Category: Books

India Black and the Rajah's Ruby  by Carol K. Carr is a short, glittering novella about one of the most fascinating female characters I've met in the last couple of years. India Black is the owner of a brothel in Victorian London, a business woman with a taste for danger. I've read the two novels in this series, but this story takes us back in time to show how India went from prostitute to owning a house herself. As such, it stands alone well, introduces you to India with a sparkling escapade that gives the reader all the background she needs. For those of us who already know India, it fills in the blanks of how she came to be where she is. "Let the girls think I'm a superior breed; it discourages competition. Of course, it would be false modesty on my part to pretend that dexterity and daring didn't enter into the matter. It most certainly did. A lesser...

I can't let the Christmas season pass without reading a fun romance anthology and Romancing the Holiday from Carina Press was a good choice. Each of the three novellas left me with a smile at the end. "We'll Be Home for Christmas" by HelenKay Dimon was my favorite of the set. Apparently it's the third of the Holloway novellas, I'm assuming the other two were in previous anthologies, but I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything important by not having read them. Lila and Spencer had a three day hook-up in a hotel months ago, assuming they would never see each other again. Of course, this is a romance story, so of course when Lila needs a fresh start and decides to fix up her uncle's old campground in West Virginia who does she run into but Spencer and his family and learns that Spencer lied to her during their weekend together. (Imagine that.) Of course there are sparks...

I've had A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch on my to-read list since spring of 2008 and I finally got around to listening to the audio version this month. Why I chose this book: I have certainly been on a mystery kick lately, and I have a weakness for those set in Victorian England. And it doesn't hurt that this one was nominated for an Agatha Award in 2007 for best first novel. The detective in this one, Charles Lenox, is a particular type of detective I've run into before. He's a gentleman, an aristocrat whose older brother has all the responsibility while Lenox is able to afford to solve crimes more or less as a hobby. He's a bachelor, well-read, an armchair traveler, but when his dear friend Lady Jane asks him to look into the death of her former maid, Prudence Smith, he heads out in the cold. The woman was murdered; he is sure after examining the scene, even though it was...

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there. The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads. And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap. Robert Sabuda takes the classic text and adds his own amazing pop-ups to it in The Night Before Christmas. The poem itself is a classic, one that's read every year. And Sabuda doesn't take any thing away from that, he adds to it. The text is clear on each page and it flows like it should. Sabuda's pop-ups in mostly white but with touches of green and red accent the text. I am always amazed by Sabuda's work. The color and shapes for the most part are simple...

  I was looking forward to reading Mrs. Jeffries and the Mistletoe Mix-up by Emily Brightwell this year. I had won it last year, but hadn't gotten around to reading it, so it was on my list for this season. I read another of the Mrs. Jeffries mysteries a few years ago, even though I don't remember which one, so I was familiar with the basic set-up. Inspector Witherspoon with the Scotland Yard is a single man in Victorian London who has a household of staff. The staff, including his housekeeper Mrs. Jeffries, helps him solve his cases without him realizing it. They use their own contacts and do their own investigations, then Mrs. Jeffries puts just the right thoughts and questions into the Inspector's head, allowing him to reach the correct conclusion. This time around the household's Christmas planning gets side-lined by murder. A prominent Oriental antiquities collector is killed, sliced through the neck with his own sword and it's up...