I couldn’t have come up with a better title if I tried. This first book in the new cozy series—Cats in Trouble—is a winner if you are a cat person and the title says it all. 

Jillian Hart comes home to find her cat, Chablis, sneezing.  Chablis is allergic to people (their dander anyway).  Her other cat, Merlot, is pouffed out in fright and sitting in the shards of a broken window.  Her third cat, Syrah, is nowhere to be found.  Thus begins the first of Jillian’s adventures as an amateur detective.

Jillian had left her cats alone overnight while she went out of town on a business trip (she makes and sells quilts for pampered cats).  She is recently widowed and has not lived in Mercy for long—hadn’t gotten to know many people before her husband was stricken by a heart attack and has been too sad to get to know many after.  She has been comforted by her cats.  She and her husband fostered homeless animals after Katrina and fell in love with and kept three of the cats.  Thus she is doubly upset by the loss of one of her beloved friends.

She calls her vet and the local animal shelter to no avail and then decides to make up a ‘missing’ poster for Syrah.  In the process of the search for her cat and getting her window repaired, she meets many of the kind town folk who she hasn’t taken time to get acquainted with previously.  There seem to be other cases of missing cats and lost flyers and when she tracks Syrah to the ‘pink house’ of the man she suspects of catnapping, she not only finds Syrah, but a dead body as well.  She finds that she and several of her new found friends are under suspicion and decides to at least partially take matters into her own hands.

This author really understands cats and the folks who love them.  The cats aren’t humanized ( they don’t talk) but they are an integral part of their human companions’  lives and they are important to them.  One of the reviews I came across after I finished this book said that the mystery is meandering.  It is—and that’s what I liked about it.  It is character and cat driven and there is an interesting puzzle of a mystery, but it moves in its own good time.  If this sounds like something you might like, then by all means give The Cat, the Quilt and the Corpse  a try.  I’m hoping there are many more to come.

I stumbled across this title, The Unquiet Bones , by accident–I’m not sure now where I read about it—and decided to request a copy because it sounded interesting.   I was sort of nonplused when it came and set it aside for awhile.  I picked it up about a week ago (the due date was coming up) and I’m really glad I did.   It turned out to be one of the best historical mysteries I’ve read in awhile.

Hugh de Singleton is the fourth son of a minor knight.  His oldest brother will inherit the family holdings and his father has decided that since he has shown scholarly aptitude, he will attend university.  Once he has finished his degree,  Hugh decides not to take holy orders, but to continue his studies.  He inherits a surgery text from a friend who dies of the plague and, after reading it, decides that he will pursue surgical studies in Paris.  Upon returning to England, he sets up shop in lodgings in Oxford in hopes of acquiring a clientele. 

He is in luck.  When Lord Gilbert is kicked by his groom’s horse in the street outside of his lodgings, Hugh is called upon to treat him.  His treatment is a success and Lord Gilbert invites him to set up his practice in the village of Bampton, near Lord Gilbert’s castle.  When bones are discovered by one of the villeins cleaning out the cesspit and it is realized that they are human, Hugh is called upon to examine them to see if he can discover to whom they might belong and how the poor soul might have met his end.  His end because Sir Robert Mallory had disappeared shortly after Easter.  He left Bampton Castle after a visit and was never seen again.  But the bones are not those of a man and the plot thickens as Hugh is drawn further into the mystery surrounding the slight bones of a young girl who has been killed by a knife.

The description almost sounds like CSI:Bampton, but it doesn’t come across like that at all.  The author is a student of medieval surgery and medieval English and it shows.  The characters are well-drawn, and the situations and language ring true.  Things can be murky and cold and dark because that’s the way things were in medieval England.  This is post plague, so the countryside is somewhat depopulated and the forest and weeds are starting to reclaim some of the land.

In case you have forgotten (or never knew) some of the terminology there is a glossary in front so that the author can maintain the feel of the time period and take his readers along with him.  This is a very well done book and the mystery kept me guessing.  According to Amazon, the second in the series is coming out in October and I am waiting to reserve my copy to find out what will happen to the folk of Bampton.

If you would like to meet Hugh de Singleton, just click on the title to request your copy.  You won’t regret it if you are a fan of historical fiction.

It was with great sadness that I read that Frank Mccourt, author of Angela’s Ashes, died.  When his first book came out I decided that I had to read it right away.  I’m part Irish and I felt that it would help me understand my mother’s family’s background.  I sat down and started to read and didn’t budge for seven hours.  I read it straight through, cover to cover.  I just couldn’t stop—the language was beautiful, lyrical even though there was great sadness, squalor (in the Salingerian sense of the word) and a weird sense of joy.  It was wonderful–so much so that I could not bear to read it again or see the movie.  It captured, for me, the essence of the Irish in me and my relatives.  I invite you to explore Frank McCourt’s childhood–just click on the title to reserve your copy.

Jane Austen has been very popular for the past few years — the books have been made more so by the fact that there have been several movie adaptations of her titles and they have been enormously popular. One of the ways that authors show their admiration (and practice their writing skills) is by continuing the lives of her characters in their own books, thus allowing all of us to continue in the world that Austen created.

All the books below are available through the libraries of the CLEVNET Consortium — many are owned by the Cleveland Hts-University Hts. Public Library System. You can click on the title if you’d like to order the book through the CLEVNET webcatalog.

Aiken, Joan

Eliza’s Daughter: A Sequel to Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility

Mansfield Park Revisited: A Jane Austen Entertainment

Watsons; and Emma Watson: Jane Austen’s Unfinished Novel Completed

Altman, Marsha

Darcys and the Bingleys: Pride and Prejudice Continues

Bebris, Carrie

The Matters at Mansfield, or the Crawford Affair: A Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mystery

Berdoll, Linda

Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife: Pride and Prejudice Continues

Billington, Rachel

Emma and Knightley: Perfect Happiness in Highbury

Bonavia-Hunt, D. A.

Pemberley Shades: Pride and Prejudice Continues

Brinton, Sybil

Old Friends and New Fancies: An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen

Collins, Rebecca Ann

Mr. Darcy’s Daughter

Netherfield Park Revisited

Pemberley Chronicles: A Companion Volume to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

Women of Pemberley: A Companion Volume to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

Dawkins, Jane

Letters from Pemberley: The First Year

Halstead, Helen

Mr. Darcy Presents His Bride: A Sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

McCullough, Colleen

Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

Newark, Elizabeth

The Darcys Give a Ball: A Gentle Joke, Jane Austen Style

Odiwe, Jane

Lydia Bennet’s Story: The Continuing Adventures of Mrs. Darcy’s Youngest Sister: A Sequel to Pride and Prejudice

Potter, Alexandra

Me and Mr. Darcy

Street, Mary

The Confession of Fitzwilliam Darcy

Wilson, Barbara Ker

The Lost Years of Jane Austen: A Novel

Vacation season is upon us and many folks will be going to the beach or just lazing around and in need of a summer read or ‘beach book’ to take along. Traditionally, many librarians recommend lighter reading–romance, thrillers, lengthy family sagas–but I have a different take on beach reading.

Vacation is about the only time that I have uninterrupted time–no laundry or extra work calling me–and so I have been known to take along a classic, a ‘difficult’ title that I have been meaning to read, but haven’t gotten around to yet.  For instance, once when I went with my family to Myrtle Beach, I took Middlemarch by George Eliot.   I had been meaning to read it, but I would get distracted by a magazine or the news or dinner.  I actually finished the book between naps and trips to the beach and I enjoyed it.  This was also aided by the fact that I didn’t take anything else along to read and, being inveterately lazy, didn’t have the energy or wherewithal to go get something else.  Even so, I was glad to have read it.

One of my other tricks is to take along something that I have tried, unsuccessfully, to work my way through either  because I wasn’t in the right mood when I tried it or, once again, didn’t have enough time.  I took Hoeg’s Borderliners along as a backup in case I finished one of Minette Walters’ books (I don’t remember the title–hmmm…wonder what that means).  I finished the Walters book and started the Hoeg and loved it the second time around.  You never know.  (I’ve also done this with long movies that require that you pay attention–Dune, for instance).

Can this backfire?  Sure–you might be left with nothing at all to read, which would necessitate a trip to a bookstore (if you’re a rabid reader like me).   But how bad could that be?  Give it a try and see if it works for you.

Click on the titles above if you want to give my picks a try and enjoy.

If you are a fan of true crime books and/or books about the Cleveland area, you’ve probably read books by John Stark Bellamy II.   John used to work at the Fairview Park branch of the Cuyahoga County Library as their local history specialist.   I’ve read John’s books and enjoyed them. I knew him personally at one time–we attended the same church for awhile. I’d heard that he’d retired and moved to Vermont, but I’d been wondering if he might have done anything recently. I did a Google search and found that he has, indeed, been busy having authored his first e-book for the Cleveland Digital Library of Cleveland State Univerity Library’s Special Collections of the Cleveland Memory Project (it’s their first e-book as well).

It’s titled By the Neck Until Dead and it is a history of hangings that have taken place in Cuyahoga County–fare that we have come to expect from John.  If you click on the title, you will find yourself at the beginning of the book which you may read online.  It will not be published in paper form.  It is the seventh in a series of books on murder and mayhem in Cleveland.  In case you are not familiar with the others, they are:

        They Died Crawling and Other Tales of Cleveland Woe.

      The Maniac in the Bushes and More Tales of Cleveland Woe

       The Corpse in the Cellar and Further Tales of Cleveland Woe

      The Killer in the Attic

      Death Ride at Euclid Beach

       Women Behaving Badly

Just click on any title above to reserve a copy for yourself.

Lest you think that Mr. Bellamy only explores true cases of murder and mystery in his hometown, let me point to a book he produced about his new home in 2007:

       Vintage Vermont Villainies:  True Tales of Murder  & Mystery from the 19th and 20th Centuries.

I think it will be a long time before John retires his pen. 

If  you have some time on your hands, take a few moments to explore the other e-books in the collection of the Cleveland Memory Project.  It’s a great source of interesting facts, pictures and information about Cleveland, not all of it criminal.

Susan Wittig Albert’s latest installment in the China Bayles series has been released. It is titled Wormwood.  I am still working my way through this series and enjoying it immensely.  I like the skillful character development and the intelligence, humanity, and vulnerability of the characters–especially China.  On the one hand I can’t wait to get caught up so I can find out what happens with the characters and their relationships and adventures and on the other I want to savor every minute.

A friend told me the other day that Ms. Albert is visiting various locations in Ohio, giving talks and doing book signings as part of the promotional tour for her new book.  I checked her website, and sure enough, she’s going to be in the area for the next few days.  Check it out for yourself by clicking here:  About Thyme.   I’m going to see if I can get to one of these events–I’d love a signed book.

You can keep track of her publications (she writes nonfiction as well as the Robin Paige Victorian-Edwardian Mysteries and the Beatrix Potter Cottage Tales Mysteries ) by signing up for her newsletter.   Remember, in case you lose track of these links and want to know in what order to read these or any other mystery series,  just go to Stop, You’re Killing Me! for all things mystery.  Happy reading!

It was with sadness that I heard that The Cat Who Smelled Smoke would not be coming out—it was supposed to have been published a year ago this month and I and a lot of other readers have been waiting for it.  It’s funny with series books.  You get interested in the characters and then you have to keep on reading the books  to find out what’s been happening in their little corner of the world.  They become like family and you’ll put up with a lot before you turn your back and say ‘enough, already.’

Quite a few of my friends gave up on this series long ago–many of them after reading The Cat Who Moved a Mountain.  The Potato Mountains and the folks who lived there (Taters) were just too much.  I usually give a series at least one farfetched, silly episode and then if things don’t get better, I consider abandoning it.  Ms. Braun’s next few books improved and I kept reading even though other readers got sick of Qwilleran’s obsession with his moustache and his other peccadillos.  Nothing any of the characters did made me want to slap them (admit it–this must have happened to you and you don’t need to spend your leisure, ‘escape’ time being aggravated–that’s what everyday life is for) until the last book, The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers.

Spoiler Alert

In this last book Polly left for Paris and told one of her friends to pack up her belongings and see to it that her cats got homes, Qwilleran’s barn burned down, but he didn’t seem terribly upset about it or the fact that Polly had abandoned him and Moose County.  Yikes.  Ms. Braun, or whoever wrote this book (there were rumors that she had become unable to finish her book and that someone else had been called in, rumors that she had actually died and someone else had written this book and was working on the next one) violated one of the cardinal rules of series writers–she was untrue to her characters and her story.  I couldn’t imagine where she was going to go with this and I guess she came to the same conclusion.  It’s too bad.  I’ll miss everybody in Moose County.  Maybe it is better to quit while you’re at the top of your game.

Please click on the titles for more information and/or to request the book.

For anyone who has read the first two Templar Knight Mysteries (The Alehouse Murders and Death of a Squire) or my blog about them, the third in the series has just come out. The title is A Plague of Poison. I just received my copy and I’m going to put everything else aside so I can see if de Marins decides to stay with the Templars and what will happen to Gianni. And then, of course, there’s the mystery to be solved. Can’t wait!  Click on the book cover to reserve your copy.

Do you ever have those days when you just want to get away?  When the car is making noises and you know it’s going to cost a fortune or when life is just getting you down or, like 9/11, when the world has  gotten to be just too frightening?  Chocolate works sometimes–or mashed potatoes, but when I need help that is going to last longer than five minutes I go for a visit to Fairacre or Thrush Green–the wonderful villages in the world created by Miss Read.

I’ve tried to explain why these books work so well as mood enhancers for me and what I like about them with varying degrees of success.  Usually someone who has read some of them understands, but from those who haven’t I frequently get puzzled looks and polite nods (sort of the reaction I got when I gave my most recent talk when a woman came up to me and complimented me on the fact that I speak clearly–she heard every single word.  Yikes.)   I’ve given this a lot of thought and decided that I have to give it one more try.

For me, reading these novels is akin to visiting old friends from back home and it’s the back home part that’s important.  It’s back home the way you remember it, the way you always want it to stay.  I turn to Miss Read for the same reason that I might call my sister or nephew or an old friend–just to immerse myself, for a little while, in the details of ordinary life so I can escape whatever ugliness has imposed itself.  I don’t need to dwell on what’s wrong;  I need to be reminded that life goes on in all of its ordinary, sometimes wacky details and that it will continue to go on in spite of what seems to be overwhelming me at the moment.

These are books set in small villages in Britain in the 1950s and forward (a bit).  You may never have been to England or met anyone who is British, but you will recognize the types–especially if you have ever spent any amount of time in a small town.  There are the town grumps;  the gossipy, elderly, spinster sisters; the salt of the earth, handyman types; the eccentric, genteel poor; and all manner of rogues and troubled folks.  In Fairacre their stories are told by Miss Read, a spinster teacher who is the headmistress of the small village school.  The Thrush Green series is written from the third person point of view (unlike Fairacre where we hear directly from Miss Read), but there is still a village school at the center of things. 

Life is not always easy–bad things happen.  People are poor, folks die, children are neglected, wives are mistreated, there is thievery and feuding–but these are the kinds of things that can happen anywhere to anyone and frequently do.  Miss Read writes about them in a down-to-earth, reasoned way that reminds me of listening to my favorite great aunt.  She’s a great storyteller and you never know what nuggets of wisdom she’ll share (and how worldy wise she is even though you wouldn’t necessarily think so).

Miss Read is actually the pseudonym of Dora Saint.  She was born in London, but moved to a small village when she was a child and fell in love with the country, nature, and village life.  She wanted to be a journalist, but that sort of thing was frowned on for women.  She ended up teaching, marrying a fellow teacher, and being a stay at home mom for years.  She tried her hand at writing stories and was finally asked to write something of more length.  Her first book, Village School, was published in 1955.  She wrote for twenty years under the name Miss Read before her true identity was known.  She is still living, but she has retired from writing, having ended both series.  Her books are still in print.

According to an article in Wikipedia, she is most directly influenced by Jane Austen, and to a lesser extent by Barbara Pym and other comedies of manners written in the 1920s and 1930s.  She herself has influenced, most famously, Jan Karon.  Under lesser known factoids, the musician Enya has a track on the Watermark album named after the book Miss Clare Remembers and another on the Shepherd Moons album named for No Holly for Miss Quinn. 

I hope you’ll give Miss Read a try if you haven’t already–or revisit her if you haven’t read any of her things in awhile.   With any luck, you’ll find them as enchanting as I do.  If you are already a dyed in the wool fan and you’re looking for someone else similar to read, try E.F. Benson. R.F. Delderfield, Paul Gallico, Elizabeth Gaskell, James Herriott, Debbie Macomber, Rosmund Pilcher, Ann Purse, Barbara Pym, D.E. Stevenson, or Angela Thirkell.  Did I forget anyone?  Please let us all know if you’ve discovered someone else who reminds you of Miss Read.  Meanwhile, have fun clicking on the above links to find out more information about Miss Read.