Try out some "Geezer-Lit!"

Retirement Homes are Murder by Mike Befeler is one of the funniest mysteries I have read in a while. This debut novel by Befeler features the utterly zany characters of the Kina Nani Retirement Home located in Hawaii. Amateur Detective Paul Jacobson is their fearless leader, and he battles his own failing memory while attempting to solve murders and spending time relaxing on the beach. Befeler cleverly examines age-related challenges with humor and sly wit and his work celebrates the challenges and rewards of being a Senior Citizen. "Geezer-Lit" is a relatively new genre of mystery (and is classfied as the genre with the 70-plus-year-old sleuths), but is a great choice for older readers or mystery fans looking to try a new type of book! Here's some other good news; the library has Retirement Homes are Murder in both regular Fiction and Large Print, in case your eyes could use a break too! If you like this story, try also Rita Lakin's Getting Old is Murder- the library has it in both Fiction and Large Type too!

Loose Yourself In "The Help!"

If you are looking for a beautifully written, intimate protrayal of life as an African American maid to a white family in Jackson, MS in the 1950's and 1960's, look no further! I did not grow up in Jackson, but many of my friends native to Jackson have read the book and agree that Ms. Stockett's portrayal of society ladies during this time period, is accurate. Kathryn Stockett was born and raised in Jackson and moved to New York City after graduating from the University of Alabama with a degree in English and Creative Writing. She pursued a career in magazine publishing and marketing for nine years before she wrote The Help. Kathryn Stockett's The Help is magnificent writing. She tells the story of Miss Skeeter, an aspiring journalist who is trying to break in to a writing career and decides to write a book detailing interviews with African American maids of white families that she knows. The changes that occur as Miss Skeeter delves into these maids lives, and their experiences with the white families are intense and hard to walk away from. I especially enjoyed Ms. Stockett's characterization of Aibileen, Miss Leefolt's maid, and her examination of how Miss Skeeter's relationships with her white friends changed during the course of her writing the book. The warmth and humor is terrific, and this is writing at its best. If you give this book a chance, it is bound to change you!

Going Somewhere in a Handbasket...

Beth Groundwater's To Hell in a Handbasket is one of my recent "finds." The mystery stars Claire Hanover, a Gift Basket Designer, in a thrilling mystery set on the slopes. Claire's family is on a ski vacation that turns deadly when they find that their social connections are a little more connected than they thought they were! This is the second Claire Hanover mystery -- the first is A Real Basket Case, which was published in 2007. Claire wants some quality time with her family, especially her daughter Judy who's been away in Paris for her senior year of college, so she arranges a ski trip to Breckenridge, which is close to their Colorado Springs home. Willful Judy has more interest in bonding with tall, dark Nick Contino than with her mom, and when Nick and his father Anthony decide to ski the back bowls of Copper Mountain together, Judy agrees to spend the day on Peak Eight with her parents and Nick's sister Stephanie. Stephanie ends up crashing into a tree and sustaining fatal injuries and though Judy thinks a showoff snowboarder ran Stephanie off the trail, Claire finds ski tracks leading from the crash site into the woods. Her suspicions grow when the snowboarder, Boyd Naylor, is run down by an SUV with plates similar to Anthony's. Claire arms herself for danger as she pursues Stephanie's killer and tries to decode the mystery. This book has nice descriptions of Breckenridge and skiing, and a spunky heroine - a perfect book to "get away" from the heat of June!

Sweet Thing

I married very late in life and to say that marriage has been an adjustment is an understatement. I had fallen into the rather bad habit of complaining about my husband to my friends. I had them questioning why I would have married such a rotten person. I ran across a book that made me adjust my way of thinking. It’s called “Remember the Sweet Things: One List, Two Lives, and Twenty Years of Marriage” by Ellen Greene.
For twenty years, Ellen Greene kept a running list of the thoughtful, funny, touching things that her husband, Marsh, said and did. She wrote them down secretly, and then shared them with him every Valentine’s Day when he would find pages from her “Sweet Things List” tucked inside a card. This book is a tribute to a man and marriage and Ellen intersperses selections from her “Sweet Things List” with recollections from their years together. At the end of the book she shares some thoughts on creating a list of your own.
Since I have about 5 years worth of listings to catch up on, I know the three I would put at the very top.
· I love coffee and in the mornings and he would microwave the leftover coffee and set the timer one the coffeemaker for 5 minutes before I get up so I could have fresh, hot coffee.

· When we married he was good to my cats and when one cat developed cancer had to be put to sleep he cried right along with me.

· He doesn’t mind my Disneymania and let’s me go to Disneyworld every year or so with a college friend.

These are just a few items and I’ll work up some more to perhaps put in a card for our anniversary. So what will you put on your “Sweet Things List?”

Dead Ringer

Dead Ringer by Michael A. Black and Julie Hyzy stars kickboxing Private Investigator Ron Shade (from Windy City Knights), and Hyzy's TV reporter/sleuth, Alex St. James (Deadly Blessings). Both authors are based in Chicago and blend their talents nicely in this book which is their first team effort. Ron Shade is working for an insurance company that paid out $12 million in an accidental death case, but now has reason to believe that the insured person is still alive. Alex St. James is working on a story about the homeless that requires going underground equipped with a Taser for protection. Told in roughly alternating chapters, their assignments eventually merge as they separately, then jointly, uncover a massive case of fraud with the unfortunate byproduct of murder. The bad guys, as deadly as they are, are pretty easy to identify, but the way the physically tough Shade and the gutsy St. James deal with them shows the protagonists to be a well-matched pair. The frisson of mutual attraction between St. James and Shade should make readers hope for future joint endeavors. Having two different types of protagonists in this book gives readers the chance to side with one (or both) of the main characters, which should make this book appeal to a wider audience.

Intent to Kill

In the mood for a gripping thriller? Look no further! James Grippando's Intent to Kill is a minute-by-minute thrill ride that will leave you breathless. The book stars Ryan James, a minor-league baseball player about to make his big break into the majors when his wife Chelsea is killed in a hit-and-run accident while driving to Ryan's last game of the season. Ryan must learn to raise his daughter while consumed with the fact that the police never found the drunk who ran Chelsea off the road on that fateful night. Ryan's entire world changes when he receives an anonymous tip on the third anniversary of Chelsea's death, and the tipster claims he knows who committed the homicide. Ryan must face some questions--did the tip come from Chelsea's autistic brother? Why did her brother withhold the information for three years? Ryan and Emma Carlisle, the prosecutor for Chelsea's case band together to unravel a cover-up reaching back to the night of Chelsea's death. This book is a rocking ride until the very last pages. If you like breathless, action-packed stories, this is the perfect book for you!

Whispers of the Dead

I just read another creepy thriller about a Forensic Anthropologist! Whispers of the Dead by Simon Beckett is the story of Dr. David Hunter, a Londoner who flees the violence in his own life to study at the legendary "Body Farm" located in Knoxville, TN. The "Body Farm" really exists--it is a field laboratory where law enforcement personnel study real corpses by subjecting them to various elemental influences. Dr. Hunter is thrust into his first investigation on U. S. soil when he is called to a crime scene in a remote Smoky Mountains cabin where a body is taped to a table. Everything about the investigation is off-kilter and it is a forensic puzzle that leads Dr. Hunter to one conclusion--he is dealing with an experienced serial killer. This book is a terrifying portrait of a killer in love with death, an exploration of forensic science, and a race against time as Dr. Hunter and his colleagues fight to solve the mystery, catch the killer, and save innocent lives! If you like this book, also try Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series, (the first book is Postmortem) or the non-fiction books, Death's Acre : Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales and Beyond the Body Farm : A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science both by Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson.

3:10 to Yuma

I am a big fan of "Spaghetti Westerns," you know the type of movie I mean--a classic soundtrack, Spanish setting, and steely, take-no-prisoners characters that you just love to hate! Spaghetti Westerns, also known in some countries in mainland Europe as the Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western film that emerged in the mid-1960s, so named because most were produced and directed by Italians, usually in coproduction with a Spanish partner. The typical team was made up of an Italian director, Italo-Spanish technical staff and a cast of Italian and Spanish actors, sometimes a falling Hollywood star and sometimes a rising one like the young Clint Eastwood in three of Sergio Leone's films. The best-known and perhaps archetypal Spaghetti Westerns were the Man With No Name Trilogy (or the Dollars Trilogy) directed by Sergio Leone and starring then-TV actor Clint Eastwood and with musical scores composed by Ennio Morricone (all of whom are now synonymous with the genre): A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). One of the most amazing things about spaghetti westerns is the impact they had on the whole western genre. I recently watched the DVD, 3:10 to Yuma and was struck by how much the movie reminded of the spaghetti westerns I love. The movie stars Dan Evans (Christian Bale), the down-on-his-luck rancher who decides to help the U.S. Marshals transport a notorious criminal Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to the "3:10 to Yuma" train in exchange for a sum of money that he needs to make his ranch solvent. The coolest part of this movie is the gentlemanly way that Ben Wade acts towards people he values--the sountrack and the scenery is wonderful and the acting is superb. I highly recommend this movie to any fan of westerns.

Sookie Stackhouse Strikes Again!

I just love reading books in the "Southern Vampire Series" starring Sookie Stackhouse! Charlaine Harris has written another winning series entry with her latest title, Dead and Gone. These mysteries are supernatural in nature and are set in the small town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, where Sookie is a telepath who works as a waitress at Merlotte's bar. These mysteries are set in the future, where vampires are "out" because they claim that they have "caught a virus" which makes them susceptible to daylight and forces them to drink blood--however, since a synthetic blood product, TruBlood, exists, the vampires are not as threatening as they could be. Other supernatural beings (such as fairies, werepanthers, shape shifters and demons) exist in this series as well. Since Dead and Gone is the latest book in the Sookie Stackhouse series, I highly recommend you start at the beginning, with Dead until Dark, if you have not read any of these books. Lots of events occur in each story, that build upon the previous stories and I am afraid you'd be hopelessly lost if you started the series' with Harris' latest. Dead and Gone is darker than the other books in the series, but its story arcs push the events of Sookie's life onward. Sookie Stackhouse is a determined young woman trying to live a normal life in a world that is far from ordinary-I admire Sookie's determination to live life to the fullest no matter what obstacles are thrown in her path. Charlaine Harris creates a fabulous picture of life in Louisiana that I know you will appreciate! Harris has also written the Aurora Teagarden and Harper Connelly mystery series. HBO will begin airing the second season of "True Blood," the television show based on the "Southern Vampire Series" on June 14, 2009 at 9:00 p.m. Check out the show's web site at www.hbo.com/trueblood!

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Growing Up Haunted

I truly enjoy reading nonfiction, and I have just read the most beautifully written biography. I'm Looking Through You-Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir by Jennifer Finney Boylan is a wonderfully lyrical biography that reads like fiction. The author is a masterful storyteller and she hooked me from the very first line. The book details Jennifer's life as she grows up in a haunted house in Pennsylvania in the 1970's, nicknamed the "Coffin House." But, other things haunt Jenny besides ghosts. Jenny, born James, existed in a haunted body and learned to live with her mysterious father and her wild, unpredictable sister as she made her way in the world and transitioned from a male into a female. The story is raw, painful and full of insight that makes the reader sympathize with Jenny's life. Boylan uses wit, humor and her experiences to show how she (and you, if you let it happen) found peace with her ghosts, her loved ones and the boundaries between men and women. This is a truly entrancing story that will make the reader think twice about what characteristics define men and women.