2013 reading, November
219. How to Murder a Millionaire - Nancy Martin 11/28/13 Philadelphia Main Line trio of daughters all widowed, one remarried, parents absconded without paying mucho taxes. Newspaper publisher friend of grandpa gave one widow a job as asst society editor, then is smothered a week later at a cocktail party at his home. Tons of suspects, society & newspaper. 2 sisters go missing, 3rd sister has to figure it all out.
218. Pressed to Kill - Dolores Johnson 11/27/13 One of Mandy’s dry cleaning shop’s customers is murdered; the Friday before, she said she was spending the weekend with her new boyfriend, whom she had met at the shop! Then Mandy discovers another of her customers had been murdered with the same MO, & she can’t stay out of the investigation. Finishes this series.
217. Death on the Lizard - Robin Paige 11/27/13 Marconi’s chief assistant is electrocuted while trying to improve a major component of very early radio.
216. Death at Blenheim Palace - Robin Paige 11/26/13 The King & Queen are going to visit with a houseparty, the King demands that the ladies wear their most elegant jewels, so there will be jewel thieves among the extra servants. The Duke is in love with a scheming little bitch determined to oust the Duchess (who succeeds, eventually.)
215. Nothing to Fear but Ferrets - Linda O. Johnston 11/24/13 #2 in Pet-Sitter series Cute. Young woman in the process of getting her law license back (see #1, - Sit, Stay, Slay) finds body in her tenant’s house with ferret food and five ferrets on it. Tenant framed, ferrets framed, she feels obligated to clear as she was framed herself & knows how it feels.
214. Mrs Queen Takes the Train - William Kuhn 11/24/13 The Queen goes to Edinburgh to visit the Britannia, and it turns into an adventure.
213. Mrs. Tim of the Regiment - D. E. Stevenson 11/23/13 Delightful. Fiction in the form of a diary: captain’s wife in a Highland regiment, 2 children, 1930 or so.
212. Taking the Wrap - Dolores Johnson 11/19/13 Mandy Dyer’s step-cousin Laura, a photographer, has her coat stolen at a restaurant & is left a different one. A dry cleaner’s tag is pinned inside; she asks Mandy to track down the owner via the tag, involving getting other cleaners to check their own records. (Hah!) Another woman is killed in a hit-and-run leaving the same restaurant - was she wearing Laura’s coat, was she killed mistaken for Laura, et cetera.
211. Buttons and Foes - Dolores Johnson 11/19/13 Mandy Dyer the dry cleaner gets involved in cleaning up a murder again --- one of her clients dies from a fall into the basement; Mandy is sure it’s murder & not an accident because she had been doing all the victim’s laundry --- the client’s arthritis wouldn’t let her do the stairs to the basement. The client also left Mandy her button collection in a way that wouldn’t be obvious to anyone else, ergo there’s got to be a valuable button.
210. Mediterranean Winter - Robert D. Kaplan 11/18/13 Subtitle: the pleasures of history & landscape, in Tunisia, Sicily, Dalmatia, & Greece. Lots of _ancient_ history, not terribly much landscape. I guess I wasn’t in the right mood, wanted more landscape, though the history is absorbing.
209. The Men That United the States - Simon Winchester 11/15/13 A look at what and who did the groundwork to make a somewhat cohesive US, despite the divisive factors of the Civil War, regionalism, distance between the east & west, north & south: Erie Canal, other canals, planes, interstate highway system, telegraph > telephone > radio > television > cable > internet.
208. The Valley of the Shadow - Carola Dunn 11/12/13 Eleanor Trewynn #3: a young man of Indian ancestry is rescued nearly dead from hypothermia & concussion from a treacherous bay in Cornwall by Eleanor’s detective sergeant niece. His family may have been smuggled into England, having been tossed out from Kenya or Uganda, but where? And are they still alive, or is this even real? And who did the smuggling?
207. Eat Move Sleep - Tom Rath 11/11/13 a reinforcement of everything I ever knew about weight loss & improvement of general health, with strategies for changing bad habits
206. Unnatural Habits - Kerry Greenwood 11/10/13 Phryne Fisher sets out to find a missing young woman - a brand-new reporter on the trail of a scoop: pregnant unmarried women sent to a nunnery in Melbourne to work in the laundry when their families threw them out (unmarried & pregnant - scandal!) are disappearing. Nicely involved, at least 3 separate plots.
205. Slippery Slopes & Other Deadly Things - Nancy Tesler 11/7/13 This time Carrie goes to a biomedical feedback conference in Vermont. An assistant of the guru of the specialty is killed, seemingly with Carrie’s scarf, though fortunately the autopsy has a different result. The guru has a “arrangement” with his wife & thinks he’s God’s gift to every woman on the planet, which affronts Carrie as the divorced wife of a serial philanderer.
204. The Golden Egg - Donna Leon 11/2/13 Brunetti tries to deal with the problem of the death of a man who doesn’t legally exist - no birth certificate, baptismal record, absolutely nada, in Italy, where documentation is (to an American) incredibly detailed. I didn’t catch the significance of the title until the last page, even with the clue of the cover illustration.
203. No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front During World War II - Doris Kearns Goodwin 11/1/13 Excellent