Library – Carol's Notebook

Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis

December 12, 2025December 12, 2025 by CarolNo Comments

Full Speed to a Crash Landing is just a fun little book. When we first meet Ada, she is alone on her ship Glory which has a hole in its side and she has less than an hour of oxygen left in her suit. She knows there's a ship in range to rescue her but they haven't answered her distress call yet. Eventually, the other ship does answer and lets her onboard, but there is plenty of tension. Ada was salvaging a wrecked ship, but the government salvage crew, especially leader Rian, is suspicious and doesn't want her knowing what was onboard the wreck. I listened to the audio. Most of the chapters are from Ada's first person point of view and I felt like the narrator caught her personality well. She's clearly smart and resourceful - she has to be to run a salvage operation on her on. She's also a bit quirky and good at banter. What she isn't is...

O, Deadly Night by Vicki Delany

November 26, 2025November 26, 2025 by Carol2 Comments

Rudolph, New York, is the place to be for Christmas - the town goes all out to welcome tourists to America’s Christmas Town. Merry once again doesn't win the best float in the Santa Claus parade, but all the shops in town are bustling. Also a new neighborhood has moved in across the street, but Mrs. D'Angelo thinks something is up. She never sees them and they won't answer the door when she tries to drop off cookies. Mrs. D'Angelo is one of those nosey neighbors and even asks Merry to mention the elusive new-comers to the police. Then Mrs. D'Angelo disappears and Merry realizes the older woman might have taken her snooping too far. Eventually, Merry finds Mrs. D'Angelo relatively unharmed - and a dead body. The killer is pretty easy to guess in this one, as is the motive, but the characters are fun to spend time with. Merry's family and friends are appropriately quirky and her dog...

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie

November 20, 2025November 20, 2025 by Carol1 Comment

I shouldn't actually like Cat Among the Pigeons. Spies and political intrigue are not usually my favorites, especially when it comes to a Christie novel, but this one is fun. Our set up is that during the revolution in a small Middle Eastern country, the king gave some jewels to his best friend to sneak out of the country. Those very valuable jewels end up at a girls' school in England, leading to a couple of murders and a kidnapping. Poirot doesn't show up until maybe two-thirds of the way into this one. The reader knows where the jewels are hidden but not who is after them or who the murderer is. A fun amateur sleuth puts together some of the pieces and heads off to London to ask for Poirot's help. This was a reread for me and I did remember a couple of the twists, but that doesn't make it less fun. This time I listened to the audio...

Arsenic and Old Lies by Benedict Brown

November 5, 2025November 5, 2025 by Carol1 Comment

I enjoy this series a lot, but don't seem to have much to say about this one. Marius Quin, mystery writer and amateur detective, finds a dead man in his study. The man has obviously been murdered and was Bella's fiancé. Bella is Marius' friend, sleuthing partner, and the woman he's been in love with forever. He's too close to the situation to help the police, so distracts himself with the case of Felicity Mortimer, a woman imprisoned for poisoning her husband fifteen years earlier. Marius is convinced Felicity is innocent and he and Bella set off to the Mortimer country estate to prove it. I like Marius. He's not the best detective or writer or the most sensitive man, but he tries. I love how well he and Bella work together and their friendship is well done. The plot moved along at a nice pace with plenty of clues, suspicious characters, and family secrets. The next in the series takes...

Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie

October 31, 2025October 31, 2025 by Carol1 Comment

This is at least the third or fourth time I've read Hallowe'en Party. Christie books are my comfort reads and this one is perfect for October. A girl is drowned in the apple bobbing bucket at a Halloween party after declaring that she once saw a murder. Ariadne Oliver, a guest at the party, turns to Poirot for help. Poirot begins with the question of what murder the girl could have witnessed, and turns up several potential cases. The plot moved along at a good pace and there were several turns. I knew the who the killer was, but it was fun getting there. I love the dialogue between Ariadne and Poirot....

A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny

October 30, 2025October 31, 2025 by Carol2 Comments

I loved A Night in the Lonesome October. It's the late 1800s and a group of strangers have gathered in a village outside of London for The Game. We know them, of course: Jack (the Ripper), Larry Talbot (The Wolfman), the Great Detective (Sherlock Holmes), the Count (Dracula), the Good Doctor (Frankenstein) and others, along with their familiars. Our narrator is Snuff, Jack's mathematically-inclined dog, who is a very good boy. There are 31 chapters, one for each day in October, but I listened to most of it on a long car ride. We are dumped right in the middle of the action and left to kind of figure stuff out on our own. It's a light, fun book, but chockful of literary and cultural references and amazing dialogue. It's clever and funny and the characters, including the critters, are so well drawn. And the showdown at the end is fabulous. I will say i should have boned up on...