Death Scene by Carol J. Perry

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Salem is all agog at the filming of a new movie, set partly in Salem and utilizing some of the City’s iconic sites, such as the Witch House for some of its scenes.  The stars are the current hot Hollywood couple, Diana Diamond and Lamar Faraday, though the gossip is that off-screen they loathe each other despite the on-screen chemistry. Lee Barrett, programming director at WICH-TV, is getting many, many orders from her boss about coverage and program tie-ins for the station which has Lee juggling even more tasks than usual.

Things don’t lighten up, either.  Diana Diamond turns up dead, in the latest of a series of mishaps for the film, leaving a lot of uncertainty about people and projects.  Lee’s husband, Detective Pete Mondello, is investigating but it turns out that Diana had a lot of enemies on set.  He may need more than a little help from Lee, her Tarot-reading friend River, and even Lee’s Aunt Ibby to solve this mystery.

This is the fourteenth book in the series but Perry always does a stellar job of introducing her characters and getting readers up to date.  I love that she does so in a very straightforward manner instead of trying to coyly slide facts in.  I love the characters (for the most part; I tolerate Pete) and I like that Perry doesn’t indulge in a lot of personal drama among her cast.  I’m looking for a mystery and not a soap opera.  I also greatly appreciate how Perry keeps the story moving, even when Lee isn’t actively investigating. There’s always something interesting going on to keep me turning pages.

The Salem setting is a big draw as well.  Books that give me a good sense of place get gold stars in my book, and I like the touches of the supernatural that crop up.  O’Ryan, Lee’s “gentleman cat,” is much more than he seems and Lee herself will see visions in reflective surfaces, though interpreting these visions is another problem altogether.

There’s also the appeal of a “behind the scenes” look at a TV studio, eschewing the glitz and glamor to presenting professionals hard at work.

While I felt the culprit in this entry was pretty easy to spot, I still enjoyed the visit with Lee and company. I also really liked the one bit of a twist at the end, which I think some readers would call most implausible but the groundwork had been well laid. While this may not be the best in the series, I consider it a keeper on my crowded bookshelves.

Can you tell this is one of my favorite series?

There’s one more book in this Witch City series before Perry moves on to the Wicked Salem series featuring Aunt Ibby and her friends.  Here’s hoping that Lee and River will also drop by! (And yes, I already have it on pre-order.)

New Fiction in April!

 

Baldacci, David  Hope Rises

Bannalec, Jean-Luc The Secrets of the Abbey

Chiaverini, Jennifer The Patchwork Players (Elm Creek Quilts)

Chu, John  The Subtle Art of Folding Space

Dailey, Janet  Kill for a Million

Graves, Sarah  Death by Chocolate Ladyfingers

Hannon, Irene Harbor Pointe

Harper, Jane Last One Out

Harris, C.S.  When the Wolves Are Silent (Sebastian St. Cyr)

Hepworth, Sally  Mad Mabel

Horowitz, Anthony A Deadly Episode (Hawthorne and Horowitz)

Hunter, Denise  More Than Friends

Jones, Sandie Killing Me Softly

Klune, TJ  We Burned So Bright

Mack, Catherine  This Weekend Doesn’t End Well for Anyone (Vacation Mysteries)

Michaels, Fern  The Final Storm

Novak, Brenda  Meet Me in Italy

Patterson, Susan & James The Mother-Daughter Book Club

Perrin, Kristen How to Cheat Your Own Death

Perrotta, Tom  Ghost Town

Perry, Devney  Rites of the Starling  (Shield of Sparrows)

Preston, Douglas  Paradox (Cash & Colcord)

Quinn, Spencer  Cat on a Hot Tin Woof (Chet and Bernie)

Richardson, Kim Michele  The Mountains We Call Home: The Book Woman’s Legacy

Rose, Karen Family Lies (San Diego Case Files)

Sandford, John Revenge Prey

Semple, Maria  Go Gentle

Shaffer, Meg  The Book Witch

Smiley, Jane Lidie: The Further Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton: A Novel

Straub, Emma  American Fantasy

Steel, Danielle  A Woman’s Place

Sutanto, Jesse  Ms. Mebel Goes Back to the Chopping Block

Nevermore: Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, A Death in the Family, Near Witch

 

Nevermore 3-3-26

Reported by Rita

 

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai

After years of failure at school, failure at work, and spending his days dreaming and singing to himself, it does not seem as if Sampath Chawla is going to amount to much. Then Sampath climbs a guava tree, and becomes unexpectedly famous as a hermit.

This book was funny and mysterious with a strange ending.    - AH    5 stars

 

The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab

The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children. If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company. There are no strangers in the town of Near. These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life. But when an actual stranger, a boy who seems to fade like smoke, appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true. The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion. As the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi's need to know about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, about the wind that seems to speak through the walls at night, and about the history of this nameless boy.

Too unbelievable. I'm glad I read it, but I probably won't read anymore books by this author.     - MH     3 stars

 

A Death in the Family by James Agee

Published in 1957, two years after its author's death at the age of forty-five, A Death in the Family remains a near-perfect work of art, an autobiographical novel that contains one of the most evocative depictions of loss and grief ever written. As Jay Follet hurries back to his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, he is killed in a car accident--a tragedy that destroys not only a life but also the domestic happiness and contentment of a young family. A novel of great courage, lyric force, and powerful emotion, A Death in the Family is a masterpiece of American literature.

This book was not an easy read, but I thought it was magnificent and very touching. I loved it!      - DC     5 stars

 

Other Books Mentioned:

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings – Paul Theroux's Literary Memoir from Five Continents on Becoming a Stranger by Paul Theroux

Under the Tulip Tree by Michelle Shocklee

The Librarian Spy by Madeline Martin

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Rough Sketches: Short Stories of a Traveling Artist by Don Andrews

Tangle All Around: Our Art, Our Journey by Alice Hendon

The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding by Joseph J. Ellis

The Award by Matthew Pearl

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

The Amalfi Curse by Sarah Penner

 

 

New Books: 

How to Build Your Very Own Little Free Library: 11 Mini Structures You Can Build by Little Free Library by Philip Schmidt

The Central Appalachians: Mountains of the Chesapeake by Mark Hendricks

99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them by Ashely Alker

The Little Book of Secret Societies: 50 of the World's Most Notorious Organizations and How to Join Them by Joel Levy

Death Through a Dark Green Glass by Julia Buckley

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

As an assistant to romantic suspense author Camilla Graham, Lena London has had a lot of new experiences—not all pleasant.  The upcoming event seems poised to be one of the most memorable, however: it’s a puzzle competition between four best-selling mystery novelists. PR genius Sasha Hardwick has devised a murder mystery game to be held in her beautiful estate.  Whichever one of the four authors solves the mystery first gets bragging rights.  It’s a scheme designed to fuel interest in all the authors’ work as well as raise some funds.  It’s all be very well planned, except for the real dead body that turns up. 

This is the sixth book in the Writer’s Apprentice series, but you need not have read any of the others.  This is my favorite book in the series, partly because it can be read as a standalone.  The earlier books were closely linked by plot, so those need to be read in order.  The books feature likeable characters, romantic elements, and clever plots.  I especially enjoy the little sequences where Lena and Camilla talk about writing, not just plotting but symmetry, atmosphere, and setting:  things a reader can take for granted but which can make or break a book.  Buckley takes these things seriously, which means I can always count on her for an enjoyable read.

I also liked that this series pays tribute to the great writers of romantic suspense:  Mary Stewart, Daphne du Maurier, Phyllis Whitney, etc. and hopefully introducing them to a new generation of readers.

The series in order:

A Dark and Stormy Murder

Death in Dark Blue

A Dark and Twisting Path

Death Waits in the Dark

Death with a Dark Red Rose

Death Through a Dark Green Glass

A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Cheating Death by Maxie Dara

 

Reviewed by Kristin

Nora Bird has always been cautious in life. She and her twin brother Charlie lost their parents in an accident when they were six. Nora knows exactly how dangerous life is, and she is well prepared for almost any emergency that might come up. Choking? Nora knows the Heimlich maneuver. Fire? Nora has several routes out of the building. Poison? Nora probably knows all the antidotes you might possibly need.

Charlie, on the other hand, is a little more laid back. He’s more likely to accept rides from suspicious looking strangers and take in stray animals, no matter whether rabies or bird flu is in the offing.

Nora is such an expert on death that she was a natural fit for a career at S.C.Y.T.H.E., Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences. She’s an administrative assistant, but she sees every file that goes out to the various agents tasked with escorting newly departed souls to the afterlife. One morning, she sees that Charles Ezra Bird is due to be collected at 11:15 a.m. after a car accident.

Charles Ezra Bird. Charlie.

Nora grabs the file and runs.

Once she has convinced Charlie of the extreme urgency of her mission, Nora leads them off to try to escape death. But, wait! After 11:15 a.m. passes uneventfully and Nora takes a second to breathe, the cause of death in Charlie’s file changes: Choking. (Charlie, put down those Doritos!)

With visions of black clad S.C.Y.T.H.E. agents chasing after them, Nora does her absolute best to protect her brother. They travel to a remote location where they find more than they expected. And yes, the cause of death keeps changing, as Charlie and Nora have more close calls than one might expect on their twenty-sixth birthday.

This was a delightful mystery that kept me guessing to the very end. Plus, there is a foul mouthed parrot named Jessica to add even more comic relief. This is the second in the series, following A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer, but each book has a different S.C.Y.T.H.E. employee as the protagonist, so they can definitely be read as stand-alones. I look forward to the next book due out in November 2026, A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Living Twice.

Nevermore: Paper Girl, Eleventh Hour, A Death in the Family

Reported by Rita

 

Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America by Beth Macy

 

From one of our most acclaimed chroniclers of the forces eroding America's social fabric, her most personal and powerful work: a reckoning with the changes that have rocked her own beloved small Ohio hometown Urbana, Ohio, was not a utopia when Beth Macy grew up there in the '70s and '80s--certainly not for her family. Her dad was known as the town drunk, which hurt, as did their poverty. But Urbana had a healthy economy and thriving schools, and Macy had middle-class schoolmates whose families became her role models. Though she left for college on a Pell Grant and then a faraway career in journalism, she still clung gratefully to the place that had helped raise her. But as Macy's mother's health declined in 2020, she couldn't shake the feeling that her town had dramatically hardened. Macy had grown up as the paper girl, delivering the local newspaper, which was the community's civic glue. Now she found scant local news and precious little civic glue. Yes, much of the work that once supported the middle class had gone away, but that didn't begin to cover the forces turning Urbana into a poorer and angrier place. Absenteeism soared in the schools and in the workplace as a mental health crisis gripped the small city. Some of her old friends now embraced conspiracies. In nearby Springfield, Macy watched as her ex-boyfriend--once the most liberal person she knew--became a lead voice of opposition against the Haitian immigrants, parroting false talking points throughout the 2024 presidential campaign. This was not an assignment Beth Macy had ever imagined taking on, but after her mother's death, she decided to figure out what happened to Urbana in the forty years since she'd left. The result is an astonishing book that, by taking us into the heart of one place, brings into focus our most urgent set of national issues. Paper Girl is a gift of courage, empathy, and insight. Beth Macy has turned to face the darkness in her family and community, people she loves wholeheartedly, even the ones she sometimes struggles to like. And in facing the truth--in person, with respect--she has found sparks of human dignity that she has used to light a signal fire of warning but also of hope. 

A really interesting read filled with really good information and research sources.     -KM       5 stars

 

The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories by Salman Rushdie

Two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, experience private tragedy against the backdrop of national calamity. Revisiting the Bombay neighbourhood of Midnight's Children, a magical musician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire. In an English university college, an undead academic asks a lonely student to avenge his former tormentor. These five dazzling works of fiction move between the three countries that Salman Rushdie has called home: India, England and America, and explore what it means to approach the eleventh hour of life. They are the reckoning with mortality that we all must one day make, and speak deeply to what the author has come from and through. 

The writing is really good, interesting, and entertaining.     -WJ      5 stars

 

 

A Death in the Family by James Agee

Published in 1957, two years after its author's death at the age of forty-five, A Death in the Family remains a near-perfect work of art, an autobiographical novel that contains one of the most evocative depictions of loss and grief ever written. As Jay Follet hurries back to his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, he is killed in a car accident--a tragedy that destroys not only a life but also the domestic happiness and contentment of a young family. A novel of great courage, lyric force, and powerful emotion, A Death in the Family is a masterpiece of American literature.

The beauty of this book is the love in it. It is beautifully written.      -AH      5 stars

Other Books Mentioned: 

Crosscut: An Evan Delaney Novel by Meg Gardiner

The Rainmaker by John Grisham

When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain

Runaway: Stories by Alice Munro

Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith

Country Vet: Thirty Years of Treating Animals and Trying to Understand Their Owners by Randy L. Skaggs

A Child in the Forest by Winifred Foley

 

New Books: 

Homeschooled: A Memoir by Stefan Merrill Block

Nightmare Obscura: A Dream Engineer's Guide Through the Sleeping Mind by Michelle Carr

Simply More by Cynthia Erivo

Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World's Worst Diseases by Lydia Kang

Underfoot in Show Business by Helene Hanff

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

 

I first encountered Helene Hanff’s writing in the delightful 84, Charing Cross Road which was composed of letters she wrote to a bookseller in London and his responses.  They formed a fast friendship, one that was later portrayed in the movie of the same title and starring Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft. (I can’t resist adding that I was not the only one charmed by the book.  Anne Bancroft loved it, and so her husband Mel Brooks bought the screen rights for her as a birthday gift.)

 

While that is by far her best-known book, she did write others including Underfoot in Show Business. I love this book for many different reasons.

 

First and foremost, Hanff has a wonderful way of telling a story.  As the book opens, it’s the end of the Great Depression. Helene has had to drop out of college and go to work as a typist in the basement of a diesel-engine school for twelve dollars a week “and all the grease I could carry home on me.” She wants desperately to become a playwright, so she writes plays in her spare time. She enters a contest for young authors with a $1500 fellowship as a prize, and ends up moving to New York where she writes plays, takes odd jobs, and scratches out a living among all the other aspiring actors and playwrights. Helene budgets very carefully, figuring out not only rent but the prospect of attending functions where free food is available.  And, of course, cigarettes.

 

What could have been a dreary tale is instead a comedic adventure in Hanff’s capable hands. Her first garret turns out to a be in a red light district, a fact she discovers only when a man knocks on her door at 1 a.m. and asks if she’s open for business. Her second apartment is more respectable but caters to elderly women.  This means one needs to get used to seeing men carry out black body bags at regular intervals.  On the plus side, it also means that there’s a steady flow of merchandise for sale, cheap.

 

This book let me learn a bit more about the ultra-private Helene, as well as giving me insight into the way theatre works. It’s not all opening nights and reviews, but hard work behind the scenes for plays that may be a hit or a flop. When Helene does find lucrative work, it’s in the new medium of television where she writes and edits scripts for some of TV’s Golden Age shows. She drops some famous names but she’s no gossip; she guards their privacy as she does her own.

 

This may be one of my favorite books of the year.