Tuesday Book Review

This week in addition to my reading the Donna Andrews books I have been reading, Aunt Dimity and the Quilt books, I also read the newest Carolyn Hart mystery - "Dare to Die". I have to give Carolyn Hart credit for getting me to read mysteries in the first place - so her books will always have a soft spot in my heart. I love Annie Darling - her protagonist and her husband Max. In fact I am thinking that when I finish reading some of these other series that I have started that I will start that series over from the beginning and read it through. I am sure that through the years there are a few I have missed - as with the Aunt Dimity series and the Quilter's Apprentice Series. "Dare to Die" did not disappoint me and was up to Carolyn Hart's usual standard.

I thought the book "Pushing up Daisies" would somehow be related to the TV series, 'Pushing Daisies' and so I grabbed it. Not remotely. It was a typical fluffy mystery but low and behold this time I happened to get the first one published by an author. It was good and I will probably read others if Rosemary Harris chooses to publish more. The other interesting thing is that usually the mysteries I read somehow take place in the South such as Virginia, South Carolina or Texas. This one was placed in Connecticut, not too far from here. I love to read books in settings I know about. That is why I have been loving the China Bayles series so much from Susan Wittig Albert. I have to say that right now that is my favorite mystery series, simply because I escape to the Texas Hill Country every time I pick one up. I also have read the two most recent 'Beatrix Potter' mysteries by the same author and thoroughly enjoyed them. I guess I don't have to know exactly where the setting is. I have never been to England and both Aunt Dimity and the Beatrix Potter mysteries take place in about the same region of England. But the authors write about a small town and a small town is a small town anywhere in the world - at least from these books.

I am grateful for a fabulous library system, a computer system that lets me order any library book I want, Parents that encouraged us to read and showed the example that reading is fun, and authors imaginations that make books possible. (Yeah, Pammy!)