Middle Sister's September Reads

As you can see, with a lengthy mid-month review and this one, I read a lot this September. It was a good month.

At the Reunion Buffet by Alexander McCall Smith In this short story, Isabel Dalhousie helps organize her school reunion, and in the process, uncovers a present-day mystery while helping resolve several past problems amongst her former schoolmates. Despite its brevity, one gets a good introduction to Isabel and Jamie, and the delightful twists and turns off any book written by McCall Smith.

The Secret of White Stone Gate by Julia Nobel I've had such go od luck reading YA books lately that I'm seeking out more to enjoy. The first in this series was not available from my library, so I started with this one, number 2 in the Black Hollow Lane series. I think it might have been better had I read the first, because there are a lot of illusions to this mysterious group which recruits tweens and teenagers from a boarding school for nefarious purposes. I never got a good handle on what this group is or its purpose, and maybe the first doesn't make that explicit either but I found it confusing. American Emmy attends a British boarding school while her author mother is on tour promoting her latest book. Emmy's father, whom she thought was dead, made contact with her in the first book, and in this second book, Emmy is coming to terms with the realization that he's alive but in danger. And the nefarious league is determined to track him down by threatening Emmy and everyone she loves. The medallions, such a crucial part of the mystery, were apparently an important part of the first book, but their background is murky in this second book and I was very confused over their actual purpose and history. Definitely a series that needs to be read in order, this isn't quite as good as some of the other middle grade and YA books I've read recently, but my impression might have been different had I been able to start with book one.

Murder in a Teacup by Vicki Delaney This is the second in the Tea by the Sea mystery series. I enjoyed the first book last year and was happy to see another book with chef Lily Roberts, her grandmother Rose, and their friends on Cape Cod. This time, Rose's old friend Sandra and her granddaughter Heather come the cape, having arranged a mini family reunion at Rose's B&B. Heather invited her estranged brother-in-law and his wife, trying to make amends after the two fell out after Heather's husband's death. There is a lot of sniping and ill will between the family group. but then someone is murdered in Lily's tearoom, and Lily, Rose and their friend Bernie swing in to action to find the killer before they strike again. I like this series because Lily doesn't investigate the murder because she thinks the police are incompetent; rather, she thinks that she can get information people may hide from the police and then she turns that information over to Detective Redmond. The location in Cape Cod is a strong reason why I like the book, as I have a longstanding yearning to visit the cape, but there really isn't much description of the setting; I wish Ms. Delaney would include more. The cast of characters that surround Lily are likable and realistic, and I'm especially impressed with her friendship with Bernie. Lily recognizes when her friend is being annoying and calls her out on it, for example, when Bernie is underfoot in her tiny kitchen, but offers unstinting support of Bernie's dream to be a writer. The love interests for both women are likable; heck, I'd date either one of them. And the twist at the end caught me off guard, so well done, Ms, Delaney, I can't wait for the third book in the series. (Net Galley)

Middle Sister's Mid-Month Review

 Hello, Gentle Readers! In order to avoid having another really long post, like August's, I'm going to post a couple of mid-month reviews.

Murder at Mallowan Hall by Colleen Cambridge Excellent story featuring Agatha Christie as a secondary character. Our amateur detective is Phyllida Bright, friend of Mrs. Christie's who works as the housekeeper at Mallowan hall which the Grande Dame shares with her second husband Max Mallowan. An avid reader of her friend/employer's books, who, we're led to believe, even makes suggestions that Mrs. Christie utilizes, Phyllida decides to use her little gray cells when an unexpected guest to weekend house party is killed in the library. Then a second murder occurs, and the fear mounts. Phyllida is a good choice for a detective in a country house setting--she straddles upstairs and downstairs, so can be privy to conversations and encounters with the guests in multiple ways. We're used to middle-aged, brusque or silent housekeepers, and Phyllida, with her bright red hair and flowered dresses that sound almost couture, is anything but a staid, gray, disapproving, uniformed servant. The hint of a possible future romance with Bradford is appealing. The writing is good, the pace and setting are perfect, parodying the weekend country house murder mysteries Agatha Christie was known for. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it lovers of mysteries, cosy mysteries, and Agatha Christie. (Net Galley)

The Egyptian Cross Murder by Ellery Queen I vaguely remembering watching Ellery Queen on television as a child, but I don't think I'd ever read any books until I became an adult. My library recently acquired this audiobook, and I thought this would be a perfect accompaniment to the never ending summer weeding. I was shocked to learn the book was published in 1932, because the opening salvo is the grim and unsettling discovery of a beheaded, crucified murder victim. Enter Ellery Queen, assisted this time not by his father, Inspector Richard Queen, but by his former professor, a neighbor of another victim. Then a third body is found... Despite the gruesome nature of the murders, the book is not gory or sensational. For those who like books where modern technology is not the crutch that helps the mystery be solved, the re-release of older titles like this is a boon. Recommended (audiobook)

The Two Isabellas of King John by Kristen McQuinn Ms. McQuinn tackles a tough job: writing a biography about two medieval women about whom so little is written, one is nearly invisible. King John of England, brother of Richard the Lionheart, he of Magna Carta fame and fictional Robot Hood infamy, was married to two women: Isabella of Gloucester and Isabelle of Angouleme.  It is hard to tackle even well-known historical figures who lived 900 years ago, but to try to research two nearly invisible people is an enormous task, and sadly, Ms. McQuinn stumbles at it. There are only a few facts known about Isabella: she was an only child who brought a substantial wealth to Henry II, John's father, when she was his ward after her father died; she and John were engaged for more than 10 years and only married after Richard became king and insisted; John annulled their marriage just before he became king; Isabelle was actually sent to live with her for a short period; she was childless and she died. That's it--those are the facts we know about her. There is more information on Isabelle in the historical record, and even a handful of letters she wrote herself. She was anointed John's queen and bore his heir to the throne, Henry III. Unlike Isabella, Isabelle was mentioned in several contemporary chronicles, although these historical chroniclers appear to have disliked her a great deal and do not record her in a flattering manner. It's a herculean task to try to and write biographies for women about whom so little is known. Ms. McQuinn attempts to get around that by talking about how medieval noblewomen in general were educated, their general expectations from life, general information about what other medieval queens knew and did, especially their mother-in-law, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and interpreting what their childhoods, education, and expectations likely were. But because of the dearth of material, Ms. McQuinn begins repeating the same facts after just a couple of chapters, albeit attempting to use them to talk about different topics. We read about Isabella's childlessness and the possible reasons for it in several different chapters (her life, her marriage, life with John, medieval fertility), and sometimes the sentences are virtually identical. There is  much repetition of ideas, actions, and arguments, and no original scholarship by Ms. McQuinn. She makes statements such as "by disposition a proud woman," but then does not offer real substantive proof of that characterization. In Chapter 6, Ms. McQuinn loses the impartiality that biographers and historians must maintain to lend any credence to their work with statements such as "it is sad she had no friends," an interpretation without any merit. There is barely a mention of these woman and none about their courtiers; how can we possibly infer she had no friends? The final chapter is an interesting idea: Ms. McQuinn looks at how works of fiction have recreated the two Isabelles because she argues that these fictional representations can shed light on the historical character. No, Ms. McQuinn, they don't. Fictional characterizations are just that, fiction, and in these two instances, there is not even enough material to say that these were somewhat rooted in historical fact. I might have accepted this as first draft of a lower level college report, but I would have returned it to my student marked up with a lot of red comments and things that needed to be fixed or addressed. There is not really enough material here for a book. Heavy editing might have saved and improved parts of it, but this cannot be considered a scholarly contribution to medieval studies or women's studies. But I do now know that dozen or fewer facts about these two queens, which is all that history knows about them. This book does nothing to bring them to life. (Net Galley)

Unearthing the Secret Garden by Marta McDowell If you loved The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett as a  child, as I did, you and I belong to select group of adults who yearn for their own secret garden, lush, filled with beautiful blooms, secret and private, and surrounded by a high wall to allow us to escape from the everyday, humdrum world. If you loved that book, you will love this book, too. Ms. McDowell has opened an eminently readable history of Ms. Burnett's own life, and her life as a gardener, by focusing on three gardens that Ms. Burnett planted and nurtured at three of her homes: one in England, one in New York, and one in Bermuda. Each garden was different, and each garden was special. Each garden is described in lovely terms and when possible, accompanied by many photographs. I loved seeing the real secret garden, where Burnett wrote, and reading her own essay about her very special robin. I loved the biography of Burnett as seen through her gardens and flower choices, and the final chapter by her great-granddaughter was a joy. Lavishly illustrated with photos from the various houses showing the gardens (oh, how I with there was color photography in the early twentieth century!) and those bits that still remain at her house in England, one can truly understand why The Secret Garden was the amazing book it was and remains--Burnett's love of flowers and gardening, and her innate understanding of the life cycles of flowers, plants, trees, nature itself, weave through her books and through Ms. McDowell's appreciation. The book is subtitled "The Plants and Places That Inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett," and anyone reading this book will be equally inspired. This is a great gift for a garden lover or someone who read The Secret Garden over and over as a child, and who longs to escape back to it, if only for a little while. What a wonderful book, and truly one of my favorites this year. (Net Galley)

Middle Sister's August Reads

 It was a wet and rainy August... really. We had over 12 inches of rain at my house in late July and early August, and more than 15 inches elsewhere in town. So of course when it's hot and humid and rainy here, I want to visit other places in my reading travels that are not hot and humid.

Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon Guido Brunetti has quickly become one of my fictional crushes, right up there with Roderick Alleyn and Homer Kelly. The series is extremely well written and provides a wonderful, intimate view of life in Venice, Italy. However, it's the complicated twists and turns of the mystery that Ms. Leon always manages to adroitly weave together that make the series a favorite. In this novel, Guido is confronted by two seemingly unrelated issues: the deaths of two American service personnel and the robbery of several valuable paintings. Just as I was wondering how Ms. Leon could pull off solving the mysteries, she did, and I was astonished yet again by her prowess. Highly recommended (Audiobook)

Mrs. Smith's Spy School for Girls by Beth McMullen Absolutely delightful YA novel! We meet Abigail as she's about to be sent to a boarding school against her wishes, but once there, she makes several strong friendships. But one night, prowling around the headmistress' apartment, Abigail learns that the school is a cover for an elite spy school for children, because, as the founder said, no one pays attention to children, so they can hear and see lots of things they shouldn't. The book is very well written, with likable and well-defined characters, rollicking adventures, and a fast pace. I listened to the audiobook, and it was very well read. I already have the second book on hold at my library. Highly recommended (Audiobook)

The Big Four by Agatha Christie I'm pretty sure I've read every Agatha Christie novel. My aunt loved them and I used to borrow them from her when we spent the summers with her. However, it's been 40 years since I read some of them, and I've been enjoying re-reading her work. This is one I didn't remember at all. The Big Four is Ms. Christie dabbling in a spy thriller, and I have to confess I didn't like this one as much as her other Poirot books. Poirot tackles an international crime syndicate with global reach. The book's setting moves around as Poirot tracks down the big four, the criminal masterminds who run the organization. The book is very episodic in nature, with each section involving Poirot traveling somewhere, identifying one of the master criminals, both trying to trap the other, and a slow weaving together of their organization and Poirot's plan to defeat it. It's not a typical Christie and it may be my least favorite, but it is interesting for Christie fans to see the Grand Dame attempt to write a spy thriller. This might have been more successful with an original main character, rather than thrusting Poirot out of his country manor setting into a global conspiracy. (Audiobook)

Murder in an English Glade by Jessica Ellicott Although this series was new to me, it's the fifth in the Beryl and Edwina series. Beryl Helliwell, an American adventuress, and Edwina Davenport, a proper English gentlewoman, were schoolgirl chums who meet again after WWI and start their own private  enquiry agency. In the proper English society in which the books take place, Edwina's understanding of the social mores is helped by Beryl's forthrightness in solving crimes. In this entry, Constance Maitland hires the two to pretend to undertake an investigation to placate her cousin, Cressida, who is convinced that Constance's brother's wife is having an affair. But then the alleged adulterer is killed, and Beryl and Edwina have to go undercover while undercover to help Constable Gibbs. It's a peasant read, perfect for the summer. I admit that I had a hard time accepting the author's choice of a female constable, even though she explains away the impossibility of a woman holding that position with a blithe comment that there were simply not enough men to fill the constabulary because of the war. It was hard to accept that early 1920s English millionaires and the upper crust would recognize and cooperate Constable Gibbs as a legitimate police officer, and that one incongruity tainted my enjoyment of the book. But it's an easy read, the story is well written, and there were no huge gaffes on the author's part. Recommended. (Net Galley)

Deck the Donuts by Ginger Bolten Am I the only person who hates it when people spell doughnut donut? It was a hot, very rainy month here in the desert, so naturally I wanted to read a book that takes place at Christmas in a small and very snowy Wisconsin town. This is another new series to me, the Deputy Donut series. Deputy Donuts is a doughnut shop in Fallingbrook, WI, owned by a retired police chief and his widowed daughter-in-law, Emily, our amateur detective. Fallingbrook is quite the idyllic town, where everyone is good friends who care for and watch out for each other. And it's even more Hallmarkian at Christmas, with every shop and home decorated, nearly the entire town participating in caroling and the ice festival, and it's all almost too much so for this reader to happily suspend her disbelief. But I decided not to resist the saccharine and just enjoy a small town that I'd like to live in with people I wouldn't mind being friends with. Emily and Brent, her late husband's partner, are the first to respond to a bus accident during a raging blizzard in which the driver is severely injured. Townspeople immediately open their homes to house the tourists from the bus, and they all pitch in to provide activities to amuse the unhappy stranded families, led by Emily and her team. They make doughnuts to bring to the people, they throw a doughnut-decorating party, they make doughnuts and cookies for the fire department's Christmas party--they eat a lot of doughnuts in this town. A lot. And apparently all are handmade as the book mentions them cutting the doughnuts by hand. Frankly, boutique designer doughnuts or not, I'd want an industrial doughnut machine.  Fallingbrook must be largely inhabited by retired police and firefighters, as they own the doughnut shop, the cleaning service, and seem to be everywhere. I get it; if you work in that field, you know a lot of people in that field, but they all work and hang out and marry each other--it's quite incestuous. The story is okay, although not very clever, and the hamhanded attempts to make some people mysterious and possible murderers is clumsy. Therefore, the final reveal of the murderer was a bit of a surprise as they flew under the radar of this reader. Enough of a surprise that I will overlook the unsuccessful and blatant shoving of certain characters into our fictional faces as red herrings and look for the other titles in the series. Fallingbrook may be too good to be true, even for fiction, but it's perfect for a Hallmark movie, which may be the author's ultimate goal. (Net Galley)

Scones and Bones (Tea Shop Mystery #12 ) and Devonshire Scream (Tea Shop Mystery #17) by Laura Childs (Tea Shop Mystery #12) I used to really like the tea shop mysteries. I love tea, almost obsessively, and tea shops, and mysteries, and plunk a beautiful tea shop in a beautiful city like Charleston with its history, and I'm sold. But I stopped reading the series years ago after reading Scones and Bones. After all these years, I hadn't remember which book had ticked me off. I'm on the road a lot right now, and have been going through audiobooks at a steady clip. When I saw this title, I thought I'd give the series a chance again. And I remember why I started to dislike the series so much. In Scones and Bones, Theodosia Browning's character took a turn for the worse. I think we were supposed to sympathize with her instant attraction to her friend's boyfriend Max, despite dating restauranteur Parker for several books. After all, most of us have experienced sudden chemical bursts when we meet a stranger. But Theo instantly forgot about Parker, and when they finally talk, she isn't honest with him (despite literally consoling herself by saying that she's always honest). I think we're also supposed to sympathize with her maternal desperation when Haley, her pastry chef, is kidnapped. But that desperation is no excuse fo Theo's utter disregard for her, Haley's and everyone's safety when she ignores Detective Tidwell's instructions as the police surround the house they think Haley is in to rescue her herself. But I thought maybe this was an aberration, maybe Ms. Childs was exploring new characteristics for Theo that maybe didn't pan out, so I then skipped several books to listen to Devonshire Scream. Only to find that the irritating dismissal of the professional police has now been extended by Theo to the FBI. Theo is an annoying buttinsky--she tells the police what to do, she tells the FBI what to do, she tells the Coast Guard what to do. There were a lot of annoying incidents in this book that just do not ring true: Theo's insistence that Brooke's niece's death is murder, not felonious murder as we listeners know it is (after all these crimes, she doesn't know what this is?) and that Brooke would immediately start planning the funeral within hours of the death rather than her niece's parents was very odd. Theo assumes a lot in this book: she assumes she's the only eyewitness to suspect a woman was involved in the explosion, she assumes this was an inside job, she (and Drayton) assume that they can just substitute a tea for Delaine that they she should drink rather than the one ordered (OK, this may be stretching it, but change my order at a restaurant and see what happens), that of course she can just waltz onto a yacht during a private party--the list goes on and on. I have to confess I heartily enjoyed the last chapter, when the whole scenario Theo had constructed fell down around her and she was proven to be completely wrong in her blundering investigation. And Ms. Childs, Earl Grey is a therapy dog, NOT a service dog (pet peeve of this dog trainer, therapy dog handler, and therapy dog evaluator for an international therapy dog organization), and the breed is called the Cavalier King Charles spaniel, not the King Charles Cavalier spaniel.  She clearly looked the breed up enough to be able to describe it accurately, so perhaps she could have cut and pasted the name correctly, too. I'll probably give in and read more of the series, but I predict I won't enjoy them if Theo continues on this path. (Audiobook)

Big Book of Baby Knits by Marie Claire Editions Very nice knitting book with a lovely selection of baby knits perfect for the new grandmother or aunt. Coordinating sets of tops and little sweaters, sometimes with a matching blanket or pants, are presented in order of increasingly complicated knitting techniques, from plain stockinette through to cables. The photography is lovely, and the layout very engaging and crisp. There are no little babies in my life, which I was ruing very much after reading this pattern book. Patterns are presented with written directions, occasional charts, and every pattern has a sketch to show how the pieces fit together. Charming book for avid knitters or for someone expecting a new little one. (Net Galley)

Pawmistry by Megan Lynne Knott Absolutely delightful and charming book for cat lovers, especially cat lovers with a bent for astrology. I read Ms. Knott's book as a very subtle parody of astrology and palmistry, but it's done so sincerely your horoscope-loving, cat-loving recipient might not realize that. Ms. Knott's illustrations are enchanting--I'd love a tea mug or tee shirt or tote with her images on it. Short and sweet, each page brought smiles and memories of some of my own cats, and some pages inspired loud guffaws. I know one cat-loving friend who will be getting this book for Christmas. (Net Galley)