Hey all! It's the last day of August, a month that has felt like 6 months, to be honest (I am not a fan of hot weather and summer time in general). But now we can finally look forward to cooler temps and a beautiful fall bounty from our fruit trees, and gardens. I'm also looking forward to all the holidays and birthdays coming up, with celebrations and even more books to savor while curled up with a blanket and a hot cup of tea. This will be, BTW, my 780th post on Butterfly books. I'm hoping to get close to 800 by the end of 2021.
Two amazing authors have passed away this week, and I'm particularly saddened by the death of Caroline Todd, as I've read and loved all of her Bess Crawford mysteries. Yet she left one last manuscript, as a legacy to her readers, so I will read it with her and her son, who co-authored all her books, in mind. RIP.
Obituary Note: Jill Murphy
British author and illustrator Jill Murphy https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz49501553, who was best known for writing the children's book series the Worst Witch and the Large Family, died August 18. She was 72. The Guardian reported that Murphy "started writing the Worst Witch while still at school, completing her first manuscript at the age of 18. Her mother once commented that Murphy and her two friends looked like witches in their dark school uniforms, which gave the author the idea for her first book."
Although she initially struggled to find a publisher for her first novel, the book went on to sell millions of copies. Murphy's works also won many awards, including the Smarties prize for The Last Noo-Noo. Peace at Last and All in One Piece were both commended for the Kate Greenaway Medal.
The Bookseller noted that Murphy "started drawing and writing stories from an early age and by the age of 11 had made 90 books which she kept and used to inspire children at events in later life."
Pamela Todd, Murphy's friend and agent of more than 30 years, said: "It's a sad day for children's books. Jill was so creative, beautiful and funny. Her genius lay in the way both the child and the adult could identify with her stories, which she wrote and illustrated herself.
Children who grew up on Peace at Last, Whatever Next! and The Large Family... are now buying the books for their children's children.... Jill was just coming into her prime and had so much more to offer. This is a great loss, not least to me personally, but we are comforted that she leaves an amazing legacy of books for generations to come."
Obituary Note: Caroline Todd
Caroline Todd, who wrote several bestselling series with her son Charles under the pen name Charles Todd, died on August 28.
One series starred a detective--Inspector Ian Rutledge--who had to make his own decisions and live with his own conscience, and the other featured a battlefield nurse--Bess Crawford--who would be considered brave and independent in any era.
Todd and her son published the first book in the Ian Rutledge series, A Test of Wills, in 1996. The book won the Barry Award from Deadly Pleasures mystery magazine and was nominated for the John Creasey Award in the U.K., the Edgar Award, and the Anthony Award. The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association named A Test of Wills one of the 100 favorite mysteries of the 20th Century, and it was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
The team published more than 30 titles, including two stand-alone novels, an anthology of short stories and more than 20 short stories.
Their works have received the Mary Higgins Clark, Agatha, and Barry awards along with nominations for the Anthony, Edgar, and Dagger awards. The next Ian Rutledge novel, A Game of Fear, and the next Bess Crawford novel were completed before Todd's death and will be published by Morrow next year.
Emily Krump, Todd's editor at William Morrow, said, "It was a privilege and honor to work with Caroline Todd. Her knowledge of World War I Britain was encyclopedic. Her understanding of story and tension was masterful. But it was her deep empathy for her characters that brought Ian Rutledge and Bess Crawford to life over so many books. Caroline was classy, funny, and kind, and I will miss her as much as her readers will."
She traveled extensively in Britain exploring the history of the small villages, visiting battlefields, clambering over period tanks and even flew in a World War I type aircraft. When she wasn't writing, she was traveling the world, gardening or painting in oils. She also had a deep love of animals and supported pet adoptions and dogs for veterans.
This has been a dream of mine for years, to spend a night in a huge library or bookstore, just drinking tea and eating cookies or snacks and enjoying a good book or three. Also, getting to browse the shelves whenever I want to!
Bookstores and Libraries You Can Spend the Night In
From the United Kingdom to Japan, Mental Floss has highlighted eight bookstores and libraries around the world https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz49501573 in which readers can spend the night. There are options in Wigtown, Scotland; Tokyo, Japan; Paris, France; and Newport, Ore., among others.
I find this news fascinating, mainly because when Kate Mulgrew visited my graduating class of theater majors at Clarke College in 1983, among the more harrowing tales she told us of auditioning in Hollywood was one of meeting with David Bowie to discuss being in a music video, and having him come out of the bedroom of his hotel suite (where the audition was being held) stark naked, followed by several models, men and women, who were also stark naked, and having to carry on a conversation with this man while trying not to stare at his junk. And now here we are over 30 years later, and she's starring in a series based on a film that Bowie starred in several years before she met him,and well before he passed away. I think that Hollywood is a much smaller place than it would appear to be at first blush.
TV: The Man Who Fell to Earth
Kate Mulgrew (Orange is the New Black, Star Trek: Voyager) will have a key recurring role opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor and Naomie Harris in Showtime's series The Man Who Fell to Earth https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz49501584, based on the Walter Tevis novel and 1976 film that starred David Bowie, Deadline reported.
Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet are writing and executive producing the series and will serve as showrunners along with executive producer John Hlavin. Kurtzman will also direct multiple episodes. The series is produced by CBS Studios in association with Secret Hideout and Timberman/Beverly. Production is underway in London, with premiere set for 2022 on Showtime.
Murder on Black Swan Lane by Andrea Penrose was a low priced ebook that sounded similar enough to Deanna Raybourne's Veronica Speedwell mysteries to pique my curiosity. This series takes place in Victorian London, England, and since there's a strong female protagonist and a male protagonist who works alongside her to help solve the mystery (and who appreciates her independence and intelligence), I thought I'd dive right in and see how strong the romantic subplot would be, and whether it would distract from the mystery itself. I'm glad to report that the romance was kept to a frisson between the two main characters, and thus the game was afoot when it came to the mystery itself. Here's the blurb: In Regency London, an unconventional scientist and a fearless
female artist form an unlikely alliance to expose a cold-hearted killer .
. .
The Earl of Wrexford possesses a brilliant
scientific mind, but boredom and pride lead him to reckless behavior. So
when pompous, pious Reverend Josiah Holworthy publicly condemns him for
debauchery, Wrexford unsheathes his rapier-sharp wit and strikes back.
As their war of words escalates, London’s most popular satirical
cartoonist, A.J. Quill, skewers them both. But then the clergyman is
found slain in a church—his face burned by chemicals, his throat slashed
ear to ear—and Wrexford finds himself the chief suspect.
An
artist in her own right, Charlotte Sloane has secretly slipped into the
persona of her late husband, using his nom de plume A.J. Quill. When
Wrexford discovers her true identity, she fears it will be her undoing.
But he has a proposal—use her sources to unveil the clergyman’s
clandestine involvement in questionable scientific practices, and unmask
the real murderer. Soon Lord Wrexford and the mysterious Mrs. Sloane
plunge into a dangerous shadow world hidden among London’s intellectual
enclaves to trap a cunning adversary—before they fall victim to the next
experiment in villainy.
Quill/Sloane is a fantastic character, full of righteous furor and also a great deal of compassion for starving street children, two of whom she manages to take under her wing and feed/care for in exchange for their running errands for her with her clandestine newspaper cartoon business. Wrexford is a bit harder to warm up to, as he's very "Spock" like, all logic and repressed emotions, but readers soon discover that a heart does beat within his breast, and he does actually care about street "weasels" as he calls the street children employed by Sloane. Though parts of the narrative were a touch overwritten with explanations of how different items or chemicals work (I don't think readers needed to know that information to enjoy the mystery story),the prose was engaging and the plot gripping enough to keep me turning pages until 4AM this morning. I enjoyed it so much that I plan to read the next two books in the series on my Kindle Paperwhite this week. I'd give this finely wrought novel an A, with a recommendation to anyone who enjoys fictional historical mysteries and those who like the Veronica Speedwell series to get ahold of a copy of this book posthaste!
The Bookshop at Water's End by Patti Callahan Henry is a women's fiction book that has a misleading title, as very little of the book takes place anywhere near the Watersend Bookstore, presided over by the wise Mimi, who keeps a secret from the women who come to Watersend looking for answers. The prose is silky and smooth as a river rock, while the plot rambles along like a clear-running stream. Here's the blurb: The women who spent their childhood summers in a small southern town
discover it harbors secrets as lush as the marshes that surround it...
Bonny Blankenship’s most treasured memories are of idyllic summers
spent in Watersend, South Carolina, with her best friend, Lainey McKay.
Amid the sand dunes and oak trees draped with Spanish moss, they swam
and wished for happy-ever-afters, then escaped to the local bookshop to
read and whisper in the glorious cool silence. Until the night that
changed everything, the night that Lainey’s mother disappeared.
Now, in her early fifties, Bonny is desperate to clear her head after a
tragic mistake threatens her career as an emergency room doctor, and her
marriage crumbles around her. With her troubled teenage daughter,
Piper, in tow, she goes back to the beloved river house, where she is
soon joined by Lainey and her two young children. During lazy summer
days and magical nights, they reunite with bookshop owner Mimi, who is
tangled with the past and its mysteries. As the three women cling to a
fragile peace, buried secrets and long ago loves return like the tide.
Most of this novel is taken up with the dual problems of what happened to Lainey's mother (who was a mentally ill drug addict who just walked out on her family, never to return, and left them no notes or any ideas of where she'd gone) and what Lainey's best friend Bonny is going to do about her work as a high powered ER doctor in the city (now that she made a fatal error that she thinks cost a patient his life) and her horribly untenable marriage to her verbally abusive husband (while attempting to reconnect with her teenage daughter Piper, who has been acting out and getting in trouble at school). Bonny and Lainey were "summer sisters" for many of their growing up years, and so they come back to Bonny's summer home to try and get their lives back on track. Mimi is not really much in evidence until the end of the book, when she comes clean with a friend of hers to tell Lainey SPOILER ALERT that her mother died only months earlier and didn't want to contact her daughter or son until she had been clean and sober for more that a year, and had her life worked out. Personally, I think Mimi and her friend were serious cowards for not breaking that secret and letting Lanie and her flighty brother know where their mom was when it became obvious that her health was bad enough that she wouldn't recover. They should have been allowed to know why their mother abandoned them and they should have been able to say goodbye. As far as Bonny goes, I think she should have divorced her crappy nasty husband way before reaching this crisis point, and I also think she should have ditched Owen once and for all, because it's obvious that this is a guy who can never stay in one place and commit to one person for any length of time.He's selfish and shallow and I didn't see what Bonny saw in such a jerk, myself. Yet though the book had its weak points, it was still a good read. I'd give it an A-, and recommend it to anyone who is interested in stories of crisis that becomes a turning point to a better life.
Lightening Strike by William Kent Krueger is the third novel of his that I've read (Ordinary Grace and This Tender Land were the other two) and loved. Krueger is like a modern day Steinbeck, married with the sensibilities of Ivan Doig and with a touch of the Irish William Kennedy's musical prose thrown in for good measure. There were many times, when reading this glorious novel that I'd have to put the book down just to breathe in the wonder of his exquisite prose, his memorable characters and brilliant plot. I gather that this is a prequel to his Cork O'Connor series, but I was so engrossed in the story that I didn't really care about what came after for the main characters. Here's the blurb:
The author of the instant New York Times bestseller This Tender Land
returns with a powerful prequel to his acclaimed Cork O’Connor series—a
book about fathers and sons, long-simmering conflicts in a small
Minnesota town, and the events that echo through youth and shape our
lives forever.
Aurora is a small town nestled in the ancient
forest alongside the shores of Minnesota’s Iron Lake. In the summer of
1963, it is the whole world to twelve-year-old Cork O’Connor, its
rhythms as familiar as his own heartbeat. But when Cork stumbles upon
the body of a man he revered hanging from a tree in an abandoned logging
camp, it is the first in a series of events that will cause him to
question everything he took for granted about his hometown, his family,
and himself.
Cork’s father, Liam O’Connor, is Aurora’s sheriff
and it is his job to confirm that the man’s death was the result of
suicide, as all the evidence suggests. In the shadow of his father’s
official investigation, Cork begins to look for answers on his own.
Together, father and son face the ultimate test of choosing between what
their heads tell them is true and what their hearts know is right.
In
this masterful story of a young man and a town on the cusp of change,
beloved novelist William Kent Krueger shows that some mysteries can be
solved even as others surpass our understanding.
I dare anyone to get to the end of this stellar novel and not cry, or at least be misty-eyed by the final pages. Of course I sobbed like a baby (I won't spoil it for you and say why) and I also found myself yearning for just a few more chapters, like an addict jonesing for a fix. Like Jane Austen I always find that good books are too short and this was no exception. Cork is such an endearing kid, and the Native American/Indigenous people, both adults and children are such fascinating and full bodied characters that they seem real, as if one could call them on the telephone and ask for directions to a small town in Minnesota. Of course I kept hearing Gordon Lightfoot singing "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" the whole time I was reading about the Chipewa and the big lake they call Kitchagume. I'd give this novel an A+, and recommend it to anyone and everyone, especially people who think of the Midwest as flat "flyover"states...you will change your mind by the end of this book, believe me. Here's a link to Gordon Lightfoots wonderful song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuzTkGyxkYI
A Stitch in Time by Kelley Armstrong is a paranormal fantasy/mystery/romantic ghost story that also has some thriller tidbits tied up in it's DNA. This is one of those ebooks that I got for a low price special on Amazon that I figured would be distracting at best. Turns out it was a jewel of a story, written in razor sharp prose with a plot that moves so fast that it will keep you turning pages long past your bedtime. Here's the blurb:
Thorne Manor has always been haunted…and it has always haunted Bronwyn
Dale. As a young girl, Bronwyn could pass through a time slip in her
great-aunt’s house, where she visited William Thorne, a boy her own age,
born two centuries earlier. After a family tragedy, the house was
shuttered and Bronwyn was convinced that William existed only in her
imagination. Now, twenty years later Bronwyn inherits Thorne Manor. And
when she returns, William is waiting. William Thorne is no longer the
boy she remembers. He’s a difficult and tempestuous man, his own life
marred by tragedy and a scandal that had him retreating to self-imposed
exile in his beloved moors. He’s also none too pleased with Bronwyn for
abandoning him all those years ago. As their friendship rekindles and
sparks into something more, Bronwyn must also deal with ghosts in the
present version of the house. Soon she realizes they are linked to
William and the secret scandal that drove him back to Thorne Manor. To
build a future, Bronwyn must confront the past.
Though of course any story that has a lovers separated by centuries theme can become sappy and maudlin quickly, but that never happened, fortunately, with a Stitch in Time. The ghosts and their feelings of fear and hopelessness kept things focused on the mysteries of their killer, and the lovers condundrum miraculously seems to solve itself, though I will say that SPOILER, I'm not sure how a woman can get pregnant by someone who has been dead for 200 years by the time she's of age in our era. But as anyone can see with the streaming series (based on the books) Outlander, writers tend to take a very liberal view of women's fertility during time travel. I did, however, really enjoy this sumptuous feast of a novel, and I'd give it a B+, and recommend it to anyone who wants a story that is by turns chilling and romantic and breathtaking.