I found this when cleaning out a friend's house. Jan Brett was/is one of my favorite children's book authors and to find seven of her books in one is truly a treasure. But as I no longer have a little one in my life, I thought of someone who would appreciate it. Just needed to read these all before I gave it away. A couple I hadn't seen. All beautifully illustrated in this Scandinavian, almost Latvian style with lots of reindeer, and trolls and natural ornaments, etc. This treasury includes: The Mitten, The Wild Christmas Reindeer, Trouble with Trolls, The Twelve Days of Christmas, The Hat, Christmas Trolls, and The Night Before Christmas.
A new Scandinavian detective series! This one is from a Danish author, and since I hope to spend a couple of days in Copenhagen next year, great to get a Danish feel for things, though it felt like any other detective story, except for the names, and maybe the pacing of the book. Kemper on Goodreads described it as "Imagine if the brooding detective Kurt Wallander from the Henning Mankell series accidentally wandered into the plot of a Stieg Larsson novel."
We have another disaffected detective - Carl (pronounced Kaal) Morck, who lost his two partners while working on a case, so he doesn't much care for anything. He has become unbearable at work, but still a very good and intuitive detective, so they create a new Department Q for him - down in the basement, and he asks for an assistant and gets a quirky Syrian - Assad. (Very relevant today, but the book originally came out in 2007, so before our current Syrian refugee crisis.) Their relationship is one of the delights of the book. Department Q is to look into important unsolved cases. Their first case is a missing female government official, presumed drowned off a ferry, but actually kidnapped. It is her back story that goes into the bizarre. There is a rich cast of characters - those in the precinct, Carl's roommates, his estranged wife, government workers, and of course the evil kidnappers.
I couldn't wait for the next Lunar Chronicles book in audio, so just borrowed it from the library. I like that these various fairy-tale characters are being intertwined in each other's stories. I am glad that we continue to follow Cinder's saga, who is actually a princess of Luna. But this is Cress' story or Rapunzel's. She is kept not in a tower, but in a satellite where she keeps Lunar ships hidden from Earthans - so, a brilliant computer geek. She really has very long hair that she has never cut while in the satellite for years. She is kept there by one of the Lunar Queen's thaumaturges Sybil Mira. As Cress monitors Cinder and her crew, she falls for Captain Thorne - who is mostly a pretty boy, but he has thrown his lot in with Cinder. Cress researches him and thinks there is something good behind the pomp. Cinder, Wolf and Thorne rescue Cress, but lose Scarlett in the process and Thorne goes blind. He and Cress end up free falling to Earth, but make it through. Not knowing where else to turn, Cinder and Wolf head to Africa, where they meet up with Dr. Erland. Cinder's robot with a personality Iko gets a new body. Prince Kai is getting ready to marry Queen Levana. Can't wait for the next book.
I think I've found another mystery series I want to pursue. Phryne Fisher is an interesting character that I would not mind spending some more time with. She grew up poor in Australia, but through the English bloodlines system, her father inherited great wealth that has left her more than comfortable, elegantly dressed (I did like the descriptions of her 20's clothing) and bored. When asked to check out why a daughter was looking so ill whenever she visited England, Phyryne takes on investigating this mystery and runs across a cocaine ring in Melbourne, Australia. I liked how she picked up Dot, recently unemployed maid, as her personal maid. I get the sense they will keep working together. Then she involves two cab drivers - Bert and Cec to help her out. Liked the Russian dancer Sasha and Dr. Elizabeth MacMillan, who work in a women's hospital, as she is not allowed to practice in the regular one. Phryne can dress up to fit into the most elegant society, and dress down to fit in among low-lives. Very enjoyable, plus a glimpse into the 1920's, and the current reoccurring theme of British expats worldwide.
What fun with the second of the Lunar Chronicles. We have Scarlet - our Red Riding Hood with her red hoodie, who works on a farm (woods?) with her grandmother, who is missing. She delivers their fresh produce to a restaurant in the town and who does she come across - a street fighter Wolf. I think there was a Hunter in the story too, but not a good guy. After that I can't find too many connections with the original story, but we are in Cinder's post WW4 world with Queen Levana from the Moon threatening to take over the world. I was glad that we continued to follow Cinder too, as we left her in jail, but with some tools that can help her break out. She lands in the cell of Captain/Cadet Thorne (not sure if he has any symbolic importance), but he has a ship that Cinder needs to escape. He's not the brightest, but he gives Cinder an amusing side-kick. Young Emporer Kai is still in the mix, as is Iko, Cinder's android friend/personality. We see Cinder start to learn to use her lunar abilities. Got to remember this is a young adult book, but lots of interesting concepts.
This is one of the mystery stories by Roberts. Shelby has lost her husband Richard in a boating accident and finds out that the wealth he surrounded her with was all a lie - everything bought on credit with payments overdue. She is left with an enormous debt. The only good thing out of that relationship is Callie, their three year old daughter. Unlike some of Roberts' books, where the woman meets the man within the first chapter if not first page, the author takes her time and we spend time watching Shelby fighting despair and debtors, getting organized and selling off things, before heading back to Tennessee and her family. There she is doted on by parents, brothers and grandparents and we see she comes from a line of strong women. My biggest discomfort was the huge focus on the beauty salon/spa that is owned by her grandmother, where her mother works, and where Shelby ends up working too. I know it is an important part of many women's lives, it just isn't for me, and the constant focus on the outward appearance troubles me. I'm all for enjoying a new dress, or getting your hair done for a special occasion, but that you can't walk out of the house without putting on your lipstick just bums me out. Plus there was inordinate fuss over an engagement party that also was unpleasant.
I have mentioned in the past that sometimes the characters in Roberts' books seem to disconnected from family and friends made over the years. This one was rich with family, and included an old high school rival and the best friend, who was mad at her for being so distant while married to Richard and not coming back for important events. Of course Shelby makes up with her friend, and through her meets Griff, a construction business. As in many of her male characters, he is too good to be true, but I did enjoy the fact that he connected so well with Shelby's daughter Callie. I also liked that he was restoring an old country house.
The mystery was based on a plot twist that was quite obvious from the beginning, but it still caused enough excitement and gave Griff an opportunity to worry and support Shelby. The debt angle was quite implausible - that she could sell so much off for such substantial sums, and that she could keep paying off the huge debt with income from her salon job. But I liked that we see Shelby regaining her confidence in herself, that she lost through the mentally abusive relationship with Richard.
Wonderful, wonderful book about Beryl Markham by the same author who wrote Paris Wife about Hemingway's wife Hadley. I read Markham's autobiography West with the Night many years ago and remembered really enjoying it. Now McLain has taken her story and fictionally revealed even more of the life of this amazing woman. Kenya is portrayed beautifully, and I ran up against my old complaint of the British - who the hell did they think they were claiming the rest of the world as theirs. Markham was partially raised by the native Kikuyu people, but I was still left with the feeling, what happened to them? I think I need to read up on Kenyan history.
Markham was the first woman to cross the Atlantic in a plane east to west and the book starts and ends with this event. Beryl was born in England, but soon her family moved to Kenya, where her father started a farm and raised horses, but her mother soon returned to England, leaving young Beryl behind. The Kikuyu stepped in and raised her. Her best friend in childhood was the chief's son, with which she learned the ways of the Kenyan woods and grasslands, including hunting. Her father taught her to work with horses, and she at one point became one of the first women trainers. When drought and debts overwhelmed the farm, Beryl felt she was forced to marry to stay in Kenya, but she was unprepared and the marriage soon fell apart. Her big love was Denys Finch Hatten, but he was more Karen Blixen's than anyone else's. I recognized the name immediately, but took a while to remember she is the author of Out of Africa - a book I read before the movie came out. After her second marriage to Markham dissolves, she turns to flying. As an independent woman, she kept running up against society's expectations in many ways. Amazing woman, who's story was very well told. I'd like to reread West with the Night again.
Second Deveraux book this year, rummage sale choice. I like the stories where a younger person (usually woman) befriends an older person and ends up unearthing past family secrets, and this seems to be a Deveraux way of telling a story. Jocelyn (Joce) lost her elegant mother, and her father remarried and returned to a more basic lifestyle. She is saved by an elderly neighbor Miss Edi, who shows her culture, helps her get an education. When Edi dies, she leaves Jocelyn all her positions, including a large old house in a small town in Virginia. The house comes with a couple of interesting women as renters. There are also a couple of interesting men waiting for her - Ramsey, a lawyer, the other, and Luke, a gardner. As she unravels the story of Miss Edi, she finds herself and the right guy for her - of course.
I know I wasn't the only one that was disappointed that we were not going to see anymore Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist books, as author Stieg Larsson had died. So I was thrilled when another Swedish author had gotten the rights to continue their adventures in this book and that the new author is also a journalist, a crime reporter, so he could continue making the fictional journalist realistic. I rarely pick up a new book in hardcover, but I did this one, and read it in a weekend. The story is complex, with many characters and locations around the globe. I appreciated the author giving the main characters from the previous books, just as a reminder, as they play roles in this story or at least get mentioned.
Blomkvist's magazine Millenium is in danger, as I can imagine many a magazine is struggling in these days of everything being on the Web. So how does journalism keep surviving, who can pay investigative journalists? But that has little to do with this book, just came up as a question. Blomkvist is restless, some are calling him washed up. He gets a call from Frans Balder in the middle of the night, and goes to see what he wants, and from then it is non stop.
Frans Balder is a genius mathematician, with autistic son August, fading actress ex-wife Hanna, her no good current live-in Lasse Westman. He has done some amazing work with AI that others want. He has returned to Sweden to take his son under his own wing and realized the kid is also brilliant with numbers and can draw amazingly - a savant. The kid becomes a key figure in this thriller.
Lisbeth Salander is working on finding the remnants of her late father's band of evil-doers, which have been called Spiders. I liked the way the comic characters were brought into the story. Brilliant techies, but social misfits often turn to comic books (as in Big Bang Theory) - and understanding these was a clue to those thrying to figure things out. Salander does stir up a wasp's (not hornet's) nest in America, so we have a complex story that includes Swedish police, Swedish Security Police, American National Security Agency, an investigative magazine, bad guys, some with a bit of a conscience, and more.
And now I know there can be more Blomkvist Salander books. Yeah!!
One more exciting, escapist Baldacci story, the second I've read with John Puller as the lead character. He goes down to Paradise, Florida, because his father received a cryptic note from his sister, Puller's aunt. Of course when he gets down there, she is dead, seemingly drowned in a shallow pool in her back yard. All of Paradise doesn't quite seem to live up to it's name, as he runs into the shadier side near the hotel he can afford. He keeps running into the local police, though hits it off with a competent police woman. At one point he asks his boss and friend, General Julie Carlson, to join him and back him up. She has a desk job and enjoys spending her vacation being shot at - in Puller's company. To each his own.
Then we have Mecho, who is even larger and more lethal than Puller with his own agenda. He gets taken by slave traders in Mexico, who use abandoned oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico as stations, but escapes them and also lands in Paradise, gets a job with a landscape company, and works on a rich guy's property that requires tending every day. Here he is approached by a gorgeous woman who has also been having sex with the rich guy.
Of course they all come together in a series of action packed adventures to stop the slave traders. It is scary to think that the slave trade is alive and well in the U.S. I am sure the novel reflected realities, like the different categories of slaves - sex slaves, mules, and basic laborers. There was also a category I hadn't thought of - children used to create "families", so the adults will not be scrutinized in airports and elsewhere. And they are all kept in place with the threat that their families will be killed if they don't comply. Horrible. I wish our governmental institutions would spend less energy harassing immigrants and on the war on drugs and concentrate on preventing the slave trade.
