Teaser Tuesdays: A Meme

I've been under the weather for a week so I decided to do something different and participate in a meme--of course I had to ask someone what a meme is in blogger talk. 

My teaser lines comes from Gumbo Limbo: An Alex Rutledge Mystery, by Tom Corcoran.

Key West had fallen funk-deep into its humid, mid-August dog days.  I smelled rot in the yard, old rainwater held by the lowest layers of dead leaves.  Carmen Sosa, my sweet neighbor, always joked that this time of year you could take a bath just sitting in your car. [p. 1]

This isn't great literature, but it rates as escapist summer reading for me when it's hot outside, and I'm trying to distract myself from not feeling good.  The depictions of the locale are enough to make you start to sweat, or "glisten," as the case may be.  Other descriptions let you know quickly that the book is written by a man.  For whatever the reason, I've been reading a lot of mysteries set in Key West lately.  They seem to epitomize summer in the tropics. 

Oops, don't think I read the rules of the meme.  Oh well. 

Look for short reviews of some Key West mysteries on my blog soon.  I'm looking for suggestions of mysteries set at the beach, so let me know if you have suggestions.

To participate in this meme correctly, or view other teaser lines, go to Should Be Reading.

The Best of Both Worlds: Mountains and Beach

I recently returned from a visit to my hometown in the southwestern Virginia mountains where I was fortunate enough to experience spring all over again.  In Louisiana the spring flowering has come and gone, but all the dogwoods in my childhood neighborhood were still in bloom.  I had fun one cloudy afternoon walking around in front of my mother's house taking these photographs.  (You can click on pictures to enlarge them.)

My childhood home in foreground



Blooming dogwood trees around Wassona Circle

 

The gully in the middle of my childhood neighborhood

 

Unknown (by me) yellow flowers in Mother's yard

I've also enjoyed being back in Louisiana--celebrating the Mudbug Season by making Southern Faire's delicious crawfish bisque one night.  Check out this recipe and other treats on this cooking (and Southern hospitality) blog.  Friday night my husband made his famous (among our friends) shrimp pesto pasta.  A friend brought the sangria and a fine time was had by all!

Sangria reminds me of the beach, and I've been doing some summer beach reading--by that, I mean I'm reading books with beach settings while I myself am not at the beach. In truth, I enjoy reading about the beach maybe more than being at the beach. I'm not a fan of swimming in the ocean or walking in the sand and, as you can tell, I'm a big fan of the color green in nature, interspersed with flowering plants. 

Obsidian/Penguin Group, 2013, 292 pages
 

However, I'm fascinated with Key West and I totally enjoy Lucy Burdette's series featuring Hayley Snow, food critic for Key Zest magazine!  They are fun, cozy mysteries that don't take themselves too seriously.  Hayley is serving as a judge for a cooking reality show, which will launch the career of one lucky Key West chef.   When one of the other judges is murdered, everyone involved in the show becomes either a suspect or potential victim.  No one, including Hayley, is safe until the murderer is exposed.

This mystery is all about the setting and features some quirky journalistic types, so don't expect a complicated plot.  Lucy Burdette is the pen name of clinical psychologist Roberta Isleib so it's fitting that her books make you feel good--like you've been on vacation yourself.  For vicarious fun in the sun, I recommend this new release.

Just a Little Bit OCD

It's back to the British Isles in my reading, and time for another list of books.  Remember I can't seem to let myself give away my books that I've read until I mention them in this blog, and my book shelves are crowded.  The trials of being slightly OCD--did I ever mention that I have to fight the urge to straighten up books in a book store when I'm browsing?  This neatness compulsion stops there unfortunately--no carryover to my home.




Berkley Prime Crime, 2013, 293 pages

If the last mystery I reviewed featured a setting for my Scots ancestors, I now give equal time to a book set in Ireland that a friend gave me.  However, this book is not as good as A. D. Scott's A Double Death on the Black Isle.  It's a bit more romantic in tone--young American, Maura Donovan, is bequeathed money by the grandmother who raised her so she will return to the Irish village where her grandmother was born.  Once Maura gets there, she takes a job in the local pub because there is really nothing waiting for her in the states.  Maura is befriended by some of the locals--the ones who aren't trying to kill her after a decades old body is discovered in a near-by bog.  It becomes a bit far-fetched as newcomer Maura has information that can help identify the body.  If she is right, it opens up a lot of speculation about property ownership and succession.  This is the first of a new County Cork mystery series by author Sheila Connolly who touts her own implacable Irish credentials.




New American Library, 2013, 355 pages

I bought this book using a gift card from Christmas because I loved the cover art.  Set in 1920's seaside England, this book is a Gothic mystery, complete with a couple of ghosts haunting the house where Oxford student Jillian Leigh is staying as she tries to settle the affairs of her eccentric Uncle Toby who has died under mysterious circumstances.  A Scotland Yard detective is also on the scene, there are local villagers with their own eccentricities and secrets, and so many twists and turns that it is difficult to say much more about the book without giving too much away.  The heroine goes from crisis to crisis so one arrives at the climax quite exhausted.

Minotaur Books: A Thomas Dunne Book,
2009, 356 pages

Another piece of cover art that drew me in, so I used my generous gift card from friends to purchase Dying in the Wool, a mystery set in a Yorkshire mill town and featuring young WWI widow, Kate Shackleton who has agreed to investigate the disappearance of the father of a woman with whom she served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment during the war.  More deaths occur in the mill town as Kate traces the circumstances in the village when the man disappeared.  Suspicion falls first on one person, then another and Kate herself becomes the target of people who don't want this mystery solved.  Kate has been compared to Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs, and the book provides the same pleasurable reading experience with a bit less of the horrors lingering from the battlefield.

Author Tasha Alexander

Minotaur Books, 2010,
306 pages

I've read several of the Tasha Alexander's Victorian series featuring Lady Emily Ashton.  In this one, Lady Emily is recovering from a near death experience.  Lady Emily has become a less engaging character in this book and seems newly prone to the vapors.   The mystery is filled with people with familial mental illness. This book was only mildly interesting--I read it but I wouldn't recommend it.  I think Tasha Alexander is a talented author, so I fully expect subsequent works of hers to be of a higher calibre.

Berkley Prime Crime, 2012, 325 pages

I'm not a huge fan of Ann Purser's Lois Meade series, but I read them if they fall into my lap.  This one involves a rich Japanese woman and her missing violin.  Lois gets involves because the young woman is the musical partner of Lois' talented son.  Purser captures village life in working class England.  I read a lot for milieu, and so far Purser hasn't captured my imagination, but I like the cover art!





A Scottish Mystery and a Shared Last Name

I first read of this book from a fellow blogger, the well-respected Cathy at Kittling: Books who gave the book an A+ rating.  Who isn't drawn to  a cozy mystery set in Scotland and when the author shares my Scots-Irish family's last name, Scott, it seems like the mystery is calling my name literally. 

According to family lore, my ancestor James Scott was actually born in 1736 in Northern Ireland, but moved to Scotland to work as a groom for a prominent family, the Holmes, on their estate.  He ended up eloping with the Holmes' teen-age daughter and fleeing to America where they settled in the Blue Springs section of the southwestern Virginia mountains.  There they had 7 children who were fruitful and multiplied, scattering Scott relatives like roaches (my husband's words), across the country!

I don't believe this author is kin folk, but I put this novel on my Christmas Wish List anyway, and a friend kindly gifted me with the book.

Atria Paperback, 2011, 357 pages

Joanne Ross is a typist at the Highland Gazette, but has always wanted the opportunity to cover a big story as a reporter.  She gets her chance when two murders occur the same day on the local estate, but one of the "persons of interest" is a close friend of Joanne's from her school days.  Can a reporter maintain her objectivity under these circumstances?  Joanne accepts the challenge.  She is a single mother, trying to make a life for herself and her two children and stay safely away from her physically abusive former husband.  She is also anxious to prove herself worthy of her editor-in-chief's confidence in her.

Joanne and her colleagues at the paper keep pursuing the truth, although with everyone lying to protect someone else, it's sometimes hard to tell who the good guys are.  Likable characters, a setting in 1950's Scotland and a community full of secrets keeps the plot moving forward.   There are times when the events in the book strain ones credulity, but overall it is an enjoyable read.

A. D. Scott is the pen name of Ann Deborah Nolan who herself was born in the Highlands of Scotland.  A woman of many interests, she was educated at Inverness Royal Academy and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and has worked in theatre, in magazines, and as a knitwear designer .  According to the publisher's blurb, she currently lives in Vietnam and north of Sydney, Australia. 

This is the second book in this series featuring Joanne Ross and the folks at the Highland Express.  The first was A Small Death in the Great Glen, which I haven't yet read.  I'm a sucker for small town newspaper stories, so I'll be adding this book to my To Be Read List.

Mystery Series

I mentioned several series that I enjoy in my last post, but it was by no means a complete listing.  I've been reading a lot of mysteries lately, and here are a few more of the authors that keep me returning to their works.  I admit it, I'm a list maker and I feel compelled to at least mention these books in my book blog before I give them away!


The Kill Artist, by Daniel Silva (Signet, 2004)
Silva is a suspense author, but each book has plenty of murders and mystery. Main character Gabriel Allon is a complex individual who shows his humanity, but he is also an assassin.  It was hard to read this book after the Boston Marathon bombing because terrorism is a featured aspect of each of Silva's novels, but every book of his is a page turner.   These novels are most often written from a Zionist Jewish bias, but this one had some Palestinian perspective interjected.  I read Silva's Gabriel Allon books in no particular order, but it doesn't bother me.


A Matter of Justice, by Charles Todd ( William Morrow, 2009)
A mother-and-son writing team turn out these Ian Rutledge mysteries.  They have written 10 of them, and I pick them up whenever I see them available for a good price.  Again I read them in no particular order.  This one featured a horrific crime committed and covered up during the Boer War, but evil deeds have a way of rearing up again to haunt the survivors. 

Chocolate Covered Murder, by Leslie Meier (Kensington Publishing, 2012)

After the graphic violence of the first two, a cozy mystery was called for. Of course this "cozy" featured a chocolate-dipped body!  A friend gave me this Valentine mystery featuring small town reporter and full time mom, Lucy Stone.  I enjoy reading about Lucy and her friends in Maine in this series, which often feature a holiday as part of the setting.



A Brew to Kill, by Cleo Coyle (Berkley Prime Crime, 2012)
Give me a trendy coffee house in Greenwich Village and some interesting characters and I'm along for the ride.  So I follow the exploits of coffee house manager Clare Cosi, her ex-husband Matteo and his mother, and Clare's police Detective Lieutenant boyfriend Mike Quinn whenever I get a chance.    Even though the plot was lame in this one (cup cake rivals and Brazilian mobsters in the same book), I still like the series.  This book was a Christmas gift.


Murder on Lexington Avenue, by Victoria Thompson (Berkley Prime Crime, 2010)
I'm a moody reader, moving back and forth between contemporary and historical settings, cozies and more hard-boiled thrillers.  I like interesting milieus and settings, characters that I can relate to and plots that are engaging on some level.  In this series midwife Sarah Brandt has a social conscience that takes her into some high risk areas and situations in Turn of the Century New York city.  I was a rural caseworker at one time, and I appreciate the character's efforts to help those whom society has ignored. The approach-avoidance relationship she has with Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy sometimes is tiresome, but it's part of the formula.


Naughty in Nice, by Rhys Bowen (Berkley Prime Crime, 2011)
A remaindered book I picked up because I had been reading Rhys Bowen's Juggle Red Writers' blog.  This  historically-based mystery features a poor relation of the queen, Lady Georgiana Rannoch.  The Nice setting was fun in this book because of the rich and famous people who summered there in real life and who were incorporated into this book, e.g. Coco Chanel and her friends.  Again there is a complicated, approach-avoidance romantic entanglement in this series that is part of the formula for this type of book.  It doesn't bother me but it might a more discriminating reader.


I really don't see how other bloggers read and review books that publishers and authors send them.  I tried it once and didn't care for the book, couldn't get in the mood to even skim it and felt guilty about it.  I  respect individuals who author books, but I don't want someone else to control what I read or when I blog about it.  Having said that, I am envious of friends who get the books before they reach the stores, but not enough to want to be a formal reviewer!

Vintage mysteries that I plucked off my shelves and read during the last few months:

Permed to Death, by Nancy J. Cohen (Kensington Books, 1999)
This book was left on my front porch by a friend, and I got interested when I read the author's description of coming up with the idea for the setting.  The plot spun off from there, but there was an amateurish quality to the book.

Mrs. Pollifax on Safari, by Dorothy Gilman (Fawcett Crest, 1977)
I've always loved Mrs. Pollifax mysteries and author Dorothy Gilman.  She and her recurring character, Mrs. Pollifax, are both "Grand Dames" of the mystery genre.

When in Rome, by Ngaio Marsh (Jove, 1971)
Who is stalking a group of tourists in Rome's subterranean grotto?  Roderick Alleyn removes his vacationer hat and switches back to Inspector to solve the murders that result.

Scales of Justice, by Ngaio Marsh (Jove, 1955)
Marsh as been compared to Agatha Christie, and her books are classics.  I found these tucked away on some upstairs bookshelves but I had never read them.

A Little Gentle Sleuthing, by Betty Rowlands (Jove, 1990)
Author Melissa Craig has come to the Cotswolds to plot her next mystery, but the discovery of a woman's body in the nearby woods derails her writing and puts her on the trail of a deranged murderer.

Death of a Hawker, by Janwillem van de Wetering (Pocket Books, 1977)
I was interested in the Amsterdam setting of this novel when I picked it up.  Definitely an old-fashioned feeling in the writing.  I have enjoyed reading some of the older authors for style, plotting and just remembering the names of companies that used to publish the paperback books.

I think I'll keep reading books off my personal library shelves, books I pick up cheaply or free, and just have fun while I'm doing it!

Comfort Books

People are always talking about the comfort foods that they desire when they need a bit of pampering.  I feel the same way about books.  There are mystery series that soothe and calm me when I need a break from real life.  In 2013 I've gone back to some of the cozy series or authors I used to read, and I've enjoyed the experience. 

Hmmm, I wonder what books are in these stacks

I have books tucked into nooks and crannies throughout the house and cottage.  Sometimes I just happen upon a book someone gave me, or that I acquired in a used book sale or bought off the remainder rack that I didn't know I had.  It's always a pleasant surprise.


Sometimes years will go by when I don't read any books by a particular author but when I open up one of these books after my hiatus, it's like reuniting with an old friend. We pick right up where we left off.  Here are some mysteries from favorite series that I've recently read.

The Singing of the Dead, by Dana Stabenow (St. Martin's Books, 2001)

Taking a vicarious trip to Alaska to see how Kate Shugak is doing after the death of her lover, Jack Morgan.  Kate is now responsible for Jack's son, Johnny, and still dealing with Jack's difficult ex-wife, making for family drama in Kate' usually solitary life in the Park.  This mystery combines a death from Alaska's Gold Rush Days with murders on a present day political campaign trail, and switches back and forth in time.  It took me a couple of tries before I got into this book, which is why it's been languishing on my shelves for awhile.  However, ultimately I was delighted to reconnect with Kate, trooper Jim Chopin, and Kate's friends, Bobby and Dinah.

 

Uneasy Relations, by Aaron Elkins (Berkley Prime Crime, 2008)

It's been a long time since I encountered Physical Anthropology Professor Gideon Oliver, and we reconnected at the International Paleoanthropological Society in Gibraltar as Gideon and his associates gather  at the ancient burial site of a mother and young child.  But all is not as it seems in academia, and people associated with the dig are dying.  Gideon himself is in peril, but manages to survive and uncover the culprit in a manner of old-style detectives, where every suspect is gathered in a room for the unmasking.

Sand Sharks, by Margaret Maron (Grand Central Publishing, 2009)

Judge Deborah Knott is heading to Wrightsville Beach for a well-deserved working vacation as she attends a summer conference for North Carolina district court judges.  An unpopular judge is murdered and Deborah soon is knee deep in murder suspects before exposing the guilty party.  I enjoy Maron's Deborah Knott series partially for the setting, close to my native Virginia, so I'm usually familiar with all the locales.

 

The Lottery Winner, by Mary Higgins Clark (Simon & Schuster, 1994)

Subtitled Alvirah and Willy Stories, this collection of short stories passed along to me by an older friend brought a smile to my face.  Who wouldn't love the irrepressible former cleaning lady and now lottery winner Alvirah and her husband Willy.  These light-hearted mystery stories are just what the doctor ordered.

 

Mourning Glories, by Susan Wittig Albert (Berkley Prime Crime, 2011)

It is always fun to reconnect with China Bayles, her friend and business partner Ruby, their families and all the folks in Pecan Springs.  I wish I could browse in her fictional store, Thyme and Seasons, and I appreciate my few pots of herbs more after I read a China Bayles mystery.  Drugs come to the local college campus in this mystery and murder  follows, but China and the police track down the perpetrator before more young women die.  I found another China Bayles' mystery on the shelf after I finished this one; Albert's books are making me want to hop in the car and head to the Texas Hill Country for spring.

 

I can't complete this post before I mention Sparkle Hayter and the Robin Hudson books again--you may recall I recently reviewed Chelsea Girl Murders on this blog.  I have now ordered and completed The Last Manly Man (1998), the Robin Hudson book that I hadn't yet read.  It is a strange and satirical mystery about aromatherapy and stolen primates and underground activists who save the day.  Hayter and her character Robin Hudson are like those friends from your past who were always wilder and crazier than you but you love hanging out with them anyway.

 

A bin of books tucked under a table in the small bedroom
awaiting the right reading moment!

The Aviator's Wife: A Novel, by Melanie Benjamin

Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Lindbergh had already made the extraordinary solo flight across the Atlantic and was "the man of the hour," Anne Morrow was the shy daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Mexico when they met at Christmas 1927. It surprised many people when he selected the unassuming Anne to be his wife in 1929. However, Anne learned to fly and served as his navigator/co-pilot on subsequent landmark flights and achieved flying feats of her own. 

Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh were the golden couple of the late 1920's through the 1930's.  Most people know the basic facts of their lives.  He was the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic. Once they married, the public fervor surrounding their lives has been compared to that focused on Princess Diana with equally disastrous results.  In what was termed at the time as the "crime of the century," their first child, Charles Jr., was kidnapped and murdered when he was a toddler. 

They survived this tragedy and went on to have 5 other children together.  In the years before World War II, Lindbergh disappointed his admirers when became a Nazi apologist, a believer in racial purity and an isolationist. Anne was even persuaded by her husband to aid his cause with writing of her own.

Later, Anne Morrow Lindbergh redeemed herself by renouncing her lapse in judgment and authoring a timeless book, The Gift from the Sea.  No doubt like many of you reading this, I read The Gift of the Sea long ago and loved it, but that book and the sketchy facts outlined above were the extent of my knowledge of the Lindberghs.

(Delacorte Press, 2013, 402 pages)

This fictionalized account of the Lindbergh's life together fills in some of the emotional landscape of their relationship.  I wasn't surprised that I didn't care for Charles Lindbergh as I read this novel.  After all, the title of the book is The Aviator's Wife so we know it will be from her perspective, but I was surprised to discover that I didn't find Anne herself to be a sympathetic character in this book, though she is obviously meant to be.  At the first of the book Anne was so full of doubts and angst that I found her tiresome.  When she finally became her own person in the book, the transition was rather abrupt.

Charles Lindbergh would leave his wife and family for months at at time.  Later the world would discover that he had three other families and fathered 7 children by women in Germany.  Two of the women were sisters, one was his secretary in Europe.   In this novel, Anne discovers his other families at the end of his life and confronts him and they achieve some measure of peace as he dies. 

I did find the author's notes at the end of the novel to be interesting as she described some of the events she fictionalized and what she gleaned from the biographical documents of the Lindbergh's lives.  Reading The Aviator's Wife has made me curious enough to want to read more about Anne Morrow Lindbergh so I can judge her character for myself.

The Blessing of Ordinary Days

"We need to learn to appreciate the ordinary days," explained a lay speaker at my church recently.  "Those are the days when we and our family are all alive and well, when we have a job to go to, when we turn on the tap and water comes out, when we go out to our car and it starts immediately."  These are the days that we often take for granted, that essentially escape our attention.

My preschool class at the Methodist Church

So far I have been blessed with essentially an ordinary life.  I laughingly have told my friends, "I can't write my memoirs--my life has been too ordinary."  I grew up in the fifties in a middle class home with two loving parents who worked hard to provide for me and my two younger sisters.  My dad was in the furniture business with two of his brothers. 

After my youngest sister finished grammar school and we moved into a "suburban" home near my grandmother and two of our uncles, my mother went to work for the federal government. 


My Oklahoma cousins, my sisters and me at the house beside the railroad tracks (before suburbia)

Our home in "suburbia" where my mom still lives

I grew up in small town America, in one of the most beautiful parts of the country--the mountains of Southwestern Virginia.  We enjoyed picture perfect Christmases with neighborhood carolers and, often when we were little, with personal visits on Christmas Eve from Santa Claus, i.e., our great-uncle who worked for the town newspaper formerly owned by his father.  Our great-uncle Joe was a volunteer fire fighter and served as Santa in our small town for 50 years or longer. 

Santa (aka Uncle Joe) visits my sisters and me on Christmas Eve at our grandmother's house!

Winter also meant sledding on the streets of our neighborhood or, as we got older, walking to "Cow Hill" behind our neighborhood to ice skate on the frozen pond there.

Spring is beautiful but a tricky season in the mountains, warm days and cold ones intermixed.  Spring mainly meant the tulips and dogwoods in the yard bloomed, Daddy had to start mowing the lawn again on Wednesday afternoons, and the end of the school year was approaching.  For me, it also meant my hay fever would begin in earnest, and I'd walk around with a fistful of tissues.

I remember summer as being perfect-- the streets full of kids to play with, running through the water sprinkler or swimming in the neighbor's pool on really hot days, visits from out-of-state cousins, long evenings of Hide and Seek or Kick the Can, extending across multiple contiguous lawns in the neighborhood while the adults sat out on my grandmother's patio loosely monitoring our whereabouts.  As darkness fell, the lightning bugs would appear creating their own light show if they managed to elude our grubby hands and old mayonnaise jars.  I was also free to wile away hours during the heat of the day, lying on a cot in the cool basement, reading my books.  The days might be hot but once the sun disappeared behind the mountain ridges, the sweaters came out.

While fall meant the end of summer fun, I enjoyed returning to school, seeing school friends who didn't live in my neighborhood, and getting new clothes and school shoes each year.  Fall meant the inky fresh smell of the new Sears catalog, which my sisters and I pored over although we rarely purchased any clothes from there.  My dad believed in patronizing local clothing stores, and my mother made some of our new outfits to cut down on the cost of clothing three girls. 


I'm wearing navy blue jumper Mother made me. 

Fall meant football games, the smell of bonfires, especially in high school when I was a cheerleader.  My dad was a big football fan: the last year he was quarterback of our hometown's high school team, the team was undefeated.  My sister and I found a small gold football in the cedar chest that commemorated this feat.  Even when I was small, my father would take me to football games while the younger girls amd Mother stayed home.  Mainly I remember being cold and begging for hot chocolate.

I could go on and on with details of my ordinary life where things were predictable and my sisters and I were sheltered from life's harsher realities.  I'm now incredibly grateful for this stability, this happy childhood to build my life on.  And when horrific events occur, such as the Boston Marathon bombing or the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, I am saddened that the ordinary lives of so many disappeared in the blink of an eye. 

There will be a new normal, families will survive, life will go on, goodness will prevail--and hopefully, you and I will wake up each day and thank the Divine when it turns out to be just another ordinary day.

An Exercise Space of Ones Own

A room of ones own needs to be part practical, part whimsy, part funky, with a mixture of indoor and outdoor elements.  Today's featured space is my exercise room.

You may have seen Daisy, the cat, and I enjoying a warm morning on the patio this week (if you look at Facebook), but today I'm featuring Katrina, the neurotic sleeping porch cat, because she often keeps me company as I ride the recumbent bike in the mornings.  I love my tiny "bike room" that used to be kind of a fancy potting shed where I also made teacup bird feeders out of vintage teacups and saucers. 

Katrina watches the patio & backyard as I exercise.

 

Now it's morphed into the exercise bike space but still retains the close to nature feeling next to the patio.  We added this area onto the guest cottage when we renovated it, but the room is accessed only from outside. 

Hmmm, my better photo of this entry area turned out to be on movie setting rather than still photograph.  Oh well.....I used the phone on these shots rather than my good camera because I always have the phone with me when I exercise so it's convenient.

You enter through the door and you're in my private, "room for only one person" exercise area. 

This is what I see from the exercise bike as I ride each day, catching up on emails, Facebook and, of course, reading.



Painted floor of the exercise room

Ricky laid the floor in this room and then we painted and distressed it.  I'm certainly no expert with sponge stencils but I still like the effect, splotches and all.  There are a couple of more utilitarian elements of this room not depicted in these photos, i.e.,  a TV and a sink, both of which come in handy at times.

Garden fairies also occupy this space.  They bring good luck to all the plants.

 

 

 

And I'm pretty sure this pot shard lady keeps an eye on things when I'm not in here.



 

This planter beside the back door that made it through the winter.  See what I mean
about the English flower fairies bringing good luck to our flowers!

English dogwood, or mock orange, growing beside the carport.

 

One great thing about my partial retirement is having more time to move about

our house & grounds, enjoying all the special places.

What about you? What do your special places look like? 

Christmas Mysteries

It's the first week in April, and like much of the country we've experienced a chilly spring in Louisiana--but not the surprise snowfall that some of our friends and relatives recently had in Virginia .  While we gird our loins here in the Deep South for the approaching summer heat, in my volunteer life I met yesterday with a group of women to plan the Christmas Tour of Historic Homes that we do every other year in our National Historic Districts neighborhood.  I can't believe we are starting this early, but such an event takes a lot of advance planning and behind-the-scenes work just to line up the venues. 

We have several Bed and Breakfasts in our neighborhood, and we hope to feature a newly renovated one in this year's tour.  Below is the entrance to another B & B featured on our last tour!

I guess prepping for Christmas this early isn't freaking me out as much as it might, because I had so many Christmas mysteries laying around the house that I continued to read them long past the holidays.

In my mind I subtitle a post like this as Book by Book: Reading a Home Library, because I continue to pick books off my shelves to read as the mood strikes me.  Then a few other books enter my life through gifts and passalongs from friends.

Christmas mysteries I've read since Christmas:

A Fatal Winter, by G. M. Malliet (2012)
A former spy who became a cleric, Max Tudor serves a rural English parish as their pastor but still manages to use the skills of his former profession to solve murders that mar the peacefulness of village life.  When several members of the wealthy Footrustle family die as the estranged and far-flung relatives gather in the family homestead (a castle) for the holidays, Max is asked by the local authorities to assist.  The setting of the castle and the Footrustle family became tedious for me as I read this book, though Max and other village characters are likable.  This was a passalong book from a friend.

Antiques Flee Market (a Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery), by Barbara Allan (2008)

This paperback appeared on my front porch left by the neighbor who passes books on to me and I to her.  Written by husband/wife writing team, Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins, this light mystery series is set in Mississippi and features a neurotic mother-daughter duo who "pick" and sell antiques. In this book, they track down the killer of one of the mother's old boyfriends.  Mildly entertaining read for the holiday scene.









Dude on Arrival: A Christmas Mystery, by J.S. Borthwick (1992)
Who knows where I got this book but I found it packed away with some holiday decorations.  A dude ranch and resort in Arizona appealed to me as a different place to spend Christmas.  Add to the western setting some colorful characters, a feisty older woman and her English teacher niece as protagonists and this was an enjoyable, escapist mystery.










'Twas the Bite Before Christmas, by Lee Charles Kelley (2005)
I learned so much about training dogs and dog behavior in this book by dog trainer Kelley that I was ready to read more in this mystery series just to add to my knowledge.  The mystery features an ex-cop and kennel owner, Jack Field, and the plot to me was forgettable but I was fascinated by the dog psychology information.






Holly Blues, by Susan Wittig Albert (2010)
If I let time elapse between reading books in Albert's China Bayles series, I enjoy them.  This mystery set at Christmas is the 18th book in this series.  The ex-wife of China's husband comes to town with a hard luck story and an expressed desire to spend some time with her son, China's step-son, Brian.  While the ex-wife is Trouble with a capital "T," China can't turn her back on Brian's mother and when a killer begins to stalk the whole family, China has no choice but to act.  Reading this book was like catching up with an old friend.



The Fleet Street Murders, by Charles Finch (2009)
The story begins Christmas 1866 and finds amateur sleuth Charles Lennox newly engaged to his neighbor, Lady Jane Grey, and standing for a Parliament. seat in Northern England when the murder of two newspapermen captures Lennox's attention. The police appear to be after the wrong men, which pulls Lennox into the case.  The climax comes rather abruptly, but the man who is pulling the strings of the "puppet perps" is brought to justice.  The ancillary characters are well-drawn in this series, and I've enjoyed all of Finch's books that I've read.





The Snowman, by Jo Nesbo (2011 audio book)
I listened to this unabridged version of Norwegian author Nesbo's 2010 (English version) mystery when I drove to and from Virginia at Christmas.  If the other books in this list are cozies and forgettable, though relaxing, reading, this thriller was the opposite.  It served its purpose in keeping me awake during the
drive, but the stark horror of the murders and the
graphic descriptions of the violence made this book hard to listen to at times.  Don't get me wrong, Nesbo is a masterful writer and the intricate, terrifying plots are extremely well-done.  If you enjoy "Nordic Noir" (as some critics term the books coming out of Scandinavia, such as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series), you will love detective Harry Hole.  In this book, a serial murderer stalks women in Oslo and seeks to show he can outwit Harry, and even if you guess the murderer's identity before the end of the book, it doesn't matter, this book keeps you holding your breath until the final scene.  With a giant exhale, I felt like I had accomplished something by completing the book, but oddly enough I was ready to read more thrillers featuring Harry Hole.

The Heroine Who Cultivates Poison Ivy

My favorite camellias find another weathered chair in which to lounge on our cottage porch,
while I lounge about reading one of my favorite mystery authors.

Sparkle Hayter wrote 5 mysteries in the 1990's/2000 featuring TV executive Robin Hudson, whose alarm and personal protection system for her New York apartment features poison ivy growing in a planter on her window sills, cans filled with rocks strung in strategic places around her apartment and an old Enfield rifle.   It is the planter of poison ivy, which provides the fragile segue from my posts about the plants in our yard back to mystery reading.

Penguin Books (2000), 228 pages

At the beginning of this book, Robin's apartment burns up, forcing her to kick the planter of poison ivy out of the way so she and her cat, Louise Bryant, can flee down the fire escape and join the other residents of her building in their pajamas standing on the sidewalk.  Escaping with just her laptop, a few mementos and her purse, Robin finds herself bunking at the famous Chelsea Hotel in the apartment of a friend who is conveniently out of the country.  However, Robin soon gets an unwanted roommate, a young woman from an unnamed Easter Bloc country fleeing an arranged marriage, and bedlam ensues.  Murder, mistaken identities, performance artists, inept thugs, a looted piece of art, revenge of a woman scorned, a religious zealot, a convent of nuns who bake and sell expensive cakes--all mesh together somehow in this wild and crazy mystery from Hayter.

The setting of New York city and, in this particular mystery, the Chelsea Hotel, are elevated to character status in the book and make me want to see New York City and the Chelsea Hotel for myself--preferably with someone as wild and crazy as Robin or Sparkle herself.

The plot is relatively unimportant in a Hayter mystery--the Robin Hudson books are so outrageous and entertaining .  Up late one night to finish the book, I was laughing so hard during one scene that I was afraid I would wake up my husband on the other side of the house.  Now I'm sad that there no more Robin Hudson books to read. 

Other books in the Robin Hudson series:
What's a Girl Gotta Do (1994)
Nice Girls Finish Last (1996)
Revenge of the Cootie Girls (1997)
The Last Manly Man (1998)

Wait, I don't think I've read The Last Manly Man!

Hayter was born in British Columbia but has lived all over the world.  She worked at CNN and then reported on the Afghan civil war, but subsequently decided to give up reporting in war zones.  She returned to the states, wrote novels and did stand-up comedy.  She has lived in Tokyo, Paris and most recently has become fascinated with Bollywood and India, where she is currently working on a project.