Book Review: A Red Herring without Mustard: A Flavia de Luce Novel by Alan Bradley

A Red Herring Without Mustard: A Flavia de Luce Novel
by Alan Bradley
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Delacorte Press (February 8, 2011)
Genre: mystery
Source: Library
Rating: 5/5

Comments: Bradley has done it again, another perfect mystery featuring that precocious and witty 11-year-old sleuth, Flavia de Luce. The books seem to be getting better and better and Bradley is hard at work on his fourth in the series!

In A Red Herring Without Mustard, Flavia befriends a tired old Gypsy woman at an annual fete and invites her to park her caravan on her father's property in a secluded and grassy bend of the river. When the Gypsy woman is attacked in the night and seriously injured, her head bashed in, all eyes turn suspiciously to Flavia who was the last to see her. A murder occurs on her father's property soon after, and Flavia becomes involved in the case of a missing baby the Gypsy was supposed to have kidnapped and carried off many years earlier.

Flavia dodges the attentions of her father and sisters to carry out her sleuthing in the village, day as well as in the early hours of the morning. With her trusty bicycle, Gladys, the 11-year-old glides through the village and uses her sleuthing skills, her insatiable curiosity, as well as her knowledge of chemistry to track down clues and put them together to solve the mysteries.

Told in the first person, the narrative moves swiftly, as Flavia moves from one thing to the next and takes us on her journeys with her. Witty and observant, her words are delightful and full of clever images that make the book much more than just a good plot. If you enjoyed the first two in the series, then A Red Herring will be an even better treat.

Book Tour: Fashion Unraveled by Jennifer Lynne Matthews

Title: Fashion Unraveled - Second Edition: How to Start and Manage Your Own Fashion (or Craft) Design Business by Jennifer Lynne Matthews
Paperback: 408 pages
Publisher: Los Angeles Fashion Resource (December 10, 2010)
Source: review copy from author
Objective rating: 4 out of 5

Jeniffer Lynne Matthews is a designer for Porcelynne Lingerie and a successful business woman. In a second edition of her book, she has rewritten her steps on planning and creating a fashion/craft design business.

Comments: A very useful how-to publication for entrepreneurs of fashion/crafts who are thinking of starting a business. It takes you from a general plan to details of marketing, customer base, production, sales, laws and regulations, with case studies, a sample business plan, and more. If I ever decide to take my jewelry making hobby to the next level, I'll surely use this book.

Product Description:  Fashion Unraveled offers an inside look into the operations of a small fashion design business. This book offers tips, tools of the trade and valuable insight into the industry. This book will guide one through the business implementation process. Fashion Unraveled also features several designer interviews, including a Q&A with British designer Timothy James Andrews and couturier Colleen Quen.

About the Author:  As an educator at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, Jennifer Lynne Matthews, saw a need to educate her students on how to start their own businesses. Matthews wrote the first edition of Fashion Unraveled in 2008 and completed the second edition in 2010. Understanding the concerns of her students entering the job market, Matthews developed her book to help create an entrepreneurial alternative. Matthews, also a lingerie designer and entrepreneur, attended Florida State University and Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Matthews opened her business, Porcelynne Lingerie in 2002. The book is based on Matthews’ experience from opening to sustaining a successful business. She brings the knowledge of running a small business and her expertise in the industry into her book and her classroom. Matthews has won numerous awards for her designs and has received worldwide accolades for her work. (Amazon)

For more information on Jennifer Matthews and her work, see http://www.fashionunraveled.com/ and http://www.porcelynne.com/

Virtual book tour by Tracee L. Gleichner
Pump Up Your Book
http://pumpupyourbook.com/

Book Review: The Thieves of Darkness by Richard Doetsch

Title: The Thieves of Darkness
Author: Richard Doetsch

Publisher: Pocket Star Books
Paperback edition: Feb. 22, 2011
Genre: thriller, adventure
Source: review copy, Simon and Schuster
Objective rating: 4 out of 5

"Michael's heart plummeted his mind spun into confusion by the unexpected sight of the woman before him, the woman who sat on death row, the woman he had held in his arms less than two weeks ago.

Michael was left speechless as he stared into KC's eyes." (Ch. 1)

Publisher's description:

WILL A TREACHEROUS MISSION LEAD THEM INTO ANCIENT PARADISE . Reformed master thief Michael St. Pierre thinks his criminal days are behind him when his best friend Simon is sentenced to die in a brutal desert prison. Breaking into jail for the first time in his checkered career, Michael frees his friend only to discover his own girlfriend in the next cell.. . .

OR STRAIGHT TO A RUTHLESS ENEMY?
With a madman on their heels, the trio plots a series of daring thefts inside the world’s most celebrated and heavily guarded sanctums to find the mysterious artifact that landed them behind bars: a map to a secret holy place predating Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. From the glittering banks of the Bosporus to the highest peaks of the Himalayas, they embark on a globe-trotting adventure to preserve the priceless relics at stake and protect the fate of humanity.

Comments: Reminds me of books like The DaVinci Code with plots in holy places, secret maps, mysterious relics and a dash to find holy sanctums. For those who love adventure, a thrilling and dangerous ride through exotic locales, and a search important enough to affect the future.  

I Love a Broad Margin to My Life by Maxine Hong Kingston

Teaser Tuesdays asks you to choose two sentences at random from your current read. Identify the author and title for readers.

.... the artists of the chi, mostly women, Chinese
women, were moving, dancing the air/the wind/ energy/life, and getting the world turning.... They played with the chi, drawing circles in the sky, lifting earth to sky, pulling sky
to earth, swirling the controllable universe. Then walked off to do their daily ordinary tasks. (p. 61)

From I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, a verse memoir by Maxine Hong Kingston, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Jan. 18, 2011.

Description from Goodreads: "In her singular voice—humble, elegiac, practical—Maxine Hong Kingston's ....swift, effortlessly flowing verse lines feel instantly natural in this fresh approach to the art of memoir, as she circles from present to past and back, from lunch with a writer friend to the funeral of a Vietnam veteran, from her long marriage (“can’t divorce until we get it right. / Love, that is. Get love right”) to her arrest at a peace march in Washington....

 
On her journeys as writer, peace activist, teacher, and mother, Kingston revisits her most beloved characters: she learns the final fate of her Woman Warrior, and she takes her Tripmaster Monkey, a hip Chinese American, on a journey through China, where he has never been—a trip that becomes a beautiful meditation on the country then and now, on a culture where rice farmers still work in the age-old way, even as a new era is dawning. “All over China,” she writes, “and places where Chinese are, populations / are on the move, going home. That home / where Mother and Father are buried. Doors / between heaven and earth open wide.”
 
Such is the spirit of this wonderful book—a sense of doors opening wide onto an American life of great purpose and joy, and the tonic wisdom of a writer we have come to cherish." (Goodreads)

Blog Hop: Little Princes

The blog hop is hosted by Jennifer at Crazy-for-Books. Hop on over to join in the fun.

This week's question..."Tell us about one of your posts from this week and give us a link so we can read it (review or otherwise)!"

My last post was a quote and a book description of The Little Princes. Click on the title to see the post and the book cover. Thanks for visiting! 

Teaser Tuesday: Little Princes by Conor Grennan

Teaser Tuesdays asks you to choose two sentences at random from your current read. Identify the author and title for readers.

"Dawa - what is it? What's wrong?" I whispered frantically, my face just inches from his.
"Eyes, Brother!" he pleaded, blinking. ( p. 36)

Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan
(William Morrow, Jan. 25, 2011)


Amazon's product description: "In search of adventure, 29-year-old Conor Grennan traded his day job for a year-long trip around the globe, a journey that began with a three-month stint volunteering at the Little Princes Children’s Home, an orphanage in war-torn Nepal.

Conor was initially reluctant to volunteer, unsure whether he had the proper skill, or enough passion, to get involved in a developing country in the middle of a civil war. But he was soon overcome by the herd of rambunctious, resilient children who would challenge and reward him in a way that he had never imagined. When Conor learned the unthinkable truth about their situation, he was stunned: The children were not orphans at all. Child traffickers were promising families in remote villages to protect their children from the civil war—for a huge fee—by taking them to safety. They would then abandon the children far from home, in the chaos of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.

For Conor, what began as a footloose adventure becomes a commitment to reunite the children he had grown to love with their families, but this would be no small task. He would risk his life on a journey through the legendary mountains of Nepal, facing the dangers of a bloody civil war and a debilitating injury. Waiting for Conor back in Kathmandu, and hopeful he would make it out before being trapped in by snow, was the woman who would eventually become his wife and share his life’s work.

Little Princes is a true story of families and children, and what one person is capable of when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. At turns tragic, joyful, and hilarious, Little Princes is a testament to the power of faith and the ability of love to carry us beyond our wildest expectations. "

Book Blogger Hop: Voltaire's Calligrapher

Welcome to Book Blogger Hop! Visit other blogs by linking up to the Hop at Crazy for Books, weekly from Friday through Monday, blog hop other blogs in the Linky list, and answer the question of the week.

This week's question: What are you reading now and why?

I picked up a slim paperback that has been languishing on my shelf: Voltaire's Calligrapher: A Novel by Pablo De Santis, published Oct. 1, 2010. I see it as literary fiction, but it's described also as "steampunk mystery set in the time of Voltaire." (Booklist) Wish I had started it sooner!

The novel was sent to me by the publisher and I'm planning a review. The author is South American but this edition is published in English.

What are you reading right  now?