Howling Frog Books

 How to Survive in the Woods, by Kat Rosenfield    I enjoyed Rosenfield's last novel, You Must Remember This , so I grabbed this new one when it was published a couple of months ago.  It's a suspense/thriller sort of thing, not exactly a mystery, but sort of, and we get the flashbacks that explain Emma's backstory as we go through the main plot. Emma is annoyed that when she decided to kill herself, she was found in time to save her life, and so when charismatic Lucas takes charge of her, she goes along -- after all, her own choices haven't been so great, and maybe it's better if she contains herself within the bounds he sets.  Emma is the founder and CEO of a hot wellness company, with money and power; and she lets Lucas take over. As he becomes ever more controlling and abusive, she meets up with Lucas' ex-girlfriend/business partner, Taylor, who understands exactly what's going on.  And when the three of them decide to hike the hardest part of the Appala...

 The Case of the Perjured Parrot, by Erle Stanley Gardner  A millionaire real estate mogul is found in a remote hunting cabin, shot dead, with a screaming parrot next to him.  Was it his estranged wife?  The gambling mafia?  His stepson?  His...new wife?  (Wait, what?)    I needed to read this particular Perry Mason story for one reason: the back cover matter.  Read that and tell me whether any librarian could resist the hilarity of a collection of guns at a public library, like a 1950s Library of Things .  The actual story does clarify that the gun collection is part of a small museum at the library; it's not the kind of collection where you can check items out.  It's still funny! This story features a remarkable amount of parrot-switching.  There are THREE parrots in total, all alike except for one tell-tale detail, and the victim, the murderer, and Mason play musical parrots with them.  In fact I'm not at all...

 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...

 February's stories are "The Pearl of Price," a Parker Pyne story, and "The Affair at the Bunglalow, featuring Miss Marple. "The Pearl of Price" is set on a group tour of Egypt, a nice little closed group of people who do not know each other well and who come from all over.  The rich American's daughter has valuable screw-on pearl earrings, which she is forever losing.  Pretty soon one of the pearls is lost, and though it ought to be easy to find...it isn't there. Who took the pearl and where did they hide it?  Parker Pyne figures it out. This is a fun short piece, and brings up the eternal question: how does anyone ever stand wearing screw-on earrings?  I've tried them!  They hurt! In "The Affair at the Bungalow," we have a dinner party that includes some retired military and police men, a lovely and famous actress, and a clever modern writer along with his elderly aunt.  As they trade stories of crime and try to fool each other, the ...

 Fanda at ClassicLit is doing a fun thing this year, and I'm going to join in.  It's the Agatha Christie Short Stories of 2024!    She has picked out two short stories to read each month. The January stories are "The Coming of Mr. Quin"  and "The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman," an early Poirot story, and there's plenty of time for you to join in. "The Coming of Mr. Quin" was published in 1923 (says my book; Fanda says '24) and was Christie's first published short story.  All the Quin stories feature him and Mr. Satterthwaite, who provides the point of view.  When Mr. Quin arrives, he doesn't solve a mystery; he simply asks a few questions and inspires others to solve the problem.  In this case, several people are gathered at a country home where, ten years ago, a friend of theirs killed himself.  Why?  The answer is crucial to two other people staying in the house... I always like Quin stories.  They're fun, and very differ...

Here we are with some bonus reading.... The Scouring of the White Horse , by Thomas Hughes : History? Novel?  What is this thing?  This 1859 publication is a novelization of Hughes' actual attendance at the 1857 scouring of the Uffington White Horse, which also serves as a sort of summary of what was then known about the chalk figure, and the history of its maintenance.  Reading it was a slightly odd experience because I thought it was supposed to be a simple account of the customs around the figure, commissioned by the heads of the nearby towns, but it reads like a novel, complete with the narrator deciding to take his annual two-week holiday at a friend's farm and falling in love with the friend's sister. Apparently Thomas Hughes, better known as the author of Tom Brown's School Days , came from the area around Uffington.  Maybe this explains it.  In the novel, while he's staying with his friend, he attends this scouring event and gets talking with an antiqua...

 ...to read lots of books?  That doesn't rhyme.  I have to do it right. ...to be a robin lightly dressed, concocting soup inside my nest! Mix it once, mix it twice, mix that chicken soup with rice! No, actually, I'm not making soup, I'm reading books.  Quite a few books, so here at the halfway point I'm doing a post.  The Marquis' Secret, by George MacDonald:   I'm a bit of a sucker for these sort-of translated 1980s Bethany House versions of George MacDonald's very Victorian Scottish romances.  This one was originally The Marquis of Lossie , a sequel to Malcolm.  Malcolm, a poor fisher-boy, is the true heir to the estate of Lossie, but his half-sister Florimel (a definite Faerie Queene reference!) thinks she is, and so he becomes her groom in hopes of finding a way to break the news to her without ruining her life.  Confusion and hijinks ensue; Malcolm despairs of influencing his sister for good; and also he falls in love.  Can this ...

Here we have a good chunk of my April reading, except the CC Spin title which will be out in a few days, and the long-term, slow books I'm reading, like Red Famine and Les Miserables.  So I do have some more serious titles, but also I get so sleepy these days when I'm reading!  I know we all have this problem...  Carrie's War , by Nina Bawlden : I'd heard this middle-grade novel described with high praise, and a copy had been sitting on my tablet for a while.  And yep, it's really good!  12-year-old Carrie and her brother Nick are evacuated from London and sent to rural Wales (which means there's very little of the outside war in the story; it's all about Carrie figuring out her life).  They live with Mr. Evans, the village shopkeeper, and his sister.  Mr. Evans is fanatically frugal and bullies everyone around him, though he seems to be totally unaware of the effects; he's surprised when people don't like him.  "Auntie Lou" is kind but ...

I've been having a good reading month!  Here are some of the more notable books I read in January.  I've also joined a daily chapter of Les Miserables , which I'm really liking so far, and I'm reading Letters From Russia , the record of a Frenchman's 1839 tour.  It's fascinating, and also nearly 700 pages long, so it will take me a while.  The Wife of the Gods , by Kwei Quartey -- the first in a series, or at least a pair, of detective stories from Ghana.  Darko Dawson is a CID man in Accra, and he's called to his mother's ancestral village (now a town) to investigate the murder of a young medical student.  As Darko wends his way through a maze of local politics, traditional beliefs, and family history, he is also wrestling with some of his own demons.  It's a good, solid mystery with great characters and lots of cultural detail, so I really enjoyed it. The plot hinges on adinkra cloth, which this cloth is not North to Paradise , by Ousman Umar -- t...

  The Silence of the White City, by Eva Garcia Saenz It's a mystery novel set in Basque country!  This was my second WIT month title, but obviously I wasn't able to finish it in August.  At least it is actually a translated book, though!   Twenty years ago, a series of bizarre, ritualistic murders terrified the city of Vitoria.  The culprit turned out to be a charismatic TV host, and he was turned in by his own twin brother.  Now, the murders have started again, but with the original suspect still in prison, who could be committing them?  Inspector Unai Ayala and his partner are on the case, but clues are few.  Ayala thinks it has something to do with a medieval church in the country, San Vicentejo, which has a symbolic carving portraying the "alchemical marriage."  Ayala must dig into the past to find his quarry before more people are killed. This is a very long mystery, and it took m a while to get into it.  Flashback chapters tel...

  A Fatal Grace, by Louise Penny I wanted to read another Louise Penny mystery over the summer.  I didn't realize that the second one in the series is a Christmas mystery that involves an incredible amount of snow, ice, and freezing everything (possibly I could have paid attention to the cover).  It's been really hot here, as it always is in August, so in a way it was nice to read about snow and ice... Our first murder victim is CC de Poitiers, self-proclaimed lifestyle guru.  She's got a book explaining her revolutionary new philosophy of Li Bien, she's planning a magazine and a home décor line, and she's certain she'll make it big once people understand.  She's also a horrible person who manipulates and abuses everyone around her, especially her husband and daughter.  When she collapses at the traditional post-Christmas village curling match, her death seems impossible, but certainly lots of people are happy she's gone. Inspector Gamache is put on the ...

 The Honjin Murders, by Seishi Yokomoto Winter 1937: in a small village, the well-off and proud Ichiyanagi family is preparing for a wedding.  The eldest son of the house, Kenzo, is finally getting married to a lovely girl, but the family is disapproving, because of her ordinary family background.  The Ichiyanagi family is intensely proud of their family history; they once owned a honjin, an inn for officials.  The day before the wedding, a strange man, wearing a mask over part of his face (much like a modern covid mask!), has been asking questions. The newlywed couple is spending their wedding night in a small annexe house, away from the main family compound.  In the middle of the night, strange sounds and screams are heard -- and then silence.  The house is locked up tight, and the family has to break down a shutter to get it, but then they find husband and wife, gruesomely murdered.  Outside, a blood-covered katana sword stands, point-down in the sn...

 I want to blog, I really do.  Everything has just been getting away from me so fast!  I'm gearing up to go back to work, which means lots of fun meetings beforehand.   I've officially changed some of my 20 Books of Summer list!  I just can't read it all, but that's OK.  And so, here is my second riffle of reviews... Summerbook #14: Millions Like Us: Women's Lives During the Second World War, by Virginia Nicholson.    The UK seems to have an even more endless and voracious appetite for books about WWII than we do here in the US, which is no surprise.  This book collects the stories of many different women; Nicholson is trying to give us a portrait of the incredible number of ways women lived and worked during the war.  So we have Wrens, WAAFs, land girls, decoders, housewives...Vera Lynn and Vera Brittain.  Nicholson also covers how women managed under wartime conditions -- not just drawing lines up the backs of their legs, bu...

 The Burning Girls, by C. J. Tudor I'd seen good reviews of this gothic thriller, so when I saw it at the public library I took it home.  Then I had to read it since library books come with a deadline! Reverend Jack Brooks, single mom, is forcibly transferred to the tiny Sussex village of Chapel Croft after a devastating tragedy in her previous inner-city parish.  Her daughter Flo, age 15, is naturally none too happy about this.  And Chapel Croft has a history -- several Protestants were burned as martyrs under Queen Mary I, and thirty years ago, two girls disappeared and were never seen again. Everyone in the village talks a lot about fresh starts and leaving the past behind, which is remarkably unhelpful as Jack promptly starts getting warnings and strange packages that nobody wants to talk about.  Flo meets both the local outcast nerd boy and the local bullies, and Jack is nervously protective about the whole thing.   As they try to settle in, it b...

The Scapegoat, by Sophia Nikolaidou In 1948, an over-eager American journalist reporting on the Greek civil war was pulled out of the bay, murdered.  The American government threatened to withdraw aid unless the killer was found immediately, and so the Greek police decided who did it.  Manolis Gris, a junior reporter, spent 12 years in jail. In 2010, Minas Georgiou is the smartest, and most disaffected, kid at his high school.  Everybody is preparing for the exams, but he doesn't want to go to university or ever take another exam again.  (After all, the Greek economy is in freefall, and there doesn't seem to be much point in anything.)  The maverick teacher at the school gives Minas an assignment: instead of exam prep, investigate the Gris case, and give a presentation on it. The story of the Gris case is presented in a mosaic made of testimonies from the people involved -- almost everyone, except Gris himself.  Blended with the old stories, we see Minas fi...