Another winner from Preston & Child, this is the fifth in the Nora Kelly/Corrie Swanson series. Even though it starts with a gruesome death--a woman walks into the desert to die--the book starts too slowly. But, it soon makes up for that.
Nora and Corrie are my favorites amid among myriad fascinating supporting characters in the Pendergast universe. I love reading about their investigations.
As good as this book is, it pales in comparison to their previous case, Dead Mountain.
A week and a half into 2025, and things have settled in a more-or-less normal pattern. I realize that I haven't written a post about 2024 goals, highlights, etc.
Spoiler alert: it's because 2024 was pretty much a total failure.
Here goes:
Dryuary Plus
Achieved.
Go to the gym 150 times.
With 78 visits, I barely made it halfway to this goal. I was doing well with double-digit visits through March. I hit a funk in April, hurt my hand in May, had to deal with colitis (and am still navigating it to this day.) I was also away for a week in June and one in September. That doesn't fully explain my lack of visits from April through September.
Read 40 books.
I only read 27 books last year. The biggest reading month was June with six books. I wish I had at least read 30. I re-read four Preston and Child books as I waited for Angel of Vengeance (book 17.)
Write 150 to 200 blogposts.
I wrote 132 posts. I wish I had written more. On the other hand, I don't need to write more drivel.
Other writing/artistic work.
I didn't make any specific writing goals, and I barely wrote. The same with artistic work.
1. American Brutus John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies by Michael W. Kaufman
2. The Second Chance Shop & Other Stories by Bette Bono
3. The Woman Who Ran for President The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhill by Lois Beachy Underhill
4. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
5. Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
6. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
7. Voyager by Diana Gabaldon
8. A Light in the Storm The Civil War Diary of Amelia Martin by Karen Hess
9. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
10. Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog with Richard Erdoes
11. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
12. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
13. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
14. Reel Art Great Posters from the Golden Age of the Silver Screen by Stephen Rebello and Richard Allen
15. Overboard by Sara Paretsky
16. Pay Dirt by Sara Paretsky
17. Angel of Vengeance by Preston & Child
18. Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
19. The Alienist by Caleb Carr
20. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
21. Eleanor of Aquitaine by Alison Weir
22. The Entertainment Weekly Seinfield Companion Atomic Wedges to Zipper Jobs: An Unofficial Guide to TV's Funniest Show by Bruce Fretts
23. Love and Other Crimes by Sara Paretsky
24. The White Princess by Philippa Gregory
25. The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory
26. Educated by Tara Westover
27. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
This weekend both the Wilton Library and the Westport Library held book sales. Cynthia and I went to both. Having two book sales in one weekend was a first for us.
Here are my purchases:
CDs:
1. Sly and the Family Stone Greatest Hits. I used to have this as an album.
2. Joe Jackson Look Sharp.
Books:
1. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I picked this up for a great niece.
2. White Fire by Preston & Child. This is one of my favorite Preston & Child books. I bought a hard cover to replace my paperback.
3. Educated by Tara Westover. This is a memoir by a women who grew up with her survivalist parents, but left to learn about the outside world.
4. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Bette Smith. This is a classic coming-of-age story. I passed it by at an earlier book sale, but made sure to get it this time.
5. The Entertainment Weekly Seinfeld Companion by Bruce Fretts. This is just for fun; I'm going to give it to my brother.
6. Go Dog, Go! Another for a great niece.
7. Love & Other Crimes by Sara Paretsky. This collection of 14 short stories includes VI Warshawski as a ten-year-old conducting her first investigation.
8. The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr. This is a sequel to The Alienist, which I recently read and liked.
9. Five Points The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum by Tyler Anbinder. I've read several books that featured that infamous neighborhood, so I'm looking forward to reading a historical approach.
10. The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory. This is the story of Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII, and arguably the creator of the Tudor dynasty.
11. The White Princess by Philippa Gregory. The White Princess is Elizabeth of York daughter of King Edward IV and his wife Elizabeth Woodville. She married Henry VII and became the first Tudor queen.
A note on books 10 and 11: I don't respect Gregory as an historian, but I will enjoy these stories.
I've got a lot of reading to do.
To be clear, a positive outlook is my goal, not necessarily my current state of mind.
I am still dealing with my gastric problems, but they aren't too disruptive. I didn't have any bad days last week, compared to the previous week when I had two. I'm also not as tired recently. I'm finally able to do some more work around the house. I still have many things to do, but I'm making progress. It may be slow, but it's still progress.
I went to the library twice to pick up Angel of Vengeance which was published last Tuesday. The librarian confirmed that I was number one on the hold list, but the book isn't available yet. Apparently, the library got a huge shipment of books that need to be unpacked. I offered to unpack the books myself, but that didn't go over too well.
In the spirit of a positive outlook, at least I picked up two V.I. Warshawski books by Sara Paretsky: Overboard and Pay Dirt. I've already finished Overboard. Hopefully, Angel of Vengeance will be available by the time I finish Pay Dirt.
Another positive outlook, the Mets beat the Orioles in tonight's series opener 4-3. They blew a 3-0 lead, but Francisco Alvarez saved the game with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th--the first walk off of his career. LGM!
I've been discouraged with myself lately. For the last week or so, I've been trying to give myself grace. I haven't felt 100 percent in two months. It's been a bad weather summer (and we've gotten off easier than other parts of the country.) But I feel that the grace period has lasted long enough. I've got to turn things around. At least I finally got to the gastro specialist today.
The Mets won a make-up game against the Cardinals. It was a nice comeback after the Mets lost two consecutive games to the Angels. There may be a wild card in the future.
I'm remaining immersed in the Preston & Child world. I'm skimming through the three books of the Leng Quartet again.Yesterday I read summaries of all the Pendergast books. I've read all the books, but some of the details are sketchy. A week to go before the latest book comes out.
After I finished Jane Eyre and Reel Art..., I grabbed a novel about Anne Boleyn, but never seemed to have the opportunity to read.
Then I remembered that Preston & Child's latest book--Angel of Vengeance--will be published in August. This will the fourth book in the Leng Quartet (following The Cabinet of Curiosities, Bloodless, and The Cabinet of Dr. Leng.)
To better appreciate the new book, I decided to reread the first three. I finished The Cabinet of Curiosities this morning. I've already read it twice, so it went quickly. Next, on to Bloodless.
On Friday I attended a writer's workshop--Visually Compelling Storytelling with Ann Lineberger--at the Norwalk Library.
The workshop was okay, but I really liked getting back to an in-person event at the library. Before Covid, I was going to history programs with light lunches on topics such as the wives of Henry VIII and Romanov empresses in Russia. My writing classes also began in-person before switching to Zoom.
Before the workshop, I picked up the last two Preston & Child Pendergast books--Bloodless and The Cabinet of Dr. Leng--to re-read before I read the latest book, Angel of Vengeance--to be published August 13.
It was also nice to see two people from my writing classes in attendance. One man is planning to self-publish a book. He wore silver--gray nail polish, and I kept thinking of Tom Sandoval. (Ugh.) The other person was Anne. We talked for a few minutes after class and plan to get together for coffee.
I got up this morning and decided to read. I take a medication on Monday morning and can't eat or drink anything or lie down for a half hour afterward. I recently realized I'm reading too much on my phone instead of reading books. Five books for the first quarter of the year isn't a good rate with a goal of reading 40 books, but I'm not going to sweat it.
Anyway, back to Harvest Home: I picked up the book because I remember liking the TV mini-series starring Bette Davis back in 1978. I have mixed feelings about the book. The story was a slow moving one. I'm okay with that, but don't think it was necessary to read so much detail about Beth's childhood. But the last hundred pages or so were compelling. I finished the book as I ate lunch.
Then there's the writing. Some language is very florid--I often had to re-read a line or two. I also had to look up words several times. Tryon lost me with something to the effect of breasts straining against the woman's blouse--it's such a cliche. It reminds me of the dangerous amounts of leg and breast in some early Preston & Child books.
The story itself was good enough to outweigh the annoying writing style.
1. Social Crimes by Jane Stanton Hitchcock
2. Your Corner Dark by Desmond Hall
3. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
4. The Tudors in Love by Sarah Grirstwood
5. All This, and Heaven Too by Rachel Field
6. The Cabinet of Dr. Leng by Preston & Child
7. Caught in the Revolution by Helen Rappaport
8. An Imperfect Spy by Amanda Cross
9. The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir
10. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
11. In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
12. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
13. Booth by David Robertson
14. Votes for Women American Suffragists and the Battle for the Ballot by Winifred Conkling
15. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
16. Catherine of Aragon The True Queen by Alison Weir
17. The Last Tsar The Live and Times of Nicholas II by Edward Radzinsky
18. Killers of the Flower Moon The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
19. Round Up the Usual Suspects the Making of Casablanca--Bogart, Bergman, and World War II by Aljean Harmetz
20. The Accidental Suffragist by Galia Gichon
21. South The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition 1914-1917 by Sir Ernest Shackleton Edited by Ernest King
22. bird by bird Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
23. One for the Money by Stephanie Plum
24. Manhattan Noir Edited by Lawrence Block
25. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
26. Dead Mountain by Preston & Child
27. The Sisters The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell
28. The Sisters of Henry VIII by Maria Perry
29. The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde
My goal was to read 40 books this year. Obviously, I fell way short. I've been thinking about why I failed. There wasn't just one reason. I read a lot of things online rather than books. Some books took me a long time to finish. There were times I just wasn't thrilled with my options. I wish I could have at least made it to 30.
My favorite book, by far, was Kindred. I also loved The Cabinet of Dr. Leng, bird by bird, and Dead Mountain. Honorable Mention: Killers of the Flower Moon and Round Up the Usual Suspects the Making of Casablanca.
This is the fourth book in Preston & Child's Nora Kelly series (although Nora first appears in Thunderhead, the fifth book in Preston & Child's collaboration.) In the four books, archaeologist Nora is teamed with young FBI agent Corrie Swanson. Nora and Corrie are my favorite characters in the Preston & Child world: I love reading about them working together.
In Dead Mountain, Corrie is assigned to a case where two bodies have been found after being missing for 15 years. The two were part of a nine-person backpacking trip in the New Mexico mountains. Six bodies had previously been found with no solution to the case the FBI named Dead Mountain. Nora works with Corrie to find the missing ninth body and solve the case that has baffled the authorities for years.
Another page turner--I finished the book in three days.
I loved this book, with a big but. The book ends with "TO BE CONCLUDED..." I knew when I got to Chapter 76 with only 13 pages remaining that there was no way Preston & Child could finish the story.
Constance Greene uses the machine discovered in Bloodless to return to her home of 1880s New York City to save her brother and sister from premature death. In the original time line, her older sister Mary is killed in a gruesome death at the hands of Dr. Enoch Leng, and her younger brother Joe is murdered in a pickpocket attempt gone wrong. Constance also wants to stop Dr. Leng's murderous experiments.
Preston & Child call The Cabinet of Dr. Leng the third book in the Leng Quartet. The Quartet begins with The Cabinet of Curiosities (so glad I reread it) then Bloodless. The fourth book is now being written. At least Preston & Child write faster than George RR Martin.
I can't wait to finish the story.
I ended the week in a much better mood than when it started. I don't know if I was in one long funk or a series of funks. Whatever. I was on edge, easily irritated and stressed, hanging on by my last nerve.
Then it changed. I was walking Jace around noon on Thursday and realized that I was in a good mood. I had just gotten my hair cut after eight weeks. It was as if I had shed my negativity with my hair. It didn't hurt that Jeff and I were planning to go out to lunch with some friends. We had a delicious lunch at Terra in Greenwich and a good visit.
Friday I made it to the top of the library's list for Preston & Child's latest book. I also found two pairs of jeans on sale, in a smaller size than I had been wearing, that fit.
Let the good times roll.
I bought this book at a library sale. I had read The Eight several years ago by the same author. I learned that The Fire is a sequel to The Eight. The issue was I didn't remember the The Eight at all.
I liked The Fire, but I think it was needlessly complicated. Too many characters across too many centuries, too many plot twists, too many "returns from the dead." In the "too much" category, my reaction to this book is similar to my reaction of Crimson Shore by Preston & Child which I read in 2020.
I'm a fan of the Preston & Child books and get the Pendergast File email. In one email, if you referred a new subscriber, they would send a copy of their book The Cabinet of the Curiosities. I suggested that I'd refer my brother and he could get the new book and give me a copy of his old book. Instead he gave me the new book. I picked it up to read a few lines and felt the need to completely reread the whole book (first read in 2018.)
I remembered the gist of it, though it took me a while to remember which guy was the criminal. I forgot many details. The book was still compelling, and I'm glad I have my own copy now.
Preston & Child have a new book coming out in January The Cabinet of Dr. Leng. It's not exactly a sequel to The Cabinet of the Curiosities, but they are linked. Preston & Child shared the first chapter(s) of the new book and it's awesome. I can't wait to read it.
I loved this book--it was well worth waiting for.
Archaeologist Nora Kelly reluctantly accepts an assignment to excavate the Roswell, New Mexico site of an alleged UFO landing. On the first day of the excavation, Nora finds bodies of two murder victims from 1947. Enter FBI Special Agent Corrie Swanson to investigate the murders.
The tale threads together aliens, conspiracy theories, espionage, violence, and even romance. Nora and Corrie make a great team. I'm already looking forward to the next book in the series.
Miscellanea is a good topic for a blog post that will be interrupted and perhaps disjointed. I'm doing laundry and will have to go to the laundry room at least once while writing this. We only have two loads today; usually it's three or four.
I've been thinking about schedules and routines lately. My Monday morning writing class is my only ongoing scheduled item. I've gotten into two routines: food shopping on Tuesday morning and laundry on Wednesday morning. I'm starting Lola on a Tuesday and Friday visit to the vet for her fluid infusions. It breaks my heart to see her so scared every time we get into the car, so I switched from three to two vet visits a week.
We had a February Dog Park Saturday and met John, Jen, and Katie. Katie had a great time chasing her ball. Lola ran across the field, but otherwise hung by the picnic table. It was windy, but we stayed for almost two hours. This was a change for Lola; I've only been taking her to Oyster Shell Park lately.
I picked up Diablo Mesa yesterday from the library. It's the latest by Preston and Child in the Nora Kelly/Corrie Swanson book series. I had finished Emma on Saturday morning. I had debated reading War and Peace next, but knew I would read Diablo Mesa as soon as I got my heads on it. I read magazines for a few days.
I wasn't thrilled with my story for last Monday's class. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly good. I liked the set up though. We have two weeks before our next class. Our assignment: write a congratulatory letter to a newly published author and mention a bad review. I think I want to be a jealous writing friend and be sarcastic. Play with that idea for a while.
I loved this book.
After a challenging case in Florida, Agents Pendergast and Coldmoon are diverted to Savannah, Georgia to investigate a case in which persons were completely drained of blood. Could it be the work of the infamous Savannah Vampire of legend?
The authors skillfully weave the eerie setting of Savannah graveyards, city history, police procedurals, the legend of D.B. Cooper, and quantum physics into an incredible story. It even has a bit of romance. Once again, I loved this book.
It's one of the best of the Pendergast series, and that's saying a lot.
I requested this book from the library before it was even released. This is the second official book in the Nora Kelly series. Nora has been my favorite character in the Preston & Child books since she first appeared in Thunderhead. Bonus: apparently the new series will continue to feature Corrie Swanson. Corrie made a memorable debut in Still Life with Crows.
Here Corrie investigates the mummified corpse of a man found in desert ghost town. Nora arrives to excavate the body, and things keep getting stranger from there.
I like the team of Nora and Corrie and look forward to more in this series.
