September's Books

Isabel's Bed is another funny and clever novel from Eleanor Lipman, wno always hits the mark with her average women who end up finding Mr. Right in unlikely places. Harriet Mahoney is a forty-something would-be writer who get dumped by her live-in boyfriend of twelve years. He runs a bagel shop and wants her to vacate their apartment, for he has found his soul mate in a younger woman. Desperate, Harriet answers an ad in the New York Review of Books to share a cottage on Cape Cod with a woman who is looking for a ghostwriter to writer her biography. The woman is Isabel Krug, a woman with a scandalous past. Problem is, Isabel won't tell the truth. While Harriet is discovering what Isabel is hiding, she also discovers her own ambitions.

Paradise Valley by CJ Box
Big Woods by May Cobb
The Reference Librarians Bible by Sowards and Chenoweth, editors
Raspberry Danish Murder by Joanne Fluke
Winter and Night by SJ Rozan
Deader Homes and Gardens by Joan Hess
My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman
The Dearly Departed by Elinor Lipman
Isabel's Bed by Elinor Lipman
Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen

The Books of August

The Ladies Man by Elinor Lipman

Thirty years ago Harvey Nash failed to show up at his engagement party, jilting Adele Dobbins. Adele shortly got over Harvey, chalking him up to a heartless cad. Adele and her two sisters, Lois and Kathleen, shared a townhouse, joking about their “spinsterhood.” One cold April night Harvey Nash rang their doorbell. He has remade himself into Nash Harvey, now a successful advertising jingle writer—and still unmarried. Hoping to make amends, he asks to see Adele, but she refuses to see him. Adele is interested in her boss at the public tv station where she works. Kathleen, who owns an upscale lingerie boutique, goes for coffee with Lorenz, the building’s doorman. Divorced Lois hopes that Harvey really left Adele because he was secretly in love with her, and he is returning to finally declare his love. Clever and witty, Lipman’s book’s are populated with characters you would like to have as friends and relatives.

 


The Family Man by Elinor Lipman
The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman
Run for Your Life by Mark Cucuzzella
The President is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson
The View from Penthouse B by Elinor Lipman
Under a Dark Sky by Lori Rader-Day
Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry
Clam Wake by Mary Daheim
Gangsterland: a novel by Tod Goldberg
The Highway by CJ Box
Badlands by CJ Box
The Way Men Act by Elinor Lipman
The Bloody Black Flag: a Spider John mystery by Steve Goble
The Devil's Wind: a Spider John mystery by Steve Goble

Thinking About Aretha Franklin

I'll always regret I never saw Aretha Franklin perform live, but it makes me happy to watch her performance as Mrs. Murphy in "The Blues Brothers." That's Aretha's sister Carolyn in the chorus, wearing the striped shirt.

Aretha Franklin "Think"

July's Books

Feliz Navidead by Ann Myers

Chef Rita LaFitte works at Tres Amigas Café in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This Christmas season her mother is visiting from Illinois, uneasy with the different traditions and the spicy foods. She is especially upset that her teenage granddaughter Celia is playing a devil in the holiday pageant. It seems like her fears may have come to pass when the man playing one of the other devils is murdered during the first performance.

Rita’s ex-husband Manny is the cop investigating the crime and her current boyfriend Jake is a lawyer defending the top suspect. There is a lot of local color and atmosphere, and a subplot about missing antiquities. There are five recipes included, and after reading a book, you will want to make a batch of the bizcohitos. Readers who enjoy culinary mysteries will savor this spicy mystery.

 

Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains by Catriona McPherson
Beware Beware by Steph Cha
The Day of the Dead by Nicci French
The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter: a memoir by Holly Robinson
Back of Beyond by CJ Box
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Mining for Justice: a Chloe Ellefson mystery by Kathleen Ernst
Feliz Navidead by Ann Myers
A Major Production! by Thomas Sawyer
Murder Has a Motive by Frances Duncan
Then She Found Me by Elinor Lipman

India Gray

India Gray: historical fiction by Sujata Massey

Two novellas and two short stories, all set in India, span a time frame from 1919 to the early 21^st century. My favorite was the novella “The Ayah’s Tale,” in which a teenaged Bengali girl leaves school to become a domestic in a wealthy British family household in 1920s Bengal. She is cheated out of her wages and time off by the unfeeling mother of the family, who spends her time socializing and carrying on an affair. Menakshi is in charge of the three older children, two boys and a girl. She entertains them by making up stories for them, and the middle child becomes fond of her. They are oblivious to the fact that she has a life outside of their family.

“Outnumbered at Oxford” is the second novella, which takes place at Oxford in 1919. Two young woman, one an Indian and one British, solve a mystery when they set out to find a missing Indian servant who is accused of stealing some valuable mathematical papers.

“India Gray” is a short story set during World War II; an Indian woman is volunteering at a military hospital. Will the patients trust her when they learn her husband is British? In “Bitter Tea,” a teenaged girl in 21^st century Pakistan attempts a rescue of a friend, who is being threatened by a fundamentalist cleric.

Evocative settings and time periods. Massey’s main characters are all exceptional women, strong in different ways.