Words by Webb

City of Whispers: A Sharon Mccone Mystery

Author: Marcia Muller

Hardcover: 272 pages

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (October 26, 2011)

Synposis:

Inside Cover:

Private eye Sharon McCone receives an e-mail asking for help from her emotionally disturbed half-brother Darcy Blackhawk. She replies…but gets no response. As Sharon digs deeper, she discovers that Darcy sent his message from an Internet cafe in San Francisco, a city he’s never been to before. Sensing that her brother is in terrible danger, Sharon begins a search for him throughout the city.

The investigation leads her tot eh body of a woman at the Palace of Fine Arts, where a witness had told her where Darcy was headed. Then, as she digs deeper, Sharon uncovers a connection to the unsolved murder of a young heiress to a multimillion-dollar-banking fortune, Now Sharon must race to solve both murders and ensure her brother’s safety, despite the imminent danger that lurks within her own family.

Review:

I’m going to blame holiday distractions because, for some reason, this book just didn’t capture my attention in the beginning when Sharon set out on her search for her brother. But I’m nothing if not persistent so I stuck with it. As Sharon involved more investigators from her company and found more leads leading every which way…murder, jealousy, incest, blackmail, drugs, power, money…it finally grabbed me. Darcy may have been the reason Sharon got

involved in this case but I didn’t really get involved until Gaby entered the picture…posthumously.

Once again I rail against the reading gods who introduced me to interesting characters mid-series. It’s clear that Sharon and the other people in her sphere have back stories…relationships, quirks, problems dating back to earlier stories. And although author Marcia Muller gives you enough info to allow you to keep all the characters straight it also whets your appetite to learn more about what made these people the way they are. SIGH. My TBR pile just got a bit taller as I realize I have to meet these characters earlier in their lives.

Today is my kind of day! December 29 is National Chocolate Day. I’ve always been a fan of chocolate and all this time I thought I had Milton Hershey to thank for one of my favorite treats. But after reading this latest book I learned that Hershey came late to the party…I should be sending my thank you note to the monkeys of the rainforest! And chocolate isn’t the only discovery the animals of the rainforests can take credit for!

How Monkeys Make Chocolate: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Rainforest

Author: Adrian Forsyth

Nonfiction: Ages 9 to 12 years old

Paperback: 48 pages

Publisher: Maple Tree Press (July 12, 2006)

Synposis:

Monkeys. Chocolate. Not the first two things you would partner together. But turns out monkeys were key to the development of chocolate. I KNEW I liked monkeys for a reason!

How Monkeys Make Chocolate is not only about monkeys and chocolate. Instead it explores relationships in rain forests around the world. Relationships between different types of plants, between plants and animals, between plants and humans and between animals and humans. This book is an eye-opener that reveals an inter-connectedness most of us never realized existed.

Review:

How Monkeys Make Chocolate is the type of book that makes you want to pause every few lines and ask anyone who will listen, “Hey, did you know…” because this book is full of fascinating facts and relationships that most of us never knew about.

Adrian Forsyth deftly captures young readers’ attention by telling personal stories (he had poison ivy x 10 thanks to a tree with ORANGE bark on one trip to the rainforest) and by weaving facts about these unfamiliar plants, animals, and places with more familiar. Information about harvesting valuable parts of trees leads back to chewing gum and pine trees, the reasons trees fruits change colors leads back to the cherry trees in his Washington DC backyard, spreading seeds throughout the jungle leads us to Velcro!

The beautiful photos included in this book break up the individual chapters. It is recommended for 9 to 12 year old students but, with a few lengthier chapters, it might serve the older children in this group better.

Found this review just hanging around the “scheduled” pile. Some quirky computer fairy didn’t post it…I think. But I didn’t want you all to miss it. It was supposed to run on October 14.

Today’s my birthday and I couldn’t hope for a better present than a new book from Gayle Trent. OK, maybe an all-expenses paid trip to Fiji but, with no tropical trips in the works, I’m happy with Gayle’s new book Killer Sweet Tooth! Check out that book cover…good enough to eat. I hope I have a birthday cake that looks (and tastes) that delicious. Hint, hint.

Killer Sweet Tooth: A Daphne Martin Cake Mystery

Author: Gayle Trent

Paperback: 272 pages (also available in Kindle format)

Publisher: Gallery Books (October 11, 2011)

Synposis:

All Daphne wants is something simple…a new filling for her neighbor Myra. Granted, it is after hours (Myra was snacking on Daphne’s peanut brittle). But how complicated could it be? If you know Daphne, you’re already guessing just how complicated. Daphne and Myra stumble over the dentist, dead in his deserted office; the police are following their two key suspects; and a clerk at a nearby store remembers seeing Elvis with blood on his sleeve that night. Elvis?! Well, he should be easy to find–except there’s a Elvis impersonators conference in town. So Daphne and Myra have to work fast and clear their names before all their suspects leave town. Daphne and Myra’s lives are further complicated by the fact that Elvis impersonators are quite the romancers. Myra loves it but Daphne (not to mention her BF Ben) is less enthusiastic about all these “hunks of burnin’ love”. And then there’s the pink Cadillac cake Daphne has to create.

Review:

Have you every noticed that knitting starts with something simple…a skein of yarn…and twists and turns it into something incredible where you can’t tell where one string of yarn came from or where it’s going next? At least it does to me, a non-knitter. Killer Sweet Tooth is literary knitting. It starts with something simple…a loose filling…and twists and turns it into a puzzle where you can’t know who did what or figure out what will happen next. Bravo!

Once again, Trent raises her book to the next level by including unforgettable characters surrounding her (relatively) normal main character Daphne. Myra, China, and the rest of the gang at Brea Ridge not to mention a few newcomers such as a bus full of Elvis impersonators and a private investigator Mark Thompson I hope will be making a return in future books. Sure, there’s a dead body (but he is a dentist and not a very nice man so no one is sobbing over him) but for the most part this book is one laugh after another. Oh, Daphne…why do these things always happen to you? And oh Gayle, keep them coming!

If you love Gayle’s work don’t forget that she also moonlights as Amanda Lee, author of The Embroidery Mystery series.

Since our days of writing 2011 are definitely numbered I’d thought I’d jump ahead to 2012. What are you looking forward to reading in the new year? It could be a book being released next year, another installment in a favorite series, or an oldie but goodie that you just never got around to reading.

Today’s post includes a review of Karen Berner’s debut novel A Whisper to a Scream, the first in the Bibliophiles series. I wouldn’t mind reading the next book in the series which is coming out in spring 2012. Karen took time to share her top five for 2012 with me.

Karen’s 2012 Reading List

1. Minding Frankie by Maeve Binchy
2. A Reader’s Guide to Writer’s Britain by Sally Varlow
3. An Object of Beauty by  Steve Martin
4. Persuasion by Jane Austen
5. Silenced by the Yams, the third Barbara Marr murder mystery by Karen
   Cantwell coming out in February 2012

So how about you? What are your top five for 2012?

A Whisper to a Scream

Author: Karen Berner

Paperback: 278 pages (also available in e-books)

Publisher: CreateSpace (June 14, 2011)

Synposis:

Annie Jacobs has dreamed of the day she would become a mother since the first time she held her Baby Tenderlove doll. Unfortunately, biology has not cooperated with her plan, and she finds herself dealing with a diagnosis of unexplained infertility instead of picking out baby names.

Across town, stay-at-home mom Sarah Anderson is just trying to make it through the grocery store without her toddler hurling a box of rice at a fellow shopper. She is exhausted from managing the house, a first grader and a toddler, all without any help from her work-obsessed, absentee husband.

A Whisper to a Scream is the story of two women on opposite ends of the child-bearing spectrum who come to realize the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side of the fence. A vivid portrayal of contemporary marriage and its problems, the novel speaks to a longing in all of us, a yearning that might start as a vague notion, but eventually grows into an unbearable, vociferous cry.

Review:

Women’s fiction. It doesn’t get more “women” than the issues of motherhood and infertility. True, this novel addresses the land mines that creating families introduce into our lives. But what I found most interesting about this book was the friendship between Annie and Sarah. It was an unlikely friendship between two women living opposite lives yet somehow they connect. There friendship is reflected in the friendships of the other members of the Classics Book Club — unlikely.

Because the situations of Annie and Sarah are familiar to so many women, either personally or through friends and family, we can find the questions that Annie and Sarah ask themselves the same questions we would ask ourselves. What would I do for a baby? How much loneliness in a marriage could I tolerate? What if my spouse and I don’t want the same things? Reading A Whisper to a Scream is like reading about your neighbors…or yourself.

Dancing on the Inside

Author: Glen Strathy

Paperback: 236 pages (also available in hardcover and e-formats)

Publisher: iUniverse (July 7, 2011)

You can read an excerpt on Dancing on the Inside here.

Synposis:

Back cover:

Ever since her grandparents gave her a DVD of Swan Lake, twelve-year old Jenny Spark has wanted to be a dancer. But on her first day of ballet class, she suffers a panic attack and makes a horrifying discovery. She’s terrified of dancing in front of the other kids, and as for actually performing for an audience? Forget it.

Yet Jenny refuses to give up her dream. With determination and a little ingenuity, she finds ways to observe ballet classes without actually participating. She trains in the safety of her room, while hiding the truth from her parents. Then Jenny meets her exact opposit: Ara Reyes, an outgoing, spontaneous, and accident-prone girl who loves dancing but has always been overlooked.

The girls’ friendship blossoms as they help each other uncover their real talents. Ara’s dancing takes a leap forward and Jenny discovers she has an amazing gift for choreography. With the support of the school’s newest teacher, Jenny’s original ballet might just make it on stage…but will she?

Review:

In Dancing on the Inside, Jenny unfolds like a blossom…both as a dancer and as a person. Despite bother internal and external obstacles she pursues her dream of dancing. I believe it will be an encouraging story for any young girl, no matter what her dreams. I must confess, I had doubts about a non-dancer’s ability to capture the mood of the ballet studio but I feel Strathy did admirably, both in the technical aspects and in the emotions of the dancers.

Instead of portraying all the adults characters as basically the same person, just with different names, Strathy creates a variety of personalities. Of course it feels a bit “good cop-bad cop” : her understanding father/her annoyed mother, her dismissive teacher/her nurturing teacher. Strathy also developed the personalities of each of the girls in class and, like 12 year old girls, they didn’t always stay true to form. Sometimes they were nice to Jenny, sometimes mean, sometimes just bored with her. Very typical 12 year old girl!

I think this book will appeal to a wide range of readers: obviously dance lovers and those with social phobia but more importantly to any young girl having trouble finding her place in the world. And what young girl doesn’t? It’s an encouraging tale of combining your dreams and your reality to create your world.

Note: My only nitpicking comment was that Jenny seems too old to be beginning ballet lessons. In any case, she wouldn’t have been in the same class with those auditioning for the National Ballet Corps. In my area, girls Jenny’s age are playing Clara in local productions of The Nutcracker (en pointe). If I was Jenny I probably would have been intimidated too since most girls begin dance classes around age 5. Maybe a 7 or 8 year old beginner, but 12? But that’s just me being difficult. It was still a great book!

I live in a spot where all the trucks are four wheel drive, most homes have a generator to keep the lights on or a wood burning stove to keep the place heated, and unless the snow hits really incredibly amounts life goes on. Of course, from my perusal of the weather channel, I realize that many parts of the country aren’t that well equipped to deal with snow. Surprisingly, one of those places is just about any big city. Not that they don’t have trucks for snow removal but simply because they have no where to go with that snow once they remove it from the streets. Buses and taxis don’t run. People can’t get to work. Pretty much everybody takes a snow day. When folks in the city say, “We’re snowed in” they truly mean it. This next book is about the evil opportunity being snowed in offers to people.

Snow Escape

Author: Roberta Goodman

Kindle: 237 KB

Publisher: Write Words, Inc. (September 29, 2011)

Synposis:

With a full refrigerator for meals and a kitten to keep her company, Allegra isn’t worried about the snow piling up — two feet by her guess so far — on the streets outside her Brooklyn apartment. She decides to pass the time by checking her online dating account. With a few promising replies, Allegra soon finds herself in a great IM chat with Charles. Great until Charles starts musing about how a snowstorm like this would be a great opportunity for a criminal. After all, how long would it take the police to answer a 911 call in this weather?

Allegra laughs it off but cuts short the chat when her weird-meter starts going off. She’s sure he was just some weirdo getting a kick out of scaring her until things start disappearing: emails, photographs, people…her sanity! Is Allegra crazy or is someone after her?

Review:

O! M! G!

I spent my teenage years watching every horror movie known to man and reading all the books. I don’t scare easily. But Snow Escape creeped me out. So much so that after finishing reading it (at 1:10 am — I thought I was just starting it at 10 pm but couldn’t stop reading!) I was nervous about turning out the light. I didn’t want to be left alone with the thoughts Snow Escape had planted in my brain.

Reading Snow Escape mirrors what Allegra must have been feeling. Like Allegra, I wasn’t sure which characters to trust…I even briefly suspected that the 75 year old neighbor and the cop were “in on it”. And I spent an equal amount of time thinking that Allegra was just some crazy lady imagining things. Great read for a snowy winter night–just lock your door first.

Nitpicking: For now Snow Escape is just available in Kindle format and there are a few problems, for example the new paragraphs are not predictable. Sometimes they indent, sometimes not, and ocassionally — especially during paragraphs of dialogue — new paragraphs aren’t started. These minor problems may have been corrected since I got my copy. And Goodman is a bit too fond of commas. They pop up in the most unnecessary spots. But I can overlook these blips to enjoy an enthralling story.