3 of 5 stars Strong female characters, plenty of action,  and exotic locales combine to  light up this lively account of a fictional trip taken  by the queen of the mystery story herself  , Agatha Christie. Wanting to be far away from England while  her ex husband remarries,  Agatha travels solo and incognito  aboard the Orient Express to visit the archaeological site of Ur in Mesopotamia. In true Christie style, each of the main characters has secrets of her own, and it takes very little time for the plot to thicken. For pure escapism written in a ..read more

4 of 5 stars Seattle journalist Laurie Sasslyn unexpectedly finds herself heading for her childhood hometown in Maine to deal with the estate of her beloved aunt Dot. Although her legal affairs are in order, Dot’s house is stuffed to the rafters, and Laurie is loathe to leave the clear out to a professional company and risk losing irretrievable personal memorabilia in the process. When two friends from high school days, June and Nick, offer their assistance , they all hunker down to sift through the house, room by room and box by box. While the letters, books, and photos are interesting and ap ..read more

Anyone who’s watched the Civil War movie “Glory” knows about the courage of the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, one of the first all-black volunteer units to ever fight in an American war. Anyone who hasn’t seen it really should. After he died with his men during the 1863 assault on Fort Wagner, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw was buried in a mass grave alongside them. For several years, his sword, which bears his initials, was considered lost, but eventually was recovered in South Carolina and given to the Shaw family, only to disappear again in the following decades. In 2017, when ..read more

public domain When many people hear the name “Gotham”, they’re reminded of the Batman comics and movies. When I hear it, I think only of New York City, often wondering how it got that nickname. As it turns out, author and NYC native Washington Irving, of Icabod Crane fame, made the association over 120 years ago.  Irving published a satirical periodical, Salmagundi, in which he wrote articles that poked fun at and lampooned the city and its more eccentric residents. He learned of a medieval English village called Gotham, meaning “goat town”, whose inhabitants conspired to keep a king from ..read more

This latest novel from Paula Hawkins truly is a slow burn. A disturbed young man, Daniel  Sutherland,  is found brutally murdered in his decrepit longboat in Regents Canal. The prime suspect is an impoverished young woman, Laura,  who suffers fromTBI and who admits to having had a one night stand with Daniel shortly before his death. The police are finding it difficult to find hard evidence against her, and soon Daniel’s neighbors and  close relatives come into the picture, none of whom appear to have motives. Laura and Daniel himself are the most fully developed character ..read more

Here were kept up the old games of hoodman blind, shoe the wild mare, hot cockles, steal the white loaf, bob apple, and snap dragon; the Yule-clog and Christmas candle were regularly burnt, and the mistletoe with its white berries hung up, to the imminent peril of all the pretty housemaids. Washington Irving Kissing under the mistletoe has long been a part of American Christmas tradition. But just what is mistletoe and how did its association with Christmas evolve? Mistletoe is a partial parasite (a “hemiparasite”) the grows on the branches of trunk of trees, penetrating the host with its own ..read more

Happy New Year! In case you can’t make it to Times Square to watch the ball drop, here are a few unique ways to usher in 2022. Most of these practices come from the British Isles. (Excerpted from a Mental Floss article by Keith Johnson). First Footing: Throw NYE party at you home, but to avoid bad luck, be sure not to allow a woman to be the first to cross your threshhold. Take in, then take out: Don’t take anything out of the house without first bringing something in. “Take out, then take in/ Bad luck will begin. Take in, then take out/ Good luck comes about.” Throw bread at the door: People ..read more

My rating: 4 of 5 stars All Will Be Well is Amy Martin’s debut novel, inspired by her ancestor John Alden. Speaking generally, I can say that the book is well researched and competently written. Told in the neutral third person, it is in its first half that the story of the Mayflower passengers, in particular John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, really shines. The reader experiences the perils of a late fall Atlantic crossing in realistic detail, perhaps the best fictional description of the harrowing journey since that offered by Anya Seton her 1958 classic, The Winthrop Woman. The struggles to ..read more

My Rating: 3 of 5 stars Aspire to Die is the first book in the Bridget Hart mystery series, co-authored by husband and wife writing team Margarita and Steve Morris. As of 2021, the series contains seven titles, and Aspire to Die makes for a worthy intro. I worried at first that it might be a cutesy cozy, but it captured my interest very quickly. as DI Hart is assigned to her first major murder case. The body of a beautiful, popular student has been found in her college room at Christ Church College, Oxford, brutally murdered. The newly promoted DI Hart, an alumna of Christ Church, is attending ..read more

My rating: 4 of 5 stars Well, I can say with absolute certainty that I’ve never read a novel that opened with the first person account of a woman digging a grave for her husband in the remote English woods, a dramatic, emotionally charged scene that hooked me from the first sentence. Something in the Water then flashes back to the early days of the relationship between Erin and Mark, which, in Erin’s view, is mostly idyllic. Both of them are riding high in their careers and planning a dream honeymoon in Bora Bora. Then Mark loses his job. They pare down their over the top wedding plans to save ..read more