Upstaged by Murder–mystery play with deadly consequences
Upstaged by Murder
by C.S. Challinor
Upstaged by Murder turned out to be more interesting and complex than I had imagined. I was treated to a theatre setting embedded in an English setting. The main character is a Scottish barrister with quite a reputation as a private detective. Full of Britishisms such as “gone for a burton” and “you finally twigged,” the production’s actors have diverse backgrounds as the cozy mystery’s focus is on a community theatre play. Thus they have their own natural personas in addition to the roles they play on stage where fictional detectives are assembled to solve a fictional crime.
Rex Graves is attending the play Peril at Pinegrove Hall written by his new wife’s friend when Cassie, the actress with the lead in the play, is killed. Rex is invited to assist the investigation in an informal capacity, and the reader gets to watch his efforts to discover not only who committed the crime and why, but also how it could possibly have been done.
I stayed engaged in the story as I followed Rex through his investigative efforts, interviewing the cast and crew and assembling a worthy timeline that eventually, along with other clues, leads him to discover the identity of the murderer. Join Rex as he pursues his passion and talent in detecting in C.S. Challinor’s latest mystery.
I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to Midnight Ink for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 5/5
Category: General Fiction (Adult), Mystery
Notes: #10 in the Rex Graves Mystery Series, but I enjoyed it as a standalone.
Publication: July 8, 2018—Midnight Ink
Memorable Lines:
A decorative wind chime on the door tinkled as he entered the shop, and he was immediately assailed by the heady scent of cut flowers, which abounded everywhere in an explosion of colour, tinted rows of almost every variety arranged in transparent plastic buckets.
Often a coincidence spelt a clue.
…that was the nature of investigations; they rarely took the course of a straight line.
Fear on Four Paws–an animal whisperer
Fear on Four Paws
by Clea Simon
Fear on Four Paws easily drops into the category of “really good cozy mystery.” Main character Pru Marlowe, an animal behaviorist working towards a master’s degree and certification, has a sensitivity for communicating with animals, understanding their feelings, and opening herself up so that they understand her. Although actually a gift, like a good sense of direction or the ability to play music by ear, when Pru’s aptitude for communication with animals first manifests itself, she thinks she is going crazy. Realizing what others might think of this special ability, she is careful to conceal it.
In Fear on Four Paws, Pru is working a number of jobs to support herself. She assists the game warden, the animal control officer, and the local vet, supplementing her various incomes with freelance work as a dog trainer and walker. She finds herself enmeshed in a murder investigation in which the Beauville animal control officer is a person of interest. While Pru could benefit by his being found guilty, she is more interested in understanding what is happening to the young male bears in the area, the animal control officer’s ferret, and an unusual number of dogs and cats who suspiciously disappear and reappear in a well-to-do neighborhood. Meanwhile she has to sort out her love life between Game Warden Greg and her current flame, Detective Jim Creighton, who is as wrapped up in his job as Pru is in hers.
The interaction between Pru and the variety of animals in the book takes top billing and is an integral part of the storyline and the successful resolution of the mysteries. Pru does not hear the animals directly talk to her, so her efforts to fine tune her understanding of them is quite interesting.
I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to Poisoned Pen Press for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 5/5
Category: Mystery
Notes: #7 in the Pru Pet Noir Series but works well as a stand alone.
Publication: July 3, 2018—Poisoned Pen Press
Memorable Lines:
We’re all animals, after all, and our vulnerabilities are heightened when we’re tired, hungry, or scared.
Outside my own open window, the birds were getting busy. Food and childcare, love and rivalry playing out in trills and whistles.
Animals don’t rework the past the way we humans do. While they experience longing and grief and sadness, they understand, better than we do, that time doesn’t go backward, for all our wishing.
Killer Green Tomatoes–building a family from a business
Killer Green Tomatoes
by Lynn Cahoon
Are the people biologically related to you your only family or can the people you choose to surround yourself with be another type of family? Angie, head chef and owner of the County Seat, tries to answer that question for herself and the reader in Killer Green Tomatoes. Lynn Cahoon’s latest work addresses this question along with several others.
Angie, somewhat of an introvert, finds herself surrounded with issues stemming from various relationships in her small community. The kitchen and wait staff of County Seat are rocked by a death. The Basque community is selecting a new leader. A murder suspect disappears. Numerous women have conflicts with Angie because of small town gossip and jealousies. The sheriff doesn’t trust her. Even Mrs. Potter from across the street is ready to shake her walker at Angie. Felicia, Angie’s best friend, and Ian, her boyfriend, are the two people she can count on.
Killer Green Tomatoes is a really good cozy mystery, and I highly recommend the series. I do have one issue with the book and that concern diminishes as the story progresses. Mrs. Potter comes to stay with Angie for a week, and Angie immediately finds excuses to leave the house because Mrs. Potter annoys her. Initially Mrs. Potter does nothing to cause that behavior on Angie’s part. Later there are some eyebrow raising incidents, but overall nothing to engender Angie’s behavior. It’s a week, for heaven’s sake, and the woman is physically independent! With Angie reconciling herself to the situation, the plot takes center stage and the reader is treated to a fun mystery.
I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to Lyrical Underground (Kensington Press) for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 5/5
Category: Mystery
Notes: #2 in the Farm-to-Fork Mystery Series, but works well as a standalone
Publication: July 3, 2018—Lyrical Underground (Kensington Press)
Memorable Lines:
Family ties. They wrapped you up in emotions you didn’t even know were there.
Angie was an introvert, and having someone in her house all the time, well, it had been harder than she’d expected.
“There’s enough evil in the world that I can see and understand. I don’t have to go all underworld to be scared.”
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
by Laura Hillenbrand
How much can the human body, the human spirit, endure? Unbroken is the story of Olympic track contender Louie Zamperini as he is tested past the limits of endurance during World War II. His running career is cut short as he becomes a bombardier. The characteristics that made him a difficult child, always testing the limits, become the foundation of an unrelenting resilience in the face of life challenging circumstances. He endured horrors, but he was miraculously saved from death several times. Did God have a plan for Louie’s life? Could he be saved from his own destructive behaviors and the hatred dwelling in his heart?
Unbroken is a biography and so much more. It reads like a fascinating work of fiction. In fact, if more nonfiction maintained the interest level of Unbroken, there would be a lot more readers of nonfiction. This book is engaging and fast paced. Unbroken was thoroughly researched over seven years using archives and many interviews including seventy-five interviews with Louie himself. Very importantly, author Laura Hillenbrand found few discrepancies among the various reports.
I read and review a lot of books. I mentally gauge my review comparing each book within its genre. A five star cozy mystery is not compared to a five star book of poetry, for example. I must state, however, that Unbroken rises above a star rating system. Although emotionally difficult in places, it is a book that everyone should read.
Rating: 5/5
Category: History, Biography
Notes: Thanks to my brother Don Lyons who insisted I borrow his copy of Unbroken. It was every bit as powerful as you said it would be!
Publication: November 16, 2010—Random House
Memorable Lines:
In a childhood of artful dodging, Louie made more than just mischief. He shaped who he would be in manhood. Confident that he was clever, resourceful, and bold enough to escape any predicament, he was almost incapable of discouragement. When history carried him into war, this resilient optimism would define him.
“The other pilots act as though nothing has happened and speak of sending the other fellow’s clothes home as though it were an everyday occurrence. That’s the way it has to be played because that’s the way it is—it’s an everyday occurrence!”
This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind…Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.
Conan Doyle for the Defence–real life detection
Conan Doyle for the Defence
by Margalit Fox
As a lover of mysteries, I enjoyed reading Conan Doyle for the Defense. Be forewarned, however, that this book is not light reading. It is the recounting of Arthur Conan Doyle’s application of Holmesian deductive skills to the real case of Oscar Slater, wrongfully found guilty of the murder of an elderly lady.
In the process of relating the details of the case, the author Margalit Fox puts the events in context. She discusses the Victorian era and the development of crime fiction, including, of course, the Sherlock Holmes mystery series. She also addresses the life and character of Arthur Conan Doyle as well as Scottish politics, police, and the penal system. Fox presents an in-depth discussion of the different types of reasoning that might be used in trying to solve crimes.
If you are looking for a beach read, Conan Doyle for the Defence is not it. If you are interested in learning more about true crime detection, and how its principles apply to fiction, then this is the right book for you.
I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to Profile Books/Serpent’s Tail for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 5/5
Category: History, True Crime
Notes: Includes a complete list of references, footnotes, and bibliography to support the information contained in the book.
Publication: June 28, 2018—Profile Books/Serpent’s Tail
Memorable Lines:
First joining the case in 1912, he turned his formidable powers to the effort to free him, dissecting the conduct of police and prosecution with Holmesian acumen. But despite his influence and energy, Conan Doyle discovered, he wrote, that “I was up against a ring of political lawyers who could not give away the police without also giving away themselves.”
Holmes quickly became a global sensation, not only for his investigative prowess, unimpeachable morals and ultrarational cast of mind, but also for his exquisite embodiment of an age of Victorian gentility, and Victorian certainties, that was already imperiled.
Detection, at bottom, is a diagnostic enterprise, and the late 19th century was where the shared diagnostic concerns of medicine, criminalistics and literary detection first truly converged in public life.
The Summer Nanny–relationships and their impact
The Summer Nanny
by Holly Chamberlin
The term “women’s fiction” can connote quite a broad range of books. Thus I was unsure what to expect from The Summer Nanny by Holly Chamberlin. This story is actually two tales in one as best friends Amy and Hayley, from very different backgrounds and with very different prospects, decide to accept employment for the summer as nannies for wealthy vacationing families. Hayley is a product of a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic and abusive father. She loves academia, but rather than finish college has to work cleaning houses to support her family. Amy’s father passed away when she was a baby, but her mother, a gifted crafter of fiber arts, has raised her in a small but comfortable home in a loving atmosphere.
Amy and Hayley find personal challenges in their summer jobs. Naive Amy is hired by a narcissistic and controlling successful businesswoman who claims to want to mentor Amy. Hayley, on the other hand, finds relief from her home environment in her job as a nanny for two year old twins whose mother is teaching French at a community college as a favor to a friend. Both girls experience personal growth as a result of their jobs. Romance plays a role in this novel, but so do family connections.
The style of The Summer Nanny with its short chapters keeps the plot moving as the focus of the chapters alternates between the two main characters. The book is interesting, but some of the scenes could have been omitted without sacrificing the integrity of the plot or the points the author wants to make.
Although this book could be considered a “beach read,” it is not really fluff. The author encourages the reader to examine questions of the causes and results of two abusive situations and the responses of the characters involved in them. There are definite themes of right and wrong and the importance of choices.
I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to Kensington Books for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 4/5
Category: Women’s Fiction
Notes: One of the recurring characters in the book is a lesbian and a subplot concerns her relationship status, but there are no descriptions of a physical relationship.
Publication: June 26, 2018—Kensington Books
Memorable Lines:
Hayley was smart enough to know there was no possibility of completely throwing off one’s past, but there had to be ways to move into the future relatively unencumbered by traumas experienced when one was young.
Love and admiration transformed an average-looking human being into an angel of beauty. Contempt and dislike transformed an average-looking human being into a goblin.
“What with arts education funding being cut so drastically, I feel I have to do something. Kids need to learn visual thinking and creative problem solving.”
Staged for Murder–danger on the catwalk
Staged 4 Murder
by J.C. Eaton
Sophie Kimball really just wants to do her job as an accountant and bookkeeper for the Williams investigations firm. She gets roped again, however, into doing some sleuthing on her own as the members of her mother’s book club in Sun City West, a retirement community in Arizona, recruit her to help discover the murderer of a member of a community acting troupe. Avid readers, they branch out as performers and crew in a production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap.
There are lots of twists and turns to the plot of Staged 4 Murder with suspicion cast like a shotgun blast in multiple directions. Just when you (and Sophie) think the murderer has been found, new evidence comes to light. Sophie is an interesting main character, and the interactions with her mother are humorous. This book is not destined to be a classic for the ages, but it is an enjoyable cozy mystery, and I look forward to the next in this series written by a husband-wife team under the pen name J.C. Eaton.
I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to Kensington Books for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 5/5
Category: Mystery
Notes: #3 in the Sophie Kimball Mystery Series, but delightfully fun as a standalone
Publication: June 26, 2018 — Kensington Books
Memorable Lines:
I got up from my chair, took the list from my mother, and muttered six regrettable words before heading home for the night. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“My God! Now you’re sounding like my mother. Next thing I know you’ll be reusing paper plates.” “Whoa. That was unfair.”
My mother tried calling the dog, but he ignored her. Selective hearing must apparently run in our family.
Murder Made to Order–good basic cozy
Murder Made to Order
by Lena Gregory
If you have ever wondered what it would be like to move from cold, urban New York to small town Florida complete with snakes, alligators, and monkeys, try reading Murder Made to Order. In this cozy mystery, Gia’s diner, the All-Day Breakfast Café, is in danger of being shut down because of zoning regulations. When Gia finds the town council’s president dead, things get complicated.
Not even sure she wants to live in Florida, Gia finds herself in the middle of a forest fire, a tornado, and a murder investigation. On the plus side, however, are her supportive friend of ten years Savannah, her potential boyfriend Hunt, and a lot of encouraging townsfolk.
Author Lena Gregory draws the reader into Murder Made to Order with a good background, interesting characters, and surprising complications. Along the way you learn a lot of interesting things about life near the Ocala National Forest.
I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to Lyrical Underground (Kensington Press) for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 5/5
Category: Mystery
Notes: #2 in the All-Day Breakfast Café Mystery Series, but works as a standalone.
Publication: June 19, 2018 — Kensington Press (Lyrical Underground)
Memorable Lines:
Gia stood in the middle of the living room and stared out the window. Rain pounded against the house. Lightning flashed, bolt after bolt, illuminating the yard. Mesmerizing. The tall, thin palm tree outside her front window bent in half.
“Twenty-one years old, barely old enough to drink, and he struts in like he owns the place. Drunk as a skunk and dumber than a bag of rocks, carryin’ on about how his daddy was going to own the place.”
Gia watched them walk away, realizing nothing united a community the way tragedy did. It seemed the need to help others brought out the best in people.
Shadow Dancing–society mom meets teenage prostitute
Shadow Dancing
by Julie Mulhern
Would this book be THE ONE? Would the seventh book in the Country Club Murder series be the one that would let me down? Would that great sense of humor mixed into a fascinating mystery fall flat? Would the 70’s backdrop become cliché? Would I tire of Ellison’s love affair with Mr. Coffee or her battles with her imperious mother? The answer to all of these questions about Julie Mulhern’s Shadow Dancing is a resounding “NO!”. I enjoyed the book all the way through and was sad when it came to an end.
As usual, the pace is perfect and the storyline is inventive. Mulhern’s use of descriptive language puts the reader in the scene as she transports Ellison through high society cocktail parties and into the danger of the night. This story focuses on homeless girls forced into prostitution and drug addiction; the seriousness of the theme gives an edge to the book with its fast-moving plot. Detective and boyfriend Anarchy Jones plays an important role in providing physical and emotional support for Ellison who finds herself in the role of protector as the murderer challenges her. This cozy mystery is full of surprises and suspense.
I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to Henery Press for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 5/5
Category: Mystery
Notes: #7 in the Country Club Murder Series
Publication: June 19, 2018—Henery Press
Memorable Lines:
Aggie marched up to a second librarian—one who made the woman downstairs look like a congeniality winner in a beauty contest. The librarian on the second floor looked like the woman in American Gothic by Grand Wood: close-set eyes, marionette lines that dragged the corners of her lips into a frown, and a long, thin neck. The expression in those close-set eyes could have scared General Westmoreland into immediate surrender.
Winstead’s didn’t sell hamburgers; it sold steakburgers. The burgers were cooked to a deep shade of brown and flavored with salt and grease. They arrived at the table wrapped in wax paper sleeves and the first bite could change a life.
Outside, the night swirled with a heavy, cold mist. March deciding lion or lamb. The mist clung to my hair, and lashes, and coat. The click of my heels echoed on the pavement. The darkness breathed—thick and dangerous. I shivered.
Death and a Pot of Chowder–cozy with guns, lobsters, and a foodie
Death and a Pot of Chowder
by Cornelia Kidd
I know very little about Maine—small, cold, and famous for lobsters. All of that information is verified in Death and a Pot of Chowder, but I absorbed so much more about Maine by reading this cozy mystery by Cornelia Kidd. The characters are very interesting, especially the likable main character Anna Winslow. Having lost her job when her stepfather died, she is a stay-at-home mom to fourteen year old Jake and wife to Burt, a lobsterman. She enjoys her quiet life until she finds herself thrown in the middle of a murder investigation to clear Burt of charges at the same time she discovers she has a half-sister Ozzie, a young, ambitious, and talented chef.
I enjoyed the community of Quarry Island and references to Anne of Green Gables. I can identify with Anna turning to chocolate in times of stress! As an educator, I appreciate that the students on the island are cocooned a little as they attend school there through junior high and only travel to the mainland for high school. In such a setting I can conceive of the freedoms Jake and his friend Matt enjoy to roam the island.
The characters are not goody two-shoes, but most do have appeal as direct people who care about their neighbors. Anna is a strong woman, but also a woman who is willing to expand outside her current boundaries. She is open to new challenges and new relationships. I did wonder about her ties with her “stepfather” Seth. She was raised from birth as his child, but when she discovers that he is not her biological father, she never calls him “dad” again. Although I understand many children long for a relationship with their biological parents, it seems cold and out of character for her to emotionally discard him. As she was working for him as an office manager at the time of his death, I assume he did not respond by cutting ties with her. This is an interesting, but disappointing, twist to the story.
I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to Crooked Lane Books for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 5/5
Category: Mystery
Notes: 1. # 1 in the Maine Murder Mystery Series.
2. Recipes are found in the back of the book.
3. As Izzie is interested in historical cookbooks, each chapter starts with a quote from a cookbook which also includes tips for managing a household.
Publication: June 12, 2018—Crooked Lane Books
Memorable Lines:
People joked that islanders had salt water in their veins. We were different, separate, and wary of off-islanders who commented on the beauty of the island, wondered at our isolation, and then left.
But first I was going to eat chocolate. If ever there was a day for chocolate, this was it.
I’d been like a mussel, glued to the rocks I’d always clung to. Now, everything had changed. I’d been tossed into the waves to survive. Would I find a new rock to cling to? Or be found by a laughing gull and dropped onto a ledge, smashed, and devoured.
education pathways 