Getting Old Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

A new addition to our collection is the latest in the 'Geezer-Lit' mysteries, Nursing Homes are Murder by Mike Befeler (number six of the series).

Octogenarian sleuth Paul Jacobson is back again.  This time, he's in Hawaii and asked for help by Detective Chun, who needs someone undercover to help investigate a sexual assault at a nursing home.  Things take a turn when the assault victim becomes a murder victim.

Jacobson has to cope with short-term memory loss as well as with some of the eccentric residents of the Pacific Vista Nursing Home, including wheelchair racers and one with a taste for soap.  It's a well-paced mix of humor, danger and mystery as Jacobson tries to put a stop to a killer before the killer puts a stop to him.

Longmire - Season 2

Walt Longmire gets a heap of trouble in the second season of the popular series on the A&E Network. First of all, he is in the midst of a heated re-election campaign against one of his own deputies--namely, Branch Connelly. Second, his daughter takes off for a few weeks without letting anyone know where she's going. Turns out that after she finds out that her mother was killed by a meth addict and not from cancer like her father told her, she goes to Denver to see what the police there know about the case. Third, we learn that Deputy Victoria "Vic" Moretti left Philadelphia under a dark cloud not of her making and it seems the cloud has found her. Then all hell breaks loose! I don't want to give too much away, so I'll just say that this is a wonderful television series that runs during the summer months on A&E and is based on a series of books by Craig Johnson. There is no mistaking that this is a modern-day western--complete with horses, cowboy hats, rodeos, and cattle rustlers. I thoroughly enjoy the characters and the actors who play them. Robert Taylor, an Aussie import, does a fine job of portraying the rough, intelligent, and caring Sheriff of Absaroka County. Lou Diamond Phillips--still as handsome as ever--plays Longmire's longtime and long suffering best friend, Henry Standing Bear. The first season was more of a way to introduce the characters; the second season goes deeper into their relationships and their pasts. While the television show is not exactly like the books by Craig Johnson, I think that it captures the spirit of Johnson's characters and of the people and places in Wyoming that are so lovingly drawn in the books.  The library owns both Season 1 and 2 of the show and it may be checked out in the audio-visual department.

Cast of Longmire (A&E Network)

"If Something Happens To Me"

A recent addition to our collection is the true story of the disappearance of Susan Powell, twenty-eight year old wife and mother of two young boys, in December 2009 and the eventual murder of her two sons at the hands of her husband/their father and his suicide in February 2012.


The authors have covered the story by making use of emails that were sent by Susan to friends and family, notes left behind, the police files (which were released last year when the case was closed) and interviews with friends, neighbors and family members.


Despite the case being closed, Susan Powell is currently still missing.  A chilling tale best read with the doors locked and the lights on.

Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

It is only fitting that my last blog entry for this blog, hosted by the Warren County-Vicksburg Public Library, be about a book that astounded me with it's lyrical beauty.   A friend of mine loaned me Gargoyle,  by Andrew Davidson, a few months ago and while I initially was interested in the story, I was distracted by other books and put it down.  I recently took a trip and discovered that the library has Gargoyle on CD, so I jumped at the chance to check it out and

finish it!  The story is simply stunning.  The book opens with the story of the narrator, who is visually beautiful by morally blank, as he is driving along a dark road and becomes distracted by what appears to be a group of arrows.  He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over most of his body.  He wakes in a hospital and suffers treatments until a somewhat unhinged gargoyle sculptress, Marianne Engel, appears at his bedside and insists they were lovers in medieval Germany.  She then spins the tale of their past life-intertwined with other tales of lovers--in a beautiful, twisting, tale of love and life.  He is eventually released into her care and they attempt to have a life together. The writing is beautiful and the story is intense as is the descriptions of burn victim treatments.  I believe you'll be as entranced as I was with this bookl, whether you check out the library's hardback copy or listen to the audio version.

A Cozy Library Mystery

     Author Miranda James continues her Cat in the Stacks Mysteries with the fifth book --The Silence of the Library. Charlie Harris, a kind and warm semi-retired librarian, and his large Maine Coon cat, Diesel spend their time working at the local college library as well as the public library of Athena, Mississippi. Unfortunately, Charlie always seems to get caught up in nefarious goings-on in this small Southern town. This time, Charlie is helping Teresa, the director of the public library, organize an event centered around children's detective stories for National Library Week. Fortunately for them, the centenary novelist Electra Barnes Cartwright--creator of the beloved Veronica Thane series--is a local resident. Charlie and Teresa convince Mrs. Cartwright to appear at their event. They don't realize, however, that inviting such a beloved writer to the event will bring out all manner of unstable individuals. When Carrie Taylor--a blogger and longtime fan of Mrs. Cartwright's work--agrees to bring some of her own memorabilia to be displayed in the library, she turns up dead. Why would anyone want to kill such a pleasant and innocuous woman? Could it be because she owned a rare version of the very first Veronica Thane book? Charlie is caught up in the matter, much to the chagrin of Deputy Kanesha Berry. On top of the murder, someone has broken into the hotel rooms of a couple of book collectors who have turned up for the event and Mrs. Cartwright's literary agent seems to have gone missing. Charlie and Diesel work their way through the clues and the list of suspects to give Kanesha a helping hand--whether she wants it or not! The ending will surprise many and the little twist is quite refreshing. I highly recommend this series for fans of cozy mysteries. If you would like to check out any of the other Cat in the Stacks Mysteries by Miranda James, they are:

1.  Murder Past Due
2.  Classified As Murder
3.  File M for Murder
4.  Out of Circulation
5.  The Silence of the Library