A California Online Magazine with Local Focus and Global Appeal
June is finally here and it’s beginning to feel like summer. Antiques and eats are on this month’s menu. Enjoy!
Tracy Gardner debuts a new series, the Avery Ayers Antique mysteries. After her parents’ death, Avery takes over the family business, Antiquities & Artifacts.
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I live in Michigan which just announced that along with the CDC’s mask recommendation that fully vaccinated people no longer have to wear masks indoors. However, the state is less than 50% fully vaccinated, and I worry about a new spike due to non-vaccinated people parading around as if they are vaccinated. This gets me back to pride. In 2020 Pride events were cancelled or moved to virtual spaces.
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Time to “Spring” into new books. This month I have several for you to dine on. Plus, my local library has reopened, so I included two library-themed mysteries. Enjoy the weather and the reads!
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For a part time job, I work at Argos Books in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is a used book and comic book store. Today I had a customer come up and ask me if we had Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. This is a book we are constantly asked for by young people just discovering literature outside of young adult novels, along with 1984, Animal Farm, A Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451, and Slaughterhouse Five. The customer today slaughtered the name Kerouac.
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Spring is finally upon us. With the end of a dark tunnel of anger, isolation, and illness in sight, we all just want to take a deep breath. But, the horrors of the headlines persist. From hate crimes against Asians to heartbreaking testimony in the prosecution of George Floyd’s killer and headlines about ordinary people of color enjoying their lives— before they’re murdered, the daily news is so packed with shocking, racist crimes that it’s delivered with a trigger warning.
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This month I pull a few rabbits out of the hat and offer six cozies with recipes. What’s in your Easter Basket? (some were released in March and some in April)
Hop ‘Til You Drop over to Juliette (Jules) Bridges Fur Bridge Farm rabbit rescue in New Hampshire. She and her telepathic bunny, Bun, have agreed to hide Easter eggs at a town event.
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I work in an academic library, and although I have my master’s in information and library science, I am not a librarian. Rather I answer the phone, and if patrons have a harder question that is outside the knowledge of our student workers (which is rare since they know all), I help find the answer.
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While the snow melts in parts of the country and St. Patrick’s Day, Daylight Savings Time, and the first day of spring are around the corner, don’t even think about giving up books for Lent! Here’s the start of a new series by a new author. There are also farms, food, and the luck of the Irish in the books coming out this month. Enjoy!
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Chocolate bonbons go with books, and February offers these reading confections. Why are so many set in Maine? Also, Amanda Flower starts a new series for us to enjoy. Sweet!
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Many people can’t read or don’t like to read. But reading can put you in the shoes of another human, allow you to experience someone else’s worldview, expose you to someone else’s culture. If the Angry White Man were to read works by diverse writers, I wonder if he’d be more compassionate, more analytical, more tolerant. I don’t know. But I wish he’d spend fifteen minutes and finish reading the Constitution.
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It’s always good to start a series with the first book, so this month I’m announcing four new ones by authors you might recognize. Enjoy!
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Ho, Ho, hoping the vaccine will reach us soon. In the meantime, tell your friends and family that all you want for Christmas are books. Here’s some titles you can suggest—some are brand new releases and some came out earlier this year.
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This holiday will be a tough one with social distancing from family traditions and turkey. So, enjoy two new series and the offerings (and offings) from some of your favorite mystery authors.
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Covid-19 is scary enough and has us all wearing masks. Grab some candy, a pumpkin spice latte, and settle down with these Halloween reads. Many came out earlier, but I saved them for you as a treat!
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Meet Pete, who, according to his foster mom “is a huge sweetheart”! Not only is he a fuzzy wuzzy sweetheart, but he also has a big, happy, motorboat purr that he generously shares to announce his sweetness! He loves to play and enjoys every single toy he meets! This irresistible boy is a big boy and a hugely loving addition in a wonderful forever home of his own. Could sweet purrasaurus Pete be the great new addition in your loving family? Peter was adopted and returned by his original family at no fault of his own, there was a illness in the family, he might need some time to adjust to his new family. Pete is available from the Cat House on the Kings.