These are festive times, Beloved Patrons…whether you observe Christmas, Hannukah, Pancha Ganapati, Yalda, or any of the myriad other celebrations taking place this month, we sincerely hope they are happy ones.

Me, personally?  I tend to get pretty excited about Hogswatch, which Terry Pratchett recorded in his Discworld novels (for those of you who haven’t yet read these glorious books, Hogswatch is a creepier version of Christmas, with a rather skeletal figure being pulled by a bunch of wild hogs.  The celebration of the festival began when a kind king was passing a cottage and heard 3 sisters weeping because they had nothing to eat. The king took pity and threw a bag of sausages at them…and knocked one out, but no one minded terribly).

 

 

Riot Most Uncouth:  I have to say, if there is one historical character that I would not have posited as the hero of detective novel, Lord Byron would have been very near the top of the list.  But Daniel Friedman (author of the award-winning Don’t Ever Get Old) seems to have embraced all the wild eccentricities of his larger-than-life protagonist, and concocted a mystery that has been earned a number of rave reviews.  The story itself is set in 1807, when Byron was a “student” at Trinity College, Cambridge (and by “student”, I mean drinking all day, seducing the wives of his professors, and parading around with his pet bear), and when no regular police force was in place to solve crimes.  So when a young woman is found murdered in a local boarding house, Byron decides to prove his limitless genius by solving the case.  Library Journal cheers, “This intricately plotted and well-researched historical series debut…blends sprightly dialog and compelling, well-drawn characters for a pleasurable read that is sure to enthrall English lit majors as well as readers who enjoy the Regency mysteries of Kate Ross and Rosemary Stevens.”

Tall, Dark, and Wicked: The second book in Madeline Hunter’s Wicked Trilogy breaks with a number of traditions in historic romances–and honestly, seems to be all the better for it.  Her hero, though the son of a duke, is also a skilled prosecutor, who finds his whole life changed by the daughter of the man he is charged with sending to the gallows.  Her heroine is fiercely independent, surprisingly tall (yay!) and fiercely clever, particularly when she realizes that the one man she thought would fight to save her father’s life turns out to be the prosecutor in his case.  Their battle of wits is an impressive one, and, as Booklist gleefully notes, “Hunter’s effortlessly elegant writing exudes a wicked sense of wit, her characterization is superbly subtle, and the sexual chemistry she cooks up between her deliciously independent heroine and delightfully sexy hero is pure passion.”

The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse: An Extraordinary Edwardian Case of Deception and Intrigue: With a title like that, there might not be much more to say about Piu Marie Eatwell’s historic true crime book–but we’ll certainly try.  In 1898, an elderly widow, Anna Maria Druce, publicly claimed that the merchant T. C. Druce, her late father-in-law, had actually been the ridiculously wealthy 5th Duke of Portland, and that he had faked his death.  She demanded that his tomb be opened to prove the reality of his identity.  Eatwell’s narrative touches not only on this bizarre case, but also the sensational newspapers of the time, that blew the story up into a national scandal, and takes us on a tour of the chillingly fascinating cemeteries of London, to probe the secrets of Druce and his family’s secrets.  This book is one of Library Journal’s Fall Picks, and they remark that it’s “Downton Abbey meets The Addams Family…a delightfully offbeat history of a bizarre Edwardian legal case that…reads like a Wilkie Collins gothic novel, but at times truth is stranger than fiction.”

Blood Salt Water: Denise Mina’s fifth mystery featuring the fascinating DI Alex Morrow begins with a wealthy, fiery, and beautiful Spanish businesswoman who vanishes from her Glasgow home without a trace.  Assigned to the case, Morrow can’t help but be fascinated by the traces left behind of the complex Roxanna Fuentecilla.  But when she traces Fuentecilla to the sleepy seaside village of Helensburgh, she finds her case growing ever more complex.  With plenty of secrets hidden behind picturesque facades, bands of gangsters and bullies, Alex Morrow quickly realizes that this case is far bigger than one missing person–and that the chance to crack the case is quickly slipping away….The Washington Post tantalizingly said of this installment, “An atmospheric, chilling thriller…The power of Mina’s writing is such that she can transport readers from placidity to violent pandemonium in the space of a paragraph.”

Drawing Blood: Underground journalist, artist, muse, and activist, Molly Crabapple had a front-row seat to the decadence and hubris of New York in 2008, and to the financial collapse that resulted, and uses her own experience as a springboard to capture snapshots of a changing world–from the Occupy Wall Street movement to Guantanamo Bay, from her own drawings to the mass movements that changed the world.  This is a book that is both personal and enormously significant, and offers a fascinating, and wonderfully unique perspective on the world around us all.  Booklist  hailed this work “Jaw dropping, awe inspiring, and not afraid to shock, Crabapple is a punk Joan Didion, a young Patti Smith with paint on her hands, a twenty-first century Sylvia Plath. There’s no one else like her; prepare to be blown away by both the words and pictures.”