Being the mistress of one’s own fate is beyond compare especially at age eleven. Such is the case with Alan Bradley’s sleuth, Flavia de Luce, and is apparent from the first pages of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (2009) through all nine novels in the series thus far.
Ever wonder how different your life would be had you made a different choice at a pivotal time? This second book in Barb Hendee’s Dark Glass series, A Choice of Crowns (2018) involves how the enchanted mirror, which readers encountered in Through a Glass Darkly (2017) affects Olivia Geroux, soon to marry King Rowan of Partheny.
Some of the KRL staff have shared some Easter memories here-some sweet, some funny, some spiritual, and with reoccurring themes of family and missing Easter eggs. I hope you enjoy their memories and they remind you of some of your own which you are encouraged to share in the comments below! Happy Easter!
We all look forward to the debut of a new Daniel Rinaldi novel and reunion with the psychologist we all would like to consult. Head Wounds (2018) is the fifth and latest in the Rinaldi series, and it does not disappoint.
How better to mark St. Valentine’s Day than savoring the irony of perpetrating a murder on this particular holiday celebrating love and lover! Admittedly---not to everyone’s taste, as it is a rather non-traditional way to celebrate any holiday.
Medieval fantasy fiction is satisfying on so many levels. Informed readers already have a broad base to draw on picturing the world of these novels, and although historically speaking, cultures vary slightly according to national and historical dictate one finds a through line of what we like to imagine about the times: chivalric behavior and great potential for honorable behavior on every page.
Our most food-oriented holiday season approaches, and I am not alone in wanting new twists on the traditional foods we serve at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Luckily, we can research some of the techniques that make French cuisine a sensuous delight just by reading the mysteries Alexander Campion has written that feature Capucine Le Tellier, a Police Judiciare officer in Paris as well as her husband Alexandre Huguelet, a major food critic for Le Monde.
Don’t look for much grit in Laura Resnick’s Urban Fantasies despite the fact that they have New York City as the backdrop. Oh, it isn’t that the streets aren’t mean and that the characters lack the infamous New Yorker’s brusqueness, rather it’s the fact that the stories are told in first person by heroine/actress/waitress/elf Esther Diamond who is nothing if not upbeat to the point of Micawberism. Even when she’s strung out over her never-quite-boyfriend Detective Connor Lopez or freaked about being unemployed, there is a strong positive undercurrent that tells readers she will triumph. Of course alliance with a 350-year-old Mage, Dr. Maximillian Zadok makes getting out of the scrapes Esther gets into much easier.
Employing a psychologist or a psychiatrist as a part of an investigative team makes perfect sense. It has worked well for Val McDermid and her Dr. Tony Hill. Even Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter, though insane, had professional insights that helped Clarice Starling find “Buffalo Bill” after all. Enter Daniel Rinaldi, Dennis Palumbo’s clinical psychologist based in Pittsburgh.
As we know, translation from the page to the stage is problematic. We readers are notorious for our loyalty to the ‘mise en scene’ in our heads, not to mention ideas about everything else from the characters’ appearances to following the books’ plots to the letter. Some novels are an easier go-to script because they are written with the object of production in mind and read almost like a screenplay already. However, this was not the case with the Shetland novels of Ann Cleeves.
