Books Finished Since April 1

The sort of thing you think of at 1 a.m. when you're still not asleep yet: I've changed the title of these posts since the old one wasn't accurate. Many books I've listed were finished in a certain month, but half or more was read in the previous month—or sometimes even earlier, so it wasn't exactly accurate to say they were read in a certain month...yes, definitely one of those things you think of at 1 a.m. when you can't sleep...LOL...

• Kiki Strike: The Empress's Tomb, Kirsten Miller
The improbable, intrepid and ingenious Irregulars are back...and there's trouble brewing: Ananka's been on so many midnight forays that her grades are suffering and her parents are threatening to send her to a farm-style boarding school. In the meantime, Oona's deepest secret has been revealed and now the girls—except for Kiki—are eyeing her warily, wondering if she's about to turn traitor. Into the mix is a find in the Shadow City, trafficking in slaves, giant squirrels running amok in the city, and the tomb of a Chinese empress who is believed to have been poisoned as a traitor. Can the Irregulars triumph? Can Ananka escape her fate—and help misfit Molly at her school at the same time? Like the first Kiki Strike book, this is a fast, funny, page-turner of an adventure. Miller is very convincing in showing Oona's schism within the group, to the point that it becomes truly worrisome. Secretive Betty also becomes more fully realized. In addition, Miller takes some pointed, not-at-all-subtle pokes at overachieving parents who push their children to be what they are not. Highly recommended.

• Main Street: Keeping Secrets, Ann M. Martin
In this next volume in the "Main Street" series, the best friends quartet of sisters Flora and Ruby, plus Olivia and Nikki, are excited to find out that the new family in the Row Houses contains a girl their age. Willow seems friendly and smart, but what's with her odd mom? And why won't she ever invite them over? Along with the fun of preparing for Hallowe'en as well as a dog parade, Martin also sensitively touches on mental illness. The ongoing mystery involving Flora and Ruby's Aunt Allie remains to be solved, so stay tuned for the next installment.

• Small Favor, Jim Butcher
Harry Dresden still owes faery Queen Mab a favor...and the favor she wants him to do is hunt down "Gentleman Johnny" Marcone, a mobster that Harry has tangled with before. He's been kidnapped and exposed to the possessed coins of the Denarians. But someone else doesn't want Marcone found and sends an increasingly large—and violent—gruff (a supernatural goat; think "three billy goats gruff") on Harry's trail.

I enjoyed this book, but it almost takes your breath away, going from one bit of action to the next. The number of players in the game—Harry's allies, Harry's enemies, other characters from previous books—are so many that it's hard to keep up with all of them. At least for once Harry seems to have gotten a happy ending, but I expect it to be a brief respite. It always is.

• A Tangled Web, Kathryn Reiss
This is the last of the new set of American Girls mysteries, featuring Julie and a new girl in school who isn't exactly what she seems to be. Clues are planted so blatantly that a lot of the "mystery" is given away. There are some touching sequences involving Vietnam veterans, however, and Thanksgiving preparations that help the story along.

• Tell Me Where It Hurts, Dr. Nick Trout
I was looking forward to this book being in paperback, as I have collected books about veterinarians' experiences ever since I read James Herriot's books years ago. But now that I've finished with it, it's been consigned to the donate pile. I wasn't totally disappointed with it like I was with the uneven narrative of Best Friends, nor did I mind Trout's insertions of veterinarian realities between the animal stories, but after a while I got tired of his little fantasies about what he should have said or should have done. Once or twice wouldn't have been bad, but these often snarky comments dot the text like one too many horseflies. I would have preferred more animal experiences to Dr. Nick's litany of what he should have said.

• Eleanor Vs. Ike, Robin Gerber
Could a woman have won the Presidency in 1952? That's the premise of this interesting alternative history novel where Adlai Stevenson has a heart attack at the Democratic National Convention and the best candidate left is Eleanor Roosevelt (with Sam Rayburn as her running mate). Gerber does a great job of recreating 1950s politics (there are almost too many explanations of who these people are, I'm sure intended for modern readers who have minimal knowledge of the real 1950s, rather than the Happy Days view of the era), and I found the subsequent campaigns and characters believable. My only two pauses: a silly "kiss with history" where Eleanor is introduced to a little girl named Hillary Rodham and a piece of narrative on the convention floor when "paramedics" go to Stevenson's side. The "paramedic" did not exist in the 1950s and it brings the narrative back to the present with a thump. Otherwise this is recommended.

• The Street Musician, Paul Berna
In the first of three sequels to Berna's Horse Without a Head, taking place mere months after the events of that novel, Gaby's gang of ten are looking for something to do now that clumsy Tatave has wrecked the headless horse for good. Marion ("the girl with the dogs") suggests that they keep an eye on the townsfolk of Louvigny and perhaps a mystery will surface. Soon Fernand is wondering what's going on at a local trucking firm co-owned by two English brothers. And when Marion gives a dog away, supposedly to a disabled man, why does the animal surface some time later, dyed solid black and accompanying a blind street musician who picks a different street each day to ply his talent, even those areas unprofitable to him?

Although all the children—Gaby, Fernand, Marion, Zidore, Tatave, Criquet, Juan, Berthe, Melie, and little Bonbon—have their share in the adventures, it's very obvious that Marion in Berna's favorite, and she gets the lion's share of the action. This is an unusual of mystery and turns out quite differently from the first cops-and-robbers type action of the original story. I'm glad I discovered there were sequels and was able to follow up with this group of children!

• The New York Public Library Book of Popular Americana, Tad Tuljea
Yep, it's a reference book, but I read it. Found mistakes in it, too. :-)

• The Mystery of Saint-Salgue, Paul Berna
In the  third  (see May 6 entry) fourth story of Gaby's gang of ten, several years have passed. Gaby is now old enough to drive and he and the other children have pitched in to buy a 1930s vintage Citroen van, which they are taking on a three-weeks camping trip to the Riviera (if rickety old "Calamity Jane" lasts that long!)—along with eleven of Marion's dogs! Their first night of camping, they run into an older Canadian couple, Charley and Betty, who are from a village in Manitoba called "Saint-Salgue" and who are heading for the village of the same name in France. The moment they speak to the Canadians, the children are followed, accused of theft, have "Calamity Jane" vandalized, and are set on by the police. Puzzled, but perceptive as always, they realize it all has something to do with the mysterious "Saint-Salgue," especially after they discover Fernand has been keeping a secret from them. While two of Marion's dogs are prominent in the story, the tale belongs largely to Zidore, who keeps the van running and the troupe on an even keel. Again, another offbeat and fascinating story from Berna.

• St. Nicholas, Volume 19, Part 1, November 1891-April 1892
I haven't finished a St. Nicholas volume in a while, and this one was quite good. I was most absorbed in following the fortunes of "Tom Paulding," a boy who is searching for for Revolutionary treasure to help his widowed mother and young sister, which has a fascinating look at the development of upper Manhattan, a spot which, at that time, was being turned from farmland into urban area. A second, tamer, serial is "Two Girls and a Boy," concerning a well-bred child named Mildred who becomes friends with rather wild siblings Leslie and Charles. There is one quite funny story about a little boy who arranges a "Bull Fight" with his aggressive pet rabbit standing in for the bull, and some true life stories about "Electric Lights at Sea," penguins, and "Russian Children in the Ural Mountains." Less interesting is an Alice's Adventures in Wonderland knockoff called "The Admiral's Caravan" in which a little girl named Dorothy slips into a fantasy world where, like in Alice, all sorts of improbable things happen and the characters take idioms seriously (these types of stories were quite common then).

A study in opposites come from "Strange Corners of Our Country," which, although spattered with the usual bigotry twaddle of that time—"savages," "queer customs," "dirty homes," etc.—is a fascinating portrait of parts of the country over 100 years ago, including customs of Native American tribes, including an account of a real "snake dance" rather than a movie gussied-up ceremony. Presented in the same volume is "Tee-Wahn folk stories," Native American folk tales, which are presented in a respectful manner, including the story of the revenge of the fawns (on the wolves who killed their parents) and the tale of the man who married the moon.

Lastly is Laura E. Richards' leisurely memoir of her childhood, narrating the plays and travels of her family. I have read several of Richards' stories, including Captain January, about a little girl who lives at a lighthouse, most famously turned into a Shirley Temple film, and the books in her "Three Margarets" series, but I did not realize who she was until getting about halfway through her memoir to discover her father was Samuel Gridley Howe, founder of the Perkins Institute of the Blind in Boston (Laura Bridgeman, the deaf-and-blind girl who served as an inspiration for Helen Keller, was trained to communicate by Howe, and was named after Laura Richards) and her mother was Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the words to "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

Even if you don't know Captain January or the "Three Margarets" series, you may be familiar with Richards from the following, delightful nonsense verse which I remember reading in school:

"Eletelephony"

Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant--
No! no! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone--
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I've got it right.)
Howe'er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;
The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee--
(I fear I'd better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)

• Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door 2008
A companion book to the Rick Steves' Europe series that shows mainly on PBS stations. Steves encourages "back door" travel—not going to high-priced hotels and seeing only the regulation sites, or moping on the beach, but staying at smaller places, eating local food, and interacting with the folks of whatever area you are visiting. He makes it sound all deliciously wonderful to live out of a backpack for two weeks, tramp old marketplaces and bicycle through the countryside, sleep at hostels and agratourismas—which, probably, it is. There are also tips on best times of the year to travel, how to pack, the best time for visiting popular attractions, and even little sidebars about unusual places to visit: the countryside of Turkey, locations with Holocaust memorials, the former Eastern Bloc countries. As much fun to read as the television show is to watch. If you don't like Steves' television series or can't stand his puns, YMMV!

• Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, James W. Loewen
Loewen crosses the United States from west to east, reporting on inaccuracies in historical markers, whether they glorify people who were not what the marker claimed, or inaccurately describe an historic event which took place on the site, or do not mention significant historic events that took place on a site, instead perhaps concentrating on room furnishings, narrowly-described ways of life, and other insignificant details. It makes for absorbing reading (I did spot at least one mistake), but I'm sure it raises controversies as well.

About two-thirds of the way through the book I was impressed; he was getting through his text without mentioning Gone With the Wind. Alas, I thought too soon...

For Fans of Historical Mystery Books

Crime Thru Time

Great site for historical mystery fans, with a timeline of eras and what books have been written within that era with links to the authors. There is also a juvenile section, and a discussion group on Yahoo.

Johnnie At Last!

Has anyone ever read all the "Katy" books by Susan Coolidge and become frustrated at this paragraph as What Katy Did Next opens—

It was nearly two years since a certain visit made by Johnnie to Inches Mills, of which some of you have read in Nine Little Goslings.

—not to mention the referral to Miss Inches ("Mamma Marion") at the end of In the High Valley? What was Nine Little Goslings? Was there another Carr family novel?

It was years before I found out that Nine Little Goslings was not a "Katy" book, but a collection of short stories by Miss Coolidge, one of which was about Katy and the Carr family, specifically about Johnnie Carr.

With all the public domain books digitized to e-books these days, I still had no success in finding Nine Little Goslings—until today! So for all of you who have wondered what happened to Johnnie at Inches Mill, here is

CURLY LOCKS

When a little girl is six and a little boy is six, they like pretty much the same things and enjoy pretty much the same games. She wears an apron, and he a jacket and trousers, but they are both equally fond of running races, spinning tops, flying kites, going down hill on sleds, and making a noise in the open air. But when the little girl gets to be eleven or twelve, and to grow thin and long, so that every two months a tuck has to be let down in her frocks, then a great difference becomes visible. The boy goes on racing and whooping and comporting himself generally like a young colt in a pasture; but she turns quiet and shy, cares no longer for rough play or exercise, takes droll little sentimental fancies into her head, and likes best the books which make her cry. Almost all girls have a fit of this kind some time or other in the course of their lives; and it is rather a good thing to have it early, for little folks get over such attacks more easily than big ones. Perhaps we may live to see the day when wise mammas, going through the list of nursery diseases which their children have had, will wind up triumphantly with, “Mumps, measles, chicken-pox,—and they are all over with Amy Herbert, The Heir of Redclyffe, and the notion that they are going to be miserable for the rest of their lives!”

Sometimes this odd change comes after an illness when a little girl feels weak and out of sorts, and does not know exactly what is the matter. This is the way it came to Johnnie Carr, a girl whom some of you who read this are already acquainted with. She had intermittent fever the year after her sisters Katy and Clover came from boarding-school, and was quite ill for several weeks. Everybody in the house was sorry to have Johnnie sick. Katy nursed, petted, and cosseted her in the tenderest way. Clover brought flowers to the bedside and read books aloud, and told Johnnie interesting stories. Elsie cut out paper dolls for her by dozens, painted their cheeks pink and their eyes blue, and made for them beautiful dresses and jackets of every color and fashion. Papa never came in without some little present or treat in his pocket for Johnnie. So long as she was in bed, and all these nice things were doing for her, Johnnie liked being ill very much, but when she began to sit up and go down to dinner, and the family spoke of her as almost well again, then a time of unhappiness set in. The Johnnie who got out of bed after the fever was not the Johnnie of a month before. There were two inches more of her for one thing, for she had taken the opportunity to grow prodigiously, as sick children often do. Her head ached at times, her back felt weak, and her legs shook when she tried to run about. All sorts of queer and disagreeable feelings attacked her. Her hair had fallen out during the fever so that Papa thought it best to have it shaved close. Katy made a pretty silk-lined cap for her to wear, but the girls at school laughed at the cap, and that troubled Johnnie very much. Then, when the new hair grew, thick and soft as the plumy down on a bird's wing, a fresh affliction set in, for the hair came out in small round rings all over her head, which made her look like a baby. Elsie called her “Curly,” and gradually the others adopted the name, till at last nobody used any other except the servants, who still said “Miss Johnnie.” It was hard to recognize the old Johnnie, square and sturdy and full of merry life, in poor, thin, whining Curly, always complaining of something, who lay on the sofa reading story-books, and begging Phil and Dorry to let her alone, not to tease her, and to go off and play by themselves. Her eyes looked twice as big as usual, because her face was so small and pale, and though she was still a pretty child, it was in a different way from the old prettiness. Katy and Clover were very kind and gentle always, but Elsie sometimes lost patience entirely, and the boys openly declared that Curly was a cross-patch, and hadn't a bit of fun left in her.

One afternoon she was lying on the sofa with The Wide Wide World in her hand. Her eyelids were very red from crying over Alice's death, but she had galloped on, and was now reading the part where Ellen Montgomery goes to live with her rich relatives in Scotland.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Johnnie. “How splendid it was for her! Just think, Clover, riding lessons, and a watch, and her uncle takes her to see all sorts of places, and they call her their White Rose! Oh, dear! I wish we had relations in Scotland.”

“We haven't, you know,” remarked Clover, threading her needle with a fresh bit of blue worsted.

“I know it. It's too bad. Nothing ever does happen in this stupid place. The girls in books always do have such nice times. Ellen could leap, and she spoke French beautifully. She learned at that place, you know, the place where the Humphreys lived.”

“Litchfield Co., Connecticut,” said Clover mischievously. “Katy was there last summer, you recollect. I guess they don't all speak such good French. Katy didn't notice it.”

“Ellen did,” persisted Johnnie. “Her uncle and all those people were so surprised when they heard her. Wouldn't it be grand to be an adopted child, Clover?”

“To be adopted by people who gave you your bath like a baby when you were thirteen years old, and tapped your lips when they didn't want you to speak, and stole your Pilgrim's Progresses? No, thank you. I would much rather stay as I am.”

“I wouldn't,” replied Johnnie pensively. “I don't like this place very much. I should love to be rich and to travel in Europe.”

At this moment Papa and Katy came in together. Katy was laughing, and Papa looked as if he had just bitten a smile off short. In his hand was a letter.

“Oh, Clovy,” began Katy, but Papa interposed with “Katy, hold your tongue;” and though he looked quizzical as he said it, Katy saw that he was half in earnest, and stopped at once.

“We're about to have a visitor,” he went on, picking Johnnie up and settling her in his lap,—“a distinguished visitor. Curly, you must put on your best manners, for she comes especially to see you.”

“A visitor! How nice! Who is it?” cried Clover and Johnnie with one voice. Visitors were rare in Burnet, and the children regarded them always as a treat.

“Her name is Miss Inches,—Marion Joanna Inches,” replied Dr. Carr, glancing at the letter. “She's a sort of godmother of yours, Curly; you've got half her name.”

“Was I really named after her?”

“Yes. She and Mamma were school-friends, and though they never met after leaving school, Mamma was fond of her, and when little No. 4 came, she decided to call her after her old intimate. That silver mug of yours was a present from her.”

“Was it? Where does she live?”

“At a place called Inches Mills, in Massachusetts. She's the rich lady of the village, and has a beautiful house and grounds, where she lives all alone by herself. Her letter is written at Niagara. She is going to the Mammoth Cave, and writes to ask if it will be convenient for us to have her stop for a few days on the way. She wants to see her old friend's children, she says, and especially her namesake.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Johnnie, ruffling her short hairs with her fingers. “I wish my curls were longer. What will she think when she sees me?”

“She'll think

“There is a little girl, and she has a little curl
     Right in the middle of her forehead;
When she is good she is very, very good,
     And when she is bad she is horrid—”

said Dr. Carr, laughing. But Johnnie didn't laugh back. Her lip trembled, and she said,–

“I'm not horrid really, am I?”

“Not a bit,” replied her father; “you're only a little goose now and then, and I'm such an old gander that I don't mind that a bit.”

Johnnie smiled and was comforted. Her thoughts turned to the coming visitor.

“Perhaps she'll be like the rich ladies in story-books,” she said to herself.

Next day Miss Inches came. Katy was an experienced housekeeper now, and did not worry over coming guests as once she did. The house was always in pleasant, home-like order; and though Debby and Alexander had fulfilled Aunt Izzie's prediction by marrying one another, both stayed on at Dr. Carr's and were as good and faithful as ever, so Katy had no anxieties as to the dinners and breakfasts. It was late in the afternoon when the visitor arrived. Fresh flowers filled the vases, for it was early June, and the garden-beds were sweet with roses and lilies of the valley. The older girls wore new summer muslins, and Johnnie in white, her short curls tied back with a blue ribbon, looked unusually pretty and delicate.

Miss Inches, a wide-awake, handsome woman, seemed much pleased to see them all.

“So this is my name-child,” she said, putting her arm about Johnnie. “This is my little Joanna? You're the only child I have any share in, Joanna; I hope we shall love each other very deeply.”

Miss Inches' hand was large and white, with beautiful rings on the fingers. Johnnie was flattered at being patted by such a hand, and cuddled affectionately to the side of her name-mamma.

“What eyes she has!” murmured Miss Inches to Dr. Carr. She lowered her voice, but Johnnie caught every word. “Such a lambent blue, and so full of soul. She is quite different from the rest of your daughters, Dr. Carr; don't you think so?”

“She has been ill recently, and is looking thin,” replied the prosaic Papa.

“Oh, it isn't that! There is something else,—hard to put into words, but I feel it! You don't see it? Well, that only confirms a theory of mine, that people are often blind to the qualities of their nearest relations. We cannot get our own families into proper perspective. It isn't possible.”

These fine words were lost on Johnnie, but she understood that she was pronounced nicer than the rest of the family. This pleased her: she began to think that she should like Miss Inches very much indeed.

Dr. Carr was not so much pleased. The note from Miss Inches, over which he and Katy had laughed, but which was not shown to the rest, had prepared him for a visitor of rather high-flown ideas, but he did not like having Johnnie singled out as the subject of this kind of praise. However, he said to himself, “It doesn't matter. She means well, and jolly little Johnnie won't be harmed by a few days of it.”

Jolly little Johnnie would not have been harmed, but the pale, sentimental Johnnie left behind by the recently departed intermittent fever, decidedly was. Before Miss Inches had been four days in Burnet, Johnnie adored her and followed her about like a shadow. Never had anybody loved her as Miss Inches did, she thought, or discovered such fine things in her character. Ten long years and a half had she lived with Papa and the children, and not one of them had found out that her eyes were full of soul, and an expression “of mingled mirth and melancholy unusual in a childish face, and more like that of Goethe's Mignon than any thing else in the world of fiction!” Johnnie had never heard of “Mignon,” but it was delightful to be told that she resembled her, and she made Miss Inches a present of the whole of her foolish little heart on the spot.

“Oh, if Papa would but give you to me!” exclaimed Miss Inches one day. “If only I could have you for my own, what a delight it would be! My whole theory of training is so different,—you should never waste your energies in house-work, my darling, (Johnnie had been dusting the parlor); it is sheer waste, with an intelligence like yours lying fallow and only waiting for the master's hand. Would you come, Johnnie, if Papa consented? Inches Mills is a quiet place, but lovely. There are a few bright minds in the neighborhood; we are near Boston, and not too far from Concord. Such a pretty room as you should have, darling, fitted up in blue and rose-buds, or—no, Morris green and Pompeian-red would be prettier, perhaps. What a joy it would be to choose pictures for it,—pictures, every one of which should be an impulse in the best Art direction! And how you would revel in the garden, and in the fruit! My strawberries are the finest I ever saw; I have two Alderney cows and quantities of cream. Don't you think you could be happy to come and be my own little Curly, if Papa would consent?”

“Yes, yes,” said Johnnie eagerly. “And I could come home sometimes, couldn't I?”

“Every year,” replied Miss Inches. “We'll take such lovely journeys together, Johnnie, and see all sorts of interesting places. Would you like best to go to California or to Switzerland next summer? I think, on the whole, Switzerland would be best. I want you to form a good French accent at once, but, above all, to study German, the language of thought. Then there is music. We might spend the winter at Stuttgard–”

Decidedly Miss Inches was counting on her chicken before hatching it, for Dr. Carr had yet to be consulted, and he was not a parent who enjoyed interference with his nest or nestlings. When Miss Inches attacked him on the subject, his first impulse was to whistle with amazement. Next he laughed, and then he became almost angry. Miss Inches talked very fast, describing the fine things she would do with Johnnie, and for her; and Dr. Carr, having no chance to put in a word, listened patiently, and watched his little girl, who was clinging to her new friend and looking very eager and anxious. He saw that her heart was set on being “adopted,” and, wise man that he was, it occurred to him that it might be well to grant her wish in part, and let her find out by experiment what was really the best and happiest thing. So he did not say “No” decidedly, as he at first meant, but took Johnnie on his knee, and asked,–

“Well, Curly, so you want to leave Papa and Katy and Clover, and go away to be Miss Inches' little girl, do you?”

“I'm coming home to see you every single summer,” said Johnnie.

“Indeed! That will be nice for us,” responded Dr. Carr cheerfully. “But somehow I don't seem to feel as if I could quite make up my mind to give my Curly Locks away. Perhaps in a year or two, when we are used to being without her, I may feel differently. Suppose, instead, we make a compromise.”

“Yes,” said Miss Inches, eagerly.

“Yes,” put in Johnnie, who had not the least idea of what a compromise might be.

“I can't give away my little girl,—not yet,”—went on Dr. Carr fondly. “But if Miss Inches likes I'll lend her for a little while. You may go home with Miss Inches, Johnnie, and stay four months,—to the first of October, let us say.” (“She'll miss two weeks' schooling, but that's no great matter,” thought Papa to himself.) “This will give you, my dear lady, a chance to try the experiment of having a child in your house. Perhaps you may not like it so well as you fancy. If you do, and if Johnnie still prefers to remain with you, there will be time enough then to talk over further plans. How will this answer?”

Johnnie was delighted, Miss Inches not so much so.

“Of course,” she said, “it isn't so satisfactory to have the thing left uncertain, because it retards the regular plan of development which I have formed for Johnnie. However, I can allow for a parent's feelings, and I thank you very much, Dr. Carr. I feel assured that, as you have five other children, you will in time make up your mind to let me keep Johnnie entirely as mine. It puts a new value into life,—this chance of having an immortal intelligence placed in my hands to train. It will be a real delight to do so, and I flatter myself the result will surprise you all.”

Dr. Carr's eyes twinkled wickedly, but he made Miss Inches the politest of bows, and said: “You are very kind, I am sure, and I hope Johnnie will be good and not give you much trouble. When would you wish her visit to commence?”

“Oh—now, if you do not object. I should so enjoy taking her with me to the Mammoth Cave, and afterward straight home to Massachusetts. You would like to see the Cave and the eyeless fish, wouldn't you, darling?”

“Oh yes, Papa, yes!” cried Johnnie. Dr. Carr was rather taken aback, but he made no objection, and Johnnie ran off to tell the rest of the family the news of her good fortune.

Their dismay cannot be described. “I really do think that Papa is crazy,” said Clover that night; and though Katy scolded her for using such an expression, her own confidence in his judgment was puzzled and shaken. She comforted herself with a long letter to Cousin Helen, telling her all about the affair. Elsie cried herself to sleep three nights running, and the boys were furious.

“The idea of such a thing,” cried Dorry, flinging himself about, while Phil put a tablespoonful of black pepper and two spools of thread into his cannon, and announced that if Miss Inches dared to take Johnnie outside the gate, he would shoot her dead, he would, just as sure as he was alive!

In spite of this awful threat, Miss Inches persisted in her plan. Johnnie's little trunk was packed by Clover and Katy, who watered its contents with tears as they smoothed and folded the frocks and aprons, which looked so like their Curly as to seem a part of herself,—their Curly, who was so glad to leave them!

“Never mind the thick things,” remarked Dr. Carr, as Katy came through the hall with Johnnie's winter jacket on her arm. “Put in one warmish dress for cool days, and leave the rest. They can be sent on if Johnnie decides to stay.”

Papa looked so droll and gave such a large wink at the word “if,” that Katy and Clover felt their hearts lighten surprisingly, and finished the packing in better spirits. The good-by, however, was a sorry affair. The girls cried; Dorry and Phil sniffed and looked fiercely at Miss Inches; old Mary stood on the steps with her apron thrown over her head; and Dr. Carr's face was so grave and sad that it quite frightened Johnnie. She cried too, and clung to Katy. Almost she said, “I won't go,” but she thought of the eyeless fish, and didn't say it. The carriage drove off, Miss Inches petted her, everything was new and exciting, and before long she was happy again, only now and then a thought of home would come to make her lips quiver and her eyes fill.

The wonderful Cave, with its vaults and galleries hung with glittering crystals, its underground river and dark lake, was so like a fairy tale, that Johnnie felt as if she must go right back and tell the family at home about it. She relieved her feelings by a long letter to Elsie, which made them all laugh very much. In it she said, “Ellen Montgomery didn't have any thing half so nice as the Cave, and Mamma Marion never taps my lips.” Miss Inches, it seemed, wished to be called “Mamma Marion.” Every mile of the journey was an enjoyment to Johnnie. Miss Inches bought pretty presents for her wherever they stopped: altogether, it was quite like being some little girl taking a beautiful excursion in a story-book, instead of plain Johnnie Carr, and Johnnie felt that to be an “adopted child” was every bit as nice as she had supposed, and even nicer.

It was late in the evening when they reached Inches Mills, so nothing could be seen of the house, except that it was big and had trees around it. Johnnie went to sleep in a large bedroom with a huge double bed all to herself, and felt very grown-up and important.

The next day was given to unpacking and seeing the grounds; after that, Miss Inches said they must begin to lead a regular life, and Johnnie must study. Johnnie had been to school all winter, and in the natural course of things would have had holidays now. Mamma Marion, however, declared that so long an idle time would not do at all.

“Education, my darling, is not a thing of periods,” she explained. “It should be like the air, absorbed, as it were, all the time, not like a meal, eaten just so often in the day. This idea of teaching by paroxysms is one of the fatal mistakes of the age.”

So all that warm July Johnnie had French lessons and German, and lessons in natural philosophy, beside studying English literature after a plan of Miss Inches' own, which combined history and geography and geology, with readings from various books, and accounted for the existence of all the great geniuses of the world, as if they had been made after a regular recipe,—something like this:–

TO MAKE A POET.

Take a political situation, add a rocky soil, and the western slope of a great water-shed, pour into a mould and garnish with laurel leaves. It will be found delicious!

The “lambent blue” of Johnnie's eyes grew more lambent than ever as she tried to make head and tail of this wonderful hash of people and facts. I am afraid that Mamma Marion was disappointed in the intelligence of her pupil, but Johnnie did her best, though she was rather aggrieved at being obliged to study at all in summer, which at home was always play-time. The children she knew were having a delightful vacation there, and living out of doors from morning till night.

As the weeks went on she felt this more and more. Change of air was making her rosy and fat, and with returning strength a good deal of the old romping, hearty Johnnie came back; or would have come, had there been anybody to romp with. But there was nobody, for Miss Inches scarcely ever invited children to her house. They were brought up so poorly she said. There was nothing inspiring in their contact. She wanted Johnnie to be something quite different.

So Johnnie seldom saw anybody except “Mamma Marion” and her friends, who came to drink tea and talk about “Protoplasm,” and the “Higher Education of Women,” which wasn't at all interesting to poor Curly. She always sat by, quietly and demurely, and Miss Inches hoped was listening and being improved, but really she was thinking about something else, or longing to climb a tree or have a good game of play with real boys and girls. Once, in the middle of a tea-party, she stole upstairs and indulged in a hearty cry all to herself, over the thought of a little house which she and Dorry and Phil had built in Paradise the summer before; a house of stumps and old boards, lined with moss, in which they had had such a good time.

Almost as soon as they got home, Miss Inches sent to Boston for papers and furniture, and devoted her spare time to fitting up a room for her adopted child. Johnnie was not allowed to see it till all was done, then she was led triumphantly in. It was pretty—and queer—perhaps queerer than pretty. The walls were green-gray, the carpet gray-green, the furniture pale yellow, almost white, with brass handles and hinges, and lines of dull red tiles set into the wood. Every picture on the walls had a meaning, Miss Inches explained.

“Some of these I chose to strengthen your mind, Johnnie, dear,” she said. “These portraits, for example. Here are Luther, Mahomet, and Theodore Parker, three of the great Protestants of the world. Life, to be worthy, must be more or less of a protest always. I want you to renumber that. This photograph is of Michael Angelo's Moses. I got you that too, because it is so strong. I want you to be strong. Do you like it?”

“I think it would be prettier without the curl-papers,” faltered the bewildered Johnnie.

“Curl-papers! My dear child, where are your eyes? Those are horns. He wore horns as a law-giver.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Johnnie, not daring to ask any more questions for fear of making more mistakes.

“These splendid autotypes are from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, the glory of the world,” went on Miss Inches. “And here, Johnnie, is the most precious of all. This I got expressly for you. It is an education to have such a painting as that before your eyes. I rely very much upon its influence on you.”

The painting represented what seemed to be a grove of tall yellow-green sea-weeds, waving against a strange purple sky. There was a path between the stems of the sea-weeds, and up this path trotted a pig, rather soft and smudgy about his edges, as if he were running a little into the background. His quirly tail was smudgy also; and altogether it was more like the ghost of a pig than a real animal, but Miss Inches said that was the great beauty of the picture.

Johnnie didn't care much for the painted pig, but she liked him better than the great Reformers, who struck her as grim and frightful; while the very idea of going to sleep in the room with the horned Moses scared her almost to death. It preyed on her mind all day; and at night, after Johnnie had gone to bed, Miss Inches, passing the door, heard a little sob, half strangled by the pillows. She went in.

“What is the matter?” she cried.

“It's that awful man with horns,” gasped Johnnie, taking her head out from under the bedclothes. “I can't go to sleep, he frightens me so.”

“Oh, my darling, what, what weakness,” cried Mamma Marion.

She was too kind, however, to persist in any plan which made Johnnie unhappy, so Moses came down, and Johnnie was allowed to choose a picture to fill his place. She selected a chromo of three little girls in a swing, a dreadful thing, all blue and red and green, which Miss Inches almost wept over. But it was a great comfort to Johnnie. I think it was the chromo which put it into Mamma Marion's head that the course of instruction chosen for her adopted child was perhaps a little above her years. Soon after she surprised Johnnie by the gift of a doll, a boy doll, dressed in a suit of Swedish gray, with pockets. In one hand the doll carried a hammer, and under the other arm was tucked a small portfolio.

“I like to make your sports a little instructive when I can,” she said, “so I have dressed this doll in the costume of Linnæus, the great botanist. See what a nice little herbarium he has got under his arm. There are twenty-four tiny specimens in it, with the Latin and English names of each written underneath. If you could learn these perfectly, Johnnie, it would give you a real start in botany, which is the most beautiful of the sciences. Suppose you try. What will you name your doll, darling?”

“I don't know,” replied Johnnie, glaring at the wax-boy with very hostile feelings.

“Linnæus? No, I don't quite like to give that name to a doll. Suppose, Johnnie, we christen him Hortus Siccus. That's the Latin name for a herbal, and will help you to remember it when you form one of your own. Now take him and have a good play.”

How was it possible to have a good play with a doll named Hortus Siccus? Johnnie hated him, and could not conceal the fact. Miss Inches was grieved and disappointed. But she said to herself, “Perhaps she is just too old for dolls and just too young to care for pictures. It isn't so easy to fix a child's mental position as I thought it would be. I must try something else.”

She really loved Johnnie and wished to make her happy, so the thought occurred of giving her a child's party. “I don't approve of them,” she told her friends. “But perhaps it may be possible to combine some instruction with the amusements, and Johnnie is so pleased. Dear little creature, she is only eleven, and small things are great at that age. I suppose it is always so with youth.”

Twenty children were asked to the party. They were to come at four, play for two hours in the garden, then have supper, and afterward games in the parlor.

Johnnie felt as if she had taken a dose of laughing-gas, at the sight of twenty boys and girls all at once, real boys, real girls! How long it was since she had seen any! She capered and jumped in a way which astonished Miss Inches, and her high spirits so infected the rest that a general romp set in, and the party grew noisy to an appalling degree.

“Oh, Johnnie dear, no more 'Tag,'“ cried poor Mamma Marion, catching her adopted child and wiping her hot face with a handkerchief. “It is really too rude, such a game as that. It is only fit for boys.”

“Oh, please!—please!—please!” entreated Johnnie. “It is splendid. Papa always let us; he did indeed, he always did.”

“I thought you were my child now, and anxious for better things than tag,” said Miss Inches gravely. Johnnie had to submit, but she pouted, shrugged her shoulders, and looked crossly about her, in a way which Mamma Marion had never seen before, and which annoyed her very much.

“Now it is time to go to supper,” she announced. “Form yourselves into a procession, children. Johnnie shall take this tambourine and Willy Parker these castanets, and we will march in to the sound of music.”

Johnnie liked to beat the tambourine very much, so her sulks gave place at once to smiles. The boys and girls sorted themselves into couples, Miss Inches took the head of the procession with an accordion, Willy Parker clashed the castanets as well as he could, and they all marched into the house. The table was beautifully spread with flowers and grapes and pretty china. Johnnie took the head, Willy the foot, and Dinah the housemaid helped them all round to sliced peaches and cream.

Miss Inches meanwhile sat down in the corner of the room and drew a little table full of books near her. As soon as they were all served, she began,–

“Now, dear children, while you eat, I will read aloud a little. I should like to think that each one of you carried away one thought at least from this entertainment,—a thought which would stay by you, and be, as it were, seed-grain for other thoughts in years to come. First, I will read 'Abou Ben Adhem,' by Leigh Hunt, an English poet.”

The children listened quietly to Abou Ben Adhem, but when Miss Inches opened another book and began to read sentences from Emerson, a deep gloom fell upon the party. Willy Parker kicked his neighbor and made a face. Lucy Hooper and Grace Sherwood whispered behind their napkins, and got to laughing till they both choked. Johnnie's cross feelings came back; she felt as if the party was being spoiled, and she wanted to cry. A low buzz of whispers, broken by titters, went round the table, and through it all Miss Inches' voice sounded solemn and distinct, as she slowly read one passage after another, pausing between each to let the meaning sink properly into the youthful mind.

Altogether the supper was a failure, in spite of peaches and cream and a delicious cake full of plums and citron. When it was over they went into the parlor to play. The game of “Twenty Questions” was the first one chosen. Miss Inches played too. The word she suggested was “iconoclast.”

“We don't know what it means,” objected the children.

“Oh, don't you, dears? It means a breaker of idols. However, if you are not familiar with it we will choose something else. How would 'Michael Angelo' do?”

“But we never heard any thing about him.”

Miss Inches was shocked at this, and began a little art-lecture on the spot, in the midst of which Willy Parker broke in with, “I've thought of a word,—'hash'?”

“Oh, yes! Capital! Hash is a splendid word!” chorussed the others, and poor Miss Inches, who had only got as far as Michael Angelo's fourteenth year, found that no one was listening, and stopped abruptly. Hash seemed to her a vulgar word for the children to choose, but there was no help for it, and she resigned herself.

Johnnie thought hash an excellent word. It was so funny when Lucy asked whether the thing chosen was animal, vegetable, or mineral? and Willy replied, “All three,” for he explained in a whisper, there was always salt in hash, and salt was a mineral. “Have you all seen it?” questioned Lucy. “Lots of times,” shouted the children, and there was much laughing. After “Twenty Questions,” they played “Sim says wiggle-waggle,” and after that, “Hunt the Slipper.” Poor, kind, puzzled Miss Inches was relieved when they went away, for it seemed to her that their games were all noisy and a fearful waste of time. She resolved that she would never give Johnnie any more parties; they upset the child completely, and demoralized her mind.

Johnnie was upset. After the party she was never so studious or so docile as she had been before. The little taste of play made her dislike work, and set her to longing after the home-life where play and work were mixed with each other as a matter of course. She began to think that it would be only pleasant to make up her bed, or dust a room again, and she pined for the old nursery, for Phil's whistle, for Elsie and the paper-dolls, and to feel Katy's arms round her once more. Her letters showed the growing home-sickness. Dr. Carr felt that the experiment had lasted long enough. So he discovered that he had business in Boston, and one fine September day, as Johnnie was forlornly poring over her lesson in moral philosophy, the door opened and in came Papa. Such a shriek as she gave! Miss Inches happened to be out, and they had the house to themselves for a while.

“So you are glad to see me?” said Papa, when Johnnie had dried her eyes after the violent fit of crying which was his welcome, and had raised her head from his shoulder. His own eyes were a little moist, but he spoke gaily.

“Oh, Papa, so glad! I was just longing for you to come. How did it happen?”

“I had business in this part of the world, and I thought you might be wanting your winter clothes.”

Johnnie's face fell.

“Must I stay all winter?” she said in a trembling voice. “Aren't you going to take me home?”

“But I thought you wanted to be 'adopted,' and to go to Europe, and have all sorts of fine things happen to you.”

“Oh, Papa, don't tease me. Mamma Marion is ever so kind, but I want to come back and be your little girl again. Please let me. If you don't, I shall die–” and Johnnie wrung her hands.

“We'll see about it,” said Dr. Carr. “Don't die, but kiss me and wash your face. It won't do for Miss Inches to come home and find you with those impolite red rims to your eyes.”

“Come upstairs, too, and see my room, while I wash 'em,” pleaded Johnnie.

All the time that Johnnie was bathing her eyes, Papa walked leisurely about looking at the pictures. His mouth wore a furtive smile.

“This is a sweet thing,” he observed, “this one with the pickled asparagus and the donkey, or is it a cat?”

“Papa! it's a pig!”

Then they both laughed.

I think there was a little bit of relief mixed with Miss Inches' disappointment at hearing of Johnnie's decision. The child of theory was a delightful thing to have in the house, but this real child, with moods and tempers and a will of her own, who preferred chromos to Raphael, and pined after “tag,” tried her considerably. They parted, however, most affectionately.

“Good-by, dear Mamma Marion,” whispered Johnnie. “You've been just as good as good to me, and I love you so much,—but you know I am used to the girls and Papa.”

“Yes, dear, I know. You're to come back often, Papa says, and I shall call you my girl always.” So, with kisses, they separated, and Miss Inches went back to her old life, feeling that it was rather comfortable not to be any longer responsible for a “young intelligence,” and that she should never envy mammas with big families of children again, as once she had done.

“So we've got our Curly Locks back,” said Katy, fondly stroking Johnnie's hair, the night after the travellers' return. “And you'll never go away from us any more, will you?”

“Never, never, never!” protested Johnnie, emphasizing each word by a kiss.

“Not even to be adopted, travel in Europe, or speak Litchfield Co. French?” put in naughty Clover.

“No. I've been adopted once, and that's enough. Now I'm going to be Papa's little girl always, and when the rest of you get married I shall stay at home and keep house for him.”

“That's right,” said Dr. Carr.

Come to think of it, this also solves the mystery of the Bible verse Dr. Carr sends to Johnnie before her wedding.

Books Read Since March 7

• Rhett Butler's People, Donald McCaig
When you read a book written by an author who has won acclaim for a Civil War novel and who has written other highly-acclaimed books, and that particular author was chosen by the estate of a well-known writer to continue the saga, you expect a lot.

This book ain't it.

I didn't expect Margaret Mitchell's style; that was so unique and descriptive it would be hard to live up to. But McCaig's prose is so spare it's numbing. Did he even read Gone With the Wind? The quotes from the novel aren't even accurate and he has Rhett actually seeing Scarlett for the first time earlier than the barbecue at Twelve Oaks. The story with Rhett's sister Rosemary parallels the story of Rhett and Bonnie Blue. Oh, yeah, and Rhett was an early pioneer in race relations and even had close friends who were black. Ho hum.

However, this novel has one thing going for it, especially if you are even slightly knowledgeable of horses: there's a wonderful scene where Rhett rides an "11-hand black stallion." Er...and this came out of a supposed Civil War expert? The horse Rhett is riding is then 44 inches at the shoulder. Anything under 14 hands is a pony. This gaffe should keep you laughing for weeks. Certainly it's the only pleasure that will come out of this mess.

• Clues in the Shadows: A Molly Mystery, Kathleen Ernst
• The Cry of the Loon: A Samantha Mystery, Barbara Steiner
• Lady Margaret's Ghost: A Felicity Mystery, Elizabeth McDavid Jones
These are three of the four newest "American girl" mysteries. Some of the previous novels have been quite smart, but I detected an air of tiredness about these three entries. The solution of the Molly mystery seemed to be just tossed in; most of the books was a lecture about post-traumatic stress syndrome. It also used the old plot device of the family members acting so nice that the person being accommodated feels uneasy. The Samantha story is pretty much a different retelling of an earlier Samantha mystery The Curse of Ravenscroft. As for the painter's identity, wasn't that just a bit convenient? The Felicity title turns out to be a partial red herring, as the majority of the mystery is about something else altogether. And one of the characters is a red-headed orphan named Anne who is treated badly by her employers? Oh, dear. It also bothered me that the books are starting to take on the aspects of the television movies about these characters, rather than the original books. For instance, Molly talks about dancing in the Miss Victory pageant. Um, she didn't, at least in the books.

• Before Green Gables, Budge Wilson
I asked in my Rhett Butler's People review if McCaig actually read the book. It's obvious that Budge Wilson hasn't read any of the Anne of Green Gables books as in the afterward she thanks people for finding supporting documentation in the books for her. Where Wilson attempts to explain things like where Anne got her love of words and how she learned so many large ones when she had inadequate schooling, she almost explains too much. For instance, Anne always insists her name be spelt with an "e" at the end. According to Wilson, this apparently was something her father used to say which was passed on to Anne from the woman who kept house for her parents and later cared for her, and throughout the book Anne is proud of her name spelt with an "e." But, if you've read the original book, Anne really didn't like her name, remember? She wanted Marilla to call her "Cordelia." She only resigned herself to being "Anne" if it could be spelt with the "e" at the end which looked more elegant to her.

Wilson tries to excuse all the adults who have been cruel to Anne in her childhood. Drunken Mr. Thomas has just lost all his dreams and is pathetic. Mrs. Hammond of the three sets of twins is just suffering from postpartum depression. The woman that runs the orphanage was just brought up very strictly. And what about all the people Anne befriends? Does no one, like the friendly schoolmarm or the embittered schoolmaster (changed by his exposure to Anne's positive nature) or the midwife ever think to rescue her from her grinding life?

The language of the tale also bothered me. Montgomery wrote in an 19th-century style that did not talk down to children (in fact, Anne of Green Gables was not written as a children's book), yet thousands of children have enjoyed it. Wilson seems to try to make adjustments so that elementary school children can understand the story and the resulting prose is choppy, with short sentences and easy-to-understand vocabulary. I didn't hate this book—interesting take on Anne's past—but it was ultimately disappointing.

• Little Women Abroad, ed. by Daniel Shealy
Although her literary alter ego Jo March never went to Europe, Louisa May Alcott made two trips to the continent, one as a companion (where she met the young Polish pianist who inspired "Laurie") and once, chronicled in this book, with her youngest sister May (the inspiration for Amy) and a friend, Alice. Louisa was still debilitated from the effects of calomel given to her while nursing soldiers in the Civil War, and the sisters and friends flitted from one warm or historical site to another, improving Louisa's health and giving May the exposure to art she desired. Both women wrote dozens of letters home to their parents and to their sister Anna, and although most of the originals have not survived, Bronson Alcott had the foresight to copy most of the letters, which are collected into this volume along with many of May Alcott's drawings of the landscapes, buildings, and people that they encountered along the way. This is fascinating reading of "the Grand Tour" of Europe in the late 19th century, as Louisa and her companions ride rickety wagons over the mountains and May Alcott visits the famous St. Bernard Hospice, and they encounter difficulties engendered by the Franco-Prussian War. Copiously footnoted.

• Shakespeare: The World as Stage, Bill Bryson
Want to brush up your Shakespeare? This a brief but enjoyable volume about the essentials of Shakespeare: the meager facts that are known about his life, the sources of his plays, the phrases and words he seemingly created out of thin air, the different versions of his folios (and the amazing fact that his plays survived when most of the famous ones of the era vanished), and other tidbits about the Bard told in Bryson's entertaining fashion.

• The War That Made America, Fred Anderson
In his more ambitious work, The Crucible of War, cited in the Morgan book below, Fred Anderson commented that most people today think of the French and Indian War as a minor event in colonial American history. Wow. What are they teaching in history class these days? Events from this war, also known as the Seven Years' War, prompted the American Revolution. Anderson focuses on the personalities of the war, including testing and training of young George Washington, and also the dehumanization of the Native tribes, plus touches on the Acadians exile.

• The Name of War, Jill Lepore
This is a rather odd book about King Philip's War, which ended the relationship so tentatively set up after the landing of the "Pilgrims" in Massachusetts. Their tenuous relationship with the different native tribes in the area deteriorates until the son of Massasoit who befriended them, Metacom, also known by the English name of Philip, leads a rebellion against the "civilized" English. Lepore includes actual testimony from settlers' journals, including Mary Rowland's best-selling narrative of captivity, as well as a play written in the 1800s to portray the changing attitude to the tribes involved and Philip himself.

• The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl
What if 19th century writers Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell and Oliver Wendell Holmes, along with publisher James T. Fields, became involved in a mystery? The gentlemen, who have formed a "Dante Club" while Longfellow is translating The Divine Comedy, slowly become aware that recent Boston deaths are emulating the gruesome punishments in Dante's nine circles of Hell. Also investigating the brutal crimes is the first African-American police officer in Boston, Nicholas Rey. In the meantime, the Commission that runs Harvard is attempting to bar Lowell from teaching Dante, and indeed trying to get a translation of Dante quashed once and for all.

I found this a page-turner with all sorts of delightful insights into the writers portrayed, but be advised that Pearl has attempted to emulate the verbose style of 19th-century prose; the text contains multiple descriptions, literary allusions, Boston history, portraits of the writers and their families, and minute details of life in that era. It will not be for all tastes.

• A Royal Pain, Rhys Bowen
Bowen has her cozy village-set Constable Evans and her feisty Molly Murphy in turn-of-the-century New York City—and then there is "Georgie." Second cousin to King George V and thirty-fourth in line for the throne, Georgie has been left high and dry by her older brother Binky after their father has lost all their money. She has no employable skills and can either marry "Fishface," a German prince, or become a companion to an elderly cousin—or continue what she is doing, living in the family townhouse and attempting to earn money by valeting stately homes, until Queen Mary asks that she escort a visiting German princess whom she hopes will lure her oldest son (the future Edward VIII) away from the "villainous" Wallis Simpson. Saddled with a kleptomaniac princess who learned English from American gangster films, her snobbish escort and grim maid, Georgie does what she does best: stumble headlong into mystery. The "Royal Spyness" stories are strictly for laughs—enjoy!

• Execution Dock, Anne Perry
In this newest Willam Monk mystery, Monk is trying to convict a loathsome man named Jericho Phillips, who takes poor young boys from the street and confines them to a barge on the river, keeping them fed and warm in exchange for performing sexual acts in front of and with wealthy young men and posing for pornographic photos. Unfortunately, as a favor to his father-in-law, barrister Oliver Rathbone, a friend to both Monk and his wife Hester, defends Phillips so skilfully that he escapes prosecution in the murder of a teenage boy. Angry at having been outmaneuvered, Monk swears to catch Phillips at some other crime to keep him from plying his trade. But in the course of the investigation, Monk finds out that his predecessor may not have been the honest man he seemed—and that his enemy will do anything to succeed, include ruining Monk's name. This is a great entry in the series, with slowly mounting tension. My only complaint: the story just suddenly ends and I wasn't sure how the coup de grace happened.

• The Genuine Article, Edmund S. Morgan
I picked this one off the bargain book table because it was labeled as "essays about early American history." What I didn't realize is they were actually essays based on published history books; basically reviews and the author's thoughts on the subject. Still, most of the essays were quite interesting and this was what prompted me to get the books about the French and Indian War and King Philip's War out of the library. The author writes intelligently, but doesn't get bogged down in a lot of academic blather.

• The Portable Italian Mamma, Luara Mosiello and Susan Reynolds
::giggle::snort::chortle::giggle:: This compact little humor book subtitled "Guilt, Pasta, and When Are You Going to Give Me Grandchildren" has it spot-on, although there's a dismaying reliance on Italian celebrities and ... sigh ... The Sopranos. What happened to the annual church feasts? (I know New York has 'em.) Picnics complete with food cooked at home and eaten off of plates that Mamma has to wash when she gets home? More about Italian mammas/nonnas/aunts from the kids' point of view? I could tell you stories...oh, wait, I already have! LOL. (Also recommended: Rick Detorie's (of the comic strip "One Big Happy") How to Survive an Italian Family.)

College Life Never Changes

Elizabeth Wales doesn't think college is the best solution in life. She's an average student and not particularly fond of studies. But her older sister loved college and thinks it would be perfect for her. So off goes the reluctant student, to be confronted with the realities of campus life, cliques, supercilious upperclassmen, and even duplicitous classmates, and learns more than she wants to about coverups, plagarism, and false friends. But along the way she also develops close companions, a talent for leadership, and even discovers she likes certain sports.

If her college years don't sound much different from yours, consider that Betty Wales "went to college" over 100 years ago, via the pen of Margaret Warde. You can read all Betty's adventures on www.archive.org.

Oh, the "flip book" format is neat; using your mouse, you can turn the page like a real book. I've included the PDF link in case the flip doesn't work on a certain browser.

To view college life in 1907 and life through 1917:

Betty Wales, Freshman: "flip book" or PDF file

Betty Wales, Sophomore: "flip book" or PDF file

Betty Wales, Junior: "flip book" or PDF file

Betty Wales, Senior: "flip book" or PDF file

Betty Wales, B.A.: "flip book" or PDF file

Betty Wales & Co.: "flip book" or PDF file

Betty Wales on the Campus: "flip book" or PDF file

Betty Wales Decides: "flip book" or PDF file

Books Read Since February 11

• The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, Lauren Willig
The fifth entry in Willig's "Pink Carnation" series finds her modern heroine, graduate student Eloise Kelly, getting on swimmingly with her new beau Colin—if she can ignore the references to "spies" that have been leveled at him by a jealous old girlfriend. Could Colin be following in the footsteps of his ancestor Richard Selwick, the "Purple Gentian"? The Napoleonic flashbacks in this entry are more about perceptions of the world and oneself than the previous romance-novel complications as Robert Lansdowne returns to England to right a wrong and finds himself falling in love with his bookish cousin Charlotte (close friend to Henrietta Selkirk Dorrington), whose idea of love is full of more fantasy than reality. Those longing for flaming sexual tension will have to look elsewhere; Robert and Charlotte are a charming couple, but their courtship is strictly low-key. However, the story about King George's possible lapse into another fit of madness and Robert's involvement with a creepy "Hellfire Club" will keep the pages turning. These books are all fun, but I felt real kinship with Charlotte despite her naiveté.

• Quoth the Maven and Spread the Word, William Safire
The usual entries in Safire's collections from his "On Language" column. If you're interested in the use of words, the misuse of words, and other lexicological matters, these volumes are a continuation of a good thing. My favorite part of all of these books are the responses Safire includes with the entries, pointing out his own errors or arguing usage with him. Some of them are very funny and come from familiar sources, such as Alistair Cooke.

• Raisins and Almonds and Murder in Montparnasse, Kerry Greenwood
Dani has chatted so much about the Phryne [pronounced "Fry-nee"] Fisher mysteries in her book blog that I was quite eager to try one or two. Sadly, the Cobb County library system has only three of the series (which numbers around eighteen now) and none of those the first book. So I tried these two, numbers #9 and #12 respectively. Since I didn't read the first story, I have had to glean knowledge of Phryne's history: apparently she was brought up in a hardscrabble Melbourne, Australian household, then inherited money from distant family in England. Now she lives in Melbourne again, comfortably rich, a free-spirited flapper with servants, two wards (girls she rescued from squalid conditions), a secretary, a police contact, an exotic Hispano-Suiza motorcar, and a Chinese lover. She operates as an inquiry agent/detective, drove an ambulance during World War I, and, oh yeah, has an active sex life.

Phryne is an intriguing character surrounded by a stable of other interesting supporting characters. The books are great fun. Raisins and Almonds involves a mystery in the Jewish community while Murder in Montparnasse reunites Phryne with an acquaintance from her postwar years. However, I did get a bit tired of the description of Phryne as a "Dutch doll" (do most modern readers even know what this means?) and I guess I'm a prude, but it bothered me that Phryne is continuing to be someone's lover after he's married, even if it is an arranged marriage and the future wife doesn't mind. YMMV.

• Among the Mad, Jacqueline Winspear
Sixth in Winspear's series about Maisie Dobbs, private investigator and psychologist, whose cases usually involve some form of aftermath from World War I. Following an incident involving a war veteran on Christmas Eve 1931, Maisie's name is mentioned in a note to the Prime Minister threatening great loss of life. She is cleared by the police, but is drawn into the investigation as mysterious events begin to happen, like the hideous death of some stray dogs, as the mysterious correspondent insists something be done for war veterans. In the meantime, she also tries to help Doreen Beale, wife of her assistant Billy, who has sunken into debilitating depression after the death of her child.

This is quite a chilling novel as the suspense is notched up chapter by chapter and a madman's plot is slowly exposed. If the mystery itself isn't creepy enough, Doreen's treatment in a psychiatric hospital will certainly make you glad you live in this century and not the last.

And...sigh...as excited as I was about the Astaire/Rogers mystery, I gave up on it not even halfway through. It was about communists and the murder of a Russian, lots of Sol Hurok malapropping his way through conversations, and name-dropping. I may not have been in the mood.

Return of the Headless Horse

In checking out the comments to my post Hail to the Headless Horse! about Paul Berna's 100 Million Francs, otherwise known as The Horse Without a Head, you will see that I made the astonishing discovery that there was a sequel to that novel.

In fact, if the list of information given in this great review of The Horse Without a Head is correct, there are three sequels to the original! The reviewer on "Freaky Trigger" briefly discusses the plot of the second book, which takes place two years later. I found this plot description of The Mystery of Saint-Salgue on e-Bay (cover picture here): "Gaby and his gang of friends have acquired a racketty old Citroen which holds all ten of them as well as eleven stray dogs. In it they set off for a camping holiday in the South of France. During the first night out they meet two strangers from Canada who charm them with talk about a village called Saint-Salgue from which the Canadians believe their home in the prairie took its name. The gang soon realises that the name Saint-Salgue has a mysterious significance not only for their new-found friends but also for two unfriendly characters who are trailing their van." I have not found any information about the fourth book.

• A Hundred Million Francs (Le Cheval sans tête), 1955
• The Street Musician (Le Piano à bretelle), 1956
• The Mystery of Saint Salgue (La Piste du souvenir), 1962
• Gaby and the New Money Fraud, 1971

There also appears to be at least two books about Inspector Sinet, the police officer who helps the children in Horse Without a Head:

• The Mule on the Motorway aka The Mule on the Espressway (Le Commissaire Sinet et le mystère de l'autoroute du sud), 1967
• A Truckload of Rice (Le Commissaire Sinet et le mystère des poissons rouges), 1968

Anyway, majorly cool!

Laughs for Language Fans

If you are a fan, like I am, of books like Anguished English and its sequels by Richard Lederer, Jerry Robinson's Flubs and Fluffs, or other books or collections where signs, letters, school papers, and other written items with amusing grammatical errors are featured, you may enjoy English As She is Wrote, a collection of flubs and fluffs published in 1883!

Books Only Multiply

So I went to the library on my lunch hour, intending to return Degrees of Separation and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town (previously mentioned). Instead of driving to the closest library (Sibley, a tiny bit of a library crammed next to a car financing company), I went to the central library downtown. In her blog, Dani Torres has mentioned the Phryne Fisher mystery novels and I was intrigued. The Cobb County Library system has three of these Kerry Greenwood-authored novels, two of them at the central library (of course, as luck has it, none of the three being the first one), which explains my attendance.

The central library always has a little cart out of mystery books and in scanning it I found an delicious-looking book: The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Murder Case by George Baxt. According to the back cover Baxt has also written something called The William Powell and Myrna Loy Murder Case, which sounds equally delicious. I suppose I will find out if it's actually true after my read of Fred and Ginger. I checked the card catalog—now a misnomer since all the books are listed on computer instead—to see if the library had any other Baxt books, but apparently the Fred and Ginger book is so new it's not even on the computer, never mind Bill and Myrna. :-)

So I sallied forth into the stacks to fetch Phryne (#9 and #12; she's a British ex-pat living in Australia during the 1920s) and of course came back via the Christmas books, and found myself smack-dab next to the linguistics books, so I also picked up two William Safire "On Language" volumes I don't remember reading, Quoth the Maven and Spread the Word. Yum...nice fat books about word usage!

As I departed the library I debated also taking out Ballet Shoes (I've never read any Streatfeild and the television production piqued my interest), but dismissed it for now. I wish Cobb County had more than one Beany Malone book! If I want to read the others I will have to get them through interlibrary loan, darnit.

A sign at checkout said "Try our new self-checkout," so I did! Just like the grocery store (although it helps when you scan the library's barcode, not the book's...LOL).

Trading Places

Remember Disney's Freaky Friday, about a teenage girl and her mother who switch bodies after they wish they could be each other (thinking that the other's life is easy), filmed originally in 1977 and remade twice since then? All had their genesis in the 1972 Mary Rodgers novel, which was followed by a sequel where the brother in the story switches places with his dad.

Would you be surprised to know that the notion of a parent changing places with a child via some sort of magical wish/talisman is not a new idea? The original concept was published as long ago as 1882: Vice Versa, the tale of a stuffy British businessman who changes place with his boarding-school bound son, can be read here. (Note: it was updated in the 1980s for American television, with Fred Savage in the boy's role.)

Books Read Since January 19

• Moving Targets, and Other Tales of Valdemar, edited by Mercedes Lackey
This is the fourth collection of short stories taking place in the Valdemar/Velgarth universe created by Lackey back in the 1980s starting with Arrows of the Queen. Sadly, every story in this anthology is interesting except for Lackey's humorous titular offering. There's nothing wrong with humor in the Valdemar universe; it's been done before—but a Herald's story that is a spoof on Scooby-Doo? With the four young people (and their version of a van) accompanied by a kyree (usually telepathic catlike wolf-creature) who speaks like Scooby? ::sigh:: I would have loved a humorous story from Lackey, but not this one. Worth buying for the other stories, however.

• Sojourn (Time Rovers, Book 1), Jana G. Oliver
In the future, time travel is possible and tourists and researchers embark on time travel vacations with the help of an escort: a time rover who places them in the past and then returns to extract them. Jacynda is a rover sadly in need of some off-time (she's starting to have hallucinations, a side effect from crossing too many timelines in quick succession) who is sent back to Victorian England right before Jack the Ripper strikes the first time to bring back a missing tourist. But he's vanished, and in the course of her search Cynda becomes involved with two gentlemen of the period who have a rather unusual secret. If you are fond of fact-based fantasy, this one's a real page turner, with enjoyable characters. There are two sequels, Virtual Evil and Madman's Dance.

• Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town, John E. Miller
This is a slim but interesting volume about the town of DeSmet, where the Ingalls family finally set down roots, basically a biography of the place where Laura Ingalls became an adult and was married. If you are a LIW fan, you may be interested to know more about her eventual hometown.

• Degrees of Separation, Sue Henry
In the newest Jessie Arnold Alaska mystery, Jessie is awaiting the first snowfall so she and her dogs can begin training again after her enforced rest after knee surgery. Unfortunately she and the team run over a dead body on their first outing. The victim turns out to be a young man whose family is well-known in a nearby town; he has a reputation for being a little wild. Then someone deliberately tries to kill state trooper Phil Becker, partner of Jessie's significant other Alex Jensen. Are the crimes related? Nature isn't cooperating, either, as a series of earthquakes rattle the area. Interesting thing about this outing: all the "strings" aren't neatly tied up at the end.

The book features a large cameo by Maxie McNabb and her dachshund Stretch, the protagonists of Henry's other mystery series. How well you tolerate this depends on your affection for these characters; I didn't mind much, but I prefer Jessie and Alex on their own.

• FDR's Splendid Deception, Hugh Gallagher
Most biographies of Franklin Roosevelt mention is polio only in brief, as a stumbling block to his political career and his road to the White House. Some note Roosevelt's efforts to cover up his being wheelchair-bound, and a couple mention his fear of fire, possibly engendered by having seen one of his aunts burn to death after a terrible accident with an alcohol lamp. I heard Gallagher speak in the documentary FDR: A Presidency Revealed and immediately found a copy of this book, which is the only volume to detail the struggle Roosevelt faced with his polio, which was not as "painless" as he always made it appear. Even if you disagree with his political decisions, it is difficult not to admire the man for coping with the daily struggle he had to put up to appear fit. Today we have associations that help the disabled to take their place in society; back then each "differently abled" person had to fight just to be treated as something other than a half-wit unable to function at all. A look at Roosevelt from "a different angle."

• Europe 101: History and Art for the Traveler, Rick Steves and Gene Openshaw
This is an entertaining summary of European history through its art and politics for the casual, non-history-buff tourist who visits Europe and wonders what all those statues and paintings are all about. For people a little more well-versed, it's a fun review—unless you can't stand Steves' atrocious puns. Well-illustrated and a good guide to art galleries and sites.

• Harry: A History, Melissa Anelli
Anelli was just a high-school student when she read the first couple of Harry Potter novels. She then forgot about the series as she arrived at college, decided that journalism, not pre-med (as her parents wished) was her forté, and got back into the series. As a lark, she wrote a few reviews for a new website devoted to Harry Potter, The Leaky Cauldron. And that's what this book is all about, Anelli's introduction into Potter fandom, her growing involvement with the website, her encounters with author Rowling and others involved in Potter fandom (including a very offbeat chapter about "wizard rock"), all interspersed between the story of the buildup to the seventh and final novel.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even if I have no interest in wizard rock. I've read reviews of it which complain about Anelli's "name dropping," about other websites being left out of this tale of "Harry Potter fandom," and other "sour grapes" comments that sound all too familiar—they are the same sort of thing leveled at author Joan Winston after her book The Making of the Trek Conventions. For all I know Anelli is a real creep—or not. This book is labeled very clearly as "a personal memoir." It makes no claim to be the be-all end-all history of Harry Potter fandom with promises to mention every single website a lot and praise a lot of people. This is Potter from Anelli's POV and as such it is enjoyable.

• Silent in the Sanctuary, Deanna Raybourn
In the second of the Lady Julia Grey mysteries, Julia is spending time recovering from the loss of her home and her husband by living in Italy with two of her many brothers, Plum and Lysander. When the three are summoned back to the family estate, ostensibly because Lysander has married a tempestuous Neapolitan girl who needs to be introduced to the family, they travel reluctantly, accompanied by the bride Violetta and a friend, Antonio. It is only when they arrive at the March family home, an old abbey, that Julia discovers that her father has also invited Nicholas Brisbane, the intelligent but reclusive "inquiry agent" who helped Julia solve the mystery of her husband's death, and whom Julia found herself attracted to. But Brisbane is now engaged, and if that little fact wasn't enough, one of the Christmas guests at the abbey is murdered. Deliciously convoluted plot involving Brisbane's fiancee, two poor relations, a gathering of Romany people on the estate, and much creeping about in dark halls, with the Wuthering Heights business between Brisbane and Julia a bit softpedaled, thankfully. If you love Victorian mysteries with unconventional characters and period detail, this one's for you.

• Country Matters, Michael Korda
In the 1980s writer Korda (nephew of the famous Hungarian director Alexander Korda) and his wife bought a weekend country house where they could relax from the tumult of life in New York City and ride their horses. The rambling old farmhouse they buy, of course, is a fixer-upper, and, in the course of repairing the house and grounds, the Kordas meet all sorts of country types, including the handyman who prunes and bulldozes the yard, neighbors in trailers, etc. A few reviews mention that Korda seems to look down on his nose at these folks, who are not the "horsy set" across the river, and he does sound a bit supercilious at times, but he also makes a good deal of fun at himself at not knowing how to cope with events that his neighbors find so easy, wryly observing how they make fun of his prolifigate spending on things like a riding arena, and of the friends who sometimes invite themselves to his "country estate" over the weekend expecting to play tennis and swim and who instead find themselves on a farm where things must be cleaned, horses must be tended, and pigs must be fed. Seems to me Korda makes almost as much fun of himself and his snooty friends. Anyway, I enjoyed it, but it is more a library book to borrow than to own.

"Plain Jane" Information on Old Children's Book Series

Master List here.

Massachusetts Author

I picked up a mystery today, The Dante Club, which takes place in 1860s Boston. Someone is murdering people in ways taken from Dante's Inferno. The members of the Dante Club, and eventual sleuths, are three writers whose names you probably know: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher James T. Fields (of Ticknor and Fields, which, among other things, published the children's magazine Our Young Folks, which was later absorbed into St. Nicholas). (For some reason, James Fields is mentioned in the 1994 movie version of Little Women as the publisher of Jo's book Little Women; the actual publisher was Brown Brothers.)

Some of the reviews say this book is rather plodding, but I'll reserve judgment until read.

Speaking of Little Women, I considered buying another, new copy of Little Women. Now, I have a perfectly serviceable copy of Little Women, the Grosset & Dunlap publication with the Louis Jambor illustrations. However, last night I noticed a hardcover version of Little Women in the literature section (rather than the children's section) of Borders, with old-style illustrations on the cover. I took it down from the shelf, noting the same illustrations in the text, and also a note at the front of the book about this particular edition.

Little Women was first published in 1868, what we now know as part one of the novel. The second half of the book was published the next year as Little Women, Part 2 (often known in England and other countries as Good Wives). In 1880, the two parts were united as one book and have been so ever since. In addition, however, this notation indicated, some changes were made. Alcott's original version had the girls and Laurie speaking less grammatically and more like children talked when Alcott wrote the book. However, when the volumes were united, Alcott went over the manuscript and corrected this dialog to fit with what publishers and educators said was better for children to read.

For example, at the opening of the book, Meg chides Jo about her tomboyish behavior and tells her she needs to start paying attention to her behavior, because she is now a young lady. In my Grosset & Dunlap (and most other) version, Jo's response is "I'm not! And if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails till I'm twenty." In the original book, Jo says, "I ain't"! In the chapter where Beth is sick, Laurie asks Jo "Doesn't Meg pull fair?" [helping care for Beth]. In Alcott's original, Laurie says in the vernacular of the day, "Don't Meg pull fair?"

There are all sorts of little differences like that; I'm quite crazy about Louisa May Alcott's juveniles and may get the "original" Little Women anyway. Many of Alcott's novels went through editing after first publication and I love to read them "as written," not cleaned up.

I really want this book, too, but...oh, my, the price! I saw it today at Borders and just drooled, but even with a 30 percent off coupon...maybe when the used copies get more reasonable...

Hail to the Headless Horse!

One of my favorite Disney films of all time has always been the French-set (filmed in England) story The Horse Without a Head, based on a book by Paul Berna. The film starred Vincent Winter (Disney semi-regular, appearing in Three Lives of Thomasina and Almost Angels) and Pamela Franklin (one of her two appearances for Disney, the other being A Tiger Walks), along with Jean-Pierre Aumont and British character actor Leo McKern. Winter and Franklin, along with three other child actors, play five poor French children whose only toy is a full-sized hobbyhorse (not like a rocking or spring horse) on three metal wheels, which they use as a "thrill ride" of sorts, riding it at breakneck speed down the steep hills of their town. Franklin is particularly delightful as Marion, the girl with a talent for nursing and re-homing stray dogs, who has them all trained to come to the sound of her whistle.

So you can imagine I was delighted many years ago to come upon the Scholastic printing of the book, translated from the French. Given that Disney sometimes adapts books into unrecognizable format, it was interesting to read this volume and discover that they stuck very close to the storyline for this adventure.

There are minor differences: in the movie the crime is seen being plotted (probably because the ringleader of the robbery is played by well-known actor Herbert Lom, later of the "Pink Panther" films), while in the book some of the perpetrators are figured out only at the end. In the book there are ten children, not five, and Vincent Winter's character is a combination of two boys, the head of the group, Gaby, and the part he actually plays, Fernand. In the movie Marion's grandfather is the old junkman who finds the horse for the children, while in the book he is a character not connected to Marion.

Also, Inspector Sinet in the book is a rather dour middle-aged man rather than someone like the handsome, vibrant Jean-Pierre Aumont. However, everything is "there," so to speak, so if you ever have enjoyed the Disney film, you would be well to look up a copy of the book to further capture the French character of the town and the story.

Books Read Since January 10

• American Road, Pete Davies
Today when we complain about bad roads, we're probably thinking of a pot-hole-pocked asphalt mess after the winter or, at the worst, that bumpy dirt road leading to a vacation cabin. But 90 years ago, despite burgeoning automobile sales, the road situation in the United States was dire. Only large cities had paved roads, and what lay between cities and towns were dirt trails that became a muddy morass when it rained. It was common for both automobiles and horse-drawn vehicles to become stuck, sometimes up to their wheel hubs, in this "gumbo."

In 1919, a military caravan composed of early trucks and other motor vehicles drove cross-country from Washington, DC to San Francisco, California, to publicize the Lincoln Highway project. Due to the state of the roads, the trip was fraught with exhaustion and frustration, despite the parties thrown for the participants in the cities in which they camped. One of the military officers along on this ordeal was a young World War I veteran who was thinking of resigning his commission and who, with a buddy, played practical jokes on members of the caravan. He'd later become famous in World War II: Dwight David Eisenhower.

Having made two cross-country trips in the days of the interstate (which, of course, Eisenhower initiated), I found this a fascinating book about the difficulty of cross-country travel in the early 1900s, a chronicle of the construction of the Lincoln Highway and what existed before it, of the men who thought up the project, and the men who endured the drive.

• Eden's Outcasts, John Matteson
He was a man with educational ideas before his time, a man who could tend a garden and discuss Plato, a friend of notables like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, a vegetarian in an era when meat was considered the best food for you, but a flawed man who believed fair-haired people were the most highly chosen and who often let his family go hungry while he tended to his ideals. He was Amos Bronson Alcott, who became the father of one of American literature's most famous writers, Louisa May Alcott. Unlike her placid father, Louisa was headstrong and tempestuous, but the two became bound together as they grew older. A must for Louisa May Alcott fans, even if you, like me, wants to grab Bronson by his collar occasionally and shake some good sense into him.

• Reserved for the Cat, Mercedes Lackey
The fifth in Lackey's "Elemental Masters" series (unless you count The Fire Rose, which preceded that series), in which characters in a Victorian/Edwardian alternate earth where magic exists; the stories are retakes on classic fairy tales. This version of "Puss in Boots" involves Ninette Dupond, an impoverished Parisian ballerina whose brief turn as featured dancer gets her fired after her rave reviews enrage the reigning ballerina. Not knowing where her next meal will come from, Ninette is astonished when a scrawny tomcat starts talking to her in her mind and starts her off on a journey to England, where she will pretend to be a shipwrecked Russian ballerina and get a position at a music hall in Blackpool.

Neither Ninette nor Thomas the cat realizes that the real ballerina will eventually discover that Ninette has stolen her name, and that the woman has been taken over by evil and will do anything to destroy Ninette.

This is a bit of a lesser effort next to Lackey's early "Elemental Masters" books, but fun enough, and the characters are engaging, if not unforgettable.

• Wesley the Owl, Stacey O'Brien
When Stacey O'Brien, a biologist at CalTech, is given the opportunity to raise and observe an injured barn owl, she finds her life not only enriched by knowledge, but by love for the wild bird who has become her family. While this book will occasionally make you cry, O'Brien's often laugh-aloud funny observations of life with an owl is a joy to read—although, even as a bird lover, I still don't know how she got through the feedings! (Warning: the nature of Wesley's diet can be a bit...well, icky.) My favorite bits, however, have to be when Wesley...um, enters puberty, since I had a budgie that exhibited similar behavior, and the chapter where her colleagues at CalTech question her about certain of Wesley's vocalizations is hilarious.

• Re-read: The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgsen Burnett
After re-watching MGM's rather gothic-touched treatment of this classic novel, I retreated to the well-thumbed pages of my Tasha Tudor-illustrated edition for a happy reunion with the moorland setting that helps change a bossy, unlovable little girl who was born in India and a sickly, hypochondriac boy kept hidden in Misselthwaite Manor into two loving, generous, healthy youngsters, with the help of a countrified Yorkshire maid and her animal-loving brother, and the beautiful, hidden garden that young Mary Lennox rediscovers. Delightful from first page to last, no matter what age you are.

• A Drowned Maiden's Hair, Laura Amy Schlitz
Maud Mary Flynn is the worst-behaved orphan at the all-girls Barbary Orphanage, a young cynic who was left behind when her older brother and baby sister were adopted by a farming family. Despite her rebellious nature, she is hungry for love, and when two elderly sisters arrive at the orphanage looking for a little girl and choose her to come with them and be their "secret child," Maud will do and say anything to stay with honey-voiced Hyacinth Hawthorne, who looks like she will give Maud the love she needs—as long as Maud does what she says. But as Hyacinth explains the nature of what she desires from Maud, and as Maud befriends the lame housemaid that Hyacinth scornfully nicknamed "Muffet" because she is afraid of spiders, the basically good-at-heart child begins to wonder if being loved is worth the deceit she will need to perpetrate.

This is an absolutely absorbing young adult novel taking place in the early 1900s, with a gripping plot and unforgettable characters. I remember seeing this when it first was published and noting that it sounded intriguing; when I found it on remainder I was delighted. It completely fulfilled my interest in it. Highly recommended.

Books Read Since November 16

No, I didn't read fewer books during this period. :-) It's just that during the holiday season I read Christmas books and magazines. The books were reviewed in Holiday Harbour.

• A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving, Godfrey Hodgson
If you have read Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower, you will find this volume redundant; however, if you are looking for a readable narrative about the "Pilgrims," their beliefs, their sojourn in Holland, and then their voyage and survival in the New World, this one will fit the bill. Detractors complain that it doesn't tell as much as Mayflower, but it doesn't claim to.

• Stories to Live By, edited by Marjorie Vetter
What a cool find!—these are growing-up stories for girls published in the 1940s and 1950s in the Girl Scout magazine, American Girl. I had AG in the early 1970s, when the stories became funky and full of 60s twaddle; these go in the other direction and sometimes feel quaint because of the stereotypes about girls in them. On the other hand, subjects still of concern today, such as being overweight or peer pressure, are covered, and by well-known authors like Betty Cavanna. I really enjoyed reading this one and "traveling back in time."

• Crusader Nation: The United States in Peace and the Great War, David Traxel
This was one of my finds at the Book Warehouse in Pigeon Forge; since this is my sphere of American history interest, I found it enjoyable indeed. Traxel writes in an uncomplicated, but not simplistic style about the United States' efforts to be a peacekeeper and innovator, until the "Great War" changed the country's isolationism. To my pleasure, there was plenty of material about my favorite president, Theodore Roosevelt. Traxel covers not only political, but social innovations. Well worth your time if you are a United States history buff.

• The Mark of the Lion and Stalking Ivory, Suzanne Arruda
I found Stalking Ivory in the bargain bin at Borders, and therefore started the Jade del Cameron series from the middle. I loved the 1920s East Africa setting, but there was something about the prose that bothered me. Finally I went back and found a cheap copy of the first book, Mark of the Lion.

Jade del Cameron, a young American woman of part Spanish descent (she was raised on a ranch in New Mexico), is driving an ambulance during World War I when her fiancé David Worthy is shot down during a dogfight. With his dying breaths he gives her a ring and begs her to find his brother in Africa. But Jade remembers that David once told her he was an only child.

After kicking off the plot in the first chapter, the remainder of the book takes place in East Africa, where Jade searches for David's mysterious brother. In the course of the story, she meets an English couple working a coffee plantation, whose wife will immortalize Jade in a series of romance novels.

Jade, as in most of these mystery-adventure novels, is a woman before her time: independent, free thinking, not ready to be encumbered by marriage—and of course good-looking, with raven-dark hair. The first novel is a cracking good adventure story, but I think I had trouble with the sequel Stalking Ivory because it was straying into romance novel territory, especially with the appearance of the handsome young American former pilot Sam Featherstone. Jade seems to change in Ivory, too; she becomes more of a conservationist...not sure if this is a natural progression because of what she has seen in East Africa or because the author chose to make her more "environmentally friendly."

I have to admit that in the end I enjoyed both books, but I think Mark of the Lion was the stronger.

• No Rest for the Wiccan, Madelyn Alt
This is the fourth in a series of "bewitching mysteries" about Maggie O'Neill, who works at Enchantments, a New Age gift shop run by a witch. Maggie has been discovering her own empathic powers and is coming to terms with herself, if having trouble deciding between the two men in her life, the practical policeman and one of her employer's "witchy" cohorts, a free-spirit biker type. Then her "perfect" sister Mel becomes bedridden and in the course of caring for her, Maggie discovers an evil spirit in the home. But it's nothing to what happens after a local feed mill owner is threatened and then dies of an apparent suicide.

If you enjoy themed cozy mysteries, you might enjoy the Alt books. I like the characters, even if they often don't seem real—except for Maggie's sister. Little Miss Perfect I want to slap. :-)

• Foundation, Mercedes Lackey
Mercedes Lackey returns to her Valdemar universe after a five-year absences. While Foundation, set at the time that Herald's Collegium is being built (and being fussed about by older Heralds who think the old way of instructing novices one-on-one is fine), isn't terrible, it does read a bit like a young-adult novel rather than a tale for adults. And there is the usual plot: adolescent, badly treated (in this case, the boy protagonist Mags is a mine slave, so it's more serious than usual), is Chosen and finds happiness, but also finds challenges in the form of evil intentions by outsiders. In this case the "evil" comes late in the novel and is just a setup for the remainder of the trilogy, so nothing really earth-shaking happens. Still, it's another new Valdemar novel, and hopefully something a bit more exciting will occur in the sequels.