Ask and you shall receive. I’ve heard cat lovers speak of “Cat Central,” a mystical agency that assigns cats to their destined homes, often by opaque or circuitous chains of cause and effect. Sometimes I think there’s a version of this for books and authors, bringing a certain volume into your hands at just the …
Review: Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d by Alan Bradley Read More »
Honestly, I tried. November – February is its own liturgical season at my house: the Unending Feast of St. Cadbury. We roll straight from Thanksgiving to a birthday, Christmas, two more birthdays, Valentine’s Day and yet another birthday. It’s a lot of parties, a lot of travel, a lot of cleanup, and a lot of chocolate. …
“There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.” –P.G. Wodehouse Maia Chance and I are going to be very good friends. Don’t worry, I haven’t gone stalkery. But when I opened Teetotaled and saw a P.G. Wodehouse quote as the epigraph, I knew I’d just made two new …
Growing up in my house was a constant refrain of “Tomayto, Tomahto.” Dad liked red wine and oysters. Mom was a teetotaler and hated any seafood but canned tuna (which hardly counts, face it.) My brother built model airplanes and read the entire Dune series (all two dozen). I made up interpretive dances to the …
Death of a Ghost by Margery Allingham My rating: 5 of 5 stars This golden-age classic is the literary equivalent of Babe Ruth calling his shot in the 1932 World Series. She points out her target, squares up to the plate, and hits a soaring home run. With only a handful of mysteries under my …
The Netherfield Affair: A Dark Darcy Mystery by Penelope Swan My rating: 3 of 5 stars *Currently free on Kindle as a stand-alone.* A fun, sweet-natured genre mashup, with hints of Northanger Abbey‘s Gothic imaginings. Hardcore Austen fans should temper their expectations. You will not find the same subtlety of expression or social interplay as in …
Review: The Netherfield Affair: A Dark Darcy Mystery Read More »
Soft Summer Blood by Peter Helton My rating: 4 of 5 stars This soft-boiled police procedural introduced me to a very engaging team of characters, DI Liam McLusky, his sergeant James “Jane” Austin, and their colleagues DI Kat Fairfield and DS Jack Sorbie. The apparently “open and shut” murder that begins the story turns out to …
The Haunted Season by G.M. Malliet My rating: 3 of 5 stars This was my first introduction to Max Tudor and the classic pastoral village of Nether Monkslip. I’m already a fan of the charming, humorous, and heartfelt world Ms. Malliet has created, and intend to read more of this series. I marked this story …
This book was recommended by my colleagues at Serealities.com, as a guiding philosophy for developing our story arcs. Here’s my review from Goodreads: Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence by Lisa Cron My rating: 4 of 5 stars A very useful resource for …
My husband and I recently celebrated our eleventh wedding anniversary by duplicating many of our early dates – wandering around a bookstore, browsing for new books to buy and reading bits to each other out of magazines. Knowing how much I love P.G. Wodehouse, and the Bertie/Jeeves stories in particular, my honey snatched this book …
Book Review: Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks Read More »