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This is the third book in the Ashmole Foxe series, about a Georgian dandy, bookseller, and occasional unofficial investigator. I reviewed both of the previous books and like this character. Of the three, this book is my favorite. Ashmole Foxe, a man about town and known for his foppish ways, moves easily through Georgian Norwich because of his ownership of a popular bookstore. He has also developed something of a nose for investigation. When a miserly, curmudgeonly undertaker and bell ringer is found with his throat cut, Foxe is sought out by the local grocer, Foxe’s friend Captain Brock, and Alderman Halloran to find the killer. There are more tracks to follow in the investigation than a dog has fleas: a group committed to a secret heresy, a son who betrayed his father, a house with deep and deadly secrets, a woman determined to protect the great passion of her life, a daughter scorned, and a group of bell ringers with axes to grind.  Foxe has to unwind a web of lies, false leads, and decades-old deceits to find the killer. There were no giveaway hints in this book, and I was kept guessing almost to the end. The characters are wonderfully individual, from the urchin whom Foxe befriended, with his own army of street minions, the widow who runs his store, to the seafaring Captain Brock, who may soon be landlocked by a woman. The Georgian world created by the author is authentic to minuscule details, and the reader is immediately immersed in its colorful activity. What I liked most about This Parody of Death was the growth of Foxe. He engages in serious self-examination about the nature of his life, his over-the-top fashion, and possible goals for the future. This character is truly three dimensional and real. There are a few drawbacks I have noted before: some repetition, over-long discussions between characters and Foxe’s lengthy considerations. However, these are minor compared to the enjoyment of this read. Who knew I would learn about the mathematical patterns of the change-ringing of church bells? I recommend this book as a great read, as are all of William Savage’s books. About the author: William Savage grew up in Hereford, on the border with Wales and too his degree at Cambridge. After a career in various managerial and executive roles, he retired to Norfolk, where he volunteers at a National Trust property. His life-long interest has been history, which led to research and writing about the eighteenth century.  But his is not just a superficial interest in history, but a real desire to understand and transmit the daily experience of living in turbulent times. You can find This Parody of Death on Amazon: William Savage’s blog is Pen and Pension:  http://penandpension.com/author/bluebrdz1946/ 0 0

It’s been raining non-stop for two days and the critters are getting antsy. Elijah Moon just had to go out today, but decided he didn’t like being wet. So he just sat here. Then he came in and went back to zzzzing. Our squirrels are quite pathetic in the rain. Their tails get bedraggled and since I need to fill the bird feeders, which they have somehow learned to draw down (even though they were advertised as being squirrel proof), they are happily chawing on the hot pepper suet. Also supposed to be squirrel proof. Here is the one I named Robert (yes, he is male), approaching the feeder and then getting his lunch.        As for me, I am writing ! No outside distractions…well, except for Elijah and the squirrels. 0 0

Last week, Hubs and I went to a production of My Fair Lady by Playmakers Theater, the oldest theater that is part of a university (UNC). This production did not have the glitz and glam of a Broadway play – with two pianos in place of a full orchestra, a horseshoe- shaped stage, and an audience of 200 – but the story is ageless, the voices were excellent, and I fell in love with Alfred P. Doolittle all over again. Most of you know that the musical My Fair Lady is based on a play by George Bernard Shaw called Pygmalion, first performed in 1914. Pygmalion is, of course, the story told by the Roman poet Ovid of a celibate sculptor who creates and falls in love with a statue of Galatea. Galatea is brought to life by Venus, and Ovid created a love-conquers-all sentimental finish. A lifelong champion of progressive causes and a reformist crusader on a host of fronts, Shaw used the stage to engage and confront the world, a venue for a clash of ideas. My Fair Lady is the story of an increasingly combustible relationship between a humorless, goal driven teacher (Pygmalion) and a lively, intelligent female pupil of the lowest class (Galatea), a pointed critique of the class system in England. In1912, Shaw was experiencing the decline of Victorian moralities, the rise of women in society as embodied by suffragists, shifts in politics that led to the destabilization of Europe and ultimately WWI. Shaw loathed the adaptation of plays to musicals, as a result of what he saw as a terrible transposition of his play Arms and the Man to a operetta, The Chocolate Soldier. He stated “nothing will ever induce me to allow any other play of mine to be… set to any music..” The first step in the creation of My Fair Lady occurred because Shaw held the cinema in slightly less contempt. Hungarian filmmaker Gabriel Pasqual charmed Shaw into giving him the film rights to Major Barbara, Androcles and the Lion, Caesar and Cleopatra, and…Pygmalion. Shaw insisted that no happy ending be given to his play, even though actors knew this is what audiences wanted. Nevertheless, Pascal’s film ends with the implication of a love match for Eliza and Henry Higgens. Pascal’s film studio retained its licensing to Shaw’s plays, and after Shaw’s death in 1950 at the age of 94, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe signed on to reinvent Pygmalion as a musical, with the creation of My Fair Lady. My Fair Lady, as described in our program notes by Gregory Kable, is a delightful marriage of contraries in the stage and screen version, and captures the tensions Shaw wanted to portray. The perfection of Lerner and Loewe’s musical adaption of Pygmalion is such that six decades later, audiences still experience the context of the original play – the tension,  the beauty, the humanity, and now the soaring lyrics – of which even Shaw would approve. PS Some trivia Rex Harrison, who played ‘enry ‘iggens in both the stage and movie version of MFL, was very disappointed when Audrey Hepburn was cast as Eliza, since he felt she was miscast and had hoped to work with Julie Andrews, who had played Eliza on stage. He told an interviewer, “Eliza Doolittle is supposed to be ill at ease in European ballrooms. Bloody Audrey has never spent a day in her life out of European ballrooms.” Nevertheless, when Harrison was once later asked to identify his favorite leading lady, he replied without hesitation, he replied, “Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.“ Although playing a 19-year-old, Audrey Hepburn was actually 35 in real life. Jeremy Brett was cast as 20-year-old Freddie so Hepburn would not seem too old in comparison. Most, but not all, of Audrey Hepburn’s singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon (who also dubbed for Deborah Kerr in The King and I and  Natalie Wood in West Side Story), despite Hepburn’s lengthy vocal preparation for the role. A dubber was required because Eliza Doolittle’s songs could not be transposed down to Hepburn’s lower vocal range. 0 0

Hi and a huge welcome to Rave Reviews Book Club’s BOOK & BLOG BLOCK PARTY at Watch Nonnie Write!  Location:  Chicago, Illinois, the City of the Big Shoulders, which just happens to be where I used to live. *** Here’s What I’m Giving Away Today: One autographed paperback copy of Death in a Red Canvas Chair One autographed paperback copy of Death in a Dacron Sail One autographed paperback copy of Death by Pumpkin  So there will be three winners! ***** Let me introduce myself to anyone new to Saylingaway: I’m a Professor Emerita at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. After forty years of research and teaching undergraduates and medical students, I decided to turn my knowledge of human anatomy to the craft of mystery writing. I’m still learning my craft! In addition to the Rhe Brewster mystery series, I have written for Death South and Sea Level magazines and the Bella Online Literary Review. I live with my husband, a cat who blogs, and a hyperactive dog in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and spend a portion of every summer in Maine, researching new ideas for my books and eating lobster. I’ve written three books in the Rhe Brewster Mystery Series so far, the fourth – Death in a Mudflat – will be out by the end of this year. There’s no end to the deadly mischief my protagonist can get into… DEATH IN A RED CANVAS CHAIR On a warm fall afternoon, the sweet odor of decay distracts Rhe Brewster from the noise and fury of her son’s soccer game. She’s a tall, attractive emergency room nurse with a type A personality, a nose for investigation and a yen for adrenalin. This time her nose leads her to the wet, decaying body of a young woman, sitting in a red canvas chair at the far end of the soccer field. Following her discovery that the victim is a student at the local college, her investigation is thwarted by an old frenemy, Bitsy Wellington, the Dean of Students and Will, Rhe’s husband, who resents her involvement in anything other than being a wife and mother. Rhe’s interviews of college students leads her to a young woman who had been recruited to be an escort on a Caribbean cruise ship, and Rhe trails her to a high class brothel at a local seaside estate. The man behind the escort services is the owner of a chain of mortuaries and is related to the dead student. When Rhe becomes too much of a threat to the owner’s multiple enterprises, he takes steps to eliminate her. Can she survive being kidnapped and locked in a refrigerator with the dead? In this first in the Rhe Brewster Mystery Series, Rhe more than holds her own, but can she figure out why the body was placed in the chair on the soccer field? ***** DEATH IN A DACRON SAIL On an icy February morning, Rhe Brewster, an emergency room nurse with an unstoppable yen for investigation, is called to a dock in the harbor of the small coastal town of Pequod, Maine. A consultant to the Pequod Police Department, Rhe is responding to a discovery by one of the local lobstermen: a finger caught in one of his traps. The subsequent finding of the body of a young girl, wrapped in a sail and without a finger, sends the investigation into high gear and reveals the existence of three other missing girls of the same age, plus a childhood friend of Rhe’s. Battered by increasingly vitriolic objections from her husband, the pregnant Rhe continues her search, dealing with unexpected obstacles and ultimately facing the challenge of crossing an enormous frozen bog to save herself. Will she survive? Is the kidnapper someone she knows? In Death in a Dacron Sail, the second book in the Rhe Brewster Mystery Series, Rhe’s nerves and endurance are put to the test as the kidnapper’s action hits closer to home. ***** DEATH BY PUMPKIN   At the annual Pumpkin Festival in the coastal town of Pequod, Maine, Rhe Brewster, an ER nurse and Police Department consultant, responds to screams at the site of the Pumpkin Drop. Racing to the scene, where a one-ton pumpkin was dropped from a crane to crush an old car, Rhe and her brother-in-law, Sam, Pequod’s Chief of Police, discover the car contains the smashed remains of a man’s body. After the police confirm the death as a homicide, Rhe embarks on a statewide search to identify the victim and find the killer. During the course of the emotional investigation, she survives an attempt on her life at 10,000 feet, endures the trauma of witnessing the murder of an old flame, and escapes an arson attack on her family’s home. There is clearly a sociopath on the loose who is gunning for Rhe and leaving bodies behind. With Sam unable to offer his usual support due to an election recall and a needy new girlfriend, Rhe realizes that the only way to stop the insanity is to risk it all and play the killer’s game. Maine’s most tenacious sleuth is back, this time to confront a menace that threatens to destroy her life and those closest to her ***** This is the first blog block party I’ve joined. I hope you’ll come back to visit my blog. It’s very eclectic – I never know what I will post (so far book reviews, historical pieces about the Pilgrims, art, short stories, interviews), whatever floats my boat each week. You can find me here and On Twitter: @rhebrewster And on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/noelle.a.granger And:  https://www.facebook.com/search/str/n.a.+granger+-+the+rhe+brewster+mysteries/keywords_top Hope you are enjoying the book and block party! 0 0

Hope your day was a happy one! 0 0

The book is the first of a trilogy about John Knox, a Scottish minister, theologian, and writer who was a leader of the Reformation and the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, marking the 500th anniversary of his birth. In this first book, Knox plays a minor role to the two main characters: Elizabeth Hepburn, a feisty woman who becomes the Prioress of a convent, and David Lindsey, her one-time lover, who is the long-time tutor and confidant of King James V of Scotland. The story opens with a charming scene that reminded me of Little Women, where Betsy, the nanny to the three Hepburn daughter, herbalist and possible witch, divines the girls’ fates from the tossing of nuts into a blazing fire. The three girls are completely different in character and although the book traces the fate of little Meg and the voluptuous and fiery Kate, it is the strong-willed Elizabeth who drives the story. This is a meticulously researched historical novel, right down to the immediate inclusion of a Scots dialect with the English. I must admit this put me off at first, because there were many words I didn’t know and I hardly wanted to take time to look them up. However, as the chapters passed it became clear what the words meant, much like reading English with words represented by only a few letters. The amount of detail, intertwined plots, religious conflicts, monarchical rivalries, and interpersonal connections are too much for this reviewer to detail, but if a sense of time and place drive your interest in history, and especially Scottish history, you will be in pig heaven. Ms. Macpherson’s main characters shine with description like bright pennies – the gluttonous and painted Dame Janet, Prioress before Elizabeth; Maryoth, the nun covetous of being prioress, evil and conniving against Elizabeth; John, Elizabeth’s uncle and Prior of St. Mary’s, greedy and eager to have Elizabeth replace Janet, his sister, to keep the rich convent in the family; and Davie Lindsey, Elizabeth’s young lover, who proves feckless and sacrifices Elizabeth more than once to serve his king.  If there was any downside to the many characters, it was the number of them, but the author includes family trees and a complete cast of characters for the challenged! There are no lusty love scenes, although rape and sex abound, so this is not a romantic barn-burner. The author, however, does a great job educating the reader about the social mores of sex, courtship, marriage and child-bearing. John Knox comes into the tale rather late, as the apparent son of a poor woman, into whose lungs Elizabeth breathes life, then adopts as her godson. He will be a major character in the next two books. This volume lays down the considerable history of the time from Margaret Tudor, sister to Henry VIII and wife of James IV, to the birth and early years of Mary, Queen of Scots, and sets the stage for Mary’s contentious relationship with Knox. All in all, a challenging and intellectual but satisfying read, which I recommend – but not to the casual reader. About the author Marie Macpherson was born in the Honest Toun of Musselburgh, six miles from the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. After earning an Honours Degree in Russian and English, she spent a year in Moscow and Leningrad to research her PhD thesis on the work of the 19th century Russian writer, Lermontov, said to be descended from the Scottish poet and seer, Thomas the Rhymer. The rich history of East Lothian – especially the Reformation period – provides the inspiration for her first fictional work, based on the early life of the Scottish reformer, John Knox. Ms.Macpherson is the winner of the Martha Hamilton Prize for Creative Writing from Edinburgh University and was awarded the title ‘Writer of the Year 2011’ by Tyne & Esk Writers. You can find her on Twitter: @MGMacpherson Her blog:  https://mariemacpherson.wordpress.com/ And on Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/Marie-Macpherson-218696288265954/ 0 0

The Curse of Arundel Hall is a cozy, the second in the Yellow Cottage Vintage Mystery series. There is a lot to like about this book, but it does have its drawbacks. Ella, following the death of her husband is given the strong suggestion by his boss, the British Home Secretary, that she forget about hIm and move away. She has decides to live on Linhay Island and take up residence in a refurbished cottage that was once a part of the Arundel Hall estate. There is a ghost living in a secret dining room that Ella discovers behind the kitchen, and she visits her friend, Harriet, the local librarian to find out more about her cottage and its history in relation to Arundel Hall. Her friend tells her a curse was placed on the hall by its first owner. Ella discovers a secret stairway from the hidden dining room to the cottage’s upper floors, and a centuries-old skeleton of a woman at the bottom of the stairs. The skeleton gives evidence she was murdered. Ella is invited to the manor hall for a celebration dinner of the engagement of the elderly owner to a much younger woman who claims to have been a stage actress. The evening takes a shocking turn when one member of the dinner party is murdered. Ella again joins forces with Scotland Yard’s Police Commissioner, her uncle, to find and catch the killer(s). The author creates a colorful world in Linhay Island, with wonderful, well-drawn characters, and after I got into the book, I found it very entertaining. Her descriptions convey the life on an island, the charm of Ella’s cottage and the menace and gloom of Arundel Hall exceedingly well. The main problem I encountered derives from the fact I hadn’t read the first book. I had no idea that Ella could really see ghosts and that Phantom, which I thought was her cat, was also a ghost. This was compounded by a substantial first chapter going into great detail – although beautifully written — about Ella’s childhood. I had to wait until midway through the second chapter to be introduced to the woman’s ghost. I also did not realize the era of the mystery until I took a close look at the stylish cover. More confusion derived from Ella’s traveling back and forth from the city to Linhay Island by car and train. Was there a bridge or a ferry? Finally, the book needs the hand of a copy editor. There were a sufficient number of errors to detract from the enjoyment I derived from the book. Now that I have become acquainted with Ella and her abilities, and despite the shortcomings, I do look forward to Ms. New’s next book in this series. About the author: J. New has been a voracious reader and writer all her life. She took her first foray into publishing in 2013 with An Accidental Murder, the first in her Yellow Cottage Vintage Mystery series. Originally from a small picturesque town in Yorkshire, she relocated in 2007 and currently resides with her partner and an ever-expanding family of rescue animals. She particularly loves murder mysteries set in past times, where steam trains, house staff and afternoon tea abound, and surmises she was born in the wrong era. She also has an impossible bucket list: to travel on the Orient Express with Hercule Poirot, shop in Diagon Alley with Sirius Black, laze around The Shire with Bilbo and Gandalf, explore Pico Mundo with Odd Thomas and have Tea at the Ritz with Miss Marple. J. New can be found at https://www.jnewwrites.com and on her blog https://www.jnewwrites.com/Blog.php 0 0

Clay Tongue was all too short for this reader. It is described as a short fantasy about the unspoken love between a shy little girl and her grandfather, the secrets of human communication, and discovered bravery. Katie Mirowitz lives in a household with her parents and her grandfather. She is so shy and afraid to speak she can’t even tell her mother that she loves her, but her grandfather is her lodestone, the one person with whom she can talk. When he has a stroke leaving him with aphasia, the inability to speak anything other than gibberish, they still communicate – she can interpret his facial expressions and meaningless words. Her anxieties come to a crescendo when she overhears her mother telling the grandfather she is not sure how long they can continue to care for him because of the family’s finances. When Katie finds her grandfather with an old journal, which he doesn’t want her to see, she just has to read what is inside. She sneaks downstairs at night to read it and with it, finds an ancient key. The journal contains a story, written by her grandfather many years earlier, of a mythical being – a golem – who can grant wishes. Screwing her courage to the wall, she goes in search of the golem. How Katie finds the golem and what happens when he asks her for her wish is sweet and heart-warming. The story line is predictable, but the writing is superlative and the author creates a read-out loud story for both children and adults with truths about love and selflessness.  The characters, especially the grandfather, colorfully and realistically drawn and stayed with this reader long after the end of the story. I highly recommend Clay Tongue, five stars. About the author (from Amazon) Nicholas Conley is a novelist, world traveler, playwright, and coffee vigilante. His passion for storytelling is evident in Clay Tongue as well a Pale Highway, the winner of the 2015 Predators & Editors Award for Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novel. He has written for Vox, Truthout, The Huffington Post, SFFWorld, and Alzheimers.net, and his original radio play Something in the Nothing was performed live on the radio station WSCA 106.1 FM in 2016. He is a member of PEN America, the writers organization dedicated to human rights and freedom of expression. You can find Nicholas Conley On twitter: @NcholasConley1 And at: www.nicholasconley.com 0 0

A pictorial essay of what is currently in bloom around our house and pool, with a few comments. Enjoy! It’s spring!                   Not sure you can see the load of blossoms on our weeping cherry tree. They are dropping already, leading to what we call pink snow!   Some late blooming daffodils in the garden:                Some as yet unpotted blooms on the porch.          We have some lovely azaleas also in bloom.   And one even had a yellow visitor!   Do you think these are blossoms on our bushes in the front of the house? Nope, it’s our last snowfall!                                                                       0 0