Currently Reading: Slated for Death by Elizabeth J. Duncan

I often like trolling the library for new books and new-to-me writers.
I found Slated for Death, set in Wales in the old slate mines that are now closed except to tourists and school groups.Though the slate industry ran for a couple centuries in north Wales, this mystery novel is set in the present time.

Slated for Death: A Penny Brannigan Mystery #6 by Elizabeth J. Duncan
Published April 14, 2015 by Minotaur
Genre: mystery set in north Wales

Teaser from the page I'm on right now: They are planning to hold the St. David's Day concert down the mine this year and Glenda was organizing it so she was on a site visit. (ch. 4)

 Book description: When the body of well-liked Glenda Roberts is discovered at the bottom of a former slate mine, now a busy tourist attraction, pandemonium erupts in the North Wales town of Llanelen. Penny Brannigan finds herself drawn into the investigation .... A visit to Glenda’s mother deepens her conviction that a hidden family secret is the real reason for the murder.

I'm enjoying it so far - the setting and the characters.

Wordless Wednesday: Yellow

Visit Wordless Wednesday  and NC Sue at Image-in-ing for more pictures

Sunday Salon: Reading in Rainy Weather

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week. Visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also visit Mailbox Monday 

We're having lots of rain, which is good for the grass and flowers, but which bows down the rambling rose bush already heavy with spring flowers. Early spring is still with us as the temps will drop 30 degrees tonight, from the 80s to the 50s. Just when I thought I could put away blankets and warm clothes!

Good weather for reading, inside or outside when it's warm and dry in the 80s or raining outdoors. I'm so unused to the warm weather and greenery now that I feel as if I'm on vacation somewhere else :)

From the mailbox: 
From Poisoned Pen Press, two uncorrected proofs for review. 

The Hog's Back Mystery: Inspector French #10 by Freeman Wills Crofts
British Library Crime Classics, to be released July 7, 2015 by Poisoned Pen Press
The Hog’s Back is a ridge in Surrey and the setting for the disappearance of several locals. A doctor vanishes, followed by a nurse with whom he was acquainted, then a third person. Inspector French deduces murder, but there are no bodies. Eventually he is able to prove his theory and show that a fourth murder has been committed.

The American title is 'The Strange Case of Dr Earle'. (publisher)

Antidote to Venom: Inspector French #17 by Freeman Wills Crofts
To be released July 7, 2015; Poisoned Pen Press
In an English city zoo a murderer plans to use snake venom to kill an old professor, hoping to inherit a fortune. In this unusual detective story we are shown the planning of the crime. 

When Inspector French is called in to solve the mystery we learn how an ingenious murder has been committed and follow the actions of the guilty men. (publisher)

From the library:

The Cat Sitter's Whiskers: A Dixie Hemingway Mystery #10 by Blaize and John Clement
Published March 31, 2015; Minbotaur Books
Pet sitter Dixie Hemingway is on the prowl again in the newest installment of Blaize Clement's series of cozy mysteries, now written by her son, John Clement, using Blaize's notes and ideas for future adventures. 

Set in the sleepy beach-side town of Siesta Key, Florida, THE CAT SITTER'S WHISKERS catches up with Dixie as she heads off for work one morning in the dimly lit hours before sunrise. Dixie soon finds herself hopelessly trapped in a murky world of black market antiques, dark-hearted secrets, and murderous revenge… a mystery only she can solve. (publisher)

Currently reading: 

Love May Fail by Matthew Quick, to be released June 16, 2015; Harper
Genre: contemporary fiction
Portia Kane is having a meltdown. After escaping her ritzy Florida life and her cheating pornographer husband, she finds herself back in South Jersey, a place that remains largely unchanged from the years of her unhappy youth. Lost and alone, looking for the goodness she believes still exists in the world, Portia sets off on a quest to save the one man who always believed in her—and in all of his students: her beloved high school English teacher, Mr. Vernon, who has retired broken and alone after a traumatic classroom incident. (publisher)
I am enjoying this one, more than I thought I would. It borders on literary fiction, with lots of references and quotations from literature - Albert Camus, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, etc. One of the protagonists is an English high school teacher, after all. 

Finished reading:
Accidents of Marriage by Randy Susan Meyers, contemporary fiction
The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami, fantasy
Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave, contemporary fiction
Ming Tea Murder by Laura Childs, mystery
The Third Wife by Lisa Jewell, contemporary fiction
The Lake Season by Hannah Roberts McKinnon, contemporary fiction

What's new on your book shelf?

Book Beginning: Accidents of Marriage by Randy Susan Meyers

The Friday 56: *Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader. Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you. Post it. Add your (url) post in Linky at Freda's Voice.
Also, visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

Accidents of Marriage by Randy Susan Meyers,paperback to be published June 9, 2015; Washington Square Press
Genre: contemporary fiction
Book beginning:

Maddy ran her tongue over her teeth, imagining he bitter taste of a crumbling tablet of Xanax. After a gut-wrenching day at the hospital nothing tempted her more than a chemical vacation. Nothing appealed to her less than cooking supper. Churning stomach acid - courtesy of work - coupled with anxiety that Ben might come home as frenzied as he'd left made a formidable appetite killer. 

Page 56:

"Don't move. You might have internal injuries." She pushed back wet hair on her forehead. As though offering a condolence prize, she held up a phone. "Do you want me to call someone for you? Do you want to make a call?"

Book description:
Accidents of Marriage explores a topic rarely shown in fiction: the destruction left in the wake of spouse’s verbal fury. Ben never meant to hurt Maddy. He never imagined his recklessness would lead to tragedy.                     

Book Review: The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami

The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami, paperback published December 2, 2014 by Knopf.
Genre: fiction
Source: library book

First sentence:The library was even more hushed than usual.

Last sentences:About how it feels to be alone, and the depth of the darkness surrounding me. Darkness as pitch black as the night of the new moon.

My comments: In very large print, The Strange Library has the look of a children's book with full page illustrations, and only 96 pages. It has the quality of a dream, of a young man's fears and longings. This young man becomes imprisoned in the bowels of a large city library by the Old Man, tasked with memorizing three long books on the Ottoman Empire before he can be released, but at the same time he is served excellent food by a beautiful young girl and befriended by his jailer, the Sheep Man.

Though the young man is helped to escape by the girl and the Sheep Man, both have disappeared, but so have his pet starling at home, and his new leather shoes. This makes him doubt that the experience was only a dream. His mother dies at the end and the young man's soaring imagination also seems to disappear, leaving him in a darkness similar to the room he was imprisoned in, in the library.

The only meaning I can get out of the book is this: loss of love, like the loss of a mother, can deprive one of light and that wide imagination that makes life worthwhile. Also, perhaps life and light is more important than filling our minds with arcane information in books.

Have you read the book? What did you get from it?

First Chapter: DIAMOND HEAD by Cecily Wong

First Chapter, First Paragraph is hosted weekly by Bibliophile by the Sea. Share the first paragraph of your current read. Also visit Teaser Tuesdays meme hosted by Jenn.

Diamond Head by Cecily Wong
Published April 14, 2015 by Harper
Genre: historical novel
First chapter, first paragraph:

Inside the care, it smells like hibiscus. It was his mother's idea; something subtle, she told him, but fresh. Something alive. As the man pulls from his driveway he is grateful, just this once, for his mother's meddling. He breathes in. Already, the sweet smell is working on his nerves. 

Teaser: 

There are few things in life as beautiful as a fresh start," Frank whispered, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling me into his chest, sheltering me from the wind off the ocean, pressing me into his eager heartbeat. "This will be ours."

Book description: At the turn of the nineteenth-century, Frank Leong, a wealthy shipping industrialist, moves his family from China to the island of Oahu. But something ancient follows the Leongs to Hawaii, haunting them. 

The parable of the red string of fate, the cord which binds one intended beloved to her perfect match, also punishes for mistakes in love, passing a destructive knot down the family line. 
Now the Leong’s survival rests with young Theresa, Frank Leong’s only grandchild, eighteen and pregnant, the heir apparent to her ancestors’ punishing knots. Told through the eyes of the Leong’s secret-keeping daughters and wives and spanning The Boxer Rebellion to Pearl Harbor to 1960s Hawaii, Diamond Head is a tale of tragic love, shocking lies, poignant compromise, aching loss, heroic acts of sacrifice and, miraculous hope. (publisher)

Based on the first paragraph, the teaser, and the book description, would you read on?

Sunday Salon: Safe Travels

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week. Visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also visit Mailbox Monday 

I had forgotten that we had programmed the car GPS to avoid highways, and so the GPS led us through small towns and farmland all the way from Columbus, Ohio. It was a scenic drive, but we switched back to the highway later on and finally made it home.
Happy Memorial Day everyone, and safe travels!

I'm in the middle of reading Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave, and liking it a lot.
I finished The Lake Season, another contemporary novel, and also the cozy mysteries,
Don't Go Home by Carolyn Hart and
Ming Tea Murder by Laura Childs. All fairly enjoyable reads.

Fairly new on the bookshelves:

A Fatal Chapter by Lorna Barrett, a Booktown Mystery #9, to be released June 2, 2015 by Berkley.
While out walking Sarge, her sister’s bichon frise, Tricia Miles, a mystery bookshop owner, is led by the agitated dog to a man lying in a gazebo. She’s startled when she recognizes Pete Renquist, the president of the Stoneham Historical Society, who appears to be suffering from cardiac arrest. When Pete later dies in the hospital, the discovery of a suspicious bruise and a puncture mark on his arm suggests he may have been murdered.

This one includes recipes. Books and recipes - nice for the weekend.