Review of A New York Christmas, by Anne Perry

Christmas, Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery 0

new_york_christmas_largeA New York Christmas

by Anne Perry

Ballantine Books, New York, 2014. 164 pages.

I’ve gotten hooked on Anne Perry’s Christmas mysteries. They offer a wide variety of situations, and I like some better than others. But all take place at Christmastime, and all offer a quick cozy holiday read – with murder. But justice is always done and they all have an overall message of peace and hope.

My hold on this year’s novella came in just in time for Christmas, though I was already in the middle of another eagerly awaited novel, so I got A New York Christmas read a few days after Christmas.

I particularly like it when Anne Perry uses characters from her other books in the Christmas novels. I don’t know why, since I haven’t read many of her other books (some day), but it gives a sense of a window into a larger world.

A New York Christmas is told from the perspective of Jemima Pitt, twenty-three-year-old daughter of Thomas and Charlotte Pitt. The book opens with her on an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic.

It was December 1904, and she was crossing the Atlantic to New York, where she would stay for at least a month. Mr. Edward Cardew had invited her to travel as a companion to his daughter, Delphinia, who was to marry Brent Albright, the son of Rothwell Albright, Mr. Cardew’s international business partner. It would be the society wedding of the year.

Not long after arriving, a murder happens, and Jemima is the primary suspect. The wealthy family she’s been staying with seems extra eager to place the blame on her. Can she use what she’s learned from her father to find out who is the actual killer? And where can she find help in New York City? And why did Miss Cardew’s mother abandon her child so many years ago? If Jemima can find out about the murdered woman, she thinks she might be able to figure out who did kill her.

It’s after Christmas now, but this story makes cozy reading at any time. This is now Anne Perry’s twelfth Christmas mystery, and it’s never too late to start a holiday tradition.

anneperry.net
ballantinebooks.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday, by Alexander McCall Smith

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery 0

comforts_of_a_muddy_saturday_largeThe Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

by Alexander McCall Smith

narrated by Davina Porter

Recorded Books, 2008. 7.75 hours on 7 compact discs.

I love Alexander McCall Smith’s books. But I do find it easier to get through his rambling Isabel Dalhousie books by listening to them on my commute. This way, I get to listen to Davina Porter’s delightful Scottish accent, and I don’t mind if not a lot happens during any one listening session. (I get impatient when that happens when I’m reading.)

Isabel Dalhousie is a philosopher who meddles in other people’s lives. In this book, she’s asked to help with a genuine case, to clear a doctor’s name. Isabel and the listener do find out the solution to the case, but it’s not really because of deduction that it’s solved.

Still, it’s fun to go along with Isabel as she ponders motives in big areas as well as in the little things of life. Her son is getting bigger and she always finds ethical issues to think about.

This series makes for nice agreeable listening.

alexandermccallsmith.com
pantheonbooks.com
recordedbooks.com

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Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Space Case, by Stuart Gibbs

Children's Fiction Review, Science Fiction 0

space_case_largeSpace Case

by Stuart Gibbs

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2014. 337 pages.

Dashiell Gibson is the first twelve-year-old to live on the moon. And he is quick to inform the reader that accommodations do not live up to the hype they were told when his parents were being recruited for Moon Base Alpha.

However, the moon is an ideal setting for a locked-room mystery. Dash overhears Dr. Holtz talking to someone excitedly in the middle of the night. He’s going to make a big announcement. The next morning, Dr. Holtz turns up dead. The official version is that he committed suicide. But Dash can’t believe it. Why would he commit suicide when he was so excited about whatever he was going to tell the world?

I liked the beginning and set-up of this book. The time is the not-too-distant future, and having dealt with the government myself, I found it easy to believe Dash’s description of how things function on Moon Base Alpha.

Living in Moon Base Alpha is like living in a giant tin can built by government contractors. It’s as comfortable as an oil refinery. You can’t go outside, the food is horrible, it’s always cold – and the toilets might as well be medieval torture devices.

I also liked the interpersonal dynamics of a small group of people living in a limited amount of space. The Space Tourists, who paid a fortune to travel to the moon, are the unhappiest about how things have turned out. The other kid who’s Dash’s age is obsessed with video games and will do anything to play them – even when they’ve been ordered to stay off the internet so no news will leak out of Dr. Holtz’s death. Another ship arrives soon after and a girl Dash’s age arrives – as well as a security officer who is interested in Dash’s theories about the death.

I was less enthusiastic about the book by the time I’d finished – mainly from quibbles about how things turned out. But along the way, we had an exciting life-threatening encounter on the surface of the moon.

Kids will find plenty to love about this mystery on the moon.

stuartgibbs.com
KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a book sent to me by the publisher.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Jupiter Pirates: Hunt for the Hydra, by Jason Fry

Children's Fiction Review, Science Fiction 0

jupiter_pirates_largeThe Jupiter Pirates

Hunt for the Hydra

by Jason Fry

Harper, 2014. 241 pages.

Set in the far distant future, this new series, The Jupiter Pirates tells about Tycho Hashoone, a kid who lives on a spaceship. In fact, he’s from a family with a heritage of being space pirates for generations.

Now, however, they are not pirates, but privateers.

As Tycho’s mother, Diocletia, never failed to point out, privateers weren’t the same as pirates. Pirates ignored the law, preying on any spacecraft that had the misfortune to stray into their gunsights. They stole cargoes and mistreated the ships’ crews they imprisoned – if they didn’t sell them into slavery or kill them.

Privateers conducted themselves differently. They obeyed the laws of space, kept careful records about the cargoes they seized, treated prisoners well, and released them as soon as possible. And they used force only when necessary. Those rules were part of the Hashoones’ letter of marque, the document that authorized them to attack enemy ships on behalf of their home government, the Jovian Union, composed of the nearly two dozen inhabited moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus.

The book begins with Tycho in command of the family’s ship, during the night watch. His mother, the captain, allows him to stay in command while they intercept a freighter from Earth, an enemy ship. However, the ship claims diplomatic immunity because of a diplomat on board. But there’s something fishy about that claim.

The family must go to court on the neutral dwarf planet Ceres. This leads into suspicious things to investigate, more space travel, encounters with actual pirates, and battles in space.

This book is fun, if not weighty. Tycho has a twin sister, Yana, and together with their older brother Carlo, the three are in a competition to see who will get to inherit the captaincy of their ship some day.

When Carlo or Yana was in command of the Comet, Tycho of course wanted them to succeed: every prize taken was more money for their family and helped the Jovian Union in its struggle against Earth. But he didn’t want them to do too well and hurt his own chances at the captain’s chair. Ideally, something would go wrong – something that wasn’t bad enough to endanger the ship and their lives, but bad enough that their mother would notice and remember. But that was a dangerous game. In space, things that went wrong had a way of proving fatal.

Their grandfather, Huff, is on board, so injured in the past that almost half of his body parts are artificial. He’s still a bloodthirsty pirate at heart, and he seemed a bit stereotypical. Maybe he was intended as comic relief? I got a little annoyed by the “Arrrr”s he threw into conversations.

But all in all, this is a fun story about legal and humane privateering with a mystery and space battles and a kid who gets to command a spaceship.

jupiterpirates.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Loudoun County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Cat at the Wall, by Deborah Ellis

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

cat_at_the_wall_largeThe Cat at the Wall

by Deborah Ellis

Groundwood Books, Berkeley, 2014. 152 pages.
Starred Review

The Cat at the Wall is narrated by a cat. A cat who used to be a thirteen-year-old girl. Here’s how she introduces herself:

My name is still Clare.

That much is the same, although no one calls me Clare anymore.

No one calls me anything anymore.

I died when I was thirteen and came back as a cat.

A stray cat in a strange place, very far from home.

One moment I was walking out of my middle school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Then there was a period of darkness, like being asleep. When I woke up, I was in Bethlehem – the real one. And I was a cat.

Clare the cat is running from some mean neighborhood cats when she sees the chance to run into a house being opened by two soldiers. The soldiers are commandeering the house to conduct surveillance on the neighborhood, looking for terrorists. However, what they don’t know, and what Clare soon sniffs out, is that a boy is hiding in the house.

In alternating chapters with what’s going on in Bethlehem, we also hear about what happened in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It turns out that Clare wasn’t a very nice girl. And she had particular conflict with one teacher in particular. That teacher made her write out a poem for detention – the same poem the Arab boy recites when he is worried or scared.

The soldiers in the house are with the Israeli army, but one is an American who’s come over to help. Clare the cat can understand all languages since her death, so she’s in a good position to see what’s going on. There’s a crisis eventually between the soldiers and the boy and the people of Bethlehem. But what can a cat do to help? And why should she bother?

I enjoyed this book. I admit, there were no explanations given why Clare would turn into a cat on the other side of the world, and no explanation why her teacher’s favorite poem would also be the favorite poem of a Palestinian boy. However, I like the way Clare’s story as a mean girl – which American kids will understand and recognize – is interwoven with the story of the Palestinian conflict, which is more removed from their experience.

And I admit, I was so intrigued by the poem, I looked it up on google. It is Max Ehrmann’s “Desiderata,” written in 1952.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story….

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

groundwoodbooks.com
deborahellis.com

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Source: This review is based on a book sent to me by the publisher.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Boys of Blur, by N. D. Wilson

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Fantasy, Paranormal, Starred Review 0

boys_of_blur_largeBoys of Blur

by N. D. Wilson

Random House, New York, 2014. 195 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Cybils Finalist

The first page of Boys of Blur pulls you in:

When the sugarcane’s burning and the rabbits are running, look for the boys who are quicker than flame.

Crouch.

Stare through the smoke and let your eyes burn.

Don’t blink.

While cane leaves crackle and harvesters whir, while blades shatter armies of sugar-sweet sticks, watch for ghosts in the smoke, for boys made of blur, fast as rabbits and faster.

Shall we run with them, you and I? Shall we dodge tractors and fire for small handfuls of fur? Will we grin behind shirt masks while caught rabbits kick in our hands?

Shoes are for the slow. Pull ‘em off. Tug up your socks. Shift side to side. Chase. But be quick. Very quick. Out here in the flats, when the sugarcane’s burning and the rabbits are running, there can be only quick. There’s quick, and there’s dead.

Boys of Blur can be thought of as Beowulf in the Florida swamp. With zombies.

Charlie Reynolds has come to Taper, Florida with his mother, stepfather, and little sister, to attend a funeral. The funeral is happening at a white church on a mound outside of town on the edge of the swamps, in the middle of muck, and ringed by a sea of sugarcane. The funeral is for Charlie’s stepfather’s old football coach, and his stepfather has been asked to coach the high school team in his place.

Charlie was in the cane where his stepfather had been raised and played his first football. Over the dike and across the water, he knew he would find more cane and the town of Belle Glade, where his real dad had been raised and played his football.

Soon, Charlie meets Cotton, his stepdad’s second cousin, and Cotton says that makes them cousins, too. He takes Charlie into the cane and shows him a mound topped by a stone. The stone has a dead snake on top, and a small dead rabbit beside it. But that’s only the first strange thing. They see a man wearing a helmet and carrying a sword.

There’s drama and danger here. There’s tension, because Charlie’s mother knows his father lives near, and Charlie sees the old familiar fear in her eyes.

And there are secrets in the cane, in the swamp, in the muck. Why do dead animals keep appearing at certain places? And what is the foul stench that comes up in the swamp at night, while Cotton and Charlie watch the helmeted man digging in Coach Wiz’s grave? And is that sound the scream of a panther?

This book is a bit more mystical than I tend to like my fantasy. But it’s excellently carried out, so it didn’t bother me while I was reading that by the end I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened. Think Beowulf in the Florida swamp — with zombies — and you’ll have the idea — Friends fighting monsters together.

ndwilson.com
randomhouse.com/kids

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Nuts to You, by Lynne Rae Perkins

Animal Characters, Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 1

nuts_to_you_largeNuts to You

by Lynne Rae Perkins

Greenwillow Books, 2014. 256 pages.
2014 Cybils Finalist, Speculative Fiction for Elementary/Middle Grade

Nuts to You is a squirrel story. And it’s a friendship story. Supposedly told to the author by a squirrel who enjoyed her peanut butter sandwich, the book has a strong authorial voice that doesn’t get cutesy. With spot illustrations throughout, this is a gentle adventure for young readers, and would make an outstanding family or classroom read-aloud.

Right at the start our hero, the squirrel Jed, gets snatched by a hawk. As he’s flying in the hawk’s talons, he tries to distract the hawk by yelling about mice.

For an instant, the hawk, scanning for mice, eased his grip, ever so slightly.

And in that instant, Jed relaxed his muscles. It was a technique from the ancient squirrel defensive martial art of Hai Tchree, not well known because it doesn’t work most of the time. Because it is so hard to do when your situation is not relaxing.

But Jed concentrated and completely relaxed his muscles — like the great Houdini escaping a straitjacket — and he slipped like water* through the distracted hawk’s talons.

*thick water. Or perhaps like a non-Newtonian fluid. Look it up on YouTube.

However, Jed lands in a realm far from his home. Fortunately for Jed, his best friend, TsTs, is in a treetop, sees the hawk snatch him, and sees him fall, faraway. She sees that he falls near the third giant frozen spider web along the buzzpaths (utility wires). She and another friend, Chai, set out to find Jed.

But where Jed lands, there is a threat to the trees. All the trees near the buzzpaths are getting sawed down with a thunderous roar. Not only do TsTs and Chai need to find Jed, once found, they need to get back home and warn their own colony of squirrels that they need to move. But how can they possibly get squirrels to take a threat seriously?

I can’t get over the idea that this book would be a wonderful first long chapter book to read aloud to a young child who’s ready to listen to a continuing story at bedtimes. There’s adventure and danger, but a happy ending and a need to work together along the way.

LynneRaePerkins.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Loudoun County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Luck Uglies, by Paul Durham

Adventure, Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Cybils, Fantasy 0

luck_uglies_largeThe Luck Uglies

by Paul Durham

Harper, 2014. 387 pages.
2014 Cybils Finalist, Speculative Fiction for Elementary/Middle Grade

We never do find out why the Luck Uglies are called the Luck Uglies. But they are not monsters. They are mask-wearing outlaws who have been banned from Village Drowning by the Earl.

Rye and her friends Folly and Quinn live in Village Drowning and begin the story by accidentally stealing a book and running over the rooftops to escape pursuit.

The Earl who oversaw the affairs of Drowning had not only banned women and girls from reading, but went so far as to outlaw certain books altogether. None was more illicit than the book Rye now pressed close to her body, Tam’s Tome of Drowning Mouth Fibs, Volume II — an obscure history textbook that was widely ignored until the Earl described it as a vile collection of scandalous accusations, dangerous untruths, and outright lies. Even an eleven-year-old could figure out that meant there must be some serious truth to it.

There are, in fact, monsters in this book — the terrifying Bog Noblins who live outside Village Drowning in the forest Beyond the Shale. Rye herself has a close encounter with one. But someone rescues her. When she wakes up in her home, she’s worried about the village.

“Mama,” Rye said, pushing her mother’s hand away from her face. “We need to tell the soldiers. Before it, it . . .” Rye shuddered. “Comes back.”

“Darling, quiet now.” Abby eased her back down. Your close call is something best kept to ourselves. Bog Noblin attacks attract attention. The Constable — and the Earl — would be eager to speak with you. That’s not the type of attention we want.”

Rye didn’t understand.

“But what about the rest of the village?” she said.

“Riley,” her mother said. “Listen to me carefully. I’ll make sure the right people know what happened. But at the moment, you need to rest. Your encounter in the bog was not the only trouble that befell you on the Black Moon. You were poisoned.”

Rye and her friends end up in the thick of danger from monsters, in a village with corrupt leadership. They need the Luck Uglies, but can the Luck Uglies outwit the Earl’s army? It turns out they will need Rye’s help.

This book does have monsters, but it comes across as a gentle fantasy adventure in the style of Robin Hood. With girls in the thick of the action.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Loudoun County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Royal Ranger, by John Flanagan

Adventure, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

royal_ranger_largeThe Royal Ranger

The Ranger’s Apprentice, Book 12

by John Flanagan

Philomel Books (Penguin), 2013. 455 pages.

I listened to the first two and a half books of The Ranger’s Apprentice series, but lost interest in the middle of book three. I have to say that I think John Flanagan has improved as a writer since the beginning of the series.

I wasn’t lost picking up the series with Book 12, though if I were planning to go back and read the books I’d missed, I’d know how some things turned out. I must admit I did like seeing the “futures” of so many of the characters I met in the first two books. In fact, at times I was annoyed in the early books when he seemed to be dwelling on minor characters. – It turns out they were quite important, after all.

But this book is nicely self-contained and tells a good story. The princess Maddie is acting like a spoiled teenager. So her parents ask Will to take her on as an apprentice – the first ever female Ranger’s apprentice.

Will’s got some issues of his own, becoming obsessed with revenge. I like the way this book mirrored, in some ways, the first book, where Will himself was the apprentice. Will and Maddie take on a challenge that threatens to be more than they can handle, and the title doesn’t give away the ending this time!

And there was no magic in this book, evil or otherwise. In the early books, there was a sinister sorcerer they had to fight. I found it interesting that in this book it’s more ordinary (but still powerful) evil they are up against.

For adventure and the excitement of a small person effectively and cleverly fighting bad guys and helping the weak, this series fills the bill.

worldofjohnflanagan.com
penguin.com/youngreaders

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Wipeout of the Wireless Weenies, by David Lubar

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Short Stories 0

wireless_weenies_largeWipeout of the Wireless Weenies

and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

by David Lubar

A Tom Doherty Associates Book, New York, 2014. 174 pages.

I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did. I thought I’d just dip into it, and the first story had me laughing out loud. Mind you, the book got a little long for my taste, but I don’t think kids will have the same problem. And there’s a simple solution: The stories are short, so just read one or two at a time. Even when I thought I was getting tired of it, I found myself picking it up again, and smiling by the time I put it down.

Think of this book as short episodes of The Twilight Zone for kids. It reminded me of Half-Minute Horrors, only with somewhat less variety, since all the stories were written by the same author. However, don’t get me wrong — there is plenty of variety. Some stories are scary, some have bad kids come to a rotten end, some are hugely funny, most have twist endings, and almost all are very clever.

This book, like Half-Minute Horrors, would be easy to booktalk. Simply read your favorite story — they are all very short — and you will immediately hook the readers who like this sort of thing.

I can’t really describe details of the stories without giving away the twists. But David Lubar covers things like what parents will do to get out of throwing a birthday party, technology gone crazy, monsters coming to life, the dangers of being all wrapped up in your phone, alien contact, and how if you’re not nice, it may come back to bite you. Basically, “Warped and Creepy Tales” sums up the book nicely.

davidlubar.com
tor-forge.com

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Source: This review is based on a book sent to me by the publisher.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!