Thursday’s Tale: Sweetheart Roland

by Carol9 Comments
Have I told you the tale of "Sweetheart Roland," from the Brothers Grimm? In wonderful fairy tale style, it starts off with a woman killing her own daughter. We've also got a witch dancing to death, and a cheating lover. After all that, though there is a happy ending, for the beautiful, faithful young woman. The Grimms do love pretty girls who do the housework, don't they? A witch had a daughter, whom she loved, and a stepdaughter she of course hated. No father is mentioned, not that he would have been much use anyway. Her daughter wanted the stepsister's apron, and her mother promised she would have it: she would chop off the stepsister's head in the night, and the daughter was to make sure she lay by the wall, and her stepsister in the front of the bed. The stepdaughter overheard this and, after the daughter slept, shifted their places. The witch cut off her own daughter's head, and the stepdaughter rose and...
Read More

Review: The Case of the Displaced Detective: The Arrival by Stephanie Osborn

by Carol1 Comment
Title: The Case of the Displaced Detective: The Arrival (Displaced Detective #1) Author: Stephanie Osborn Category: Sci-fi Mystery Rating: 3½ out of 5 stars Add: Goodreads Purchase: Amazon The Case of the Displaced Detective: The Arrival is a SF mystery in which brilliant hyperspatial physicist, Dr. Skye Chadwick, discovers there are alternate realities, often populated by those we consider only literary characters. Her pet research, Project: Tesseract, hidden deep under Schriever AFB, finds Continuum 114, where Sherlock Holmes was to have died along with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. In a knee-jerk reaction, Skye rescues Holmes, who inadvertently flies through the wormhole to our universe, while his enemy plunges to his death. Unable to go back without causing devastating continuum collapse, Holmes must stay in our world and adapt. Meanwhile, the Schriever AFB Dept of Security discovers a spy ring working to dig out the details of - and possibly sabotage - Project: Tesseract. Can Chadwick help Holmes come up to speed in modern investigative techniques in time...
Read More

Audiobook Review: The Heist by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg

by Carol7 Comments
  Title: The Heist (O'Hare and Fox #1) Authors: Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg Reader: Scott Brick Category: Crime Caper Audio published: June 18, 2013 by Random House Audio Rating: 3½ out of 5 stars Add: Goodreads Purchase: Amazon | Book Depository | IndieBound FBI Special Agent Kate O’Hare is known for her fierce dedication and discipline on the job, chasing down the world’s most wanted criminals and putting them behind bars. Her boss thinks she is tenacious and ambitious; her friends think she is tough, stubborn, and maybe even a bit obsessed. And while Kate has made quite a name for herself for the past five years the only name she’s cared about is Nicolas Fox—an international crook she wants in more ways than one. Audacious, handsome, and dangerously charming, Nicolas Fox is a natural con man, notorious for running elaborate scams on very high-profile people. At first he did it for the money. Now he does it for the thrill. He knows that the FBI has been hot on his trail—particularly...
Read More

On TV: Sleepy Hollow, Episode 1

by Carol9 Comments
  I re-read Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" last fall. It's a good story, but I was interested to see what twist Fox was giving it in the new tv series, Sleepy Hollow. Ichabod Crane is not the goofy teacher we remember from the original. This time around, he's an Oxford professor, come to America to fight the rebels, but he eventually joins their side, fighting under Washington. And then he dies. The story picks up 200+ years later, when the dead Crane wakes up via some kind of magic  in modern-day Sleepy Hollow, along with the infamous Headless Horseman. So far it's a cool idea and Crane is kinda sexy. I just can't call him Ichabod- I picture the cartoon character with the huge ears. I also like the cop who Crane pairs up with, Abbie Mills, who actually believes him to some degree because of an event from her past. Crane in modern America makes for some amusing comments,...
Read More

Thursday’s Tale: The Suitors of the Princess Fire-Fly

by Carol3 Comments
Today, I thought we'd look at another tale Baroness Orczy retold in Old Hungarian Fairy Tales, "The Suitors of the Princess Fire-Fly." A long time ago, there lived a King Fire-fly who lived in a lovely lotus palace. He had a lovely daughter he kept safe inside the palace, but she became lovelier and lovelier and her fame spread throughout the land. All the moths, beetles and flies of neighboring kingdoms pulled out their finery in order to woo her, but she stated she would only marry the one who would perform a perilous task for her, bring back a spark of fire. Many fairy flies, and beetles, and moths, and all types of insects fly off on the quest. The problem is that bugs and fire don't get along well. Many get burned, some find phosphorescent mosses but they go out when daylight comes. The "Red Admiral" finds a ring of fire, a diamond, but a boy picks it up before he can...
Read More