Virtual Book Tour

Elaine Viets, one of my fellow members of DorothyL, had a stroke a few weeks ago. She was due to start the publicity tour for her new book soon. Since she won't be able to, some of us have decided to help out.
Here's my small contribution:


Don't send flowers,
buy the book!

Murder with Reservations: A Dead-End Job Mystery
By Elaine Viets
NAL Hardcover. $21.95
ISBN: 0-451-22111-7
On sale May 1, 2007
(preorders accepted any time by your favorite bookstores)

More information about the book can be found here:
http://www.elaineviets.com

Garden pictures

I posted a picture of one of my roses on DailyKos yesterday, but someone couldn't see it, so I said I'd post it here.


This is one of my climbers, Joseph's Coat.

And while I'm at it, here's a photo of one of my miniatures, Gingerbread Man.

I finally finished it!!

I'm pretty sure my ma isn't going to read my blog. And if no one tells her, she won't know about this until I give it to her.
Here it is, blocking:

Just finished reading....

What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman.

This is an assumed-identity novel in the vein of Mary Stewart's The Ivy Tree and Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar. Yes, this is as well-written and absorbing as those two classics.

The story begins when a young woman is involved in a car accident while driving into Baltimore. Although she flees the scene, she is found by police a little while later. But she has no ID, and when the police question her, she admits to being one of "the Bethany girls", two sisters who had been kidnapped 30 years earlier, and had never been found.

Is she really Heather Bethany? The circuitous path to the answer is absorbing and believable. I stayed up way too late finishing this book last night, and it was worth it!

Just finished reading....

Death Comes for the Fat Man by Reginald Hill.

The "Fat Man" of the title is indeed Andy Dalziel, who is critically injured in an explosion. Peter Pascoe is also injured, though not as badly, and once released from hospital he sets out to learn who put his partner in a coma.

The news topic of the day is terrorism, and that is the basis for Peter's investigation. But was it really terrorists who set the bomb, or some other type of vigilante group?

Not fully recovered from his own injuries, Peter gets himself assigned to a covert anti-terrorist force, to the disappointment of Sgt. Wield and Peter's wife, Ellie, who try unsuccessfully to convince Peter to take it easy after his own physical and emotional trauma.

I'm not going to reveal outright whether or not Andy dies, but I will say that the conclusion of the book is very satisfying, and gives hope that this is not the end of the series.