November final

INCONTINENT ON THE CONTINENT: JANE CHRISTMAS non fiction

Product Description
Since the beginning of time, mothers and daughters have had notoriously fraught relationships. “Show me a mother who says she has a good or great relationship with her daughter,” Jane Christmas writes, “and I’ll show you a daughter who is in therapy trying to understand how it all went so horribly wrong.”

To smooth over five decades of constant clashing, Christmas takes her arthritic, incontinent, and domineering mother, Valeria—a cross between Queen Victoria and Hyacinth Bucket of the British comedy Keeping Up Appearances—on a tour of Italy.

Neither has been to Italy before, but both are fans of ancient art, architecture, and history. Will gazing at the fruits of the Italian Renaissance be enough to spark a renaissance in their relationship? As they wander along the winding Amalfi Coast, traverse St. Peter’s Square in Rome, and sample the wines of Tuscany—walkers, biscuits, shawls, and medications in tow—they revisit the bickering and bitterness of years past and reassess who they are and how they might reconcile their differences.

Unflinching and frequently hilarious, this book will speak to all women who have tried to make friends with their mothers.

SEAWEED ON THE ROCKS: STANLEY EVANS

Product Description
In this fourth mystery of the "Seaweed" series, Victoria neighbourhood cop Silas Seaweed is as always sensitive to his Coast Salish culture, but when he's confronted by a ten-foot-tall bear on a marsh on the city's outskirts, he suspects that this is no creature from the unknown world but someone out to con him. And Silas is right, but his attempts to unmask the bear lead him into a labyrinth of blackmail and murder. Along the way he investigates a homeless people's sit-in at Beacon Hill Park, a burglary in the office of hypnotherapist Dr. Lawrence Trew, and the barely legal world of small-time hood Titus Silverman. And whenever Silas is not busy finding corpses, he's on the lookout for a missing artist and two eight-year-old runaways.

THE MURDER STONE: CHARLES TODD

How well do we really know the people we love? Maybe never well enough, to judge by the example of Francesca Hatton, the young British heiress around whom Charles Todd constructs his first standalone historical suspense tale, The Murder Stone. Leaving London and her volunteer work with wounded World War I soldiers, Francesca--"the last of the Hattons ... a long and distinguished line"--returns in 1916 to River's End, the rural estate where her powerful and beloved grandfather is dying of a stroke. Francis Hatton's passing hits Francesca hard, especially coming so soon after the demise of her five male cousins, all of them "mown down with their dreams of glory" in battle. But her mourning is interrupted by multiple mysteries. Why did Francis insist in his will that the Murder Stone, a large and cryptically named white rock in his garden, be moved to the farthest corner of Scotland? Why had he concealed his ownership of two other, distant estates? And could there be any truth in the charge, leveled by an invalided soldier, that Francis long ago "abducted and killed his mother, then buried the body where it couldn't be found"? Forced by new revelations to rebalance her faith in the man who'd taken her in as an orphaned child, while simultaneously contending with a random sniper who's invaded the neighborhood of River's End, Francesca struggles to build a new future, even as her trust in the "facts" of her past crumbles.

WATCHERS OF TIME: CHARLES TODD

From Library Journal
The cliffhanger ending of Todd's Legacy of the Dead (LJ 8/00) left Inspector Ian Rutledge on the brink of death. In this follow-up, Rutledge is recovering from his gunshot wound while trying to investigate the murder of a parish priest in the small town of Osterley. Rutledge is skeptical that Father James's death is a simple case of robbery gone wrong. Was he murdered because of something he knew or had seen? Rutledge's inquiries are hampered both by the local authorities and by townsfolk unwilling to talk. With the ever-present voice of Hamish, a dead Scottish soldier, in his head, Rutledge must set aside his own problems to find out the truth. A gifted writer, Todd has once again created an intriguing mystery peopled with memorably unique characters. The depth of emotion that he expresses is truly remarkable. Highly recommended for all libraries.

A FEARSOME DOUBT: CHARLES TODD

From Publishers Weekly
This brilliant and gripping whodunit may well be the best of Todd's six Rutledge novels (Watchers of Time, etc.). Featuring as its protagonist a Scotland Yard inspector who is among the walking wounded after his WWI traumas, the series has always been compelling. This time, Todd ratchets up the psychological pressures by raising doubts about the one aspect of Rutledge's life that he has felt secure about: his prewar accomplishments as a policeman. The widow of a convicted killer, who went to the gallows for preying on the infirm elderly, confronts him with a missing jewelry piece found in a neighbor's possession, suggesting that Rutledge helped execute an innocent man. Reopening the inquiry requires caution not only because of the soul-searching it provokes, which threatens to shatter the inspector's tenuous grasp on sanity, but also because the case contributed to his superior's promotion. This old mystery becomes only one of the puzzles Rutledge must resolve when he's ordered to investigate the poisoning deaths of three disabled soldiers. The solutions to both sets of crimes are logical, satisfying and unexpected, but it is the character of Rutledge himself-intuitive, exquisitely sensitive to mood, the emotions of others and the significance of what is left unsaid-that makes this both an outstanding historical mystery and literate period fiction.


5 books

month end: 10
to date: 109