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I will be away from my blog for the next week or so and won’t be able to read posts and comment. I dread the thought of opening my email when I return! However, I think I’ve found a guest blogger who will entertain you.  Let me know how that works out. 0 0

This piece is from a guy whose posts I treasure. It should tickle your funny bone… 0 0

Murder on the Levels is the second in a series of short tales of murder by Frances Evesham. I was looking forward to reading this after I reviewed Murder at the Lighthouse, and I was not disappointed. This is a perfect short, cozy mystery. Libby Forest was trapped for years in an abusive marriage, and after her husband Trevor dies, she takes some of the money from the sale of their house and buys a cottage in Exham on Sea, a small inbred coastal town. She currently works in a local bakery and hopes to have her own patisserie and chocolate shop eventually. In the meantime, she makes samples of her sweets available at the bakery. At the beginning of this tale, Libby brings sandwiches and sweets from the bakery to the local cycling club, to the spot where they stop for lunch on one of their outings. Shortly after, everyone becomes sick and two of the bikers die. Libby, who is walking a friend’s dog, runs into the mysterious Max Ramshore, who Libby suspects is a government spy. He is also walking a dog – Bear, his enormous Carpathian sheepdog – and gets a phone call telling him his son, Joe, a detective sergeant in the local police force and one of the cyclists, has become seriously ill and has been taken to the hospital. He and Libby drive out to the wildlife reserve and what is now being treated as a crime scene. On her way home, Libby herself becomes sick. The only thing she ate that the cyclists would have eaten is an Eccles cake. Libby made it, and she knows she didn’t do anything wrong. A poison, digitalis, is determined to be the source of the sickness. Naturally, suspicion falls on the bakery and its boss, Frank, and of course, Libby. The book reintroduces the reader to some of the town’s colorful characters: Mandy, the young Goth who rents a room from Libby; Joe Ramshore, who resented Libby’s sleuthing in the previous mystery; Frank the baker; and Fuzzy, Libby’s marmalade cat who has an unusual liking for Bear. New are Steve, Mandy’s boyfriend, and Ali, Libby’s daughter, who comes to take care of her. Ali shocks Libby when she reveals she’s left her studies at the university and is going to build schools in a rain forest with a young man she’s met. When Ali leaves, she deliberately places an envelope where Libby will find it; in it is a deed to a house in Leeds that Trevor left to Ali. He also deeded a house to their son, Michael. Libby is perplexed as to why her late husband would do this and becomes suspicious, since Trevor emptied all their bank accounts when he left her. Now Libby has two things to investigate, and this becomes three when, for no apparent reason, Steve is run off the road while riding his motorcycle. The author does a great job believably weaving together the disparate threads of this story, sending Libby hither and yon through West Country scenery and keeping the reader guessing until the very end. This is an engaging and easy read, and heralds the continuation of a wonderful mystery series. I strongly highly recommend Murder on the Levels, a great cozy to curl up with! About the author: In addition to historical mystery romances, Frances Evesham has written books on speech and language, and parenting and communication, which she can practice with her growing collection of grandsons. She’s been a speech therapist, a professional communication expert as well as road sweeper. She has also worked in the criminal courts. Now, she walks in the country and breathes sea air in Somerset. For fun, she collects Victorian ancestors and historical trivia, likes to smell the roses, lavender and rosemary, and cooks with a glass of wine in one hand and a bunch of chilies in the other.   You can find Frances at: http://francesevesham.com/ and on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frances.evesham.writer You can find Murder on the Levels on Amazon: And on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28934226-murder-on-the-levels?from_search=true&search_version=service     0 0

Dear Readers: I was up in Virginia this weekend and made a trip to the Walmart in Rocky Mount. I was surprised to see a flock of sea gulls basking in the sun in the parking lot, since Rocky Mount is roughly 200miles from the coast.   Well, color me somewhat ignorant. I’ve discovered there are more than 50 species of gulls worldwide, with many found hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. Some actually live primarily inland, including the ring billed gull, which thrives in suburban settings around the United States. Gulls are opportunistic omnivores and will eat all sorts of things: insects, earthworms, rodents, grains and even French fries and other fast food. Mall parking lots offer the chance of a handout and Dumpsters filled with scraps  Gulls also prefer open areas where they can spot predators and take off easily, which this group did as soon as I got any closer for another picture. Along with this picture, I also picked up a head cold and now feel like a blivet, which is an old family term for 10 lbs of crap in a 5 lb paper bag. Snufflingly yours… 0 0

                                                         THE Ohio State University I took a trip on Sunday to Ohio State University to give a lecture on Leonardo da Vinci and his place in the history of anatomical dissection. I had been invited by my last Ph.D. student, who is now an Assistant Professor there, and her first Ph.D. student who just graduated. So I have my first grand Ph.D.! In contrast to actually getting to Columbus, the lecture was a breeze. It began when I asked my husband to print out my boarding passes on Saturday night. It was then that he noticed the reservation through Orbitz had been made in my maiden name. Now I have been married for many decades, and Hubs made those reservations. No way he would have used my maiden name. I water-boarded him asked him repeatedly to make sure. We still can’t figure out how it happened. Hubs got on the phone with Orbitz and I could hear him for the next hour trying to reason arguing with them to re-issue the tickets in my married name. Several supervisors later, no dice. Next he went to American (my first flight to LaGuardia) and then United (my second flight to Columbus). More reasoning arguing, more supervisors. Then the suggestion that we just go to the bank and get my birth and marriage certificates. This was such an intelligent stupid idea: it was Saturday night and my flight left on Sunday. In the meantime, I was trying to work through the lecture to make sure the visuals co-ordinated and that at least one of my thumb drives would accept the power point presentation (a big one). We were both listening to TV in the background, and the Tar Heels were getting beaten by Virginia which was not improving either of our tempers. The best hubs could do by reasoning arguing was to get a note put in the airlines’ computers, somewhere, that I am who I say I am. Sunday morning, I arrived at the airport early and tried to get my ticket reissued in my married name at the American counter. No dice. But the ticket agent assured me there would be no problem with TSA. I had brought a Mass booklet from our wedding Mass (the only thing we could find with my maiden name on it)) and that would certainly do the trick. Not. The TSA agent looked at my un-matching ticket and passport while I tried to explain what happened.Two agents later, the supervisor arrived. By now, Hubs was jumping up and down outside the screening area, trying to explain in a loud voice, to great no effect. I yelled at him to calm down.The supervisor disappeared and came back with a form, which I filled out.Then she made a phone call to somewhere in Washington where all of our past and present names are stored, and after some back and forth with lots of notations of their names and some numbers, I was cleared to go. Hubs left, and I was escorted through the X-ray machine after removing all some of my clothes under close supervision, then I was wanded and given a very thorough pat-down. Most of the stuff in my carry-on was removed and tested for explosives and my toothpaste was thrown out. I slept all the way to LaGuardia, but since I didn’t leave the boarding area, was spared having to repeat that process. My travails were not over, because I had to repeat the whole thing at the Columbus airport the next day for my trip home.This time I knew what to expect, and Mr. Higgins, the TSA supervisor, was so kind and nice about the whole thing that it was lengthy but not onerous. Plus I got patted down by a pretty blond agent named Summer Flowers. I’m saving that one for a book! Mr. Higgins may get in one, too. The morals of this story: Always check your flight confirmation as soon as you get it. Consider bringing your passport with you– my driver’s license wouldn’t have cut it. If you’re a married woman and do not use your maiden name, have something handy with your maiden name on it. Don’t use Orbitz. One of their poltergeists may change your name.     0 0

Book 1 of the Viridian System Series, The Perihelix, is out and available for reading! Published by Princelings Publications Genre: science fiction/scifi-adventure/space opera (for grownups, although I wouldn’t describe it as adult) Words/pages: 83,800 / 360 Formats: all ereaders and paperback Price: ebook currently on special offer at 99c (rrp $2.99): paperback rrp $10.99 The Blurb: Two asteroid miners, three women, one spacecraft, and five pieces of a legendary weapon scattered around the galaxy. Big Pete and the Swede are rich, or so they discover after bringing their latest haul of orichalcum in from the asteroid belt. So some well-deserved vacation awaits them. It starts out just fine, with one of the men winning the big flyer-race of the season, but they start to receive odd messages, and despite the attentions from the girls, both realise that someone is trying to drag them back to their pasts, pasts they have tried hard to erase. As they set out to discover who’s bugging them, they are kidnapped by some particularly nasty aliens, which leaves the girls in a mess – stranded on the spaceship with very little idea how to fly it. The author of The Perihelix is my long-time blogging friend, Jemima Pett. She has an amazingly creative mind and you should visit her blog: http://jemimapett.com/. She also is the owner of a family of delightful guinea pigs, who have their own blog (http://georgesgpworld.uk/). About the author (from her blog): I’ve been writing since I was 8 years old.  I still have a small booklet I found in my mother’s box of treasures, written in a very childish hand, entitled The Little Stream.  It reads very much like the story of Smetana’s Vltava, or The Moldau as it was called when I was young, so I must have been into classical music at an early age (I blame my brothers’ influence).   My early fiction attempts failed for want of suitable inspiration: I couldn’t get characters or plot that seemed interesting, and my first attempts were derided by a ‘friend’.  I had the bug for writing, though, and wrote articles and event reports for newsletters and magazines whenever I got the opportunity. My career in business and in environmental research kept me chained to a desk for many years, but also gave me the opportunity to write manuals, reports, science papers, blogs, journals, anything and everything that kept the words flowing.  Finally the characters jumped into my head with stories that needed to be told…. I now live in a village in Norfolk with my guinea pigs, the first of whom, Fred, George, Victor and Hugo, provided the inspiration for the Princelings stories.  Where Pete and the Swede came from is another story! An interview with Jemima Q: How did you come to invent the characters in your new book? It was through my regular flash fiction stories on my blog.  We’d had a couple of times when I’d ventured into science fiction, once in a Casablanca/Star Wars mash-up which was called Paradisio, and then those characters got mentioned in a Random Title story called the Orichalcum Library, where two asteroid miners wanted to read real books, so the bar owner on another planet got hold of some which had been swapped for food by some fugitives from the Paradisio story.  The asteroid miners turned into Pete and the Swede, and there we go. Why did they end up with three women?  Isn’t it a bit degrading to bring in your female characters as escorts? Asteroid miners have a reputation for being hell-raisers when they aren’t mining.  Pete and the Swede want some female company, and after a while they realised they actually wanted company, good food, people to enjoy their vacation with, as well as bed companions.  So when they found escorts who they liked, they rehired them, and if you can afford more company, then why not?  As for why are the females escorts, well, in the Wild West women are generally either bar girls (escorts) or pioneer/ranchers’ wives, and I didn’t have any ranches around.  The Viridian system is very much Outback, and although there are a few women in what you might call ‘normal’ jobs on Sunset Strip, it’s not an area that’s easy to get to without a sponsor.  These girls have quite interesting futures ahead of them, though, as you’ll see when you read the book.  What was the most difficult thing about writing the book? Having developed my worlds of Pleasant Valley and Sunset Strip, the two inhabited planets of the Viridian System, in part through the short stories, I then had to check the science for them.  I’ve done a course on planetary science, and to me, getting planets that were physically feasible was important.  I wanted Sunset Strip to have two sunsets in a Standard day, which led me to realise the difficulties with that, which I’ve mentioned in the ‘world-building’ section on the Viridian series website. Now, sorting those worlds out wasn’t difficult.  But then I realised ALL the other places they go to on their adventures need to be fully realised as well.  Oh, boy!  Physical characteristics, society, relationships with other planets, weather, occupants…. and keeping tabs on with all with a huge spreadsheet.  But it’s great fun.  As long as my memory holds out! How do you keep up with the science? At present it’s hard, because in the eighteen months since I wrote the first draft of The Perihelix (at Camp NaNoWriMo) there have been huge developments in the detection of exoplanets – planets around stars outside our own system – and level of detail we’ve worked out about them.  We’ve also had hugely more information about the outer planets of our own system.  What is emerging is that basically, anything goes; a lot of what we thought would be the rule from what we knew of the solar system has been turned on its head. It’s really exciting!  Most of my updates come from a couple of websites, from other bloggers who report on interesting things, and

This review is for Rosie’s #Bookreview team. The book was purchased by the reviewer. The Code for Killing is the second in a mystery series set in Georgian England. I read the first in the series and was intrigued by the historical setting and, since I’m married to a physician and taught medical students for years, was drawn to the sleuth, an MD and his closest friend, Peter Lassimer, a pharmacist and a confirmed ladies’ man. I liked this book even better than the first. The main character, Dr. Adam Bascom, is written with more depth and angles to his character. He is highly intelligent with keen deductive skills, but as the story opens, he is bored with his rural practice and despairing of many of his patients – cantankerous wealthy people who do not pay their bills. He enjoyed his role as a novice detective in the first of his investigations, when he sussed out the murderer of man whose body was found in a graveyard, and longs for more excitement. He is also clueless about women, and his mother despairs he will ever form any attachment leading to marriage. Bascom doesn’t have to endure his situation for long because he receives an urgent summons from Mr. Wicken, who had some interaction with Bascom on the previous case and heads up a clandestine department of the British government charged with finding spies. A young man has been attacked in Norwich. He is in a catatonic state, and Bascom is asked to treat him because this man is an important a code breaker for the government. In addition, the King’s Messenger who was bringing the young man documents to decode has been murdered, and the documents are missing. Before he can get to Norwich, however, Bascom is summoned by his brother to do a post-mortem on an unpopular miller and testify at the ensuing inquest. The way in which the author unravels all the threads of the story is compelling. Characters are one of Savage’s fortes. He introduces us to several women who attract Bascom’s attention: the delightful and intelligent Sophie LaSalle, his mother’s companion, who insists on helping him with his investigations; the flirtatious Phoebe Farnsworth, an actress who introduces Bascom to the London stage; and the young and faithful wife of the elderly and wise Sir Daniel Fouchard, who requests the skills and company of Bascom to manage his pain while he is dying. Even more colorful are Captain Mimms, an old friends of Bascom’s, whose help he enlists in the investigation; two of Mimms’ former crew, the amusing scoundrels Peg and Dobbin; and Molly, a young prostitute with a heart of gold. Beyond the characters, what I particularly enjoy about these books is the history of the politics of time (food riots, possible war with France, privateers and spying) and descriptions of the practice of medicine and pharmacy. Savage also gives the reader a fine-tuned description of Georgian society and manners and lively dialog in the manner of the times. The conversations drive the story. I was decidedly kept guessing about where the various threads of the story would lead and how they would come together as they twisted and turned around Bascom’s detecting. This is story telling at its best. I give The Code for Killing five stars and highly recommend this series. Is it obvious I’m looking forward to reading the next book? 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 The Code for Killing on Amazon: William Savage’s blog is Pen and Pension:  http://penandpension.com/author/bluebrdz1946/   0 0

Barb Taub is one of the wittiest writers I know, and her latest book – Do Not Wash Hands in Plates – did not disappoint. My smile muscles hurt by the time I finished it. This is a travelogue with a twist, a repeat adventure of three friends (Americans Barb and Janine and an Indian, Jaya) of one they had taken four decades before. Only this time instead of the relatively small country of Belgium, they chose to meet in India, where Jaya lives. After overcoming as many obstacles as the board game of that name, they managed to find each other at the Ahmedabad Airport without the use of digital devices and spent their first days at Jaya’s house – where their itinerary was “1. Eat. 2. Rest up from eating. 3. Eat more. 4. Go into jetlag coma.” The first part of their vacation was spent on a train, where they all were relegated to upper bunks. Arriving in Agra, they discovered the Taj Mahal was closed because of President Obama’s visit, but they found some lesser but equally impressive monuments to visit and spent a lot of the time eating. In fact, eating was one of their main forms of entertainment and torture. The reader is treated to instructions on how to shop in India, to queue, to haggle down the price of a souvenir, to navigate without a GPS (ask anyone), and to cross a road safely. The three friends found Delhi and Kerala were similarly closed, but a steam bath, a massage, and a swim were viable substitutes. Plus more food. Along their tour, they saw dancing, monkeys, elephants with parking places, and Barb got Delhi belly. She ended up in a hospital, where she was given sufficient pharmaceuticals to recover and begin eating again. The book is described as the story of three women eating their way across India in search of adventure, elephants, temples, palaces, western toilets, monkeys, the perfect paratha…and find the kindness of Indian strangers. Perfect! I highly recommend it. Excerpt: Despite blizzards, canceled flights, de-icing delays, and an adjacent passenger who had made unfortunate food choices resulting in alarming gastrointestinal events, I arrived in India. The theory was that I would fly in from my home in Scotland, Janine would come from Washington DC, and Jaya would meet up with us at the airport. Nobody who knows any of us thought for a second that this could really occur. Actual conversation at Passport Control, Mumbai: Janine: “Well no, I don’t have my friend’s address or phone number. But she’s going to pick me up at the airport. She lives in Gujarat. That’s in India.” Passport Control: [SO not impressed I arrived before Janine. As far as I could tell, the Ahmedabad Airport was staffed by the entire Indian army, each soldier carrying a honking huge gun. I grabbed my suitcase and exited baggage control into India. Noise. Chaos. People, dogs, honking horns, more people. More soldiers. More guns. Dozens of sincere men who called me “Sister” and suggested they could take me anywhere on the planet I might want to go. No Janine. No Jaya. And, apparently, no way to get back into the airport. After several failed attempts at international texts, I realized I could (at heart-stopping expense) send email to Jaya, who soon confirmed that she was on her way and that it was 3:00AM so I should go back inside. Except there were signs everywhere saying you couldn’t go back in. “No problem.” Jaya explained that rules in India are more like guidelines. “People in India are very kind. Just ask.” I’ve been living in the UK where rules are inviolate and graven in stone, so I didn’t believe a word of it. But the soldier at the door listened to my plea and waved his AK-Humongo to usher me back inside. There I found Janine attempting to send email or text. I reminded her neither option was likely for two technologically-challenged, jet-lagged, middle-aged ladies in a foreign country at 3:00AM. In the end, we wandered over to the door and to our mutual amazement found Jaya waiting for us along with a hired driver and a van. Apparently lightning does strike again, because just like thirty-five years earlier, the three of us actually managed to meet up in another continent. What could possibly go wrong from here? About the author: From Goodreads In halcyon days BC (before children), Barb Taub wrote a humor column for several Midwest newspapers. With the arrival of Child #4, she veered toward the dark side and an HR career. Following a daring daytime escape to England, she’s lived in a medieval castle and a hobbit house with her prince-of-a-guy and the World’s Most Spoiled AussieDog. Now all her days are Saturdays, and she spends them consulting with her occasional co-author/daughter Hannah on Marvel heroes, Null City, and translating from British to American. You can find Barb at:  barbtaub.com Her blog is: BARB TAUB – Writing & Coffee. Especially coffee.  And her books at: http://www.amazon.com/Barb-Taub/e/B00EZP9BS8/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1 0 0

  While I was deep underground, slaving away on my third book, I tried to sandwich in the reading of a number of books which I had promised Rosie Amber and several others I would review. Just to warn all y’all (the plural of y’all), there will be several upcoming: Britannia III – The Warlords, by Richard Denham and T.J. Trow The Code for Killing by William Savage Do Not Wash Hands in Plates by Barb Taub I thank Rosie and the authors for their patience! 0 0

Love in the Time of Murder is book three in The Gray-Haired Knitting Detectives series by this author. I will confess I haven’t read the first two, but I didn’t have any trouble getting into the story and understanding the relationships of the characters. I understand this is the last book in the series, and the previous two are also stand-alones. This is a fun romp of a cozy. Delilah, or Dee as she is known to her friends, is the granddaughter of a group of elderly ladies who get together to knit and solve crimes. Her life is in a bit of a mess. Her husband Brock has become abusive for an unknown reason. Dee finally manages to leave him and move out on her own, but this means moving in with her grandmother, who raised her, with her attendant knitting and busy-body posse. Soon after, Brock shows up to take Dee back, and things get ugly before he finally leaves. For me, this was the most immediate and emotionally tense part of the story. While Dee is trying to figure out how to handle the situation – the Gray-Haired Knitting Detectives insist she get a restraining order – Brock is found murdered and Dee is suspect number one. Dee’s problems don’t end there, since the ladies see the perfect opportunity to find Dee a new man and put their matchmaking skills to use. Dee is having none of it, except for the fact the man they select – Tommy, introduced in the previous book – is handsome and makes her heart sing. At the same time, the ladies dive into finding the real killer, in order to save Dee. The grannies are at once nosey, frustrating, overbearing and irritating. I myself got irritated with them, along with Dee’s moving back and forth from her new apartment to her grandmother’s. I think the relationship between Dee’s gay employer and his boyfriend is a little too blatant for my taste – they seem to be snogging in public at every opportunity (really?) – and some of the humor didn’t reach my funny bone. Equally frustrating is Dee’s reluctance to overrule her grandmother and the posse, despite being constantly ambushed by people with the best of intentions but oblivious to her mental distress. I wonder whether this is because the book is told in first person, which means the reader sees and feels everything through Dee’s eyes. Third person would allow the reader to view the characters in a less biased way. Having said that, the mystery is a good one. The revelations about Brock keep you wondering just who he actually was, and overall, the book is a good story. Some of the wit and sarcasm I liked and there were some one-liners that made me laugh; I just wish the other relationships hadn’t fogged the sleuthing so much. About the author: D. E. Haggerty grew up reading everything she could get her my hands on, penning poems, writing songs, or drafting stories. After college and a stint in the U.S. Army, she entered the field of law, but after a few years in, became fed up and quit to become a writer. Her first manuscript she hid in the attic and returned to the law, then became a B&B owner. She managed a writing career by shutting the B&B during the week and in the off-season.  Several books later she moved to Istanbul to write full-time. 0 0