Howling Frog Books

 D is for Death, by Harriet F. Townson I heard an interview with this author and her new novel sounded like something I would enjoy.  A murder mystery set in the London Library?  In the 1930s?  Yes please!  I got it on Kindle. Dora is leaving home for London in hopes of escaping an impending marriage to a man she dislikes -- she plans to stay with her godmother, find a job, and build a life for herself.  But her fiance, Charles, gives chase and Dora finds refuge in the London Library, only to discover a dead body in the stacks.  It's the bad-tempered and shouty head of the Library, although how he got the post is a mystery since he knows nothing of books.  Also involved: Dora's favorite mystery writer, her catty former assistant, half the staff of the library, Charles the ex-fiance, Dora's best friend from school (in serious trouble), class-conscious Detective Inspector Fox and his sister....so many people!  And what Dora really wants is to f...

 The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, by Robert Louis Stevenson  It's Spin Day!  Did you read your book? The Black Arrow was fun.  It's set -- as the subtitle says -- during the Wars of the Roses, a chaotic and confusing time when two branches of the English nobility fought over which would control the throne.  Everybody else fought on one side or the other, and quite a few switched sides on the regular, according to who looked like winning.  This lasted decades, in patches, and was essentially a series of civil wars that took up much of the 1400s.  It ended with the death of Richard III in 1485 and the accession of Henry Tudor, a Lancastrian who married Elizabeth of York to unite the two branches.  But in this story, Richard III is a young man.  Strictly speaking he isn't even the Duke of Gloucester yet, but RLS makes him duke a little prematurely to avoid confusion. Richard Shelton, called Dick, is a teenage orphan in the care of Sir...

 How the Girl Guides Won the War, by Janie Hampton This was one of the titles that intrigued me on our last book-binge day in London.  As a former Girl Scout myself, I had to be interested in this!  How could that possibly be? Hampton confesses in her introduction that she meant to write about how awful the Girl Guides were, so hearty and colonial and tragically unhip, but was then surprised to discover that they were in fact amazing .  She doesn't cover just British Guides, but girls in many countries, and though she ranges throughout Guide history since its inception, she mostly focuses on World War II.  This makes it kind of all over the place, but it's always fascinating to read about what these girls and women accomplished! One thing to remember is that for a long time, Guiding reached up well into early adulthood and often functioned as further education back when many girls left school at 14 or 16.  You could be a Guide into your twenties, and lead ...

 Joyful Recollections of Trauma, by Paul Scheer I like Paul Scheer; he's very funny, and I keep meaning to listen to his podcast "How Did This Get Made?" but I've seen him in other things.  Like the hilarious NTSF:DS:SUV::.  Anyway, a little bit ago I listened to one of my favorite comedy podcasts and he was a guest, talking about his new book.  I ordered it for my work library, and read it once it came in.   Scheer had a pretty rough childhood, with a stepfather who enjoyed thinking up creative ways to terrorize little Paul.  Finally he and his mom escaped, and he embarked on his quest to become...an actor!  Lessons in improv led to one thing and another, and finally to the Upright Citizens Brigade, a long-form improv comedy troupe that launched Amy Poehler and others.   He also realized that he was not okay, and spent a good long time straightening himself out in therapy, which was really interesting to read about.  He'd tried rag...

 The Clackity, by Lora Senf The Nighthouse Keeper I was recommended this title by Leila at Bookshelves of Doom , who is on Substack now.  I'm so glad I read it, and I can't wait to get my hands on The Loneliest Place , the final book in the Blight Harbor trilogy, which comes out soon. Blight Harbor is the seventh-most-haunted town in America, so Evie has become familiar with the supernatural since she moved to town a few years ago to live with her Aunt Des.  But she's never been allowed to explore the old abattoir on the other side of town; that place is haunted in a very bad way.  Des, however, has a job to do there, and Evie witnesses her disappearance.  To get Des back, Evie has to make a deal with the Clackity, the monster that inhabits the place, and go through to the other side of reality on a quest. Under a dark sun, Evie has just hours to find her way through seven houses and rescue her aunt from the even worse monster pursuing her.  She has a few t...

 The Strange Library, by Haruki Murakami This is a funky little story -- at just 72 pages long, with a lot of artwork, it's a short story, not a novel.  It's a bit like somebody let Tim Holz illustrate it, but in fact the marbled papers and illustrations come from books found in the London Library (which I am still bitter about not being allowed to visit). Our narrator, an unnamed boy, just wants to return his library books and ask for a new one.  He's directed to room 107, in the cellar, and soon he is imprisoned and on a strange adventure.  Assisted by a mysterious girl and a sheep man, he meets all sorts of dangers; will he ever get home to his mother? An intriguing read, sometimes hard on the eyes (pale grey ink on magenta, whose idea was that?), and worth the time, which isn't much. 

  The Witch Family, by Eleanor Estes, ill. by Edward Ardizzon e I picked up this titles from the discard table, largely because of the Ardizzone illustrations.  I like to collect Ardizzone and will grab whatever I can (same for Trina Schart Hyman).  And soon I happily grabbed a matching book, The Alley , so I'll read that soon too!  I like Estes just fine, but usually you only see The Hundred Dresses.  I'd never heard of The Witch Family. This is an utterly charming story!  If you have a witch-loving little girl in your vicinity, get this story for her right away.  Amy and her best friend Clarissa love to sit together and draw pictures, and Amy has decreed that Old Witch must be banished.  She has been too wicked, and she must be banished to the Glass Hill, there to live all alone.  If she behaves herself, Amy will let her out for Halloween.  But Amy doesn't wish to be too tough on Old Witch, so she lets Little Witch Girl and Weeny Witch...

  Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans, by Jane Marie This is an expose of MLMs -- multi-level marketing schemes -- which are pyramid schemes that keep just within the letter of the law.   You know them: Amway, Avon, Mary Kay, Arbonne, Doterra, Lularoe, and many many others.  Some are more respectable than others, but they all promise you the ability to run your own business from home, be independent, and make money at your own pace.  The trouble is that the product they're selling, whatever it is, is not where the profit lies; that's in your downline.  The more people you recruit to be sellers, the more money you'll make, but as the layers add up, the money runs out.  The people at the top make plenty, but you won't; in fact, you'll probably lose money and end up with a basement full of product you can't move. Marie dissects the biggest MLM companies, analyzing how they attract people (predominantly moms looking for fle...

Glow-in-the-dark ink!!  Moonbound, by Robin Sloane  Two hundred or so years from now, human civilization -- called the Anth -- will be at an apex, with incredible technologies and problem-solving.  And they've discovered how to time-travel; at least, how to send information through time, and they build constructs called dragons to send through time.  When the dragons return, they have gone mad, and they envelop the Earth in dust.  The ensuing war destroys nearly everything. 11,000 years later, a boy lives in a village owned by the wizard Malory.  Ariel was born to live a story, but he goes off-script...and now anything can happen. I loved Moonbound, and read it in two long sessions.  This is amazing storytelling, and fantastic SF too.  I liked Sloane's first novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore , but this is a whole new level for Sloane.  (Plus I got a limited, hand-printed zine, which made me happy.)  This is an excellent novel, hig...