The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook

by Carol8 Comments
The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook Henry Griswald is the narrator of this tragic story he relates what happened seven decades earlier, when in 1926, he was a teenager, son of the headmaster of the Chatham School. That is the year, Elizabeth Channing arrived in town, a young, beautiful art teacher who has traveled the world.  That is the year his small town witnessed passion and death, saw a young woman destroyed and eventually accused of murder. Only Henry holds the key to what truly happened those years ago and it takes the whole book to learn all of the secrets. We left a few minutes later, and I didn't say a single word to Miss Channing that morning, but only gazed at her stonily, my demeanor already forming into the hard shell it would assume on the day I testified against her, answering every question with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, knowing all the...
Read More

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg

by Carol15 Comments
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg (Suggested reading level: Grades 3-6) Sometimes classic children's books just don't work for me, probably because I'm too critical. Amber (10) and I both adored this one, though. Claudia is determined to run away from home to teach her folks a lesson. She knows herself well and realizes that she wants to run to somewhere comfortable and beautiful. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the perfect place. Taking her brother Jamie, who has a fair amount of cash, with her, she settles in for a nice stay. There she becomes intrigued by Angel, a statue that may or may not have been carved by Michelangelo. Claudia is determined to discover the statue's secrets. Her quest leads her to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the remarkable old woman who sold the statue, and to some equally remarkable discoveries about herself. "Returning with a secret is what she really wants. Angel had...
Read More

Flirting With Forever by Gwyn Cready

by Carol13 Comments
Flirting with Forever by Gwyn Cready I don't know that I've ever read a time travel romance before this one. Apparently I've been missing a fun sub-genre. This is a fun, sexy romp. In present day Pittsburgh, art historian Campbell Stratford is working on a manuscript, a sexy tell-all "fictography" of a seventeenth-century painter that she hopes will help her get the promotion she's after. To her surprise, she discovers a time portal that transports her back to that time, straight into the home of painter Peter Lely, portraitist to Charles II. Here's where it gets a little confusing. Peter Lely is dead and has been recruited by the Guild protecting dead artists to sabotage Cam's project. So he's traveled back to that point in time, too, knowing that he will meet the writer then. Sparks fly, but after a night of seduction, Cam returns to the present and realizes she's been betrayed. But, Peter manages to travel to modern Pittsburgh, in theory...
Read More

A Summer Teaser

by Carol6 Comments
Green and lush, it grew up and around the doublewide, making the structure, with its bright cobalt color and red door, look like one more exotic bloom. Along the front, sunflowers moved lazily in the breeze, brushing a side window: beneath them were a row of rosebushes, their perfumelike scent permeating the air. (pg. 115, The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen) I admit that the nice weather lately has made me want to get out in the yard, plant flowers and veggies.  I'm not an outdoors person, but I do love my gardens. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Play along. I cheated a little, but the rules are easy. Grab your current read, open to a random page, and give us two teaser sentences. Remember, no spoilers. My copy was borrowed from the library and the above is my honest opinion. I am an Amazon associate....
Read More

The Stir Outside the Cafe Royal by Clarence Rook

by Carol5 Comments
"The Stir Outside the Café Royal" by Clarence Rook I love a good detective story, although this one doesn't quite fit the bill for me. There is not much actual detecting, no showing how the clues are followed. I know nothing about the author other than that he died in 1915. Colonel Mathurin was one of the aristocrats of crime; at least Mathurin was the name under which he had accomplished a daring bank robbery in Detroit which had involved the violent death of the manager, though it was generally believed by the police that the Rossiter who was at the bottom of some long-firm frauds in Melbourne was none other than Mathurin under another name, and that the designer and chief gainer in a sensational murder case in the Midlands was the same mysterious and ubiquitous personage. The story tells how on pleasant, sunny day in London a young American woman, alone in the city, manages to trick this criminal into entering...
Read More