Books Completed Since September 1

 The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age, Francesca Coppa
I first heard about fanfiction from "TV Guide" and a book called Star Trek Lives. At that point I was writing my own, but didn't know that was what you called it. In 1980 I discovered fanzines, printed delight continuing the adventures of favorite television and movie characters. A little while later, I joined the ranks of the authors.

The internet has opened up the fanfiction world (for better or for worse, considering the dreadful orthography and grammar that pops up). Anyone who can upload a story can share it with others. This particular fanfiction volume differs from earlier works in that it reproduces in entirety stories, rather than citing excerpts. For the most part I enjoyed the stories, even if I wasn't involved in the fandom (although there was a very strange Supernatural story that I thought would never come to an end) and if a couple of stories kind of wigged me out (the Pete Ross story from Smallville being one and the NSYNC real-person fic being the other, for two totally different reasons).

What I found really annoying was the introductions to each of the stories, which gave away the plots in an effort to explain what the author was doing. Surely it could have been worked differently. It especially irritated me in the first story, "Lunch and Other Obscenities," taking place in the reboot Star Trek universe, and probably my favorite story in the book.

 Son of a Midnight Land, Atz Kilcher
Why does anyone who hates summer live in Georgia? Well, there are a lot of reasons, mostly due to family and friendly ties. But every chance we get, my husband and I are watching television programs set up north where it's cold most of the time, reveling in the snow and the "jacket weather," wayyy back to Flying Wild Alaska and many of the other programs taking place in "Seward's Icebox."

We latched onto Alaska: the Last Frontier at once and became fascinated by the homestead life of the Kilcher family, so picking up a book written by one of the family was a given. Let's say that part of what it said was not a surprise. If you have read country singer Jewel's book, Never Broken, you know that she is Atz's daughter, that life on the homestead was pretty tough, and that the genial Yule Kilcher, patriarch of the clan, that you see in old home movies, wasn't a hard-working saint. Oh, he was hard working, but he was also often abusive and had his own inner demons. Atz, as the oldest son, bore the brunt of this, and it affected him in many ways, including internalized anger. He has been several times married, and later became an advisor toward abused youth because he understood what they were going through.

Son is written in a stream-of-consciousness style that may not fit or might confuse some readers. Atz is evidently using the book as not just a look at his past, but to exorcise some further demons brought about by an impatient, frustrated father and an unfulfilled, depressed mother. If you watch the series and have been tempted to view it as some halcyon place where you work hard, eat naturally, and live happily ever after, this book may disappoint you. When it comes to human beings, the truth is always more complicated than that.

I won't be able to watch Alaska: the Last Frontier and Atz now without thinking of what has been revealed, but to me it makes Atz and his family stronger for it.

Note that the book contains profanity and stories of physical and emotional abuse.

 A Terrible Beauty, Tasha Alexander
Lady Emily Hargreaves has never forgotten that she married her first husband without loving him, until she read his diaries after he died. Now married to Philip Ashton's best friend, Colin Hargreaves, the pair and Emily's old friend Jeremy Bainbridge, who was betrayed by his fiance, are headed for the island of Santorini, to the villa which Philip bought as a wedding gift for Emily. The three of them are flabbergasted when they are greeted at the villa by Philip, who apparently did not die in Africa as they were told. Furthermore, someone is trying to kill him to get an antiquity from him, one that might have belonged to the mighty Achilles himself.

Emily's narrative alternates with Philip's, as he tells his story of survival and his attempt to return to his previous life, only to discover Emily has moved on from his death and remarried. He becomes involved with archaeologists and loves his new life, but still dreams of sharing it with her, only to find the precious antiquity and then lose it—while those eager to own it try to wrest it from him nevertheless. At first skeptical of him, Emily and Colin slowly come to believe his amazing tale. But how many people will die before the antiquities thieves believe that Philip doesn't still have the artifact?

The biggest problem I had with this story is that I had seen the actual plot device used before. I can't recall in which book. Perhaps in an Elizabeth Peters novel? It disappointed me slightly, despite the tightly written story and peek behind the scenes in the cutthroat world of artifact smuggling and collecting.

 The Apparitionists, Peter Manseau
While I am a history buff, the Civil War era is not my particular interest. However, I have always been curious about the early applications of photography, and this was an unusual subject. I knew that in the early days of photography portraits were very difficult to capture. The subject had to sit very still for long periods of time without moving, since the least twitch would appear as a blur. This is why early photographic subjects do not smile; it is very hard to hold a natural smile that long. Other people saw photography as an imperfect capture of a person's self and still preferred painted portraits. The real story begins when William Mumler takes a photograph of one person, but the ghostly image of another appears as well. Mumler himself naturally thought that he had not cleaned his glass photographic plate properly (they were scrubbed and reused once the photograph was printed), but people swore the ghostly image was just that: the spirit of a loved one that they knew personally. Mumler became convinced he was taking "spirit photographs" and made a big business out of it, especially in an era where so many people died young of the various virulent diseases we now have vaccines for. Once the Civil War broke out and young men were dying, grief-stricken parents came to Mumler to get a final glimpse of "their boy," and other forms of spiritualism became popular (the author discusses the infamous Fox sisters, who claimed they could talk to the dead, and only later they confessed that it was just something they started to alleviate boredom.) Eventually Mumler was put on trial for fraud.

P.T. Barnum, Mathew Brady (I did not realize so many of the war photographs attributed to Brady were actually taken by his assistants, and, sadly, some of them were staged, with dead bodies being moved to areas with better lighting and surrounded with battlefield items to make them better compositions!), and Mary Todd Lincoln all make appearances in this interesting, if slightly plodding history of spirit photography, as Mumler spawned a whole horde of photographers eager to provide comfort at a profit. What seems an obvious double-exposure to us now in an era of even more cunning photo-trickery was something amazing to our ancestors, and they seem sad rather than gullible, grasping at a last vestige of connection between themselves and a loved one.

Recommended for those with interest in the history of photography, the Civil War, or the spiritualist movement.

 The Marsh Madness, Victoria Abbott
Chadwick Kauffman has made Vera Van Alst, former shoe factory heiress and collector of mystery first editions, an offer she can't refuse: fine first editions of all of Ngaio Marsh's mystery books. Jordan Bingham has always wanted to visit Summerlea, the Kauffman estate, and is ecstatic when she is permitted to accompany Vera to make the deal, with her Cousin Kevin along as chauffeur. The encounter is a little awkward, but it's nothing compared to the shock of next morning, when Jordan discovers Kauffman is dead and the local police believe that she, Vera, and Uncle Kevin are the prime murder suspects. Even worse, more compromising evidence keeps arising that shows them (and other members of Jordan's family) responsible, and Jordan suspects that even her boyfriend, police officer Decker, thinks she had something to do with it.

Once again, Jordan is using the expertise of her—uh—unusual family to try to figure out who is trying to frame her, although they're getting dragged into the plot as well. Knowing that the investigating detective is determined to pin the crime on her, Jordan forms her own investigation, counting on luck, disguises, and smarts.

This would have been the perfect twisted mystery except for one thing: Jordan and a friend start talking about someone. A lot. Someone who has only been peripherally mentioned in the previous three books. As far as I was concerned, this was a dead giveaway. So "whodunit" wasn't the question, it was more like "whydunit." The usual suspects, like Uncle Mick and Uncle Lucky and Cherie, re-appear, although it seems like Uncle Kevin loses IQ points every time a new book rolls around.

 The Anne of Green Gables Cookbook, Kate Macdonald
I should have been suspicious when I noted on the title page that it was an expansion of the Anne of Green Gables Cookbook from 1985, which came out after the Kevin Sullivan version of the story. I remember seeing that one and remembering how few recipes it had in it. This is just that version "prettied up" with some pleasant flowery artwork and a few more recipes in it. I was hoping against hope it was more like the Little House Cookbook, which includes historical food information and the science of why the recipes work, and why and how Ma Ingalls would have used that particular recipe (for instance, she would have used sourdough starter for her bread on the prairie because they had no yeast). It could have at least been expanded to show the type of food Anne might have made for her children, and the meatless, wheatless menu they might have eaten during the World War I timeframe of Rilla of Ingleside.

Nice enough if you want a few recipes from the Anne novels and a pretty volume on your cookbook shelf. Otherwise pretty sad.
 
 Pioneer Girl Perspectives: Exploring Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by Nancy Tystad Koupal
These are essays based upon the recently released Pioneer Girl manuscript, Laura Ingalls Wilder's original memoir and the source from which all of the "Little House" books eventually came. Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, initially envisioned it as an adult memoir, but were unable to sell it, so Laura (with coaching from Rose) rewrote the story as a children's tale, initially, she admitted, so her father's tales would not  be forgotten. Indeed, the first essay in this book is by Wilder herself, from a speech she made in 1937, about the backstory of the series.

Other essays include Rose's troubling career writing "biographies" that were fabrications simply to sell newspapers, and later wishing to include a murderous family in her mother's memoir; Rose's troubled career; how Pioneer Girl eventually got published; Laura and her family as archetypal Midwesterners; Little House as an American fairy tale; and more. Most are written at a scholarly level, but not in language that proves too dense for the layman. As further reading about Pioneer Girl and Wilder's life, the vocabulary is just about right.

Okay, one minor thing ticked me off: in his essay about the Little House books, Michael Patrick Hearn referred to Johnny Tremain as a work "of dubious literary distinction and rarely read today." Speak for yourself, buddy! No need to go insulting good books just because you like a different writer more.

 The Pearl Thief, Elizabeth Wein
Code Name Verity introduced us to Julia Beaufort-Stuart, the staunch Scots lass eager to help the war effort. But we only know Julie in her war context; what was her life like before?

It is 1938, and Julie is coming home from her Swiss boarding school early to surprise her family, even though it is a sober homecoming: the family estate is being sold to clear some of her grandfather's debts. Since no one is home, she walks to the library (the librarian is a friend of hers), but finding the library empty, she walks along the river, falls asleep...and wakes up in a hospital room with a head injury, having been rescued by some Scottish travellers (like gypsies/Roma). Julie's memory of the events start coming back to her slowly, but not before she has tried to befriend (and defend) her two new friends, Ellen and Ewun McEwen.

This was a good story—I knew nothing about Scottish river pearls, or Scottish Travellers (although I knew of travellers, and of people being prejudiced against them) before I read the story—and I loved knowing more of Julie's backstory and the story of the Mary Stuart memorabilia, meeting Julie's family again and getting to know her mother and grandmother further, but simply this doesn't have the breathtaking novelty of the Verity narrative, so don't expect something on that scale. It's a quiet character study of Julie's friendships and sense of justice, with the mystery of a half-remembered jar of pearls niggling at her—as well as how she got the nickname "Queenie." Like all young girls she makes a few bad decisions, but then tries to make right by them. (Also, I scoped out one of the villains of the piece the moment the character appeared; I was kind of disappointed Julie was off the mark on this one!) It's an interesting book, but not a special book, like Verity or Black Dove, White Raven.

 A New England Autumn, Ferenc Máté
This looked like a promising coffee-table like book with a combination of photographs and poetry/prose, with several selections from Sara Orne Jewett's Country of the Pointed Firs. Some of the photographs are indeed lovely, and some of the selections, including the Jewett, were novel. But there were a lot of photos that weren't of autumn, such as a lot of close-ups of boats or water or fog (boats or ships against autumn trees would have been fine) and several of the selections seemed incongruous, like the Edgar Allan Poe (perhaps they were trying to capture Hallowe'en?). Frankly, I could get just as good photos in autumn issued of "Country" and find better autumn poetry and prose online. If you buy it, get it remaindered like I did.

 A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain, Michael Paterson
It's difficult doing a book about Victorian Britain, simply because Queen Victoria reigned for such a long period. The first part of her reign, which overlaps the Dickens period and is not long removed from the Regency period, is much different from the mid-Victorian period and the late Victorian period. So Paterson must paint in broad strokes the different portions of the Victorian era and what was notable about each, and he's under no illusions that this is a complete history. Instead, it operates as a quick overview to the era and its highlights, perhaps for those who want a little background in the period dramas they are watching, with much more suggested reading in the footnotes and bibliography. It's an easy, if not condescending, read, summing up the social, military, technological, and industrial improvements—and shortcomings—of the era. There's a discussion I've not noted in very many other Victorian history volumes, which is how the printing of less expensive books encouraged a more educated society; at first books were only for the wealthy, but lower-priced, more cheaply printed books brought both fiction and nonfiction to the masses, and subscription, and then free, libraries brought reading to even more.

Again, not a complete reference by any means, but interesting overview.

 A Rather Remarkable Homecoming, C.A. Belmond
Sadly, the last of the Penny Nichols/Jeremy Laidley stories, as far as I can tell, as Belmond's website hasn't been updated since 2015. I don't know if she passed on or just stopped writing, but I'm sorry to see them go.

Newlyweds Penny and Jeremy return to London from their honeymoon only to find that a big corporation (headed by some sinister brothers said to have ties to the underworld) is trying to buy a huge swath of land in rural Cornwall, including the property of the couple's grandmother, where they first met as children. With encouragement from HRH Prince Charles himself, they head for the property, which has been sadly run down, and the people who wish to save it. They hope that a clue that William Shakespeare once stayed at Grandmother Beryl's house may save it as a historical property.

In the course of the story, Penny and Jeremy discover friends and foes, eccentrics and businessmen, a children's pact, an old friend in dire straits, folks that will turn on them when things don't go their way, and people who will do anything to get their way on both sides. It's the usual charming combination of the likeable couple (with some help from not-so-honest cousin Rollo), an erudite historical mystery, and a wonderful setting in Cornwall (with a crucial side trip to Spain). While the mystery wasn't quite up to the previous one about the tapestries, it's a fitting conclusion to the saga of Nichols & Laidley.

 Re-read: A Wind to Shake the World: The Story of the 1938 Hurricane, Everett S. Allen
The 1938 hurricane was as real to me as a child as current events like the Vietnam War, the assassinations of two Kennedys and a King, and the music of the Beatles. Nourished on my mother's tales of life during her childhood and pre-marriage adulthood, I would ask her over and over "tell me the story about the hurricane," and she would re-tell her story once more, complete with the bricks flying by her window at work and the scare about her missing father.

Everett Allen was a cub reporter—literally, as he had just started the job the day before—on a New Bedford newspaper when the hurricane of 1938, nicknamed "the Long Island express," barrelled along the coastline of southern New England and around Cape Cod. So this account of the hurricane from Long Island to Cape Cod is not only evocatively and engagingly written, with Allen taking us back to the summer and fall of 1938, but it has that depth that comes from a person who experienced the event firsthand and who has not only taken reports from the newspapers of the time, but interviewed people who survived the ordeal. You will find heartbreaking stories and amazing survival tales, and be able to envision the surge of water, the scent of the wind, the scrape of flying sand against your skin, the desperation of the survivors and their despair in the lost. One of the best accounts of a natural disaster ever published.

 The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Marta McDowall
This is technically a re-read, since I read the e-book earlier in the year. But it doesn't quite beat having the physical book in my hands, since this is such a gorgeous volume. The moment I saw the author of this book, I wanted to read it. I sat down one grey and gloomy day to read McDowell's Gardening Life of Beatrix Potter and was completely immersed in summer, flowers, and the heady scent of the English countryside and the sheep-dotted slopes of the Lake District.

While there have been many books in the last couple of decades written about Laura Ingalls Wilder, this is the only one that addresses not simply events in Laura's life, but the landscapes her family lived in, the wildlife she saw, the plants that grew in the diverse areas in which she lived. Each chapter corresponds with a milestone in the life of a plant, from seed as Laura is born and spends her early years in the Big Woods of Wisconsin (and Almanzo grows up in the cold north of New York), to late harvest as she and husband Almanzo grow old at Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri. It is also more generally a history of westward expansion and the flora and fauna found by the settlers when they arrived.

This is a beautiful book, liberally illustrated with color and black-and-white photos of the Ingalls family, illustrations from both Helen Sewell and Garth Williams from the "Little House" books, botanical prints, maps, and clippings from newspapers, brochures, magazines, etc. that tell the story of the European settling of the Midwest. McDowell's words bring to mind winter chill, summer warmth, birdsong, the sheer awe of the tall prairie grass (don't compare prairie grass to what grows on your front lawn; these are mammoth blades of grass which were higher than a man's head and gave to the bison all the nourishment needed), the scent and sight of fields of wildflowers, the blue sky arching above. For anyone who loves nature, or who wishes to know as closely as possible what Laura experienced in the Wisconsin woods, on the Kansas prairie, in the Iowa groves, and in the hills of Mansfield, Missouri, this is a keeper for certain.

Perfect for a quiet day with cocoa and soft music playing in the background.

 Caroline: Little House, Revisited, Sarah Miller
It's been a bumper month for Wilder books: this is the third I've listed here.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie chronicles the brief period that the Ingalls family—Charles, Caroline, Mary, Laura, and Baby Carrie—lived on the Kansas prairie attempting to "prove up" on a homestead claim. Part of it was fictionalized—Carrie was actually born in Kansas, the Ingalls actually moved from Kansas because they had no income coming in from the man who bought their home in Wisconsin—and much of the story was from memories elicited from family members because Laura was so young, but the events were true. Caroline tells the true story from an adult perspective, from leaving Wisconsin to leaving Kansas.

Caroline Quiner Ingalls was a woman of her time: you do what needs doing and no complaining, but here the author tries to bring us into the mind of a relatively young woman who has already endured hardships as a child and who undertakes a bumpy, stressing wagon ride while pregnant, facing giving birth with just her husband for help. So most of the narrative is Caroline's internal conflict, fearful of the future but fiercely protective of her children and very much in love with her husband. Miller even confronts the thorny subject of Caroline's hatred of Native Americans, which stems from fear based on events that happened when she was a child.

Some reviews complain that they were uncomfortable with Caroline's thoughts of sex and desiring her husband, which strike me as odd. She's a fairly young woman (late 20s) with a husband she adores. Are modern readers still unable to believe that 19th century women, although forbidden to speak of such things, had the same sexual feelings that modern women have? After all, Caroline was legally married to Charles—even most religions were realistic about married women enjoying relations with their husbands (and husbands were supposed to take care that married relations were enjoyable to the wife as well; it was considered part of their marital "duties"). Our ancestors were not sexless.

Even though I know the plot of Little House on the Prairie by heart, this book really brings home how difficult and how dirty pioneer life was. The sequence where the family endures a severe rainstorm makes me flinch just to read it, not just with the storm, but with the idea of the mud and the dirty boots inside the wagon, thinking of all the work Caroline is going to have to get her bedding and clothing clean after the storm is over. Dangers like the well digging and the house raising, which were softpedaled in the original novel, are given their full portend here.

While this is definitely not an action novel, it is paced comfortably like a long journey by wagon. I enjoyed it immensely.

 A Peter Rabbit Christmas Collection, Beatrix Potter

 Movie Geek: The Den of Geek! Guide to the Movieverse, Simon Brew
I have a confession to make: I've never heard of Den of Geek. According to the introduction, it was once a mere starter website which is now very popular. I also have no idea who Jason Statham is, but he sure pops up a lot in this book. 😀

However, I love trivia books, and particularly movie and television trivia books, so this one was a no-brainer. It's not the usual lists, either, like the top ten top grossing films, or the top twenty films taken from novels. Instead we have funny, but often thoughtful lists like "Things That Inspire Movies," "Ill-Advised Sequels That Never Were," "The Lost Endings of Big Movies," "Family Movies That Traumatize Small Children" (Watership Down, anyone?), and, one of my favorites, "The Collateral Damage of Tom Hanks' Movies" (and he doesn't even mention Saving Private Ryan). There's even three pages about the relation between Pink Floyd and the new Doctor Strange film. The graphics are pretty good (although the contrast of the thin black typeface on the occasional blue pages is not good and those pages are a bit more difficult to read). Plus it's an entertaining read, even when the situation takes a serious turn, and perfect for bedtime reading, where you can read one essay or five and not worry about losing your place.

I enjoyed this so much I'm going to buy a copy for a friend who is a filmmaker and film buff.

Books Completed Since August 1

 Fool's Gold, Caro Peacock
I'll admit I was puzzled at the opening to this book: Liberty Lane has married her sweetheart Robert Carmichael and they are honeymooning in Cephalonia in Greece. They see an impossibly handsome young man diving into the ocean and later meet him, discovering the graceful youth, Georgios, is blind—and very possibly the illegitimate son of Lord Byron. It almost read like a Tasha Alexander book.

It is only when the couple are back in London and Robert is summoned on a delicate mission on the Continent that Liberty finds herself helping the young man again. Adopted by an impetuous man named Matthew Vickery and now known as George, he is being fitted for a university education and a gentleman's life, but Vickery lives in fear that someone is planning to kidnap him because they think he knows where Lord Byron's "lost treasure" is. His fears come true when a woman shows up claiming to be George's mother. Soon Liberty and her friends Amos Legge, the groom who cares for Liberty's horse Rancie, and Tabby, the street girl who assists her in her private inquiries are deeply involved, even traveling to Vickery's new country estate to keep George safe.

Once Robert leaves, this becomes a suspenseful mystery where the ever-shifting clues make Liberty—and the reader—wonder who she can trust; even the sweet-tempered but troubled George comes under suspicion, and red herrings abound. The Victorian setting is well described without the author feeling she has to do an information dump every so often. A big plus is that the mystery isn't solved immediately as in some historicals, with the solution coming in a day or two. Weeks go by with no answers, as in a real investigation. Liberty herself makes several missteps, showing that while she is dogged and discerning, she is not infallible. Tabby, as always, is a delight, and one could only dream of having a friend as good as Legge. One suspect, however, is pretty obvious, and you wonder when the character will show up again. However, I didn't see the twist coming until almost the end. This seemed back in form compared to the previous book Friends in High Places, which I found a bit tepid.

 Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse, Eric Jay Dolen
I've been waiting for this one to come out in paperback since I first saw the hardback; believe me, it was difficult to resist. Dolen begins at the beginning with a general history of lighthouses, then concentrates on the first lighthouses built on American shores and the primitive reflective whale oil lamps they used initially which were inadequate. In this area, Europe was ahead of American with the Fresnel lens—Dolen explains clearly what makes these unique lenses so effective and suited for lighthouses—and chronicles what was one of the first Federal contractor frauds featuring a superb salesman of a less effective lighting method in collusion with the man who was head of the U.S. bureau of lighthouses.

Dolen also talks about an aspect of lighthouses in American history that I hadn't thought of: how they became targets in wartime. In both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 lighthouses were fought over by the rebellious colonists and the British, and during the Civil War many Southern lighthouses became casualties of Union predations and vice versa.

My favorite chapters were reserved for the stories of the lighthouse keepers and their difficult lives; some of these men slept only two or three hours a night in order to tend their lighthouses properly, spending hours scrubbing soot off lamp chimneys, reflectors, and windows, sometimes in appalling weather conditions. The chapter on heroic lighthouse keepers—including Rhode Island's own Ida Lewis, now remembered in the name of Newport's Yacht Club—who overcame terrible storms to rescue survivors from shipwrecks makes you consider modern-day people wimps.

Well narrated and unforgettable! One of my favorite nonfiction books this year.

 Foxglove Summer, Ben Aaronovitch
Neophyte police officer and wizard-in-training Peter Grant is headed to Herefordshire, to discover if the disappearance of two schoolgirls has any...ahem, "Falcon" associations. He expects a quick trip up and back, hoping the girls have just run off on a lark. Teaming with DS Dominic Croft in the little town of Rushpool, he soon joins the search for the girls when it becomes obvious they aren't just hiding out. And then evidence surfaces that the girls' cell phones were destroyed by magic.

We see more of the magical landscape that is part of Peter's world, this time in the countryside, which is unfamiliar territory for city-raised Peter, and are introduced to Dominic, who plays a part in one of the graphic novels as well, and also Mellissa, the beekeeper's granddaughter. Best of all, Beverley Brook returns.

And if all this wasn't enough, Peter's former partner, now gone rogue, is contacting him via cell phone.

I love all these books, but this one has the additional charm of a fish-out-of-water plotline and an appearance from that very British of supernatural creatures, the Fae, all well mixed with the police procedural storyline. Pity Aaronovitch isn't triplets turning out more of these every year.

 Star Wars FAQ, Mark Clark
I've seen the original trilogy, and the three prequels, and The Force Awakens (but not yet Rogue One), and have the novelizations of the original trilogy, but I can't really say I'm one of those Star Wars fans that has read everything, especially about the original trilogy (except for the "Starlog" articles since I used to subscribe). Mark Clark freely admits there is nothing new in this book, which concentrates on the original trilogy, but that it concatenates magazine articles, book excerpts, and items recently revealed on the Web in one coherent whole. So if you are the Star Wars buff to end all Star Wars buffs, you will find nothing new here. However, if you, like me, want to take a trip back to yesteryear, where a scruffy film student named George Lucas conceived and finally gave birth to a good old fashioned space opera, come on aboard! Clark goes all the way back to the conception of Star Wars being all about a Luke Starkiller (actually even older than that) and takes us on a ride through script changes, casting three relatively unknown actors (then) as the leads, and assembling a creative team to bring the SWUniverse to life. Along the way there's overbudget shoots, leisurely directors, one big honking divorce, and a reception no one ever expected.

I enjoyed it; your mileage may vary.

 The Hanging Tree, Ben Aaronovitch
A teenage girl is found overdosed in a lavish apartment in a building catering to wealthy clients. A sad event in any case, but for Peter Grant, young police constable and wizard-in-training, there's a catch: one of the other people at the party is the daughter of Lady Tyburn, the goddess of the River Tyburn. She saved Peter's life some time ago and now wants him to return the favor by keeping her daughter's name out of the investigation. Further investigation into the young woman's death, however, finds that her brain has been damaged by magic. There's also an obscure magical text on the loose somewhere, a fox in human's clothing, and a lead on the Faceless Man who led Peter's former partner Lesley May to desert the force.

We're back in the city after a country vacation with lots of familiar faces appearing—DC Guleed and DCI Seawoll (neither who are happy that "Falcon" elements are mixed up in their case), Peter's tutor Thomas Nightingale, the enigmatic housekeeper Molly, Peter's lover Beverley Brook, Lady Ty, DCI Stephanopoulos, Lesley May, Dr. Walid, Ryan, Peter's mom—as well as new characters like Reynard Fossman, and a nice meaty complicated plot with lots of storylines going.

The worst of this book? It's the last one except for a novella and the graphic novel Detective Stories coming out in December. Write, Ben, write.

 Salt Sugar Fat, Michael Moss
Let's say I knew all the facts Moss states here (although none of the behind the scenes stuff), but when you see it in print under your nose it has a lot more impact. I knew all the facts because I've been complaining for years how food is becoming more sweetened and salted; the latest atrocity being Classico's no-sugar added Tomato and Basil pasta sauce, which used to be basic tomatoes, tomato paste, water, and salt, which I use for a base for my own sauce (slow cooking with pork), which is now polluted with sugar, and fake-tasting garlic and onions as well.

Moss talks about the development of convenience food, and how the companies have designed food that make you want it, as opposed to designing food that people want. In an effort to produce a "bliss factor" that makes you want to eat more and more of a certain food, not only snack foods, but convenience foods like Hormel dinners and bologna have been stuffed with salt and fat and even sugar. He interviews different people who worked for mega-food conglomerates like Kraft and Coca-Cola (and, surprise!, these people do not eat the food they manufacturer, opting for healthier diets!) and how some of them actually thought they were going to help people eat better and ended up disillusioned. After all, if you eat many of these foods (they mention bread, crackers, soup, meat) without salt, they taste not only bland but in some cases bitter, metallic, or soapy.

In the end, the issue isn't about salt, sugar and fat—it's about too much salt, sugar and fat, and about companies manipulating you into eating the item ("you don't have to feel guilty"). Moss does repeat his information several times, to make sure you get the message. Otherwise, it's an easy read—as well as an uneasy read.

To be honest the most frightening part of this book was on pages 336-337, where he talks about Nestlé marketing liquid foods for people who have had gastric bypass and their envisioning "drug-like foods, or food-like drugs." Made me squirm.

 Murder at Beechwood, Alyssa Maxwell
This may be the first of Maxwell's Gilded Newport mysteries that didn't jar me too much with modernisms.

Emma Cross, a "poor relation" of the Vanderbilts, makes her living as a reporter for a Newport newspaper. She lives with a chaperone and, to the disapproval of many in her set, a former "fallen woman" who is trying to turn her life around. One morning Emma hears a strange noise outside and finds a baby on her doorstep. She immediately suspects that a murder that occurred nearby might have a connection with the baby, so she treads very carefully in her search for the child's mother. Then a tragedy occurs at a house party she is attending as a reporter: wealthy Virgil Monroe drowns during a boat race, and his brother and Derrick Andrews, the publisher's son whose proposal Emma turned down, are both suspect in his death. A clue seems to link Monroe and the infant. What's going on?

The language is much better in this entry, although Maxwell seems to keep Emma's horse going here and there for hours and days with no clue how she keeps him properly groomed and fed in the meantime except for one sequence in the stable. Horses require a lot of work; they aren't like cars. And I had to wince every time I read the name of the two brothers involved in this story: Virgil and Wyatt? Really? Was the author at such a loss for names she had to dump the names of two infamous Western lawmen on her characters? However, the mystery itself was suitably convoluted and I didn't guess the twist until just before the climax. Besides, it's Newport!

  Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Dog Really Did That?, edited by Amy Neumark
Seems I can't resist picking up these volumes; your mileage varies depending on your tolerance for schmaltz and your love of dogs. They're like peanuts for me. Funny stories and sad stories, thoughtful stories and hopeful ones, all abound.

 Death Comes to Kurland Hall, Catherine Lloyd
Lucy Harrington is back at home in Kurland St. Mary helping with her friend Sophia's wedding, still smarting from an awkward and what Lucy thought was patronizing marriage proposal from gruff Major Robert Kurland. While she refuses to act as Kurland's secretary any longer, she can't help encountering him because the wedding will be held on the estate grounds. But Lucy's got bigger problems: the widow Chingsford, a gossiping and calculating but sweet-spoken woman, has endeared herself to Lucy's father the vicar and plans to marry him—and no sooner has that been announced than the widow is found dead at the foot of a staircase. Lucy and Major Kurland soon find out that there's a big long line of people who would have loved to see the gossipy woman dead.

The biggest surprise of all in this book is that Lucy becomes friends with Kurland's ex-fiance as she tries to ferret out who hated Mrs. Chingford enough to kill her. She has also caught the eye of Kurland's estate manager, Thomas Fairfax, who appears to be puzzled when his father's young widow, who previously objected to him, now wishes to visit with him. The duplicitous Mrs. Chingford, however, knows a secret about just about everyone, and a lot of secrets under the quiet village facades start to emerge.

I enjoy this series very much; Lucy is headstrong without being anachronistic, and her adversarial relationship with Robert Kurland is done very well (as is his with her). Quite looking forward to the next one in paperback this fall!

 Holmes for the Holidays, edited by Martin H. Greenberg

 The Happy Hollisters and the Old Clipper Ship, Jerry West
You'll have to believe in a whole lot of coincidences to have fun with this happy Hollisters volume where the family rescues a young man after a tree falls on his car. (I was particularly amused by how the author described the man who is not whitebread human like everyone else on the Hollisters' street). He turns out to be Tom King, a young man in search of the records of a clipper ship, coincidentally the same clipper ship the Hollister children's favorite actors are making a movie about. (Does it surprise you with these books that the kids eventually meet the actors and get to participate in the film? I didn't think so.) Soon 12-year-old Pete, 10-year-old Pam, Ricky, Holly, and 4-year-old Sue are helping Tom in his search for the clipper ship that may provide the young man an inheritance. but someone else is trying to find the clipper ship as well, and he's not a nice person. (You know this because even Zip the collie growls at him.)

Sexism finally rears it's ugly 1950s head: Pete and his friend and Ricky get to build and sail a mini-clipper ship out of the rowboat they are making a film with (foreshadowing: the mark of good literature!) and Pam and Holly and Sue only get to sew the sails. However, in a cute sequence that I loved, Ricky and Holly get separated from the rest of the family on a visit to Boston, visit a market, and buy some tea to throw into Boston Harbor! Nice to know in the Hollister universe seven- and six-year-old kids know history when today's teenagers can barely figure out what century George Washington is from! And of course when they are at the harborfront they accidentally stumble over a clue to the clipper ship Tom is looking for.

Seriously, this is fun if you don't mind all the coincidences. Just one thing: what is with Joey Brill's mother? Is she completely clueless or what?

 Nanea: Growing Up With Aloha, Kirby Larson
This is the first book of the newest American Girl, Alice Nanea Mitchell, who lives in Honolulu. Her red-headed father works as a civilian employee on Hickam Field while her native Hawaiian mom is the daughter of businesspeople who Nanea loves to help at their small store. She has an older brother David and an older sister Mary Lou, and her favorite activities are attending hula class taught by her grandmother, an accomplished hula instructor, cuddling with her little dog Mele, and playing with her best friends Lily (of Japanese descent) and Donna (together they are known as the Kittens). Nanea is desperate to show her family she is ready for more grown-up responsibilities, and also win a contest that the newspaper is sponsoring. As part of her dual campaign, early one Sunday morning Nanea wakes early to make breakfast for the family, only to be startled by airplanes flying over and the loud sounds of explosions. Pearl Harbor has been attacked by the Japanese.

I liked Nanea very much. She's very much like Maryellen without the silly streak (you won't catch her painting the front door red!) and I was very much drawn to her warm multicultural family as well as her friendships. The story of what the family experiences after the Pearl Harbor attack seems very true to other things I have read: her father gone for days helping at the airfield, her brother delivering blood to hospitals, her older sister and her friends taking up knitting, and Nanea and her friends recycling bottles and collecting scrap and doing anything they can to help out, and the family's attempt to help when Lily's father is mistakenly arrested as an enemy alien. Mele is also lost after the attack, only increasing Nanea's distress. The only thing they softpedaled a little was Lily's being insulted and her family being harassed after the attack; these things are only talked about, not shown. It might have been a bit grittier to show Nanea witnessing someone calling Lily a "Jap" and telling her to get out of Hawaii, or seeing the family's store egged, but perhaps American Girl didn't want to go that far.

The high water mark of the most recent American Girl series has been Melody, and Nanea doesn't quite make it, but it is still a strong entry and at least we have another non-white girl as a protagonist. AG seems to be overrun with blondes ever since Mattel took over. Again, as in the Melody book, I really missed the history feature that used to be in back of the books. While there is a Hawaiian word glossary, there are no little sidebar drawings to illustrate the Hawaiian and Japanese treats the girls like or the native food.

 Nanea: Hula for the Home Front, Kirby Larson
Nanea is looking forward to getting back to school (her school was damaged in the Pearl Harbor attack) and continuing to help her favorite teacher Miss Smith. But as soon as they set foot in the classroom Nanea is dismayed to see Miss Smith paying so much attention to a new student named Dixie Lopez, who seems unfriendly and who even seems to fall asleep a lot. In fact, Miss Smith gives the coveted job of War Stamp Collection supervisor to Dixie! Even worse, while running errands for the military, her older brother David has become good friends with an Army officer, Lieutenant Gregory. David will be eighteen soon and Nanea is afraid the lieutenant will talk David into enlisting.

In the second volume, Nanea's story starts to sound a bit like Molly's: her mom is working for the Red Cross, her older sister is doing endless knitting projects, and the kids are being organized into doing a hula exhibition to entertain the injured sailors at the nearby military hospital. In fact, Nanea's bond with her little dog Mele results in Mele "dancing" in part of Nanea's hula routine, a big hit with the soldiers, and she discovers that just petting Mele makes the young men feel better (shades of modern "therapy dogs"). While I know she is smarting over the loss of her best friend and worried about David, her selfish attitude toward Dixie at the beginning of the story seems uncharacteristic. Otherwise it's a good tale of how kids pitched in to help the war effort and some of the hardships they faced (Dixie's living conditions) and I'm glad there was no "cop out" with David. However, once again missing the lengthy historical notes that used to be at the end of the American Girl stories. This probably would have addressed the beginnings of therapy animals for military casualties.

 American Eclipse, David Baron
How could I resist this with our totality excursion coming up on August 21? I actually didn't get to read it until after seeing the breathtaking sheer amazement of a total eclipse, so it means that much more. In 1878, another total eclipse cut a swath across the United States from Idaho to Louisiana, and the astronomers of the time packed their equipment to go west to the Rockies: James Craig Watson, determined to discover the planet Vulcan which was said to orbit the sun inside the orbit of Mercury; his once friend and now rival C.H.F. Peters; Maria [pronounced "Mariah"] Mitchell, the brilliant woman astronomer still striving to prove that higher education, even in the sciences, did not ruin a woman's body (per a bestselling nonfiction book of the time); Cleveland Abbe, a nearsighted but persistent observer who means to view the eclipse even after he's stricken with altitude sickness; and even the inventor Thomas Edison, who had invented a gadget called a tasimeter to measure the heat of the corona of the sun.

Baron saw his first total solar eclipse in 1998 and his love for the subject shows through, even when his detail for what's going on with the astronomers (what they ate and how they passed their time—Edison went hunting and poor Mitchell was obliged to track down her telescopes due to railroad rivalries) gets a bit bogged down. He has some wonderfully descriptive language of the eclipse. His text illuminates the science of the time and of the cultural and medical beliefs that held back Mitchell and her fellow astronomy students, and even of the educational deficiencies that led an African-American man to murder his son and then commit suicide as the sun was blotted out, believing it was the end of the world.

I was surprised to note that Edison only began working on the problem of a cheap, long-lasting electric light after his astronomy adventure, so that it was only four years between his first experiments and the first electric Christmas tree lights! The volume also is illustrated profusely with the illustrations of the time taken from newspapers, scientific journals, and magazines, which present novel graphics, which gives us an idea how Americans of the time viewed the event. Astronomy buffs and science fans will especially enjoy.

Books Completed Since July 1

 Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color, Philip Ball
I'm not certain what I expected of this book. I was hoping for something like Victoria Finlay's Color, in which she travels the world looking for the sources of the colors used in art (ochre in Australia, etc.) This was a little different: Ball traces the use of colors used by artists and how artists of the past pretty much had to know more than a little chemistry to mix their own colors, since they didn't come ready-made by Winsor and Newton. Indeed, the artists' apprentices first task as apprentices was to learn how to grind and mix color.

Ball goes back to the Egyptians' love of colored glass, but most of the book is involved in talking about the classic artists (Da Vinci, Raphael, Vermeer, Rubens, etc.) and the mediums and colors they used: the pigments mixed differently if you were using fresco and if you were using tempera and if you were using oils, and sometimes the color you needed simply didn't exist yet. Blues were not only hard to come by, but expensive due to the fact that they came from precious stones, and were saved for the paintings of saints that were considered the most important thing to portray for many years.

He also covers the concept of color, and how some societies do not have names for certain colors (the Vietnamese and Korean languages, for instance, do not differentiate between green and blue; the medieval color sinople could refer to red or green), the minerals and plants and even insects that produce different colors, how palettes changed from the medieval era to the present, and how manufactured colors revolutionized the artists' palette.

It ended up being fascinating reading even if it wasn't what I expected.

 Whispers Under Ground, Ben Aaronovitch
In the third Peter Grant adventure, the action opens with Peter's thirteen-year-old neighbor leading him and his partner Lesley May to a ghost spraying graffiti near her school—but he's soon brought back down to earth by the death of a young American art student in one of the Tube tunnels. It looks like a simple stabbing, but it turns out he was killed with a piece of pottery that reeks of magical vestigia. It also turns out the student was the son of an important American politician, and the FBI sends out an agent to assist the Met in finding the killer.

And then things get really strange.

The cover copy makes a big deal out of the fact that the FBI agent is a born-again Christian, but that doesn't seem to cause all that much problems—she just keeps ditching the escort the Met has on her. The big problem is keeping her out of the way once magic starts rearing its ugly head. Some familiar faces appear, including Stephanopoulos and Sahra Guleed, and we make the acquaintance of Zach Palmer, whose dad was a fairy ("and by that I don't mean he dressed well and enjoyed musical theatre" ), and Jaget Kumar, who's Peter's guide into the underworld of the tube, which contains a big surprise.

I'm devouring these books like peanuts (or chocolate). They're inventive and fun, and I love the characters. They've even inveigled me into reading the graphic novels (check out below).

 A Historical Tour of Walt Disney World, Andrew Kiste
This is a nifty little book that covers the genesis of the different lands and rides at Walt Disney World (chiefly in the Magic Kingdom), from Main Street's antecedents in Walt's favorite town of his childhood, Marceline, plus Great Britain's Crystal Palace, to the history of pirates and African explorers which prompted Adventureland, to the Western legends that led to Frontierland, the history behind the Carousel of Progress, etc. There are some long-winded explanations of exhibits (the examination of "Casey at the Bat" comes to mind), but mostly the narratives are fun and interesting. If you didn't know anything about Walt Disney's life in Marceline, or about the Old West, the "darkest Africa"-type explorers of the late 19th/early 20th century, and the futurism of the 1950s that gave birth to Tomorrowland, this book will be illuminating.

 Radio Girl, Carol Brendler
This is the story of Cecelia "Cece" (rhymes with "peace") Maloney, a fourteen-year-old New Jerseyite whose dream is to become a radio star. When her father signs her working papers, but refuses to take her with him to the studios at "the Mutual" (he's a sound effects engineer at the Mutual Broadcasting System where Cece's favorite radio series, The Shadow, is produced) to get a radio job as he promised, Cece sneaks off one Saturday and dares to try to get a job at the CBS radio network instead—and to her delight is allowed to help out in the mailroom. From there she goes on to helping with other things, including typing scripts, and meets one of her idols, young actor Orson Welles, as well as an actress she admires. But other things aren't going so well for Cece: her best friend seems to be dumping her for another girlfriend (one she initially said she hated), she's keeping her employment a secret from her overworked mother, and her dad's young sister, who lives with them, appears to be keeping a terrible secret.

This is a bouncy, almost believable adventure that brilliantly brings 1930s teenage life alive: fashions, after-school jobs, favorite radio programs and singers, etc. Cece's breezy narrative, laced with the teen slang of the day, follows her as she confides in her best friend, and makes her way inch by inch toward her dream, never realizing her new job may gain her fame, but it's going to change her life in ways that she hasn't imagined. She's a typical teenager, self-absorbed enough and so fixed on her dream as not to guess what's going on at home.

Brendler paints the 1930s well; I detected only one mistake: missalettes were a 1970s thing, and I did think it was a bit "overkill" to have Cece and her best friend share a similar family problem. But she nicely ties a historical event into the end of the story. Not great literature, but quite enjoyable in the end.

 An Echo of Murder, Anne Perry
Victorian-era Thames River officer William Monk is called to the scene of a particularly brutal murder in an area of London where Hungarian immigrants live: the victim was stabbed, his fingers mutilated, and seventeen candles, some of them a rare purple color, were scattered around the murder site, their tips dipped in blood. Most of the people in the neighborhood do not speak English and a learned man who lives nearby agrees to help Monk by translating for him. Ugly rumors start arising from the surrounding community, that the Hungarians are aliens who practice bloody rituals. Even Monk is baffled, unable to understand what caused such hatred.

In the meantime, the Monks' adopted son "Scuff"—who asks to be known as "Will" after his adopted father—is working as an apprentice to Crow, a slum doctor who sometimes treats the Hungarians. Out of nowhere, an English doctor who calls himself Fitz comes to Crow's assistance with an amputation case—and it turns out he served in the Crimea and was friends with Hester Monk, who thought he died on the battlefield. Fitz is still badly shell-shocked and sometimes has no memory of events; could he be the murderer?

Monk takes a little bit of a back burner in this latest in the series even as he doggedly pursues clues as more murders with the same grim pattern happens; the novel more revolves around Hester Latterly Monk, her reacquaintance with Herbert Fitzherbert and facing up to the privations and horrors she endured in the Crimea, and her making peace with her brother Charles, and also with Scuff, who is less a mudlark and more a young man every day, one who is getting good experience in the medical profession. He decides that he will use the name "Will" as an adult and plays a part in discovering who committed the murders. It's a nice change of pace to see the story revolve around Hester and Will, even though in the end it's Monk who makes the final connection that brings the murderer to justice.

 Head of Drama, Sydney Newman and Graeme Burk
Born Shimshon Nudelman in the poor section of Toronto, media historians might know Sydney Newman as a former promising artist, or once a vital cog at the National Film Board of Canada or at ABC Television in Britain. But almost any fan of Doctor Who's long history can tell you that Newman was the bloke who came up with the idea of an old man traveling in a time machine who can visit points in Earth history, and appointed a young woman named Verity Lambert to produce the show (a rarity in that day, as well as having a young man of Arab ancestry to direct the first story). He was determined not to have "bug-eyed monsters" on his new show, which he insisted should be about history, and was nonplussed when the second story in the series, about the pepperpot Daleks, made the series a hit.

The first half of the volume is a memoir by Newman of his life through 1987; it's frank and some of the language would be considered culturally insensitive today (although Newman uses it to refer to himself). He rises from struggling young artist to flirting with socialism to employment with the National Film Board of Canada to working in Britain where The Avengers turned from a police procedural to the hip series we remember today, and finally to the BBC as head of drama. Newman's colorful life and stubborn character is well-told in an unflinching narrative (although, as in all memoirs, he forgets some of the details, which are remedied with footnotes). At home he was married to the love of his life, Betty, until her death from polychondritis and they—well, mostly she, as was the tradition back then—raised three daughters.

Burk takes over after Newman's memoir leaves off, chronicling the final thirty years of his life as his career waned. In the 1980s he even lost touch with the series he was most associated with, Doctor Who, stating it should quit doing all those trite science fiction plots and go back to historical and scientific stories. (However, in a nod to current events, he also thought it would be appropriate if the Doctor regenerated into a woman!) As a treat—although it is a rather sad postscript—there is an afterword by Newman's daughter Deirdre, offering another short perspective on her father and also on her mother's death and how it affected him.

In a modern age where "get up and go" ambition has been replaced with the need for multiple college degrees, Newman's story of climbing the executive ladder on grit and blarney may be an eye-opener. If you have no knowledge of Canadian and British broadcasting, you may find the narrative dry or without purpose. On the other hand, if you're a fan of The Avengers or Doctor Who (especially if you saw the film An Adventure in Space and Time and wondered about that bombastic man ordering Jessica Raine's Verity Lambert about), you probably will enjoy Newman's story.

 The Sherlock Holmes Book, edited by David Stuart Davies
This is one of Dorling-Kindersley's "big ideas simply explained" volumes about the Great Detective himself. There are synopses of all of the canon stories with diagrams and graphics, a timeline of Arthur Conan Doyle's life and literary work, insets chronicling historical background to many of the stories, data about the era in which Holmes and Watson worked. profiles of major characters, and chapters about other Victorian crime fiction and Sherlock on stage, screen, and audio. The text is dotted with illustrations and photographs, magazine and book covers, lithographs, maps, old advertisements, movie clips, and more to thoroughly immerse you in Sherlockania. The game is afoot!

 The Royal Nanny, Karen Harper
In 1897, a young woman named Charlotte Bill arrives at the royal home of the Duke of York (later to be King George V) and his growing family, in order to take the position of assistant nursemaid. Almost immediately she discovers that the head nursemaid has suffered emotional distress and is taking it out on the two young sons of the prince: toddler David (some day to be Edward VIII before his abdication) and little Bertie (the future King George VI), and, in the process has made both children afraid of their parents. When Bill reports the abuse, she is suddenly thrust into the heady and strict role of the royal nanny.

This is a fictional story about the life of Bill, who became known to the royal parents as well as their children as "Lala," and her life as nanny and later governess to the family of six: David, Bertie, Mary, Harry, George, and the youngest, Johnnie, who was kept out of the public eye because of his epilepsy and a developmental delay that might be called autism today. Lala lavishes all her love on the children and, in a fictional bit of yarn-spinning, even turns down marriage to stay with them. She will be known to many as Johnnie's saviour, as the Yorks are constantly advised to have the boy shut away somewhere, but her strong belief in him, and in the Duchess of York's feeling that she should not give up on the child, kept him at home and at least near the family and not institutionalized.

The romance Harper creates for Lala is a bit "wet," if you know what I mean, even more so knowing that it is a totally made up character (Harper says she combined two actual servants at York Cottage to create the fictional love interest). But it is the dedication Lala shows to her young charges, especially sunny Johnnie, and the behind-the-scenes action of the royal household that is of the most interest. Read the romantic frippery with a light eye and concentrate on the real meat of the story, Lala's love for the children, and you'll be fine.

(There is an outstanding miniseries about Johnnie that can be found on DVD, The Lost Prince.)

 Rivers of London: Body Work, Ben Aaronovitch & Andrew Cartmel
I haven't read any "graphic novels," as comics are known these days, since back when Comico was doing Jonny Quest and Innovation did Quantum Leap. I have to admit I haven't been very pleased with some of the comic art which I've seen in the past few years: roughly outlined faces and figures, blurred figures and backgrounds. But I love the Peter Grant books and decided to take a chance on this first collection. I was not disappointed. The artwork is excellent and characters portrayed as they are described in the book.

The story: a car found in the Thames with its driver drowned presents magical influences when Peter investigates. This leads them to a car repair shop where odd things begin to happen—like cars having a mind of their own. This is nothing new to Thomas Nightingale, who introduces Peter to the most haunted car in Britain. Would it surprise you to know the two cases are connected? I knew it wouldn't.

Enjoyable art and stories, a collection of the individual comic covers at the end, and several brief "Tales from the Folly" featuring various regular characters wrap up this volume, which has a very funny ending featuring Molly and Toby the ghost-hunting dog. 

 Re-read: The One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Dodie Smith
If your total experience with this story is the animated Disney classic or the two live-action movies and the abysmal weekly cartoon that Disney Pictures did, you owe it to yourself to read Dodie Smith's original, with its wicked sense of humor and some very touching scenes. Mrs. and Mr. Dearly (not Roger and Anita as in the movies, and he's an accountant, not a songwriter) live with their Dalmatians Pongo and Missus (in the book Perdita is a different, separate character) near Regents Park with their two nannies, Nanny Cook and Nanny Butler. Mrs. Dearly's old schoolmate Cruella de Vil is eager to buy Missus' puppies, and, as you know the story goes, has them kidnapped. By way of the dogs' Twilight Barking, a rescue mission is mounted!

The book includes a lot more adventures for Pongo and Missus in rescuing the puppies, including a very sweet stay with an elderly spaniel and his even more ancient master, a sojourn in a very special barn, and meeting with a Staffordshire terrier who helps them get aboard the moving van, and is a very funny read for adults and children alike, as Smith's narrative is very witty and has jokes adults will appreciate more than children. There are also additional characters like Cruella's husband and her white Persian cat, and other things are slightly different: in the book the runt of the litter is not Lucky, but little Cadpig, who stars in Smith's sequel Dalmatian novel, The Starlight Barking.

Recommended for all ages.

 A Nantucket Christmas, Leslie Linsley, photographs by Jeffrey Allen

 The Longest Road, Philip Caputo
This book unlocks every ounce of wanderlust I have. On two different years, 1978 and 1975, Mom, Dad and I popped in the car and drove cross country to California (and on another year drove down to Disney World). Yes, we traveled the interstates, not the blue highways, but we stayed at local motels and ate at a lot of local places rather than chains (although we were really fond of Nickerson Farms on the I-80 rest stops; they had a killer chicken soup). It was a great adventure, from the lush hills of eastern Pennsylvania to the corn- and wheat-covered fields of Nebraska and Kansas to the arid lands of Nevada to the golden grass of California. When I heard Caputo talk about this book on "Travels with Rick Steves," I had to pick it up.

Caputo and his wife Leslie and their two English setters, Sage and Sky, borrow a vintage Airstream trailer and tow it behind their pickup truck ("Ethel" and "Fred") and drive from the southernmost mile marker in the US in Key West diagonally across the US and up the Alaska Highway to Deadhorse, the northernmost mile marker, observing not only the scenery and tasting the local treats, but in search of the answer to Caputo's question "How does the United States, peopled by every race on earth, remain united?" (There really isn't one answer; but the responses are interesting.) They meet travelers, pocket philosophers, locals with differing political views, Native Americans trying to regain their heritage, people "sticking it out" (or are they?) in dying towns, and more.

While I was a little bored by some momentary political asides, I mostly enjoyed the trip, especially the problems of traveling with a vintage trailer and seeing life off the interstate, and of course the lush descriptions of scenery. And I smiled when he visited Chicken, Alaska, the setting of one of my favorite pioneering-days-in-Alaska books, Tisha, about a schoolteacher in the early 20th century. (Caputo doesn't mention the story.)

  Equus, edited by Rhonda Parrish and J.G. Formato
Somewhere in me there is a little girl who always dreamed of horses, read Black Beauty and the Windy Foot books, even though I knew I wouldn't want to go through the work it took to keep a horse healthy and happy even if we had the room for one. Better to ride imaginary horses who could take you anywhere and didn't need grooming and mucking out.

This is a fine set of imaginary steeds to ride, and unsparing of the grim as well as the glorious: a rider and trainer of war unicorns can't explain to a new assistant why her virginity is worth keeping, but knows it is in her even when a tragedy occurs; a mute Florida girl races her limerunner (another name for a water horse) against the best (including death), a woman starts to knit to belong to her husband's clique and creates a new world for herself instead, magic colors a Regency-era horse race, a fallen angel and his steed take refuge in a church with explosive results, when rain ends in a valley that needs it desperately a young woman seeks to ride the horses that come out of the sky to find out why, in a modern urban setting two hard-drinking men in Halifax make a discovery involving kelpies and secretive shipments to a lake, a mysterious carousel shows up in an Australian town just as men move to round up wild brumbies, a woman who has a daughter who is "different" begs a unicorn to change her, a being of light enters a celestial chariot race when he begins to fade, and more.

The gods of Ragnarok show up a little too often for my taste in the volume, but the stories mentioned above quite struck my fancy as I read through this anthology, and I especially enjoyed the story of the war unicorns and the celestial race, the Regency and the Halifax-set stories gave me a chuckle, and I loved the familiar yet fanciful settings in Florida and Australia. One thing: I'm grateful for adventure stories that now feature women on an equal setting with men, but I wish there had been a couple of more male protagonists.

 Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome
First published in 1930 and the first in a long series of books featuring the characters, this novel introduces the Walker children, whose mother is renting a home in England's Lake District during the summer holidays (the father is a naval officer and at sea). John, Susan, Titty, and Roger are wild to camp out on their own on a small island across the lake from the rental home, and since they can all swim (Roger is just a beginner) and sail, their father and mother give them permission. When they arrive on the island in their little sailboat Swallow, they find that someone has camped there previously and they re-use the fireplace the campers have made. They haven't been there long when they meet the previous campers: two tomboyish girls, Nancy and Peggy Blackett, who crew a small sailboat named Amazon.

This is one of those wonderful kids' adventures where the children are virtually unsupervised (their mother keeps tabs on them by hearing from the farmer's wife who provides them with milk and other goodies each morning) and just live fancy and free on their own. Once they meet the crew of the Amazon, they engage in a pretend "war" with them to determine which group will have the flagship, and commiserate with the girls about their usually fun uncle, whose writing project has left him ignoring the two—until his houseboat is robbed and they are accused.

Modern parents would be aghast at leaving kids 7 through 14 on an island alone, but both the Walkers and the Blacketts have been taught to be self-reliant and responsible, so they can have fun without all those bothersome adults around, just like when I was a kid. The kids swim, sail, row, hike, and then eat lots of fresh food and homemade treats. Yeah, the sailing terminology sometimes is a little deep, but Ransome explains it well enough that you can figure out what the kids are doing. Just enough mystery and adventure without putting the kids in danger. For a nostalgic look back at kids' vacations in 1929, this one can't be beat.

 Friends in High Places, A Liberty Lane Mystery, Caro Peacock
Feeling tired and restless after the conclusion of her previous case (The Path of the Wicked), Liberty Lane is ready for some tea and companionship at the home of her friend Marguerite Blessington. Instead, she is embroiled in the British aristocracy's interest in Prince Louis Napoleon and a valet who is hiding out at Blessington's home, a  Frenchman who has escaped from France with papers that may keep the Prince from jail. No sooner does Liberty arrive than strange things begin to happen: a fire near the scullery, and then the report of a burglary that never happened. But more sinister things are about to happen, including a murder and an encounter with spies, and news about the man that Liberty loves that will shake her to her very core.

I have to admit the political machinations in this story made my head spin. Good thing the usual familiar characters were there to keep it balanced: Liberty, her friend Amos Legge the commensurate groom, the street urchin Tabby, and even police officer Bevan and Liberty's beautiful mare Rancie. The mystery is suitably convoluted and will keep you guessing until a telling clue is thrown in before the final few chapters. There's also the new experience of seeing usually practical Liberty experiencing jealousy. (And I must admit the fact that she left a suspect alone with temptation in her path was pretty stupid, but then it was an emergency.)

Not one of my favorite Liberty Lane mysteries, but well worth checking out.

 Rivers of London: Night Witch, Ben Aaronovitch & Andrew Cartmel
This is the second graphic novel based on Aaronovitch's book series about Peter Grant, neophyte police officer and "apprentice wizard," working under Inspector Thomas Nightingale, England's last practicing wizard. A wealthy couple from the former Soviet Union who are living in London are terrorized by a "leshy" (a woods spirit) who has taken away their daughter; they try to kidnap Varvara Tamonina, one of a former World War II regiment called "the Night Witches," to help get her back. But Tamonina, just recently taken into custody by Nightingale and Grant, refuses to go with them. Instead, an old friend works behind the scenes to alter the situation.

Accompanying the suspense of the missing child story are some humorous moments with Beverley Brook and nice insight on Nightingale's character, as well as more about Tamonina's past. As in the previous volume, the final few pages highlight the individual issue covers and one-page humorous stories called "Tales from the Folly."

This is one graphic series that lives up to the "novel" nomenclature. As I said for the first one, this is splendid artwork, not the slash-and-gash faces that other graphic novels have developed in recent times, and the stories are just as good as the books. I can't wait until the next one comes out on the 25th.

OH! Don't do like I did and read this before reading the book Broken Homes. Something happens in the book that drives the plot of the graphic novel. As River Song shrills: SPOILERS!

 Four Feet to Fame, Bob Weatherwax and Richard Lester
I've been waiting for this book since I heard about it: it's Bob Weatherwax's story about his father, Rudd, and the canine star he created, Lassie. Because Bob worked with his father and grew up with Lassie, I was hoping there would be a lot more details about some of the movies and about the television series. Instead there's a lot about Bob himself, starting with a nearly fatal motorcycle accident he had some years back as well as his own experiences as a trainer (not that this was all necessarily bad).

For someone who lived the experience, there are some odd factual mistakes, though. Bob says "Spook" (the Lassie you see with the wide blaze in early Timmy episodes) was in Lassie's Great Adventure (taken from a five-part Lassie episode) when it was "Baby," Spook's successor, and he said the series titles originally showed Lassie standing on a rock "surveying his domain" and the iconic scene of Lassie jumping over the fence came later, but it was the rock scene which came later after the farm episodes. (Also, I'm not sure whose mistake this is, Bob's or co-author Richard Lester, but he refers to Corey Stuart as a park ranger, which is wrong. Corey is a forest ranger; park rangers are completely different--they even work for a different government agency.)

Another troubling bit of narrative has Bob explaining the Lassie lineage. For years the creators of the series and the Weatherwax family stated that each new Lassie was the son of the previous dog. Several years ago it came to light that the second Lassie, "Lassie Junior," who appeared on the television episodes with Jeff and later Timmy, was not a son of "Pal," the original Lassie of the movies. (However, all the Lassie collies following were descended from "Junior.") In this book Bob states that "Pal" was bred and had a son who was a Lassie-in-training; however, that collie had eye problems and couldn't perform, but his son Laddie was groomed to be Pal's successor. Unfortunately Laddie died of distemper, and a new Lassie had to be sought out. Finally one of Rudd Weatherwax's helpers, Frank Inn, found Lassie Junior, but Bob described the dog as "vicious" several times. He never explains how Rudd managed to break the dog of attacking people.

But there are enough other behind-the-scenes glimpses to be reasonably satisfying: Bob talking about being friends with Tommy Rettig, who played Jeff and who was so strictly supervised by his mother he didn't have a chance to be a boy; the truth about John Wayne "winning" Lassie at poker while filming Hondo (and how tough it was to work with John Wayne, who really didn't like to work with dogs); the dog Bob considers the smartest Weatherwax dog ever trained (it wasn't Lassie); how hard it was to work with collies (they have minds of their own); how Rudd's efforts to protect the Lassie image pretty much ruined him emotionally; about Rudd's tough childhood and the no-nonsense approach he took with his own children (if you love Lassie, you may not like the truth about Rudd); etc. And some trivia: for instance, in the 19th season episode of the Lassie television series, "The Visitor," that isn't "Hey Hey" (grandson of Baby) playing Lassie; it's Bob's dog Silver who played "Dog" in Big Jake.

So, worthwhile for a Lassie lover—just wish there'd been more.

 Broken Homes, Ben Aaronovitch
So much is going on in this fourth novel in the Peter Grant "Rivers of London" series that I'm hard pressed to sum it up. A man involved in a car accident has blood all over the rear of his car as if a body has been riding there; Peter, his partner Lesley, and his mentor Thomas Nightingale are still chasing down the disciples of the Faceless Man; a young woman has been found with her face destroyed;, another man is found having been burned up from the inside; a rogue magician turns up; a man has suddenly jumped under a Tube train; a wizard's grimoire has appeared; and apparently something odd is going on at a public housing flat. Oh, and the Folly's enigmatic housekeeper Molly is working her way through cookbooks now. Got all that?

As in the way of these books, it all makes sense in the end—or as much sense as it can make in a London where magic exists, but Peter and Lesley are kept on the run trying to figure it all out. Eventually they move undercover to the public housing unit where Peter discovers there's something a lot bigger than murders and grimoires going around.

If you are reading the graphic novels, do not do as I did and read Night Witch before this book, as there is a whopper of a spoiler in it for this book.

 Rivers of London: Black Mould, Ben Aaronovitch & Andrew Cartmel
I know I'm hooked: I bought this as soon as it was released on July 25.

DC Sahra Guleed is investigating the rental home of a friend whose daughter has refused to live in it any longer, citing creepy and fearful feelings, when she is attacked by an animated "creature" made from black mould. She fights it off and reports it to the Folly, where she helps Peter Grant defeat the creature off with an unusual weapon, since his use of magic just strengthens it. Peter's search for more of this "creepy" mould leads him to a swank new apartment building, two young people living slightly illegally in an aunt's apartment, an old-age home, and even to his musician dad for some advice. After all, what's the connection between homicidal black mould, a jazz musician, and a rental company?

Loved Peter and Guleed working together, the humorous subplot with Nightingale and Tom Debden (the body-shop guy from Body Work), a great action scene involving Molly and an intruder, and seeing Peter's dad "in the flesh," so to speak. My only quibble: I wasn't sure the woman character introduced near the end of the story was all that good a character; she seemed a bit over the top. Another funny ending with Molly and Toby finishes off an entertaining story that's still not quite as good as Body Work, but which gets points for a novel "villain." (And there's a couple of great chuckles in the one-page "Tales from the Folly.")

Books Completed Since June 1

 Folks, this ain't normal, Joel Salatin
Salatin and his family run an organic and free range farm in Northern Virginia, trying to combine the best way of old farming methods (use of straw bedding and manure for fertilizer, grass-feeding their cows and allowing their pigs and chickens to forage, no antibiotics, etc.) and modern ones (using the internet, farmer's markets, etc.) to get healthy food to people. Salatin's argument is, like most organic farmers, that the processed stuff we are stuffing ourselves with is bad for our health and that factory farming could be accomplished more naturally if we combined old methods with new. He's selling his philosophy, naturally, but a lot of what he says makes sense.

Still, it takes money to "eat right." Salatin argues that you can ditch that loathsome lawn and grow your own, but for those of us who hate being out in the sun aren't going to go for it (I let someone else take care of my lawn; I don't even water it—if God wants it to grow He can make it rain Himself). If I was one of these bigshot executives with a six-figure salary I would buy all my vegetables from local farmers, only eat organically grown grains, and eat only free-range, grass-fed animals which are killed humanely. But not making six figures (the two of us together don't make six figures), factory-farmed supermarket food is our lot.

Still, the book makes interesting reading and will make you think.

 Live and Let Growl, Laurien Berenson
Believing she'll be helping her sister-in-law Bertie get her dogs ready for a dog show, Melanie Travis leaves her two sons and six poodles in the capable hands of her husband to ride with Bertie and her formidable Aunt Peg to a dog show in Kentucky, where Peg will also check up on an unexpected acquisition: a racehorse she inherited from the best friend of her late husband. However, it turns out that husband Sam and Aunt Peg and Bertie want Melanie to have a good rest from her teaching and training duties, so Melanie has some leisure time to spend with her poodle Faith on the trip and befriend Aunt Peg's old friend Ellie Wanamaker, a retired show judge. Ellie's not only having family difficulties, but Melanie notices a lot of the folks on the dog show circuit are hostile toward her. But was one of them hostile enough to kill her?—she took a fatal fall on familiar land; was it just an accident.

This entry in the long-running series is a bit of a breather from the usual story where Melanie meets someone unpleasant on the dog show circuit who is later murdered, as much of the story itself has to do with double-dealing on the racehorse circuit instead. A different venue (Kentucky instead of Connecticut) freshens the plot a little, but with that comes a warning: the whole process of buying and selling (or not selling) racehorses is completely explained in long detail so that the end gambit makes sense. If you have no interest in horses, that may turn you off. A plus: there's a delightful quartet of Jack Russell Terriers who have cameos in this one, and Melanie gets to spend time with Faith.

 ROY G. BIV, Jude Stewart
This is a small novelty-like book about color and color interpretation which probably would have been more interesting had it not been set up like a web page with hyperlinks. While that works okay on a web page, it's annoying to be confronted on every page with underlined words in a rainbow of color referencing referrals in the margin of the page to other colors with similar meanings. The information contained in each chapter about a color is interesting, but the "links" are distracting and, after a while, annoying when you see the same ones over and over. My advice is to just read the text as text and avoid the hypertext.

 Meg Follows A Dream: The Fight for Freedom, 1844, Norma Jean Lutz
It's 1844 in Ohio, and Meg Buehler is the daughter of one of many families of German heritage that live in the area. Meg loves art, but her practical parents, a hard-working mother who can't understand why Meg is always daydreaming, and her father, a furniture-maker of the old school, don't think learning how "to paint flowers" is a good use of her time. Her father also disapproves of her younger brother, Fred, whose head is filled with dreams of machinery, and who teases Meg about her art and often tattles on her. Meg also becomes interested in a young man she sees at the opening of the local art institute.

The underlying thread of this story is "freedom," as a conflict over slavery is slowly simmering in the Ohio area and young Fred strongly agrees with the abolitionists whose writings appear in local papers while the elder Buehlers just want to keep out of it. However, it's a very thin thread held together mostly by Meg's crush, her love of art, her lack of strength as compared to her mother and sister, her friendship with Susannah, her brother's ceaseless teasing, and her eventual collapse due to overwork. It's a lesser effort in the "Sisters in Time" series, with a lackluster, wandering plot.

 The Button Box, Lynn Knight
The subtitle to this book is "The story of women in the 20th century, told through the clothes they wore." Knight's grandmother Annie was a seamstress and like everyone other woman of that era, seamstress or not, she kept a "button box" in an old candy tin (some women used cookie tins) and used these leftover and unique buttons on her personal and professional sewing projects. Knight begins her book with the iconic jet button of the Victorian times of her grandmother's birth, a mourning necessity in an era when too many children died before their first birthday and diseases like typhoid, dysentery, typhus, and tuberculosis ("consumption") carried off people willy-nilly. Through Grandma Annie's buttons, Knight follows the changing status of women from pampered Victorian/Edwardian doll to suffragette to flapper to someone making ends meet to someone making do during the First and Second World Wars to miniskirt-clad dolly-bird during the Swinging Sixties. Dress design, working women, the Baby Boom, childcare, the new feminism are all touched on in this fascinating social history. I don't like shopping or even particularly looking at clothes, but this told the story of women so well through their dress it was irresistible.

 Home by Nightfall, Charles Finch
Charles Lennox's detective business is finally starting to flourish and his family life with wife Lady Jane and young daughter Sophia grows sweeter every day. He's almost too busy, especially when it affects his usual lunches with his beloved brother Edmund, who is lately extremely depressed after the death of his wife. But Edmund has something else to occupy one day: strange thefts in the village where his country house is located, and he asks Charles to come down for a few days to look into it. But Lennox and his agency are investigating, like every other private inquiry agent in the city of London,  the disappearance of a famous German pianist. How will he do both at once?

Let's say Charles manages as always. The country-set portion of the story is very entertaining—the mystery involves an insurance agent who had an unusual chalk figure left upon his property and then who was lured away from his home about a false claim; a mystery which finally ends with the death of the local mayor—especially when the townspeople keep assuming Charles has come back to Markethouse to stay. The country mystery has a little in common with something that happened in a book I read later this month, and a twist of Charles' mind with the evidence his partners have gathered brings also the solution to the disappearance of Muller. I thought the country mystery as well as the solution much superior to the city story, and enjoyed the atmosphere of the little market town. Finch is making fewer of those anachronistic errors I used to hate in the earlier books, so I am well satisfied with this entry.

  Murder at the Puppy Fest, Laurien Berenson
Melanie Travis is back home in Connecticut after her Kentucky adventure, helping out at an annual event called "Puppy Fest," run by a local dog rescue organization funded by local millionaire Leo Brody, who opens his capacious home for the event, which is covered by the press, and attended by most of his children from three different marriages. When Brody doesn't show up for the opening of Puppy Fest (which is played somewhat like the Puppy Bowl game on Superbowl Sunday), Melanie is sent to track him down. You guessed it: she finds him dead—with his latest mistress bending over the body. So not only is there now a body, but several people think Melanie had something to do with his death, including Jane, the Brody daughter who runs Puppy Posse.

It's a good thing Melanie is still on vacation because she spends the rest of the book driving through Connecticut talking to the rest of Leo Brody's fractured family, and boy are they a bunch of pips—if they don't hate each other on the surface they sure do underneath. This is another one of Berenson's books in which everyone is so unpleasant you almost don't care who gets arrested as long as they all shut up. Of more interest in the story is the terrier that Melanie and Davey rescue as the book opens and if he will find a home with the family, and of what Aunt Peg is going to do once a sobering event happens.

 The Queen's Accomplice, Susan Elia MacNeal
After her Washington, DC, mission in the previous novel, codebreaker and spy Margaret "Maggie" Hope is back in London, working as a "code checker" for messages coming in from Allied spies in occupied France. She's worried about one of the spies, a young woman, but her superior brushes it off as a "typical female mistake." But then a bigger worry emerges: first one and then another young woman worker at SOE is found murdered in the manner of the Jack the Ripper killings from 60 years earlier, including a Welsh girl Maggie was friends with. In the meantime, Maggie has taken in her friend Chuck and her baby after their flat is destroyed by a gas explosion, and her pleas to her old friend Winston Churchill has worked a miracle: gotten her sister released from a concentration camp and headed to England—except Elise does not wish to go.

MacNeal has based her story about a serial killer during the Blitz on a real-life killer during that time crossed with the sordid history of H.H. Holmes, an American serial killer who operated during the 1890s and who some theorize might also have been Jack the Ripper. (See Erik Larson's Devil in the White City.) Intercut is Elise Hess' odyssey and Maggie's friends Hugh and Sarah training for a mission in France. There is also the reality of many men's resentment of a woman's new, powerful role in wartime London, which not only is fueling the killer, but other men less lethal.

This one is a welcome change from the tepid Washington adventure of last time, as tension builds and the killer sets his sights on Maggie. The equality for women lectures are a bit tedious as they seem like lectures most of the time, but they do indeed provoke real resentment from the reader at the callousness of some of the male characters (which have repercussions in the following book). This book and The Paris Spy are pretty much a two-part story, so don't read that one without also grabbing this one as well.

 The Uncertainty of Everyday Life: 1915-1945, Harvey Green
This was the final volume in the "Everyday Life in America" series by Harper-Collins, and wasn't written until 1992, so it has a different viewpoint of the two wartime eras separated by boom and bust economics rather than the one that would have prevailed had this book been written in, say, 1960. Between 1915 and 1945 the United States went from a still mostly agrarian, isolationist nation to a manufacturing world power. American products and production reached its height and they became known as reliable and recommended. Yet another wave of immigrants unnerved "the old order" and, sadly, interactions between white Americans and black Americans not only remained the same, but in some ways deteriorated as the post-Civil War society the Ku Klux Klan rose again. Americans had more free time, which they first devoted to the "movies," first silent and then with sound, and then radio. (Television briefly knocks but is not touched on.) As advertising methods moved from text to imagery due to improved printing methods, advertisements persuaded Americans to buy more, especially items that would have been considered "frivolous" int he 19th century, and we truly became a consumer culture. Foods changed through the generations, with formerly "hearty traditional dishes" giving way to international foods, and the teenager appeared, with his/her own culture.

The text is a bit dry when they get into facts and figures and at its best when talking about social changes. If you are student of or interested in American history, a worthwhile series of books to dig up.

 Deck the Halls: Treasures of Christmas Past, Robert M. Merck

 Mycroft Holmes, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar & Anna Waterhouse
In 1870, the man whom Sherlock Holmes would describe as having his finger on the pulse of the nation is a mere secretary in the British government. He's engaged to be married to a beautiful and educated young woman whose parents have a plantation in Haiti, has just purchased a spirited mount named Abie, and has an unconventional friend, also from Haiti, who works in a tobacco shop. Then his fiance Georgiana abruptly decides to return to Haiti just as his friend receives a report of strange goings on there, including the deaths of children.

The good news is that this is a high energy mystery with something going on every minute, and a little-known facet of history of life after the slave trade ended revealed in the plot. With a lively opening in London, most of the action takes place in Haiti, where our party of Mycroft Holmes and his friend Cyrus Douglas meet opposition along every path trying to track down Georgiana as well as digging up troubling clues to the uncanny events happening.

The biggest problem for me is that I don't believe this is Mycroft Holmes. I can't really reconcile the overweight gourmand who has so much pull in the British Government as the intense, action-packed hero portrayed in this book: he rides at dead speed, bets on rowing races, swims, leaps, and does so much physical action he's more like Tarzan than Mycroft. So I enjoyed the adventure, the research into life in Britain and Haiti at the time was sound and the narrative was lively and literate, but it would have been better if our hero was named Montmorency Harrison or Michael Havilland—and the few small scenes with a supercilious university-age Sherlock did nothing to dispel that feeling.