A Lion Called Christian by Anthony Bourke and John Rendall

You can buy anything at Harrod's was the slogan of the upscale London store and what caught the eye of two Australians visiting England was a lion cub.

It was 1969 and although not unusual for exotic pets to be paraded along the King's Road, nevertheless, a lion was an attention getter. Anthony Bourke and John Rendall took their lion home and a friend allowed him to spend his days entertaining (and sometimes scaring) customers at a furniture store. Christian's daily exercise was at Moravian Close once a property owned by Sir Thomas More.

Before long, the two realized that keeping a lion in a London flat was not going to be possible for much longer as at 8 months old he already weighed 130 pounds. It was then that Bill Travers and his wife Virginia McKenna visited the shop (they stared in the movie Born Free). The movie portrayed George Adamson and the lion, Elsa, that had been returned to the wild with the help of George and Joy Adamson and it was through them that Christian also found a new home in Africa.

This was no easy task and after helping Christian to get acclimatized to his new surroundings, the two friends left for a year. When they returned he immediately recognized them. It’s an amazing story.

Need You Now by James Grippando

I hadn't heard of James Grippando until I read a review of Need You Now on Tif Talks Books. You can read her review here. Mr.  Grippando takes us into the world of Wall Street, Ponzi schemes, the FBI and witness protection. There were many twists and turns. I'll definitely be looking out for more of his books. The only part I didn't particularly like is a torture scene which I skipped over. Other than that it was a riveting book and one I had trouble putting down.

Thanks Tif for the book which I won in a giveaway.

From the cover:
Ave Cushman, the evil genius behind a sixty-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme has killed himself and taken his secrets to the grave. For Patrick Lloyd, a young Wall Street adviser at the world's largest Swiss bank, Cushman's fall has unexpected and deadly repercussions. Patrick's girlfriend, Lilly, is directly tied to billions of dollars in losses suffered by Cushman's most dangerous "victims" a group of powerful investors whose identities and dirty finances are shrouded in secrecy. What Lilly knows can get her and Patrick killed . . .

Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher

Rosamunde Pilcher has long been a favorite author of mine. She often has lovely settings in Cornwall, where she was born, and in Winter Solstice she has her character briefly visit Cornwall before moving to Scotland. Ms. Pilcher artfully describes each setting beautifully. This story is about Elfrida who moves from London  to a small country cottage where she meets many local people and is invited into their fold. It is told from several different points of view of the characters whose paths cross. They eventually spend the Christmas celebrations together in Scotland. There were several parts of the story that bothered me. I didn't find it believable that someone would plan to move to one location and after being there a short period of time, would leave the house empty and move with someone she hardly knows to a house in Scotland. Each of the characters was dealing with deep emotions and yet I didn't feel empathy for any of them. Oscar in particular didn't divulge whether he actually was happy that Elfrida had packed very few items and moved in with him, making decisions for both of them. Neither Oscar not Elfrida seem to have an income (Elfrida gave up a small income making pillows when she moved). Although I loved the settings and her wonderful descriptions, I wasn't as engrossed in the story as I had hoped to be.

Vernon Castle

This week I came across a memorial for Vernon Castle. As a child, I remember seeing Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in a movie called The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle.  Vernon Castle and his wife, Irene were ballroom dancers in the years preceding WWI. After WWI, Vernon Castle taught aviation students at a base just outside Fort Worth, Texas. While on an exercise, his plane stalled and he crashed and died at a site in Benbrook where there is a memorial and a street (Vernon Castle Avenue) named after him. 

The Sound of Broken Glass by Deborah Crombie

I've long been a fan of Deborah Crombie's mysteries and was delighted to come across The Sound of Broken Glass. Although living in Texas, Ms. Crombie sets her novels in London and this one brought with it a little nostalgia for me. It is set in the Crystal Palace area where I grew up and spent many childhood days wandering around the Crystal Palace Park with its distorted statues of dinosaurs and once the site of the Great Exhibition building designed by Joseph Paxton. The Crystal Palace, named for its steel structure and glass, had housed the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park and was rebuilt in an area of Sydenham, London. Unfortunately it was destroyed by fire in 1936 and my mother remembered pieces of molten glass hurtling into windows of the house she lived in as a child, not far from the park. You can read more about the history here.

The Sound of Broken Glass follows the investigation of a murdered barrister. The investigation is headed by Inspector Gemma James. But that isn't the only mystery of the story. In the past a solitary thirteen year old boy meets his next door neighbor. . . Drawn together by loneliness, the unlikely pair forms a deep connection that ends in a shattering act of betrayal.

My thoughts:
I love Deborah Crombie's style of writing and she uses language and descriptions to set us in the London streets. Her mysteries not only draw the reader in, but the personal life of Gemma James and her husband Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid also bonds us with the characters. I haven't read all of this series and need to go back and read some of the prior novels. The only thing that I wondered about was Charlotte's background and how Gemma and Duncan came to be foster parents to the child. Other than that, I don't think you necessarily need to read these in order. This is another one to go on my favorites list for 2013.

Ironically, I ended up in an area where there is a Crystal Palace replica - The Infomart in Dallas.

Lone Star Antiques

I met some friends at Lone Star Antiques Tea Room in Haltom City this week-end. They have a delicious lunch menu and I always love wandering around the Antique Mall. While there I stopped at Sherry's Shanty Girl booth where she has such a wonderful collection of shabby chic furniture and decorations. Hop on over to her blog here

Killer in Crinolines by Duffy Brown

Killer in Crinolines is another cozy mystery winner from Duffy Brown. Reagan Summerside is a delightful southern character with a quirky, Cher quoting, Aunt Kiki and a friend, Chantilly who seems to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Throw in a drop dead gorgeous attorney, a few southern belles and an alligator and you'll find yourself glued to each page.


When Reagan Summerside is asked to make an emergency bowtie delivery to Magnolia Plantation for a wedding, she finds the groom facedown in five tiers of icing and fondant, a cake knife in his back and her good friend and UPS driver accused of the murder.
Can Reagan find the real killer without winding up in the local swamp as alligator meat?
Will Walker Boone badass attorney and once upon a time gang member help her out or will he feed her to the alligator himself.


This is the second book of the Consignment Shop Mystery series and definitely going on my list of favorite books for 2013.


Duffy Brown has kindly offered to give away two tote bags to promote Killer in Crinolines. Just leave a comment and your e-mail address (deadline April 26) and I'll pick two using Random.Org (USA and Canada addresses only).

Oranges and Sunshine

A movie I watched recently - Oranges and Sunshine is about a social worker (played by Emily Blount), The story is set in the 1980s in London and covers the deportation of over 130,000 children from England to Australia. Even though I lived in England during the1950s I hadn't heard of the child migrant scheme that took place from the 1940s to 1970s. Many of these children were orphans, but not all, and in the process of moving to Australia, documentation was lost and ties to families severed without the knowledge of the mothers and families. Brothers and sisters were also separated on arrival and the children were told their parents were dead. They were sent to children's homes in Australia where many children were abused. They have been called The Lost Children of the Empire. The Australian and British governments have finally taken responsibility for their actions and "children" are being reunited with their families. Sadly many of them are finding that their parents have since died without knowing where their children had been all these years. Read more about The Lost Children in a Daily Mail article here. 

According to the article: "The child migrant scheme was responsible for sending about 150,000 children to British colonies, starting with Canada in the late 19th Century, and later to South Africa.

The aim was to provide cheap labour, relieve the strain on the public purse in Britain and increase the colonies' white breeding stock."

More articles were published in the Independent about the migration and about Bindoon, the Boys town here. Bindoon was run by the Christian Brothers. The boys thought they were going somewhere fun to live, that was until they found out they would be building it!

Altar Ego by Craig Groeschell

I rarely read "religious" books because I've found them to be, more often than not, preachy and self righteous. But when I received Altar Ego by Craig Groeschel I was pleasantly surprised. I received it as a giveaway from Joan's blog Book Woman. (Joan is a retired Christian book store owner). Not only is Pastor Groeschel humble, he has a great sense of humor and shares many of his embarrassing and thought provoking stories with us. In Altar Ego - becoming who God says you are, he gives us a gentle reminder of what God says about us and gives the reader a gentle nudge toward the right path.

Hop on over to Joan's blog here. Along with book reviews, she has some amazing photography.

At Wick's End by Tim Myers

If you like cozy mysteries hop on over to The Cozy Mystery List Blog where you're sure to stumble across a new cozy mystery author. It was here that I was first introduced to Tim Myers and picked up At Wick's End. Unlike many cozy mysteries where the protagonist is female, the main character is a young man. After the suspicious death of his Great Aunt Belle, he takes over her candle shop and delves into both the murder and the candle making craft. Mr. Myers' writing is smooth and his mystery is peppered with delightful characters and a charming town set on the Gunpowder River in the North Carolina Mountains. I'll be looking out for more of his books (he also writes under several pseudonyms).

From the cover:
Harrison Black knows nothing about candlemaking. But when he inherits his Great-Aunt Belle's candle shop, At Wick's End, he's ready to take on the challenge. Then, when someone vandalizes Belle's apartment, Harrison realizes that he's also inherited a whole lot of trouble.
Why anyone would have wanted a harmless old lady dead is beyond Harrison. So he takes it upon himself to do a bit of sleuthing. but it looks like he's playing with fire - because somebody wants Harrison to mind his own beeswax . . .

Manna from Hades (A Cornish Mystery) by Carola Dunn

I loved this book. Part of the reason is that is set in a Cornish village in the 1970s which is when I lived there. Eleanor drives a Morris Minor which is the car I drove at that time. There are so many things that I'd forgotten. For example, black and white police cars were called Panda cars. This is the first in the Cornish series by Carola Dunn

From the cover:
Eleanor Trewynn is a widow living in Port Mabyn a small fishing village in Cornwall, England. Until her husband died, she worked with him in many exotic parts of the world. Now retired, she volunteers at the local charity shop that occupies the first floor of her cottage. . . Eleanor discovers the dead body of a long-haired, scruffy youth hidden in the stockroom of the charity shop . . .

This one is going on my list of favorite reads for 2013.

Grandmother's Flower Garden Giveaway

Grandmother's Flower Garden by Ann Summerville is free this week-end (April 6 and 7) for all Kindle users and free until May 30 for Prime Members.

This is the first cozy mystery in the Pecan Valley Series.

When Bea first arrives in Pecan Valley she’s accompanied by thunder and lightning, and she tells herself the storm will pass. She also tries to convince herself that she’s taking an early retirement, looking for a quiet place to work on her quilts, putter around in her new garden. But returning to the place where the event happened thirty years ago sparks a longing to find out what took place after Bea left Pecan Valley. Although the clouds have now dissipated, another storm is hovering over her new home and when someone is murdered, she has second thoughts about moving to a small Texas town.     

Excerpt:

Bea peeked through the blinds in her kitchen. They were still there, both of them. Two feet clad in mud-covered brown boots protruding, uninvited, from beneath the vines of her sunshine yellow squash or was it a cucumber vine? She couldn’t tell from the window. Regardless of which vegetable patch these boots were invading, she had no doubt that the owner was lifeless. After all, who lies beneath vegetation in someone’s well tended garden in the middle of a Texas summer?

This wasn’t what Bea had anticipated when she told her friends she was starting a new life, moving from the hustle and bustle of the city, moving to the country and she said  . . . . Bea paused for a moment, thinking of the words she had used.

“I’ll have a vegetable patch, grow raspberries. I’ll buy storage jars for the vegetables and make jam. Perhaps even pickles.”

But there in the middle of her prized squash . . . Bea lowered one of the blinds with her finger until it resembled a v-shape, scrunched her brow and considered looking for her glasses. No, the feet were definitely pointed toe up among the yellow flowered cucumbers.

What was she to do? The garden club tour was in less than a week and having yellow tape and crime scene people traipsing around just simply wouldn’t do. But regardless which vegetable from the cucumber family had been invaded, this was the second death in as many weeks and she began to reconsider her life changing decision.

Hop on over to the Amazon Author Page for a list of published cozy mysteries by Ann Summerville  here

Below Stairs by Margaret Powell

Downton Abbey has brought with it an interest in the big houses of the early 1900s. In the 1970s there was a similar television series called Upstairs/Downstairs. But before either of these piqued our interest, Margaret Powell wrote her memoirs, Below Stairs which covers her life as a kitchen maid which was the position my grandmother held when she was a young teenager.

Margaret Powell was born in 1907 in Hove, an English coastal town. 

It was a hard life for a young girl:

Kitchen maid's duties - rise at five-thirty, come downstairs, clean the flues, light the fire, blacklead the grate with a hard lump of blacklead [graphite] which before you went to bed at night you had to put into a saucer with water and leave soaking before it would assume any kind of paste. Clean the steel fender. Clean the brass on the front door, scrub the steps, clean the boots and shoes, and lay the servant's breakfast. And all this done by eight o'clock.

She also mentioned she had to take out all the shoe laces and iron them! In most houses she had to cook on a kitchen range which had to be lit each morning - there was no gas stove. The bedroom she shared with another servant she described as tropical in the summer and freezing in the winter. The wash jugs formed ice overnight and they had to break it in order to wash. 

Article from the Daily Mail about the memoirs  gives a good overview of the book here 

Ms. Powell speaks often of the unfairness of the vast difference in wealth  between those upstairs and downstairs. The servants were required to buy their own uniforms on a meager salary and their rooms and furniture was sparse. Even cast off clothes were sent to "charity" rather than giving them to the people below stairs and the gentry prided themselves in being on boards of these charities, although they rarely treated their servants with the same kindness.

I don't know if it's much different today. Most corporations seem to treat employees as a necessary evil and while the managing executives on the top floor, reward themselves with big bonuses and large salaries, they rarely look after the people who work for them. At least we don't have to sleep in the attic.

In the Garden of Thoughts

Hop on over to Thoughts in Progress to read more about Dodinsky and his upcoming book In the Garden of Thoughts.
His blog is a delightful garden of quotes - Dodinsky Blog

U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton

I've long been a fan of Sue Grafton's series which began in the early 80s. The books are in alphabetical order with the first being A is for Alibi. The sleuth is a private investigator, Kinsey Millhone who is a loner, lives in a garage apartment and barely makes ends meet. Unlike some series which tend to seem they are fulfilling a contract for a certain number of books, the Alphabet Series gets better with each mystery and U is for Undertow does not disappoint.  Sue Grafton grounds the reader in the time and place and gives vivid descriptions which mysteries often sadly lack. It's easy to picture both her surroundings and her characters. 
Another aspect of Ms. Grafton's writing that she covers with ease, is repeated characters. A book I recently read in a series gave me details of every story from a previous book each character had been in, what happened and practically their whole life story. In this series, she starts off with "My name is Kinsey Millhone. I'm a private detective, female, age thirty-seven . . ." Other characters are described just enough to give you an idea of who they are. If you haven't read any of Sue Grafton's books and like mysteries, then pick up a copy. They don't have to be read in order, but it gives you a better insight into her characters if you do.

Alphabet Series listed here.

From the cover:
It's April, 1988, a month before Kinsey Millhone's 38th birthday and she's alone in her office doing paperwork when a young man arrives unannounced. He has a preppy air about him and looks as if he'd be carded if he tried to buy booze, but Michael Sutton is 27, an unemployed college drop-out. Twenty-one years before, a four-year old girl disappeared. A recent reference to her kidnapping has triggered a flood of memories. Sutton now believes he stumbled on her lonely burial when he was six years old. He wants Kinsey's help in locating the child's remains and finding the men who killed her. It's a long shot but he's willing to pay cash up front and Kinsey agrees to give him one day. As her investigation unfolds, she finds out Michael Sutton has an uneasy relationship with the truth. In essence, he's the boy who cried wolf. Is his current story true or simply one more in a long line of fabrications?