Books and Breads Blog

July 14, 2010

Pompeii by Robert Harris ** (of 4)

About the three days before Mount Vesuvius blew its top and decimated the city of Pompeii as seen through the eyes of a conscientious aquarius...

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July 14, 2010

The Number One Lady’s Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith **** (of 4)

A very sweet, fun read about the Miss Marple of Botswana.

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July 14, 2010

The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith ** (of 4)

Not as good as the first in the series, The Number One Lady’s Detective Agency. It’s a sweet book, but the slow pace of the...

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July 14, 2010

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell *** (of 4)

The first in the series. Kurt Wallender is a contemporary Swedish policeman who true to the genre of crime fiction is recently divorced, has trouble...

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July 14, 2010

Double Whammy by Carl Hiassen *** (of 4)

Vintage Hiassen. The murderers and bad guys are Florida tele-evangelists and unscrupulous land developers, assisted by rednecks with brains the size of ‘possums. The good...

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July 14, 2010

Devil’s Corner by Lisa Scottoline *** (of 4)

I once read that we read mysteries to learn about another place or time or culture as much as for the mystery itself. Devil’s Corner...

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July 14, 2010

Daddy’s Girl by Lisa Scottoline **** (of 4)

It’s the usual Scottolini fare: shrimpy, gutsy, wise-cracking lawyer (Penn professor of law in this case) without a decent boyfriend gets caught up in violent...

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July 14, 2010

Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes *** (of 4)

This is such an accurate rendtion of 1960s Harlem I could smell the trash in the streets, sense the despair, hear the sirens, and feel...

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July 14, 2010

The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith * (of 4)

Maybe McCall Smith writes like a woman or is writing for women: his characters notice intricate details and reveal their feelings about scented tissues and...

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July 14, 2010

Bethlehem Road Murder by Batya Gur ** (of 4)

At the height of the second intifada, with tensions between Israelis and Palestinians at the ignition point, a Jewish girl of Sephardic origin is found...

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