Monday, October 3, 2016

Books Read - September 2016

Beaton, M.C.
Busy Body ****
Fiction.  21st book in the Agatha Raisin cozy mystery series.  The village should be putting up Christmas lights and decorations, but a new healthy and safety man has announced he will be fining anyone doing any decorating.  Agatha attends a meeting in nearby Odley Creusis, where the villagers gather to discuss how to rid themselves of this new man, John Sunday.  As the discussion takes place, a noise is heard outside, and to the villagers’ surprise, the bloody body of John Sunday appears in the window.  Somebody has killed him.

A Spoonful of Poison ****
Fiction.  Book 19 in the Agatha Raisin cozy mystery series.  Agatha’s detective agency is quite busy, but when Mrs. Bloxby introduces Agatha to the vicar of a neighboring village who wants to hire her to help organize the local fĂȘte, Agatha is happy to do so...after she sees the handsome man also helping the vicar.  When two women at the fĂȘte die after ingesting LSD-laced jam, Agatha must use her detective skills to discover who put the LSD in the jam.

There Goes the Bride ****
Fiction.  Book 20 in the Agatha Raisin cozy mystery series.  Agatha’s ex-husband, James Lacey, is getting remarried, and Agatha is invited to the wedding.  But when the time came for the bride to walk down the aisle, she didn’t.  The bride was later found shot to  death in her bedroom, and James is one of the suspects.

Blackwell, Juliet
Letters from Paris *****
Fiction.  Claire’s grandmother is ill, and though Claire is devastated, the timing seems fortuitous.  She packs up and leaves Chicago to head down to Louisiana’s bayou country to take care of her grandmother in her last days.  In the attic, she finds a long lost broken mask of a mysterious beautiful woman and remembers that when she was young, she would tell the mask her greatest secrets as if the woman were alive.  Before her grandmother passes, she urges Claire to fly to Paris and solve the mystery of the mask woman’s identity...and Claire’s journey is just beginning.

Fluke, Joanna
The Wedding Cake Murder ***
Fiction.  23rd book in the Hannah Swensen cozy mystery series.  Hannah is looking forward to her wedding and also to participating in a television dessert cooking show.  The head judge is harsh to most of the contestants, but when he’s found dead, Hannah feels it necessary to try to solve his murder.

Funke, Cornelia
Inkdeath *****
Fiction.  Final book in the Inkworld trilogy.  The children of Ombra are hidden by the robbers for fear that the Adderhead will enslave them all in the mines.  Meggie and her mother go with them, but the Bluejay, Mo, must surrender in order to keep them all safe.

Inkheart ****
Fiction.  First in the Inkworld trilogy.  Meggie’s father has a special gift.  He can sometimes read characters out of books.  Unfortunately, he cannot pick and choose which characters will emerge, or who in his life will disappear into a book.  When evil characters from a book called Inkheart enter our world, his wife disappears into its pages.  Ever since then, he has refused to read aloud from a book, and he and Meggie have moved from home to home to flee an evil man named Capricorn who came out of Inkheart.

Inkspell *****
Fiction.  Second in the Inkworld trilogy.  Meggie, her father, and her mother, are reunited at Elinor’s house.  But evil follows them there, when Basta and Mortola force their way into the manor and demand that Mo read them back into Inkworld.  Another reader, Orpheus, appears, who also can read people into and out of stories, but he has no conscience about his actions.  Farid begs Meggie to read him into Inkworld to find Dustfinger, but Meggie ends up sending  more than one person into the story when she reads the words.

Giltenan, Ceci
The Pocket Watch ****
Fiction.  Maggie Mitchell is suffering from heartbreak, when a strange woman approaches her at a park and offers to let Maggie swap souls with someone from a different place and time.  Maggie believes the woman to be mentally disturbed, but agrees to follow her instructions.  Surprisingly, Maggie wakes to find herself clinging to the back of a galloping horse headed directly for a cliff’s edge.

Rajchel, Diana
Mabon ****
Non-fiction.  Lore, celebration, crafts, recipes, spells, and rituals of Mabon.

Rowling, J.K.
Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide ***
Fiction.  Trivia guide to Hogwarts.

Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies *****
Fction.  Stories of beloved characters of the HP world.

Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Political and Pesky Poltergeists ****

Fiction.  Stories of not-so-beloved characters of the HP world.