Some good books both to help you operate more effectively and some just to enjoy, always with bookselling in mind.
I’ve revamped, redone, reorganized and generally changed the way I’m going about listing and writing up the Best 100 Mysteries of All Time. Although these titles are still in the list–they no longer are numbered. I have put the entire list up, in alphabetical order, thereby keeping what book comes in at what number, undisclosed, … Read more
Fright George Hopley 1950-IP It’s no secret that I love Cornell Woolrich. There are several entries on this list of his work. Fright is a latecomer to me. Under the pen name of George Hopley, Woolrich wrote a book that I literally could not put down. I was riveted, horrified, wondering if the protagonist would … Read more
Who would have thought it? Not me. Thanksgiving in my life is something I’ve always wanted to avoid. Stress, relatives, stress, too much food, and stress were the prevailing elements when I was growing up. Naturally, over the years the holiday was celebrated with other people, but the stress remained–a boyfriend’s mother, a friend’s family, … Read more
Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie—Alan Bradley 2009–IP There’s never been a protagonist quite like 11 year old Flavia DeLuce. Right off the bat you are thrown into her chaotic world where she lives with her two sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, and her widowed father in a decaying manse called Buckshaw. She and her … Read more
They Buried a Man Mildred Davis 1953 –used Mildred Davis is the author I ‘discovered’ recently. Somehow I passed her by all these years. So, I read her Edgar Award winning first novel, and was not as impressed as I had thought I’d be–maybe too much expectation on my part, but there was a romantic attachment … Read more
Stone Quarry— S. J. Rozan 1999-St. Martin’s Press-IP “It can be a treacherous road, State Route 30, especially rain slick in the twilight of late winter, but I know it well. I sped along its badly banked curves faster than legal and faster than necessary. I was heading for Antonelli’s; I had plenty of time. I drove … Read more
Pictures of Perfection—Reginald Hill–1994–Delacorte Press I came to Reginald Hill’s Peter Pascoe and Andy Dalziel Yorkshire detective novels late. At least 10 books worth late. For reasons that escape me now, I didn’t like his work–or put in another way, I only made it halfway through the first page of the one book I tried … Read more
