Middle Sister's September Read

Why the backlog? Well, like hundreds of thousands, if not millions of USAians, I lost my job this year. And while reading was a welcome escape, I was working hard to find a job and working hard at odd jobs to support myself. So bear with me, Gentle Reader, as I get caught up on yet another draft that was waiting to published.

The Gift of the Magpie by Donna Andrews Magpie was last year's Christmas book published by a favorite author of mine. And since it was hot and dry, reading of another snowy holiday murder in Caerphilly hit a large number of comfort notes for me. This time, Meg and Caerphilly Helping Hands are helping a hoarder with cleaning and decluttering his dilapidated house. Harvey is a nice man, albeit a little shy, but his behavior is not like that of any hoarder any of us have been on TV. The hoarders exploited on distressing TV series are resentful of the attention, fight folks trying to come into their house, and are seriously emotionally upset when their things are disturbed, much less hauled away. Whereas Harvey just lets the well-intentioned ladies of Helping Hands box up all his stuff within minutes of meeting Meg and Caroline--unrealistic, even for a series in which I usually suspend disbelief at how kind and generous everyone in Caerphilly is (which I why I'd like to live there, but I digress). And as much as I love this series, there were, honestly, some parts that rang off: the hoarder not acting like a hoarder, the idea that the hotel would foster a few dogs that guests could check out to run with or visit with--who's going to administer that program? What about liability, for both parties, the hotel and the animal rescue? When dogs are released and transferred from one shelter to another, the process involves lots of paperwork. And you can't just stick them somewhere not approved for animal housing like a human hotel, where paying guests could be allergic or frightened of dogs. I did like how Harvey's murder was resolved, but Magpie was a weak entry in the series. I still want to live in Caerphilly, though. No. 28 in the series

Mockingbird Court by Juneau Black I loved Beatrix Potter's books when I child, and I loved the Cottage Tales series by Susan Witting Albert, and you've read in the past how I love the Shady Hollow mystery series by Juneau Black. They are warm, grown-up versions of an animal world where the animals are vegetarians, live in towns and hold jobs, and generally live in harmony except for the occasional murder. In Mockingbird Court, we not only are treated to another delightful and cosy murder, we are treated to learning more about our heroine, Vera Vixen. Vera's past has always been mysterious. We knew she came from the city, but we knew nothing of why she left, nothing about her family. We learn Vera's story, a very human one, when someone from her past is murdered, and Vera is the main suspect. Will she be able to prove her innocence, and will her relationship with Orville survive this murder investigation? If I were an animal, I'd want to live in Shady Hollow, eat at Joe's, and shop at Lenore's bookstore. Highly recommended. (Net Galley)

Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green This was one of two selections for the Governnerd's Book Club Sharon McMahon organizes, and what a fantastic read it was! One of my favorite books of 2025. This book is so well researched but written so thoughtfully and engagingly, with enough science to satisfy this scientist but not too much science to drive non-scientists away. It's an extremely compelling history not only of the disease, but our society's reaction to it medically, socially, politically, and economically. Once you read it, you will agree that yes, everything is tuberculosis. Highly recommended

Crouching Buzzrd, Leaping Loon by Donna Andrews Back to the beginning of the series, as my library has started filling in missing titles. Meg and Michael are searching for a new place to live in, one that will be large enough for the two of them, but Caerphilly has a sever drought of affordable and decent houses or apartments. The search for a home is stressful enough, but Meg's been roped in to serving as business manager and switchboard operator for Mutant Wizards, her bother's computer game company. Mutant Wizards has grown very quickly, and Rob, in typical Rob fashion, doesn't want to, maybe doesn't even recognize, the managerial issues that have been building up and which Meg gets to address. First issue: the one-winged buzzed that lives in the office lobby. Second issue: Michael's mother's dog, Spike, who likes no humans and to whom has mother is allergic, so Spike is now living with Meg and Michael and terrorizing everyone at Mutant Wizards.  Third issue: the company's popular computer game has inspired crazy fans and possibly industrial spies to try to steal their way in every day, and it's up to Meg to chase them out. The company is staffed by brilliant and kooky computer geniuses, who as a lark have laid out a track for the mail cart to follow automatically. Then on one sweep through the office, the mail cart is carrying an extra package--a dead colleague. Highly recommended. No. 4 in the series

Cockatiels at Seven by Donna Andrews Given my library's non-sequential catalog of Meg Langslow titles, I had to jump forward several titles from Buzzard to Cockatiels. Newlyweds Meg and Michael are still renovating their new house when Meg's old friend Karen stops by. She's in desperate need a babysitter for her son, Timmy, for a couple of hours, and begs Meg to help her out. Meg, of course, does agree, but when four, then five, and then six and more hours go by and Karen hasn't returned for her son, Meg is worried that Karen has been in an accident. But it's worse--Karen seems to have disappeared completely. Poor Timmy has no food, no clothes, and his favorite toy needs repair, and Meg is suddenly afraid for Karen's life and afraid of her own reactions to the sudden, temporary childcare roll. Rob is acting very mysteriously, and Meg's dad and grumpy zoologist Montgomery Blake are involved in some animal welfare project Meg worries will land them in jail. Meg's worries heighten when it becomes clear that some dangerous men are after Timmy, and will stop at nothing to get him. Highly recommended. No. 9 in the series

Owls Well That Ends Well by Donna Andrews Sure, I could order these sequentially, but I write about the books in the order that I read them, so, Gentle Reader, join me in another jump through fictional time. Meg and Michael are excited at their new home, a rambling Victorian mansion owned by the late Edwina Sprockett. They haven't moved inlet, however, since of the reasons they got such a good deal on the house was because they were going to have to clean it out. And Edwina was nothing if not a collector. Their solution: a giant yard sale, and they're delighted by the local interest, but not delighted by the would-be treasure hunters showing up at 5 am to try and sneak in to find the best items before everyone else. Too bad everyone had the same idea. Among the treasure hunters are Edwina's distant relatives, who have decided that maybe they wrong in agreeing to sell the house and all its contents as is, and now are trying to prove that Meg and Michael hoodwinked them out of large inheritance. Endangered barn owls living in the ramshackle outbuildings add to the general confusion. When Meg spots someone sneaking into one of the off-limits outbuildings, she hurries over to herd them back to the yard sale, and finds one of the antique dealers, dead. Would someone really kill someone over Edwina's junk? Highly recommended. No. 6 in the series

We'll Always Have Parrots by Donna Andrews And let's step back one more time, Gentle Reader! Meg and Michael are attending a fan convention for Porfiria, Queen of the Jungle, a cult TV show that Michael has a minor role in. But now that he has a stable position int he Drama and Theatre department at Caerphilly College, Michael would like to leave Porfiria behind. But not everyone wants him to leave the show, especially the star and executive producer, and when she's found murdered, Michael is just one of a number of cast and crew under suspicion. The series rarely leaves Caerphilly, so it's always a treat when Ms. Andrews finds a way to get Meg and Michael away. And the loony, besotted, sometimes weird fans are a funny substitute for Meg's eccentric family. Highly recommended. No. 5 in the series

Why Didn't They Ask Evans by Agatha Christie Bobby Jones is the vicar's son, and he's at loose ends and avoiding making a decision about what to do with his life. What better thing to do than play golf? Until he hits his ball over the edge of the cliff, and running to see if it's visible, he finds instead a dying man. Bobby is perplexed by his last words: "Why didn't they ask Evans?" but a search of the pockets reveals just a photograph of a beautiful young woman. Bobby and his childhood friend, Frankie, aka Lady Frances Derwent, daughter of the local lord, are intrigued when the deceased is finally identified as Alex Pritchard and his sister claims to be the woman in the photo, despite the lack of any similarities between the young beauty in the photo and the middle-aged sister. Then the photos is published, and it's a different photo than the one Bobby had seen and replaced in the dead man's pocket. And that's when Bobby and Frankie realize that something sinister is going on. Highly recommended.

Agatha Christie: an Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley Lucy Worsley has written a new biography of Agatha Christie and filmed a television biography show on the BBC. Ms. Worsley spends a little bit more time tracking down clues to Ms. Christie's mental state during and after her famous disappearance, looking through old phone books to identify psychologists the author may have consulted that were located near her London apartment. Ms. Worsley found a brief interview I'd never seen referenced before in which Dame Agatha herself talks about her mental state during and after the breakup of her marriage. While that's the only new information in the book, there is more on her marriage to the archaeologist Max Mallowan than most biographies report. I knew it was a happy marriage, but the excerpts from their letters made my heart glow that a such a broken heart was able to be healed by love again. Recommended.

Murder Takes A Vacation by Laura Lippman When I first read the description of the story, I thought, well, this sounds like fun. Muriel Blossom, middle-aged widow and former employee at a private investigative form, wins  a lottery and decides to take a Paris river cruise. This middle-aged reader would love to win something like that. Too bad the book was so dreadful I had to stop reading it. She's a former private investigator who worked with Ms. Lipman's other series character, Tess Monaghan, and yet makes the most naive and stupid decisions ever: she accepts a gummy from a stranger in the airport to help her sleep not he flight to Paris--hunh? He doesn't wake her up when their flight arrives so she misses her connection--hunh? She then lets him make reservations at a hotel for them? Lets him convince her not to follow her carefully planned itinerary? Hunh? Then she makes out with him and lets him stay in her room while she sleeps? What?? Then she gets to Paris, meets a young man she lets paw through her clothes and claim to be her son when. body is found--and that's just the first 2 chapters! I chucked it. Completely unbelievable. Completely stupid behavior. I hated every character by the end of two chapters--that is not a good sign. I was delighted to learn later that someone in my online mystery book club had disliked it as much as me. Avoid at all costs.

Middle Sister's July Reads

 July was hot and rainy, and I didn't get to read as much as I had hoped. But here is what I did manage to finish this month,

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder This was recommended to me 6 months ago, and it took this long for my book reserve at the library to arrive because so many are wanting to read it. And I understand why. This is a fantastic, clear, and concise presentation of 20 things we should have learned from our history, but haven't. Things that have been happening again the past 8 or so years. I recognized the tyranny as soon as it surfaced 8 years ago, although I didn't have quite the word for it, because with my background in history and cultural processes, and my personal history as the daughter of a WWII vet and a woman arrested at the age of 8 in Poland in 1940, I saw with horror the same things being said and done as had been said and done in 1920s and 1930s Germany. But for those younger than me, or those without a family history like mine, or anyone with a faint niggling feeling that something is not right, this is a great distillation of what is happening around us put into it's historic context. As the song goes, "if you paid attention, you'd be worried, too." The book made me think long and hard about the people I know who have reacted differently to our current situation, and whether they would have been revolutionaries or loyalists, in the resistance or a collaborator. And that reflection has been uncomfortable. But I cannot recommend this book enough. It's a quick but dense read, and makes its argument cogently and with sparing prose. Highly, highly recommended.

Death of a Ghost by Margery Allingham I am not reading all the Allinghams that my online group is reading this summer. My lirary doesn't have all of them, some are sold out, and some are just too expensive to buy. But this one was 99 cents, so I skipped a couple of our group reads for this one. The murder mystery is personal, unlike the raison d'être for the murder in the first book we read last month. And because the reason is personal, it's a darker exploration of the human psyche and not a rollicking adventure story. I enjoyed the book and the characters although Donna Beatrice was so annoying I'd have kicked her out on her ear decades before if I were Belle. But I found the ultimate punishment that the murderer underwent to be les than satisfying, perhaps because I find it unbelievable. But it was a great read, and I love seeing Campion changed, matured, angered, and facing the reality that evil can win. Recommended.

Summer's End by Juneau Black I love this series. It's like Nancy Drew meets Beatrix Potter with a slight twist of Dashiell Hammett. Lenore Lee has managed to convince Vera Vixen to volunteer as a chaperone on a school visit to the archaeological site, Summer's End. It's an important archaeoastronomy site, with an amazing solar event that happens once a year. The archaeologists working at the site will give the students a personal behind the scenes tour, so Vera decides that the opportunity to see the site with these guides is too good to pass up. I really enjoyed the action moving out of Shady Hollow although I did miss Orville. The school group is horrified when they discover a corpse on the site, and Vera springs into action when she realizes that the police's main suspect is Lenore's sister. But without Orville, her access to the site and information is restricted, and she finds that she has to nose around in some unconventional ways to discover the murderer. While I did think the culprit was easy to identify early on, that did not detract from my enjoyment at all. I'm a retired archaeologist, and I have to say the authors did a terrific job at creating a culture history and archaeological site, and the description of the site, the lab, the artifacts, etc. was terrific and spot-on correct. It is so well depicted that I wonder if someone has a background in anthropology or archaeology. Highly recommended to those who enjoy whimsy with their mystery,

Middle Sister's June Reads

 I read the most delightful book this month, the third of three really good books that I enjoyed (see my Mid-month Review in the previous post). June was a good book month.

Cold Clay by Juneau Black The second entry in a series of three books (to date). Shady Hollow is a small, quiet town inhabited by animals (yes, animals). Reminiscent of Susan Wittig Albert's Cottage Tales series, 8 equally delightful (and I was so sad when Ms. Albert stopped writing the series), this charming book has memorable characters and a lovely setting (and a map--you know how I love a book with a map!). Vera Vixen, fox reporter, is our amateur detective, and she is ably assisted by her best friend Lenore Lee, the raven who owns Nevermore Books, and her boyfriend, Deputy Orville Braun, bear. I loved this book. It was so charming and sweet, the animal characters kind and realistic and relatable. Shady Hollow and its inhabitants were enchanting and I immediately looked for the other two books in the series. The mystery is well plotted, the characters are fully fleshed out, and while there was one aspect of the whodunit conclusion that was a little bit of a stretch to believe, it was still a great read. It did not escape my notice that Vera appears to be a vegetarian, and every meal she has at Joe's Mug read deliciously. I am eager to return to Shady Hollow, especially during these tumultuous and scary times. A sweet, innocent murder mystery that is appropriate for both advanced child readers and adults--perfect. 

Steeped in Evil by Laura Childs I know I vowed to stop reading this series, but I thought one from  earlier in the series might still be good, without all the annoying inconsistencies that beset the more recent Tea Shop Mysteries. And I enjoyed the first half of the book. Theodosia was not annoying and arrogant in her sleuthing, the professionals were not ridiculed as incompetent, and I had high hopes. And then it started, first with a few little things: Theodosia never tells Maggie that Andrew is looking to buy a house, just that she knows someone who could use a realtor, yet Maggie jumps to the assumption he's a buyer. OK, that's perhaps not an unreasonable assumption; he's either buying or selling. And then world class tea sommelier Drayton doesn't know what a Banbury tart is? And he says "Seriously?!" like a tween girl? Drayton is a little fussy but very gentlemanly, an American version of the stereotypical Englishman, and his exclamations and vocabulary would not include 'Seriously?!" And speaking of the food, how does Haley manage to do all the cooking, cleaning, and planning for not only the tea room but also the catering events? Miss Dimple is there to help serve when needed, but honestly, there's no way Haley could do all that work, especially if the Indigo Tea Shop is open 6 days a week (I think they're closed one day a week, but even if closed for two, it's just not realistic that she has no help). I've suspected for years that Ms. Childs employed a ghost writer, and the fact that Theo's boyfriend Max actually says the sentence "We're going to pretend we're not snuggle bunnies?" proves it. Then it was there, in full force: Theo muses that maybe the sheriff would figure the mystery out. "Or maybe pigs would sprout wings and fly." At this point, Theo has exchanged about 12 words with the sheriff, so how she has the temerity to think she judge his progress in his investigation is beyond annoying. She gets very annoyed when the manager of Smiley's won't let her interrogate one of his employees when that man is supposed to be working, and the entire exchanges when she trying to wheedle her way into the restaurant were embarrassing at best and insufferable at worst. They witness the car accident, but don't call 911, and Drayton was so upset he couldn't dial those 3 numbers? That is not the competent man we know. But the most egregious violations were this: private hospital rooms do not share a bathroom, so the entire scene where Theo escapes discovery by sneaking out the shared bathroom was ridiculous. Clearly the ghost writer backed themselves into a corner and created this plot device to fix a major shortcoming in the story. But that episode was  surpassed by her behavior at the silent auction, when, instead of voicing her suspicions about the bottle of wine to either law enforcement or the auction organizers, she grabs it and opens it to prove her point. Stop insulting your readers! Cell phones have the numbers and/or names of incoming calls showing nice and bright and big right there on the screen, so Theo would never have been surprised by who was calling her; she'd have known the instant she looked at the phone. This is beyond insufferable and beyond excuses. Stop dialing it in, Ms. Childs. Either slow down your mass production of multiple series or perhaps just stop writing. 

Murder on the Moor by Julianna Deering Drew and Madeline Farthering are asked by his former schoolmate, Beaky, to look into some mysterious happenings in the moor that surrounds his estate.  His wife Sabrina has been spooked by noises when walking her dog and feels certain someone has been watching her. Drew and Madeline immediately drive up to the estate to look into things, while their friend Nick impersonates a rough traveling man so that he can investigate things from the village's perspective without suspicion. Set in the 1920s, this is reasonably accurate portrayal of that time between the wars when society and economies were in turmoil, and the landed aristocracy was having to face the new realities of the early twentieth century. I liked the book, although Drew and Madeline were a little too cutesy for me. The secondary characters were interesting and useful and not merely there to fill in the pages; they each advanced the story in important ways. All in all, an nice, quick read.