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Several mysteries wrapped together in one novel - an endangered child, a dead shepherd, missing sheep, and endangered badgers!
Set during a key crossroads in the life of childrens' author Beatrix Potter in England's Lake District, this series features both umans and naimals in its cast of characters and is quite charming. Gentle spirit in it, too, which is just right for a cozy mystery!
This is the first book in a series of mysteries that feature childrens' writer Beatrix Potter as the sleuth. Set in the Lake District, they take place on and around Potter's beloved Hill Top Farm and the nearby villages. The cast of characters has both people and animals!
I was not sure how this would work, but I was charmed by the resulting novel. Beatrix Potter is herself at a cross roads of her life, learning and growing stronger as a person, and quite interesting as a result. The animals were OK, talking to each other but not the humans. The English society, in the early Edwardian Era, is itself at a crossroads where change is coming.
The tone of the mystery itself is quite gentle. I guess I have coem to want to my cozies to be...cozy... rather than hardcore crime dramas.
Checking out this book from the local library made me really happy I stoppped spending money on this series.
Among other reasons, it suffers from something many mystery series set in small towns (in this case a small town in Virginia) do - the victims and criminals all come from the new characters. And if you have spent numerous books with the main cast of characters it jars to suddenly hear about good friends from the tiny little town that you have never heard of before (or huge new interests that have never been mentioned before this book and will never be mentioned again, like women's collegiate basketball in a book earlier in the series). In addition - Crozette must have a higher per capita murder rate that Baltimore or Chicago or any large city you could name. Give me a break.
On top of all that, the author decided a few books back that this mystery series makes a great platform for her to preach about social issues and politics. YUCK. Just yuck. Makes the books nearly unreadable for me.
Throw in some hardcore prejudice and mockery of larger sized people in this book, and you have a pretty awful read.
Life in the tiny English village of Finch is starting to get a bit stale for Lori Shepherd.
What could make life more interesting than a summer long Ren Faire in some farm fields right near her charming cottage?
But are the potentially fatal accidents at the Faire really accidents - or murder attempts? Is Lori's formidable imagination running away with her again, or is there really danger?
Another gentle mystery from Atherton, filled with the spirit of reconciliation and mercy.
When the local squire (and good friend) of Lori Shepherd turns out to secretly be a Viscount and heir to a wealthy Earl, she and her husband (who is the Earl's lawyer) attend a house party at the ancestral estate.
Since the Earl and Viscount have been estranged for decades, the Earl is in poor health, and there is a huge estate with tons of money at stake, tension runs very high.
Strangely enough, there seem to be murder attempts not focused on the Viscount as one might think, but on his eldest male cousin. But why him?
Lori investigates...
Another gentle mystery from Atherton.
Things I liked about this book:
well developed and interesting magic system based around the art of wine making
coming of age story of Jerzy, a very sympathetic character
interesting mythology and history for the world
hints of heavy duty trouble on the way
things I wish could have been improved upon:
I felt the plot had only begun to get going as the book ended. This is not so much a stand alone self reliant story as much as it is an installment of a longer work (with the rest not available to read yet).
I am going to lump these two books, the first two novels of a fantasy series, into one entry, as I did not particularly enjoy them, and do not want to dwell upon them!
I have not run into a main character in a book (of any genre) this irritating in quite some time. The only one I can think of off the top of my head that might be MORE irritating is Anita Blake, and that is saying quite a bit!
Opal is supposedly a powerful mage - but she spends all of her time being kidnapped (usually a result of something dumb she has done), being imprisoned (usually the result of something stupid she has done), being tricked (because she's not bright enough to ever figure anything out), and whining, whining, whining. When she is not whining, she engages in constant self-criticism.
If you ever wanted to read a book where you wish to be able to reach into the pages and shake some sense and intelligence into a character, this might be the one!
This is a coming of age story of a girl named Theo, who lives on a planet named Delgado, home to a major university. She is rather stifled on her home world, and learns all sorts of things abour herself while traveling off world with her mother.
While I liked both Theo and her father a great deal, I could not stand Delgado (a nanny state run amok in attempting to keep all residents perfectly safe at all times), and could not warm up to Theo's mother (an academic of Delgado), either. When you end up rooting for the bad guys to win so that Delgado can get the good shake up it so obviously needs, something has gone awry in the story.
I have read a couple of first rate dectective noir/fantasy crossovers in the past year or two, such as Mieville's The City & The City and Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S), and I am glad to report that this novel fits right in with the weirdness, the darkness - and the excellence.
Detective John Finch has been charged by the alien overlords of his native city of Ambergris to solve a really strange double homicide. He travels the dangerous streets of the (literally) decaying once great city, searching for answers. And the trail seems to lead to both the past AND the future.
I'm not sure what I can reveal, given that the plot is rather intricate and it would be very easy to give away a huge spoiler, something which I do not want to do!
But rest assured, the book is well worth a read if you are in the mood for something unusual with a dark edge (or two or three) to it, and if you want to experience a mind blowingly odd setting.
This short book (with large print and large margins) contains some Sookie Stackhosue short stories, all of which have already been priinted elsewhere.
There are two that lead into important subplots or plot strands in the main series of novels - one deals with Sookie's fairy relatives, and the other with how Sookie finds out about her cousin Hadley, and what Hadley had been up to in New Orleans for the past few years. As far as I can tell, the other stories are fun for fans to read, but not essential to the novels.
While I enjoyed it, I also feel it might have been overpriced given that there are only a handful of stories, and I had already read half of them in other anthologies.
I have enjoyed every book I have ever read by this author, and this one was no exception.
It follows the lives of a group of Western hostages from the time of their rescue from captivity to the time when the world as they knew it is completely ended via flooding.
The flooding goes beyond that of global warming - far beyond it - as underground oceans open up and spill their contents into the existing oceans.
Good bye London! Good bye New York! Good bye entire low elevation countries!
As surviving humans gather into high elevation areas, they come up with ingenious ways to survive - giving notes of hope (as well as horror) into an increasingly hopeless picture.
So this is the way the world ends...
sequel to The Outback Stars and The Stars Down Under
Chief Terry Myell sacrificed himself to protect humanity from an alien invasion and became a god of the Australian pantheon.
Now he is stuck in an endless time loop, visiting his wife again and again and again in various stages of her life. She does not believe in him, and he cannot break out of the loop to further save her or humanity from a new pressing invasion force of the aliens.
Myell must find his real wife - several months pregnant - out of all of the copies in all of the timelines -and he must find a way for both her and all of mankind to survive the upcoming savage invasion.
Even if that means sacrificing himself anew...
Another solid novel in the series, combining military science fiction with Australian mythology.
sequel to The Outback Stars
Chief Terry Myell and Lt. Commander Jodenny Scott are trying to make a go of marriage, even though one is an officer and one is enlisted.
A secret group within Team Space has other plans for the duo, however. Besides space travel, people can also travel from world to world using ancient constructs called Wondjina Spheres - and Team Spce belives that Myell and Scott are a key to understanding the mysterious structures - and plans on making them part of the secret team studying them whether they wish to be or not.
What Team Space is not counting on is that humanity is about to lose its monopoly on interstellar travel in both space and in the spheres - and that the competition will be deadly enemies with more advanced technology.
Another solid novel combining military science fiction with Australian mythology from Sandra McDonald.
science fiction
Lt. Jodenny Scott is a great hero - and carries the scars, both on her body in her psyche, to prove that.
Her new assignment is on the Aral Sea, where she is supposed to whip the subperforming Underway Stores department into shape. But she never counted on the involvement of some of her enlisted in murderous & traitorous plots, on falling deeply in love with one of her men, or in becoming a hero again.
The author mixes military science fiction with Austrailian aboriginal mythology to good effect. Being a former US naval officer herself, she captures both the boredom and occasional terror of shipboard life quite well, as well as the tension between officers and enlisted, and of people attracted to each other who cannot be together under naval regulations. All in all, a good debut novel.
This is a history which follows the lives of the three legitimate children (Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward) of Henry VIII, and their interactions following his death, as each ruled Britain in turn. The brief and tragic reign of little Lady Jane Grey (who might have been as great a religious fanatic as Mary Tudor had she lived and ruled) is also covered.
You can see how Mary, who started out as a decent and kind human being, became twisted by the events of her life into someone who became a monster. You can see how Edward might have become one if he had lived. And you can see how Elizabeth quietly learned from all of the mistakes of her father and siblings, to become one of Britain's greatest monarchs - even though she was often hard pressed to merely survive.
Interesting stuff, of a royal family who only ruled for three generations (Henry VII, Henry VIII, Henry VIII's three children and their cousin) but who changed the world.
history, Tudors
So sue me, even though I know that a lot of the history in the first season is complete garbage (like the early childhood death of Henry Fitzroy and the marriage of Margaret Tudor to the King of Portugal, neither of which ever happened), I am still a fan of the TV show TheTudors.
So I have decided to reread some histories of the era to refresh my memory.
This particular book is quite valuable in that it explores more of the daily life of Henry VIII and his court. While it certainly has content on his marriages and children, it also has great tidbits on things like food preparation, bathing (Henry had both hot and cold running water for his bath chambers in some of his palaces and liked to stay very clean), clothing, sports, and all sorts of other things important for daily life.
It really is fascinating - given how many dishes were served at feasts (even though the leftovers were often given to the poor), it is a wonder that everyone wasn't waddling around like butterball turkeys!
Great general information about the court and daily life that often does not enter into histories written about that era.
Agatha Raisin is about to marry her neighbor, James Lacey, but some problems come up.
Agatha has told everyone that her first husband is dead - and she does believe this, as he was a hardore alcoholic. But she has never acually bothered to verify his death.
When he (the husband) shows up at her wedding ceremony, her fiance dumps her (and who would not under the circumstances - who would want ot be married to a liar of that magnitude)?
The first husband then turns up murdered, and Agatha and James are the primary suspects, and they end up having to investigate the crime together.
The plot seemed promising - but I ended up heartily disliking both the lying Agatha (and her constant moping over the consequences of her lies and laziness in not checking on the circumstances of her first husband while planning on her second marriage) and the cold James. By the end of the book I literally did not care what happened to either of them.
This is a unique and crazily creative novel set on an alternate Earth in an alternate universe where everything is run by clockwork like springs.
An archangel appears to an impoverished young clockmaker's apprentice in New Haven, and tells him that the Earth needs to have its mainspring wound up (something which must happen about every 2,000 years) or the Earth (and all life thereon) will die.
Needless to say, most people do not believe the kid (named Hethor), and his attempts to find the key and the mainspring itself are very difficult. As he travels the world (often by zeppelin), he has one wild adventure after another.
Creative and different, this is a complete story which can be read as a stand alone, though I think that the author does have other books set on the clockwork Earth.
Grace is a Latina car mechanic who lives in a city in the US desert Southwest. She is into tatoos and restoring old classic street racing cars, especially Fords.
John Burns is haunted by a tragedy in his past that he just cannot seem to get over.
When the two of them meet on a Halloween night at a music hall, it is immediate true love for both.
Unfortunately for them, they have met two weeks too late...
I am unsure of how much more of the plot I can reveal, as going any further (even though I have not gotten much past the jacket blurb) would be getting into huge spoilers.
But I can say that both Grace and John are likable characters, and you cannot help but root for them to get past their difficulties and somehow find a way to get together which will not involve a major tragedy.
And it is great to read an urban fantasy that does not involve wild monkey sex with either werewolves OR vampires, LOL.
Ned is a Canadian teen spending a few weeks with his father (a professional photographer) in the south of France. While touring a Cathedral he meets a cool girl - and a very odd stranger.
He slowly but surely gets sucked into the orbit of an ancient and accursed love triangle which has cost thousands of lives over thousands of years.
This book is a sort of sequel to the author's Fionavar Tapestry, but can certainly be read as a stand alone as well. Two important Fionavar characters are in the book, and the powers one of them carried is finally explained - but I do not think that you have to have read the earlier trilogy to get the gist of the plot of this book.
As always, Kay's prose is first rate and beautiful, and while the story begins slowly, it does suck you in. I have never understood why he is not more popular among fantasy fans, as his writing really is lovely.
