Married with Children vs. the World

 

I loved "Married...with Children". I watched it when it first aired when I was a kid with my dad, who really loved it. Rewatching it as an adult I realize how much of the raunchy humor went over my 10 year old head, but I found it to still be absolutely hilarious. 

It's hard to remember a time when there were really only three major channels with some local programming. A brand new network was a big deal. Fox launched with "Married...with Children" as its flagship series. It wasn't an instant hit, but since Fox didn't have anything else going for it, they kept it on the air. Ironically, an irate woman in Michigan who protested the show and threatened to boycott the sponsors helped launch its success. People tuned it after hearing the outcry and found it funny, so they kept watching. I attended a sub-par, Christian in name only private elementary school, and one day our teacher had us write protest letters to Fox regarding "Married...with Children". She wanted us to put how disgusting and inappropriate it was and how we would boycott all the sponsors. Since I loved it (none of my other classmates were allowed to watch it, so they didn't know), I instead wrote a glowing letter telling Fox how great it was and hoped it would stay on the air forever. My teacher was not thrilled, but hey, it's still America, last time I checked. If you don't like the show, change the station. If you don't like the book, put it down and get a different one. But you can't take away other peoples' rights to watch/listen/read whatever they want. Can you tell this is a topic I'm pretty passionate about, especially with all that's going on in libraries right now? 😊

You With the Sad Eyes

 

This one was sad 😢I really feel for her. Her life has been rough. 

I loved "Married with Children", I used to watch it with my Dad when I was a kid. I thought Kelly (Christina's character) was so pretty. It's heartbreaking to hear how she thought she was overweight and "plain". She's anything but plain! My goodness. 

Christina grew up in Laurel Canyon with her mom. Her dad left when she was a baby but they ended up having a good relationship before he passed away. Her mom had abusive boyfriends, she was abused, she had abusive boyfriends, the whole nine yards. 

She had a double mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer, and then the MS diagnosis came. It sounds like she really struggles with it and is in constant pain. 

It never fails to amaze me what human beings are capable of withstanding. You think we'd break, but the human spirit and will to live is strong in so many. Of course some folks do break, and that's tragic. It was a tough one to read but I couldn't put it down. 

All the Ever Afters; Alice; Accidental Brothers; Play of Death; Robin

There are, as we know, two sides to every story. We all know about poor Cinderella and her wicked stepmother and ugly stepsisters, but her stepmother, Agnes, is here to tell her side of the story. Agnes had to leave home as a young girl to go work as a laundress in the manor house after her mother dies. She was clever and pretty, and managed to finagle a better position for herself at a nearby abbey. There she meets and falls in love with a messenger boy named Fernan, and becomes pregnant. Forced to care for her, Fernan takes her to a nearby village and rents her a room in an alehouse, and even though they don't marry they live together as man and wife. She has three daughters and learns to brew ale, and takes over the alehouse when the woman who owns it dies. It's a hard life, but Agnes is content with her lot. Then Fernan dies of the pox, the same pox that scars who middle daughter, Matilda, and kills her youngest, Catherine. The alehouse reverts back to the abbey and Agnes is forced to return to the manor house to be nursemaid to the new baby, Ella. Parted from her daughters, Agnes does the best she can to be a good nurse and later, stepmother, to the strange little girl. It was charming and well written.

It took me forever to finish this biography of Prince Philip's mother, Princess Alice of Greece. Not because it wasn't interesting, but because everyone has the same name, and it was really hard to keep track of all the different Victorias, Alices, and Louises. Couldn't someone name their girl Betsy or Marilyn or something? Geez. At any rate, Alice was born at Windsor, her mother Victoria was a favorite of her grandmother, Queen Victoria (see what I mean?). She met Andrew, a prince of Greece, and they married and Alice moved to Greece. She was born with hearing issues but learned to compensate for her deafness by becoming a proficient lip reader. She and Andrew were happy and she had four daughters before finally giving birth to Philip. The Greek country was in constant political turmoil, and Andrew's family was run out. The family fled, moving about Europe, staying with whichever relatives would put them up. Alice always considered Greece her home, and even though she and Andrew no longer lived together as man and wife, she returned whenever she could. She fed children during the war and nursed wounded, she even hid a Jewish family. Alice went through periods of tragic mental illness and lived in hospitals. She spent her last years in Buckingham Palace with her son and daughter in law and grandchildren, and many years after she died her final wish of being buried in Jerusalem came to pass. Fascinating life.

I read one of Nancy Segal's other books on twins, "Born Together, Reared Apart", and it was quite interesting. I don't know why twins fascinate me so much, I don't even know any twins, but I've always been curious about them, and apparently it's not uncommon. The case Segal writes about in this book is like something out of a movie or a work of fiction: two sets of identical twin boys were born in Colombia, and one boy from each set was switched. William went home to rural La Paz with Wilbur instead of going home with Jorge to Bogota. Carlos ended up with Jorge instead of going home to La Paz. Both sets grew up thinking they were fraternal, and their upbringing was very different: Jorge and Carlos had an education and got to go to college, while William and Wilbur left school at a young age to work on their family farm. A young woman who worked with Jorge went into the butcher shop where William worked and was stunned by the resemblance to her coworker. At the age of twenty-five the four men met up and the twins were reunited with their identical brothers. It's an amazing story, and it's rather scary to think of how common it is that babies go home with the wrong parents. Identical twins are sometimes discovered, but what about singles? At any rate, it was riveting.

I've really enjoyed all of Oliver Potzsch's Hangman's Daughter series. As usual, this one was well written and covered a lot of territory. Simon, Magdalena's husband, takes their oldest boy, Peter, to a town twenty miles away so he can study with his former teacher, Georg. As the grandson of the hangman, Peter isn't allowed an education in his own hometown (it takes place in 1670). When Simon gets to the town, he discovers there's just been a grisly murder: the young man who was playing Jesus in the upcoming Passion Play was crucified. Since the town's doctor recently died and they haven't found a replacement yet, they ask Simon, who is a medicus, to investigate. 

And finally, the heartbreaking story of Robin Williams, and his life cut short. Like most people, I was heartbroken when I heard about Robin's suicide in 2014. Then the news came out that he was suffering from Parkinson's, and it made more sense. Still, terribly tragic. He brought so much joy and laughter to so many people throughout his 30+ years in show business. He actually had a pretty normal upbringing: his dad was a high level executive at Ford and his mother was a socialite. He had two older half-brothers from his parents' first marriages. He attended an elite boy's school before his dad moved the family from Detroit to California when he was a teen. Robin found his calling in acting and worked the stand up circuit before finding success when he was cast as Mork in an episode of "Happy Days". That led to the spin off that he starred in with Pam Dawber, and he spent the rest of his life working in film and TV. He married (three times) and had kids (three) and made many, many friends along the way who spoke kindly of him. It was touching and made me cry.

The Lost Tudor Princess; Who Gets the Drumstick?; Richard III; Did You Ever Have a Family

I was actually disappointed with Alison Weir's latest, "The Lost Tudor Princess". Normally her nonfiction reads like fiction and is very engaging, but this one was a slog. The longwinded descriptions of the garments that Henry VIII gave his niece didn't really help much, although I understood she was trying to tie in the clothing she owned in order to identify portraits, but it would have been so much easier to say: "the sitter in this painting is wearing a dress that matches the fabric Henry gave Margaret in 1544" or whatever. At any rate, the subject matter was definitely interesting: Henry VIII's niece by his older sister, Margaret Tudor, Margaret Douglas, was born and lived in England, married Scottish nobility, and had eight children. Six of them died young but two of the boys grew to adulthood and married, one having a son, James, who became king of Scotland as James the VI and king of England as James I, and her other son fathered Arbella, who had a strong claim to the British throne as well. It's a shame it wasn't more enjoyable.

As a kid I loved the movie "Yours, Mine, and Ours" (the original with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda, not the travesty of a remake). I never knew the mother, Helen Beardsley, wrote a book but once I found out she did I had to read it. It was very sweet and a bit sappy, but a nice, quick read. The original movie didn't stray too far from the book, although apparently (at least according to Helen) all the kids were for their parents marrying, no one protested like in the film, and they moved into Frank's house, which they renovated and added onto. If you don't know the story, it's about a Navy widow with eight children who meets and falls in love with a Navy widower with ten kids. They marry and have two more kids together. It reminds me, of course, of the lovely Gilbreth family of "Cheaper by the Dozen".

David Horspool's "Richard III" was very even and unbiased. He took a fair look at the known facts about Richard III and laid them out for the reader to decide how to interpret them. It was very good, I enjoyed it, although he could have made it a bit easier on the reader by translating the original documents from their native spelling. Those were difficult to decipher and broke up the natural flow of the book to all of a sudden be confronted with a nearly foreign language. I greatly admire those scholars who spend so much time trying to read the handwriting of those letters and documents and figure them out. Lord knows I couldn't do it.

I had high expectations for Bill Clegg's "Did You Ever Have a Family". I read so many book reviews for work, and the buzz around this book before it was published was astronomical. I was expecting something quite magnificent. What I got was...well, a decent story, and I liked it, but I think I would have liked it more if I hadn't been aware of all the hype. On the morning of their wedding, Lolly and Will are killed in a house fire, along with Lolly's father and Lolly's mother's boyfriend, Luke. Lolly's mother June is the only survivor of the family and after the funeral she takes off. The book is not really about her journey, she ends up in a hotel on the West Coast, but more about the lives of the people around her and how they all end up intersected. It was a nice message about how even when we think we're alone we really aren't, but other than that I didn't get much out of it.

The Summer I Turned Pretty; Queen Elizabeth's Daughter; It's Not Summer Without You; We'll Always Have Summer; The Big Nowhere; King of the Weeds; Club Dead

 I really enjoyed Jenny Han's "The Summer I Turned Pretty". Belly (real name Isabel) spends every summer with her mom and her older brother Steven at a beach house with her mom's best friend Susannah and her two sons: Conrad and Jeremiah. Belly has had a crush on Conrad for years, but the boys have always treated her like the tag-along little sister until now. Belly is almost 16 and has bloomed into a beautiful young woman. Through flashbacks to previous summers, Belly shares her special moments with Conrad and Jeremiah. This summer is different. Susannah is dying. It was sweet and tender and I really enjoyed it.

"Queen Elizabeth's Daughter" by Anne Clinard Barnhill was pretty forgettable. Fictionalized life of Mary Shelton, a ward of Queen Elizabeth (and cousin), Elizabeth has brought her up, groomed her for a life of luxury and is disappointed when Mary falls in love with John Skydemore, a widower with five children. She forbids their marriage, but Mary defies her and weds John anyway. When Elizabeth finds out, she overreacts in typical Tudor fashion, banishing Mary from court and arresting John for treason and throwing him in the tower. Mary is able to beg forgiveness from the Queen and free John, but they never really have a life together, since the Queen insists Mary stay with her at court always. Like I said, pretty forgettable.

When I realized there were two more books after "The Summer I Turned Pretty", I was dying to read them. I was pretty disappointed, though. Neither one held the charm of the first. In the second one, "It's Not Summer Without You", Belly and Conrad have broken up after only about six months of long distance dating, after a disastrous prom. Conrad is pulling away as Susannah is dying, and after she dies he completely shuts down. Conrad disappears from school and Jeremiah enlists Belly's help in finding him. Of course he's at the summer house, which their father is threatening to sell now that his wife is dead. It just felt really forced and completely ridiculous for Conrad to treat Belly the way he did.

And then the last one, "We'll Always Have Summer", was just as bad. Belly has been dating Jeremiah, and they are at the same college together. Belly finds out he cheated on her over spring break and is devastated, but Jeremiah apologizes and proposes. They decide to get married in August at the beach house. Their parents are of course opposed to a marriage so young, but they go about planning it anyway. Conrad confesses to Belly the night before the wedding that he still loves her, and she realizes she's too confused about how she feels to marry Jeremiah. They call off the wedding and she ends up marrying Conrad a few years later. Yawn.

I'm going to see the great James Ellroy speak at the end of October, so I've been trying to finish the L.A. Quartet. I read the first one, "The Black Dahlia", years ago. The second one, "The Big Nowhere" was gritty and dark, classic Ellroy. A brutal murder has officer Danny Upshaw combing gay bars, looking for a middle aged man with a predilection for heroin. At the same time, a task force is being assembled to bring down the Communist menace, and Upshaw has been asked to go undercover to seduce one of the women involved to see if he can get some evidence. Whole lotta blood, death, cold hearted killings, and incest of the worst sort made this one a gore fest, and it was great.

I love Mickey Spillane. I miss Mickey Spillane. "King of the Weeds" was great fun. Before his war buddy Marcus Dooley died, he told Mike Hammer where he'd stashed the 89 billion dollars he'd stole from the mob. Now everyone's after Hammer, trying to figure out where the loot is at. Also, a 40 year old murder is being reopened, threatening Pat's career. He arrested (with some help from Mike) Rudy Olaf for the murder of several bums, but now Olaf's old friend Henry Brogan is copping to the kills, complete with the long lost murder weapon. Brogan is, conveniently, dying, and Hammer suspects Olaf has made a deal with him that he'll take care of his grandkids with the fat payout he's getting from the city for 40 years of wrongful imprisonment. Good stuff.

And finally, another Sookie reread. "Club Dead" by Charlaine Harris is the third book in the series. Bill is working on a mysterious project for the queen of Louisiana when he is kidnapped. Eric suspects the king of Mississippi and asks Sookie to go to Jackson with a werewolf bodyguard, Alcide, who has access to Club Dead, where vampires and werewolves hang out. Sookie goes with Alcide to find out what she can about where Bill might be being held, even though she is angry when she discovers he's been cheating on her with Lorena, a vampire, and is planning on leaving her. Sookie is injured in the club while saving the king of Mississippi's right hand lady, and Russell takes her back to his compound to be healed. While there Sookie finds out where Bill is at, rescues him, and gets to kill Lorena in the process before heading back to Bon Temps.

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man; Touching from a Distance

 

I'm a big fan of Paul Newman's movies. As a person...maybe not so much. No, I'm kidding. He did a lot of good in the world through charity. He just made some bad decisions and hurt people, but at least he was honest about it, unlike some people (cough, cough, Eric Clapton, cough). 

Paul led a very interesting life. He married young and had three children with his first wife, Jackie, at least one of which was conceived after he'd begun his affair with Joanne Woodward. After Jackie and Paul divorced, he and Joanne married and had three more kids together. He acted in and directed a bunch of movies and then in his later years started racing cars and put out the Newman's Own line of food products with the profits going to his various charities. Apparently the book was culled from interviews done with Paul and people close to him while they were still alive, in the late 80s and early 90s, but then Paul pulled the plug on the whole thing. It's too bad, I would have liked to have heard his perspective on his later years. 

I'm not quite sure what to say about "Touching from a Distance". I'm not a *huge* Joy Division fan (although I do love "Love Will Tear Us Apart"). Written by Deborah Curtis, Ian's wife, it was super short, just barely over 100 pages. Ian and Deborah met in their teens and started dating. Right away, there were giant red flags. Ian was dictating what she could and couldn't wear, forbade her to wear makeup, cut her off from all her friends. I'm literally screaming at her to RUN! Of course she didn't, she got engaged to him. Her parents threw them a party and he got super jealous when she danced with her uncle. And then to make things worse, after they got married they were dead broke and Deborah decided she wanted a baby, so they had one.

Good grief. 

Ian was diagnosed with epilepsy and suffered seizures frequently while the doctors adjusted his medication. Apparently some of his bandmates and friends blamed the medication for his suicide, but he talked his whole life about dying before he was out of his early twenties, so it sounds like it was more than the medicine. He might have been suffering from something much worse than epilepsy. It was a sad story about two very sad people and their terrible decisions. 

London Refrain; Underboss; Paris Encore; The Librarianist

 

I thoroughly enjoyed my long weekend, and I actually did get quite a lot accomplished, not just reading. But I did a lot of that too 😀

So the final three books of the Zion Covenant series were billed as "readers will finally know the fates of all their favorite characters". LIES. Instead of just telling us what happened to Jacob and Lori and Elisa and Murphy and everyone else, Thoene introduced a whole new cast of characters. I do not have the emotional energy to invest in yet *more* people, I'm sorry, I just don't. And they're all carbon copies of Elisa and Murphy. There's Mac, a cameraman reporter who falls for the lovely Eva, the woman Rachel gave her British passport to at the end of "Warsaw Requiem". Davey, a RAF pilot who falls for Annie, studying to be a nurse. Annie's brother, Trevor, is a sailor with the British Navy. Churchill becomes Prime Minister and England kind of enters the war, along with the French. Apparently all these folks show up in other series, which is all fine and well and good, but I must admit, the nonstop heartache in these books is really getting to me. I know it was a tragic war beyond all human comprehension, but making me care about more people who are doomed is just wrong. 

A few months ago I saw Sammy the Bull Gravano's story on a show called "Very Scary People" and I was fascinated. I'd heard of John Gotti, but not Sammy. 

Sammy was John's underboss. He killed a whole bunch of people but unlike John, he kept a low profile and tried not to be noticed. Unfortunately John was so carefree and didn't take proper measures to avoid implicating himself and Sammy ended up arrested, along with John and a couple of others from information gleaned from wiretaps. When Sammy heard John basically making him out to be the fall guy on the tapes, he turned and testified for the prosecution. At the time, Sammy was the highest ranking member of the Mob to do so. John went to jail and Sammy went into Witness Protection--for a time. He found it didn't suit him, so he left, deciding to take his chances. He's still alive, in his late 70s, and has a podcast. It was interesting and a bit chilling to hear him casually describing murder so cavalierly. 

"Paris Encore" was more of the same from "London Refrain". A quick page or two about the main characters from the first six books, then on to the new folks. 

Madame Rose and Madame Betsy, sisters from America, have been living in Paris for decades and run an orphanage they fund by taking in washing. Jerome and his sister, Maria, show up after their father goes off to join the war and the woman he left in charge of them sells their boat out from under them. Andre Chardon is hiding a Jewish scientist in his Paris home while he works on decoding the Enigma machine (which he helped build back when Jews could still work in Germany). Josie Marlow, a reporter, is trying to get Yacov Lubetkin to Jerusalem and to his grandfather with the help from an unlikely source. 

And finally, "The Librarianist" by Patrick DeWitt. DeWitt is usually pretty good with the dark humor. This one just made me sad. Maybe because it hit too close to home. 

Bob Comet is a retired librarian living in Oregon. He never knew his father and his mother died while he was relatively young, and he inherited her house and a bit of money. He met his wife, Connie, at the library, as well as his best friend, Ethan. Not long after he and Connie got married, she left him and ran off with Ethan. He never saw them again, although he did hear that Ethan died in a car accident not long after he and Connie married. Bob never remarries (or even dates again) and has no children. One day Bob is out walking and comes across a woman with a card attached to her, identifying her as living in a retirement home, so Bob returns her. He starts hanging out at the home, helping out. He eventually breaks his hip and has to sell his house and moves into the retirement home. It had its funny moments, but all in all it just gave me a too stark vision of my own future. 

Danzig Passage

 

Danzig used to be a free city-state on the shore of the Baltic that was part of Germany before WWI. We are introduced to some new characters, like Lucy Strasburg. Lucy is dreaming of marrying dashing S.S. officer Wolf now that she's pregnant with his baby, and realizes her naiveté when he laughs and tells her he already is married. He and his wife have three daughters, so he's hoping for a boy for the Reich. Lucy is determined to keep her baby. Otto is shielding the family of dissent Michael Wallich in his apartment when Wolf and Lucy pay him a surprise visit. Wolf gets Otto arrested, and Otto takes cyanide before he can be interrogated. Poor Otto. Lucy's warning saves the Wallich family, and she escapes with eldest son Peter and the baby, Willie, to Danzig. 

Meanwhile, Anna's sister Helen is arrested in Berlin, along with her husband, Pastor Karl Isben. Their children, Lori and Jamie, hide out in a church, along with two Jewish children they grew up with, Jacob and Mark. Together with a young man named Alfie, who is developmentally disabled and managed to escape from the hospital before he could be euthanatized, manage to make their way to Danzig too. But with Hitler breathing down Poland's neck, how long will Danzig be safe? 

Born Together, Reared Apart; Off the Road; Growing Up Dead in Texas; Fate of the Princes; Unfaithful Queen; Mister Pip

"Born Together, Reared Apart" by Nancy L. Segal was an interesting and not too completely over my head scientific look at the fascinating study of twins who are separated while still very young and then raised separately. Segal and the rest of the staff of the Minnesota Twin Studies department looked at how much genetics influences our decisions as far as career, hobbies, tastes in food, religion, politics, etc. It was pretty good, and I was proud that I understood most of it!

"Off the Road" by Carolyn Cassady documents her life married to Neal Cassady, immortalized in Jack Kerouac's books like "On the Road". She put up with a lot of BS while married to Neal, more than I would have put up with, but she did get to hang with Kerouac and Ginsberg, so that's pretty cool. Like most teens, I was profoundly into the Beats and thought I was the first person ever to discover how awesome they were. As I got older, and especially while reading this book, I realized just how immature they really were. Neal was forever running off and fathering babies with random women that he had no way of taking care of. Stuff like that really irritates me. But it was a great read, very interesting.

I was so disappointed by "Growing Up Dead in Texas" by Stephen Graham Jones. I had heard really good things about it, but it fell very flat for me. It was disjointed and confusing (now mind, I read *Faulkner* and understand it) and I had no idea what was going on. Something about a fire? And maybe child molestation? I don't even know.

"Fate of the Princes" by P. C. Doherty was a fictionalized account of King Richard III's close friend and adviser, Francis Lovell. Richard asks Lovell to investigate the disappearance of his nephews from the Tower of London, which Lovell does and comes up with a satisfactory explanation as to what could have happened to the boys. I thought Richard was very nicely portrayed in this. I'm keeping an eye on developments in Leicester as to the possible discovery of his body. Amazing after all these centuries!

"The Unfaithful Queen" by Carolly Erickson was a decent but heavily fictionalized account of Queen Katherine Howard's short life and sad death. It was okay, nothing particularly memorable about it.

"Mister Pip" by Lloyd Jones was another disappointment. It came highly recommended but I couldn't really get into it. It was just too sad for my taste. A young lady named Matilda is living on an island in turmoil. The only white man on the island, Mr. Watts, offers to take over the school and reads to the children from Dickens' classic "Great Expectations". Matilda really loves the book and connects with it, which was great, but I'm not a big Dickens fan, so I failed to see the charm of the book. That might have been part of the problem.

Lemon Meringue Pie Murder; Romantic Outlaws

Yes, I am ignoring all the library books I have checked out to tear through these Hannah Swensen books, thanks for asking! The fourth book in the series has Hannah investigating the murder of drugstore clerk Rhonda. Rhonda sold her grandmother's house to Norman, Hannah's dentist boyfriend. Norman decided to tear the house down and rebuild from scratch, and Rhonda asked if she could clear out some personal things first. Norman agreed. Hannah and her mother go over to look for antiques for Delores' shop, which Norman said she could have (Norman is too nice). Delores finds Rhonda's body in the basement. Using the leftovers in the garbage, including one of her own lemon meringue pies, Hannah is able to track down who shared Rhonda's last meal, who had a motive to kill her, and who did it. That Hannah is a smart cookie :) 

After reading the annotated Frankenstein a few weeks ago, I was eager to learn more about Mary Shelley. I found this great book about her and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. It was very nicely done: each chapter alternated between the two women. They were both very rebellious: Mary Wollstonecraft bore a child out of wedlock, Fanny, in her mid-thirties, before marrying William Godwin, Mary's father. She died a few days after Mary was born of childbed fever. Mary grew up hearing stories about her famous philosopher mother and striving to be like her. She fell in love with Percy Shelley, who was married at the time, and ran off to Europe with him. By the time his first wife had committed suicide, Mary had already had two children with him. They were married once Percy was a widower and lived a complicated life. They traveled a lot, and Percy seemed to be whimsical, which Mary loved as a childless teenager but was exasperated by once she had children to feed and clothe. Percy drowned, leaving Mary a young widow who never remarried. Both women struggled to lead authentic lives and abide by their own codes, eschewing the rigid ways of doing things and rebelling against the unfair laws that didn't allow women the same rights as men. I'd like to think they'd both be pleased with how far society has come since their time.

The Case of the Velvet Claws; Sleep in Heavenly Peace

First off, another Erle Stanley Gardner reread. "Velvet Claws" was the first Perry Mason, written back in 1933 (I'd forgotten they went back that far). In this one, a married woman comes to Perry because she has been caught out on the town with a prominent politician, and she's afraid a local gossip magazine will report the nasty details. Perry works to uncover the real head of the magazine and pays him an unexpected visit at his house. And who should be there but his client? And guess who she's married to? Um-hmmm. Well, then the husband turns up murdered and the wife tries to say she heard Perry arguing with him before the gun went off. Pin a murder on Mason? I don't think so!
"Sleep in Heavenly Peace" by M. William Phelps was a true crime book about a woman who murdered three of her children at birth and then made a series of really stupid mistakes leading to her arrest and conviction. First of all, she was pregnant with these children in the early 1980s, after abortion was legalized. Why, if she didn't want to give birth to these kids, did she not have an abortion? Why wait until birth to kill them? It's a mystery to me, especially since she already had three normal, healthy little girls when she killed these three. Then, instead of getting rid of the bodies, she put them in boxes and toted them around with her across the country for the next ten years. Ew....She left them in a storage unit in Arizona and when she moved back East (all the babies were born in New York) she stopped paying the storage unit bill. Smart move. So of course it's auctioned off and some poor fool looking for buried treasure finds the skeletal remains of these poor kids and calls the cops. I can't even imagine, opening up a box...anyway, so the police have no trouble tracking this woman down. Her first story (and the one she should have stuck to) was that the kiddies were born dead. Then she says no, she heard them cry but because she didn't get to the hospital in time to deliver them, she was all alone and blacked out during delivery, and woke up to find them dead. Um, okay? And then, after the jury convicts her of killing her kids, she tries to lie to this book author and play up that her mom was such a horrible woman she killed the kids after they were born. Mom was conveniently dead, so she couldn't refute this. It was a very well written and very sad book that just shows how dumb some criminals can be.

The Cousins; In League with Sherlock Holmes; The Astonishing Life of August March; A Rose for the Crown; The Brothers York

Bet you can't guess what I spent my long weekend doing! :)

First up, Karen McManus's "The Cousins". Her books are always so much fun, with terrific twists. Even though I guessed the end to this one well in advance, it was still a good ride.

Twenty-four years earlier, the four Story siblings each got a letter from their mother, saying "You know what you did". Subsequent attempts to contact her have failed, and all four siblings insist they have no idea what they did to make their mother cut them off so completely and abruptly. Then one day each of the three grandchildren get a letter from their grandmother, inviting them to spend the summer at her exclusive resort. The cousins don't really know each other that well, but they can't pass up the opportunity to meet their grandmother and potentially find out why she cut their parents out of her life. Of course it helps that grandma is worth a ton of money and the grandkids would like their share. Once they get to the island, though, they discover that not only did their grandmother not invite them, she's really unhappy they are there and will do anything to get them to leave. 

"In League with Sherlock Holmes" wasn't what I was expecting. Most of the stories didn't feature the great detective at all, they were Sherlock adjacent, as it were (one of them was about Benedict Cumberbatch, for instance). Some were pretty funny, like the one about Irene Adler's great-great-granddaughter solving a murder on the Jersey Shore to clear her BFF's name, or the serial killer who thinks he's Sherlock. Some were just kind of blah, which is par for the course with any collection of short stories.  

"The Astonishing Life of August March" was whimsical (which isn't a word I use often enough). August was born in a theater (literally: his mother was an actress who gave birth to him in between acts of a play she was performing and left him in the laundry basket). The aged laundress, Eugenia Butler, raises him (sort of, honestly August raises himself) at the theater, where his education consists of watching great plays night after night. When the theater is torn down August is tossed to the streets to make his own way in life. It was a charming little story. 

"A Rose for the Crown" by Anne Easter Smith was wonderful, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a fictionalized account of Richard III's mistress, the mother of his acknowledged illegitimate children, Katherine and John. Nothing is known about who this woman (or women) was in real life, so Smith has license to make up her story. Kate Haute was born on a poor peasant farm, but has the beauty, grace, and charm to be noticed by a minorly important cousin, Richard Haute. Richard arranges for Kate to come and live with him and his wife and his daughter, Anne, who is Kate's age. Kate learns how to be a gentlewoman and is eventually married: first to an old merchant who leaves her a young, well off widow, then to a cousin named George Haute. Kate is very much taken with George's attractiveness, but quickly discovers he prefers men to women and their marriage becomes a disappointing sham. Kate wants to be loved and have children. She has the good fortune to meet fifteen year old Richard Plantagenet while he's out hawking one day and the two fall for each other and quickly become lovers. It was sweet and romantic and I cried at the end when Richard died. My only quibble (and it's a very small one, but still) is that she has Kate go visit Richard shortly after his wife, Queen Anne, dies, and mentions how he looks much older than his 31 years. He was 32, actually, something Smith, as a Ricardian, should have known or at least verified. 

And finally, "The Brothers York" by Thomas Penn. I was really looking forward to this one because of course anything new about Richard III is exciting. 

Unfortunately, he relied on historians who have been discredited and are considered very biased towards the Tudors, like Thomas More and Polydore Vergil. He tried to make out like the three York brothers: Edward, George, and Richard; were somehow quite unusual for how they fought with each other and tussled over everything. They were in fact very much a product of their times. He contradicted himself quite a bit once Richard became king, talking about how greedy he was and how he wanted to usurp the crown so badly he murdered his nephews, and in the next sentence how being king was such a burden it weighed him down. He called Henry Tudor's marriage to the former Princess Elizabeth "a true union" but Richard was all too glad to get rid of Queen Anne and was eager to marry Elizabeth himself (utter rot and nonsense, of course). Not to mention the little errors that grated on me a bit: called the coronation feast the "wedding" feast, etc. There are much better, fairer, books about Richard and his brothers out there. 

Man Who Ran Washington

 

James A. Baker III was, at one time, one of the most powerful men in Washington. He helped get Gerald Ford the Presidential nomination in 1976 (although Ford lost to Carter), then helped the Reagan campaign in 1980. He worked for Reagan and George H. W. Bush as Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, and White House Chief of Staff. 

Baker was born into an influential family in Houston, Texas and grew up obeying his father's every command, even after he was married with children his father still dictated what type of car he should buy. "Never get into politics" his father lectured him, and Baker obeyed until his dad died. One of Baker's best friends, George Bush, asked for his help with his Senate campaign in 1970. Baker was known in Washington as a "fixer". He knew everyone and knew how to make things happen. He considered running for President himself after Bush lost in 1992. While it was interesting and I enjoyed it, I was a little disappointed we didn't get to see more of Baker as just a husband and a father. I know he's intensely careful about his public image, it was just unfortunate that he wasn't willing to open up more and share a personal side. 

I loved this quote, and think it applies today more than ever: "We in this country have been going through a long, dark night of self-criticism. We have been telling ourselves that America has tried to run the world, that it is corrupt, that many of our institutions have failed us and need to be “dismantled” under the guise of “reform”. Confession may be good for the soul, but there comes a time when too much confession makes us weaker rather than stronger. Sure we make mistakes, but who in this world doesn’t?". 

The Case of the Long Legged Models; The Case of the Footloose Doll; The Word is Murder; The Case of the Waylaid Wolf; The Case of the Empty Tin; The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

Perry is visited by a poised young woman named Stephanie Falkner. Her father was murdered some time before, leaving her 40% of a modest casino in Las Vegas. She's being pressured to sell her interest to a man named George Casselman. Perry gets a call from a client of his, Homer Garvin, Sr., who asks him to do whatever he can to help Stephanie out. Apparently his son, Homer Garvin Jr., had been dating Miss Falkner, and Sr. thought she was going to be his daughter in law someday, and bought 15% of the stake in the casino to give to her as a wedding gift. Together, he and Stephanie have over 50%. Unfortunately, Jr. has just married a showgirl he barley knows. When Casselman is found murdered, there are too many clues, too many suspects, and too many guns: Garvin Sr. bought three identical guns, gave one to Jr., and kept two for himself. *One* of those guns is the murder weapon, but is it Jr.'s, or the did Mason switch guns right under Tragg's nose?
It never ceases to amaze me in these books how many times people make appointments to see people in the middle of the night. Casselman had like, four, appointments between eleven and midnight. He was literally shuffling people out the back door while inviting others in the front. It gave Perry plenty of red herrings to work with!

Mildred Crest has had a terrible day. She gets a phone call at work from her fiance: not only is he calling off their engagement, he's about to be pinched for embezzlement and is fleeing town. Mildred is horrified and embarrassed. Her boss sends her home for the day, since she's clearly not feeling well, and Mildred impetuously decides to leave town. She cleans out her savings account, hops in her car, and starts driving. She doesn't have a destination in mind, she just needs to get out of Oceanside and clear her head. At a gas station, a young woman who introduces herself as Fern Driscoll asks if Mildred will give her a ride. Mildred tells her she doesn't know where she's going, and Fern says that suits her fine. Mildred lets her in the car, and as they drive Fern tells her a little of her story: she's from the Midwest, she's in a terrible bind, and she wants to kill herself. She taunts Mildred to drive the car off the steep cliff of the hill they're climbing. Mildred is nonplussed when Fern grabs the wheel and deliberately crashes the car. Mildred manages to escape, but Fern is crushed to death instantly. Mildred makes a bold decision: she'll take the dead woman's identity and start over. She switches purses and accidentally lights the car on fire, then hightails it out of there.
Mildred makes it to L.A., where she starts work as a secretary under the name Fern Driscoll in the same building where Mason has his office. The papers report Mildred Crest died in a car accident, and also that she was two months' pregnant. Mildred is tracked down by a would be blackmailer who has discovered she's not Fern, and she consults with Mason. When the blackmailer is stabbed with an ice pick and dies, Mildred is not only on the hook for his murder but for stealing Fern's identity. The "Long Legged Models" was about the musical guns, this one was about the musical ice picks. There were six instead of three, which made it really fun trying to keep track of which ice pick was the real murder weapon!

I took a break from Mason to read Anthony Horowitz's newest, "The Word is Murder". He wrote himself into the story, which is usually a bad idea (Stephen King, I'm looking at you) but it worked quite well in this case, he carried it off brilliantly. Diana Cowper visits a funeral parlor to make arrangements for her own funeral. Just in time, too, she's murdered that evening. Former Detective Hawthorne approaches Horowitz with a deal for him: Horowitz can join him on his quest to catch the killer and then write a book about it, and they can split the profits. Horowitz is hesitant at first, but something about the case appeals to him, so he agrees. It turns out Diana accidentally killed a little boy almost ten years earlier while driving without her glasses. She crippled his twin brother, and got off with a slap on the wrist from the judge. Her son is a famous actor, living out in Hollywood, and when he comes home for his mother's funeral, he is murdered that afternoon. There were plenty of red herrings all over the place: just when I thought I had it figured out, I was proved wrong. Which was great! I enjoyed it a lot.

Back to Mason. Arlene Ferris is working late one night, and when she goes to leave her car won't start. Luckily, the dashing playboy son of the owner, Loring Lamont, happens by and offers her a ride home. Arlene accepts. After she's in the car, he remembers he promised to take some important papers out to someone at his father's country place and promises Arlene it won't take long, and he'll take her out to dinner afterwards to make up for it. Arlene reluctantly agrees. They get to the country place and no one's there, so Lamont makes a few phone calls and gets angry when he finds out the man's been delayed and his father expects him to wait for him. Arlene is agreeable, though, and they make dinner, turn on some music, have some drinks. Then Lamont gets down to what he really wants. Arlene is offended and runs out of the house in a desperate attempt to protect her virtue. Lamont chases after her in his car and gets out to follow her on foot. Arlene manages to backtrack and jumps in his car (silly boy left the keys in it) and takes off. She parks in front of his apartment building in front of a fire hydrant, hoping he gets towed, and takes a cab home. She calls her good friend, Madge (who, incidentally, got Arlene the job at Lamont's business simply by making a phone call, which tells you something about Madge's connection to the Lamonts) to tell her what happened. Madge is properly sympathetic. Arlene goes to visit Mason the next day to tell him what happened and figure out if there's anything they can do about Lamont. She knows she's not the only girl he's tried this on, and she wants to stop him. Well, someone stopped Lamont for good the night before: he was found murdered, with the knife still in his back.
There were some great scenes in this one with Mason and Arlene's friend Madge. It was interesting to see him flirting with someone besides Della.

This is the exact copy I own of the "Case of the Empty Tin" and the "Case of the Drowsy Mosquito". I absolutely love how cheesy and silly the cover is, so I had to include it.
I read the "Empty Tin" first (it's from 1941, "Mosquito" is 1943. Why "Mosquito" is first I don't know. I hate when publishers do that. Almost all of my Mason's are like that, since most of the ones I own are 2 in 1s). Housewife and mother extraordinaire Florence Gentrie spies an empty tin on her shelf of preserves in the cellar that she knows darn well wasn't there before. Why would anyone put an empty tin on a shelf, all sealed up? She tosses it in the scrap bin, but her sister in law, spinster Rebecca, thinks it's quite a mystery and makes a big deal out of puzzling it out. Florence doesn't have time for such nonsense: she has a big house to run, a servant to look after, three children, and a husband, not to mention a boarder and a pesky sister in law. That night, the household is woken up by a gunshot. Someone was shot at the house next door, but the tenant and his housekeeper have both disappeared. Coincidentally, one of Mason's clients lives on the second floor of the house, the shooting happened in the downstairs apartment. His client is a recluse who is in hiding and doesn't want publicity, so he begs Mason to solve the crime and keep him out of it. Mason starts investigating and he too is puzzled by the empty tin, especially when they find the lid has what appears to be a secret code etched into it. Fun! There's a great scene where Mason poses as Tragg's brother up in San Francisco.

And finally, "The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito". Salty Bowers comes to Mason for his friend, Banning Clarke. He and Banning were prospectors together, and Banning got rich and used his money to buy a big mansion by the ocean and got married. It nearly killed him, according to Salty. Banning was meant for the outdoor life, and living indoors has weakened his heart. He has a nurse on premises as well as a housekeeper. Mason and Della go with Salty to pay a visit to Banning and find him camping out in a cactus garden away from the main house. It was Salty's idea, to restore Banning to health, and it seems to be working. Since his wife died almost two years earlier, Banning has been eager to return to the desert with Salty and continue their prospecting. Banning's household is an odd one. His former mother in law and brother in law live in the main house. When his wife died, she left everything to them, including the stock in his mining company Banning put in her name. So now he shares the company with them. The live in housekeeper, her husband and daughter all live there, as well as his nurse. Banning wants Mason to represent the housekeeper's husband in a fraud suit brought on by his former brother in law. The brother in law, Jim, claims the old prospector salted a mine to get him to buy it and it's worthless. The whole cast of colorful characters appeals to Mason, and he agrees.
Jim and his mother are poisoned that night, seemingly by arsenic, but thanks to the fact that the nurse, Velma, was on hand they pull through. Mason and Della come to take care of some business, and they are poisoned! Luckily, they pull through as well (seriously, why try to kill a bunch of people with arsenic when there's a nurse in the house?). Unfortunately, Banning Clarke isn't as lucky. Even though he's dying from arsenic poisoning, someone shoots him. Overkill, as they say. It actually reminded me a bit of Kurt Cobain's demise. Drugs or guns, people. You don't need both.
At any rate, there were no courtroom scenes in this one ("The Empty Tin" didn't have any, either) but it was still fun. Mason proposes to Della in the end, but she turns him down, knowing full well he doesn't want a wife and to settle down, but his brush with death made him think he did.
This book makes me want to go camping, which is something I never thought I'd say :)

Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

 

I sincerely hope I don't have to wait another 8 years before book 10. 

Spoilers ahead. Beware!

The 9th book of the Outlander series was terrific. Not nearly enough Lord John 🦊, but then she could write thousands of pages of just Lord John and I'd be okay with that (whenever I type "Lord John" on my phone, it automatically inserts the fox emoji now, because I've done it so often. David Berry is gorgeous, what can I say?). 

Brianna, Roger, Jem, and Mandy are back from 1980, fleeing Rob Cameron and his goons who were after the gold. Jamie and Claire are of course thrilled to have them back. Brianna brings books for everyone: the Merck Manual for Claire, the Lord of the Rings trilogy for Jamie, and one of Frank Randall's books for herself, about the Scottish contribution to the Revolutionary War. Jamie reads it and discovers the exact date he'll die.

Oh. That sucks.

Meanwhile, in Savannah, Lord John and his brother, Hal, are living with Hal's oldest son's Ben's widow and her son, Trevor, when William shows up with a man who claims Lord John is his natural father (he's not). There were some hysterical scenes with Lord John and baby Trevor. Good thing he's a soldier and not a nanny 😃 William is still trying to come to terms with the fact that he's Jamie Fraser's son while also trying to get to the bottom of Ben's death. He's also undeniably attracted to Ben's widow, Amaranthus. Brianna and William get to spend some quality brother/sister bonding time together when Brianna goes to Savannah to paint a portrait (Lord John and Jamie hatched the plan to get the two of them together. While their friendship still hasn't been completely mended after Lord John married and bedded Claire, I think it's on the road to recovery). We actually got a lot of William in this book, and it was nice. I like him. 

Ian finds out his first Mohawk wife, Emily, has been left a widow with three children and the oldest one might be his, so he sets out to see if she needs his help. His current wife, Rachel, their baby son, Oggy, and Ian's mother Jenny all go along for the ride (God, I love Jenny). Along the way they rescue the Quaker family that helped Jamie in book 8, the Hardmans, and when they return to Fraser's Ridge they have Mrs. Hardman and her three daughters, plus Ian's son with Emily in tow, as well as a Mohawk who has taken a shine to Jenny. I kind of really love the idea of Jenny having a Mohawk suitor. 

Brianna has another baby, a boy they name David (instead of John, like I suggested). Jamie nearly dies in a battle, on the date Frank mentioned, but Claire is able to miraculously save him. Mrs. Hardman, Silvia, marries Bobby Higgins, a widower on the Ridge who has a couple of little boys. Everyone is celebrating the wedding when a rider comes tearing up. It's William. Lord John has been kidnapped and is being held captive, and William needs Jamie's help to rescue him. 

And that's how the damn book ended and I was awake all night, scared to death for Lord John. I hope nothing bad happens to him, otherwise I'm going to light something on fire.

Bloody Spur; Astrid Lindgren: the Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking

Third in the Caleb York series, the wonderful Western collaboration between the late, great Mickey Spillane and the keeper of his flame, Max Allan Collins (side note: happy 100th anniversary of Mickey Spillane's birthday the other day!). The railroad wants to build a spur of the line between Trinidad and Las Vegas (New Mexico, not Nevada) and most of the townspeople are thrilled at the idea of the railroad coming through their town, bringing new business and prosperity. Founder of the Bar-O ranch, blind George Cullen, is against the spur, since he thinks it will bring more crime and trouble and competition. His daughter, Willa, is all for it but doesn't know how to convince her father to change his mind. York is for it, but he's got more important things on his mind: a bad hombre named Preacherman is in town to compete in the poker tournament at the Victory, and York has a feeling he's been hired to kill someone. It was good and lots of fun, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I've never actually read any of Astrid Lindgren's books. My sister and I used to love watching the old Pippi Longstocking movies on TV when we were kids. I saw this new biography about Lindgren, and checked it out. It wasn't bad. It's funny to think she only wrote three Pippi Longstocking books, she wrote so many others, and yet Pippi is what she is known for. She lived a pretty unconventional life: she got pregnant at 18 by her much older, married boss and traveled to Denmark to give birth in secret, since Swedish hospitals required both parents' names on the birth certificate. She left their son, Lars, with a foster mother for a few years until she was able to go back and get him and bring him home with her. She married her next boss, who was a bit older, and had a daughter, Karin, with him. It wasn't a marriage for love but for mutual benefit: as a single mother she needed to be able to give her son a stable home, and she and her husband got along well. When he died, quite young, actually, she never considered remarrying, instead enjoying living on her own, surrounded by children and grandchildren. She passionately loved children, and had some rather radical notions about how to raise them.

Forest City Killer; Sitcommentary

This true crime piqued my interest when I read the summary, so I checked it out. It was good, I liked her writing style. Even though it was a subject I knew absolutely nothing about (cold case murders in Canada), it held my interest. In the 1960s and 70s, young women were found raped and murdered. To complicate matters, a few younger boys were also found in similar situations, all close to the small town of London, Ontario. Some experts insist there were two killers at work, others believe it was only one. The author, Vanessa Brown, is hoping advances in DNA technology might lead to a solution to these terrible crimes and finally bring some sense of closure to the grieving families. 

Robinson's book about sitcoms that changed America was a quick, funnish (sometimes) read. After all, his point is that sitcoms brought about social change by making us laugh at all our faults and shortcomings as a society. For the most part, he was pretty nonpolitical, but when he was it made sense in the context of the subject he was discussing, so it didn't bother me. What kind of did bother me was how he left some pretty major (I think, anyway) sitcoms out of the discussion. If you want to talk about groundbreaking, what about "Married with Children"? "The Simpsons"? I know you have to pick and choose, but some of his choices left me wondering why that show rated the cut and others didn't.

The Kingmaker's Daughter; Game of Thrones; Long Lankin; Gone Girl

A bunch of really great books lately!

Philippa Gregory's latest, "The Kingmaker's Daughter", was a fascinating fictional look at Anne Neville, the youngest daughter of the Earl of Warwick, Richard Neville, who was responsible for putting Edward IV and the Henry VI on the throne. He was killed in battle when Edward wanted his throne back, and Anne married Edward's youngest brother, Richard, who later became King Richard III and one of history's most interesting and (in my opinion) maligned figures. I can't wait for her next book, which will be from the point of view of Elizabeth Tudor, who married Henry VII and was Henry VIII's mother.

The first in the Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, "Game of Thrones" was very tense and riveting. At the heart is the basic War of the Roses story, so it was familiar to me: King Robert married a woman against the wishes of his advisers, Cersie Lannister. She is part of a large family which rises swiftly in the land, taking important titles and lands from men who feel they deserve it more. There are rumors that Cersie is a witch. When King Robert's hand (his closest adviser) dies, he approaches his longtime friend, Ned Stark, to come and be his new hand. Ned doesn't want to leave his home, Winterfell, but he hardly feels like he can refuse. There is much intrigue and secrets and people are murdered and while all this is going on half a world away the woman who feels Robert stole the throne from her, Dany, is preparing to launch a battle to win her rightful place back. I haven't seen the HBO show yet, but I'm eager to after reading the first book.

"Long Lankin" by Lindsey Barraclough is a genuinely spooky YA book based on a real English ballad. The book is set in the English countryside in the 1950s. Cora and Mimi turn up on their great Aunt Ida's doorstep with nowhere else to go. Ida makes it painfully clear she doesn't want the young girls there, and there is a long list of rules to follow: doors and windows must never be opened, no playing near the marsh, and never, ever go to the old church. Cora meets a young boy named Roger who lives near by, and of course they go to the church to see what all the fuss is about. It slowly comes out that Ida's family has been terrorized for generations by Long Lankin, who steals little children in order to drink their blood. Ida has lost many family members to Lankin, and it looks like Mimi might be next.

And finally, "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn. There is a lot of hype surrounding this book, and it has long holds list at my library, so I was worried it might not live up to expectations, but it was very good. I can't say too much about the plot because there are several big twists, but the book starts out with Nick coming home and discovering his wife Amy is missing and the living room is torn up. The police don't take very long to determine that there was a great quantity of blood in the kitchen that has been hastily cleaned up, and that the struggle in the living room was staged. In between chapters dealing with Nick, who acts guilty, we read past entries from Amy's diary, as she grows increasingly scared of her husband's escalating violence. So did he do it or not? The ending was very satisfying, a lot of times a book will be very good and the ending will fall flat but not this one. Excellent!

The Case of the Deadly Toy; Blood and Chocolate; Under the Beetle's Cellar

"The Case of the Deadly Toy" by Erle Stanley Gardner finds Perry with a client who actually tells the whole truth right from the start. I think it's a first. Norda, the client, called off her engagement to the wealthy Mervin when she saw first hand how cruel he was. Mervin's ex-wife, Lorraine, asks Norda to help her win sole custody of their son, Robert. While Norda is staying with Lorraine and her new husband, Barton, Mervin is killed...and little Robert is the one holding the gun. There were some interesting twists in this one, and a great scene where Perry and Della pose as a married couple with a baby to trick a babysitter into spilling her secrets.
"Blood and Chocolate" by Annette Curtis Klause was written 11 years ago, but has been reissued and is being made into a movie, I understand. No doubt trying to cash in on "Twilight". I don't blame them; I would be, too. This one was about a teenage werewolf named Vivian who falls in love with a human boy, Aiden. She makes the mistake of telling him her secret, thinking that he would love her enough to understand. Wrong! It was pretty good, but it was no "Twilight". I find it hard not to compare, even though I know I shouldn't.
"Under the Beetle's Cellar" by Mary Willis Walker was great. For work I'm trying to read more books that people haven't necessarily heard about or read before, so I can use them in booktalks and reader's advisory recommendations. Walter, a Vietnam vet and a part time school bus driver, is kidnapped, along with 11 kids, by a crazy cult in Texas. While he and the kids struggle to survive while buried underground, on the outside Molly, a reporter who is the only person to have interviewed Samuel Mordecai, the cult leader, is working with law enforcement and negotiators to try to get the children out alive. It was taunt and suspenseful, and emotionally gripping. The ending did not disappoint.

Sunday Kind of Love; Children of Llyr

I love the cover of this book. I love picnics and sunflowers and the blue hat. It is seriously the only reason I decided to read it, since it's a genre I normally eschew: romance. While I like the Regency era romance, I haven't really read too many others. This one wasn't terrible, but it was completely predictable. Cute, though, and a quick read. It's set in Indiana in the 1950s. Gwen comes home to small town Buckton with her boyfriend Kent in tow. Kent is everything she and her parents dreamed she'd end up with: rich and good looking, successful. But Kent isn't supportive of Gwen's dream of being a writer. So when he just announces they are getting married without actually proposing (or letting Gwen have a say in her future), they fight and she runs off in the middle of a raging storm and ends up nearly drowning in a nearby river. Luckily town pariah Hank manages to rescue her. Six months earlier, Hank's beloved little brother Pete died in a car wreck while Hank was behind the wheel, drunk. No one in town has spoken to him since. Well, you can see how this one ends :)

The second book of Evangeline Walton's Mobingion's series was really sad and very bloody, lots of fighting and battles. Britain is ruled by a giant named King Bran, and Irish king Matholuch sails across the sea to ask for Bran's sister Branwen in marriage. Bran and his brothers are reluctant to let their little sister go so far away, but Branwen falls for the handsome King and begs her brother to let her. So Branwen and Matholuch are married and she goes back to Ireland with him. Before they leave, though, Branwen's evil brother Evnissyen gravely insults the Irish. Matholuch assures Branwen he's over it, and they have a son, Gwern. But Matholuch's advisers drip poison in his ear about Evnissyen and Matholuch is talked into putting his wife aside, banishing her to the kitchens where she is roundly abused. Branwen is able to get word to her brother Bran by sending a bird she has taught to speak, and when Bran hears how his sister is being treated he rounds up and army and descends on Ireland to seek vengeance. I'm hoping the next book is a little less depressing. Still, the story is very interesting, I'm having a hard time putting these books down, even though I have library books with due dates :)