As promised, there was hot food waiting for us. To say that Samantha Conner was the most awful cook in the world would not be an exaggeration. I hadn't tasted anything quite as bad as her dumplings since I'd had the brilliant idea to eat my first-grade art paste.
But, to be polite, Cynthia and I ate as much as we could choke down. At least the family stories told at dinner, helped make the food a little more palatable, especially since we'd already heard bits and pieces from Cynthia's mom. Samantha mentioned that her husband was traveling, and had not returned. I could tell she didn't want to talk about his disappearance, but that didn't stop her from talking about everything else.
"Go ahead, Ma," Jay insisted. "Tell them about how you met Pa. You know you want to."
Samantha laughed self-consciously. "Oh, Jay. These two don't want to hear tales about some old couple…
Poirot Investigates. Agatha Christie. 1924/2011. HarperCollins. 256 pages.
I loved Poirot Investigates. Perhaps because I had low expectations? This was my first experience reading Christie's short stories. And since I'm not generally a fan of short stories, I didn't have great expectations for enjoying these fourteen stories. Each story is narrated by Captain Hastings. And he is a character that I tend to love and adore. I've found that Hercule Poirot needs a little help either from Hastings or Ariadne Oliver to help tame his arrogance. I have definitely come to love Hercule Poirot through the mysteries I've read, but, it was a long road for me. It wasn't instantaneous like it was with Miss Marple.
This collection of short stories was originally published in 1925. So it is "early" Poirot. The short stories in this collection are:
The Adventure of the Western Star
The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor
The Adventure of the Cheap Flat
The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge
The Million Dollar Bond Robbery
The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb
The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan
The Kidnapped Prime Minister
The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim
The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman
The Case of the Missing Will
The Veiled Lady
The Lost Mine
The Chocolate Box
It's not that any one story is amazing or incredible. That's not why I loved this collection. For me it is all about the relationship between Poirot and Hastings. Their conversations. Their friendship. Seeing these two together. There is just something DELIGHTFUL about spending time in their company.
© 2012 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
Jacqueline Gardner is the author of Thoughtless, a suspenseful YA novel with a heroine who can read minds. Jacqueline stopped by the virtual offices to introduce herself and chat about her book.
[Manga Maniac Café] Describe yourself in 140 characters or less.
[Jacqueline Gardner] I’m a mellow, easy-going, sarcastic (at times), fitness nut with a cupcake obsession.
[Manga Maniac Café] Can you tell us a little about Thoughtless?
[Jacqueline Gardner] During a high school football game, Bridget accidentally stumbles upon a dead cheerleader in the janitor’s closet. There’s a killer out there. And worse, somehow the killer knows Bridget’s secret. The one time she actually tries to embrace her talent, it’s useless. Bridget can’t figure out who’s blackmailing her, who killed Stacey, and why she can’t hear her boyfriend’s thoughts!
[Manga Maniac Café] How did you come up with the concept and the characters for the story?
[Jacqueline Gardner] Thoughtless started with a random thought that popped into my head one day. What if I could have read my friend’s thoughts in high school? From there I wrote a chapter with the characters in my head to see if they had chemistry, and they did!
[Manga Maniac Café] What was the most challenging aspect of writing Thoughtless?
[Jacqueline Gardner] Deciding how far to go when it came to hearing other people’s inner self talk. I wanted it to play a comical part in the book but I also wanted to bring in a lot of honesty. I did my best to find a happy medium of the two.
[Manga Maniac Café] What three words best describe Bridget?
[Jacqueline Gardner] Quiet, skeptical & sarcastic!
[Manga Maniac Café] What is Bridget’s single most prized possession?
[Jacqueline Gardner] Her BF Emma (although Emma is a person)! Bridget realizes throughout the course of the book just how lucky she is to have an honest and loyal friend. For a while, she takes Emma for granted.
[Manga Maniac Café] What are your greatest creative influences?
[Jacqueline Gardner] I’d say things I dream about and music. I keep an idea journal next to my bed and I can’t write without my music.
[Manga Maniac Café] What three things do you need in order to write?
[Jacqueline Gardner] Music (anything but absolute silence), a notebook to doodle in, and gum.
[Manga Maniac Café] What is the last book that you read that knocked your socks off?
[Jacqueline Gardner] I just started the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It’s fantastic!
[Manga Maniac Café] If you had to pick one book that turned you on to reading, which would it be?
[Jacqueline Gardner] The Witches by Roald Dahl
[Manga Maniac Café] What do you like to do when you aren’t writing?
[Jacqueline Gardner] I live in the Rockies so I love the outdoors – hiking, camping, biking. I’m also an amateur cake decorator.
[Manga Maniac Café] How can readers connect with you?
[Jacqueline Gardner] website/blog: www.jacquelinegardner.com
twitter: @Writer_Jacque
facebook: www.facebook.com/authorjacquelinegardner
The Mystery of the Blue Train. Agatha Christie. 1928/2011. HarperCollins. 320 pages.
I have gradually come to appreciate--dare I say even love?--Hercule Poirot. Even so, this one took three or four chapters to take to this one. At first I thought I couldn't even finish it, I just didn't like the flow of the first few chapters, introducing all these people (often nameless), the focus on a piece of jewelry, all this big build-up before introducing the main characters, etc. The story was oh-so-slow to start. But then at one point, everything started to click, started to move, and the novel became much better.
So what is this one about? Well, let's start with the victim, Ruth Kettering. She's in a very unhappy marriage. She's in love with someone else, her husband is in lust with someone else. (Well, to be fair, I think she's in lust with someone else too. Except I think she honestly thinks that that lust is love, while I think the husband, Derek, is more realistic and realizes it is what it is.) Her affair being somewhat mostly private and out of the public's eyes, his not so much, he's "in lust" with an exotic dancer. Ruth's father is an American millionaire, and he is pressuring her to divorce her husband and start over. When the novel really opens, he's gifting her with some very, very, very expensive and oh-so-rare jewels, rubies. These are gems with a PAST and then some. Several weeks, if not several months, go by, and the novel next opens with a train trip. Ruth is on her way to meet her lover, her husband and his mistress just happen to be on the same train, and yet supposedly no one knows this. But perhaps it isn't right to start with the victim? Since the main character, the main character besides Poirot, is a young woman who's just recently inherited money. Katherine. This is truly more her story. For she's on the train as well, and she met Ruth just hours before her death. The two took a liking to one another, and Ruth confided in her a good deal. Even told Katherine how uneasy she felt about this trip, like something horrible was going to happen to her.
It was easy to see why Katherine was so likable. It really was. This Agatha Christie novel was good. I wouldn't say that it's one of the best, best, best mystery novels ever. Christie wrote so many, so many GREAT novels, that it would be hard for this one to make the top five or top ten, but it is definitely a good novel. I liked it!!!
Read The Mystery of the Blue Train
- If you're a fan of Agatha Christie
- If you're a fan of Hercule Poirot
- If you're a fan of British mysteries, especially British mysteries set on a train
© 2012 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
Author: Mark De Castrique
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Genre: Mystery
ISBN: 978-1-59058-941-0
Pages: 250
Price: $24.95
Author’s website
Buy it at Amazon
Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson are partners in investigation – and in love. While they are tailing Janice Wainwright, believed to be faking her back pain in a medical lawsuit, Wainwright falls from a mountain and is killed. Blackman and Robertson, as well as some of the local police, question that it was an accident, and a new investigation ensues.
As they dig deeper into the case, new elements of Wainwright’s research emerge, and one more death follows – this time clearly not accidental. Justice comes with a price, and the killer is finally stopped.
This fast-paced and enjoyable murder mystery pulled me in right from the beginning. I enjoyed the relationship between these two detectives, as they bantered light-heartedly throughout the investigation. And I thought the ending was fitting for a book that takes place in the South. I highly recommend The Sandburg Connection.
Reviewer: Alice Berger
By:
Becky Laney,
on 6/19/2012
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Mrs. McGinty's Dead. Agatha Christie. 1952/2011. HarperCollins. 272 pages.
I definitely LOVED Mrs. McGinty's Dead. I really, really, really LOVED the surprise appearance of Ariadne Oliver. But, of course, the main star of this one is Hercule Poirot. The novel starts off rather unpleasantly with Poirot thinking to himself how wonderful he is, how marvelous he is, and how much he needs someone to talk to so he can show off how wonderful he is. So when he receives an unexpected visit from Superintendent Spence who is asking him to take on a closed case, well, he can't resist. Spence was one of the men who helped convict James Bentley of murder, but, he's having doubts, strong doubts. He believes that if Bentley is executed, well, they'll be executing an innocent man. He's not sure who killed Mrs. McGinty, but he knows that Poirot can solve this case better than anyone else. So Poirot travels to the village of the crime and he learns what only he can learn...
I LOVED this one!!! Loved hearing Mrs. Oliver talk about her writing, loved seeing her "work with" someone who is adapting her character, her main detective, into a play. Loved hearing her grumble and complain about her Finn detective.
This one is a great mystery, and, it was just so much fun to spend time with Christie's characters.
Read Mrs. McGinty's Dead
- If you're a fan of Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot, or Mrs. Oliver
- If you're a mystery lover
© 2012 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
Author: Mitchell Scott Lewis
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Genre: Mystery
ISBN: 978-1-59058-950-2
Pages: 250
Price: $24.95
Author’s website
Buy it at Amazon
David Lowell runs an unusual detective agency – he uses atrology to predict certain events, and to understand the motives of those he’s investigating. When his daughter, Melinda, comes to him about a legal case she’s working on, Lowell jumps right in to help.
Melinda is defending a bartender who is accused of murdering a judge. All evidence points to her guilt, but Melinda doesn’t believe she did it. Asking too many questions puts their lives in danger, when they start to get too close to the truth.
Murder in the 11th House is the debut novel of Mitchell Scott Lewis. It’s a well-crafted murder mystery, with a satisfying conclusion. My only small complaint is that David and Melinda are a little too perfect. I’ll be looking forward to seeing their humanity in future books. Overall, this one is a winner.
Reviewer: Alice Berger
By: Melody,
on 6/14/2012
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Of all the English classes I ever had, my 7th grade one was the best. And part of it was that my teacher was great, and part of it was that I realized that grammar is equal parts fun and fascinating — although I realize I may be alone on that one — but probably the single biggest factor was that we had to write an essay on a short story each week. And I could talk a lot about how helpful it was to have to churn out essays and learn to construct an argument and stuff, but what I’m here to talk about today is how much I hated the short stories.
Middle School and High School English classes do a lot to instill in kids the idea that serious literature is super depressing, and short stories, which tend to be sort of single-minded in pursuit of an idea, make it worse — at least with novels, there’s usually time and space to put in a few scenes that will make you laugh, or, you know, offer sidelights on a character that give you hope that they have inner resources to draw on and won’t spend the rest of their lives completely miserable. If they live to the end of the story, that is.
I mean, there were bright spots: “The Speckled Band.” Dorothy Parker. Vocabulary lessons. But I came out of Middle School English with the conviction that all short stories were terrible and that I would hate them forever, with a grudging exception for detective stories.
Anyway, the point of this is that for a long time I really believed I hated short stories — until a couple of years ago when I realized that I was reading short stories all the time, and loving them. It was just that they were short story series, character-driven and funny instead of literary and depressing. These days I get really excited when an author I’ve been enjoying turns out to have a series of short stories or two. So this is the first in what I expect to be a extremely rambling series of posts about those, and how much fun they are — starting with the super obvious.
Sherlock Holmes
It doesn’t get a lot more obvious than Sherlock Holmes, right? To the point where I don’t need to describe the series at all, because if you don’t already know the premise, you’ve been living under a rock since 1887.I’m only including the Holmes stories here to point out that they’re exactly the same as everything else I’m about to talk about — focused on a character, based around a central conceit, and closely tied to a specific setting. And all about a person who’s better at stuff than everyone around him, which is preferred, if not essential. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is, I think, the most fun — first collections usually are — and I retain my 7th grade fondness for “The Speckled Band,” although I think the one that kind of bowled me over the most when I first read it was “The Red-Headed League.”
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Project Gutenberg doesn’t have the complete Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes or Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, but you get the idea. And the novels are sort of beside the point in this context, but I will freely admit that my favorite Sherlock Holmes Thing is Hound of the Baskervilles, which I love probably beyond reason.
Jeeves and Wooster
Then there’s P.G. Wodehouse. And if Sherlock Holmes is typical of the thing I’m trying to talk about, I don’t know what the Jeeves
By: shelf-employed,
on 6/8/2012
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I've got a science-themed book review for you today, but if you're a teacher, I invite you to visit the ALSC blog today as well. Let's talk. Carey, Benedict. 2012.
Poison Most Vial. New York: Amulet.
(Advance Reader Copy)
When the famed forensic scientist, Dr. Ramachandran, is found murdered in his office at DeWitt Polytechnic University, suspicion falls on Ruby Rose's father, the university's custodian. Someone has planted empty vials of poison in Mr. Rose's locker. With the help of her friend, T. Rex, and the reclusive "Window Lady" from apartment 925, Ruby and Rex attempt to clear her father's name before he is arrested.
Although it's not specifically spelled out, Ruby and Rex appear to be in 7th or 8th grade. They attend the Lab School, located on the university campus. Using their proximity to the labs, and the knowledge of and familiarity with campus that is intrinsic to a custodian's daughter, Ruby and Rex begin to ferret out the whereabouts of everyone present on the evening of the murder, monitoring the comings and goings of employees and grad students through a labyrinth of access points. However, more difficult than discovering who may have had opportunity, the pair must learn the science behind toxicity, absorption and concentration. Exactly what was it that killed Dr. Ramachandran? When? and Why?
To truly enjoy Poison, readers should be prepared to think. There is the science of forensics to ponder, as well as the internal musings of the three main characters - Ruby, Rex, and Mrs. Whitmore, the retired toxicologist in apartment 925,
"Why, hello," said Mrs. Whitmore, opening her door.
The young faces looked so different up close, she thought, and it seemed that the boy was more then (sic) merely anxious. He was searching her face so intently that she averted her eyes.
"Welcome," she said, stepping aside. "Do come in."
The untied sneakers, the shuffling way they walked, the shifting eyes; like no one had taught these children the proper way to carry themselves.
"I made some cakes," Mrs. Whitmore said abruptly.
"Pudding cakes. Would you like some?"
She disappeared into the kitchen and overheard the boy whisper, "It's the left one. See how it bulges a little?"
"No more than your big bug-eyes right now," the girl replied. "Jimmy's pulling your chain. He's got no idea."
Jimmy?
"Ruby," the boy said, "Why do you think they call him the Minister of Information if -- Oh, hello."
Mrs. Whitmore marched back in with a tray from the kitchen and nearly dropped it on the coffee table in front of the couch. A piece of cake, and the boy -- Tex, was it? made to lunge for it and then recoiled, glancing oddly at her face and turning away, moving back toward the window.
"This is real nice," he said in an alto voice that surprised her. "You can see all the way past DeWitt through here."
"Yes, it's quite a view," Mrs. Whitmore said.
&nbs
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Madeline is in fifth grade and she lives with her parents on the island of Hornby in Canada. Her parents support the family by making sand-dollar art. Madeline is really the adult in the house. She takes care of everything–including her parents–and works as a waitress to make ends meet. When her parents are kidnapped by foxes, Madeline starts out to discover where they are and rescue them but her detective Uncle falls into a coma (something he has been looking forward to) and Madeline doesn’t know where to turn. Then she meets Mr. and Mrs. Rabbit who have decided that their newest passion is to be detectives and they take her case pro bono (that means for free).
Fancy Nancy is growing up and so are her readers. Kids who are growing out of the Fancy Nancy picture books and leveled readers will be thrilled to see this new series of chapter books featuring all of the characters from the previous books by Jane O’Connor. O’Connor’s sweet, funny text is paired well with Robin Preiss-Glasser’s illustrations once again in this story.
I have never heard of these books- but I like the idea of reading them to get an idea of what people were thinking at the time they were written. Thanks for sharing.
~Jess
Fun review. I'm fascinated by the USO and canteens.
Yes, I like the idea of revisiting the past to see what was done, how and why, a good way to learn new things and avoid past mistakes, I think.
Thanks, Joy. I think USOs and Canteens are interesting, too. Sometimes I like to watch the old movies like Hollywood Canteen on TMC just for the fun of it.