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Top 5 Mysteries I Have Read During the Pandemic is a brand new midweek column we are starting this week. As we continue to spend most of our time at home, we are all looking for book suggestions so we asked mystery authors and reviewers to share the top 5 mysteries they have read during this pandemic. This week mystery authors Neil Plakcy and Merrilee Robson share theirs!
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Staying at home? Tired of the news? Desire something different? Check out whether streaming AcornTV is the answer for you; it is for me! I’ve been a member for a very reasonable annual fee (monthly membership available) for a few years, and have always found something entertaining, engaging, and thought-provoking. From comedies (Ain’t Misbehavin’) and dramas (Pitchin’ In) to amateur and licensed detectives (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mystery and Hamish MacBeth). I plug myself in and…relax!
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ACORN-TV continues to provide hundreds of the best programming options including news & reviews, mysteries, dramas, comedies, documentaries, foreign language, feature films and some programs only available on or original to Acorn-TV. The regular monthly or annual subscription fees are very reasonable and with hours of commercial-free streaming enjoyment for the true anglophiles, you won’t be wondering, “What’s on the telly tonight?”
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Acorn-TV provides hundreds of the best programming options including news & reviews, mysteries, dramas, comedies, documentaries, foreign language, feature films, and some programs only available on ACORN-TV. Currently there is a free trial, but the regular monthly or annual subscription fees seem reasonable. With hours of commercial-free streaming enjoyment for the true fan of UK productions, you won’t be wondering, “What’s on tonight?”
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The most pleasing element in reading Agatha Christie is spending time in her world. It’s an orderly place full of rather complacent, pleasant people suddenly faced with the inexplicable: murders are discovered, friends go missing, or incongruities mushroom in either their village or whatever closed community her detectives happen to be in or called to at the time. Her best loved characters, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, are essentially likable, despite one’s occasional flightiness and a touch of narcissism in the other.
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I have been an Agatha Christie fan ever since I was a teenager, so when I saw that Good Company Players were going to be performing the Agatha Christie play Witness For the Prosecution, I couldn’t wait! We were front and center opening weekend for this show that plays at 2nd Space until October 9.
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As the owner of Eventful!, professional event organizer Amy-Faye Johnson prides herself on always having a schedule and a comprehensive agenda prepared for the celebrations she plans. The grand opening of her brother Derek’s brewpub, Elysium Brewing, is testing all of her party-planning abilities. Despite her every precaution it is plagued by fire, overflowing toilets, a protest by Women Outing Serial Cheaters (WOSC)…and a dead body.
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“We don’t ask why certain classics have survived despite their styles passing into history. Certain books are meant to remain. Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie are among the authors who have successfully bridged the years,” said Lori Rader-Day, whose debut mystery was nominated for multiple awards.
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Jane Marple has been portrayed onscreen by a cadre of fine actresses. The world has been blessed with a veritable, murmuration of Marples. Or would that be a murder of Marples? Or perhaps a marvelization of Marples, because it is quite marvelous to have so many characterizations to choose from.
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Carolyn Hart has written fifty-one mystery novels and won every major mystery-writing award at least once. Since the days when she wrote her first mystery, Hart has seen many changes in the publishing industry, and that’s where this story begins. “In the 60s and 70s,” said Hart, “New York ignored most American women mystery authors. Publishers thought the American mystery was written by American men with male protagonists and the traditional mystery was written by dead English ladies.”
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I’m a little envious of a couple of my friends who will be in London this Christmas season. I have been there during early spring and again in summer, but have always dreamed of having a British Christmas on the Isle itself. I consider making a plum pudding every year in December, but just don’t want to face boiling anything in cheesecloth. I’d love to have roast Christmas goose, Christmas punch, and play the Minister’s Cat with a witty group of Brits, but my dream has not materialized thus far.
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I spend every year literarily mixed up in murder. Notice I said “literarily,” not “literally.” Of the multitude of novels and short stories I read annually, relatively few are not of the mystery/detection/suspense variety, but then my fiction diet has always contained generous helpings of crime and mystification.
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Did you ever stop and think where we’d be today without Agatha Christie, Alfred Hitchcock, and Arthur Conan Doyle? We would never have had the pleasure of Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes or even Norman Bates’ company.
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It was 1928 and Agatha Christie was on her own, newly divorced and traveling to the Middle East on the Orient Express. It was a kind of test for herself; she wondered how she’d do without anyone else to help or keep her company. Once there, she met some new British friends, the Woolleys, who invited her to stay with them and made her promise to come visit again the next year.
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Matilda is a friendly, feisty furry ninja who loves to play and who is brimming with energy and personality who is 1 year old! She was found at the intersection of a busy road and the freeway and was scooped up by a Good Samaritan! She greets you with cute little meows and she loves to cuddle once she’d finished playing. She’s been fostered with other cats and she like to be the center of attention. Matilda is available from the Cat House on the Kings.
