(no subject)
2015: The New Year's Resolution will be to read one nonfiction for each five mysteries, one from my piles and piles of personally owned for each 3 library books, and at least one from the biography/history To Be Read List (on the laptop and/or Goodreads) each month.
Didn't do it. But the shingles was a partial excuse - I didn't feel up to reading *tomes*.
Total: 291 New: Total: 249 Library: 163 me: 77
Mysteries: 177, biography/history: 29, nonfic: 9, plain fiction: 23, Pres/First Lady: 5
Rereads: fic: 43, nonfic: 1
A Time of Gifts - Patrick Leigh Fermor 12/30/15 Walking tour from Holland to Hungary (in this volume) 1938-9 when he was 18-19, written 1977. Wonderful writing, marvelous experience. Needed, however, to have Wikipedia and maps open while reading, and expect sequels Between the Woods and the Water and The Broken Road, both of which I intend to read, to be the same.
Every Trick in the Book - Lucy Arlington 12/28/15 The Novel Idea Literary Agency sponsors a writers conference; Lila Wilkins, our narrator, is an agent at the agency specializing in cozy mysteries. She received a submission too gory for her specialty and passed it on to the proper agent, noting the author’s name. During a pitch session at the conference, she sees a man watching her intently during the time slot using the name attached to the submission, but working with a different agent. Later he attempts to strangle her. Melissa, a NY publishing editor, looks very like Lila and is killed the next day. Lila can’t stay out of the investigation, not knowing whether the man killed Melissa by intent or mistakenly for Lila.
Home for the Homicide - Jennie Bentley 12/27/15 #7. Avery and her husband buy a house to be renovated after one 70-plus-year old sister breaks her hip & has to go to a nursing home; her sister is not mentally competent (but harmless) and has to go there also. Their father bought the house in 1938 when he married; they’ve lived there always until now. Avery finds the skeleton of a baby in the attic, and boy does it get complicated thereafter.
A Roux of Revenge - Connie Archer 12/26/15 The soup restaurant is the focus of this volume of the Perils of Lucky, the nickname of Our Heroine. Nate the police chief is called to the scene of a van wreck, finds a body which had a gunshot wound, and takes the van to the county impound lot and the body to the morgue. A local pumpkin festival is going on, with a musical act played by travelers/gypsies based in Nova Scotia. One of the travelers haunts the restaurant without coming in - he looks incredibly like one of the waitresses, who is frightened, even more so when she finds a photograph of the man in her mother’s jewelry box. Who is he, why does her mother have his picture? Is there a connection between the gypsies and the festival organizer? Who shot the man in the van? The body and the van are stolen from legal custody. Who and why?
A Broth of Betrayal - Connie Archer 12/25/15 Lucky inherited her parents’ restaurant in a small Vermont town before the previous book. In this one, a local bad boy returns to build a car wash *right on the main street*, which will ruin the picturesqueness (and tourist attraction) of the town, having bought 4 of the 5 selectmen. A skeleton is discovered in the excavation and must be properly identified, postponing construction > he’s furious. The local car repair man is coshed and dies. No one has any idea why - he was a loner, though he had lived there always. There is a re-enactment of a Revolutionary War battle during which the bad boy’s construction trailer is burned with him inside, obviously murder. Who? What motive? Just the car wash, or something earlier? Connection to the other murder? The mayor goes missing just before the skeleton is found, but she isn’t really missed for 3 days, and the town goes nuts looking for her.
Lemon Pies and Little White Lies - Ellery Adams 12/22/15 didn’t care for as much. Someone torches Ella Mae’s aunt’s barn/workshop, killing her friend & burning Aunt Dee severely. This is an opening move in Nimue’s plot to get rid of Merlin’s curse so that all magic-capable beings may do whatever. Foiled. Meh. Finished only as completist.
Shoveling Smoke - Austin Davis 12/14/15 Houston burned-out tax lawyer Clay comes to a small East Texas town to join a two-man law firm - one is an ex-federal judge/Baylor Law professor, the other a sex-obsessed short fat lawyer. A case is pending in which they have screwed up royally, not answering an interrogatory. The client has not told them the truth about -anything-, other than his non-guilt. Dirty tricks abound, Clay tries to revive their ethics. About as off-the-wall as M*A*S*H. No other books by this author, unfortunately.
Death Flips Its Lid - Barbara Jaye Wilson 12/11/15 Brenda Midnight #3 Brenda is an NYC milliner in Greenwich Village. Nado, her first ex-husband from home, has a fight with his current wife Kathilynda (all 3 are high school classmates) & drives to NY to have fun and cool off. Brenda takes him to a party being given to celebrate her current “just friends” ex-beau Johnny’s departure to Hollywood - he is an actor playing a detective, shot in NYC. Brenda gets another friend Lance to let Nado use Lance’s parking space in Lance’s condo - no one in NY with sense has a car. Nado gets plastered at Johnny’s party, goes to his van to sleep, and is wakened by the cops. A murder has been committed in the garage, they want his testimony but don’t tell him he’s not under arrest, he takes off with the squad car after they get it stuck in a pothole and disappears. Kathilynda arrives to find him and takes over Brenda’s studio condo, just not “getting” Manhattan, that no-one has a spare bedroom, nor car, et cetera, and that this is not evidence of economic failure. Kathilynda sets Brenda up with Vinnie T, newly divorced, whom Brenda had nearly had a date with in high school, but someone called Brenda to call it off --- Brenda thought all this time it had been Kathilynda and is still mad. Lance thinks he’s a suspect in the murder - his wife is having an affair with the victim. Brenda has to clear Lance, get Nado found, and get Nado and Kathilynda to Go Home.
Daughter of Empire: My Life as a Mountbatten - Lady Pamela Hicks 12/11/15 birth to age 30; fascinating insider view
A Fatal Chapter - Lorna Barrett 12/9/15 Booktown #9. Bob Kelly, Tricia’s landlord, has been nagging her to buy the burned-out building her bookstore was in - she is bound by the lease to continue paying rent - but the asking price is still at least 10% too high and he threatens her. The president of the Historical Society, who knows perhaps too much local history, is murdered, his second-in-command is also nearly killed. The manager of the local pub is nearly strangled after offering to lead ghost tours of the local cemetery - she has been exposed to dangerous history .
Book Clubbed - Lorna Barrett 12/9/15 Booktown #8 Angelica won the presidential election and inherited Betsy Dittmeyer as the Chamber of Commerce’s receptionist/secretary. She and Angelica have a minor spat, Betsy goes upstairs to Angelica’s store’s stockroom (where the Chamber’s office moved after the former president/realtor declined to renew the lease on the old office) and is murdered there. Fortunately Angelica, Tricia her sister, and Frannie the former CofC receptionist are all together when they hear the noise of Betsy fighting her attacker, though they don’t realize it in time to catch him, but it does give them perfect alibis. Tricia can’t keep from asking questions, as usual. Angelica and Tricia have Betsy’s house keys, and Betsy turns out to have been a hoarder. The house is horrible, her murderer commits arson, but the motive is unclear for quite a while.
Not the Killing Type - Lorna Barrett 12/8/15 Booktown #7 Tricia’s sister Angelica decides to run for President of the Stoneham Chamber of Commerce against her former boyfriend Bob Kelly. The election is to be the week before Black Friday, but during the meeting Stan Bell, one of the members, is stabbed. He had also been nominated for president on a bare-bones platform, the opposite of Angelica and Bob’s viewpoint, making both Angelica and Bob suspects. Stan also was a serial philanderer and abusive to his girlfriends, any of whom could also be suspects. Why anyone puts up with that I can’t fathom.
The Road to Santiago - Kathryn Harrison 12/7/15 semi-memoir/spiritual journey, but the spiritual part is not developed enough.
Bless Her Dead Little Heart - Miranda James 12/7/15 Southern Ladies #1. The Ducote (Du-CO-tay) sisters An’gel (An-JELL) and Dickce (Dixie) ages 82 and 80 are cat-sitting Diesel the Maine Coon while his family goes to France for a month. Rosabelle Sultan, a sorority sister, shows up uninvited, claiming she must hide from her family - they’re trying to kill her. Within hours, her son, daughter-in-law, two daughters, grandson, granddaughter, and step-grandson all show up. The daughter-in-law falls down the marble staircase right before dinner, and we’re off to the races. Water on the steps, and Vaseline on the banister. Was she the target, or Rosabelle? The children are heirs to the trust that benefits Rosabelle _while she lives_ left by their fathers, so plenty of motive.
Treachery in Bordeaux - Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noel Balen 12/6/15 Actually a television series in France: Cooker is an English chemist/oenophile whose two businesses are reviewing wines and solving problems vintners have. In the set-up, he interviews and hires a new assistant and is immediately called to help a Bordeaux vintner, four of whose barrels of new wine are contaminated. The winery is being encroached upon by the suburbanization of the area. He also meets an old history professor who is very knowledgeable about chateaux which have been torn down for new/ugly housing developments. Le professeur turns up dead shortly after. Lots of sequels.
A Spoonful of Murder - Connie Archer 12/6/15 The title is misleading - there’s no poison. Lucky Jamieson returns to Snowflake, Vermont after her parents die in a car crash - black ice. She takes over their soup restaurant with her grandfather Jack and chef Sage. A rich vamp has come to town, Sage was once her personal chef, framed for theft when he wouldn’t sleep with her, and of course is the only suspect when she is found with her head bashed in behind the restaurant. However, promiscuous is an understatement in description of her behavior. Lots of other suspects, and Lucky finds the right one.
In Passionate Pursuit: a Memoir - Alessandra Comini 12/3/15 A very traveled life. Art historian, folksinger/collector of folk song, professor. Mother Minnesotan, father Italian, parents met on Ibiza in 1931, came to US for her birth, then back to the Spain until Franco’s war, then to Italy until WWII started getting hot, then Minnesota again for a few months, then parents based in Dallas permanently. Barnard College, many friends/professors there, Univ of Vienna, Hungarian Revolution, SanFran for a while, then realized needed masters & Ph.D. to teach > Columbia. Book on Egon Schiele, other books. To SMU. More books & travel.
Silence Is Golden - Jeanne M. Dams 12/1/15 #4 - I’m backtracking. A circus comes to South Bend, Hilda Johansson and her beau Patrick Cavanaugh take her 12-year-old brother Erik tot he circus --- if they hadn’t, he would have sneaked off to see it anyway ---they see a marvelous trapeze performance by the Shaw troupe, Erik’s best friend Fritz wants to join and runs away. He is returned but was abused in all ways while away and blames Mr. Shaw, who disappears. Hilda has the idea to check out other circuses and goes to Niles, MI with Patrick and Erik, Erik sees the Shaw wagon and runs into the crowd then hides, Hilda and Patrick can’t find him and have to return to South Bend without him. Erik witnesses a murder but is seen by the murderer, and runs away again. Much of the rest of the book is finding Erik twice and hiding him again from the murderer. Shaw didn’t do it; Fritz was threatened into saying he did.