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Charming (def.): pleasant, endearing, wonderful, amusing, satisfying, entertaining Charming is a wildly overused word, but in this case it is totally appropriate in describing Greening of a Heart by Stepheny Houghtlin. This book reminded me strongly of the novels of Maeve Binchey and Rosamunde Pilcher, who happens to be one of the author’s favorite writers. Hannah Winchester is the wife of the Reverend Martin Winchester, Vicar of St. John the Baptist Anglican church in the Cotswald village of Burford, England. For the last several years, her marriage has been problematic, her husband cool, irascible and unengaged. His temperament has extended to his pastorship and his friendship with the Bishop, an old Cambridge friend. When the Bishop insists that Martin take a sabbatical at St. George’s College in Jerusalem during the summer, Martin goes with great reluctance. Hannah hopes the summer apart will allow her to determine the direction in which she would like to grow, reinvigorate her husband’s life and rekindle their love for each other. Hannah’s passion is gardening and when the story begins, she is in the middle of the redesign and expansion of the vicarage garden. The original garden was well-known and was the pride of the previous vicar, Robert Myers, who led the church for 30 years. Hannah acquires an intern for the summer, Henry Bernard, who works at the famous Kew Gardens and ostensibly comes to Burford to help Hannah and to study English clergy-gardeners and the role of gardens in their spirituality. His real reason for applying for Hannah’s position is a mystery weaving through the book. During the summer, Hannah’s garden expands and blooms, along with her creativity in its usage and goals for herself. The reader meets a cast of village characters that delight and enthrall with their talents, humor, occasional pettiness, and gossip. Not all of them are happy with what Hannah is doing with the Garden and as the months pass, the lives of the villagers entwine with Hannah’s in surprising ways. Hannah’s own daughter is trapped in an unhappy marriage of her own. How can Hannah help her? Will the new garden be accepted by the village? Will Hannah’s plans for it come to fruition? Will Martin accept the changes she has made to herself, the garden and the vicarage? And most of all, can Martin win back Hannah’s heart? The author’s knowledge of gardening is a strong thread through her novel, and I learned a great deal about it as a result. There is also a spirituality to the telling, which is never overwhelming but entirely germane to the story of a vicar’s wife. I enthusiastically recommend this book – it is worthy of Oprah’s Book Club. 0 0

My blog has suffered in the last couple of weeks from lack of input. I’ve had things I wanted to blog, but with all the wedding preparations getting into gear, the most I’ve been able to scrounge for time is the occasional morning. Which is my favorite time to write, but – I’ve got the line edits to finish on the second book before I send it off and the second chapter of the third book needs to be sent out to my critique group, only it isn’t done. What to do? Is anyone else facing this conundrum? How do you allot your time and how do you get in the mood to write when you sit down and tell yourself this is it, I’ve got three hours! 0 0

I will admit I’m a huge fan of Terry Tyler, so I eagerly downloaded Round and Round to my Kindle a while back. I was not disappointed! How many of you would like to go back to a certain place in your life where you had a choice of which man you would marry or at least end up with. What if you had chosen differently? My head swims just thinking about it. Ms. Tyler has written about just such a thing: Sophie Heron’s 40th birthday is soon and she finds herself fed up with her life, not the least part of which is her longtime boyfriend’s new hobby, which involves, well, I’ll leave the reader to find out. She has recently lost her Auntie Flick, a faerie of a woman who had been her confidant, supporter and mentor since she was little. She and Auntie Flick had shared a special place, a tree by a river, where Sophie goes to ask her now guardian angel to what to do. As a result, she gets to see what might have been, when, at age 24, she remakes herself and in short order has a number of suitors in addition to the man she ends up with. She sees what might have been with each of them, in order to find her way forward. The ending will surprise you! This is a quick read, not only because it’s a novella, a third and a half long as a regular novel, but also because it grabs you. It has a great plot, realistic characters and yes, desperation. I read it in two sittings. And had a good think about what might have happened had I chose differently… Terry Tyler had published nine books on Amazon. She offers a rather unique genre in her writing, what Amazon says readers describe as lying somewhere in the area of contemporary drama and romantic suspense, with the occasional bit of rock fiction thrown in. I recently reviewed Kings and Queens on Rosie Amber’s blog – another 5 star book for me. 0 0

It was wonderful to be asked to write a guest post for Noelle’s lovely blog but what was I to write about? I had a think and my mind wandered to the three men in my life. These men have made me laugh and even made me cry on occasion for the last thirty odd years and I haven’t even been married to any of them. Stand up James Herriot, Tom Sharpe and Bill Bryson. My relationship with Herriot began many years ago. It started in the school library. The humour section beckoned whilst I was trying to read up on a particularly boring biology test which was booked for the following day. No matter how much I read the text book in front of me nothing was going in and staying there and I had reached the end of my academic capacity for the day. As the library emptied I glanced over to the shelf and sticking out was Herriot’s If Only They Could Talk beckoning seductively in my general direction and telling me to ditch the biology and learn from the master. What’s a girl to do? Over the next few years I absorbed every book he wrote and I can still quote passages from them. I also know that if a cow looks as if it is wearing spectacles then it probably has a copper deficiency. As yet I haven’t had a use for it but never say never… Tom Sharpe was an accidental encounter in a second hand book shop in a small Suffolk town. Never mind meeting over the tomatoes in the supermarket; that was old hat by then. This was the real thing. His rough edged coverings, his enticing artwork. This was a well-thumbed book which had been loved and now needed some appreciation. I was that woman. He made me laugh, he made me wince, he made me realise humour writing was a well-oiled machine of phrases crafted to build an image just enough to allow the reader to take it one step further in their imagination. From Riotous Assembly to Ancestral Vices I wanted to have written those books. Not for the sales but just for the accomplishment and creativity. Bill Bryson took me by surprise one day whilst on a packed train to London. I rather wish he hadn’t as I laughed out loud at his nickname and description of his Dover landlady (whose name I don’t feel inclined to repeat here as it is rather rude…) in front of several startled passengers and that was before he started putting warnings on his books. Thank heavens I wasn’t in First Class otherwise they would have chucked me off at Hatfield Peverel and I might still have been there. A least I would have had something to read. His perception of the flaws of the human race and his ability to laugh at himself held an appeal which I still find entertaining as I re-read his books to this day. These days he has taken to writing books which explore various topics such as his excellent A Short History Of Nearly Everything and At Home to name just two but it is his travel memoirs such as Notes From A Small Island, Neither Here, Nor There: Travels In Europe and The Lost Continent: Travels In Small Town America which have made me snort tea through my nose and have kept me going back for more. Of course, the relationship soured somewhat when I realised he had totally bypassed East Anglia on his travels as if we weren’t worth a mention and then had the audacity to move here. Well, honestly! Bodicia can be found on her website where she writes book reviews, articles and entertains guests. You can also find her on Twitter and Goodreads. Huge thanks to Bodicia for this post! You can find her at A Woman’s Wisdom. Do check out her Tales of the Manor, an outgoing humor series on her blog. You’ll love her wit! 0 0

A Good Mystery Is Like A Turducken 0 0

This is a post from several years ago when I did Renaissance artists for my A-Z challenge. Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431 – September 13, 1506) was an Italian painter and a student of Roman archeology.  He was the first to experiment with perspective, in which objects become smaller as their distance from the observer increases, and foreshortening, whereby an object’s dimensions along the receding line of sight are shorter than dimensions across the line of sight. He is also one of my favorite artists of the period because he drew figures with accurate anatomical features. This is a little longer than my other blogs because I find this artist so fascinating. Mantegna was born close to Padua, part of the Republic of Venice.  At eleven, he became the apprentice of Francesco Squarcione, a painter interested in the ancient art and architecture of Rome and Greece.  Mantegna was said to be a favorite pupil, and during this time Squarcione and his pupils, including Mantegna, began the series of frescoes in the church of Sant’ Agostino degli Eremitani, almost entirely lost in the 1944 allied bombings  of Padua.  One of these, St. James Being Led to his Execution, is clearly Mantegna’s but only old photographs exist today. It is notable for his worms-eye view of the scene and is a good example of the artist’s understanding of perspective. At the ripe age of seventeen, Mantegna left Squarcione’s studio for the Venetian art firm of Jacopo Bellini, claiming Squarcione exploited him. Mantegna’s early style is best represented by the Agony in the Garden, painted in 1455. Note the angels in the upper left, with the disciples sleeping in the foreground. In the background, Judas comes with soldiers to arrest Christ. Jerusalem is depicted as a walled city, with monuments more suitable to Rome (an equestrian statue, a column with relief sculpture), undoubtedly from the influence of Squarcione. In Verona around 1459, he painted an altarpiece for the church of San Zeno Maggiore, depicting a Madonna and angels, with four saints on each side. Note the use of classical details and perspective in all of the panels. In 1460 Mantegna was appointed court artist for the Marquis of Mantua; he was paid a salary of 75 lire month, a huge sum which marked the high regard in which his art was held. His Mantuan masterpiece was painted in what is now known as the Wedding Chamber of the Marquis’ castle: a series of frescoes including various portraits of the Gonzaga family, of which the Marquis was a member. It was finished around 1474. After the Marquis died and Francesco II of Gonzaga was elected, Mantegna’s artistic commissions resumed. During this period he painted St. Sebastian, one of three he painted.  The saint is tied to a classical arch and seen from an unusually low perspective, to create the dominance of his figure. The head and eyes are turned toward heaven and at his feet are two people intended to create a contrast between the man of faith and one attracted by earthly pleasures. Pope Innocent VIII commissioned him in 1488 to paint frescos in the Belvedere Chapel in Rome, now destroyed, after which Mantegna returned to Mantua.  There he finished nine tempera pictures of the Triumphs of Caesar, which he had probably begun before leaving for Rome.  These are gorgeous depictions of the splendor of Caesar and are considered Mantegna’s finest work. Note the elephants in one of the processional scenes and then Caesar, a stony-faced figure high on his chariot, which is the last in the series. Caesar’s features were copied from Roman busts and coins, his body stiff as a sculpture, while the people around him are more alive. During this later period, Mantegna also painted the Lamentation of the Dead Christ, which portrays the body of Christ supine on a marble slab.  This painting is often used to demonstrate Mantegna’s extreme and talented use of perspective.  In this painting, there are rich contrasts of light and dark, with the realism and tragedy of the scene enhanced by the perspective.  An analysis of the painting has shown that the size of the figure’s feet has been reduced since in their exact size, they would have blocked some of the body from that angle.  Note Mantegna’s obvious knowledge of anatomy, particularly in the thorax, hand, and feet. This is one of my favorite paintings of his. Mantegna died in Mantua in 1506. In 1516, a monument was erected in his honor by his sons in a chapel of the church of San Andrea in that city.                                   Bust of  Andrea Mantegna made by himself or Gian Marco Cavalli If you like these Renaissance diversions I will find more to re-post! 0 0

In Plymouth, Massachusetts, where my family moved when I was five, my brother Jay and I first attended Sacred Heart School, a parochial school run by the Sisters of Divine Providence. The school buildings have been sold and re-purposed, but I recall them as vividly as yesterday – a  long asphalt driveway that ran up a hill between a large, dark brown clapboard, two story building and a white building of the same size, curving around into a parking lot behind the brown building. The brown building held the classrooms, while the white building was the nuns’ home and had the chapel where Mass was held on First Fridays. Mom was Catholic and Dad was not, but since my mother grew up being taught by nuns in a Catholic school and had what she described as a truly good education, she was resolved we would be taught by nuns, too. My brother got to go to the new school in Kingston when he entered, which is where Sacred Heart School is still located today. My memories of my classes there are a bit fragmented, since I only attended through the second grade, but they were run with military precision by the nuns. In those days the Sisters of Divine Providence wore long black habits with veils, and wide, round, stiffly starched collars and forehead pieces to which veils were attached. A large wooden rosary served as a belt. I don’t think I was the best of students. I remember climbing on the rocks surrounding the parking lot, pretending to be a circus performer and falling during one of my aerial feats. The nun who tended to my bleeding knee clucked about being more careful and not daydreaming. The nun whom no students wanted to encounter was Sister Mary Paraclete, the Mother Superior. With bushy grey eyebrows (that is all you could see of hair), a gray thin mustache, and a stern look, you knew you were in trouble if you were called to see her. I liked to talk during class, and one day, despite a stern warning from my second grade teacher, I kept chatting with the girl in the next desk and was caught. It was decided my punishment would be to sit in the kindergarten class for half a day and read to them. Sitting in the tiny kindergarten desks and having all of the little kids staring at you (of course it was explained to them why we were there) was a terrible punishment and shut me up for the remainder of the year. I had to see Sister Mary Paraclete when our banishment from our class was over, and I remember being so frightened of her that I was nearly sick. There were some little girls that were her favorites, however, and one day one of them was marched around in a tiny nun’s habit. I always wondered if that girl became a nun. In any event, at the end of second grade, my parents told me that they were going to send me to public school the next year. I think it had to do with finances, and they figured that Jay would really need the nuns. So the following fall, I found myself sitting in a third grade classroom at in Burton, one of the two school buildings that made up Cornish-Burton Elementary. They were old even then. To be continued… 0 0

Cozie mysteries are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are minimized and the crime and its solution take place in a small, socially intimate community. The detectives can be professional but most frequently are amateurs and can be male or female. The Miss Marple mysteries of Agatha Christie, the Mr. and Mrs. North series by Frances and Richard Lockridge, and three different mystery series by Rita Mae Brown represent some of the best of the cozie genre. Time for them to move over and make room for another writer who should also become a Queen of the Cozies: Trisha Sugarek. Ms. Sugarek, author of the blog Writer at Play, has been writing for four decades. She began her career acting, directing and writing stage plays, but this multi-talented author has also penned two novels, two books of poetry, and a group of children’s books. She began writing The World of Murder series in 2013, and this reviewer popped into the series with book four, The Angel of Murder, published this year. New York Police Department Detectives Jack O’Roarke, a big, tough Irishman, and Stella Garcia, whose sweet quiet demeanor is his perfect foil, have evolved through the series. This time they have a serial killer on their hands. The bodies of little girls, dressed for a Catholic First Communion and wearing a gold cross on a chain around their neck, are turning up in all five boroughs of New York City and there are no suspects. The story opens with the unexplainable disappearance of a girl from Garcia’s son’s school, and she and O’Roarke have the unenviable job of interviewing all the parents. To complicate their investigation, a private detective has been hired by one of the families to find one of the missing girls. In spite of all their effort, O’Roarke and Garcia hit dead end after dead end. Who is this monster and how does he manage to walk off with these girls without being seen? When will he strike again? The author writes in a spare style but draws the characters with precision. She keeps the reader engaged and moves the plot along a breakneck speed with action and good dialogue. I intend to go back and read the three previous books, but it’s not necessary to enjoy this one. You can visit Trsha at her website, Writer at Play: http://www.writeratplay.com/ 0 0

  I was tagged for a WiP game by a sister blogger with a fantastic book, Luccia Gray. Check out her blog, Rereading Jayne Eyre (http://lucciagray.com/all-about-jane-eyre/) and her book, All Hallows at Eyre Hall. She’s currently finishing the next book of her trilogy, Twelfth Night at Eyre Hall. The rule: Post the first sentence of the first three chapters of your current WiP. My current WiP is the next book in the Rhe Brewster mystery series, Death in a Dacron Sail. I’m currently doing the line edits, so what you read is what you will get with this book. Chapter 1 The lobster boat rocked violently against the pier as I backed down the ladder and extended my foot onto its heaving deck. Chapter 2 The midnight shift in the ER at Sturdevant was normally quiet, but it was a Friday night and a full moon, which meant a lot of loonies would be out. Chapter 3 Bob Morgan proved as pesky as ever, and I had three messages, all from him, on my cell phone when I finished my shift at the hospital around 8 PM. I hope you’ve read the first book in my series, Death in a Red Canvas Chair. Death in a Dacron Sail will be out late this fall. Look for it! I’m currently working on Death by Pumpkin. Think on that… I’m nominating my four of my favorite authors to carry on this WiP hop: R.M Byrd (http://byrdwords.wordpress.com/), Terry Tyler (http://terrytyler59.blogspot.com/) , Stepheny Houghtlin (http://stephenyhoughtlin.com/author/stephenyhoughtlin/), and Trisha Sugarek (http://www.writeratplay.com/ . Do check them out!   0 0

I’m a member of Rosie Amber’s book review team, and this week I reviewed Cleaver Square. Here is my review: Cleaver Square by Daniel and Sean Campbell is a British police procedural in the genre of the books by P.D. James and her character, Inspector Adam Dalgliesh. I was not disappointed in the story line, which kept me reading eagerly to the end, and with few exceptions, the main characters were interesting and well-drawn. Brothers Daniel and Sean have been writing together since 2012. Their first collaboration was Dead on Demand, which they wrote in 90 days, on a bet. In this book, DCI David Morton comes to life again, as he investigates the death of a child whose body is found frozen in a marshy area in London. The child appears to have no name until the very expensive watch found on the body leads Morton and his team to the foster system. There they find another child who is the real owner of the watch – or is he? Early in the investigation, Morton is the victim of identity fraud, leaving his and his wife’s bank accounts and retirement funds drained. Despite this rather huge distraction, Morton is determined to find the identity of the dead child, assisted by his team: the dedicated Bertram Ayala, a smartly dressed Detective Inspector, and his second in command, Detective Inspector Tina Vaughn, a young Welsh woman who more than admires her boss. The authors keep the pressure on Morton via his superiors and do a good job of interweaving the investigations of Morton and the members of his team with the story of the two boys. Only two things were somewhat distracting in this entertaining read: a little too much time spent on the procedures required legally for the case to move forward, which slowed the action, and the fact that Morton’s relationships with the two main female characters – Sarah, his wife, and Tina Vaughn – did not completely resonate with this reviewer. Perhaps the first book establishes the nature of these relationships more clearly. Notwithstanding these points, I recommend this book to mystery readers, especially those who like British mysteries, and look forward to reading more of DCI Morton’s adventures. Four of five stars 0 0