Cosy Crimes in the Library

 

What is a cozy crime novel ??

These books are safe, usually have the same ongoing characters and altogether a fun read.

There is no graphic violence, sex or anything to make you squeamish.

The main character or “detective’ is usually an amateur and more often that not a female, think Miss Marple.

The books are usually set in a village or community and have the same characters popping up as secondary to the plot.

These books are not going to keep you up at night, jumping at every sound and wanting to lock the windows. They fun, sometimes  even comical and  a great read.

For some good examples try the following:

Die Laughing — Carola Dunn

A visit to the one person sure to instil terror into Daisy’s heart turns out to be even worse than expected when she discovers her dentist, Raymond Talmadge, slumped dead in his patients’ chair, a nitrous oxide mask clamped to his smiling face. Although rumoured to be a secret dope fiend, Daisy and her husband, Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, are sure he was murdered. Suspects abound – the devastatingly handsome Talmadge didn’t need laughing gas to make his female patients swoon. And with scandals surfacing in a case that grows more tangled by the day, Daisy and Alec face their most perplexing mystery yet!

Chorus Lines, Caviar, and Corpses — Mary McHugh

It’s never too late to kick up your heels. Just ask Tina, Janice, Pat, Mary Louise, and Gini–aka the Happy Hoofers. After posting a video of their tap-dancing routine on the Internet, the leggy ladies find themselves booked to perform on a Russian river cruise up the Volga from Moscow to St. Petersburg.    But when murder cuts in, the five fabulous friends find it’s not so easy to tap their troubles away. A crew member has been killed, and a passenger is missing. With a killer on board, the Hoofers need to watch their step. But with a little fancy footwork, these soft-shoe sleuths may get a leg up on a killer who’s cruising for a bruising.

As the pig turns : an Agatha Raisin mystery — M C Beaton

The picturesque Cotwsold village of Winter Parva has decided to warm the winter months after the holidays by roasting a pig in the town square. Agatha, always one for a good roasting, has arrived with her former protegee and current rival in the private detection racket, Toni, to enjoy the merriment. But as the rotary spit is placed over a bed of fiery charcoals and the pig is carried toward its final resting place, Agatha realizes that things are not as they seem…. “Stop!” she screams suddenly. The “pig,” in fact, is Gary Beech, a policeman not exactly beloved by the good people of the village. Although Agatha has every intention of leaving matters to the police, everything changes when Gary’s ex-wife hires Toni to investigate. With that provocation, how could any sleuth as obviously vain and competitive (and secretly insecure) as Agatha could do anything other than solve the case herself?

The aloha quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini                                                             Another season of Elm Creek Quilt Camp has come to a close, and Bonnie Markham faces a bleak and lonely winter ahead, with her quilt shop out of business and her divorce looming. A welcome escape comes when Claire, a beloved college friend, unexpectedly invites her to Maui to help launch an exciting new business: a quilter’s retreat set at a bed and breakfast amid the vibrant colours and balmy breezes of the Hawaiian Islands.

The corpse on the court by Simon Brett

Jude’s life has been turned upside-down thanks her new man, Piers Targett, who’s keen to get her involved in his hobby – or obsession – of Real Tennis. But when one of Piers’ friends dies on the court in suspicious circumstances, Jude finds herself caught up in the police investigation. 

 

Our Most Popular Books

The following books were our top ten reads for 2014/15:

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice:    A chance meeting with a Sussex beekeeper turns into a pivotal, personal transformation when fifteen-year-old Mary Russell discovers that the beekeeper is the reclusive, retired detective Sherlock Holmes, who soon takes on the role of  mentor and teacher.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Cicada:  An isolated property in the middle of Western Australia, just after the Great War. An English heiress has just given birth and unleashed hell. Weakened and grieving, she realises her life is in danger, and flees into the desert with her Aboriginal maid. One of them is running from a murderer; the other is accused of murder. Soon the women are being hunted across the Kimberley by troopers, trackers and the man who wants to silence them both. How they survive in the searing desert and what happens when they are finally found will take your breath away.

Gone Girl : ‘What are you thinking, Amy?’ The question I’ve asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I suppose these questions storm cloud over every marriage: ‘What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?’ Just how well can you ever know the person you love? This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn’t true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren’t his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what really did happen to Nick’s beautiful wife? And what was in that half-wrapped box left so casually on their marital bed? In this novel, marriage truly is the art of war

The Narrow Road To The Deep North: What would you do if you saw the love of your life, whom you thought dead for a quarter of a century, walking towards you? Richard Flanagan’s story of Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor haunted by a love affair with his uncle’s wife, journeys from the caves of Tasmanian trappers in the early twentieth century to a crumbling pre-war beachside hotel; from a Thai jungle prison to a Japanese snow festival; from the Changi gallows to a chance meeting of lovers on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Taking its title from 17th-century haiku poet Basho’s travel journal, The Narrow Road To The Deep North is about the impossibility of love. At its heart is one day in a Japanese slave labour camp in August 1943. As the day builds to its horrific climax, Dorrigo Evans battles and fails in his quest to save the lives of his fellow POWs, a man is killed for no reason, and a love story unfolds.

The Help: Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren’t trusted not to steal the silver… There’s Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son’s tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared. Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they’d be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell.                                                                                                                

The Mint Lawn:  Clementine is twenty-five and still living in the place where she grew up, rooted there by memories and her own inability to make changes until she has understood her past. The past is dominated by memories of her mother, and her mother, and her mother’s attempts to dramatise and enrich small-town life and the perceptions of her three clever, receptive daughters. But only Clementine has stayed. Is this out of loyalty to her mother’s memory? Or to comfort her father? Perhaps she wants to find peace with Hugh, her earnest husband in whose house she most uncomfortably lives? Or is the lure Thomas, who alone can appreciate Clementine’s own sensuality, and her humour, but who must remain another of her secrets. In The Mint Lawn, Gillian Mears has written a wonderful debut novel which will be read with pleasure and remembered with joy. ‘Gillian Mears writes like an angel.                                         

The One Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared: Sitting quietly in his room in an old people’s home, Allan Karlsson is waiting for a party he doesn’t want to begin. His one-hundredth birthday party to be precise. The Mayor will be there. The press will be there. But, as it turns out, Allan will not. Escaping (in his slippers) through his bedroom window, into the flowerbed, Allan makes his getaway. And so begins his picaresque and unlikely journey involving a suitcase full of cash, a few thugs, a very friendly hot-dog stand operator, a few deaths, an elephant and incompetent police. As his escapades unfold, Allan’s earlier life is revealed. A life in which–remarkably–he played a key role behind the scenes in some of the momentous events of the twentieth century. The One-Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is a charming, warm and funny novel, beautifully woven with history and politics.                                                                    

Pardonable Lies:  Maisie Dobbs, the renowned psychologist and investigator, receives a most unusual request. She must prove that Sir Cedric Lawton’s son Ralph really is dead. This is a case that will challenge Maisie in unexpected ways, for Ralph Lawton was an aviator shot down by enemy fire in 1917. To get to the bottom of the mystery, Maisie must travel to the former battlefields of northern France, where she served as a nurse in the Great War and where ghosts of her past still linger. As her investigation moves closer to the truth, Maisie soon uncovers the secrets and lies that some people would prefer remain buried.

The Target: A time to kill or a time to die? The mission is to enter one of the most dangerous countries in the world. The target is one of the toughest to reach. The result could be momentous – or it could be Armageddon. There is no margin for error. US government operatives Will Robie and Jessica Reel have to prove they are still the best team there is. But are they invincible when pitted against an agent whose training has been under conditions where most would perish? An old man is dying in an Alabama prison hospital, it seems there is one more evil game he has still to play. And it’s a game which comes close to home for Reel and Robie. But this time the stakes might be way too high.

All the Light We Cannot See:  Marie-Laure has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a perfect miniature of their Paris neighbourhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. But when the Nazis invade, father and daughter flee with a dangerous secret. Werner is a German orphan, destined to labour in the same mine that claimed his father’s life, until he discovers a knack for engineering. His talent wins him a place at a brutal military academy, but his way out of obscurity is built on suffering. At the same time, far away in a walled city by the sea, an old man discovers new worlds without ever setting foot outside his home. But all around him, impending danger closes in.
 

Celebrating NAIDOC Week

Derby Library is celebrating Indigenous Fiction Authors.      Check out the following:

SWEET ONE – PETER DOCKER   When a senior Aboriginal war veteran dies horribly at the hands of state government authorities, Izzy, a journalist and daughter of a war veteran herself, flies to the goldfields of Western Australia to cover his death. But Izzy is about to learn that for every action there is an equal and bloody reaction. On the trail of the vigilantes, she finds herself embedded in a secret war that is finally, irrevocably, going to explode to the surface.

TIDDAS – ANITA HEISS    Five women, best friends for decades, meet once a month to talk about books …and life, love and the jagged bits in between. Dissecting each other’s lives seems the most natural thing in the world – and honesty, no matter how brutal, is something they treasure. Best friends tell each other everything, don’t they?  But each woman carries a complex secret and one weekend, without warning, everything comes unstuck.

THE SWAN BOOK – ALEXIS WRIGHT   The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginals still living under the Intervention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change. It follows the life of a mute young woman called Oblivia, the victim of gang-rape by petrol-sniffing youths, from the displaced community where she lives in a hulk, in a swamp filled with rusting boats, and thousands of black swans, to her marriage to Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia, and her elevation to the position of First Lady, confined to a tower in a flooded and lawless southern city.

THE WATERBOYS – PETER DOCKER    Conway inhabits an apocalyptic future in a continent caught up in a violent struggle for control of water. He is a whitefulla whose heart and spiritual connections are black. On the run from the Water Board flunkies who hate him but need his water divining skills to survive, Conway dreams his way back to the arrival of Europeans in Western Australia when Captain Charles Fremantle chooses to throw off the mantle of Empire and join the Nyoongar people.

THAT DEADMAN DANCE – KIM SCOTT    Big-hearted, moving and richly rewarding, That Deadman Dance is set in the first decades of the 19th century in the area around what is now Albany, Western Australia. In playful, musical prose, the book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers

Western Australian writers

Western Australian based writers have won  many awards and are acclaimed world wide, if that’s not reason enough to read them, then  its great to read about local places with local colour.

Listed below are some of the authors whose books we have in the Derby Library.  Click on the author’s name to find out what titles are available.. 

Liz Byrski : as a freelance journalist Byrski’s work has appeared in The West Australian, The Australian, The Age, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, Homes and Living, New Idea, Cosmopolitan, SkyWest In-Flight, Building Magazine, and Portfolio.   In  her fictional works she makes an exploration of women’s lives with a WA flavour.

Amanda Curtin:   Amanda Curtin is a writer and freelance book editor. Her first novel, The Sinkings, was published in 2008, followed by a short story collection, Inherited, in 2011, and her new novel, Elemental, in 2013. Amanda lives in an old house in an old suburb of Perth, Western Australia, with her husband and an extremely opinionated Siamese cat.

Peter Docker: Peter Docker was born in Wilman Country at Narrogin, Western Australia, and is of Irish, Cornish and English heritage. He grew up on a station in Wudjari Country at Coomalbidgup, near Esperance. He has worked as a dairy-hand, hay carter, wheat-bogger, window-washer, bank teller, lift driver and barman. He has written short stories published in Australian literary journals

Sara Foster:  Sara Foster is the bestselling author of two psychological suspense novels, COME BACK TO ME and BENEATH THE SHADOWS. Born and raised in the UK, she worked for a time in the HarperCollins fiction department in London, before turning her hand to freelance editing, and writing in her spare time.  Sara moved to Western Australia in 2004, where she lives with her husband and young daughter.  She writes psychological thrillers.

Juliet Marillier : Juliet lives in a 110 year old cottage in a riverside suburb of Perth, Western Australia. She shares her home with a small pack of waifs and strays – she is a foster carer for an animal rescue group. She has four adult children and seven grandchildren. Juliet is a member of the druid order OBOD (the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids.)  Juliet writes international best selling fantasy books.

Fleur McDonald :  After growing up on a farm near Orroroo in South Australia, Fleur McDonald’s first job was jillarooing in the outback. She’s now closely involved in the daily management of the 8000-acre station she and her family live on near Esperance in Western Australia.   Fleur writes bestselling rural romances.

Other Western Australian writers with books in the library are Loretta Hill, Christine Piper, Kim Scott, L M Stedman, David Whish-Wilson, Craig Silvey and Tim Winton.

 

Download FREE Audiobooks!

Citadel by Kate Mosse, narrated by Finty Williams

Citadel is set in the far south of France during World War II. While war blazes in the trenches at the front, back at home a different battle is waged, full of clandestine bravery, treachery and secrets.

And as a cell of resistance fighters, codenamed Citadel, fight for everything they hold dear, their struggle will reveal an older, darker combat being fought in the shadows.

Download the e-Audiobook FREE on OneClickdigital. Simply log on to library.sdwk.wa.gov.au  to find out more.

Standing In Another Man’s Grave – Ian Rankin

It’s been some time since Rebus was forced to retire, and he now works as a civilian in a cold-case unit. So when a long-dead case bursts back to life, he can’t resist the opportunity to get his feet under the CID desk once more. But Rebus is as stubborn and anarchic as ever, and he quickly finds himself in deep with pretty much everyone, including DI Siobhan Clarke. All Rebus wants to do is uncover the truth. The big question is: can he be the man he once was and still stay on the right side of the law? www.dubraybooks.ie

Terry’s review:

I absolutely loved this book – I can understand Ian Rankin being bored with writing the same character in book after book but Rebus has to be my favourite cop in this genre of book. I suppose it is like putting on a old pair of comfortable slippers for an avid Rebus fan but this book has more than a few twists for the reader. It starts out with Rebus retired from the regular force but working for the Edinburgh cold case unit which is under threat of closure and he picks up a case which might be a serial killer as another girl has gone missing on the A9 road between Perth and Inverness.
Descriptive writing is everything you would expect from Ian Rankin and characterisations are superb. The story is believable and the setting is in one of my favourite parts of the country especially Pitlochry. My only adverse comment would be that it ended too quickly with the denouement in the final chapter and that was that.
It remains to be seen if Rebus will return again and if not he will be sorely missed.    www.goodreads.com

Who writes ……

HUMOUROUS STORIES

Our funny fiction books are some of the most popular items in the library. If you want to read something a little light and frivolous these are the authors for you!

Nick Earls
Ben Elton
Marian Keyes
Terry Pratchett
Tom Sharpe
Sue Townsend
Janet Evanovich
Wendy Harmer

If none of these authors appeal search the catalogue at 
http://library.sdwk.wa.gov.au/ and search for Humorous stories or click on the link.

What We Read in 2012

Derby Library’s most borrowed Adult Fiction books for 2012 were:

A lady cyclist’s guide to Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson
The end of the wasp season by Denise Mina
Foal’s bread  by Gillian Mears 
The descendants  by Kaui Hart. Hemmings 
Kill shot by Vince Flynn
The affair : a Reacher novel by Lee Child.  
One good turn by Kate Atkinson
 The submerged cathedral by Charlotte Wood 
Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
 Dead centre by Andy McNab

The most popular DVD was:

Mad Bastards

Where was 50 Shades of Grey you may ask, well it was so far down the list it didn’t even register. Perhaps you’re all too embarrassed to borrow it and have gone and bought a copy!!

What Were We Reading in 2011?

The Light Between Oceans – Review

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss.   goodreads.com

Lisa’s Comments:  This story drew me in from the first page. Compelling and provocative, it raises many questions about right and wrong, and the human heart’s capacity for love and forgiveness. Gorgeously written – the people and settings sprang to life from the pages – it’s really an amazing first novel from this author. I hope to see more from her in the future.    Bookbrowse.com

What a Classic ….!

If you are interested in reading the classics but are put off by big weighty tomes, full of dry, dusty people. Try any of the following, they are interesting, easy to read and all classics in the own right.

The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway’s magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. It was THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA that won for Hemingway the Nobel Prize of Literature. Here, in a perfectly crafted story is a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of a man’s challenge to the elements in which he lives.

Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie

Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. One of his fellow passengers must be the murderer.   Isolated by the storm, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer among a dozen of the dead man’s enemies, before the murderer decides to strike again

Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurer

 Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again …’ Working as a lady’s companion, our heroine’s outlook is bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose proposal takes her by surprise. She accepts but, whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the brooding house Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is for ever kept alive by the forbidding housekeeper Mrs Danvers

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Out of his smoke-filled rooms in Baker Street stalks a figure to cause the criminal classes to quake in their boots and rush from their dens of inequity …The twelve mysteries gathered in this first collection of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watsons adventures reveal the brilliant consulting detective at the height of his powers. Problems involving a man with a twisted lip, a fabulous blue carbuncle and five orange pips tax Sherlock Holmes intellect alongside some of his most famous cases, including A Scandal in Bohemia and The Red-Headed League.

The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Graeme

‘Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.’ So says Rat to Mole, as he introduces him to the delights of the river and his friends Toad, the spirit of rebellion, and Badger, the spirit of England. But it is a world where the motor-car is about to wreck the gipsy caravan, the revolutionaries in the Wild Wood are threatening the social fabric, the god Pan is abroad, and the warm seductive whispers of the south are drifting into the English lanes.  . A profoundly English fiction with a world following, it is a book for adults adopted by children, a timeless masterpiece, and a vital portrait of an age.

 However, for something a little meatier but still not dry and dusty, try the following:

 Pride and Prejudice –  Jane Austen

When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; while he struggles to remain indifferent to her good looks and lovely mind. When she discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Charles Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him even more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly invokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle class life.

 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly founded village where Jose Arcadio Buendia and his strong-willed wife, Ursula, have started their new life. As the mysterious Melquiades excites Aureliano Buendias father with new inventions and tales of adventure, neither can know the significance of the indecipherable manuscript that the old gypsy passes into their hands.

Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina seems to have everything – beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike, and soon brings jealousy and bitterness in its wake. Contrasting with this tale of love and self-destruction is the vividly observed story of Levin, a man striving to find contentment and a meaning to his life – and also a self-portrait of Tolstoy himself.

Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

 Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment and the consequences are devastating.