I did a lot of gardening in May so listened to a lot of audiobooks. And this is the start of summer in the desert, when we hunker down and avoid going outside whenever we can. Books a'plenty were read!
Death on the Lanai by Rachel Eckstrom Courage My mom (and I) were big fans of the TV show The Golden Girls, so when Discovered on NetGalley that there was a series of books featuring the girls, well, naturally, I had to read it. Ms. Courage does. a good job mimicking the characters and presenting them to the reader as they were presented on the television screen. The voices in my head as I read dialogue were the voices of the actresses and the characters, and I found that very comforting. The mystery, however, was not enthralling and relied a little bit too much on coincidence. But if you loved the Golden Girls and are looking for some light reading to amuse you, this will do the trick. (Net Galley)
Birder, She Wrote by Donna Andrews Everyone knows I love the Meg Langslow series, and my library has been slowly acquiring the series in both audiobook and e-book format. I'e been trying to re-read in order, but acquisitions aren't always sequential, so I've been doing some jumping around. In Birder, She Wrote, book 33 in the series, Meg's father convinces her to let him add to the beehives that he has installed on her property. As she helps Dad with his latest enthusiasm, Meg learns that some of the newcomers to Caerphillly, who live in big McMansions, are finding that the rural idyll they sought is actually home to rural farmers and their farms and livestock and life ways, and the smells and delays are not what they expected. Now some of the newcomers are making waves, trying to make some of the less picturesque aspects of rural living go away, like bees. Who swarm and hum and sting when they get angry. Randall asks Meg to be the go-between with the newcomers and their complaints. Then Meg's grandmother, Cordelia, arrives and with her, a young reporter for a southern lifestyle magazine who wants to write a feature on Cordelia. Meg, Cordelia, the reporter, and Deacon Washington go looking for a list African-American cemetery, and find a not-so-long-lost corpse. As always, an excellent read. Or in this case, listen; the audiobooks narrated by Bernadette Dunne are very good.
Whose Body in the Library by Eva Gates Kudos to the author for coming up with a novel way to address how to charge up a long-running series, keep the characters people like, but inject fresh characters, fresh points of view, and new situations. The Lighthouse Library series has 12 previous books in it, through which we've watched Lucy arrive to her new job, settle in, make friends, fall in love, get married, and have children. And Ms. Gates decided to shake up a successful formula in a way that successfully keeps the characters, the setting, everything we like, but makes it probably more fun for her to write. The library director has retired, Lucy has been promoted, and so the library now needs another librarian. Enter Nichelle, a fifty-something woman with a brand new MIS degree and a strong desire to start over somewhere new. Nichelle is hired to join the Bodie Lighthouse Library staff and will move into the lighthouse apartment, just like Lucy did. But she discovers a dead body on the steps of the lighthouse when she arrives on her first day on the island. Nichelle doesn't quite understand how and why Lucy investigated mysteries, but she finds herself entwined in this one, and like Lucy, she uses her librarian skills to help solve the crime. I enjoyed having a main character more similar in age and life experience to me. I thought the inclusion of Lucy as a secondary character and the new dynamics between the staff and Nichelle and each other was well done. Recommended.
