really wanted to do was write. She had a good life, but noted that she was still often unhappy, which spurred her first book on self-improvement, The Happiness Project. Along the way, she noted that people could be classified as having four different tendencies: Upholder, Obliger (the one most people are), Questioners, and Rebels. She discussed them in her book about habits, Better Than Before, but this is a "deep dive" into the four tendencies. Each chapter addresses what defines the particular tendency, how this tendency will react when asked or told to do activities, and how to deal with reluctance, especially with Questioners and Rebels, including with children, and how a person with one tendency, who can't understand those with other tendencies, can learn to accept that others may not be able to think, act, or react like they do.

I still haven't figured out what I am, although I'm assured by my husband that I am an Obliger (one with Rebel tendencies; and apparently Obligers are so overwhelmed by their obliging nature that they regularly have obliger rebellion anyway). I ask a lot of questions, and doing so often delays what decisions I make, which is why I waffle about this. But all the tendencies make sense, and I can see where friends and family fit in.

 

  Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing, Maryla Szymiczkowa

This book has taken me nearly forever to read; I've had it about a year and finally left it in the bathroom so that during bouts of "unavoidable delay," as Frank Gilbreth would have called it, I would continue reading it. In 1893, in Cracow, Poland, Zofia Turbotynska leads a good—but in truth a little dull—life as the upper-class wife of a professor at the university. In looking for something to do, she decides to involve herself in a charity event for the almswomen of Helcel House, which appears to be a combination women's almshouse (poorhouse) and what we would call a retirement or nursing home for the more well-born, run by an order of Catholic sisters. As luck has it, Zofia's arrival coincides with one of the almswomen having disappeared—and a few days later Zofia is there again where the woman's body is found hidden behind some boxes in the attic. Because her death was suspicious, she is autopsied, and it turns out inoffensive Mrs. Mohr was poisoned, and Helcel House's cook is blamed. But then a second murder, much different from the first, occurs.

To me the big problem with this story is that the writers chose to compose the text in the style it would have been written in in 1893. I've read 19th century books and some of them have been easier than others. And, indeed, the old-fashioned writing really fits the situation; Zofia is a very old-fashioned woman despite her sleuthing, and the style does help capture 19th century Cracow society and several specific situations, like the night at the opera, the celebration of All Souls Day at the Cracow cemetery, and also the all-out massive funeral for the famous artist, for which nearly the entire city turns out. But you must be prepared to wade through Victorian verbiage to get to the meat of the mystery. Plus Zofia herself really isn't that likeable. She's pushy, nosy, and autocratic at times, and I do feel sorry for that second maid she keeps trying to engage; none of them are ever good enough.

Still, the mystery is convoluted enough; I certainly would not have guessed the identity of the killer or why that person committed the crime. If you like historical mysteries with a 19th century literary flavor, this could be the one for you.

 

  Egg Drop Dead, Vivien Chien

Despite her early protests, Lana Lee has begun to enjoy managing the family business, the Ho-Lee Noodle House at Cleveland's Asia Village, a mall full of flourishing Asian businesses. Her romance with police detective Adam Trudeau is doing well, and she's taken her next step in expanding the business: catering. Her first catering job is for Donna Feng, whose husband's murder Lana helped solve in the first book of the series.

 

Wouldn't you know it? Donna's governess, Alice Tam, is found drowned in the swimming pool after the party—not long after Donna screamed at her for not watching her twin daughters carefully enough. Donna asks Lana specifically if she can figure out what happened, since the police think she's the prime suspect. Plus guess who shows up at the Ho-Lee Noodle House one day: Warren Matthews, the guy who broke Lana's heart several years ago. So yet again she's propelled into solving a mystery with the help of her roommate/best friend Megan and even the reluctant approval of Adam—who reminds her not to put herself in danger, and she needs to find out why Warren's suddenly trying to get back into her life.

Turns out a lot of Donna's friends were not, and Lana's going to have to work to figure out this mess. We're given a whole lot of suspects and red herrings.

I like reading these stories because Lana isn't your usual whitebread protagonist. I love reading about her blended family and the personalities at Asia Village. This one left me irritated on several fronts, though. Firstly, since your usual cozy mystery needs a dramatic climax, usually the protagonist, Lana in this case, has to go somewhere she knows she shouldn't to solve the mystery. And boy, does she do it in this one. It makes her seem stupid. Second, when on earth did Adam start calling her "babydoll"? All of a sudden he sounds like Sam Spade. If I were Lana I'd smack him one every time he did it. And finally, Chien introduces a character she created for a writing class into the story to help Lana. I really, really wish I liked this character more, but I don't. The person speaks and acts in a cliched manner; I'm glad they are not the protagonist of this series. So I didn't enjoy this one as much as I have the previous entries.

However, the epilogue, where Lana finally meets with Warren—oh, yes, I liked that a lot!

 

  My Friends, The Huskies, Robert Dovers

I found this at a book sale and tugged it out to read at the first onset of warm weather; it takes place during Dovers' year of participation with a French expedition (Dovers himself is Australian) surveying emperor penguins in the Antarctic. Even if you didn't see that it was an old book, and published in 1957, you certainly wouldn't mistake it for a modern book, which would be full of soul-searching, and paeans to the beauty of nature, and of the sagacity and souls of the dogs. Instead, this is the day-to-day grimness of living in tents and huts in an inhospitable climate (even in summer) with teams of dogs who are closer in temperament to wolves reacting with each other than domesticated canines. In fact, if you've read The Call of the Wild, you'll get an idea of the personalities of these dogs: deeply competitive, always fighting, with a battle for dominance between lead dog Bjorn and his "lieutenant" Fram that eventually comes to a head. Both dogs and men live a tough life of privations as they suffer through blizzards, must transport from one survey site to another using the dogs and sledges as well as tractor-footed "weasels" over treacherous ice with crevasses and cracks that cause the weasels to tilt sideways and almost swallows dogs and sleds whole, fear being lost on the featureless icy "plains," and deal with numbing cold.

Throughout the book it's the dogs that hold our attention: strong but not very clever Bjorn, the loyal Fram who suddenly gets a taste of leadership and likes it, the sloppy and bumbling Aspirin, the clever and strong Helen (an instigator in savage fights) but is disinterested in caring for her puppies, young Roald who turns from bumbling puppy to ambitious puller, the grizzled veteran Boss for whom the year will bring about great change in his life, Yakka and her puppy, Maru the penguin-slaughterer, and the inseparable Tiki and Milk. These are true arctic working dogs, not cuddly pets, and violence between them is frequent and vividly described. This book is not for the fainthearted or for those who wish to believe all animals are the anthropomorphized Disney type who love one another and are cute and cuddly. A fascinating read about midcentury scientific exploration and the personalities of working dogs.

 

  Re-read: Stillmeadow Daybook, Gladys Taber

While I'd read other non-animal stories like The Good Master, Johnny Tremain, and the Danny Dunn and Miss Pickerel books in elementary school, my reading in those years was mostly about animals: Black Beauty, Lassie Come-Home, Lad: A Dog and the other Terhunes, Beautiful Joe, the Silver Chief books, etc. So it was to my delight that I found another "dog book" in my junior high library: Especially Dogs, Especially at Stillmeadow. I knew nothing of Stillmeadow, or of Gladys Taber, who wrote for magazines my mother didn't buy. Her columns always included her dogs and cats, but were mostly about her home, her cooking, the garden she and her best friend "Jill" tended so careful, her thoughts about life and the future. Cooking and domestic pursuits bored me, and, as I tell people, the Italian gene for gardening completely passed me over; about all Taber and I had in common was writing and a love of dogs and cats. As a kid without a dog who dearly wanted one, but was stuck with allergies instead, reading about them was a small solace. Entranced by Taber's tale of "Timmie," her graduation gift, a spirited Irish setter who even won over her dog-adverse father, her other Irish setters Maeve and Holly, and the cocker spaniels she and Jill raised, including Star, Sister, Rip, and Honey, this was one of my favorite withdrawals.

 

While recalling the book and the author fondly, I didn't think of either of them again until I was married and visiting Mystic Seaport with my husband and my mother. The gift shop had reprint copies of Stillmeadow Daybook and Still Cove Journal; in a split instance, the memories flooded back: the setters, the spaniels, the farmhouse..."Oh," I exclaimed joyfully when I saw them (to hubby and Mom's confusion), "Stillmeadow books!" As an adult I was able to appreciate Gladys' quiet country living and not only purchased the reprints snatched up and held to my chest like treasure, but scoured the internet for more. It has been a love affair ever since. And so here on my Gladys Taber re-read I have come back to the Daybook.

 

Once again her volume covers one year, but this time she begins in April, as the blossoms arrive at Stillmeadow. "Early morning is like pink pearl now that April's here. The first lilacs are budding over the white picket fence in the Quiet Garden; crocus, daffodils, white and purple grape hyacinths repeat the magic of spring." And so we plunge again into housekeeping in a colonial home, the romping cocker spaniels as well as one young Irish setter named Holly, cooking special dishes, hosting special friends like Faith Baldwin and "Western star" Smiley Burnette (more people now recall him from Petticoat Junction), who built Taber a giant outdoor barbecue, the flower-filled beautiful "Quiet Garden," her recollections of her childrens' growing up and the joy of them visiting as adults, the birds at the bird feeders, the joys of each passing season and month (lilacs in May, hay wagons in September, brilliant autumn leaves in October, stiff chill and snow forming a backdrop to Christmas, and more. In this age of mindfulness and "hygge" reminders, Taber's books are a powerful reminder to just look at ordinary things for beauty, at simple things for joy, and her prose is always a delight to read, with its references to literature and her commentary on the problems of the day (this book was from 1955, so references to the atomic bomb and racial intolerance pop up often). It is always worth visiting Stillmeadow.

Books Completed Since August 1

 Lois Lenski: Storycatcher, Bobbie Malone
Malone would have had hard work to capture the life and emotions of Lois Lenski; an intensely private person, Lenski jotted down few private thoughts, even in her correspondence, mainly things concerning her work. So this book is more an examination of her work and her work habits, and little personal information is gleaned. Even Lenski's own Journey Into Childhood delves little into the personal side of her later life, as she waxed enthusiastic about her childhood: she is very circumspect, especially in what seemed like a very formal marriage to Arthur Covey. However, we do know of the difficulties she faced finding time for her artwork when society dictated she be a good wife and mother.

Malone addresses each of the phases of Lenski's career: her illustrations for others' books, her historical novels, her regional and "roundabout" books, the "Mr. Small" books she wrote for her son, and the "Davy" books she wrote for her grandson, each tailored for the job it was to do. ("Mr. Small" and "Davy" were both published as small books, alá Beatrix Potter's "little books," so that they could be held by small hands.) Some of the book reviews are subjective, and I don't agree with all of them. (But it made me surely wish once again I could read her early autobiographical books Skipping Village and A Little Girl of Nineteen Hundred!) I would certainly rate her historical novels much higher! I was amused to discover that Lenski was so enamored of her research for Phebe Fairchild Her Book that her publisher had to remind her that the story was about Phebe and not all about the historical facts she was placing in the story.

Her most well-known books are the regional stories inspired by a trip Lenski and her family took to Louisiana. She became fascinated by the lives of the Cajun people and wrote Bayou Suzette. Her next regional, Strawberry Girl, won her a Newbery Medal. There were eventually seventeen regionals, as well as her "Roundabout America" series for younger children. They not only touched on how people lived in different regions of the United States, but portrayed a class of children frequently missing from the two-parent-middle-class-family-businessman-father-homemaker-mother common in juvenile fiction of the 1940s to the 1960s: middle- and lower-class kids, often rural or with no home of their own. These, of all her works, were the most unique.

An enjoyable overview of Lenski and her body of work, even if I didn't agree with all the author's assessments.

 Addressed to Kill, Jean Flowers
I noticed there doesn't seem to be any further books in this series, which is probably for the best. The plot in this third and final of the "postmistress" mysteries is a mess. It takes place in the small Massachusetts town of North Ashcot around the Valentine's Day holiday, where Cassie Miller is enjoying the tunes of a local group doing their practice sessions at the social hall attached to the town post office. But when one of the musicians, a college professor, is found dead at his home, Cassie wonders if it's linked to robberies in the neighborhood, or something more sinister.

All that post office trivia Cassie used to impart in the first two books seemed like padding in this one, and the story of her giving the presentation to the college class seems to go on almost as long as the mystery. Sunni Smargon, the chief of the North Ashcot police, seems to think of Cassie as a deputy now, enough for her to ask Cassie to do some very questionable sleuthing, and Cassie seems to be able to take time off from her post office job (replaced by the old postmaster, Ben Gentry) any time she wants (sure glad my taxes aren't paying her salary!). During her investigation, Cassie swipes something from the murder victim's study!

Something nice happens to Cassie at the end and is about the only positive thing about this story.

 A Furious Sky, Eric Jay Dolin
As a child I was enthralled by my mom's story about the Hurricane of 1938, so I have several books about that disaster, and also one on the 1935 Key West tragedy, so when I saw this, a book about the history of American hurricanes going all the way back to the first European explorers, I was intrigued. And then to find that it was written by the same author who wrote Brilliant Beacons, one of my favorite books read in 2017? Perfect.

I can't say I was quite as enthralled by this one as much as Brilliant Beacons, but it was nearly as good, although I had hoped Dolin would be able to garner more nuggets about the colonial hurricanes, since I have read more about the modern ones (since 1900). Yet I did garner a little more information about the great Revolutionary War hurricane (and how it affected the outcome), the Great Gale of 1815, and early storms during the age of exploration, as well as the history of weather prediction in general and of how hurricanes form and grow in particular, especially of the two theories of how hurricanes "work": one from merchant and amateur scientist William Redfield and the other by James Espy. (In the end, it turned out they were both partially correct.) Alas, another insightful hurricane theorist was pretty much ignored because he was both Spanish and Catholic: Father Benita Viñes of Cuba. (Had the newly formed and xenophobic US Weather Bureau consulted with the Cubans, more people in Galveston might have been saved.) Dolin even brings us along on the newest of hurricane trackers: the airplanes and their crews known as "hurricane hunters."

Should please anyone interested in weather history, hurricane history, and how hurricanes have changed history. Need to check into Dolin's books about the American/China trade and the American fur trade!

  The Children's Blizzard, Melanie Benjamin
I didn't read the description carefully on this book when I got it from Netgalley; I thought it was a new nonfiction study of the 1888 Midwest tragedy known as "the children's blizzard" rather than a novel. However, I did enjoy what I read.

Based on true accounts, Benjamin weaves a fictional story around two sisters, Raina (the younger, shyer girl) and Gerda Olsen (the older, more assured one), both who have become schoolteachers at one-room prairie schools; newspaperman Gavin Woodson, who wrote promotional literature for immigrants who came to settle the prairies; and Anette Pederson, an abused girl whose mother sold her into servitude who has been "allowed" by her "adoptive mother" to come to Raina's school. When the balmy day of January 12 in the Dakota territories abruptly turns stormy and cold, prairie teachers must make an agonizing decision: keep the kids at the schools, which were badly built and rarely had extra fuel, or allow them to go home. Raina chooses, with the help of her eldest student, to help the children get to the nearest house; Gerda, having let her children go early so she could sleigh ride with a suitor, tries to save two of them; Anette, having left Raina's classroom early, must try to survive with the help of a classmate. Once the blizzard is over, temperatures hit a deep freeze.

The hardships faced by Scandinavian immigrants to the Dakota territory, especially in winter, and especially by women—at least one of the men in this story is a real jerk—are brought to life, although I thought Gerda was a little too hard on herself. I wish Benjamin had gone more into the story of "Ol' Lieutenant" (Ollie Tennant), a black man who runs a saloon, and who discovers how his children are being treated by a white teacher, and less into Gerda's self-loathing after the blizzard is over.

 Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders, Tessa Arlen
Britain has been at war for almost three years, and Poppy Redfern, an orphan who has been raised by her grandparents in the village of Little Buffenden in the Chilterns, has just finished her air-raid warden training in London after a succession of hair-raising raids has proven her capable. She takes up her warden duties back in her home town only to immediately run afoul of one of the American airmen who have taken over the family home, Lt. Griff O'Neal. Opinion is rife in Little Buffenden on whether the Americans are good neighbors or bad news—when a local girl who favors the servicemen from "across the pond" is murdered and evidence points to the airman she was dating. Poppy must now do her warden duties guarded by young Sid Ritchie, a sickly young man who nevertheless serves in the home guard, and everyone is on edge; Poppy's grandparents eventually organize weekly dinners to introduce the American officers to the suspicious townsfolk.

I enjoyed this well enough that I will probably get the next book in the series, and it's a good enough look at the resentments that many British had for the American servicemen who were, in their words, "over paid, over sexed, and over here." I liked Poppy and her grandparents, but much preferred it when Poppy worked in London (and it looks like I'll get my wish in the next book). But still things niggled at me. Like Poppy's grandparents' dog, Bess. It's obviously a Welsh corgi, but no one ever refers to her as one. Poppy calls her "a Welsh herding dog." The corgi was already well associated with the royal family; why did no one seem to know what it was? Were they not called "corgi" back then? Also, Poppy and her family seem to drink a lot of coffee. I was under the impression from other books written during the period (by British authors) that, although the British do drink coffee, the war was rather "run on tea," that it was not rationed where coffee was, and people drank copious amounts of it. And my other complaint is: can we quit having mystery stories with a female protagonist where she immediately meets the hot/handsome guy who falls in love with her? I'm really, really tired of having my mysteries interrupted with love stories. At least have the romance take a few books to develop!

 The Story of America, Reader's Digest Association
This is one of those big Digest compilation books like I love to buy when I see them at book sales. This one is from 1975. It is both the history of the United States told in words, photographs, artwork, maps, newspapers, waybills, etc., and specific looks at American culture (the arts, exploration, industries, education, natural wonders, man-made wonders, music, the sciences, sports, space travel, etc.).

Those of you who look at the copyright date must think the book is full of outdated sexual and racial mores, but it might surprise you to know that the text is rife with accounts of the injustices suffered by people of color and by women. The matter of slavery and later treatment of African-Americans is addressed with the severity it deserves, and chapters also cover the women's movement and how so many inequalities need to be addressed. The fact that this is a nearly a 50-year old book will actually make you uncomfortable about how many of these issues that they are addressing are still problems today! The only thing missing are commentaries on LGBTQ rights, but these were pretty much still not spoken of in the '70s.

To be honest, reading this book makes me feel that some things have actually regressed, and that is a sad commentary on 21st century life.

 Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution, Todd S. Purdum
Today, with hits like Hamilton breaking new ground on Broadway, most fans of musicals tend to think of Rodgers and Hammerstein as "old hat" or "treacly," and not at all groundbreaking. But back in their day, they were exactly that: creating the first musical theatre that wasn't simply a string of songs hung together on the most threadbare of plots (usually a backstage love triangle). Rodgers and Hammerstein together not only put together the most memorable songs, but produced shows that addressed prejudice, spousal abuse, young and old culture clashes, integrity vs. profit, submission to philosophies you know are wrong, etc. rather than carrying on with more "froth." Their characters, from Maria von Trapp to Bloody Mary, Julie Jordan to Anna Leonowens to "poor Jud" are memorable characters who have entered the cultural lexicon.

Richard Rodgers was a musical prodigy who, early in his career was partnered with the troubled Lorenz Hart; Oscar Hammerstein II was the grandson of a New York Theatre empresario. Hammerstein worked hard to get his lyrics just so; Rodgers, on the other hand, seemingly could pull a song out of thin air when presented with the correct lyrics. Never close friends, but good working partners, they made their way through hits—South Pacific, Carousel, Oklahoma, The Sound of Music—as well as some real stinkers (Me and Juliet, Pipe Dream, Allegro).

I've heard several reviews of this book complain that it isn't as good as Rodgers' autobiography, but having not read that yet, I found this entertaining and quick-moving, giving enough details but not bogging down in minutiae, especially when the author is talking about how Hammerstein worked to get the lyrics "just right" and Rodgers' tweaking of even a few notes to make the song "go up" or "come down" as it should to set the correct mood. I enjoyed it a bunch as an overview of their career together.

 Late Checkout, Carol J. Perry
In the ninth book of the Witch City series, Lee Barrett (neè Maralee Kowalski, journalism graduate, young widow of a race car driver, and now back living upstairs at the home of the librarian aunt Isobel [Ibby], who raised her) is determined not to let her temporary demotion get the better of her. Since she's been asked to share her field reporter/investigative reporter duties with WICH-TV's owner's nephew Howard Templeton, she has less work to do, so she volunteers at the Salem, MA, main library where Aunt Ibby works. Her first volunteer task is shelving books—and she's shocked (but not so shocked that she doesn't call WICH-TV reporting the news!) to discover a dead body in the spooky stacks. The body is identified as "Wee Willie" Wallace, once a promising baseball player and then a racetrack worker whose gambling ruined his life and sent him to jail. Lee's given permission to investigate Wallace's life and finds out he has ties to WICH-TV as well as to the station's former sports reporter, Larry Laraby, who was, oddly enough, found dead in his personal library, also surrounded by scattered books.

Set against Salem's legendary Hallowe'en celebrations and the 50th anniversary events going on at WICH-TV, Lee is embroiled with not only Willie's mystery but with nostalgia as she talks to television personalities she recalls from her childhood, including Katie the Clown and her favorite, Professor Mercury, who had a circus-themed science show. Her scrying ability is downplayed in this story, but she does a good job interpreting a Tarot card drawn by her friend River North on her television show as somehow being appropro to her current situation. The ending was rather unusual for this series, delving into Lee's childhood fears and memories.

I like these books; they seem to me a cut above some of the other cozy mysteries revolving around magic and/or witchcraft. Also enjoyed that a character from a previous mystery returned, and that Perry did not use the opportunity to make Howard a bad guy. Light, enjoyable entertainment and likable characters make this a plus.

  Murder is in the Air, Frances Brody
This newest Kate Shackleton mystery, taking place in 1920s Great Britain, has Kate, a private inquiry agent, and her partner, Jim Sykes, hired to look in at the Barleycorn Brewery in Yorkshire, owned by William Lofthouse. Lofthouse, newly married to a young wife, and, wishing to turn more of the running of the company over to his nephew James, hopes Kate and Sykes will spot some little problems that he thinks are keeping the company from running at top efficiency. In the meantime, the brewery is drumming up favorable publicity by promoting a local girl, Ruth Parnaby, who's a whiz in the personnel department, as "brewery queen," a twist on a beauty queen—if Ruth's efforts aren't sabotaged by her drunken father, who's already driven his wife away with both Ruth and young George longing to follow her.

Two plots are running here concurrently: the mystery of who might be sabotaging things at the brewery (a recent new beer was fouled with dirt and rubbish) and also a mystery surrounding one of the workers. It's possible they are both linked, but when two different murders happen, Kate and Sykes discover there are no simple answers in this one.

Brody addresses PTSD (Ruth's dad was not a brute before his war service) and spousal and child abuse against the colorful traditional goings-on in the Great Britain of that era of crowning a pretty young girl "queen" of a certain industry (cloth mills, railways, coal mines) to perk up tough times in industrial towns. Brody reverses the usual "the mysteries are connected" plot in this story, so there are several different endings to several different crimes, leading to several different cliffhangers, and once again Kate's niece Harriet and landlady Mrs. Sugden prove themselves equal to being part of the solution. The local characters (Ruth, George, Annie, Parnaby, Joe Finch, Miss Crawford, William and Eleanor Lofthouse, Miss Boland the music teacher) are all interesting characters in their own right, and several of them will have your sympathy before the story is concluded.

 The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski
For over 30 years, Oxford compatriots J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams got together at least once a week at a pub, more often at Lewis' Oxford rooms, to chat, debate, laugh, play pranks, discuss, and, most importantly, to read their current writing projects to each other. Joined most times by Lewis' brother Warren ("Warnie") and at various times by Hugo Dyson, Gervase Mathew, Alan Griffiths, Nevill Coghill, and (in later years) Christopher Tolkien, and others, they were known as "the Inklings" and the group itself was almost as famed as its parts. The story begins with Tolkien's mother, inspiration for his imaginary journeys, and ends with the death of Owen Barfield, who attained his fame after the Inklings' meetings had ended, and intertwines the lives of the four primaries and their satellites, and even their correspondents, which, despite the "all boys' club" of the meetings, included women such as Dorothy Sayers and Sister Penelope Lawson.

The works of the four, their lives, and a liberal dose of philosophy, Roman Catholic and Anglican doctrines, and psychology mix in this thick volume which skips from one writer to the next, with the University of Oxford almost as its own character holding the protagonists together. At time the analysis of the works of the Inklings gets a bit deep, other times the narrative is brisk and lively, and, of all the works I have read about Lewis, this book gives you the most insight into his brother Warnie, who was a noted writer himself and might have gained more attention if not being the older brother to the noted Lewis. Tolkien fascinated me the most in these pages: I have not read any of the "Middle-Earth" works he is noted for and was surprised not only at his total devotion to world building and language, but did not know he was also a competent artist.

If one is interested in just one or two of the group, a straight biography of them may be more your cup of tea; however, if you are curious about how they interacted, argued, forgave, inspired, annoyed, and endured, be prepared for much philosophical thought and plunge right in.

 The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery in Skyscraper City, Jerry West
In the 17th volume of Hollister adventures, the eldest boy Pete finds a book about tunnels under New York City at the school's annual book sale (a kid after my own heart!). Inside the volume he finds a note written in Chinese with one English word: HELP. He's no sooner bought it than an Asian man offers him five dollars for it, but Pete refuses. Later the kids (12-year-old Pete; 10-year-old Pam; Ricky, age 7; Holly, age 6; and Sue, who's four) get the message translated with the help of Sue's school friend Norma Chen; it seems to indicate that a man named Yuen Foo has hidden a treasure somewhere in New York City. Concurrently, Mr. Hollister and his friend Mr. Davis are interested in marketing a new space toy at a New York toy exhibition, but the electronics aren't quite right yet. Mr. Hollister, and the rest of the family, accompany Davis to "skyscraper city" while they work on the toy—and of course the children can try to find Mr. Foo and perhaps discover the treasure. Sadly, Mr. Foo has died, but they track down his son Paul and his grandchildren in solving the puzzle. And coincidentally Paul Foo is an electronics whiz who can help with the space toy! But the mysterious Asian man who tried to buy the book has followed them and makes trouble at every turn.

The Hollisters mix sightseeing facts (the Empire State Building, a gold reserve, and the Statue of Liberty) liberally with the mystery in this one. The Chinese part of the mystery take place at the Chinatown areas I remember seeing as a child, where the elder adults still worked with abacuses, Chinese restaurants used traditional styling, and quaint little gift shops run by Chinese people selling all sorts of memorabilia abounded. There is a sequence where the Hollisters visit a Chinese school where Chinese children, after their regular day at public school, go to learn to speak and write Chinese to preserve their heritage. I recall a Chinese boy I went to elementary school with who went to Chinese school after our weekday classes.

This is a nonstop adventure as the kids and their new Chinese friends Jim and Kathy Foo chase down clues as the mysterious Hong Yee dogs their every step. There is no one talking like Charlie Chan in the tale although the term "oriental" is still used, a word that designated "eastern" back then. Also, Pete says "Honest Injun" once; at least in that case, the pejorative is used positively. In addition, the girls don't get stuck back at the hotel making sandwiches, but follow in all stages of the investigation and it's Sue that figures out an important clue because she's so small! All the kids get to try out the new space toy, which probably would be considered a "boy's toy" back then.