The “what if it really is Spring?” reading list

Let’s admit it has been a long, long snowy, cold and dark (did I say long) winter.   I believe this means we need to tip our customer service people more than usual because likely they are dealing day in and day out with the cranky lot of us.   But this also means I have been reading a lot of mysteries just to keep me awake in the evening and get my adrenaline going (the gym works too, but reading is usually more fun).

Here is what has kept me sane through this crazy weather of random:

• A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch – This is the first in the series of Charles Lenox mysteries.  Lenox is a wealthy, upper-crust gentleman in Victorian London who also seems to have a good handle on sleuthing.  The mystery itself in this first book wasn’t what kept me captivated, though it was well done, it was the societal descriptions, the cups of tea, and the rules of priority that made this fun.  It is best enjoyed with a glass of sherry, if you can handle the stuff, or just admit that sherry is terrible and just have a glass of wine while you imagine gaslights and rustling petticoats.
• Mr. Rochester by Sarah Shoemaker – I need to just throw it out there that I love Jane Eyre like the rest of you love Pride and Prejudice.  That is not to say that I do not love Austen (I absolutely do) but nothing has ever grabbed my imagination like Thornfield hall and poor, resolute Jane.  I say all of this because maybe this retelling of the story through Edward Fairfax Rochester’s perspective is not as good as I think it is.  I am pretty sure I would latch onto every retelling of this story and love it.   The critics of this book complained that it was slow but the way Shoemaker matches her style to Bronte’s, as well as the writing of the period, is really well done.   No, it is not exciting at every turn and no this is not a traditional mystery.  But Jane Eyre is one of the best gothic novel of its time and this retelling is just fun.
• Arrowood by Laura McHugh – This is the second book I have read by McHugh and I like her style.  While playing outside on a summer day, Arden Arrowood’s twin sisters disappeared without explanation  and with only 7 year old Arden as the unreliable witness. After searching everywhere for the twins, the Arrowood family moves away from their family home in the small Iowa town to try to forget all of the terrible memories.  But as Arden comes to examine her life in her twenties she finds that she is directionless and again newly single.  So she returns to her family home and begins trying to examine her own memories of the day her sisters were lost.  As she begins piecing together things that as a child seemed unimportant, she finds that those same events reveal that there may be a way to find out what really happened. And Arden quickly realizes that finding these answers seems the only way to help her move forward in her own life.
• The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton –  This book is everything I love in a quirky story.  Agatha Raisin has spent her life building her own firm in P.R. in London.  In her early fifties she decides to sell her firm and retire to a quaint cottage she has found in the Cotswolds.  Not exactly a warm and fuzzy person, Agatha finds that her neighbors in the village are not as easy to get to know as she had hoped.  In an
  effort to assimilate, she enters into the local quiche baking contest.  Of course, never having baked a quiche in her life, Agatha trains up to London, purchases a quiche at the award winning bakery, and returns to the town to submit it as her entry.   The judge after eating a piece of Agatha’s quiche dies and the police discover that he has been poisoned.  Obviously, Agatha has to shamefully admit that she did not make the quiche but this leaves the interesting question of who wanted this small time judge of quiches, jams, dog shows, and flower arrangements dead? This book is just fun and should be read while also googling sales of Cotswold cottages so we can all dream about moving there but not entering into local bakery contests.  I already found my cottage and of course you can visit.

Don’t despair friends, as happens every year, I feel almost positive that warm weather has to be on its way. But until then I wish you warm cups of tea, sightings of snow drops and violets, and cozy reads.