Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter by Nancy Atherton

Lori Shepherd’s life in England couldn’t be more tranquil or more satisfying— except for one thing. Her five- year-old twins have started school, and Lori fears they’ll catch everything from the flu to fleas. What they do come home with, however, is worse: a report of a pale, cloaked figure with bloodstained lips lurking in the woods. Lori is skeptical at first but soon grows concerned enough to consult with her late (but not entirely departed) Aunt Dimity and her dear friend Kit Smith.

The vampire-hunting trail leads to Leo, a charismatic vagabond who just returned to England after a self-imposed exile, a bitter old crone named Lizzie Black, and finally to Aldercot Hall, where a mysterious murder took place forty years ago. With Kit and Aunt Dimity’s help, Lori uncovers the secret that will shock everyone—including herself—about the true identity of the twins’ vampire.

I haven't read one of the Aunt Dimity books in a year or so. I can only take so much of Lori's panic stricken run around like a chicken with her head cut off moments of paranoia. But I enjoy her relationships with her neighbors, township and most of all Aunt Dimity. Her dead aunt by friendship who she communicates via a special journal. This was an easy weekend read and a nice break from the lately kind of depressing mysteries I've been reading.

Death of a Red Heroine (Inspector Chen Cao)
by Qiu Xiaolong

This political mystery offers a peek into the tightly sealed, often crooked world of post-Tiananmen Square China in the 1990's. Chen Cao, a poet and T.S. Eliot translator is bureaucratically assigned to be chief inspector. He is assigned to investigate the murder of Guan Hongying, a young woman celebrated as a National Model Worker, but who kept her personal life strictly and mysteriously confidential. Chen and his comrade, Detective Yu, take turns interviewing Guan's neighbors and co-workers, but it seems most of them either know nothing or are afraid to talk openly about a deceased, highly regarded public figure.

Maybe they shouldn't be so uneasy, some characters reason; after all, these are "modern times" and socialist China is taking great leaps toward free speech. Chen and Yu make headway when they stumble on Wu Xiaoming, senior editor of Red Star magazine, who apparently was involved with Guan before her death. Tiptoeing around touchy politics and using investigative tactics bordering on blackmail, Chen slowly pieces together the motives behind the crime.

This is an intriguing novel as we see how life is in 1990's China. The main character translates English literature into Chinese but also writes his own poetry. We see how various relationships have established the person he is now and who he is to become. I am looking forward to reading more books in this series.

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! voices from a medieval village by Laura Amy Schlitz ~ Winner of 2008 Newbery award

Using a series of interconnected monologues and dialogues featuring young people living in and around an English manor in 1255, she offers first-person character sketches that build upon each other to create a finer understanding of medieval life. The book was inspired by the necessity of creating a play suitable for a classroom where "no one wanted a small part." Each of the 23 characters (between 10 and 15 years old) has a distinct personality and a societal role revealed not by recitation of facts but by revelation of memories, intentions, and attitudes. Sometimes in prose and more often in one of several verse forms, the writing varies nicely from one entry to the next.

Historical notes appear in the vertical margins, and some double-page spreads carry short essays on topics related to individual narratives, such as falconry, the Crusades, and Jews in medieval society. Although often the characters' specific concerns are very much of their time, their outlooks and emotional states will be familiar to young people today. Reminiscent of medieval art, Byrd's lively ink drawings, tinted with watercolors, are a handsome addition to this well-designed book.

I wasn't sure what to think when I first heard about this book as I am not a fan of monologues or poetry. But I was pleasantly surprised. I can see this being a favorite of upper elementary and middle school teachers for years to come.

Pardonable lies : a Maisie Dobbs novel by Jacqueline Winspear
Maisie Dobbs has been operating her detective cum psychiatric agency for more than a year. Her mentor, Maurice Blanche, a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, has retired and she has been successful on her own. She becomes involved with three cases: proving the innocence of a 13-year-old farm girl, Avril Jarvis, accused of murder; undertaking a search for Sir Cecil Lawton's only son, a pilot shot down behind enemy lines in WWI, whose body was never recovered; and looking into the circumstances of the death of her university friend Priscilla Evernden Partridge's brother in France during the war. Maisie must go back to the region where, 13 years earlier, she served as a nurse, and confront her memories of mud, blood and loss.

I enjoy the Maisie Dobbs novels as they have a bit of suspense and esp tied into the mystery plus you really feel like you are there in the 1930's living her life. I met the author a few years ago and she was quite interesting to hear speak about her writing and her characters. She has found a good niche.

Yiddish Policeman's Union
by Michael Chabon

This alternate history of a world where Jews were settled in Alaska after World War II, is told through the eyes of Meyer Landsman, a police detective investigating a murder. It is a mere few weeks before the special Jewish district will soon be controlled by Alaska again.

Landsman, macerated in brandy and sadness, becomes interested in the hotel corpse, though he has enough dead bodies in his own past to keep him busy: a never-born child, a possibly murdered sister and a father who committed suicide, not to mention the ghost of his marriage to a Sitka policewoman. Landsman calls up his partner and cousin, Berko Shemets, a half-Jewish half-Tlingit big man with a soft heart and what passes in this novel for a happy home life. The corpse turns out to be a chess prodigy and heroin addict, the wayward son of a powerful head of a Jewish sect called the Verbovers, and possibly the key to the essential mysteries of both his own death and the future of the Jews. Landsman and Shemets are on the case, even though any number of people try to throw them off.

The book is shot through with Yiddish phrases and names, which melodically roll off Riegert's tongue.

This book took me a full 6 weeks to read as I had to really read slowly. It is not kidding when it says above that it is full of Yiddish phrases & names. I have no background in the Yiddish community so it felt rather foreign to me but I did enjoy the story and the relationships the main character has.

I am Legend by Richard Matheson

Listened to on CD while driving to and from work. I actually read the graphic novel a few months earlier so it was interesting to read the original.

Robert Neville has witnessed the end of the world. The world's population has been obliterated by a vampire virus, though Neville has somehow survived. As he toils to make sense of it all and protect himself against the hounding vampires who seek out his life force, Neville embarks on a series of projects to discover the source of the plague and hopefully put an end to the vampires.

Set in a future 1976 we see Neville try to survive and not loose the part of himself that makes human. But in the end is he just as much a monster as he tries to kill the vampires. It is a powerful novella and still relevent today though it was written in the 1950's.

Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
We find Queen Elizabeth II in a mobile library van in pursuit of her runaway corgis and into the reflective, observant life of an avid reader. Guided by Norman, a former kitchen boy and enthusiast of gay authors, the queen gradually loses interest in her endless succession of official duties and learns the pleasure of such a common activity.

With the dawn of her sensibility... mistaken for the onset of senility, plots are hatched by the prime minister and the queen's staff to dispatch Norman and discourage the queen's preoccupation with books. Ultimately, it is her own growing self-awareness that leads her away from reading and toward writing, with astonishing results.

I listened to this novella on CD in the car - it is only 3 CD's plus it is read by the author. I thoroughly enjoyed it. What a hoot!