Saturday, July 31, 2021

The Mysterious Case of Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys by Carole Kismaric & Marvin Heiferman, 133 pages

 Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys have woven their spell of teen intrigue over more than 150 million readers, beginning in 1927 and continuing today. With its marvelous text and brilliant design, The Mysterious Case of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys uncovers why the fearless young crime fighters remain beloved icons.

From The Secret of the Old Clock to Rock 'n Roll Renegades, the popular teen sleuths have deduced and detected their way through hundreds of adventures. Although the plots have changed with the times, the books have always starred the same clean teens with justice and generosity in their hearts. Hip and nostalgic at the same time, this richly illustrated study tracks teen culture and values and provides surprising insights into the lives of kids over the past 70 years.




Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light by Helen Ellis, 176 pages

 When Helen Ellis and her lifelong friends arrive for a reunion on the Redneck Riviera they unpack more than their suitcases: stories of husbands and kids, lost parents and lost jobs powdered onion dip and photographs you have to hold by the edges; dirty jokes and sunscreen with SPF higher than they hair-sprayed their bangs senior year, and a bad mammogram. It's a diagnosis that scares them, but could never break their bond. Because women pushing fifty won't be pushed around.

In these twelve gloriously comic and moving essays, Helen Ellis dishes on married middle-age sex, sobs with a theater full of women as a psychic exorcises their sorrows, gets twenty shots of stomach bile to the neck to get rid of her double chin, and gathers up the courage to ask, Are you there, Menopause? It's Me, Helen.

A book that reads like the best cocktail party of your life, Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light is chockablock with fabulous characters: cat-lady plastic surgeons and waterpark Adonises, bridge ladies and poker players; platinum medallion fliers and Garage Sale Swindlers; forty-year-old divorces, fifty-year-old new moms and still-young octogenarians. Alive with the sensational humor and ferocious love for her friends that won Helen Ellis legions of fans, this book has a raw vulnerability and an emotional generosity that takes this acclaimed author to a whole new level of accomplishment.





Friday, July 30, 2021

Bite Me by Shelly Laurenston, 375 pages

 Livy Kowalski has no time for idiots. When you shapeshift into a honey badger, getting through life’s irritants is a finely honed skill. Until she gets stuck housing her nutso cousin and dealing with her dad’s untimely and unexplained demise.


That’s where Vic Barinov comes in—or his house does. Vic can’t step outside without coming back to find Livy devouring his honey stash and getting the TV remote sticky. It gets his animal instincts all riled up. But he’ll have to woo her at high speed: all hell is breaking loose, and Livy is leading the charge…
 



Thursday, July 29, 2021

Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt, 234 pages

 When the casket reached the front of the sanctuary, there was a loud cracking sound as the bottom fell out. And with a thump, down came Father Iggy.


From shoot-outs at funerals to dead men screaming and runaway corpses, undertakers have plenty of unusual stories to tell--and a special way of telling them.

In this macabre and moving compilation, funeral directors across the country share their most embarrassing, jaw-dropping, irreverent, and deeply poignant stories about life at death's door. Discover what scares them and what moves them to tears. Learn about rookie mistakes and why death sometimes calls for duct tape.

Enjoy tales of the dearly departed spending eternity naked from the waist down and getting bottled and corked--in a wine bottle. And then meet their families--the weepers, the punchers, the stolidly dignified, and the ones who deliver their dead mother in a pickup truck.

If there's one thing undertakers know, it's that death drives people crazy. These are the best "bodies of work" from America's darkest profession.



Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Calico Captive by Elizabeth George Speare, 274 pages

 In the year 1754, the stillness of Charlestown, New Hampshire, is shattered by the terrifying cries of an Indian raid. Young Miriam Willard, on a day that had promised new happiness, finds herself instead a captive on a forest trail, caught up in the ebb and flow of the French and Indian War.

It is a harrowing march north. Miriam can only force herself to the next stopping place, the next small portion of food, the next icy stream to be crossed. At the end of the trail waits a life of hard work and, perhaps, even a life of slavery. Mingled with her thoughts of Phineas Whitney, her sweetheart on his way to Harvard, is the crying of her sister’s baby, Captive, born on the trail.
Miriam and her companions finally reach Montreal, a city of shifting loyalties filled with the intrigue of war, and here, by a sudden twist of fortune, Miriam meets the prominent Du Quesne family, who introduce her to a life she has never imagined. Based on an actual narrative diary published in 1807, Calico Captive skillfully reenacts an absorbing facet of history.



The Beautiful by Renee Ahdieh, 425 pages

 In 1872, New Orleans is a city ruled by the dead. But to seventeen-year-old Celine Rousseau, New Orleans provides her a refuge after she's forced to flee her life as a dressmaker in Paris. Taken in by the sisters of the Ursuline convent along with six other girls, Celine quickly becomes enamored with the vibrant city from the music to the food to the soirées and—especially—to the danger. She soon becomes embroiled in the city's glitzy underworld, known as La Cour des Lions, after catching the eye of the group's leader, the enigmatic Sébastien Saint Germain. When the body of one of the girls from the convent is found in the lair of La Cour des Lions, Celine battles her attraction to him and suspicions about Sébastien's guilt along with the shame of her own horrible secret.


When more bodies are discovered, each crime more gruesome than the last, Celine and New Orleans become gripped by the terror of a serial killer on the loose—one Celine is sure has set her in his sights . . . and who may even be the young man who has stolen her heart. As the murders continue to go unsolved, Celine takes matters into her own hands and soon uncovers something even more shocking: an age-old feud from the darkest creatures of the underworld reveals a truth about Celine she always suspected simmered just beneath the surface.



Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Death in a Prairie House by William R. Drennan, 218 pages

  The most pivotal and yet least understood event of Frank Lloyd Wright’s celebrated life involves the brutal murders in 1914 of seven adults and children dear to the architect and the destruction by fire of Taliesin, his landmark residence, near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Unaccountably, the details of that shocking crime have been largely ignored by Wright’s legion of biographers—a historical and cultural gap that is finally addressed in William Drennan’s exhaustively researched Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders.

     In response to the scandal generated by his open affair with the proto-feminist and free love advocate Mamah Borthwick Cheney, Wright had begun to build Taliesin as a refuge and "love cottage" for himself and his mistress (both married at the time to others).
      Conceived as the apotheosis of Wright’s prairie house style, the original Taliesin would stand in all its isolated glory for only a few months before the bloody slayings that rocked the nation and reduced the structure itself to a smoking hull.
     Supplying both a gripping mystery story and an authoritative portrait of the artist as a young man, Drennan wades through the myths surrounding Wright and the massacre, casting fresh light on the formulation of Wright’s architectural ideology and the cataclysmic effects that the Taliesin murders exerted on the fabled architect and on his subsequent designs.



Monday, July 26, 2021

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, 209 pages

 The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflict between men and women.


As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.



A Soul of Steel by Carole Nelson Douglas, 395 pages

Alive and well despite the widely published accounts of her death,  diva Irene Adler and her dashing husband Godfrey Norton are taking coffee with their friend Nell Huxleigh in a Parisian sidewalk café when a stranger dressed in Oriental garb falls at their feet.  It is not Irene's beauty that has felled him, but a dose of poison--and even more surprisingly, the friends learn as he recovers that he is an Englishman!  The mysterious young man informs them that he is seeking a Dr. Watson who tended his wounds at the disastrous battle of Maiwand, a man whose life he says is now in mortal danger.
 
The hunt is on and their search will lead them to a command performance for the Empress of all the Russias and to Sarah Bernhardt, into a channel steamer and at last to the doorstep of  221 Baker Street, where they will discover deadly secrets both past and present. 



Thursday, July 22, 2021

She Be Damned by M.J. Tjia, 222 pages

 London, 1863: prostitutes in the Waterloo area are turning up dead, their sexual organs mutilated and removed. When another girl goes missing, fears grow that the killer may have claimed their latest victim.


The police are at a loss and so it falls to courtesan and professional detective, Heloise Chancey, to investigate.

With the assistance of her trusty Chinese maid, Amah Li Leen, Heloise inches closer to the truth. But when Amah is implicated in the brutal plot, Heloise must reconsider who she can trust, before the killer strikes again.

Tjia brings us a pacey and exciting murder mystery set in Victorian London. This historical crime thriller sees a young female detective work with the police to evade a violent killer.



Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Stoker's Wilde by Steven Hopstaken & Melissa Prusi, 374 pages

 Years before either becomes a literary legend, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde must overcome their disdain for one another to battle the Black Bishop, a mysterious madman wielding supernatural forces to bend the British Empire to his will. With the help of a European vampire expert, a spirited actress and an American businessman, our heroes fight werewolves, vampires and the chains of Victorian morality. The fight will take them through dark forests in Ireland, the upper-class London theater world and Stonehenge, where Bram and Oscar must stop a vampire cult from opening the gates of Hell.




Tuesday, July 20, 2021

The Jew Store by Stella Suberman, 457 pages

 In 1920, in small-town America, the ubiquitous dry goods store--suits and coats, shoes and hats, work clothes and school clothes, yard goods and notions--was usually owned by Jews and often referred to as "the Jew store." That's how Stella Suberman's father's store, Bronson's Low-Priced Store, in Concordia, Tennessee, was known locally. The Bronsons were the first Jews to ever live in that tiny town (1920 population: 5,318) of one main street, one bank, one drugstore, one picture show, one feed and seed, one hardware, one barber shop, one beauty parlor, one blacksmith, and many Christian churches. Aaron Bronson moved his family all the way from New York City to that remote corner of northwest Tennessee to prove himself a born salesman--and much more. Told by Aaron's youngest child, The Jew Store is that rare thing--an intimate family story that sheds new light on a piece of American history. Here is One Man's Family with a twist--a Jew, born into poverty in prerevolutionary Russia and orphaned from birth, finds his way to America, finds a trade, finds a wife, and sets out to find his fortune in a place where Jews are unwelcome. With a novelist's sense of scene, suspense, and above all, characterization, Stella Suberman turns the clock back to a time when rural America was more peaceful but no less prejudiced, when educated liberals were suspect, and when the Klan was threatening to outsiders. In that setting, she brings to life her remarkable father, a man whose own brand of success proves that intelligence, empathy, liberality, and decency can build a home anywhere. The Jew Store is a heartwarming--even inspiring--story.




Monday, July 19, 2021

In League With Sherlock Holmes edited by Laurie R. King & Leslie Klinger, 463 pages

 The latest entry in Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger’s popular Sherlock Holmes-inspired mystery series, featuring fifteen talented authors and a multitude of new cases for Arthur Conan Doyle’s most acclaimed detective.

Sherlock Holmes has not only captivated readers for more than a century and a quarter, he has fascinated writers as well. Almost immediately, the detective’s genius, mastery, and heroism became the standard by which other creators measured their creations, and the friendship between Holmes and Dr. Watson served as a brilliant model for those who followed Doyle. Not only did the Holmes tales influence the mystery genre but also tales of science-fiction, adventure, and the supernatural. It is little wonder, then, that when the renowned Sherlockians Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger invited their writer-friends and colleagues to be inspired by the Holmes canon, a cornucopia of stories sprang forth, with more than sixty of the greatest modern writers participating in four acclaimed anthologies.

Now, King and Klinger have invited another fifteen masters to become In League with Sherlock Holmes. The contributors to the pair’s next volume, due out in December 2020, include award-winning authors of horror, thrillers, mysteries, westerns, and science-fiction, all bound together in admiration and affection for the original stories. Past tales have spanned the Victorian era, World War I, World War II, the post-war era, and contemporary America and England. They have featured familiar figures from literature and history, children, master sleuths, official police, unassuming amateurs, unlikely protagonists, even ghosts and robots. Some were new tales about Holmes and Watson; others were about people from Holmes’s world or admirers of Holmes and his methods. The resulting stories are funny, haunting, thrilling, and surprising. All are unforgettable. The new collection promises more of the same!



Murder in the Locked Library by Ellery Adams, 307 pages

 With her twins, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, back in school, Jane Steward can finally focus on her work again--managing Storyton Hall, and breaking ground on the resort's latest attraction: a luxurious, relaxing spa named in honor of Walt Whitman. But when the earth is dug up to start laying the spa's foundation, something else comes to the surface--a collection of unusual bones and the ragged remnants of a very old book. The attendees of the Rare Book Conference are eager to assist Jane with this unexpected historical mystery--until a visitor meets an untimely end in the Henry James Library. As the questions--and suspects--start stacking up, Jane will have to uncover a killer before more unhappy endings ensue . . .




Friday, July 16, 2021

The Ape Who Guards the Balance by Elizabeth Peters, 376 pages

 The Ape Who Guards the Balance begins in 1907 in England where Amelia is attending a suffragettes' rally outside the home of Mr. Geoffrey Romer of the House of Commons. It seems Romer is one of the few remaining private collectors of Egyptian antiquities, and a series of bizarre events at the protest soon embroil Amelia in grave personal danger. Suspecting that the Master Criminal, Sethos, is behind their problems, the Emerson Peabody's hasten to Egypt to continue their studies in the Valley of Kings where they soon acquire a papyrus of the Book of the Dead.


As with past seasons, however, their archaeological expedition is interrupted. The murdered body of a woman is found in the Nile. Ramses, Radcliffe, and Amelia all have their theories as to the origin of the crime, but their own lives might soon be at stake if the cult of Thoth and their ancient book is, indeed, involved.



Thursday, July 15, 2021

Behind Every Great Man by Marlene Wagman-Geller, 356 pages

 Who Said Men Get to Monopolize the Glory?

Discover the Little Known Women Who Have Put the World's Alpha Males on the Map.

From ancient times to the present, men have gotten most of the good ink. Yet standing just outside the spotlight are the extraordinary, and overlooked, wives and companions who are just as instrumental in shaping the destinies of their famous—and infamous—men.

This witty, illuminating book reveals the remarkable stories of forty captivating females, from Constance Lloyd (Mrs. Oscar Wilde) to Carolyn Adams (Mrs. Jerry Garcia), who have stood behind their legendary partners and helped to humanize them, often at the cost of their own careers, reputations, and happiness. Through fame and its attendant ills—alcoholism, infidelity, mental illness, divorce, and even attempted murder—these powerful women quietly propelled their men to the top and changed the course of history.

Meet the Untold Half of History, Including:
•Alma Reville (Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock)
•Elena Diakonova (Mrs. Salvador Dali)
•Winifred Madikizela (Mrs. Nelson Mandela)
•Ann Charteris (Mrs. Ian Fleming, a.k.a. Mrs. James Bond)
•Ruth Alpern (Mrs. Bernie Maddoff)

And 35 more!




Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered by Karen Kilgariff & Georgia Hardstark, 300 pages

 Sharing never-before-heard stories ranging from their struggles with depression, eating disorders, and addiction, Karen and Georgia irreverently recount their biggest mistakes and deepest fears, reflecting on the formative life events that shaped them into two of the most followed voices in the nation.


In Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered, Karen and Georgia focus on the importance of self-advocating and valuing personal safety over being ‘nice’ or ‘helpful.’ They delve into their own pasts, true crime stories, and beyond to discuss meaningful cultural and societal issues with fierce empathy and unapologetic frankness.



Monday, July 12, 2021

Mr. Finchley Discovers His England by Victor Canning, 352 pages

 Mr Edgar Finchley, unmarried clerk, aged 45, is told to take a holiday for the first time in his life. He decides to go to the seaside. But Fate has other plans in store…

From his abduction by a cheerful crook, to his smuggling escapade off the south coast, the timid but plucky Mr Finchley is plunged into a series of the most astonishing and extraordinary adventures.

His rural adventure takes him gradually westward through the English countryside and back, via a smuggling yacht, to London.

This gentle comedy trilogy was a runaway bestseller on first publication in the 1930s and retains a timeless appeal today. It has been dramatized twice for BBC Radio, with the 1990 series regularly repeated.




The Hidden Staircase by Carolyn Keene, 182 pages

 Nancy Drew is alarmed when Nathan Gombet threatens her father. Gombet sold a piece of land for a railroad bridge through Carson Drew and now believes that he was cheated.

Meanwhile, valuable objects are disappearing from rooms in the Turnbull mansion even while the Turnbull sisters, Rosemary and Florette, are at home in their locked house. Having heard about her reputation for solving mysteries, the sisters invite Nancy Drew to stay in the mansion and discover the thief.

In seeking to solve the mysterious happenings in an old stone mansion, Nancy uses her courage and powers of deduction and tackles a situation that would have appalled a far older person.



Friday, July 9, 2021

Oh! To Be in England by H. E. Bates, 101 pages

 With a letter announcing the imminent arrival of Madame Dupont, Pop and Ma Larkin learn that little Oscar and Blenheim - are to be christened. Pop, who needs no excuse to open a few bottles and host the perfick party, rushes out and buys a fun fair to celebrate. But there are one or two gatecrashers even Pop hadn't counted on turning up.




Just a Simple Wedding by Lynn Johnston, 119 pages

From that first spark to those unexpected senior moments, For Better or For Worse follows the life of the Patterson family through the perils and pitfalls of everyday life. In good times and in bad, Johnston captures family life, wedded bliss, and grandparenting, in a completely unique light.

In Just A Simple Wedding, now grandparents, Elly and John adapt to a smaller home, while son Michael and his family spread out in the old Patterson house. Elizabeth and Anthony's romance is rekindled bringing things full circle.




Home Sweat Home by Lynn Johnston, 127 pages

 In Home Sweat Home, moves are afoot aplenty. John and Elly downsize to a new home and Mike and Deanna buy the family homestead to raise their children as a new generation fills the Patterson legacy. Romantic moves abound, too, as Elizabeth has her heart broken only to have it won back by Anthony. April turns sixteen and will soon by driving-which is driving her parents crazy.




Senior's Discount by Lynn Johnston, 143 pages

 Senior's Discount: A For Better or For Worse Collection follows John and Elly as retirement looms, Grandpa Jim celebrates his 85th birthday and suffers a stroke, Mike and Deanna adjust to the demands of parenthood, Elizabeth accepts a teaching position that brings her back home, and April strains for more and more independence.




A Little of What You Fancy by H. E. Bates, 153 pages

 'Teetotal!' Ma said. 'It's a libel. He'll never live it down. He'll never be able to hold his head up again. Whatever will people think? What's he going to say when anybody asks him to have one?' ' 'No,' 'said Dr Conner. 'You'll have to strap him down,' Ma said. 'You'll have to put the handcuffs on.' And so after a mild heart-attack - caused by rather too much of what you fancy - Pop Larkin finds himself off the booze, off the good food and off the good life generally, much to his own and everyone's else's horror and upset. And while Ma tries to find ways around 'doctor's orders', young Primrose is finding her own way round a rather flustered - not to say flushed - Mr Candy...




Thursday, July 8, 2021

Teaching...Is a Learning Experience! by Lynn Johnston, 144 pages

 Lynn Johnston's award-winning For Better or For Worse comic strip is the world's most popular strip in which characters evolve through age and experience, rather than remaining frozen in time. Fans appreciate that the daily doings of the Patterson family often closely resemble their own.


* Featuring more than 43 weeks of strips, with Sundays in color, this collection features Elizabeth's developing teaching skills working in a northern First Nation's community, Mike and Deanna's move to Mrs. Saltzman's upstairs apartment, April's confrontation of teenage issues like acne and self-image, while John and Elly face middle-age ailments and the possibility of retirement.



She's Turning Into One of Them! by Lynn Johnston, 136 pages

 In 1991, I wanted another baby," writes creator Lynn Johnston. "Since it wasn't possible to do in reality, I made one up! Baby April appeared April 1st of that year and has added a great deal of creative fun to the strip. . . ."

The Pattersons have never exactly been all "sweetness and light." As any For Better or For Worse fan can attest, this entertaining family endures just as many of life's downs as ups, but they always seem to keep moving forward. Now, however, parents Elly and John experience life in all directions as their youngest daughter, April, becomes a teenager!

In true For Better or For Worse style, the best-selling strip examines all the good and bad of "teenagedom," while keeping it in context of the rest of the family's other joys and challenges. Readers will smile knowingly as John and Elly try to decipher teen-speak, deal with their own protective parental tendencies, and struggle to give their maturing daughter the independence she wants and needs. Then just when the wide, wide world of 13-year-olds is at its most intense, everything from fired coworkers to another new grandbaby vie for everyone's attention.

This collection of daily and Sunday strips demonstrates once again that Johnston's ability to intertwine the lives of all her characters with the reader's own is remarkable. She's Turning into One of Them! will have them laughing, crying, and shaking their heads in the best For Better or For Worse fashion. Life? Bring it on!



Excuse Me While I Slip Into Someone More Comfortable by Eric Poole, 275 pages

 In 1977, Eric Poole is a talented high school trumpet player with one working ear, the height-to-weight ratio of a hat rack, a series of annoyingly handsome bullies, and a mother irrationally devoted to Lemon Pledge. But who he wants to be is a star…ANY star. With equal parts imagination, flair, and delusion, Eric proceeds to emulate a series of his favorite celebrities, like Barry Manilow, Halston, Tommy Tune, and Shirley MacLaine, in an effort to become the man he’s meant to be—that is, anyone but himself.


As he moves through his late teens and early twenties in suburban St. Louis, he casts about for an appropriate outlet for his talents. Will he be a trumpet soloist? A triple-threat actor/singer/dancer? A fashion designer in gritty New York City?

Striving to become the son who can finally make his parents proud, Eric begins to suspect that discovering his personal and creative identities can only be accomplished by admitting who he really is. Picking up at the end of his first acclaimed memoir, Where’s My Wand?, Poole’s journey from self-delusion to acceptance is simultaneously hysterical, heartfelt, and inspiring.



Tuesday, July 6, 2021

Rare Books and Royal Collectors: Memoirs of an Antiquarian Bookseller by Maurice L. Ettinghausen, 220 pages

 The adventures, twists, and turns of finding old books, manuscripts, maps, and related odd items... and moving them to the libraries, museums, and collections where they would be preserved and protected: That was Ettinghausen's international life and work for about 60 years, beginning just after 1900. Being multilingual and trained in classics and history, he helped to re/discover much that had been lost or hidden for generations, or even centuries. His sources and clients included royalty, the wealthy, the savants, and a few undefinables. I was especially interested in his involvement with the Huntingdon Library and the Codex Sinaiticus.




Never Wink at a Worried Woman by Lynn Johnston, 128 pages

 In Never Wink at a Worried Woman, life is progressing for each character. Elly and John tenuously think of retirement while still being preoccupied parents of a preteen. Michael and Deanna grow into their roles as new parents while Michael's career gets a new boost. Elizabeth takes more steps to adulthood, by beginning her student teaching and facing the fact that Anthony is marrying another. April is racing to turn 13, busy with her band and also helping out at Lilliput's, where she makes a painful discovery about a coworker. Add in Grampa Jim's quest to maintain his aging dignity and baby Meredith's burgeoning curiosity, and you get a full dose of life.




Monday, July 5, 2021

Black Swan, White Raven edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, 366 pages

 In their fourth collection of original adult fairy tales written by some of the premier names in literature today, World Fantasy Award-winning editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling transport readers deep into an enchanted forest with a stunning array of magical stories - bringing us the princes and ogres, charms and bewitchings, castles, cottages and secret gardens of fervent imagination.




Striking a Chord by Lynn Johnston, 128 pages

 Johnston's acclaimed strip centers on the everyday life of a Canadian family, humorously portraying both the good and the not-so-good events that are shared by the Patterson clan and their extended family of friends and neighbors. Parents Elly and John; children Michael and his wife, Deanna, Elizabeth, and April; Grandpa Jim; and dogs Edgar and Dixie all live out the joys and complexities of modern life. From parents apprehensively facing their fifties and a young couple tackling new parenthood to a young woman confronting career choices and a girl's loss of a beloved pet, Striking a Chord brings compassion, understanding, and a lighthearted touch to every human interaction.


This collection includes cartoons from November 2002 through July 2003.



Reality Check by Lynn Johnston, 136 pages

 They say life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. And in the latest update of the Patterson family, life is ?happening? and a few new realities have set in. ? Still adjusting to their status as newlyweds, Mike and Deanna find that two cannot live as cheaply as one, and then learn an unexpected baby is on the way. ? After discovering that her live-in boyfriend was cheating on her, Elizabeth swaps steady date for blank slate. ? And Grandpa Jim catches everyone (including himself) off-guard when he and Iris elope to England. Life, it seems, always has a new surprise in store. Lynn Johnston has been bringing life to the Patterson clan for nearly 25 years, and for readers of more than 2,000 newspapers around the world, life just wouldn't seem right without her daily dispatch. This is the magic of For Better of For Worse: it is real life at its most realistic. Like real life, it is unpredictable, enlightening, heartwarming, honest, sometimes sad, and often very funny. Reality Check gives readers more of what they've come to expect from Johnston's beloved cartoon: a sense of connection, a shared intimacy with a family as familiar as their own, and a front-row seat to the enduring, endearing comic saga called life. Like the many For Better or For Worse collections that have preceded it, Reality Check is sure to resonate with fans around the world.




With This Ring by Lynn Johnston, 144 pages

 It was a big year for new relationships in the Patterson household. Wanting to avoid an elaborate, expensive wedding, Michael and Deanna married in secret and moved in together. Meanwhile, her mother continued to engineer a huge social affair, which threatened to upset an already delicate relationship between the two families. When Elly helped her reluctant daughter-in-law choose a dress, it brought them closer together-as confidantes and friends-and in the end, the wedding was beautiful. Meanwhile, Grandpa Jim began a slow, sweet courtship with Iris, whom he met at the Wednesday night Legion dance, and Elizabeth moved in with her boyfriend, Eric. She soon suspected he was not her knight in shining armor, and Anthony, the boy Elly and John always hoped Elizabeth would marry, becomes engaged to someone else.




Saturday, July 3, 2021

Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food by Jon Krampner, 298 pages

 In "Creamy and Crunchy" are the stories of Jif, Skippy, Peter Pan; the plight of black peanut farmers; the resurgence of natural or old-fashioned peanut butter; the reasons why Americans like peanut butter better than (almost) anyone else; the five ways that today's product is different from the original; the role of peanut butter in fighting Third World hunger; and the Salmonella outbreaks of 2007 and 2009, which threatened peanut butter's sacred place in the American cupboard.


To a surprising extent, the story of peanut butter is the story of twentieth-century America, and Jon Krampner writes its first popular history, rich with anecdotes and facts culled from interviews, research, travels in the peanut-growing regions of the South, personal stories, and recipes.



Graduation: A Time for Change by Lynn Johnston, 136 pages

 For Better or For Worse's Patterson family has grown and grown up for decades on the comics page. Facing real-life issues with a continuously humorous, often poignant, sometimes sentimental stance, For Better or For Worse delivers storylines that reflect the life moments and family challenges that most people face. In this collection, Graduation: A Time for Change, life is transforming for each family member and their widening circle of friends. Elly and John face middle age and the decision to ask Elly's dad to move in. As Michael graduates from the safe confines of university, Elizabeth begins her college years with a surprising roommate. The pleasures of being the number one kid sometimes escape the often-lonely April. Throw in the engagement of Michael and Deanna and add another dog to liven up the household and you get a lot of laughs and a bit of chaos--just like real life.




Just One More Hug by Lynn Johnston, 128 pages

 Cartoons take a humorous look at the Patterson family paying taxes, celebrating the holidays, hiring a new baby sitter, visiting a farm, and preparing for school.




Family Business by Lynn Johnston, 144 pages

 Gleaned from the For Better or For Worse syndicated strip, this collection embodies the ups and downs of everyday family life.