Someone From the Past was originally published in 1958 and won the Crime Writer’s Association award for best crime novel of the year. Margot Bennett never wrote another crime novel. I wish she had because I enjoyed this quite a lot. Nancy and Sarah have been friends for years and their loves and relationships have become very intertwined. When Sarah receives threatening letters she asks Nancy to help her discover who is behind them. The letter says, ‘I haven’t forgotten what you did to me in the past. You don’t deserve to live, what’s a life worth to you? I’ve watched the road you’ve taken. Up to a point, any…

Those of you who live in the same hemisphere as me might have some questions about this photo. After all, it isn’t winter and yet I am reading a wintery book and knitting mittens for my daughter. It is going to be 80 degrees F tomorrow. What is wrong with me? What is wrong is that I am way behind on a lot of things these days. I actually read this book back in January but I read it while recovering from gallbladder surgery. I should have reviewed it right away but I didn’t and apparently the pain meds made me groggy because I don’t remember much about it. I…

I have had the paradoxical problem of having had lots of time to read recently but not much time to write about what I have been reading. I am using this post to catch up on some of that. I am afraid a good portion of this post is going to end up being a long list of quotes I enjoyed from the books. It is what it is. The first book is one I have been working my way through for a long time now. It is The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry. I first heard of this book through Claire at The Captive Reader. She and I…

The British Library has reprinted many thoroughly enjoyable mystery novels and I have appreciated every one they have sent me. I think, though, that some of my favorites are by E. C. R. Lorac who also wrote as Carol Carnac. Lorac wrote more than 70 novels under her several pen names and deserves to be more well-known. Her books are always well-written with a strong sense of place. Frequently, I am left wanting to read more about the characters even after the mystery is solved. Impact of Evidence: A Welsh Borders Mystery is set in the countryside in an area that is temporarily isolated due to heavy snow and then…

As of this writing, I have not made a single recipe out of any of these cookbooks. That does not prevent me from highly recommending them. All three of these are more than cookbooks in their separate ways. The first one is The Little House Cookbook: Frontier Foods from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Classic Stories by Barbara Walker. If, like me, you grew up totally obsessed with the Little House then this is the cookbook you need in your life. The Little House books are full of food references. Who can forget the huge meals Almanzo eats as a child on a farm in New York? The pies, the donuts, the…