wednesday december 10
I’ve written about Stuart Kaminsky’s Chicago police detective Abe Lieberman, but there’s another elderly detective closer to home, Ronald Tierney’s Deets Shanahan. The seventy-year-old Indianapolis p.i.’s latest appearance is in Bloody Palms. I just read that one, and then I just had to go pick up the couple that I had missed before it.
In Bloody Palms, Shanahan gets a call to come to Mexico for a meeting with his old army major, Jack Wenders. It’s been since Korea, so Shanahan is a bit surprised to hear from him. Wenders, it turns out, wants Shanahan’s help to deal with an international conspiracy. Which would seem a little over the top, except that the next day Wenders is murdered.
Meanwhile, back in Indiana, Shanahan’s younger fellow p.i. and friend Howie Cross suddenly has a case to investigate, too. His mother wakes him to tell him that his daughter, Maya, has disappeared from their farmhouse.
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tuesday december 09
We’ve developed quite a crush on Maisy at my house. Maisy is an adorable little mouse who stars in her own children’s book series created British book illustrator Lucy Cousins. (Maisy also has her own show on Nickelodeon’s Noggin)
Maisy is very much like a human toddler who goes on adventures and plays with her friends Charley the Crocodile, Tallulah the Baby Chicken, Cyril Squirrel, and Eddie Elephant. They guide little ones through everyday experiences such as making friends, riding tricycles, going swimming, playing in the garden, and reading books while reinforcing early learning concepts such as colors, numbers, and social themes.
The lift the flap board book format seem to be most popular at my house, but really all of her adventures are fabulous. I’m not sure if it is the brightly colored illustrations or think black outlines Cousins uses, but her illustrations mesmerize my kiddos.
Below are a few of the library’s collection of Maisy books. Happy Reading!
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friday december 05
"Psychologist/Investigator" is how she describes herself on her business cards, but the character of Maisie Dobbs is even more complex than that. Starting out as a housemaid at age 13, she came under the tutelage of a master sleuth, worked in the field hospitals of France during World War I, and then completed a college education before launching her own investigation agency in London. In a metaphysical vein, she studied meditation with a yogi and she inherited the gift of second sight from her grandmother. Brains, careful observation, and personal intuition all come into play as she tackles the cases that are brought to her office door.
Author Jacqueline Winspear is a native of England herself, growing up listening to stories of her grandparents' experiences during WWI. She cleverly incorporates threads of those tales into Maisie's life, providing rich details about the long-term effects of the war on those who survived. The fifth book in the Maisie Dobbs series, An Incomplete Revenge, was published in 2008; all of the titles in the series can be found in various formats in The Library's fiction collection.
thursday december 04
Christmas is just around the corner! The bad news is you have less than three weeks to wrap up your shopping. The good news is the library has added some fabulous Christmas titles to our children’s collection- and checking them out is free!
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wednesday december 03
For a novel about orphans, thieves, and grave robbers, The Good Thief, by Hannah Tinti, is a suprisingly buoyant book. You can get a glimpse of its quirky, Dickensian charm from the marvelous jacket illustration.
Ren is one of the boys in St. Anthony's orphanage. Because he is missing his left hand, he knows that he is never likely to be adopted, and that he will some day be given to the soldiers. So he consoles himself with small thefts.
Then a man named Benjamin Nab shows up and claims that Ren is his little brother. He spins a wild tale of how they were separated. Perhaps no one quite believes it, but it solves the problem of Ren. And it turns out that Ren's affliction is useful to Benjamin--a piteous crippled child is a good draw for a conman and thief.
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"Caper novel" doesn’t seem like quite the right phrase to describe Duane Swierczynski’s debut crime novel, The Wheelman, since the body count is almost as high as the page count. But you’ll find yourself snickering anyway, and you’ll recognize the homage when the hero borrows a Donald Westlake pseudonym as an alias mid-novel.
Patrick Selway Lennon is the getaway car driver for a well-planned bank job in Philadelphia. The take is $650,000, and despite a few glitches, he gets them on the road out of town. But then the car is rammed by the Russian mob, and Lennon wakes up to find himself being dumped in a pipe on the construction site of the new children’s museum, along with a couple of other bodies.
Things only get worse from there.
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tuesday december 02
People often say when a baby enters your life it creates an enormous number of unexpected changes. What they don’t mention is that along with the little one (or little ones in my case) comes a whole new category of stuff to fill every corner, closet, and available floor space in your home-- not only the obvious large items like furniture and diapers, but also a slew of items you never heard of before that are soon to be essential to daily life. Who knew my first floor could pass itself off as a Babies R' Us annex??
Add to it our attempt to green our lives and suddenly my husband and I were overwhelmed with articles on everything from cloth diapers to organic baby food and fair-trade clothing… Luckily I also stumbled onto a few great books with easy and economical things you can do to raise a green family
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