Lunar New Year, and Mon Coeur a Demenage: Sunday Salon

 French author, Michel Bussi

Mon cœur a déménagé est à la fois un récit initiatique, un roman d'amour et d'amitié, une vaste enquête s'étirant sur plus d'une décennie, et bien entendu une intrigue à twist, nul ne sachant, jusqu'à la dernière page, qui connaît la vérité, et qui la manipule.

Genre: mystery, thriller

Setting: Rouen, France

Published January 11, 2024; Presses de la Cite

Michel Bussi est un auteur et politologue français, professeur de géographie à l'université de Rouen. Il est spécialiste de géographie électorale.

What language(s) do you read in? There is a translate button at the right hand top column of the blog, for English and other languages.

Happy Lunar New Year of the Green Dragon

Description: Lunar New Year, an illustrated book, captures the magic of the celebration by exploring how Ling and her family enjoy the biggest Chinese festival of the year.

The new year festival lasts for 15 days full of preparation, celebration, and symbolism. Join Ling, her sister Mei and granny Po Po as they clean the house from top to bottom, pick fresh flowers from the garden, visit friends and family, and carry red lanterns through their neighborhood. Ling invites the reader into her home and family, allowing the reader to experience this special celebration first-hand through an authentic narrative non-fiction story.

A fun 16-page  'factivity' section  follows the story and delves into more detail about how the festival is celebrated in China and beyond. Enriching activities are also included, such as guess the riddle, make your own red envelope, and a recipe to make delicious Lunar New Year 'pot sticker' dumplings. 

The Lunar New Year is celebrated in many different Asian and Southeast Asian countries and beyond. It begins February 10.

Do you celebrate the Lunar New Year?

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

Mastering the Art of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge

 For Paris in July 2023 Reading Challenge 

Mastering the Art of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge, audiobook narrated by Polly Lee

Published April 25, 2023; Kensington

Genre: mystery, historical

I was so delighted with this audiobook about a post-WWII murder mystery in Paris, that I gave it five stars. First of all, the narrator was excellent; her French accents were perfect, as was her American accents. And the story's interest includes budding chef, Julia Child, during her early days in France taking cooking lessons at Le Cordon Bleu.

Julia, along with her fictional friend, Tabatha, and Tabatha's French grandfather and uncle, all collaborate, if only by offering tips, to solve the murder of a woman found murdered in the cellar of Julia's building. Tabitha does most of the sleuthing and investigating, taking risks to discover the truth about the murdered woman, whom she had met briefly after Julia's dinner party.

The plot of the story is also very well thought out. The setting of Paris and the time period just after the war are all important in this mystery. In addition, stories of Julia's cooking and her efforts to perfect her homemade mayonnaise add interest to this French mystery novel. (Hint: use warmed bowls to make the mayonnaise.)

I don't have a Julia Child cookbook, but I did learn how to make a simple omelet, French style, with butter and herbs. I tried it and it was delicious. What a difference cooking with butter makes!

Sunday Salon: A Mystery and a Memoir

 Just read: 

Now You See Us by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Published March 7, 2023; William Morrow & Company

Genre: mystery thriller, fiction, Asia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The experiences of three Filipina domestic workers in Singapore in this novel are quite different. 

Corazon works for a wealthy woman who treats her as a family member; Donita is abused physically and mentally by an overly demanding and insulting woman who aspires to rise in society; Angel likes her job as caretaker for a disabled man but is shunted aside when a nurse is hired in her place.

The novel was an eye opener on the varied conditions of Filipina domestic workers abroad, in this case in Singapore. The book is made even more interesting when the three workers get together to clear the name of one of their friends in the murder of her female employer.

Revealing and informative as social commentary, and entertaining as a mystery novel, the book is interesting and important on many levels.

Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong

Publication: May 16, 2023; Tin House Books

Genre: memoir, nonfiction, Asian American literature

I liked the poetic prose that Jane Wong, a poet and creative writer, uses for much of this memoir. She has a poet's acute and perceptive reaction to her life experiences. 

 
I think of the book as a very personal memoir of her despair and agonies in growing up among those who don't understand or accept her - in school, university, in Atlantic City, where her parents ran a restaurant until her father deserted the family. Of having to field stereotyping, microaggressions, outright hostility, and more.

Her mother is the force that bolsters her as she goes through one heartbreak after another in her life and in her failed relationships with boyfriends. The author does not dwell as much on her rise as a poet and on her academic career as an associate professor of creative writing. But I recall betrayals on her road to that position as well.

In this very honest memoir, the heartache comes through, as does her remarkably resilient self, and her mother who sees Jane through all her responses of dejection and grief.

I was heartened to see that the author is a successful poet, writer, and teacher because of or in spite of all she went through.

What are you reading this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted byThe Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

Sunday Salon: Crime Solving and Romance

 Book Club Pick: 

The Thursday Murder Club

(Thursday Murder Club #1)

by 

Richard Osman, published 2021 by Penguin Books

Genre: mystery, humorous crime fiction, contemporary fiction

We had so much to discuss with this murder mystery book at our book club this week. We loved the main characters, all eccentric in their own way, but very likeable characters. We enjoyed the complexity of the plot and the red herrings, plot switches in the novel, and the humor in the telling of the story.

We did agree however, that there are so many characters, about 27 in all, that we had trouble remembering who did what and to whom, and some of us had to make cheat sheets to keep track of the murders and who the final culprits turned out to be.

Nevertheless, we were enthusiastic about the book, the first of three in the series, and all wanted to read more about main characters, especially Elizabeth and Joyce, all senior pensioners in an upscale independent living complex in Kent, England, who are able to solve murders in their Thursday Murder Club before the police do. 

I just borrowed number 2 in the series from our library, The Man Who Died Twice, and am enjoying this one as well. 

Delightful Rom Com:

The Fraud Squad by Kyla Zhao

Publication: January 7, 2023; Berkley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The novel is part Pygmalion and the story of Icarus, who fell from the sky after flying too close to the sun. At least this is how working class woman Kyla Zhao sees herself, especially when she pictures herself failing in her bold attempt to infiltrate the highest levels of elitist Singapore social circles.

This clever romantic comedy reveals Singapore's upper class behavior and aspirations. Kyla is shown as a daring young woman whose own aims are to become a writer and public relations person for the most prestigious society magazine in Singapore. But first she must show herself socially worthy to be part of the higher echelons of that exclusive group. Kyla enters a pact with two upper class friends to have her pass as a Singapore socialite. 

I liked reading about the ups and downs of a Cinderalla-like young woman chased from the ball by time and by deceitful individuals who may block her in her pursuit of her career goals. 

An enjoyable romantic comedy.

Just finished: 

 

Murder at the Porte de Versailles

(Aimee Leduc Investigations #20)

by 

Cara Black, published March 1, 2022, Soho Crime

Genre: mystery set in Paris

PI Aimee Leduc and her investigative group work to clear a friend, Boris, of a crime she knows he didn't commit - bombing a police laboratory in Paris. The bombing happened during a birthday party for Aimee's three-year-old daughter Chloe which Boris had just attended.

The complex world of international spies, world politics, and the aftermath of the 2001 World Trade Center bombing in NYC has everyone on edge, even in Paris. Aimee rushes in and through the city that she knows so well, finding clues and interviewing people who might know the reasons behind the deadly bombing at the Paris police lab.

Added to this is Aimee's personal, romantic life, which brings more intrigue and drama to the novel.

I enjoyed this 20th in the Paris mystery series, and through reading it, find Paris as enticing as ever, what with the detailed descriptions of history, place and people in the book.

What are you reading this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

First Chapter: Murder Is No Picnic by Amy Pershing

Murder Is No Picnic

(Cape Cod Foodie Mystery #3)

by 

Amy Pershing, publication June 7, 2022, Berkley Books

About the book: 

A search for the world's best blueberry buckle turns into a search for a killer in this delicious installment in the Cape Cod Foodie Mysteries by Amy Pershing.

 What could be better than a DIY clambake followed by the best blueberry buckle in the world? Sam has finally found the perfect recipe in the kitchen of Clara Foster, famed cookbook author and retired restaurateur.

But when Clara dies in a house fire blamed on carelessness in the kitchen, Sam doesn't believe it. Sam needs to find Clara's killer before the fireworks really start..

First chapter/first paragraph:

"Ladies and gentleman, I have an announcement," I said grandly.

My friends paused from wolfing down various decadent desserts and glanced at one another skeptically. They were not used to me saying anything grandly....

"My search for a blueberry buckle worthy of our upcoming Fourth of July is finally at an end," I said, still in grand mode. 

 

Would you read on ?

First Chapter/Intros meme is  hosted by Yvonne @ Socrates Book Reviews. Each Tuesday post the first paragraph or two of a book you are reading or plan to read soon

Book Review: The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang

 

The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang

Published February 1st 2022 by W. W. Norton Company

Genre: Cultural heritage fiction, mystery, literary fiction 
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's amazing that a chance encounter with a stranger, Zhang Fujian, carrying a small fortune in his bag would lead to the downfall of the Chao family patriarch, owner of the Chao restaurant, and lead to suspicion falling on the three sons. James, the youngest son, helping an old Chinese man at the train station began the turmoil of events. Little did anyone know that the man's blue bag, forgotten in the back of a car, would be removed and transported to different places and cause a major problem for the Chao family.

How the three brothers - master chef Dagou, industrious and ambitious Ming, and college student James - stick together, facing the insults and disdain of their overbearing father during the illness and the death of their mother, and how they rally in each other's defense is admirable. Family secrets also prove fatal in this story.

I enjoyed the characterization of each son, so different from one another, and the denouement of the plot in this domestic drama. There is a murder mystery to be solved, also, but I liked that the brothers join together in the face of being children of immigrants in a small American town, and in the face of possible, pending tragedy.

Critics have called The Family Chao a reimagining of  The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.

View all my reviews

Book beginning: 

For thirty-five years everybody supported Leo Chao's restaurant. Introducing choosy newcomers by showing off some real Chinese food in Haven, Wisconsin. 

At 56% of ebook: 

Then after Winnie died, someone - one of his brothers, or even one of this parents' friends -would have carried the blue blag out of the hospital and loaded it into a car. And then what? 

 

Memes: The Friday 56. Find any sentence that grabs you on page 56 of your book. Post it, and add your URL to Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginnings at Rose City Reader.

Sunday Salon : New Books and ARCs

 Books to be read:

The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra, May 3, 2022, Pegasus Crime. Source: from publisher for possible review

The first in a cozy crime series set in 1920s Bangalore, India, featuring sari-wearing detective Kaveri and her husband Ramu. The two are determined to find the real killer who struck at the Century Club party.

An Honest Lie

by 

Tarryn Fisher, April 26, 2022, Graydon House

Source: review ARC from publisher 

"Lorraine—“Rainy”attends a girls’ weekend in Vegas. But after a wild night, her friend Braithe doesn’t come back to the hotel room."  And so begins the search and suspense.

Currently reading:

The Other Family by Wendy Corsi Staub, February 8, 2022

Source: NetGalley

About: "

a family making a fresh start moves into a house which was the site of an unsolved triple homicide."
There's a problem right there, in my opinion -  choosing the wrong house for a young family! But this may make a better thriller. 

 

Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone, May 24, 2022, NetGalley

Genre: international thriller

About: The novel follows Ariel Price, newly married, after she wakes up in her hotel room during a business trip to Lisbon. Her husband is nowhere in sight and she must find answers to his disappearance on her own.  

I haven't started on the first two books and am finishing up the last two ARCs. 

What are you reading this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Mailbox Monday, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves

Book Review: The Lost Dragon Murder by Michael Allan Mallory: Sunday Salon

 

The Lost Dragon Murder by Michael Allan Mallory, December 31, 2021, BookLocker

Genre: traditional detective novel

First paragraph:

For a man who hated violence Henry Lau was awfully good at it. Well schooled in the way of the fist, he had considerable experience in its use....

My comments:

As the first in a planned series of mystery and police procedural novels featuring Detective Henry Lau, The Lost Dragon Murder introduces the main character and his side kick, his niece Detective Janet Lau, in some detail.

Henry has practiced the traditional Chinese art of Wing Chun kung fu for over 20 years, and is therefore an expert in it.  For self defense as well as to form a philosophy of life, Wing Chun allows Henry to cope with life's vagiaries, including the trauma of the loss of his great love, Kay. 

When Henry saves the life of a professor of Asian Studies in an apparent mugging, little did he know that the same professor would again be targeted because of a one-of-a-kind Chinese bronze dragon figurine. This priceless item is sought not only by an unknown collector but also by the Chinese government seeking the return of cultural artifacts.

I enjoyed the book because of the detailed character development as well as the plot and its action. I'm looking forward to more of Detective Lau in future books in the new series. 

What are you planning to read this week?

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Mailbox Monday, and Sunday Salon

First Chapter: Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

 

First Chapter, First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros are hosted by Socrates Book Reviews. Teaser Tuesdays by The Purple Booker

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara, February 4, 2020, Random House. Award winning novel based on a true story, a mystery set in the slums of India. 

CHAPTER I

This Story Will Save Your Life

 

When Mental was alive, he was a boss-man with eighteen or twenty children working for him, and he almost never raised his hand against any of them. Every week he gave them 5Stars to split between themselves, or packs of Gems, and he made them invisible to the police or evangelist-types who wanted to salvage them from the streets, and the men who watched them with hungry eyes as the children hurtled down railway tracks, gathering up plastic water bottles before a train could ram in to them.  

 

Publisher description: Nine-year-old Jai ... decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from episodes of Police Patrol to find a missing schoolmate,...ventures into some of the most dangerous parts of the city. But kids continue to vanish, and Jai and two friends must confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force and soul-snatching djinns in order to uncover the truth.

My review on goodreads:

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Realistic, eye-opening, heart breaking. Life and survival in the slums through the eyes of a ten year-old boy who decides with two classmates to become detectives and find out why and how children in their settlement have begun to disappear. Good character development that allows you into the hearts and minds of the people in the slums.

View all my reviews

Book Review: The Long Weekend by Gilly Macmillan

The Long Weekend by Gilly Macmillan is to be published March 29, 2022 by Century. 

This thriller/mystery/suspense novel has a setting that so many other mysteries have adopted. An isolated place where people go for a quick trip or vacation; their lives then upended and threatened, where they can't trust each other. In this book, the Dark Fell Barn in the wilds of northern England in the middle of a heavy rain storm, is the perfect setting for fear, paranoia, and the sense of danger.

Three women arrive at the Barn for a long weekend getaway, and wait for their husbands to arrive the next day. But the husbands are threatened in a mysterious letter that waits for the women at the Barn. They are told that one of the men would be killed before they can arrive.

The women panic, suspect each other of harboring secrets, and flail around in the barn and outdoors in the storm, without access to wifi or cell phone connection, or an easy way to leave in the storm. 

Makes for a perfect situation for a mystery.  

What makes the suspense: 

A writer can also throw in personal failings, such as health, physical or mental, to gum up the works and prevent smooth sailing for the characters in the book. 

In The Long Weekend, you can find creeping dementia, alcoholism, dyslexia, dissasociative mental disorder sprinkled among the main characters, and of course, psychosis in the killer.  Add all these together in a mix, and there is a pot of suspense boiling for the reader. 

Other thrillers: 

I am finding that mystery writers are becoming more adventurous and creative about throwing people into situations and creating personalities that are out of the norm, to foster suspense in their books. But you can ask, what is out of the norm these days? 

I gave the thriller five stars, just for doing all the above reasonably well. 

Book Beginning: Hanging Falls, a mystery by Margaret Mizushima

 

Hanging Falls by Margaret Mizushima, August 10, 2021, Crooked Lane Books

Genre: mystery in a series, police procedural

Murder stalks the rugged Colorado high country--and sends officer Mattie Cobb on a quest to uncover the darkest secrets from her past (publisher)

Book beginning:

Friday morning, mid-July

A stitch in her side plagued Deputy Mattie Cobb as she jogged uphill, telling her that her level of anxiety and this form of exercise didn't mix. Running in the Colorado high country around Timber Creek had soothed her for years, but not today. Her mind kept jumping back to the one thing that made her so...well, she'd have to say frightened, excited, and nervous all at once. 

Page 56:

"In Colorado you can possess a small amount of marijuana for use in your own home, but it's against the law to smoke it in a national forest." Mattie recited the code, watching his face fall. 

Would you read on?

Memes: The Friday 56. Find any sentence that grabs you on page 56 of your book. Post it, and add your URL to Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

It's Monday: What Are you Reading?

 

The Night Hawks by Elly Griffiths, June 29, 2021. Netgalley

Genre: mystery set in Northern England

There’s nothing Ruth Galloway hates more than amateur archaeologists, but when a group of them stumble upon Bronze Age artifacts alongside a dead body, she finds herself thrust into their midst—and into the crosshairs of a string of murders circling ever closer. (publisher)

What are you reading this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon

Sunday Salon: Renewed Reading

That Strawberry Moon hanging behind the trees outside my window has me in thrall. It has for the past two early mornings, too. It was most beautiful and golden Friday morning way before dawn.

My brief period of distaste for books lasted a day or two, and happy to say, I'm back in the reading mode. I've finished

The Last Mrs. Summers by Rhys Bowen 

Publication: August 4, 2020, Berkley

Genre: historical mystery

Georgie, of Her Royal Spyness fame, travels to Cornwall with her friend Belinda, who has inherited a cottage there from her late grandmother. 

They meet Rose, an old childhood acquaintance of  Belinda's, who invites them to stay at her mansion, where Rose lives in lonely splendor, waiting for her husband Tony to return from his business travels. 

The author says this book is loosely based on DuMaurier's Rebecca, but the plot is different enough to make it interesting. There is a spooky and threatening housekeeper who runs things efficiently, as in Rebecca, and Rose seems out of her comfort zone in the stately mansion, as did the heroine of DuMaurier's novel. However, there is enough difference to make the mystery novel suspenseful enough to keep your interest. There is a murder, for one. 

I give this a five for entertainment and originality in spinning the plot of Rebecca into a new weave!

Our House by Louise Candlish

Publication: August 7, 2020, Berkley

Genre: thriller, domestic suspense 

A warning about fraud in real estate deals; sales made and transferred online can be intercepted and stolen. The story was entertaining and informative, as well as suspenseful. A woman returns home after a short trip and finds strangers moving into her house saying they are the new owners. Then she has to figure out how the mistake was made and what her husband Tony has really been up to. The ending is a surprise. Four stars.

The Last Savannah by Mike Bond

Published November 19, 2013, Mandevilla Press

Genre: thriller, travel adventure

Bond uses his international settings to point out political and environmental problems that affect the people and their world. This book deals with wildlife poaching in Africa. Going after poachers from Somalia, who enter into Kenya to gather valuable elephant tusks, Bond goes on a tortuous journey to save a female archaeologist kidnapped by the poachers for ransom. The novel is both an adventure, a thriller, and a romance. I gave this read five stars for plotting, suspense, atmosphere. I've dropped a couple of books along the way, as too uninteresting or improbable. But I'm currently enjoying a few others, such as the one below. All This I Will Give You September 1, 2018 Domestic drama set in Spain Translated novel Novelist Manuel Ortigosa learns that his husband, Álvaro, has been killed in a car crash and finds out that Alvaro has been hiding his past all these years.

What are you reading this week?

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon