You know what’s a great way to get some sewing done?

Leave the fabric on the kitchen table, go upstairs and curl up in bed with a good book.

I haven’t quite worked out how that’s going to end in a bridesmaid dress.

But I certainly know what I recommend you read while avoiding the work – Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series.

(Public Service Announcement: these books can be used for avoidance no matter what the action, wedding-related not required.)

“The daughter of a struggling greengrocer, Maisie Dobbs was only thirteen when she was sent to work as a maid for wealthy London aristocrats.  But being bright and thoughtful beyond her years, Maisie studies her way to Cambridge, then serves as a nurse on the Front during the Great War.  Now, it’s the spring of 1929, nearly ten years after the Armistice and Maisie has just opened up her own detective agency.  Her first assignment, a seemingly open-and-shut infidelity case, will reveal a much deeper, darker mystery, forcing Maisie to revisit the horrors of the war and the ghost she left behind.  Refreshing, absorbing, and beautifully rendered, Maisie Dobbs marks the beginning of an incredible new series.”  ~Book jacket of Maisie Dobbs, first book in the series

A British-style mystery… and not only because it’s set in 1930s London.  Maisie Dobbs is everything I love in a mystery – it’s character based, clever, and not scary.

I can’t handle scary. The only kind of book I don’t read?  Thriller.

I get enough suspense thinking every bump in the night is a killer breaking into my home, with rope, knives, and feathers at the ready.  (I can only assume there will be some level of tickling involved in any horrible form of torture.)

Back to Maisie.  A strong, independent woman investigating crime against the backdrop of a London still struggling for normalcy after the devastation wrecked by WWI.  I love Maisie. I love her dad and Lady Rowan, her benefactor.  I love her assistant, Billy Beale, and her childhood friend Priscilla.  I love the insight the series gives me into the impact World War I had upon England and I love imaging women wearing cloche hats.

Most of all, I love how every book touches me.

1930s fashion is dream world,

Megan

A great way to fight off those stuck-indoor-in-a-blizzard blues is by reading Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie.  Hercule Poirot is invited out to a country estate where a murder mystery party is taking place.  Once the young girl playing the victim is really murdered, Poirot steps up to solve the crime.  Is is the mysterious cousin, just arrived from France?  The adoring husband?  The jealous secretary?  The bickering married couple?  I was hooked on the story, and though I’d caught most of the important clues, was completely surprised by the solution.

If you haven’t read Christie’s Poirot yet, this book is a great place to start.

What mystery authors do you love?
Megan

Remember Megan’s Recommended Reading?

No?

Me neither.  At least, I’m claiming amnesia.  It seems like the most acceptable/plausible explanation for why I have somewhat faltered in posting about books I love.

Thankfully, I have recovered.  Cue sweeping music.  Or crickets.

So today I am recommending Lisa Lutz’s Spellman series.

The Spellman Files is the first.

Feel no obligation to read them in order.  It’s just something I must do.

If I read a series out of order I start feeling all squirmy inside.  But that’s my issue.

The Spellman Files follows a PI family from the perspective of the older daughter.  The main pluses to growing up with professional investigators for parents include the ability to tail people, pick locks, and tap phones, though that doesn’t make up for the minuses, in that the people you are supposed to trust most will constantly use their detective skills to spy on you.

I bought the book expecting a mystery.  There is certainly something mysterious going on in the Spellman household, but the main focus of the book is on the family drama.  While The Spellman Files was not what I was expecting, I found it enjoyable.  Certainly enjoyable enough to purchase the next book in the series…

First I was going to pick the sale sticker off the front cover, but then I realized keeping it was more truthful.

If you’re going to read a lot of books, then it’s important to be cheap.  That is, if you’re like me and are too lazy to stick to a library’s timetable.

Though I’d already read The Spellman Files, I kept expecting Curse of the Spellmans to change the story dynamics, and focus on a mystery.  And when the oldest daughter becomes convinced their new neighbor is a serial killer, the mystery certainly permeates the novel.  Yet, again the focus is not on events outside the home, even those right next door, but rather on what’s going on with the Spellman family.

Price Sticker Aside: I actually found this book at McKay’s, my local fabulous used bookstore.  Used bookstores are quite hit-and-miss when it comes to getting specific authors, with an emphasis on miss, so this find was very exciting.  It also explains why I made an exception to my used bookstore price limit.  I mean, $7 dollars?  That’s hefty.

I wasn’t joking about being cheap.

Revenge of the Spellmans is the third in Lisa Lutz’s Spellman series, and I can assure you that if you’ve read the first two and fallen in love with this dysfunctional family, it will not disappoint.

Stay tuned for the next edition of Megan’s Recommended Reading: Memoirs, it’ll make you feel like your own life is terribly drab and boring.