Month: September 2024

Alan Bradley: What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust

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Flavia DeLuce #11

If you haven’t read this series, and I must admit that I have not, you are missing a treat. Flavia is the world’s most precocious 11-year-old chemist and poison expert. A British orphan with very adult British attitudes in 1950s England, Flavia nonchalantly deals with post-war rationing, dead bodies, poisons, spies, kidnapping, and murder – along with a couple of surprises I won’t spoil.

The plot revolves around the death of a neighbor, Major Greyleigh, who apparently died from eating poison mushrooms cooked by Flavia’s housekeeper, Mrs. Mullet. Surely she wouldn’t murder someone, even accidentally! Major Greyleigh was once a hangman. Could he have been murdered by a family member of someone he killed in the line of duty? Investigating the murder leads Flavia to a nearby American airbase with unexpected and surprising complications. read more

Tasha Alexander: Death by Misadventure

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Lady Emily #18

I’ll freely admit that I love this series.  Of course some of them are even yummier than others, and this latest one might be one of the most delicious.  The books follow Lady Emily and her dishy husband, Colin, as they investigate crimes all over the globe, and although Colin has a mysterious secret arrangement with her majesty’s government, it’s often Lady Emily’s intuition and intelligence that solves the case.  Another standard element in the books is a dual timeline, with events from the past connecting or relating to events in the present in some form or fashion, with part of the mystery consisting of figuring out how. read more

November Book Club: Vanessa Lillie

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Vanessa Lillie, author of last year’s Blood Sisters, will be joining our November book club via zoom on Sunday, November 17th at 2 p.m.  This is a wonderful first in a series novel featuring a Cherokee woman who works for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  She lives in Rhode Island but is called back to her Native Oklahoma, where she encounters ghosts of her past as well as a wall of family resentment and hostility.  She’s an archeologist, so she’s been called back to examine a skull that’s been found with her ID in it’s jaws.  This was a wonderful, textured, emotional read, one of my favorites of 2023.  My review can be found here.  All are welcome.  Copies (paperbacks available after October 1) are available on our website.  If you’d like the zoom link, message me on facebook or email me at store (at) auntagathas.com. read more

Matthew Becker: Run

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Debut

This book is by a former customer of ours, who, as a kid, used to shop with his family at our store.  He and his brother gobbled up thrillers like they were candy, and I’m happy to say, Becker has now written an excellent one of his own.  I have rules when I’m reading a thriller, and if they don’t meet them, I always feel a lack.  They are: upping the ante; the seemingly unsolvable problem; the twist; specifity; and pace.

Becker ups the ante right off the bat.  Ben and Veronica, a happy, seemingly ideal couple, are suddenly split apart when Veronica disappears after a mass shooting in a Washington DC park. Immediately, the reader is on Ben’s side as he tries to find his wife, the only clue being a mysterious text she’d sent him out of the blue before her disappearance. There’s the unsolvable problem: where is Veronica, and why has she disappeared? read more

Ragnar Jonasson: Death at the Sanitorium

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Author Jonasson, an Icelandic fan of Agatha Christie from a child, had read all the available books translated by the time he was 17.  At that point, craving more, he simply went to the publisher and asked if he himself could translate more of her previously untranslated titles.  They agreed, and Jonasson was treated to a master class in plot, structure, character and setting as he did his work.  As evidenced by his own books, the lessons certainly took.  Like Christie’s, his books are perfectly structured, have memorably distinctive characters and always feature an evocative setting.  Oh, and they are also short, another valuable lesson he gleaned from Agatha. read more