The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

After successfully solving a murder in their first outing, the members of the Thursday Murder Club find themselves investigating even more crimes.  The first has to do with an attack on one of their own, while the second has a man from Elizabeth’s past contacting her.  It’s her ex-husband and he is on the run after allegedly stealing twenty million pounds’ worth of diamonds from a broker for some very bad people, all of whom have reason to want him dead.

The Murder Club has their hands full, but as usual they will rise to the occasion.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Thursday Murder Club and the lively assortment of people in the retirement community, but wondered if the delight of that book could be sustained in a sequel.  I’m very happy to report that this one is just as good, and maybe even better.  The old crew is still together:  Elizabeth the former spy who still has contacts in high places, Ron the rabble rouser union activist, Joyce the seemingly flighty one with a sharp eye and sharper mind, and Ibrahim, the psychiatrist who loves order and lists.  Together they are a formidable team.

What I like most about the book is the writing: practically every page there is something amusing and/or profound.  If I were the type to underline in books, I’d probably go through two pens just to get it all. There are wonderful character sketches that make me think of people I know.  There are insights that make me pause, and lines that make me laugh out loud.  I like the way the story is told from different perspectives—Joyce’s is in first person as she writes in her diary—and lets the reader see the world through someone else’s eyes. I adore the humor in the books, and the author is so good at making me want to read “just one more chapter.”

The characters are very distinctive, with strong personalities. I like all the Murder Club members immensely and would love to join them at their meetings, though they are all made of sterner stuff than I am. The characters are also all aware of their limitations and face mortality with intelligence, grace, and humor.

I am definitely going to read the rest in the series.  There’s to be a filmed version of the first book and from all reports it’s a dream cast:  Helen Mirren as Elizabeth, Ben Kingsley as Ibrahim, Pierce Brosnan as Ron, and Celia Imrie as Joyce.  While I’m sometimes dubious about book to film, I have to say I’m excited about this one. If it’s half as good as the book, I’ll be thrilled.

Highly recommended!

Nevermore 4-2-24: Becoming Madam Secretary, Ten Thousand Doors of January, Girl Behind the Gates

 

 Reported by Rita

Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray

Describes how Frances Perkins met a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt in turn-of-the-century New York and, despite initially not getting along, the pair formed a historic partnership that led them both to the White House.

 

Perkins is a fascinating character.     – WJ     5 stars

 

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

January Scaller, a ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, finds an ancient book containing tales of secret doors and truths about the world as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

 

A very good fantasy novel.     – MH     4 stars

 

The Girl Behind the  Gates by Brenda Davies

1939. Seventeen-year-old Nora Jennings has spent her life secure in the certainty of a bright, happy future--until one night of passion has more catastrophic consequences than she ever could have anticipated. Labeled a moral defective and sectioned under the Mental Deficiency Act, she is forced to endure years of unspeakable cruelty at the hands of those who are supposed to care for her. 1981. When psychiatrist Janet Humphreys comes across Nora, heavily institutionalized and still living in the hospital more than forty years after her incarceration, she knows that she must be the one to help Nora rediscover what it is to live. But as she works to help Nora overcome her past, Janet realizes she must finally face her own.

 

It's a good book but a heartbreaking story.     – CW     5stars

 

Other Books Mentioned

James Herriot's Dog Stories by James Herriot

The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell

All Bleeding Stops: Life and Death in the Trauma Unit by Stephen M. Cohn

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier

An Irish Country Girl by Patrick Taylor

The Frozen River: a Novel by Ariel Lawhon

Largo Desolato: a Play in Seven Scenes by Václav Havel

Dear Mom and Dad: a Letter about Family, Memory, and the America We Once Knew by Patti Davis

New Books

The Tigerbelles: Olympic Legends from Tennessee State by Aime Alley Card

Unbecoming a Lady: the Forgotten Sluts and Shrews that Shaped America by Therese Oneill

Until August by Gabriel Garcâia Mâarquez

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai

The Lost Traveller by Sheila Connolly

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

American Maura Donovan moved to Ireland after inheriting a pub in rural County Cork from a friend of her Irish-born grandmother.  It’s been a bit of a struggle to adjust as well as getting the pub, Sullivan’s,  up and running—the late owner had been an elderly man who didn’t quite keep things up. Maura has kept the local charm while trying to update things a bit, including bringing back live music.

Her efforts seem to be paying off—that is, until the body of a man is found near the pub, his face so battered that identification is impossible.  It seems that the murder is keeping people away in droves, so unless Maura can help the police solve the crime soon, Sullivan’s may be out of business.

I’d read one or two others in this series before I picked this one up, but I had no trouble following the characters. Connolly keeps the reader up to speed with what has gone before in a very organic way that doesn’t feel like a lecture.  While the mystery is slow moving in terms of being solved, the real appeal of this book is the setting and characters.  The book doesn’t feel at all stereotypical, the way that some Irish set mysteries by Americans can be. For example, she keeps the rhythm of the Irish speech without writing in dialect or resorting to the eternal, “That’s not the way we do it in America.”

I also liked the way Connolly handled some of the issues, such as illegal workers, young people leaving for the city, and so forth. She was informative but not judgmental.  The Travellers may also be new to some readers, and an interesting addition to Irish culture.

The mystery is resolved, but as I said before it’s slow moving.  The resolution is in some ways anti-climactic and most of the information comes near the end of the book. Usually, this would cause me to complain but in this book it seemed to fit in with the pace and atmosphere.  I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Sullivan’s and will no doubt return.

Titles in the County Cork Mystery series are:

Buried in a Bog

Scandal in Skibbereen

An Early Wake

A Turn for the Bad

Cruel Winter

Many a Twist

Tied Up with a Bow

The Lost Traveller

Fatal Roots

The Fatal Folio by Elizabeth Penney

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

American Molly Kimball loves living in Cambridge, England.  She helps manage the family bookstore, the centuries old Thomas Marlowe, and is dating Kieran Scott, a handsome bike shop owner who is also the son of a titled family.  In fact, Molly has been hired to inventory the Scott family library, an incredible collection of rare books, the crown jewel of which is an eighteenth century manuscript of The Fatal Folio authored by “Selwyn Scott.” It was a popular book in its day and still interests gothic scholars, including Kieran’s cousin Oliver who teaches at a nearby college.  Oliver is hoping to get a promotion, but his chances are dimmed when a student files a complaint against him—and then the student ends up dead.  While the police are investigating, it’s Molly who may be able to pull all the clues together to expose the killer.

This is the third in the Cambridge Bookshop Mystery series, but it can be read as a standalone title.  I think it’s the best in the series so far, since the author has firmly established her characters and location which means there’s not a lot of time wasted explaining things.  Molly is comfortable, and this makes the reader comfortable.  There’s some romance, great settings well described (I want to visit that library!), and of course an intriguing mystery.  Actually, there’s more than one and I found them all interesting.

Part of one mystery is the authorship of the “Selwyn Scott” book, since the name was a pseudonym for a member of the family.  Molly reads a copy of The Fatal Folio during the course of the book, searching for clues to the author’s identity, so the reader has a story within a story.  I have to say that in some books I have found this annoying, but Penney made the gothic novel entertaining and also helped with the overall atmosphere of the modern story.

I did figure out whodunit before the denouement, but I was enjoying the other elements so much that didn’t bother me. 

I’ve read the previous two books in the series and enjoyed them. In order they are:

Chapter and Curse

A Treacherous Tale

The Fatal Folio

Madrigals and Mayhem (due out November 2024)

Nevermore: James Herriot's Dog Stories, Hand to Mouth, Book of Separation

 Nevermore 3-19-24

Reported by Rita

 

James Herriot's Dog Stories by James Herriot

Tells the stories of fifty dogs and their unique relationships with their owners.

Loved it – absolutely delightful.   – NH     5 stars

 

Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado

A first book by a widely read, controversial essayist on poverty profiles the realities of the working poor in America and why poor people make decisions that are popularly criticized.

Found on TN R.E.A.D.S. – a real eye-opener.  – CD     5 stars

 

The Book of Separation: a Memoir by Tova Mirvis

The author describes how she left both Orthodox Judaism and her marriage and followed her inner compass to forge a new life for herself and her children while seeking her own path to happiness

Stark, but very moving.  – AH     5 stars

 

Other Books Mentioned

Ultra-Processed People: the Science Behind Food That Isn't Food by Chris van Tulleken

Congo by Michael Crichton

The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip by Sara Brunsvold

Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers by Joyce Dyer

The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

North Woods: a Novel by Daniel Mason

Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power by Victor Davis Hanson

The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning, Elevate Your Life by Robin S. Sharma

We All Want Impossible Things: a Novel by Catherine Newman

Always Looking Up: the Adventures of an Incurable Optimist by Michael J. Fox

 

New Books

Dear Mom and Dad: a Letter About Family, Memory, and the America We Once Knew by Patti Davis

Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip

Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson

Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray

The Maid by Nita Prose

 

The Maid by Nita Prose

Reviewed by Jeanne

Molly is a maid.  She’s a very good maid, anxious to restore each guest’s room to a state of perfection, and she loves working at the Regency Grand Hotel.  She loves coming in each morning to her crisp maid’s uniform waiting at her locker.  Molly loves cleaning and order. She loves rules, which help her try to understand human behavior.  Nuances are not  her strong suit. Molly’s social skills are rudimentary and she has trouble understanding people. She used to talk to Gran about it, and Gran would help her understand but Gran died a few months ago.

But even Gran might have trouble explaining to Molly about finding a dead body in a hotel room—especially when that body belongs to a wealthy and powerful man.  This means the police are eagerly looking for suspects. And who is a better suspect than a maid?

This had been on my To Be Read list for quite some time and I’m really glad I finally picked it up. Molly is a wonderful character.  She’s very rigid in many ways but she’s also struggling to understand a world that that to her is chaotic and confusing.  She’s very much an innocent even as she feels she is in control. I found myself worrying over her when I know she’s misreading a situation and cheering her on when she stands up for herself. To make it even better, the whole thing is wrapped up in an intriguing mystery with some fascinating twists and turns. It says a lot for how much I cared for this character that I kept skipping ahead to make sure things turned out okay.

Besides Molly, the book is populated with a number of vivid characters. Some are wonderful, like Gran or Mr. Preston, while others are—well, not.  I’m looking at you, Cheryl. Most of all, I liked seeing the world from Molly’s point of view, even as some of her friends and co-workers watch, baffled, by what Molly sees as straightforward.

With as many mysteries as I read, it’s hard to find something that seems fresh, and this one certainly did.  In fact, I was so entranced that I rushed to find and read the sequel, The Mystery Guest, which was just as satisfying.  I’m very much looking forward to the third in the series, a novella entitled The Mistletoe Mystery due out in October.

Bad Boy Beat by Clea Simon

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Emily Kelton is a journalist, currently working for the Boston Standard on three months’ probation before becoming a full-fledged employee.  She has the crime beat, working anything of interest that comes in over the scanner, desperate to get copy in—especially a story that would rate a byline.  She’s no rookie; she’s jaded enough to know that some crimes won’t rate space in the paper or police investigation time.  She knows a lot of the small time operators in the city, and she is good at spotting patterns.  When dead bodies start turning up in alleys, she thinks there may be a connection but handsome detective Jack Harcourt disagrees.

That isn’t going to stop Em.  She’s a real reporter and and she knows a story when she sees one.  One way or another, she’s going to uncover what is really going on in the streets and alleys of Boston.

This is a standalone novel from Simon, who is also the author of several series. It’s a bit darker and grittier than some of her other offerings but just as well written. Em is no wide-eyed innocent, for all her rookie status. She comes off as more an old-time journalist, eschewing databases for pounding the streets and interviewing witnesses.  She is cynical and a bit of a loner though she is loyal to friends like Roz, a reporter who is working on stories out of city hall. Em is tough; she’s cautious in the streets but not cowed. She’s well able to stand up for herself against editors, bouncers, or cops and can hold her own at a bar.  She is   As a reader, I enjoyed the peek behind the scenes at a newspaper, even as subscriptions dwindle and content goes online.  Simon also does a good job of conveying the atmosphere of the seamier side of Boston. Good mystery, strong characterization, some fast-paced action and a few twists and turns make for a most enjoyable read.

Other standalone novels by Simon are World Enough and Hold Me Down; her most recent series is Witch Cats of Cambridge.

Nevermore: Brave Enough, Parable of the Sower, Move Like Water

 

Nevermore 3-12-24

Reported by Rita

Brave Enough by Cheryl Strayed

A collection of quotes from the columnist and author captures her wisdom, courage, honesty, spirit, and outspoken humor.

Quick and fun – a real attention grabber.  – CD     5 stars

 

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler

In 2025 California, an eighteen-year-old African American woman, suffering from a hereditary trait that causes her to feel others' pain as well as her own, flees northward from her small community and its desperate savages.

Very well written – sometimes horrifying. – MH     Not rated

 

Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea by Hannah Stowe

As a young girl, Hannah Stowe was raised at the tide's edge on the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales, falling asleep to the sweep of the lighthouse beam. Now in her mid-twenties, working as a marine biologist and sailor, Stowe draws on her professional experiences sailing tens of thousands of miles in the North Sea, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Celtic Sea, and the Caribbean to explore the human relationship with wild waters.

Spiritually beautiful with great illustrations.  – AH     5 stars

 

Other Books Mentioned

Always Faithful by Jerry McNeal

Three Years a Traveler: One Woman, One Dog, Seven RVs, and the Path Less Traveled to Heal the Heart by Leslie White

Home Again: a Novel by Kristin Hannah

The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

A Room With a View by E.M. Forster

The Wilderwomen by Ruth Emmie Lang

The Rosewood Casket: a Ballad Novel by Sharyn McCrumb

We'll Call You if We Need You : Experiences of Women Working Construction by Susan Eisenberg

The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning, Elevate Your Life by Robin S. Sharma

A Wild and Heavenly Place: a Novel by Robin Oliveira

Always Looking Up: the Adventures of an Incurable Optimist by Michael J. Fox

New Books

The Fortune Seller: a Novel by Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World-- and How You Can, Too by Ijeoma Oluo

Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials by Marion Gibson

They Included Me: A Five-Decade Teaching Career by Jerry L. Jones

Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

 

Reviewed by Kristin

Evie Sage is looking for a job. Employment isn’t that easy to come by in her fantasy/magical/medieval kingdom of Rennedawn, and soft hearted Evie stepped aside from her last job offer because the other applicant with multiple children hanging from her cloak looked so darn needy. Nonetheless, Evie is the main support of her household containing her ailing father and her young sister. She simply must find a job!

Cue the walk home through the dangerous forest where Evie gets caught between King Benedict’s guards and the man they are chasing. And it’s not just any man either—it’s The Villain.

The wanted posters for The Villain portray an old man with a gray beard and gruesome teeth. Even though this man exudes a sense of danger, he looks nothing like those posters. He’s young, strong, and quite handsome. As he clasps his hand over Evie’s mouth to keep her from crying out, she can’t help but notice that The Villain is rather different from the man who she and many others in the kingdom fear.

After The Villain whisks Evie away to his secret lair, he can’t just let her leave. What’s next? Her head hanging from a hook in his entryway? No, he gives her a job: Assistant to the Villain.

This novel is snappy and engaging, even if you have to choose to accept a few of the more unusual premises and plot twists. Evie quickly makes herself invaluable running The Villain’s business. The romance part (duh, The Villain is HOT!) is somewhat predictable, but nonetheless enjoyable. There were a few points when I wished that Evie would have remembered she had a brain instead of getting so wishy washy over the fact that surely her swooning feelings of love could never be reciprocated, but obviously the author needed to keep the action moving along for a few more chapters.

The twist at the end did give me hope for Evie’s spunkiness and leadership abilities, and leaves room for a sequel.

Assistant to the Villain actually started as a series of TikToks by @hannahnicolemae. After going viral as a BookToker, Hannah Nicole Maehrer penned her debut novel and has the sequel, Apprentice to the Villain, coming out in August 2024, and a third book contracted for 2025.

A Scarlet Death by Elaine Viets

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Angela Richman is a death investigator for Chouteau County, which means she is one of the first called to the scene when a body is found. Angela helps determine if the demise is natural or if foul play is suspected.  When she’s called to the death scene of prominent local citizen Selwyn Skipton, she finds the seventy year old lying on satin sheets in an enormous bed in an apartment decorated with paintings of nude women. Given that the body has a necktie wrapped tightly around its neck and a red A stapled (yes, stapled) to the chest, it’s pretty obvious this is a crime scene.

As Angela and Detective Jace Budewitz try to piece together what happened to the late philanthropist, they discover a secret life which may just have gotten him killed.  Meanwhile, Angela is faced with a real life decision that suddenly becomes more complicated when someone she loves is in danger.

While I had read other books by Elaine Viets, I had not read any others in this series.  I hesitated at starting with the eighth book in the series, but found I had no trouble in immediately getting into both the plot and the characters.  This is a bit darker than my usual cozy mysteries, but while the crime scene descriptions can be a bit graphic they aren’t gratuitous; the reader gets important pieces of the puzzle from the descriptons. I particularly liked seeing how the various professionals work together to process a crime scene.  More than one crime takes place during the book, and I was impressed at the way Viets manages to juggle the different situations.  As a reader, I had no trouble following the individual cases and I found the characters interesting. Angela herself is likeable, but most of all I appreciated her competence and strength. She’s a thorough investigator, tough but not too jaded.

The ending was very satisfying.  I’ll be recommending this series to others, though I will probably have them start at the beginning!

Books in this series are:

Brains Storm

Fire and Ashes

A Star is Dead

Death Grip

Life Without Parole

Late for His Own Funeral

The Dead of Night

A Scarlet Death

Nevermore: My Name is Red, Himself: A Novel, The Covenant of Water

 Reported by Rita

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

A furor erupts when the Sultan hires a group of artists, under the direction of Master Uncle, to illuminate a great book in the European style to celebrate his reign at a time in which all figurative art is considered Islamic heresy, but the situation becomes worse when one of the miniaturists vanishes, in a mystery set against the backdrop of religious repression in sixteenth-century Istanbul.

Could not put it down – immediately reread it.  – DC     5 stars 

Himself: a Novel by Jess Kidd

When he discovers that his mother may not have given him up, but that foul play may have led to her disappearance, lovable car thief and Dublin charmer Mahony returns to the rural Irish Village where he was born to find out what really happened 26 years ago and, setting the town on its ear, enlists the help of a brash anarchist and retired theater actress to solve this mystery.

Incredibly clever – loved it.  - MH     4.5 stars

 

The Covenant of Water: a Novel by Abraham Verghese

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, and set in Kerala, on South India's Malabar Coast, an epic of love, faith, and medicine follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning.

A literary wonder – highly recommend.  – VC     5 stars

 

Other Books Mentioned

1912 Facts about Titanic by Lee W. Merideth

Nora Bonesteel's Christmas Past by Sharyn McCrumb

Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas by Jim Minick

The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George

Andrew Johnson by Annette Gordon-Reed

The Night of the Storm: a Novel by Nishita Parekh

The Speckled Beauty: a Dog and His People by Rick Bragg

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness by Peter Kuper

The Magic All Around by Jennifer Moorman

 

 

New Books

The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly

A Wild and Heavenly Place: a Novel by Robin Oliveira

1001 Dreams: the Complete Book of Dream Interpretations by Cassandra Eason

Bittersweet in the Hollow by Kate Pearsall

Red String Theory by Lauren Kung Jessen

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Dedicated New Yorker Rooney Gao is an artist.  She uses the pseudonym “Red String Girl” for her art because she wants to make a name for herself, not for the fact that she has a famous mother. The name also reflects her use of string in her art, a manifestation of the Chinese legend that everyone has a red string that attaches to their one true love.  For Rooney it means some things are just fated to be.

Enter Jackson Lui, a senior engineer at NASA, who is in New York City to do a presentation which he hopes will help earn him a long sought after promotion.  The two meet up at a print shop, and then again at a party.  Rooney is beginning to wonder if it could be fate, but there’s a small problem or two:

Jack doesn’t believe in fate.

And he lives in California.

Yes, I have now read two romances so far this year, which may be some kind of record for me.  It’s not that I have anything against love, but I do tend to bog down in the overwrought drama that many of those books feature. I get frustrated with the characters because they could usually clear things up with one conversation but it seems to be more fun to wail and fuss.

That’s not the case here.  Rooney and Jack are two adults. They’re attracted to each other from the start and have a magical date. They actually talk about things that matter. I loved (no pun intended) how we got to know the characters, how they discussed their beliefs and respected one another.  I learned a bit about art, about Mars, about chance, about Chinese folklore, and probability, and found two fictional characters that I like a lot.  I enjoyed how the two meet up again, and the way they reconnect.

If more romances were like this one, I’d read more romances.

Mickey: The Cat Who Raised Me by Helen Brown

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

I have been trying to find a way to do a decent review of this book, but it has been a struggle.  Not because I didn’t like it—spoiler alert, I loved it!—but because like many of Helen Brown’s books it isn’t something you can sum up in a quick tag line.  Oh, you could, but to do so would be to miss the depth and nuances which I love and which make all her books instant “must reads” for me. 

Helen is twelve years old in 1966, growing up in a small town in New Zealand.  Her father is an engineer, a champion of using natural gas which is not an easy sell.  Her mother is devoted to theatre and the arts, a mercurial personality who throws herself into preparing for local theatrical productions.  Helen has two older siblings, a sister who has at times been more maternal than her mother, and a brother who is a budding taxidermist. Helen sometimes feels lost and unnoticed.  She doesn’t seem to fit in. She struggles in school, is teased as “Helen the Melon,” and is facing eye surgery.  

Then one day her father takes her to pick up a scraggly kitten, sole survivor of a litter.  Helen names him Mickey but has to hide him from her mother who dislikes cats.  To Helen’s dismay, Mickey seems disinclined to accept her overtures of friendship and instead promises to upend the household.  It’s up to Helen to keep Mickey alive and a secret.

It seems strange to think that a girl in New Zealand would have all that much in common with a girl growing up in Appalachia, but there were so many times that I totally related to what was going on in Helen’s life. While I didn’t see atomic bomb tests on nearby islands, I certainly remember packing sandbags against basement windows and the old atomic signs to show us where to hide in the school in case of nuclear war.  Figuring out who your favorite Beatle was, the benign neglect of parents who let you explore and play without direct supervision, and trying to fit in among your peers is all familiar territory. So many half-forgotten memories appeared as I read this book that I would have to stop and ponder.

While most of her books revolve around a cat—Cleo, Jonah, or Bono, previously—it’s a mistake to dismiss them as “just a cat book.” Not that I have anything against cat books! It’s why I picked up Cleo all those years ago.  But Helen’s books are more than the story of one individual cat; they are mediations on the human experience.

Most of all, Helen Brown has the gift of storytelling, of describing scenes so vividly that the reader can almost see them. She also knows how to find that point of connection between people and make different experiences relatable, and has a delightful sense of humor.  I have always found reading her books to be like talking with an old and dear friend, and this one is no exception.

I now want to go back and re-read her other wonderful books, Cleo: The Cat Who Mended a Family; Cats and Daughters: They Don’t Always Come When Called; Bono; and her novel, Tumbedown Manor. I know there will be laughter, tears, warmth, and love.