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Currently Reading

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I read two cozies, plus another Jane Yellowrock, this past week.

I continue with the Marcia Talley series – except I accidentally skipped number 3 and had to go back. I am glad I did.

In Occasion for Revenge, Hannah’s father begins dating a woman named Pauline, a woman who both Hannah and her sister Ruth despise. They are also dealing with their father’s alcoholism. (I know this sounds heavy but Talley has a light touch.) Then Pauline is found murdered and Hannah’s father disappears. Recommended.

Doggone Death is the second by S.A. Kazlo.

At a hooker’s workshop (that’s rug hooking), a difficult woman dies in Jamies’s arms. So, she is instantly suspected of the murder. Of course, she begins investigating. The murderer tries to warn our intrepid heroine off, including by poisoning her beloved dog Porkchop. Fun and frothy.

Finally, I read the next in the Jane Yellowrock series, Blood Trade.

Jane heads to Natchez on a job for the Master of that City. Naturaleza, vampires who treat humans like cattle and drain them, are killing humans. When Jane arrives, she finds these vampires are unlike any she’s ever seen before. Silver does not kill them and they scuttle like insects. What is going on?

Jane is also dealing with an appeal from an old friend who grew up in the children’s home with her. Misha’s daughter is desperately ill with leukemia. Misha risks meeting with vampires, some of them the Naturaleza, and now she has disappeared, leaving her daughter in Jane’s care.

Another page turner!Occasion

Cosmetics

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Lydia, of the Will and Lydia Rees mystery series, does not wear cosmetics of any kind. Although the Colonial periods both men and women boasting fine white wigs and patches, the Federalist culture viewed women who wore ‘paint’ as loose. Lydia, as a former Shaker, would be even more reluctant to wear any kind of cosmetic.

Throughout human history, however, people have worn various forms of paint for adornment. Even war paint is adornment of a sort, although used to strike terror in onlookers instead of awe at their beauty.

I thought of this as I researched my next series, a historical murder mystery set in Bronze Age Crete.

Cosmetics were commonly used in the Ancient World: Egypt, the Middle Ages, and Asia. In Egypt and Mesopotamia, we know from hieroglyphics, murals, frescos and more, they were used by both men and women and all classes. Kohl was the most commonly used cosmetic. Although kohl was the major cosmetic in Crete, in Egypt eye paint was also important. Especially green eye paint. That was made of malachite a copper carbonate pigment. Kohl was made from galena, a dark gray ore and crushed charcoal. Both the malachite and the galena were crushed and missed with gum or water to make a paste. Cosmetics were so important cosmetic palettes were found buried in gold with the deceased’s grave goods.

Kohl was used for lining the eyes, like modern eyeliner. It offered health benefits in the form of protection from disease, bugs and sun rays. Red ochre clay was ground up and mixed with water to create a paste to paint on the lips and cheeks.

This was a lot less dangerous than the white lead women used to paint their faces in Elizabethan times. Lead is toxic so these women were gradually poisoning themselves. (Medieval women also plucked the front hair on their heads also to give themselves a high forehead.

The ban on cosmetics for “virtuous” women continued through the eighteen hundreds but returned as a fashion imperative during the nineteen twenties when so many other changes happened. Women have worn cosmetics, especially lipstick, since. (Lipstick, BTW, used to be made with the blood of small cochineal beetles to give that scarlet shade.)

I wear eyebrow pencil to darken my pale eyebrows, mascara for my blond lashes and eyeshadow, continuing the history of eye paint since the Bronze Age.

Murder, Sweet Murder Review

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So pleased to receive this wonderful review from Missi Stockwell Martin.

Murder, Sweet Murder (Will Rees Mysteries #11) by Eleanor Kuhns

Will Rees accompanies his wife to Boston to help clear her estranged father’s name in this gripping mystery set in the early nineteenth century.

January, 1801. When Lydia’s estranged father is accused of murder, Will Rees escorts her to Boston to uncover the truth. Marcus Farrell is believed to have murdered one of his workers, a boy from Jamaica where he owns a plantation. Marcus swears he’s innocent. However, a scandal has been aroused by his refusal to answer questions and accusations he bribed officials.

As Will and Lydia investigate, Marcus’s brother, Julian, is shot and killed. This time, all fingers point towards James Morris, Lydia’s brother. Is someone targeting the family? Were the family quarreling over the family businesses and someone lashed out? What’s Marcus hiding and why won’t he accept help?

With the Farrell family falling apart and their reputation in tatters, Will and Lydia must solve the murders soon. But will they succeed before the murderer strikes again?  (Summary via Goodreads)

Readers of the Will Rees Mystery series by Eleanor Kuhns are going to go crazy, in a good way, when they start reading the eleventh book, Murder, Sweet Murder……Rees and his wife Lydia along with two of their children are heading to Boston to visit Lydia’s family.

In Murder, Sweet Murder Lydia, who left home many years ago when her father had tried to marry her off to a gentlemen that she did not love, is returning after receiving a letter from her younger sister asking for help.  It seems that their father Marcus was accused of murder and Cordelia, Cordy, knows that Will and Lydia have helped solve crimes in their hometown in Maine so they are the obvious choice to clear Marcus’s name.  Unfortunately when they arrive at Lydia’s old home, they are not as welcomed as they had hoped.  First no one other than Cordy wants an investigation, it seems the case has somehow been swept under the rug, and second the family is not so warm to accepting Will into the family.  When Lydia left she didn’t keep in touch with anyone other than Cordy so they are not aware of Will as her husband and of her children.

Will and Lydia are not deterred and begin their investigation into the young man’s death.  It is known that he is from Jamaica, a plantation that Marcus owns, but not much more is known. He was killed in the middle of the night outside a tavern that was closed, no witnesses that they are aware of and not much to go on…so Will decides to start at the place of death and go from there……

Every time that they think they have a clue or a fact to the murder, something happens that changes their minds.  Once they start investigating they learn of more people that could possibly have committed the murder and when they find out that the person killed isn’t who everyone thinks, they are lead down another disturbing road.  And when someone else is murdered in exactly the same way as the first person, Will and Lydia are more determined to find the killer !!

Readers will be drawn into the story immediately !!  Readers will love that Will and Lydia are traveling to Boston allowing us to get to know Lydia’s family and the secrets that have kept her away for all those years.  There will be members of the family you will fall in love with instantly and there will be some you will hate as soon as you meet them….but you will enjoy the time that you spend in Boston and will be just as glad as Will is when they leave.

Review by Missi M.

Currently Reading

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Since last Thursday, I have read only one book: Blood Cross, the second Jane Yellowrock.

Jane is still in New Orleans, searching for the vampire who is creating new young rogues. (In this world, the newly risen have be controlled i.e. chained in a basement, for ten years until they regain their sanity. The young and newly created are attacking humans and vamps indiscriminately.

After Jane’s friend Molly is attacked and her children kidnapped, Jane realizes she is dealing with something new: witch vampires.

Another exciting read.

Currently Reading

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Because I blogged about the Albany Book Fair (tremendous fun) on my usual day, I will do my review of my most recent books now.

The first book I read was John Dedakis’ Bullet in your Chamber.

I unfortunately read this series out of order so I already knew something terrible had happened. I had to go back and fill in. Really excellent, but pretty dark.

Lark Chadwick, finally happy in a relationship, comes across a plot to blackmail one of the president’s advisors into pressing the president into approving a drone law. There were so many possible murderers, it was hard to identify the guilty party. Several deaths later, and problems in Lark’s relationship, make for a captivating read.

Lighter but still fascinating was This Enemy Town by Marcia Talley.

I am gradually reading my way through all the Hannah Ives mysteries. In book 5, another cancer survivor asks Hannah to help with the naval academy’s production of Sweeny Todd. Feeling she cannot refuse, Hannah agrees. While there, she sees Jennifer Goodall, the woman who’d accused Hannah’s husband of sexual harassment and almost destroyed both his career and their marriage. Hannah confronts her and when Jennifer’s body is discovered, Hannah is arrested as the prime suspect.

I did not see the final twist coming and I am now on to number six.

I took a break from mysteries and read Skinwalker by Faith Hunter.

It came up on my Amazon feed as something I might enjoy. And I really did. Jane Yellowrock is a vampire hunter in a world when the ‘vamps’ have been outed and are now part of the human world. A rogue vampire is terrorizing New Orleans, draining humans and vampires alike.

Well-written and full of action. It reminded me of the Thomas Perry Jane Whitehead mysteries with a badass woman, except with an added paranormal aspect. Another series I will continue reading.

Finally, I began reading a nonfiction book by Matthew Green: Shadowlands; Britain’s Lost Cities and Vanished Villages.

Although I haven’t finished this, I read the first chapter and was immediately hooked. Skara Brae is an old old village, estimated as about 5000 years old, so older than the Egyptian pyramids and older than Stonehenge, in northern Scotland. A severe storm in 1850 washed away the sand from a beach and revealed this neolithic village on the shore.

I have seen this village on a pre-pandemic trip to Iceland. On the way home, we stopped in Kirkwald, a very northern town. From there, we took a bus to Skara Brae.

It is a village of little stone huts. Repeated storms have continued to wash away the sand and also, unfortunately, one of the houses.

Although it was the beginning of July, it was COLD.

Albany Book Festival

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I had a great time at the Albany Book Festival this past Saturday. It was so wonderful seeing all the other writers (especially my table mate Jode Millman) and the crowds of attendees.

This is a free event and plenty of people took advantage of it. All ages, both men and women, and a wonderful diversity. I will definitely sign up again next year.

All of the authors around me sold books too so we did well with publicity aspect of it. As usual, I picked up a few books to read but at least this time I didn’t spend more than I took in. LOL

Hiking in Maine

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As anyone who knows me can tell you, I am an avid hiker and one of my favorite places is Acadia Park. We visit the park as often as we can, at least several times a year.

We visited Acadia over Labor Day Weekend. I have never seen the park so busy – but I digress. This was our first time taking the new puppy on a real hike. On our past visits, we took her for several of the easier walks: Wonderland and Ship’s Harbor.

This time we hiked up Flying Mountain. Although short, and one of the easier hikes, it includes many of the things we love about this park: the rock climbing and the stunning views.

After twenty minutes going almost straight up, Cayenne was already tired. But we pressed on to the summit.

Then we began the downward climb. One’s knees really take a beating from climbing over the granite boulders on both the up and the down. Many of the trails are also treacherous with exposed roots.

We were almost to the end here, with maybe a little more than half a mile to go. Cayenne was very tired and didn’t want to walk anymore. We did not carry her and she made it to the end of the trail. When we got home, she collapsed on the floor and didn’t move for about twenty minutes.

Rum and Slaves

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Rum was the lubricant and the fuel for the engine of commerce leading up to the American Revolution and a bit beyond. It was a favorite drink of the slavers, the slaves, and pretty much everyone else. Called Nelson’s blood (as well as a number of less flattering names), rum made up part of the British sailors’ pay.

In fact, one source I read said that the outrage over the Boston Tea Party had more to do with the dumping of rum than tea.

What is rum? Rum is distilled from the molasses left over from sugarcane. The cane has particular requirement and cannot be grown in the temperate lands. It must be grown with lots of sun and water. It also needs intensive labor to cut, cart and process the cane under the tropical sun. A clear and distinct link between the growing demand for sugar and slavery can be drawn because, as plantations were turned over to cane, the needs of a large work force demanded more workers – Slaves. The Good Hope Plantation, at its height, owned approximately 3000 slaves to do with work.

The slaves needed to be fed. New England ships brought dried cod, picked up the molasses for transport to the distilleries in New England. The resulting drink (called among other things, screech, kill-devil, demon water) was put in casks and sent to Africa to purchase more slaves and also to Great Britain. This was the previously discussed Triangle Trade.

Once slavery was abolished and the plantations no longer had this labor pool, the importance of sugar and sugar cane fell, first in Jamaica and then in the United States. (Now machinery performs most of the duties required in farming and harvesting sugarcane.)

Ironically, the long trips over the ocean, stored in casks, made the rum more drinkable.

Although rum was still consumed after the War for Independence, as mentioned in Murder, Sweet Murder, it was falling out of favor as the new country’s beverage. Whiskey, from rye grown in Western Pennsylvania, and distilled in the country, was considered more patriotic and as such became the drink of choice.

Making sugar from sugarcane

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The cruise I was on for vacation stopped at Falmouth Jamaica. An excursion out went to the Good Hope Plantation. I was particularly interested in visiting this estate since my most recent book, Murder, Sweet Murder, centers around a sugar plantation in Jamaica.

Sugarcane is a finicky crop that demands a particular temperature and regular water. Since it exhausts the soil, new fields must always be planted. It is also very labor intensive.

The Good Hope estate was set up in 1774 and, at its height, used about 3000 slaves.

Several buildings from that time are still there, although they are being used now as a shop, reception area and a restaurant. A small museum was attached.

One of the tools used to create sugar from the cane is a pot that resembles a wok. Five of these, the heat increasing as the syrup was moved from one pan to another, boiled the cane juice down. The resulting syrup was allowed to cool and the sugar crystallized out of it. The crystals are allowed to continue drying and then packed in barrels.

This must have been some process. Anyone who has ever made fudge knows how quickly sugar burns. (At the Whitney Plantation near New Orleans, a site now dedicated to the enslaved people who worked it, we were told that children were usually given the job of stirring the syrup, I can hardly imagine assigning a child to such a dangerous task.)

The byproduct of sugar making is molasses which was fermented into rum. The lowest quality was called killdevil, screech and a number of other names. Nonetheless,, everyone drank rum – until the Whiskey Rebellion in the new United States made whiskey the patriotic drink.

At its height, Jamaica produced about 20% of the world’s sugar. The amount dropped off when slavery was abolished and the plantations lost their enslaved workforce.

I did not see the house but pictures show an elegant home and hint at the gracious lifestyle the enslaved population offered the white planters.

Currently Reading

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This past week I read two great books, both very different.

The first one is The Hidden one by Linda Castillo, the newest in this series.

Kate receives an appeal from three men from a far away Amish community asking her to come and help. Jason Bowman, her first flame, has been accused of murdering the Bishop of this village eighteen years ago. Kate hesitates. She will be out of her jurisdiction and with none of her support network. But she agrees to look into it.

Once she is attacked in her motel room, she knows her investigation is upsetting someone. Instead of being intimidated, she is more determined than ever to resolve this case.

Her research takes her to Minnesota, and to a failing bar outside the Amish are. She soon begins to see that the Bishop was not the man everyone thought.

I did not guess the ending. Another wonderful mystery.

The second book I read was A Killing in Costumes.

Cindy and Jay, once married soap stars, came out as gay. They remained good friends and have set up a store of movie memorabilia Hooray for Hollywood. Facing financial ruin, they are offered a way out in the offer of a valuable movie collection from an old star. But a larger company is also trying to handle the sale. After meeting with the salesman from Cypress, he is found dead and Cindy and Jay are the prime suspects.

And what’s up with the old star’s creepy son? Lots of fun.