Flavia de Luce, an 11-year-old English bicycle riding detective, pedals her way throughout the 1950s English countryside to unravel, when the Scotland Yard can’t, the murder mystery which began with the discovery of a rare lost stamp positioned on the beak of a dead black bird. For readers who loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society,  The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, a debut novel, provides a fast, fun, can’t-put-down very British read, which will thrill and delight, all the while propelling the reader into the intriguing world of stamp collecting. Stay tuned for the continuing series highlighting this precocious, winsome juvenile Sherlock Holmes!

-Nan

If you haven’t had the pleasure of watching the oh-so-amazing Showtime show, Dexter, you are missing out.  I’d seen the show a few times before realizing that it was based on a series of books by Jeff Lindsay.  Of course as soon  as I found that out I immediately had to read the series.  Turns out that like most novels turned movie or t.v. show, the books are even better.  Lindsay has a fantastic dry sense of humor that shines in the Dexter novels.

by zita

Hey, mystery and dog lovers out there, have I found a delectable late night read that’s got a low key, slightly life- battered detective named Bernie and his K9 counterpart Chet.  This is the first of the Chet and Bernie series.  A teenager gets kidnapped, Chet gets dognapped and spends some harrowing hours in an animal shelter, bikers spin across the desert with Chet fastened behind the burliest of them all.  Bernie has put out big signs all over the place for his lost dog.  In the meantime, the plot simmers with the drama of the missing 16-year-old and some unsavory characters who might just have sequestered her in a mansion in the woods.  Maybe.  I’m not through with the book.  Lights out time is 8:48 pm at the Hall House.  This book had me up past midnight last night and eager to befriend its pages again this cold evening.  This articulately construed mystery is good stuff and not some sentimental fluff about a man and his dog.  I recommend Dog On It to all our dedicated mystery readers, to people who are tired of the same ole formulaic mystery, to people who like a book written from a different point of view, and to anyone who likes to read for pleasure.

-Pat