Books Finished Since May 1

 Murder Your Darlings, J.J. Murphy
Dorothy Parker arrives early for her luncheon at the Algonquin Hotel with her fellow members of "the Round Table," a sharp-tongued company of writers and publishers, including the acid-tongued Alexander Woollcott and the whimsical Robert Benchley, and discovers, under that selfsame table, the murdered body of a newspaper drama critic. A young visitor from the South, callow "Billy" Faulkner (yes, that Faulkner), is suspected of the crime, and Dorothy juggles apartments and escape routes to keep the young man out of the clutches of the police, accompanied by her drinking partner-in-crime, Benchley.

With the police pursing "Mr. Dachshund" (Dotty's cover name for Faulkner), Parker and Benchley bounce from newspaper publishers to speakeasies to the haunts of gangsters trying to figure out who would want to kill the critic—with a fountain pen nonetheless!—and even manage to do some writing in the process. Murphy draws a vivid picture of Prohibition New York, to the point where Parker and Benchley's sheer volume of imbibing makes one cross-eyed. And the members of the Round Table may have been inventive writers and creators, but they certainly were an unpleasant bunch of comrades, even to themselves. Still, the book moves at a brisk pace, and if knife-edged repartee is your fortè, you may enjoy the wild ride.

 My Life as an Experiment, A.J. Jacobs
I bought this off the remainder table and didn't expect much from it; it looked a lot lighter than The Year of Living Biblically and even Jacobs' first effort, The Know-It-All. In the end, indeed it is, but there are still several hilarious moments. Jacobs outsources all his responsibilities (to a company in India, nonetheless), tells only the strict truth for a month (you can imagine how that turned out), attempted to live by George Washington's "Rules of Civility," posed as a celebrity, attempted to find "the most rational toothpaste" (yes, honestly), and more.

As always, Julie Jacobs needs to be commended for putting up with A.J. The woman is a saint. And in total honesty, like A.J., I will tell you this is best bought as a remainder book. However, at that price, you should find something to enjoy.

 Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, Nina Sankovitch
Nina and her sister Anne-Marie were brought up with a love of books. From childhood they recommended volumes to each other, purchased each other books, read together. Then Anne-Marie passed away at age 46. Floundering in grief and memories, Nina decides to take a hiatus in her life and read a book a day as a way of soothing her soul and honoring her sister.

It was a daunting challenge. I'm a fast reader and can usually finish a regular-sized book in a day, but I'm not sure even I could have kept up her pace. I'm not sure I would have been prepared to give up sleep and other activities to keep this tryst. But I enjoyed reading of her experience: of the books she read, of the memories they brought back, how they made her think or cry or laugh—or occasionally just be happy the book was finished and there was a new one the next day! She read fiction, nonfiction, profound books, light books, young adult novels, and more.

This book is for anyone who has loved books and for whom books are a refuge from sorrow, something you turn to for solace and inspiration. You will definitely understand.

 White Corridor, Christopher Fowler
The war to close the Peculiar Crimes Unit isn't over: it has been arranged that a minor, tetchy royal will inspect their headquarters; surely what she sees will lead to an order to shut them down. If that isn't bad enough, senior officers Arthur Bryant and his more urbane partner John May have become trapped in a blizzard (and a murder investigation), while the rest of the unit must operate on their own, and solve the mystery death of one of their own, about-to-retire, superannuated coroner Oscar Finch, who expired in a room locked from the inside.

Fowler twists the unit, still bruised from their last adventure with the Horseman, into two parts: Bryant and May trying to help a young mother who's being stalked by a murderer while the rest of the unit works to solve Finch's death before the Princess' visit. As always in a PCU book, there is unexpected humor mixed with tension, the delightful eccentricities of each of the team members, and the mounting tension involved not only with the mother and her son being stalked, but the real danger of Bryant and May also becoming victims. I was a bit dismayed at the team being broken up for the story, but it did not fail. Another delight.

 Cut the Clutter and Stow the Stuff, edited by Lori Baird
Really, all I needed was another book about decluttering...but I had this 50 percent off coupon at JoAnn...

This is a very practical, readable clutter book. The author firsts asks a series of questions to pinpoint what type of clutter you have, and then helps you work with it. She's very practical and does not suggest you go out to buy expensive storage solutions, or even plastic tubs, her theory being that you just toss the stuff in bins and really don't declutter. She offers a lot of low-cost solutions for keeping things under control, from something as simple as a board nailed across two-by-fours in your non-drywalled garage to corral brooms and rakes by their handles, using non-traditional pieces for storage like putting a baker's rack in the mudroom or a sorting hamper in the garage, and just a bunch of other useful stuff. Very enjoyable and enough to set off light bulbs over your head.

 Ginny Gordon and the Lending Library, Julie Campbell
I picked this up at a used bookstore, having been a fan of Campbell's Trixie Belden novels since childhood, and having read that this resembled the Belden novels superficially: Ginny is always getting involved in mysteries, Ginny and her friends live in Westchester County [New York], they have counterparts in Trixie Belden characters (although I doubt if Trixie would have put up so patiently with the characters of the twins, Babs and Whiz, who always seem to be doing something stupid). In this entry, Ginny and her friends are starting a lending library in their small town and, inexplicably, two men are trying to find a specific copy of a new bestseller. Typical 1950s kids' mystery, with the biggest mystery to me how Ginny got any of her schoolwork done in between working on the library, trying to help a financially-challenged friend, and trying to find a companion for an older woman!

 A Free Man of Color, Barbara Hambly
In 1833 New Orleans during Mardi Gras, Benjamin January is playing piano at a ball where white benefactors display their handsome mixed-race mistresses. Of mixed racial heritage himself, January is a trained physician who cannot openly practice in the United States and supports himself by teaching and playing music. When he meets a former student of his, a costumed white woman wildly out of place at the event, and she asks him to help her speak with the well-known but spiteful Angelique Crozat, he cannot refuse her.

And then Crozat is found murdered.

This is a complicated historical mystery that pulls no punches about the racial discrimination of 19th century New Orleans. January must find out who killed Angelique without implicating his former student, and risks being sold into slavery to do so. The novel contains a large cast of characters, both of Creole and American extraction, and is a fascinating portrait of New Orleans society before it became Americanized, but is no light mystery reading. For those who stay with the story, there are rich characterizations and situations.

 The Alchemy of Murder, Carol McCleary
The first in a series of "unpublished" adventures of Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, otherwise known as crusading Victorian reporter Nellie Bly. Nellie's career including her incarceration in a mental institution (in order to expose the horrible treatment of the inmates) and traveling around the world in 72 days to beat the record of the fictional Phileas Fogg.

But "newly-discovered" manuscripts reveal that Nellie discovered a horrifying event while incarcerated on Blackwell's Island: a foreign doctor performing experiments on prostitutes. He escapes the United States, only to spend a short sojourn in London as Jack the Ripper, and then Nellie follows him to Paris, where the great Exposition is taking place. Here she enlists the help of Jules Verne, and eventually is assisted by the dissolute but charming Oscar Wilde and the elder biologist Louis Pasteur, entering the Parisian underworld in search of a madman. An epidemic looms over the city—but is it of natural causes or artificially produced?

This is a page-turner that takes Nellie from sewers to hospitals to the rough neighborhoods of the Parisian poor. Verne's initial hostility blossoms into something quite different, and there are chases through sewers teeming with rats, encounters in dance halls and sleazy clubs, a journey to the country stalked by cutthroats, as our heroes slowly realize a biological weapon is being born. Improbable, but addicting, except for one thing: it's another of these modern books where spell-checking is evidently done by computer. Nellie "shutters" instead of "shudders." Oscar Wilde wears "beeches" (nice trick) rather than "breeches." It breaks the crafted atmosphere and is really quite unfortunate.

 The Wilder Life, Wendy McClure
Anyone who has ever loved a book series to the point where they wished they could have lived the adventures in it will feel kinship with Wendy McClure, who fell in love with the Little House books as a child. Years later, she finds one of the books among her childhood things after her mother dies, and re-reads and becomes obsessed with the series. With her patient partner in tow, she tries recipes from the books, and eventually visits each of the sites Laura Ingalls Wilder lived in.

If you are expecting a "tour" of the Ingalls sites, you will be disappointed, as some reviewers were. This is not a Laura Ingalls Wilder travelogue, but the journey of Wendy McClure, who is searching for a past that is not her own. She has some amusing journeys to each of the sites, and gives a portrait of the Laura-lore as it is presented at each home, from the pageants in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, to the loneliness of the prairie, but it is also the story of Wendy's reconciliation with her own past.

I really enjoyed this book, but nevertheless was a bit dismayed at one portion: her and her partner's reaction to the devout Christians they met at one of the sites. Neither of them is religious, and they referred to the Christians as "cult members" and other unpleasant names because they indulged in prayers and practiced disaster preparedness, possibly in case of the end times, which several of the group chatted about. I felt their reactions were rather bigoted. Would they have reacted the same way to Muslims praying five times a day, a Wiccan or a Native American performing a traditional ritual, or Catholics saying the rosary? The Christians they encountered treated them with nothing but friendliness and did not try to forcibly convert them. Could they not have been polite and tolerant? This really bothered me.

 Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of World History, Richard Shenkman
Given that I enjoyed Shenkman's I Love Paul Revere Whether He Rode Or Not and his similarly-titled volume to this, about US history, I was puzzled at the fact that I did not like this book as well as the others. Then I scanned some of the reviews of all three books and noticed that my opinion pretty well dovetailed with the others. The two US books were fun "bites" of American history, but while Shenkman admits straight out in the preface to this particular book that he's about to be Eurocentric, the book still seems gratuitously padded with jokes at the expense of the facts. The whole thing seemed like a lesser effort just to stuff some historical facts in humor. Very disappointing.

 State Fair, Earlene Fowler
It's nice to see Benni Harper and hubby Gabe Ortiz "back on the job," as it were. This time Benni is helping out at the annual Mid-State Fair and enjoying a week of "bad for you" foods. A feature at this year's fair is an exhibit of reproductions of African-American quilts. Then the most complicated of the quilts disappears—and reappears wrapped around the dead body of a young white man who was dating a biracial girl who is the daughter of the fair's first African-American general manager. Could the death be racially motivated?

Since the quilting club and the manager are all Benni's friends, of course she can't help getting involved. But who might be responsible? Is the skinhead group in their midst too obvious? And why was the body stuffed in the family exhibit of a loudmouth car dealer?

The mystery shares several stages with other subplots, most prominently Benni's realization that racism still exists in San Celina. There's also a lively subplot with Benni's visiting great Aunt Garnet, who displays a surprising aspect of her personality and which lends a great deal of humor to the first half of the novel. Pleasing on several levels for fans of Benni, Gabe, Grandma Dove, and other returning characters.

[Note: Fowler has never made a secret of her Christianity, especially through Dove, Father Mac, and several other characters. However, it seems to be manifesting itself more heavily in the text in this offering. Some folks may find it unexpected or disconcerting.]

 Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out, Lee Goldberg
Monk has too much on his plate. No there hasn't been a surfeit of killings in San Francisco; in fact, due to the downturn in the economy, the police department's let him go from his consulting job. He figures he'll live on his investments—until he finds out they're gone, his "investment counselor" accused of a gigantic Ponzi scheme of which he claims he is innocent. Monk not only considers him guilty, but suspects him of murder as well. What will both Monk and Natalie do without jobs? Worst yet, what will Monk do without water—his beloved Sierra Springs has also gone out of business! How long can he survive on water a teaspoon at a time?

This is the second book I've read in two months that involves the protagonists with economic downturns. The children in the previous book almost reacted better than Monk. As always in the novels, Monk seems to have more phobias than ever, and they can get intensely annoying. There is a nice confrontation between Natalie and her teen daughter Julie that shows Natalie's backbone, a humorous sequence in a pizza parlor, and a welcome appearance by Monk's agoraphobic brother Ambrose, but I didn't enjoy this one as much as, say, Mr. Monk is Miserable or Mr. Monk in Outer Space.

 Time Unincorporated, Volume 2: The Doctor Who Fanzine Archives, edited by Graeme Burk and Robert Smith?
The title pretty much tells all in this collection of articles about the classic series of Doctor Who, some informative, some touching, some humorous. We learn about the Canadian roots of the series, series symbolism, "31 Things I Wouldn't Know If I Didn't Watch Doctor Who," essays for and against Jon Pertwee's Doctor (and another about his relationship with Jo), a look at the stereotyping in the classic "Talons of Weng-Chiang," women in the series, a closer look at Barbara Wright and Tegan Jovanka, as well as the Tom Baker era and John Nathan-Turner's tenure, examination of the Daleks, "20 Handy Tips for Survival in the Doctor Who Universe," and fifty more. You may not love every essay, but there's certainly something here for everyone. IMHO, a must collection for the classic Who fan.

 The Mistaken Wife, Rose Melikan
In this third book of the adventures of Miss Mary Finch, heiress, and Captain Robert Holland, Army engineer and occasional adventurer, intelligence agent Sir Cuthbert Shy recruits a restless Mary to perform her most dangerous mission yet: she is to pretend she is the wife of an expatriot American painter and travel to Paris, a Paris in the wake of the Revolution and patrolled by menacing French officers, to keep the French from forming an alliance with the Americans against the British. At the same time, Holland has had troubling news of a new weapon, a boat that travels underwater. He also infiltrates France, knowing nothing of Mary's mission.

Needless to say, the two meet, sparks fly—and they must then race to complete their respective missions and then escape France before the gendarmes discover what they're up to. In the meantime, a faithful friend of Mary's preserves the illusion she's in England—but will the secret be kept?

Based on two real events, "the XYZ affair" and Robert Fulton's invention of a submarine, the suspense builds slowly until it's almost too late. A great combination of history and suspense, with two charming heroes who don't slobber over each other.

 The Hardy Boys Mysteries, 1927-1979: A cultural and Literary History, Mark Connelly
What makes the Hardy Boys, created in the 1920s in a series of formula-driven, cheaply-published novels, enduring characters? Connelly addresses the mystery in this McFarland volume, which chronicles the early adventures of the Hardy brothers, Frank and Joe, through their 1920s exploits with "roadsters" and stereotypical minority characters through the 1950s when the books were rewritten and socially adjusted to the modern era where they fight terrorists with the latest technology. The characters are examined, how they changed with the times (and how the villains did as well), how the stories were corrected but became less challenging, how language differed over the years, how women were viewed in the series, and more. Connelly even tries to locate "Bayport," the iconic Hardy Boys hometown. A must for anyone who loved the Hardy Boys.

 Royal Flush, Rhys Bowen
Lady Georgina has just committed a major social blunder: the penniless 34th-in-line-for-the-British-throne, young "Georgie," unable to find employment in any other field, decides she will hire herself out as a dinner companion to traveling businessmen. She soon discovers that "escort" means something a bit different than she envisioned, and is luckily rescued from a lascivious client by her dashing Irish beau, Darcy O'Mara. Then she is visited by an official for the Home Office, who asks her to return to her ancestral home a few weeks early. Someone appears to be trying to injure (or perhaps kill) members of the Royal family. So Georgie reluctantly returns to Castle Rannoch, to be enthusiastically and uncharacteristically greeted by her dour sister-in-law "Fig," who is being driven mad by visiting Americans (including Wallis Simpson, the inamorata of the Prince of Wales).

Georgie rather bumbles her way through this mystery, which throws all sorts of characters at one right and left: a sexy Italian speed demon, endlessly bathing Americans, a dashing woman pilot, a dismissed officer, a stalking reporter, Georgie's twinkling Cockney grandfather and her narcissistic mother—even the young Princess Elizabeth! It's a fun romp through another version of a legend addressed in a Robin Paige book.

 In a Gilded Cage, Rhys Bowen
While attending a women's suffrage parade with her unconventional friends Sid and Gus and their former Vassar classmates, Molly Murphy is arrested, but rescued by her police office fiance Daniel Sullivan; via the parade private detective Molly also gains two cases: one old classmate asks her to find out the truth about her birth, and some time later Molly is contacted by another classmate who wishes to know if her husband is cheating on her. But when the latter woman abruptly dies, Molly wonders if there is more to the case than adultery.

I guessed "who" early on, but the "why" of the tale is a convoluted mystery that should keep most "gaslight era mystery" fans entertained. More interesting in this volume is Bowen's portrayal of an era when women were almost literally property of their men, unable to do anything without male approval, and the husband held sway; women who showed intelligence were called "bluestockings" and were persuaded to bury their education to become pampered creatures who were basically baby breeders. Molly is having her own struggle with accepting a marriage proposal; she likes being an independent woman as much as she loves Sullivan. It is a thoughtful portrayal for what intelligent women know was an infuriating era.

My one quibble: at least twice Bowen uses modern nomenclature which propels me abruptly out of the story. (For instance, a woman refers to a suspected homosexual person as "AC/DC." Say what?) Why carefully paint Molly's turn-of-the-last-century world and then use vocabulary that destroys the brushstrokes?

 The Little Ice Age, Brian Fagan
At one time England and Newfoundland were so warm that vineyards flourished. The Vikings struck terror into neighboring countries because the ice packs had retreated enough to give them a freewheeling lifestyle.

And then climate changed. Bitter winters and rainy summers became the norm. Crops rotted, people starved throughout the late medieval and Renaissance periods into the age of exploration. The 19th century saw some conditions even worsen: when Mount Tambora erupted, the world suffered through "the year without a summer," where snow fell in June and frost killed ripening crops. Climate change led to the Irish being dependent on potatoes, which caused disaster when the potato blight struck.

This is a smart, readable text about the effects of climate change on people, society, governments, and ecology. Never simplistic, the text is accompanied by maps and graphs to further illustrate events and concepts.

 A Witch in Time, Madelyn Alt
The little town of Stony Mill sees two more mysterious deaths, but it's the domestic complications of protagonist Maggie O'Neill and her family that drive this newest Bewitching mystery. Maggie's just about to tryst with her boyfriend Marcus Quinn when she gets the word that her "perfect sister" is ready to deliver. Pretty soon Mel is with twins, and Maggie has become trapped in an elevator, where she hears what sounds like a threat against a woman. Later on, she hears an argument between a man and one of the new mothers on the maternity floor. Can the two events be connected?

We spend the first half of the book involved with Maggie's family dynamics (in fact, it all takes place at the hospital) and the mystery doesn't really get going till the second half. Indeed, the story is more about Maggie coping with her overbearing mother, repercussions from the birth of the twins, Marcus' growing relationship with her, and a minor subplot involving Maggie's best friend. If you don't mind the story being light on mystery and you don't mind the "Grandma Cora" convention leaping to another level, you should enjoy this entry in Alt's series. Maggie's grandfather is a hoot!

 Our Glorious Century, Reader's Digest Books
A super used bookstore find: a big coffee-table book published in 1994 as an overview to 20th century life in the United States. Crammed full of photographs, lithographs, drawings, maps, charts, and other visual aids, the book progresses era through era covering the political, social, and environmental issues of each time period, with the occasional two-page spread about fads that spread over the entire century, like automobiles, games, transportation, and more. A delightful cornucopia of American history.

The "Real" Lord Peter?

In face only, at least. Apparently, Sayers based Wimsey's looks on Roy Ridley.

Books Finished Since April 1

 Coming into the Country, John McPhee
After watching series like R5Sons Alaska and Flying Wild Alaska, plus numerous nature specials taking place in the area, I was a natural to be drawn to this book by nonfiction writer McPhee in which he examines the wild landscape, the individual Alaskans, and even the politics of the Last Frontier. The book opens on a fishing/camping trip that McPhee takes with four other men, surveying the Salmon River, where he immerses himself in magnificent landscapes of river bottoms, tundra, and mountain slopes teeming with wildlife, fish, and insects—and learns how to successfully avoid grizzly bears. Next, a short chapter focuses on the conflicts between those who wish Juneau to be retained as the state capitol, and those who feel that the government in Juneau are out of touch with "real" Alaskans and wish to form another state capital. The last and largest portion of the book portray the stubborn, strong, opinionated, and often odd folks who live in the "bush," often under living situations most people would find primitive and/or horrifying, from a man who passed the winter living off the land and scant supplies with only his dog for companionship, to couples who eschew beautiful clothing and furniture for "roughing it," to rough individualists who chafe at government control. I enjoyed reading about the "bush" and also about the unusual people who live in it, but found the chapter about the capital quarrel a bit dull.

 Staying Together, Ann M. Martin
Is this the end of the "Main Street" series? There certainly seemed to be signs of a conclusion, with characters taking stock at the end.

Ruby's "project" to make up for the wrong thing she has done appears to be making her a better person, but her older sister Flora knows better. The girls are not speaking, and their best friends Olivia and Nikki can't help but be affected. In the meantime, the economic crunch has come to Camden Falls and all the small businesses are doing their best to cope. Will Hilary's family have to move back to Boston? Will their efforts to fund-raise for the town community center be successful?

The best thing about the Main Street books is that they don't solely concentrate on the child protagonists, nor do they gloss over some hard facts (Nikki volunteers at an animal shelter, and is faced with abused animals and survivors of puppy mills). Several portions of the book focus on Mr. Pennington's search for a new dog; in another sequence Mr. Willet (the elderly gentleman whose wife has Alzheimer's disease) makes a momentous decision about his future; Robby, the gentle boy with Down syndrome, enters a new phase in his life; even the girls' Aunt Allie's life is changing.

If this is a wrap-up book, it ties up most loose ends. But I will certainly miss my visits to Camden Falls.

 The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin
I was curious when this book came out, enough to go to Amazon.com to read reviews. Some of them were downright vituperative: "shallow, silly, stupid," all came up at various times. A frequent theme reoccurred: "What does Gretchen Rubin have to be unhappy about? She says...brags, some people insist...about her wonderful husband, kids, family, job, home.

I think they missed "the piont," as they used to joke on Ask the Manager. Rubin admits her blessings of home, family, and work right off, but wonders: "If my life is so good, why am I so unhappy so often?" This is Rubin's discovery of herself, and how making herself happy actually helps her family and friends attain happiness as well. She doesn't perfect anything, backslides and recovers, admits selfishness and frustration, but persists. It's her journey into what works for her, but any "happiness project" you do for yourself must center around your own needs and situations. I found her writing bright and interesting, and, while there is some repetition, it is usually to emphasize key points, not to fill space.

I felt inspired by Rubin's journey and hope to profit from it. I may never have a super job in New York City or adorable children, but happiness can be attained on many levels. Your mileage may vary.

 Mistress of the Art of Death, Ariana Franklin
As a baby, she was found on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius by two scientists of the school of Salerno, a girl they named Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar. In a school which made no distinction between men and women, Adelia, as she is known, has not only been trained in medicine, but has learned to read from the bodies of the deceased the method of their death.

In other words, she's a coroner—and in a 12th century world. When four small children are murdered in Cambridge and the profitable Jews of the town are blamed, King Henry II asks the King of Sicily to send someone who will sort the means of their deaths. Along with her companions, Mansur, a Moor who acts as her bodyguard, and Simon, a Jew, Adelia is sent to England, a superstitious, religious-constrained, male-oriented England that would consider an educated woman a witch. Under cover of acting as a "wise woman" assistant to Mansur, Adelia slowly reveals the brutal nature of the crime—and that the killer is living among the people she has been traveling with, including a kindly abbot, a high-living abbess, a churlish knight and his kindly companion who have returned from the Crusades, and the former Crusader Sir Rowley Picot, who takes a shine to Adelia.

While Adelia does seem a bit more "liberated" than any medieval woman would be (including providing low-cal suggestions to an overweight man), Franklin does an excellent job of portraying medieval society and the living conditions of the unwashed, unlettered world around Adelia. Do be aware that the childrens' murders are very brutal and described as such, which may be disturbing to some.

 Meerkat Manor: Flower of the Kalahari, Tim Clutton-Brock
This was a great find from the bargain shelf! If you followed the Animal Planet series Meerkat Manor, you will probably also enjoy this well-narrated, lavishly-illustrated book by Clutton-Brock, who headed the research project studying the meerkats. Indeed, the project had progressed over several years before someone had the idea to film the colony of meerkats, develop it into a narrative, and turn it into a television series. For that reason, this book covers more than Flower and her progeny, but begins with her own birth and puphood, and describes how she became the alpha female of the "Whiskers" clan. The observers are careful to be just that—the meerkats were given names only to keep from referring to them by confusing numerical identifiers—but it's quite amusing to see how the meerkats actually became used to the researchers and used them and their vehicles for lookout perches!

 The Shanghai Moon, S.J. Rozan
When I picked this up I thought, "Wow, I haven't read a Lydia Chin story in ages." And ages it has been, at least a half-dozen year since Rozan's last novel involving this pair. When I finished I realized it had been worth the wait.

When Lydia is hired by Joel Pilarsky to look into a matter of missing jewelry, she never realizes how deeply she will become emotionally involved with the original owner of the piece, Rosalie Gilder, an Austrian Jewish girl who, with her brother, fled the country just before the Nazis captured the remainder of her family, and emigrated to Shanghai, and who left a legacy of letters behind. On the ship she meets a charming Chinese businessman who will shape her future.

There are several threads working in this mystery, including Lydia's rocky relationship with her now ex-partner, Bill Smith, and her attempts to get her contentious mother to move somewhere more comfortable, her family's connection to Chinese gangs, and the tangled lore of a legend that has become attached to the piece of jewelry known as "the Shanghai Moon," but the most fascinating portion of the story is the historical tale of the Jews who moved to Shanghai and formed a community there after being turned away by other supposedly freedom-loving countries. This was a historical event of which I had no knowledge, and I was as engrossed by Rosalie's tale as much as I was by the search for the "Moon" and a murderer. Great from first page to last—and, Lydia? don't be away so long next time!

 The Anglo Files, Sarah Lyall
When Sarah Lyall married a British man and moved from New York City to London, she realized she'd have to face some culture changes: driving and language differences, for instance. But she also found some things that were downright perplexing or odd: the glacial speed of cricket, the eccentricities of nobility and the House of Lords, political and sexual banter, the legendary British habits of understatement and self-effacement, the Page 3 girls in the Sun, the unpredictable British weather, and more—and even hedgehog lovers.

Anglophiles may enjoy this wry volume that hides a bit of melancholy and frustration under Lyall's commentary. It's obvious that she's never quite fit in with the British lifestyle and it shows. In fact, many times she makes the British sound a bit pathetic, when all they have is personal quirks just like any other person of any other nationality. Still, I found it a fun read without taking the sour underside too seriously.

 Chicken Soup for the Soul: Living Catholic Faith, Jack Canfield/Mark Victor Hansen/LeAnn Thieman
Perfect Lenten reading: 101 short pieces about faith, love, healing, consolation—occasionally even humorous recollections. Several of them can be applied to any denomination, but these are chiefly told from the POV of the Catholic faith.

 The Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs
I hadn't read Jacobs' other book, The Know-It-All, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect of this book. I'd purchased it last year and pulled it out for Lenten reading. Jacobs, Jewish by heritage but not doing more than lending it lip service, decided to spend a year "living Biblically," trying to obey rules set by the Bible, eight months for the Old Testament, four for the New. He starts out in what I take is his typical quirky manner by having his clothing inspected so that he does not break the rules that say fibers of wool and linen should not be mixed.

The first thing I need to say is that Jacobs' wife Julie has to be the most patient woman on earth. When Jacobs said he was going to live by the rules of the Bible, he tried to meet most of them, including things like not sitting in chairs that a menstruating woman had previously sat in. Plus, given the idea and the book's cover, the whole thing sounded as if it might be flippant.

Well, he is a bit flippant, but not usually about the Bible, and in the course of consulting books, investigating other churches (as well as things like a Creationist museum and Bible discussion groups), talking to religious people as diverse as Amish farmers and snake-handlers, Jacobs' text often reminded me of points presented in The Happiness Project: that if we just took the time to slow down, be kind to one another, listen, and give something of ourselves, our lives just might be a little better. Offbeat but more insightful than you'd expect.

 What on Earth Have I Done?, Robert Fulghum
In this latest collection of life essays by Fulghum, he talks about "the Mother Questions," those that your mom demands of you when you have been too full of yourself: "What on earth have you done?" "What in the name of God are you doing?" "What will you think of next?" and "Who do you think you are?" When Mom asks them, they are daunting enough...but in reality, they are questions to ask yourself for all time. The essays are grouped into threes, written in his own neighborhood in Seattle; from a second home in Moab, Utah; and from his vacation home in Crete (where he tells a delightful tale about his housekeeper). These later essays aren't as fresh as his earlier ones, but I had to bookmark this bit by Fulghum, I liked it so:
       Meanwhile, the trucks of fate roll by.
       The trick is not to get run over by one.
       The trick is to be there, alert, by the side of the road, with your thumb out. So that if the truck with your number on it just happens to come along, you will know. And you will get in and go. And the ride will be as long and as lovely as you always imagined it might be.

 Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City, Michelle Nevius and James Nevius
This is the kind of history-combined-with-travel book I love. The Neviuses take us street by street starting at the Battery and the earliest settlement on the island of "Manna-hata," and then northwards as the city expands over the years. Many books of this sort print a photograph and a few lines, but this volume is jam-packed with facts and fascinating stories like that of "the Peach War," Castle Clinton (which later became the predecessor to Ellis Island), the oldest existing cast-iron building in the city, the revelation of just who is buried in Grant's Tomb, and other facts well-known or obscure. Peppered with black-and-white photographs, this is a great volume for anyone who loves history and especially that behind the metropolitan massiveness of "the Big Apple."

 A Rather Lovely Inheritance, C.A. Belmond
Yes, okay, it's chick-lit. But it's light, charming, with a minimal mystery and a likeable heroine, Penny Nichols, a young woman who makes her living doing research for historical films. When Penny is named an heir in her Aunt Penelope's will, she makes the re-acquaintance of her handsome cousin Jeremy, now an attorney, and the acquaintance of her distasteful Aunt Dorothy and her dissolute cousin Rollo, and a whole passel of familial intrigue, including hidden bequests and a long-buried secret.

And thus begins an odyssey that crosses England, France and Italy as Jeremy's right to inherit is contested, and a mysterious burglary of Penny's new flat inherited from her aunt takes place. There's nothing deep or socially significant about this book—it's just nice light reading, with an appealing, spunky heroine, a dashing but moody hero, a few shady characters along with a few more with ulterior motives, the romantic history of lively Aunt Penelope, and foreign locales that will make you want to move to a villa in France or take a vintage flat in London. Just put your brain in neutral and enjoy.

 Atlantic, Simon Winchester
Having grown up barely fifteen minutes' drive from an Atlantic inlet (Narragansett Bay) and spent so many summer (and winter) Sundays on the shore of this restless ocean, I was eager to read this new effort by Winchester.

As a whole I enjoyed this "biography" of the Atlantic ocean beginning with its formation after the separation of the super-continent of Pangaea. Winchester then uses as his framework Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" to tell the story of man's relationship with the turbulent ocean: the Phoenicians' tentative steps onto the feared waves in search of murex dye, and other early explorations, followed by the great wave of European explorers, and then onward to stories of battles at sea, famous wrecks, the extension of technology across the ocean (the Atlantic cable, followed by the transmission of wireless), to the present-day worries of pollution and rising sea temperature affecting marine life. Despite this organization, the book occasionally feels scattered, with irrelevant tangents, although in total the history, legends, and tales collected are of interest, especially a history of trans-Atlantic shipping and the first packet boats.

This is my first foray into one of Winchester's books, so I came with no pre-conceptions of his writing style. Other reviews appear to have found something lacking in this volume. Perhaps, then, this volume is best read by Winchester neophytes, or those who really love the lore of the Atlantic and won't mind the occasional sidetrack.

For Molly Murphy Fans

Are you a fan of Rhys Bowen's Molly Murphy mysteries? If you have a Kindle or a Kindle phone app, you can get a free, prequel Molly Murphy story from Amazon.com that will be delivered to your device when the story is released on May 10:

"The Amersham Rubies"
 

Whilst Wandering Through a Catalog

When I name beloved books that I first read in junior high school—The Family Nobody Wanted, The Story of Walt Disney, What Katy Did/What Katy Did at School, A Wrinkle in Time, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Especially Dogs, The Morning of Mankind—there is one I always forget to name, but the book itself is so memorable that I smile at its title just thinking about it: Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie, although I first knew it by its American title, The Edge of Day.

This was a magical book. Lee was born during World War I and grew up impoverished but surrounded with the love of his mother and older sisters in a small English village. This was the first time I had ever read prose that sounded more like poetry; Lee's use of description and language was like a song set in paragraphs, a chronicle of his home and village life, and his adventures in growing up.

Google Books has some sample chapters of this extraordinarily lovely autobiography here; perhaps you too will fall in love with its delightful prose.

Books Finished Since March 1

 How Shakespeare Changed Everything, Stephen Marche
Well, really, he didn't; still, this is a lively small book about some of the major influences Shakespeare's plays have had upon our society: innovations in language, unique characters, even "modern" concepts such as racial equality—the opening chapter, about Paul Robeson's portrayal of Othello, presents an aspect of the play I had not heard of before—and teenage angst. Other chapters discuss aspects of the Bard I had read about previously (those who try to prove Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him, the fact that not much biographical information is known about the man, even one about the gentleman who released starlings in North America, determined that every bird mentioned in Shakespeare should be available to be seen in the United States—the starlings, of course, bred copiously and invaded native species' territories), and there was a short but interesting chapter the Booth family and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

This is not a book I would have gone out of my way to buy, nor is it remarkable, but it was enjoyable, easy reading, and might be a good text to spark a teen's interest in Shakespeare.

 Ten Second Staircase, Christopher Fowler
Once again, the Peculiar Crimes Unit, with its elderly senior officers, the eccentric and acerbic Arthur Bryant, and the still urbane John May, is threatened with extinction when their supervisor complains to his superiors about his difficulties reining in the offbeat group. In the meantime, an artist is murdered in her own display at an art museum, with a school group nearby, by a mysterious highwayman on a black horse, an improbable criminal seen by one of the students.

As always Fowler deals with much more than the mystery originally posed: May's agoraphobic granddaughter April is lured from her home to work with the Unit, Bryant becomes troubled by the emotional disassociation of the privileged as well as impoverished youths they encounter during their investigation, and the ghost of an old investigation is purposely called up, that of the Leicester Square Vampire, a killer who claimed the life of May's daughter (April's mother). The hows and whys of the plot kept me guessing until the end, and I found much amusement in realizing how much I agreed with some of Bryant's complaints about modern society! Captivating and absorbing.

 The Silver Guitar: A Julie Mystery, Kathryn Reiss
The Julie stories wig me out; it's impossible for me to think of my teenage years as now being "history." :-) In this outing, Julie participates in a fundraising project that will help birds and mammals harmed in an oil spill (a particularly timely topic) and meets a couple who collect priceless objects. They plan to auction some of these collectibles off to help the cause, including a genuine silver StratoCruiser guitar which belonged to a famous, deceased rock star. But when Julie's friend T.J. accidentally breaks the priceless instrument, the two kids discover that the guitar is fake.

While the mystery is fairly solid, the dialog in the Julie books always strikes me as being unnecessarily stiff. It sure doesn't sound like the 1970s I lived through. They also manage to mention deceased young rock stars without once mentioning drug overdoses, which I found intensely amusing. Another curious incident is T.J. being given the responsibility that gets him in trouble: the couple allows T.J. access to their house after meeting him once; it's a bit hard to swallow. This is not the best of the Julie mysteries, but much better than the first one.

 A Family Affair, Caro Peacock
Once again Benjamin Disraeli summons Miss Liberty Lane to provide discreet information into a perplexing event: influential Lord Brinkburn is dying, and, inexplicably, his formerly retiring wife has circulated the shocking information that their eldest son Stephen is not legitimate; she claims she accidentally had sexual congress with a stranger in a hotel room in Italy and he was the result. Their younger son Miles, her favorite of the two boys, is the actual heir. Liberty, with a young urchin named Tabby in tow to play as her maid, poses as an artist who wishes to paint and sketch in a cottage on the Blackburn estate. In this way she hopes to gain the confidence of Lady Brinkburn and perhaps find out the truth behind this fantastical statement.

This third Liberty Lane adventure starts off at a gallop during the re-creation of a joust held by bored young aristocrats and never slackens its pace. Bit by bit, Liberty peels back the layers of the Brinkburn family, to come to some astounding revelations and an action-filled conclusion to the story. Yes, Liberty's manner still seems too modern for an early Victorian-era young woman--in one sequence she's actually running around the countryside in a robe and her underwear, and seems not very nonplussed by the fact--but our plucky heroine, the narrative, the interesting supporting characters, and even the medieval re-creations by the indolent young lords all add up to an appealing mystery-adventure.

 Clue in the Castle Tower: A Samantha Mystery, Sarah Masters Buckey
Samantha and Nellie accompany the Admiral and Grandmary to England, where they are invited to the manor home of the Admiral's old friend, now guardian to his two mischievous grandsons. The lively boys seem nice enough, albeit being pranksters, so the girls decide to help when Henry and Ian are threatened with being sent back to their dreary boarding school after their grandfather suspects them of stealing valuable books.

Aside from the boys seeming a bit more American in their manners than English, this is a mildly interesting mystery. The Lady Florence character, however, seems just tossed into the story to show an independent British girl and add another suspect, and the tutor is rather colorless. The most interesting character is the maid who yearns for more education (although she reminded me a bit of Maisie Dobbs).

 Make Room for Danny, Danny Thomas with Bill Davidson
This is an easy-to-read, amiable autobiography of television star and nightclub performer Danny Thomas, who started off life as Amos Jacobs, the son of Lebanese immigrants. One of eight children, Thomas was actually raised by the aunt who cared for him while his mother was sick after childbirth and her husband. He was determined go to into the entertainment industry and eventually did, working hard and eventually getting some big breaks due to friends. Eventually he became known nationwide as the star of the highly popular sitcom Make Room for Daddy.

This book may not be everyone's cup of tea—Thomas doesn't "dish dirt" or relate sexual escapades. By today's standards it's pretty tame! But as a fan of Make Room for Daddy and Thomas' charity, St. Judes, I found it enjoyable.

 A Bundle of Trouble: A Rebecca Mystery, Kathryn Reiss
Rebecca's troubles are only beginning when she notices her brother Victor sneaking out at night. The same day a young couple and their small baby move into the Rubins' apartment building and Rebecca offers to care for the fretful infant away from the tumult of moving. She takes the child to the park, where she befriends an Italian girl taking care of her baby sister. But when she returns baby Nora, she fears the two babies have been switched—deliberately, as part of a kidnapping spree going on in New York City.

The historical details of this volume are much better than the previous Rebecca mystery. Reiss gives one a nice feel for how poor children lived and cared for younger siblings in 1914. For an adult, it will be obvious that one character must be the obvious suspect since that person has no other purpose in the story. Still, there are several mysteries working here at once, a definite improvement on the first story.

 The King's Speech; How One Man Saved the British Monarchy, Mark Logue and Peter Conradi
Albert Frederick Arthur George grew up as a shy prince in the shadow of his effervescent older brother, first in line to the throne of England. "Bertie," as he was known to family and friends, suffered from a debilitating stutter that made him the butt of classmates' jokes and caused instructors to think he was slow-witted. Lionel Logue was a talented public speaker from Australia who emigrated to England with his family and successfully treated people with speech disorders despite having no formal training.

In 1926, tired of criticism of his public speaking and desperate for a cure, the Prince contacts Logue for help. What he did for the prince was nothing short of a miracle; the treatment became a godsend when "Bertie" found himself king after his brother abdicated in favor of "the woman I love," and, not soon after, the country was plunged into World War II.

This book is at its best in the first two-thirds, as it chronicles the life of the man who would later be George VI as well as the Australian upbringing of Lionel Logue, followed by the prince's decision to seek Logue's help and how the therapist helped him. Revealed are the prince's bleak childhood, Logue's youth in pioneer Adelaide, and of the close friendship that sprang up between the men, as well as a portrait of England in the first half of the 20th century. If you saw the film, are a history buff, or were simply curious about the story, you will probably enjoy this book.

 The Mental Floss History of the United States, Erik Sass with Will Pearson and Magesh Hattikuduk
The Mental Floss folks hit the high points in this occasionally humorous overview of United States history, with summaries of each era ("State of the Union"), "Lies Your Teacher Told You" (actually misconceptions people have about US history, riffing on the van Loewen books), and sections like "Where My Gods At," "Other People's Stuff," "Trendspotting," etc. The authors try hard to stay impartial (especially near the end during the Red/Blue States controversies), and it's a nice, informative summary in digestible bites. In fact, there are some nice overviews of subjects many history books gloss over, such as indentured servitude, the ubiquitous colonial rum, Bacon's Rebellion, Lincoln's treatment of civil liberties, how Commodore Perry really "opened up" Japan to trade, and more, plus a tidy summary of presidents from Washington to Obama at the conclusion of the book. Super for history buffs!

 The Winter Garden Mystery, Carola Dunn
The Hon. Daisy Dalrymple, her family fortune just a memory due to her brother's death in the Great War, must instead write articles and take photographs for "Town and Country" magazine to earn her living. When an old school friend invites her to the family estate, Daisy is overjoyed to find a new article source. But the household is unsettled: autocratic Lady Valeria is quarreling with one of the inhabitants of the nearby village, her vague husband retreats to his model dairy at the least sign of conflict, tomboyish "Bobbie" (Daisy's chum) keeps disappearing, and something is obviously troubling breathtakingly handsome Sebastian, Bobbie's brother, and his crippled tutor, Ben.

It is when Daisy is being given a tour of the manor's famed Winter Garden that another apparent secret of the estate is revealed: the body of Grace Moss, a housemaid who disappeared, is buried under a dying shrub.

Again, while the Daisy mysteries have so far mentioned repercussions from the first World War, they are not the thoughtful, psychological tales of Anne Perry's or Jacqueline Winspear's postwar novels. Although the war deaths are not treated lightly, rather, it is the bright 1920s, with snappy slang, flappers, and bobbed hair inserted into an English country house mystery. These are quite enjoyable "cozies" with a heroine who knows her own mind, and supporting characters that will remind you of early Sayers or Woodhouse.

 Mother Was a Gunner's Mate, Josette Dermody Wingo
I found this at the library while I was there for a totally different reason (but isn't that always how it is?). It's the true story of Josette Dermody, "nice Catholic girl" from Detroit who joined the WAVES in 1944. She trains at Great Lakes and then is shipped to her duty station at Treasure Island near San Francisco to train naval Armed Guard antiaircraft gunners on the West Coast. Told in a delightfully brisk first person, Josette encounters sexist male compatriots, occasionally hostile female companions (one of her bunkmates is a deeply prejudiced Southern girl), not to mention the fears of her family at home (she never did get her father to understand why she joined up, a sore point with him) and her fears for her brother and ex-boyfriend overseas. Josette may not "see the world," but she certainly sees lives different from the world she grew up in, meeting German prisoners, Russian sailors, and the denizens of 1940s San Francisco. A must for anyone wanting to know about woman's contributions during World War II, or just wanting a good coming-of-age story.

 The Vertigo Years, Philipp Blom
The years from 1900-1914 are known by many names, including the Edwardian era (although George V came to the throne in 1910, those four years are usually considered to be a continuation of Edward's reign until the first World War began) and "the Gilded Age." It's usually considered a quiet time of fabulously wealthy aristocracy, complacent middle class, and appallingly hideous slum dwellers.

Don't believe it. Behind the post-Victorian "calm" was a world already boiling with social change—suffragettes, sexual tensions, young men and women gathering without chaperonage, the theories of eugenics, the collapse of aristocracy, the flowering of psychiatry, the protest against abuse of colonial tribes—and mechanical ones as well: the rise of the automobile, aviation, and other technological advances. For years doctors had insisted only women suffered from nervous problems due to the fact that they were female and subject to "hysteria"; now more and more men were appearing with "nervous complaints," harried by the clock and the rush of industrialization, feeling emasculated by intelligent women.

Year by year, Blom deals with a topic particular to that passage of time: the Paris exposition of 1900, X-rays and radioactivity in 1903, the Russo-Japanese war of 1905, the suffragette movement in 1908, the rise of leisure time by 1911, etc. I really enjoyed this book and all the different topics and personalities it addressed.

 Trio of Sorcery, Mercedes Lackey
There was no way I was going to miss this volume, after having read all the Diana Tregarde novels and existing short stories—not buy the book with the "long lost 'Arcanum 101'" in it? Lackey has talked about this story for years!

It's the first Tregarde story ever written, about Diana's first steps away from home and lodging at college, trying to balance study and sorcery. Along the line she gets an assignment from the police (discredit a fortune teller who's advising a woman whose little girl was kidnapped) and a "Scooby gang" comprising the students upstairs who become her first friends. There's some exposition for newcomers to the storyline which may be tedious to Tregarde fans, but it trots along at a good pace. The other two stories are "Drums," a short story based on the Native American characters in Lackey's novel Sacred Ground and an original tale, "Ghost in the Machine," about Ellen McBride, a "techno-shaman" who helps online game developers whose new "super-villian" is a lot more powerful than it should be. The Jennifer Talldeer story explores some interesting Native American legends, but the Ellen McBride story crackles with energy—I would definitely like to see more stories, or a book featuring McBride. Highly recommended for those of you, like me, who've been waiting for "Arcanum 101" for years, and the other two stories are welcome laginappe.

Behind the Scenes

Oooh, look what's being released next Tuesday!

Lessons from the Mountain

(And while it has nothing to do with Mary's biography, there's a new Bryant and May book due out in September...)

Read an E-Book Week: Those Adventurous Boy Heroes

Given the era of the boys' series books contained in e-book archives, it was a given that the boys would experience more adventure and danger than their female counterparts.

Boys were definitely boys in those days, and while the girls did get to solve mysteries, frequently face unpleasant people, and even encounter spies, the boys invented, fought in wars or against enemies, were shot at, participated in long trail rides or motor rides, hunted and faced wild animals (not to mention wild men—outlaws and such), occasionally used their fists, always used their wiles—and remained gentlemen to boot!

The granddaddy of all boys series' was the Rover Boys. They're quaint reading now, even for 19th century book fans: they speak in pseudo-British slang (the opening stories take place in the boys' boarding school, Putnam Hall, and their schoolmates were spun off into yet another series). During their adventures the boys age, eventually marry, and their sons take over the youthful tales.

Probably the most famous of the boys' series was Tom Swift. Despite decades of "tom swifties" jokes, the Tom Swift series was a serious set of books about young Tom, a budding inventor and his inventor father, and what seemed like the constant efforts of other, lesser inventors to steal Mr. Swift's blueprints, patents, etc. The first books discussed machinery like motorcycles and motorboats, which, while commonplace to us, were quite novel to the readers of 1910. Later inventions included electric guns and other more fanciful equipment. Tom, like the Rover Boys, aged, married, and had a son, Tom Swift Jr, who participated in more space-age adventures with rocket ships and ray guns.

As time passed, the boys' series leads were often paired with the newest technology. There were boy motorcyclists, boy radio operators, boy motorboat owners, boy motorists, boy submariners, and, of course, boys involved with the newest, most amazing invention of all, the airplane. There were several boy aviator series, most of which took place during "the Great War." Their names changed, but the plots mostly followed the same plots: the gallant American boys flying for freedom against the "Boche" (Germans), saving the helpless and foiling evil spies. (If you blanch at the thought of ten-year-olds flying airplanes, driving cars and motorcycles, and thwarting enemies, please recall that the term "teenager" had not been coined when these books were written. The "boys" represented in series books were usually seventeen to nineteen years old.)

A more typical set of boys to begin with were H. Irving Hancock's "High School Boys," initially a set of sports-themed books. "Dick & Co.," as they were often known, after their leader, Dick Prescott, also included Greg Holmes, Dave Darrin, Dan Dalzell (also known as "Danny Grin"), Tom Reade, and Harry Hazelton, all of whom lived in the town of Gridley and attended Gridley High. Well-mannered, honest "square fellows," they were nevertheless frequently tormented by the town bully and his toadies. Hancock followed with a summer series about the boys, and then, having exhausted their later schooling, wrote a series of "Grammar School Boys" adventures about them. Once the boys reached adulthood, however, they split into three groups, each with a series. Dick and Greg went to West Point, then became "Uncle Sam's Boys" and fought in Europe. (Dick, amazing as always, on his first day in the trenches spots a spy who has fooled everyone else, including the officers, for weeks!) Dave and Dan went to Annapolis, then participated in various famous naval encounters, including adventures in Vera Cruz. Very soon our young lads were officers commanding small ships! Tom and Harry took a less military approach and attended engineering school, then managed to be coupled on assignments in various wild places, including Mexico and Nevada, where they always earned the lasting hatred of the biggest, baddest gunslinger around (who, of course, they always bested with superior thinking).

One of the more unusual series was the five-book "Circus Boys" series. Phil and Teddy, two bored country boys, join...well, the circus, starting out as general dogsbodies and tenderfoot performers, and by the end of the series, due to their pluck, initiative, and staying power, have worked themselves up to be publicists for the show, before even hitting their 20s. It was an interesting look behind the workings of an early 1900s traveling circus.

Again, one cannot discuss these early series, boys' or girls', without mentioning the sometimes blatant, sometimes more subtle, racism that was included in the stories. One of the most memorable characters in the original Tom Swift series, for example, is Eradicate Andrew Jackson Abraham Lincoln Sampson, the typical minstrel-show African-American supporting character. While "Rad," as Tom calls him, often provides Tom with important "clews" and saves him, he also speaks in stereotypical "colored dialect" and prefers to travel with his mule, Boomerang. These sad individuals spot both boys' and girls' series, for both younger and older children: Dinah and Sam in the Bobbsey Twins and Hercules, the family retainer in two of the Frey Camp Fire Girls books (another stereotypical African-American provides a plot point in yet a third Frey book) are only two of many examples, which is why I was surprised to discover The Air Ship Boys by Saylor, which contained a young black character who spoke in dialect, but not as bad as other novels, and did not act the fool; while he did most of the scut work for his white companions, he was also considered a trusted guard and companion.

Most minorities and many ethnic groups came in for drubbing. The worst series in this respect was the Pony Rider Boys series, about a group of boys and their older escort, who visited various Western and wilderness locales on horseback, encountering rustlers, cheats, land grabbers, and other villainous types. I had a tough time making it through my first Pony Rider book, despite thrilling adventures, faced with such epithets as "greaser" and "spic" directed to every Mexican, "dirty savages" in regards to Native Americans, "Chinamen" to Asians, etc. As observed in my girls' series entry, it is not surprising white children who read these books came away with such racist attitudes, as these books were provided to them by people they respected: parents, relatives, friends, perhaps even clergy.

Again, however, I still maintain these books have much to offer. They portray the virtues the early 1900s' adult wished good, manly boys to have: honesty, courage, conviction, drive, steadiness; open a window to the technological advances of the time; portray the closing frontiers of the United States and even Europe; show how the First World War was "spun" as a great crusade even to the youngest citizens of the United States; and vividly point out what strides have been made in defeating cruel and ugly stereotypes. It is a trip back in time that displays the realities, good and bad, of the era in a much more honest way than more recently written books that try to pretend that such things were not common among educated persons.

Read an E-Book Week: Those Sturdy, Principled Girl Heroines

Perhaps the most famous girls in series books are Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden, followed by Judy Bolton, Cherry Ames, and the other girl sleuths from the 30s and 40s, but they were preceded by an entire flock of earnest, principled girl heroines from early series books.

Not all of the stories these girls were involved in were mysteries. Some involved character studies, like the story of The Three Margarets (Margaret, Rita, and Peggy), all manipulated by their tyrannical relative to emerge friends, or slice-of-life stories in which girls like Patty Fairfield, Billie Bradley, and Nan Sherwood faced problems in growing up, or stories in which the girls embarked on newfangled adventures: they traveled in motorcars like "The Automobile Girls," appeared in the "flickers" like "The Moving Picture Girls" who faced rival actresses, or even flew "aeroplanes" like the Girl Aviators. Jean Webster's fun-loving Patty got in college scrapes but always came out fine at the end.

You can see the early face of girls' mysteries, however, in most of the series of the times. In between attending school, vacationing, and making their way through rivalries with other girls, our heroines usually managed to find missing papers and inheritances, make discoveries about lost children or adoptions, rescue abused kids, etc. Unlike the series of today, most of the girls were allowed to age, go from high school to college to a brief career, even to marriage. Ruth Fielding even finds a successful career as a movie screen writer, Ruth and Alice DeVere (the Moving Picture Girls) become actresses by accident (it's their father who actually wishes to become a film actor)

Typical of these girls were the Outdoor Girls. Dependable Betty Nelson, age fifteen, was the head of the little group—indeed, she is known to her friends as "the little Captain" due to her practical nature—who formed a "Camping and Tramping Club." The other members of the group are Grace Ford, who manages to keep a "Gibson girl" figure despite the fact that she always seems to have a box of chocolates on her; Molly Bilette, known as "Billy," the emotional member of the group (she's of French descent, you see, so she's excitable); and quiet Amy Stonington, who finds out to her great astonishment in the first book that she is adopted. Later in the series she finds out more about her real family. In addition, Grace's brother Will Ford and his friends appear, as well as Billy's insipid small twin siblings Paul and Dodo, who usually manage to blackmail the girls into giving them candy.

The one thing you will notice about all these girls' series is that the girls in them are chiefly in their late teens, but, despite the fact there are boys about, the girls do not spend their time mooning over them, or even obsessing about sex at all. It is a given that Betty likes Allan Washburn, and that Grace Harlowe, in her own series, is fond of Tom Gray (later her husband), but these girls have no time for boys until they reach their 20s. The same goes for the Camp Fire Girls, who are in their 20s by the time the series ends. It is refreshing to see supposedly old-fashioned girls acting so sensibly as opposed to their modern counterparts, who are obsessed with bodies rather than brains, looking good for boys, and being "princesses" when younger instead of independent women.

The other things emphasized are the girls' sense of virtue and fair play. They would never think of cheating or being deliberately "mean" to others, although they occasionally uttered a too-impulsive words or actions which they apologized for later. Grace Harlowe, Betty Nelson, the "Winnebago" Camp Fire Girls, Nan Sherwood, and their sisters would be horrified by the Gossip Girls.

Grace Harlowe was one of the straightest arrows in the series world. She was so "straight," in fact, that numerous girls in each year of high school and college attempted to "get even" with her by blackening her name. Grace spends several books being mistrusted by teachers, professors, or other authority figures because of resentful classmates. Yet she always managed to persevere with dignity and clear her name, and still have fun with her friends: Anne Pierson, a poor girl despised by her classmates who Grace takes under her wing; Nora O'Malley and Jessica Bright. Some of her enemies, like Eleanor Savell and Miriam Nesbit, later become her friends.

One of the more interesting series is that of Ethel Morton. In each of the Morton books, an educational theme accompanies the story line; for instance, in one of the books Ethel learns to cook healthful meals and grow fresh vegetables, in another book she and her friends learn decorating and designing a healthful and happy home.

One of the common topics of all the books written between 1914 and 1918 is the girls' participation in some type of aid during what was known then as the Great War. They knit, raised money, put together packages for European waifs, appeared in parades, bought Liberty Bonds, and otherwise encouraged their readers to help in the war effort. Of course, they occasionally caught spies as well! Hildegarde Frey's Winnebagoes even capture a German spy in The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit while defending their friend, Veronica Lehar, a Hungarian refuge.

An unexpected and interesting series is "Aunt Jane's Nieces." Louise, Beth, and Patsy are all summoned to their Aunt Jane's deathbed. She will leave only one of them her fortune, and tries to set the girls against one another, but instead they become friends. They also befriend Aunt Jane's ward Kenneth, who should be the recipient of her fortune, but she dislikes him. However, Kenneth eventually does inherit Aunt Jane's fortune, leaving the girls without support. Unexpectedly their Uncle John turns up. They believe him as poor "as a churchmouse" but it turns out he's rolling in dough and adopts all three girls, as well as appointing Patsy's father as his majordomo. The girls and Kenneth go through various adventures, including making a go of a farm, buying a newspaper, traveling to Europe, etc. The books touch upon some subjects that were surprising for girls' novels of their day: in one Kenneth runs for office and the girls help him politically.

The biggest surprise, however, of the series is that the Edith Van Dyne writing their adventures is in actuality L. Frank Baum of "Oz" fame. In fact, he wrote several other girls' series under a pen name, including the Mary Louise books.

These girls' novels are a window to the world of young women from 1900 through the 1920s. It is an eye-opener to see them emerge from the Victorian world where girls sewed samplers and painted china to vigorous young ladies who compete in basketball and tennis, drive automobiles, even start to lead independent lives even though there are expectations of marriage and children in their futures.

As in all the novels of this era, bigotry and racism sometimes appear. While it is sometimes painful to read, it also reminds us of how far we have come in racial and ethnic equality. It also explains to us how children of the era fell victim to racism and negative ethnic stereotypes, being presented as common and normal in these much-read volumes.

The next time you're looking for an e-book, try one of these old series. I have a particular fondness for the Hildegard Frey Camp Fire Girls (a series of ten books, eight which can be found online), but Betty Gordon, Grace Harlowe, Ruth Fielding, the Outdoor Girls, and others are all fun choices. If nothing else, you can smile at the quaint dialog, the funny medical beliefs, and even occasionally those annoying cutsey younger brothers and sisters!

Read an E-Book Week

I'd planned to do an e-book post at some point, and this appears to be the perfect time. E-books are nothing new to me—just the concept of paying for them are! :-) I've been reading e-books since I bought my HP Jornada in 2002. One of the applications it came with was Microsoft Reader, which is the ".lit" format.

At that time there were no Kindles, Nooks, Kobos, etc. There were e-readers on Jornadas and Palm Pilots and other PDAs, however, in two formats that I knew about (there may have been others), Microsoft Reader and Mobypocket. The Jornada came with some fairy tales, but I later found e-books of classics on a University of Virginia site. Gutenberg.org also had e-books. Again, at that time these were public domain classics: Louisa May Alcott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Frederick Douglass, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, etc.

I hit the jackpot when I found a site called Blackmask.com. This site not only contained the same classics, but it also had pulp magazine stories and, best of all, old children's series books. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys? No, these are still under copyright. But everything else, and much earlier than Drew or Hardy, all the way back to the much joked about Rover Boys and the original Bobbsey Twins (where they rode around in horses and carriages), and everything else.

(The owner of the Blackmask.com site was later sued for using Doc Savage and the Shadow pulps on his site, ignoring the fact that Conde Nast still owns these characters. The site vanished for a time, but is now back, sans Doc and Lamont, as Munseys.com. New e-books join the ranks daily.)

So here I discovered all the early girls' series: Grace Harlowe, Ruth Fielding, Betty Gordon, Nan Sherwood, and more. Plus the boys' series: the Pony Rider Boys, the High School Boys (later the Dick Prescott books, the Dave Darrin books, and the Young Engineers), the Boy Allies, even Tom Swift. It's all been great fun to peek into the past: fashions, mores, school customs, speech patterns, how the adults of the time expected girl and boy protagonists to act. Some of the plots are paint-by-number, sadly bigotry reared its head many times, language might be florid—but all of it has been interesting, occasionally fun, and I have even come to love some of these early characters.

I'm hoping to write more this week about the books I discovered, some characters I found endearing, and more during Read an E-Book Week.

The Peculiar Crimes Unit

Bryant and May have their own website: The Peculiar Crimes Unit!

And there are at least two more books upcoming!

Happiness!

The Library Booksale: Titles and Thoughts

The spring edition was this morning, and I was there not quite at the opening, but the earliest I'd ever been there, about a quarter to ten. (It was also a first, as I wasn't sick—for some reason every time the library has a book sale, I've either had a cold or gotten there after having not eaten lunch and wandered about, stomach growling and light-headed.)

I was agog at the crowd. I have never seen that many people at the sale. Not only was it difficult to move around, but more people than ever were dragging shopping carts, those rolling boxes with handles like a suitcase, or even real suitcases (when they weren't blocking the aisle with strollers). There were many young mothers or older people there, and many were stuffing bags, boxes, and suitcases full of books, a clear commentary on the economy.

I hit the children's books first, under the same cockeyed optimism that I will find some older books as was common in the 70s and 80s book sales. Sadly, most used book stores and sales usually just have piles and piles of Babysitters Club, Goosebumps, and modern paperbacks. Unfortunately, I never do find Betty Cavanna or Janet Lambert, or Augusta Heuill Seaman, or the Scholastic Books we didn't have money for when I was in school, like White Ruff or Always Reddy. I did see a vintage bio of George Washington, but passed it up. I got one of the Katie John books, though, and a Ginnie and Geneva, and picked up Gone-Away Lake, which is a classic that I've never read. I also found a small press book that was stuck with the biographies, about a boy growing up on Martha's Vineyard.

I checked out both the hardbacks and the paperbacks in more forlorn hope that someone had discarded some of the Carola Dunn books I'm trying to find, looked over the travel, nature, and craft books, and then scoured the biographies hoping that someone had been careless and donated a copy of Colonel Roosevelt. However, I did find American Eve, the story of Evelyn Nesbit, and a biography of one of my television favorites, Danny Thomas.

There was a nice collection of Christmas books this year, half craft stuff and the other half mostly Mary Higgins Clark books, the John Grisham Skipping Christmas (which I absolutely loathed), David Baldacci's The Christmas Train (loved it), some Jan Karon. I found an interesting recipe book from the 1960s that had traditional recipes in it, like syllabub and mulled wine and other historical- or ethnic-based ones. And then a total surprise.

Many years ago in the original Atlanta Borders store I found a trade paper volume called A Worcestershire Christmas. It was short selections, photos, and drawings of Christmas celebrations in Worcestershire, England, published by Sutton. Well, here was a similarly-sized book, same format, also by Sutton, called A Surrey Christmas! I'm wondering now if there were a series of them! (OMG, just checked Amazon.co.uk—there are dozens of them, looks like for each shire in England, plus volumes like Bronte Christmas, Thomas Hardy Christmas, London Christmas, Great British Christmas, Medieval Christmas, Country House Christmas, Gilbert and Sullivan Christmas, etc. ...wow!)

Anyway, I was still poking about in the children's book area when a mom came behind me with two small kids, maybe about age four or five. The little girl had picked up a book and was trying to give it to her mother. Her mother said, "You've already read that book; I'm not buying you a book you've already read!" Not "a book you already have," but "a book you've already read." Is this not depressing? It's not like the book cost a fortune! And why should the kid not have a book she really loved and wanted to read again? I have so many books I love to re-read; they are as dear as old friends. What's wrong with buying a book that's already been read?

Later, as I was perusing the art books, a woman came up behind me with two older children, probably around nine or ten. It sounded like they were being homeschooled, because mom was looking for books about artists for the children to learn about, and when I pointed out a book about opera to her, she picked it up to check it because the children were going to see a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta soon. They were dragging a library cart behind them with an entire, fairly new set of the World Book Encyclopedia, and I wanted to give them a sunny smile and say, "Oh, what a wonderful time you're going to have with that!" I can still tilt my head to the left and see my set, the ones my mom gave us as a housewarming gift, and remember my original one from 1963 with the pebbly red "library finish" that my Cousin Eddie Lanzi sold us. I would see something on television and say, "Mommy, is that true?" and she would say, "Go look it up in the encyclopedia!" and I would. I read all the volumes through at least twice. Through its pages I visited different countries and climates, discovered the world of flora and fauna, read about scientific discoveries and literary gems—and the people who created them, got to know saints and sinners, heroes and villains.

Now I can surf anywhere and see anything via the web, but nothing will ever be quite like the magic of that first World Book!

Books Finished Since February 1

 Intrigue, Mercedes Lackey
Mags, the wretched orphan rescued from mine work by being Chosen by the Companion Dallen, is progressing well at the new Collegium being built, but he still remains a solitary character with only a few strong friends: Bear, gifted with knowledge of herbs; Lena, a Bardic student desperately trying to do something outstanding so her talented but narcissistic father will notice her; and Amily, the handicapped daughter of the King's Own Herald, Nikolas. He is trusted enough to do little spying missions for Nikolas—until a group of Farseers have a vision of what seems to be an assassination attempt on the King with a "foreigner" involved, and Mags is the only "foreigner" in residence. And it's then that Mags' solitary life starts to work against him, as he is suspected by fellow students and courtiers alike, despite the fact he has become a star player in a new game invented to help the Heralds simulate battle situations.

I have been reading books about Valdemar since the first, Arrows of the Queen, was published. Mags' story still feels a bit like Talia's with some changes in it (if you remember, students bullied Talia as well, and even tried to drown her). This time everything conspires against our hero; even his best friends (granted, under great duress) desert him. Mags' situation just becomes worse and worse until he is driven to rock bottom; it is not an easy story to read (nor should it be, since he is under such stress, but it is a hard slog). Plus there is entirely too much time taken up with the Kirball games, which, as other critics have pointed out, bear a remarkable resemblance to Quidditch on horseback. Mags being good at the game makes him a few more real friends, ones who appreciate him for himself, not just his playing, but the descriptions of it get tedious fast, like reading an old-fashioned boys' sports book. I'm sure the training will serve Mags and his friends in some way in the final book of the trilogy, but for now the play-by-play is a tad tedious.

I would wait for the paperback on this one.

 The Sisters Grimm: Magic and Other Misdemeanors, Michael Buckley
In Buckley's delicious mish-mash universe of fairy tale characters of all persuasions, things are deteriorating at a rapid rate. Sabrina and Daphne Grimm's parents are still in an enchanted sleep, the murderous mayor of Ferryport Landing (the Queen of Hearts) has levied an enormous tax on the remaining human members of town and left the despicable Sheriff of Nottingham to enforce her laws, and someone is stealing magic items for an unknown purpose. How will Granny Relda find the objects and pay the tax?

The most intriguing thing in the story is a glimpse into a possible future due to time rips opening and closing within the town. A character who disappeared in a previous novel has returned and talks the sisters into helping look for the stolen objects; what the person has suggested sounds sensible, but is there something behind it? It will be interesting to know in future books if what the girls see is their actual future or just an alternative they may want to change.

 Murder on Waverly Place, Victoria Thompson
Sarah Brandt, midwife, has just recovered from finding out the truth of the murder of her physician husband, when her wealthy mother comes to her asking for help. Mrs. Decker has consulted a spiritualist in hope to contact her older daughter, Sarah's sister Maggie, who was driven away from home when her parents disapproved of her marriage, and who later died. Sarah disapproves, but goes with her mother in hopes of proving the spiritualist, an Italian girl, is a fraud. Instead, she is witness to a murder of another attendee.

This is a very talky entry in Thompson's "Gaslight Mystery" series. Frank Molloy, Sarah's love interest, is the investigating officer, and we learn a good deal about how spiritualists dupe their clients. A whopping coincidence helps solve the mystery, and there is no real progress in the Molloy/Brandt romance. The narrative was good enough to keep me reading, but the mystery is rather lukewarm.

 Napoleon's Hemorrhoids, Phil Mason
"And Other Small Events That Changed History"
This is a British-published trade paperback that will please any history lover who likes bits of trivia about historical situations. As the title explains, these are tiny bobbles in history that could have led to vastly different futures had they not happened. My only complaint on this book would be is that the sports chapter is totally unnecessary; who cares about results in sports? It's not like a differing result makes any difference in history. Really, forty years later, who cares about "the Heidi Bowl" except a few fans of the sports teams involved?

 The Ninth Daughter, Barbara Hamilton
Abigail Adams arrives at the home of Rebecca Malvern and knows immediately, frighteningly, that something is wrong. Rebecca, a woman who contributes to the causes of the Sons of Liberty, and who lives in poverty since being driven away from her wealthy husband by his jealous children, has vanished and another woman is murdered and horribly mutilated in her kitchen. Later the Sons of Liberty cover up the murder evidence because Rebecca knew too many secrets about them—and John Adams himself becomes one of the suspects in the murder. It is up to Abigail and British Lieutenant Coldstone to find the murderer and Rebecca—if the latter is still alive.

Despite some of the slightly improbable situations Abigail is involved in, including scoping out a strict religious colony with faithful Sergeant Muldoon, Hamilton brings daily life in Revolutionary-era Boston and the outlying towns of Massachusetts Bay come alive. Aspects of everyday living, politics, and religion are vividly portrayed. Hamilton's Boston is populated by characters both good and bad, some facing universal problems: people who marry into a family who resents her, spoiled children, abusive religious leaders, adults with problem parents. She creates British characters who are fully realized, not just two-dimensional enemies of those who seek a break with the British monarchy. Abigail is also an appealing protagonist who must juggle her investigations, her friendships, her household duties, and her role as wife and mother.

Please note that this book, while looking like a "cozy" because of its setting and protagonist, does contain some strong, unflinching scenes of violence.

 Looking for Anne, Irene Gammel
Have you ever enjoyed a literary character so much that you wondered how the author came up with the idea for him or her? Since Lucy Maud Montgomery is no longer around to ask, Irene Gammel has investigated the various aspects of Montgomery's life and environment that combined to become the immortal Anne Shirley, heroine of Anne of Green Gables. As with most characters, you will find that Anne is a combination of Montgomery's life experiences while reading something of the author's troubling and often lonely life; what you might not know is that the original image for Anne's "look" came from a notorious American girl whose name was soon plastered in newspapers across the country.

Some readers will find troubling the author's inferences to Montgomery's—and perhaps Anne's—sexuality. Anyone who reads Victorian and Edwardian books that contain strong girls' friendships will note that today these behaviors often indicate lesbianism: girls held hands, danced with each other, had crushes on older girls and gave them little love-tokens, etc. Maud herself had friendships like these as a girl and then refuted them in adulthood. Since being a lesbian was forbidden territory then, there is no way to know how many of these friendships were more than that. I did not mind nor did I find such suppositions a handicap when reading this book, and found the various origins that combined to make Anne a fascinating example of how an author combines bits of reality and fancy to create a character.

 Verily, Verily, Jon Sweeney
Two of the most quoted books in the English language are the King James version of the Holy Bible and the plays of William Shakespeare. In this small, appreciative volume, Sweeney recounts the history of the English-language Bible, starting from publishers who risked death to translate the standard Latin version into the vernacular: Wycliffe and Tyndale. When eventually it was published in English, the Geneva Bible held sway until James I required a Bible that would unite the English.

Sweeney also deals with unintended humor in the KJV, how renown authors used it in their works, immortal verses and apt proverbs, and the role of the KJV in modern life despite its archaisms (a glossary to many of the words is provided at the conclusion of the book). This is a nice overview of how the KJV came to be and its impact on society.

 Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files, Jim Butcher
These are short stories based in the universe of Harry Dresden, "Chicago's only practicing wizard," as chronicled in Butcher's 12-book (and growing) series. The first is Butcher's first attempt at creating a universe around Dresden, which also recounts his first meeting with Karrin Murphy, his contact at the Chicago police, followed by a short vignette Butcher wrote to promote the series. The remainder of the stories, save one, have appeared in various fantasy anthologies over the years, and the final story is an original published for this volume.

Well, I enjoyed them all, even the first which Butcher claims isn't quite polished. In the short stories he has taken opportunities to deal with Harry's world from other POVs, so we have a story from the point of view of Harry's half-brother Thomas, one concentrating on Billy and Georgia's wedding, one about Michael's enforced retirement after the injuries he sustained in Small Favor, and even one which teases the "'shippers" of Harry/Murphy. Even Harry's big Temple dog Mouse gets in some good action.

Warning: the final story takes place after a major plot point in the book Changes. If you haven't reached that story yet and don't like spoilers, I'd avoid the story. Good piece, though, told from Murphy's POV.

 The Land of Painted Caves, Jean M. Auel
After many years Auel is releasing the sixth, and supposedly last, book in the Earth's Children series (although I read somewhere Auel has enough material for a seventh novel). Even if you have never read this series, you have probably heard of it via, if nothing else, the Daryl Hannah film of the first book, Clan of the Cave Bear. Hannah played the protagonist, Ayla, a Cro-Magnon child orphaned by an earthquake and raised by Neanderthals.

The first few books had a specific theme. Cave Bear was a "fish out of water" story. The second book, The Valley of Horses, is a survival story until right at the end where Ayla meets her soulmate, the handsome Jondalar. The Mammoth Hunters chronicles how Ayla learns to live with others of her kind, and is adopted by the people of the Lion Camp. Other adventures happen in The Plains of Passage and The Shelters of Stone, but they seemed anticlimatic.

In this book, Ayla prepares for her Zelandoni (spiritual leader) training by taking a pilgrimage to the sacred sites: the painted caves, culminating in a tour of Lascaux. In a way, that is one of the problems with this book: as Ayla, Jondalar, their baby and later young daughter Jonayla, and the First (the head spiritual leader) tour each of the tribes who live around the sacred spaces, the same things happen over and over: each must be introduced with their long titles, people must be amazed at Ayla's foreign accent and her way with animals (she has tamed two horses and also a wolf which she raised from a cub), the travois on which the First travels, etc. Although I understand Auel's need to describe everything to illustrate to the reader how the Zeladonii (Jondalar's tribe) live, the sheer description becomes daunting. Plus there is a large cast of characters, and while there are a dozen or so who stand out, after a while the names begin to blur. Is this man the drunken one, or the nice one? Is this woman the flirt, or the helpful one? One also wishes young Jonayla had been given more to do.

In the third part of the book, Ayla undergoes a revelation that will change the way the tribe sees itself, and the story moves a bit faster. Unfortunately, it also rehashes a plot from a previous volume. If you have invested yourself in the characters previously, you will probably be more patient with Auel's long-winded narration. Just be warned: it's slow going.

Books Finished Since January 1

Sherlock Holmes For Dummies, Steven Doyle and David A. Crowder
One hundred years have passed since Doyle wrote the stories and novels that comprise the canon of Sherlock Holmes. Today Holmes is still popular, with films, novels, and television series being written around the character and his loyal friend Dr. John Watson. So this is a primer to Doyle, Holmes and Watson, and the canon, in addition to mentioning the pastiches that followed, in a lively style that only wants you to remember that neither Holmes nor Watson were doddering middle-aged or old fellows during the majority of the stories, but were young chaps (as portrayed in the modernized British series Sherlock). Everything is covered through the Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes film. Plus note that Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson," or wore a deerstalker hat through the streets of London (a deerstalker is exactly what its name states; it's a hunting hat, for wear in the country).

The only problem I can see with this book is that Doyle and Crowder repeat the same error that many have made: they refer to Dashiell Hammett's "series" of "Thin Man" books. For once and for all, Hammett only wrote one book with Nick and Nora Charles, The Thin Man. MGM was the one who spawned a series of "Thin Man" movies.

The Best American Mystery Stories 2010, edited by Lee Child
Otto Penzler points out in his forward that very few mysteries are detecting stories anymore; more's the pity. There are about three straight "detecting" stories here—many of the rest are what I would call suspense stories, or even thrillers. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the majority of them, although the ones with more gruesome narratives were my least favorites.

Notable among the stories are an excellent Sherlock Holmes pastiche, "The Case of Colonel Warburton's Madness," in which Holmes turns his sleuthing eye upon a story told by Dr. Watson about his experience in San Francisco with a patient exhibiting signs of insanity. Author Lyndsay Faye has Doyle's narrative spot-on. Doug Allyn's police procedural "An Early Christmas" had appealing characters on both sides of the law and a nice solid mystery. "A Jury of His Peers" by Jay Brandon, set in San Antonio, Texas, at the time of the Mexican War, was also a favorite, mixing an actual historical incident with a fictional mystery. Both "Designer Justice" and "Custom Sets" are tales of revenge rather than what I would term as mystery, with nicely built suspense and satisfying endings.

The one story everyone seems to have enjoyed and praised is the Kurt Vonnegut piece; I really did not enjoy it all that much. "Dredge," involving a traumatized young man and a drowning victim, was unsettling and creepy. As always, peoples tastes vary. If you are a mystery/thriller/suspense fan, there is a good chance all or some of these stories will appeal to you.

The Tale of Applebeck Orchard, Susan Wittig Albert
There is a very slight mystery here—who set Farmer Harmsworth's haystack on fire, leading him to bar the footpath through his land, one which has been used for generations—but there is more interest in what the human denizens of the Lakes villages of Near Sawrey and Far Sawrey have been up to. Will Captain Woodcock ever realize how Miss Nash, the plain but endearing schoolteacher, feels about him? Will young Gilly Harmsworth escape the clutches of her abusive aunt and uncle? Will Lady Longford allow her granddaughter Caroline to attend college to study music? And, most importantly, will Beatrix Potter and attorney William Heelis finally acknowledge the admiration they feel for each other?

There's also a subplot with the badgers at the Brockery, and of course the village animals, including Max the Manx cat who is looking for permanent abode, have their noses stuck firmly in the footpath controversy, but they are mere distractions this time to the human emotions boiling about them.

Christietown, Susan Kandel
In the fourth Cece Caruso mystery, Cece has her hands full with her own wedding preparations to police lieutenant Gambino and the impending birth of her first grandchild, not to mention the visit of her ex-husband, his fiance, and her mother. At the same time she has been asked to revise a chapter in her biography of Agatha Christie, and is involved with the opening of a retirement community called "Christietown," where the homes look like little English cottages planned around a British "high street." Part of the publicity includes a Christie play—but suddenly the leading lady turns up dead.

Cece's family and friends provide much of the highlights in this book, especially one person who Cece unexpectedly finds herself friends with. The idea of a little English village town in a desert area seems a bit absurd, though.

A Celebration of The Good Life, Richard Webber with John Esmonde and Bob Larbey
This is a marvelous trade paper volume all about the classic British comedy series starring Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal, Paul Eddington, and Penelope Keith, chock full of publicity photos and text about the creation of the series, creators Esmond and Larbey, the four principal actors, the locations used, and even a few pages at the end about real people who "chucked the rat race" and practiced self-sufficiency (but none of them in Surbiton, of course!). If you are a fan of the series, you are certain to enjoy this book.

Inventing George Washington, Edward G. Lengel
Famous persons are almost always surrounded by legendary stories, and none so much as George Washington. Well into the 1920s and 1930s, children were still taught the "cherry tree' legend made popular by Parson Weems, and George Washington quotations and events attributed to him (such as the probably apocryphal situation where he was caught praying at Valley Forge) are still being mentioned by politicians of all persuasions.

You will be disappointed if you are expecting a biography of Washington; it is not that at all. Rather, it is about how successive generations have perceived him: as godlike hero, as rakish man-about-town, as distant aristocrat, as evil slave-owner. Lengel points out that, due to the cavalier regard which with Washington's papers were treated—not only did Martha burn all their correspondence, but one descendant cut pieces wholesale from his journals and rearranged them to suit himself, and often gave away or sold letters, so that much of what is left has either disappeared or is in the hands of collectors who are keeping their mouths shut—most of the stories cannot be substantiated. Many of the inspirational stories that were told about Washington come from secondhand sources, or from the memories of aged soldiers and comrades who revered him.

While the Revolutionary War time period is not my forte, I found this book absorbing and well-narrated, and even sometimes surprising, as I had no idea there was a group that believes George Washington encountered...wait for it...space aliens!

The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society & the Birth of the Modern World, Edward Dolnick
We are surrounded by science. Every day some new technical or medical discovery is made. We live knowing the arrangement of the solar system, geometry, of gravity, orbits, and trajectory, and even if we don't understand the mathematics very well, by physics and calculus. (Well, unless you're "Snooki," of course.)

Dolnick takes us back to the time of Newton and his contemporaries: one of disease, death, and imminent apocalypse. It isn't just a world without industrialization or technology, it's a completely different world of thought, one where everything occurs because God wills it so. To deny it you risk censure, brutal physical punishment, and even death. People still believe in witchcraft, astrology, "the humors," possession by demons. And yet in this time Galileo, Newton, and others made their discoveries, in many cases to confirm God's creation of a perfect universe, and come to "wildly improbable" answers: planets do not circle in the perfect form of a circle, but in ellipses; the Earth is not the center of the universe nor the the worst place in it, mathematics alone can tell you unmoveable truths.

He also shows us Newton and others of the Royal Society, who guard their discoveries the way a prospector guards his gold strike, and who can be quarrelsome, selfish, rude, capable of dreadful experimentation on animals and men, including themselves. To a Liberal Arts major like myself, he makes the scientific discoveries clear and presents these "paragons" we have read about in science and math class as ordinary human beings who presented extraordinary ideas.

A Lesson in Secrets, Jacqueline Winspear
In the previous novel, changes in Maisie Dobbs' personal life have set her on a new course in her investigations. In the newest book, a bridge is beginning to form between the repercussions of the Great War and the yet unknown second World War, while Maisie is asked by the British secret service to take a position as philosophy teacher at a new university in Cambridge which preaches a philosophy of peace, to investigate whether any activies taking place there are subversive to the Crown. The head of the university is a man who wrote a children's book about the war so filled with pacifist leanings that it was banned by the government and was rumored to have caused a mutiny at the front lines. Maisie is not there long before the man is murdered. While Scotland Yard investigates, Maisie continues her own inquiries, and, a bit too priescently, I thought, warns the Secret Service about certain of her students with Nazi leanings and the party itself (which, of course, the Government types ignore). There is much more for Maisie to learn about the man's life and the secretary who disappears following the death, about the German professor that steps into his place and the wealthy man who funds the school.

In the meantime, Billy Beale works on the case brought to them by Sandra, a young woman whose husband died due to an accident at work. As the story progresses, both Maisie and Billy suspect the accident wasn't one at all. Maisie's old friend Priscilla and her family are drawn into this portion of the story.

Maisie's relationship with her new love progresses slowly in this outing, but those who read the Dobbs books know it's in Maisie's nature to take things methodically. Her dad is also making some change in his life. Readers who like the earlier stories of Maisie dealing with repercussions of the First World War may dislike signs of the next appearing, but Winspear is not allowing Maisie to remain static in a postwar world. Several of the cards are played early in the mystery, but all-in-all I found the story and characters appealing.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris
The first book in Morris' trilogy about Roosevelt, followed by Theodore Rex (his presidency), and Colonel Roosevelt (later life, including opposition of Woodrow Wilson), this is a rich biography of a complicated man. While it is evident that Morris is a Roosevelt fan, he also shows us Roosevelt "warts and all": his neglect of his eldest daughter after her beloved mother dies, his hunting excesses even as he champions against developing wild spaces, his temper, the way he cannot understand his ill and alcoholic brother's weaknesses despite his love for him. As in every portrayal of him, Roosevelt seems larger than life: Western explorer and cattleman, New York dandy, a rising politician fighting a wave of competitors used to the spoils system after elections, a man who reads prodigiously, wrote an acclaimed book on the Navy before he was twenty-five, and who seemed to survive on little or no sleep.

Morris' narrative is bursting with detail, especially in an evocative prologue that places you in line waiting to shake hands with President Roosevelt on the White House's annual New Year's open house (a practice that would, sadly, be forbidden today). The frozen Dakota prairies, the stinking New York slums, the heat- and insect-riddled morass that confronted the Rough Riders, the summer days at Sagamore Hill all come alive under Morris' pen, not to mention the constantly moving contradiction that was Roosevelt himself. Okay, I must admit I found the political bits occasionally dull, but as a whole found this readable without being simplified. Recommended especially if you are a "TR" fan.

Dark Road to Darjeeling, Deanna Raybourn
Sated (literally) after an eight-month honeymoon, Lady Julia and her brooding, brilliant "private inquiry agent" husband Nicholas Brisbane accompany Julia's older sister Portia and her restless brother Plum to India. Some time earlier Portia's former lover, Jane, yearning to have her own child, married Freddie Cavendish and returned with him to The Peacocks, the tea plantation he had inherited. But now Freddie has died under mysterious circumstances and Jane is afraid she or her child may be the next target.

Going hand-in-hand with the mystery element, which ecompasses the Marches' impoverished cousins Emma and Lucy, a free-spirited American women with two intriguing children who is married to a staid minister, a drunken doctor, and an older Englishman known as the White Rajah, is the often rocky relationship between Julia and Brisbane. She is determined to show him she can be an equal partner in his crime inquiries, to the point of being rude and demanding. In his turn, Brisbane will not allow himself to be led by the nose. They are two independent spirits who will need to find as much balance in their professional life as in their marriage bed, and it's as much fun watching them clash as it is to make your way through the convoluted conundrum posed by Freddie's death. The newlyweds pound the pillows a bit much, though. :-)

Meet the Malones, Lenora Mattingly Weber
While the remainder of Weber's celebrated "Beany Malone" series focuses pretty much on practical, stubborn and occasionally dreamy Catherine Cecilia Malone, the first book revolves around Beany's older sister Mary Fred. The book opens with Mary Fred bringing home Mr. Chips, an injured horse she bought with money she saved for her first formal dress—but she needs funds to complete the purchase. On the way home, she encounters younger brother Johnny, who has caused a fender-bender on the snowy road with a woman delivering eggs. Johnny, an aspiring writer, promises to make good for the eggs and repair the fender, meaning he can't keep the new typewriter he was hoping for. And, at home, thirteen year old Beany desperately wants money to redecorate her room and rid herself of the nursery pattern she hated even as a child.

Their father Martie Malone, a famous newspaper columnist, has a chance to take a plum assignment in Hawaii covering the war news (Pearl Harbor was attacked only a few weeks earlier). When their housekeeper leaves, he allows the children to take over her chores to earn the money they need. But crises keep popping up: older sister Elizabeth returns home now that her soldier husband has shipped out, with a new baby; Johnny is trying to write a book about the history of their home state of Colorado with the help of a tottery old journalist, and right when Mary Fred is managing everything perfectly, the school's star football player makes the moves on her. With stars in her eyes, Mary Fred forgets family, friends and horse in order to make herself over for him. Then the real trouble arrives: Nonna, their kind but used-to-being in charge step-grandmother. Will the Malone children acquise to Nonna's every wish, or will they keep their independence and self-respect?

This is a lively, mostly happy look at life in wartime America, but it has an underlying theme about the price you must pay to get the things you want, and if it is worth sacrificing your principles for them. Weber's books are fondly remembered by her fans, and if you're a fan of 1940s era teen fiction, or just want to experience what life was like back then, you will enjoy the adventures of the Malones.

Walking English, David Crystal
It's a bit of a cheat this being here, as I haven't quite finished it yet, but I'm over halfway through and having so much fun with it I must put it in.

For someone like me, who loves language and history and who is, if not a born one, at least a long-time Anglophile, this book is the literary equivalent of an angel presenting me with a box of dark chocolates filled with all my favorite fillings—mint, orange, coffee, caramel, and that heavenly lime from Sanborn's Candies—and telling me I can eat all I feel comfortable doing so, since they have no calories and no fat! Basically Crystal starts off in Wales and relates travels through England as well as in Poland, San Francisco, and South Africa in a narrative of place names, word origins, history, changes in word meaning, Shakespearan plays and names, that Welsh town with the long name that the locals just refer to as "Llanfair,' placing people by accents, sheep with accents, and more, all in a delightful candy-box jumble. I suspect I shall be sorry when the book finishes, but right now I'm just enjoying it all with a big silly grin.

A big plus: learning about the humanitarian poet John Bradburne and the book town of Hay-on-Wye. I think I'd like to spend a week in the latter, thank you. :-)