Friday Reads: Return to Fender by Virginia Brown

This is what I am reading this Friday. Return to Fender is book 4 of the Blue Suede mystery series written by Virginia Brown. It came out in May 2013 published by Bell Bridge books.

Someone is trying to kill Jordan Cleveland. Tootsie, Jordan's friend and fellow drag queen, asks his friend Harley to look into it. Harley can't resist. It can't be that dangerous for her. After all someone is out to get Jordan not her.

"But, after Jordan is sideswiped by a car and ends up in the hospital, trouble starts to turn Harley's way. The next thing she knows, she's dangling off the side of the city's famous Peabody Hotel while an anonymous thug tells her to mind her own business... or else.

Things can only get worse." (from the back of the book)

For more information before my review appears check out the publisher's site, link above, or Goodreads.com.

Review: Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall

Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall captures perfectly the voice of a 9 year old as a narrator. Starla Claudelle runs away from her home at her grandmother's house in the summer of 1963 Mississippi. Mamie has been mean to her just one too many times. Grounding her from the Fourth of July festivities is just almost too much for Starla to bear. Being caught breaking the grounding and threatened with reform school is.

On the spur of the moment, Starla decides to run away to Nashville to be with her Mama who left her and her Daddy to become a famous singer when she was just 3 years old. She starts walking the road and meets up with Eula, a black woman, driving with James, a white baby in the car. Adventure follows.

Not all of it is what you would want for a 9 year old, but it is authentic for the time and place. Sometimes it is heartbreaking. Other times it makes for a warm, loving scene. Some of it is educational for Starla. She grows in ways she never could have anticipated.

It is a pageturner. The momentum is pretty high from the time Starla hits the road. Even before that, you grow to love her and wish some happiness into her life.

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. It's not something I would normally pick up to read, but I'm glad I did. I loved Starla and Eula and some of the other characters. I loved the pacing and the use of the narrator too.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

Friday Reads:Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall

This Friday I am reading Whistling Past the Graveyard  by Susan Crandall. I'm finding it hard to put this book down.

It's the summer of 1963 in Mississippi. Starla is 9 years old and living with her paternal grandmother Mamie. What her father calls her "red rage" where she speaks out without thinking or acts out without thinking often gets her in big trouble. Afraid if she stays she will go to prison for "assault with batteries," Starla finds herself running away to Nashville on  the spur of the moment hoping to find her Momma. Momma left her and her Daddy when she was 3 years old to go to Nashville to become a famous singer.

And so she meets up with Eula, a black woman, and James, a white baby, on the road. And the adventure begins. I'm only 18% along so far. I just started it, but I expect I will get a long way into the book today. Can't wait to see what happens next.

Waiting on Wednesday #4 - The Shadow Show edited by Sam Weller and Mort Castle

Shadow Show: All new stories in celebration of Ray Bradbury edited by Sam Weller and Mort Castle has been out for a while now, but  I haven't been able to get to it yet. It's full of short stories by authors who have been influenced by Bradbury. In turn, these stories that are published here for the first time are influenced by Bradbury, from dystopian settings to carnival settings to small town America settings and more. The authors of the stories vary from Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, and Margaret Atwood to Jacquelyn Mitchard and Alice Hoffman and more.

If you enjoy Ray Bradbury's writing, I don't see how you could pass up this edition in tribute to the master. I won't. It's only a matter of time. It's on my To Be Read list.

Review: Still Life in Brunswick Stew by Larissa Reinhart

 Larissa Reinhart's Still Life in Brunswick Stew came out May 21st from Henery Press.

Take one sassy, southern, persistent heroine add one friend dead of possible poisoning, sprinkle in a bunch of viable suspects, a pickup that won't start consistently, 2 disapproving policemen, and a murderer that's hard to pick out before the end of the book and you have a recipe for a nice humorous, cozy starring CherryTucker.

Cherry Tucker and her friend Eloise are spending the weekend at the
Sidewinder Annual Brunswick Stew Cook-off selling their arts when Eloise suddenly gets sick and dies. Cherry is convinced it is because of all the stew that Eloise consumed. Surely someone must have poisoned her. Then food poisoning breaks out at the festival, and the police dismiss her death as just a bad case of food poisoning.

Cherry can't take that easy dismissal of her friend's death. She starts investigating on her own. The police start getting irritated with this habit of hers, especially her boyfriend Luke and her Uncle Will. Repeatedly she finds herself in more danger than she thinks the situation merits. And of course, the closer she gets to the murderer, the more danger she finds.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. It really is a humorous cozy mystery. Cherry is a little off the wall at times in the choices she makes, for example climbing down a rose trellis wearing a dress and flip flops, but she is loyal, sassy and persistent when it counts. Most of the time her train of thought and behavior seem mostly reasonable. And Larissa Reinhart does small towns well.

If you like mysteries with the elements of a cozy, small town south, strong female protagonist and humor, then you will probably like this book.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for my unbiased opinion.

Waiting on Wednesday #3 - Babayaga by Toby Barlow

Babayaga: a novel by Toby Barlow is on my To Be Read list and definitely on my Waiting to Read list. How can you not be intrigued by a book that says in it's blurb that it is : "a novel of love, spies, and witches in 1950s Paris—and a cop turned into a flea."

I'm also generally interested in fairy tale and folk tale characters and what authors do with them. So, I find putting Baba Yaga in Paris in the 1950's of particular interest. Somehow I think you can take the girl out of the evil hut, but you can't take the evil hut out of the girl.

Review: The Penguin Pool Murder by Stuart Palmer

Miss Hildegarde Withers is just in time to see a body slide into the penguin pool while on a field trip to the New York Aquarium with her third grade class. She rushes around the corner to the stairway to the behind-the-scenes to see if she can help, but it's too late. Homicide detectives are called, and the place is put on lock down until everyone can be interviewed. Detective Piper arrives; the person who normally takes notes doesn't. Miss Withers volunteers to take notes as he interviews. And so begins her association with the investigation and with Detective Piper.

The Penguin Pool Murder was recently released on May 14th, 2013 by MysteriousPress.com. This mystery was originally released in 1931. It is a historical sort of cozy with a setting of a few weeks after the stock market crash. Some of the language is interesting slang from the time period as well. For example, one line refers to derbies as tin hats. And at 185 pages, it is a short mystery.

I gave this book 3 stars. It was good. I liked it, but I wasn't crazy about it. There were repetitions and some slow parts to the investigation as they got different people's views of what happened. It was interesting to read a cozy set in this time period though. Many of the books I've read in this time period are noir instead. And this mystery did have a sort of understated sense of humor to it as well. For example, Piper is having a conversation with his housekeeper when the phone rings and she wonders who that can be. "You'll never know by standing there. Leap thither," he responds.

If you enjoy The Penguin Pool Murder, there is a whole line of Hildegarde Withers mysteries.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased opinion.