August News for A Cozy Death Book Club
News for A Cozy Death Mystery Book Club
Last Month
July was our last meeting using Meetup. We read Murder by the Sea by Danielle Collins. The novel took place in Kenya and gave all of us a taste of seaside culture in Kenya. We all agreed that the author spent a lot of time telling us that the characters were hungry and had them going to various seaside eating places. Talking about it made us hungry!
We were delighted to greet some new members and to have Lori back from her world travels. We finished off the meeting playing the dice game and had a winner. There were some close seconds so we decided that each of them would get a prize. Tahlia is taking care of sending them out.
This Month
Please join us on Zoom! The link is: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/https://zoom.us/89349964589
We’re reading A Generation of Vipers by Sarah Yarwood. Lovett. The novel’s concern is the ecological disaster pending if the new building project damages the once protected area of boggy land in which many species live and thrive, most importantly a particular viper species. Of course there’s a murder, stalking, a chase, and a resolution. There’s a bit of romance as well. The novel’s title sounds as if the author loves reptiles but it’s the murder and mystery that takes center stage. Insert the link into your search box and look forward to a rousing discussion as well as a game of reptile know how. More information will come to you in a reminder for the meeting!
Recommended Books
Besides the books we read for our monthly meetings, Tahlia and I read a slew of other books as well. We try to stay ahead of the game and read the books that are possibilities for the following year. Also, I read some that just sound terrific when I get a blurb about them To say that we’re always reading some book is misleading. We also listen to some online. My favorite locale for listening is when I’m in the shower. It’s found time with no interruptions. Silly, I suppose…but fun.
Here are some books that have recently been reviewed in The New York Times or Town and Country Magazine or that one or the other of us is currently reading:
Thus Was Adonis Murdered
by Sarah Caudwell (1981)
Popular with NY Times Readers
Caudwell’s four books featuring a group of young London lawyers and their mentor, the Oxford professor Hilary Tamar, may be the platonic ideal of a good mystery series: intelligent and elegantly mannered, filled with sparkling prose, pithy dialogue and characters making terrible choices. Start at the beginning with Thus Was Adonis Murdered, ostensibly about a murder in Venice, and prepare to be utterly charmed.
Strangled Prose
by Joan Hess (1986)
Reading a Joan Hess novel is about as astringent an experience as it gets: battery acid-level humor, wicked descriptions of small-town life and no one — absolutely no one — spared. Her Maggody series is great fun, but I’m partial to the one featuring the bookstore owner Claire Molloy, who starts her sleuthing adventures after hosting a party for the romance novelist Azalea Twilight (real name: Mildred Twiller), who is killed the same night. Naturally, the list of suspects encompasses practically everybody in town
Grave Reservations
by Cherie Priest (2021)
Leda Foley, who’s trying to get her travel agency off the ground, wishes that her psychic abilities were a little less, well, erratic. When she rebooks a flight for the Seattle police detective Grady Merritt at the last minute, he demands answers after the original plane explodes on the tarmac. “I changed your flight because I did know something was wrong — but I swear to you, I didn’t know what it was,” she tells him. “I might’ve been vibing off the cosmic certainty of the plane crashing.” That convinces him: Leda’s his perfect crime-solving sidekick.
The Golden Spoon
by Jessa Maxwell
Think: The Great British Bake Off, but set in Vermont, and throw in a murder mystery. What results is The Golden Spoon, where six bakers arrive in Grafton, Vermont for "Bake Week" at baker Betsy Marton's childhood home. But soon, things begin to go awry—and when a body is discovered, everyone is a suspect. The book is by Jessa Maxwell.
The Postscript Murders
by Elly Griffiths
After a 90-year-old woman named Peggy dies, the police have no reason to be suspicious. But Peggy used to be a "murder consultant" for authors, and Natalka, her home health aide, says Peggy was worried someone was been following her. Natalka sets out to solve what happened, teaming up with a former monk and an elderly ex-BBC employee, as a detective also begins an investigation. Read The Postscript Murders by Elly Griffiths.
Enjoy your reading. Don’t forget to join us on Zoom for our August 24 meeting at 2:00 pm PDT (10:00 pm BST, 5:00 pm Eastern). We can’t wait to see you!