The Secret Guests

I have to admit, I wasn't delighted and charmed by this one like I thought I would be. The premise sounded good: during World War II, the King and Queen of England spirit the princesses off to Ireland where they will be (supposedly) safer than London. The girls are accompanied by a few bodyguards and police are monitoring the estate where they are staying. I'm not sure what I didn't like about it, to be honest. It didn't seem terribly well fleshed out, none of the characters (except for Princess Margaret) were fully developed and interesting. There was some sort of IRA plot I didn't really follow.
It probably wasn't the author's fault. I think I just wasn't in the mood for this one.

Ride the Devil's Herd; Freaky in Fresno; A State at Any Cost

Bet you can't tell how I spent my long weekend!
Three books that could not have been more different, but I enjoyed them all.
First up, "Ride the Devil's Herd" by John Boessenecker, about Wyatt Earp and his posse who took on the worst outlaw gang the West had ever seen: a group of anywhere from 100-220+ (accounts differ as to the numbers) men who murdered and robbed their way through the Wild West. The official law was so ineffectual nothing could be done to stop these desperadoes, until Wyatt and his brothers came to town. The Earp boys weren't saints by any means, but they did the job the lawmakers couldn't do.

Cousins Lana and Ricki used to be best friends, but since Lana has started her online blog about makeup tips and Ricki has been working hard to keep the local drive-in theater from going under, the two girls haven't spent that much time together. Their Aunt May gifts them a vintage pink convertible to share, in the hopes it will bring the girls closer together. Lana wants the car for a big Digifest in L.A., the same night Ricki wants it for the Skylark's grand re-opening. While fighting over the car in the parking lot of the drive-in, something...freaky...happens. The girls wake up the next morning in each other's bodies. They have to work together to figure out a way to switch back in order to make their respective big events. It was super fun and silly, but also quite charming.

David Ben-Gurion was the first Prime Minister of the newly created Israel. He moved to Palestine as a young man and was instrumental in helping create the country. It was an interesting look at a very complex man.

American Tabloid

Not a library book! One I own. But, it's not Trixie, so I'm counting it as a win.
I love James Ellroy. I've seen him speak twice, once at the library where I work (I tried to flirt with him, it didn't work. C'est la vie). He's a dynamic speaker.
At any rate, "American Tabloid" is the first in his Underworld USA trilogy. It was marvelous. It covers 1958-1963, when President Kennedy is assassinated, and features a lot of historical characters. Such fun.

Freedom Libraries

Finally, a library book!
It was so sad, though, it made me cry. During the Civil Rights Era, volunteers gathered up donated books and went down to poor Southern states to establish libraries for African Americans, since of course they weren't allowed in the "white" libraries, and the states couldn't afford to build them decent libraries. These brave volunteers were attacked, mocked, beaten, and in a few extreme cases, killed, simply for letting black people read and providing them with books. The Freedom Libraries didn't last long, but they definitely made an impact.

Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Uninvited Guest; Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Midnight Marauder

All right! Who's ready for a wedding at the Wheelers'?
Everyone, including some weird old lady no one has ever heard of before!
Here's a hypothetical: an old woman calls up, demanding an invitation to your wedding. Neither you nor your fiance have any idea who she is. Do you:
A. Tell the old bat to bugger off
B. Invite her not only to the wedding but also your bridal shower
If you answered A, you clearly haven't been paying attention to how things work in Trixie land (so the title is actually misleading--she was invited. No one had any idea who she was, though. Spoiler: she wasn't even a she).
Jim's cousin Juliana is marrying her Dutch boyfriend, Hans. Trixie's cousin Hallie is in town, and she and Trixie mix it up a lot (they really don't like each other. I kind of don't blame Trixie on this one, Hallie seems like a pest). Bobby is acting super weird all of a sudden, and Dan's old New York City gang is hanging around, causing trouble, and Dan disappears (I love how the gang members wear cowboy boots and Stetsons. Badass). Diana's family is robbed of their living room furniture. Bikes, trikes, and other wheeled conveyances are disappearing at an alarming rate. There was a lot of stuff going on in this book.

I really do need to finish my library books, though. Seriously.
First, the high school is vandalized. Wimpy's is robbed. Crimpers department store is threatened, all by someone calling themselves the "Midnight Marauder". The townsfolk blame the teenagers, because obviously, who else but a teenager would call themselves a "marauder"? That's such a hip, cool, teenage term.
Clearly.
Mart is acting weird. He's stopped eating! Gleeps!
Turns out the marauder was an antiques dealer who wanted Grandpa Crimpers jewelry box.
Pretty elaborate scheme to get a jewelry box, if you ask me, but hey, what do I know? I had to look up what "marauder" meant the first 5 or 6 times I read this book, because I couldn't remember.

Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Castaway Children; Trixie Belden and the Gatehouse Mystery

Oh gleeps. Instead of reading my library books, I reread two of my favorite (after Glen Road, of course) Trixie books.
Trixie and the gang find a baby in Reddy's doghouse after a sudden summer thunderstorm. The kids name the baby Moses Bobwhite and argue over who gets to wake up in the middle of the night to feed the baby and change his dirty diapers, as teenagers do. The rest of the Bob-Whites basically move into Crabapple Farm so they can take turns taking care of the baby. Somehow Mr. and Mrs. Belden don't seem to mind.
At any rate, the police actually ask for Trixie and Honey's help in finding the baby's older brother, Davy. Seems Davy thought his parents were going to sell him and his baby brother at an auction, so he ran away. The parents are getting threatening ransom notes. It was a fun one, even if the kids have a really close call in the end.

"The Gatehouse Mystery" is the first one with Mart and Brian (hooray!), back from summer camp. Trixie and Honey find a diamond in the abandoned gatehouse on the Wheeler's property and decide to do the sensible thing and keep it while trying to track down the no doubt extremely dangerous criminal who stole it. Trixie is immediately suspicious of two new employees on the Wheeler estate: the gardener and the chauffeur, Dick. She and Honey finally let the boys in on their secret, and being the responsible older brothers they are they agree that it would be best if they caught the criminal themselves rather than get the police involved. Of course poor Jim nearly gets killed, but hey, small price to pay for solving the mystery yourselves.

Wife After Wife

I have a thing about King Henry VIII. I've read everything (fiction and nonfiction) that I can get my hands on. A few weeks ago, one of the review journals had a two page spread on Henry VIII fiction, and this book was on there, so I immediately snatched it up. It was brilliant and clever, I really enjoyed it.
Set in modern times (starting in the mid-1980s and finishing up in 2018) Henry Rose is head of a giant media corporation. He's young, rich, devastatingly handsome, and married to an absolute saint named Katie. Katie is a devout Catholic who wants a big family and is heartbroken when she suffers multiple miscarriages. Henry strays from the marriage bed, having a bastard son named Henry with a barmaid and starting an affair with the wife of a friend, Merry, before he meets Merry's sister, Ana. Ana is chic, intelligent, and not willing to be another notch on Henry's bedpost. She wants all or nothing, but Katie won't give Henry a divorce. The book covers all six of Henry's marriages in turn, but the best parts were with Katie and Ana. I had great fun figuring out who everyone was (some were really obvious, but not all of them). The best part is she's written a sequel about Henry and Ana's daughter, Eliza. Ooh, fun! Can't wait.

Trixie Belden and the Mystery Off Glen Road

I know, I reread this one ALL THE TIME. There's a good reason: it makes me laugh. I really do love it.
The Bob-Whites clubhouse is destroyed in a hurricane. The repairs will cost around $50, the exact amount Brian has saved to buy a secondhand jalopy from Mr. Lytell. Brian, being all honorable, donates the $50 to buy the supplies. Trixie can't bear to see him lose out on buying the car, so she convinces her parents she's got a crush on Honey's cousin, Ben Riker, who is coming to stay at the Manor House over Thanksgiving, and wanting to look more feminine to attract his attention, asks for her diamond ring out of the bank safe. Mr. Belden finally, reluctantly, agrees and Trixie gives it to Mr. Lytell for security against his car. The Bob-Whites are going to spend the week being gamekeepers on Mr. Wheeler's estate, and once they earn the $50, she will give it to Mr. Lytell, who will give Brian his car and Trixie back her ring. Easy, right? No, of course not. Her brothers and Jim flat out refuse to believe she'd go for a drip like Ben and give her nothing but grief about it. And of course she now doesn't have the ring to wear when she threw such a huge fuss about having it, so she has to borrow a fake from Honey. While the girls are patrolling the game preserve, they spot evidence of a poacher. Some of the best lines of the whole series are in this book.

Big Lies in a Small Town

I figured I should probably try to get through some of my library books, because they will *eventually* want them back :)
I've read a few other books by Diane Chamberlain. This one wasn't bad, but there was a major plot hole that bugged me.
Morgan is in prison for driving while under the influence and crippling a young woman. She is visited by the daughter of a famous artist, Jesse Williams, who recently passed away, and her attorney. Jesse stated in his will that he wanted his new art gallery to open in Edenton, North Carolina with an old mural painted by an artist named Anna Dale restored, and he wanted Morgan to do the restoration. Morgan is amazed that Jesse knew who she was, and also knows she's not up to the task or restoring a mural, she never even finished art school. But it's a way out of prison, so Morgan takes it. The story is told in alternating points of view between Morgan in the present and Anna in 1940 as she was painting the mural.
Here's the thing that bugged me: Morgan is naturally curious about Anna, who supposedly lost her mind while painting the mural and then vanished off the earth. She goes to the library repeatedly to look for Anna in the newspapers and finds nothing. Then, in Anna's sections, we find out she murdered a man in self-defense and went on the run. While hiding out, she learns that she's been "front page news" for over a month. Why didn't Morgan run across *that* information when she was searching the newspaper? I know, it's a minor thing, but it would have been easy enough to not have Morgan go look at the newspaper if you wanted to hold back that plot twist until it happened.