Living in the Country Growing Weird

 

By Dennis Parks

From the University of Nevada Press:

"In 1972, Dennis Parks, a young potter with a promising academic career ahead of him, decided to move to Tuscarora, a near-abandoned mining town in remote northeastern Nevada. Parks and his wife were attracted to Tuscarora's isolation and beautiful setting, and they believed that it might be a healthy environment in which to raise their two small sons. This is Parks' account of his family's life in Tuscarora, a tiny settlement whose population even forty years later numbers fewer than twenty permanent residents.
Parks created a pottery school that attracts students from around the world and developed for himself an international reputation as the creator of powerful, innovative works in clay. Meanwhile, he and his family had to master the skills required of those who choose to live in the back country--growing and hunting their own food, renovating or building from scratch the structures they needed for residences or studios, resolving conflicts with neighbors, inventing their own amusements. The transformation from middle-class urbanity to small-town simplicity is, as Parks reveals, a lurching and sometimes hilarious process, and the achievement of self-sufficiency is similarly fraught with unexpected challenges."



Dennis and his wife Julie made a good life for themselves and their two boys in the very isolated town of Tuscarora. They managed to make ends meet without feeling too deprived of the finer things in life, according to what he writes in his book. One of his sons, Ben, joined his dad at the pottery school and continued on with it after Parks passed in 2021.

You can find out more about his life in this obituary on the Legacy.com website.

This was an inspiring read and makes the simple life seem very appealing. It has lots of black and white photos in it but their quality is rather poor.

The First Eagle

 

By Tony Hillerman

A policeman, Benny Kinsman, is investigating a tip he received that a man known for poaching is back at it again. So Officer Kinsman heads out into the wilds of northern Arizona to catch the poacher, Robert Jano, in the act of capturing an eagle, a protected species. 

Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police is expecting Kinsman in his office for a meeting and when Kinsman doesn't show up, Chee goes looking for him. He finds the poacher, Jano, standing over Kinsman's body and immediately arrests Jano.

Meanwhile retired policeman Joe Leaphorn has been hired by a woman to find her missing niece, Catherine Pollard. Pollard went missing the same day as Officer Kinsman was attacked. Leaphorn doesn't believe in coincidences and agrees to try to find the missing woman. He seeks out Officer Chee, seeking to speak to Jano to find out if he noticed Pollard when he was in the area or if he had seen the jeep she was driving. Leaphorn finds out that a jeep was seen by a local not too far from the area where Kinsman was killed. And Chee finds out that Jano also saw a jeep while he was out poaching eagles. Using this information, the jeep is located and there is blood on the driver's seat. It begins to look like Kinsman's murder is possibly connected to Pollard's disappearance. And that Jano is not the killer.

This was an OK read. There is some rather technical stuff about scientists investigating diseases carried by animals that can spread to humans, namely bubonic plague and hantavirus. Of course this figures into the plot and it is not a red herring. But the killer's motive came as a complete surprise to me and made sense in a sad way. One can only hope that the killer's conclusion about the fate of humankind doesn't happen.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

These Old Shades

 

By Georgette Heyer

The story is summarized by the author herself towards the end of the novel:

'"Once upon a time—there were two brothers. I have forgotten their names, but since they detested each other, I will call them Cain and—er—Abel ... The hatred grew and flourished until I believe there was nothing one brother would not do to spite the other."

"Cain, being the elder of these two brothers, succeeded in due course to his father ... Cain's succession but added fuel to the fire of hatred, and whereas our friend Abel was consumed of a desire to stand in his brother's shoes, Cain was consumed of a like desire to keep him out of them ... Cain took a wife unto himself and doubtless thought himself secure ... But ... the years went by, and still there came no son to gladden Cain's heart ... Abel ... grew more and more jubilant, and I fear he did not hesitate to make—er—a jest of his brother's ill-luck. [Cain's wife] raised her husband's hope once more. This time Cain determined that there should be no mistake. When madame's time was upon her, he carried her off to his estates, where she was delivered of—a daughter." ... Now observe the cunning of Cain. On his estate ... there dwelt a farm-labourer ... whose wife had just presented him with a second son ... [Cain] bribed this peasant to give him his lusty son in exchange for his daughter."

"Cain presently brought his family back to Paris ... leaving instructions that his daughter's foster-father was to leave his estate for some remote spot ... For twelve years [Cain's daughter] remained in the heart of the country, with her foster-parents, and was reared as their own child ... A plague struck down both foster-father and mother, but my heroine escaped, as did also her foster-brother ... She ... was taken to Paris by her foster-brother, a youth many years her senior ... He bought a tavern in one of the meanest and most noisome of your [Paris] streets. And since it was inconvenient for him to have a girl of my heroine's tender years upon his hands, he dressed her as a boy ... I shall not discompose you by telling you of her life in this guise ... Further, he married a slut whose care was to ill-use my heroine in every conceivable way. At this woman's hands she suffered for seven long years ... During those years she learned to know Vice, to Fear, and to know the meaning of that ugly word Hunger. I do not know how she survived."

"Then ... Fate stepped in again, and cast my heroine across the path of a man who had never had cause to love our friend Cain. Into this man's life came my heroine. He was struck by her likeness to Cain, and of impulse he bought her from her foster-brother. He had waited for many years to pay in full a debt he owed Cain; in this child he saw a possible means to do so..."'

So there you have it, pretty much the whole plot of the story. The girl, Leonie, is found by the Duke of Avon, an English lord visiting Paris. Her unusual coloring, bright red hair and striking black eyebrows and lashes grabs his attention. At first, the Duke believes she is a by-blow of his enemy, the Comte de Saint-Vire, a French nobleman that the Duke had a run-in with years ago. Comte too has bright red hear and striking black eyebrows. Doesn't take the Duke long to figure out that the person he thought was a teenage boy is in fact a young woman. Being an intelligent man, he realizes that Leonie was given up by the Comte as described above. This knowledge is the weapon the Duke will use to bring the Comte to his doom. And in the process the Duke will lose his heart to a beautiful, wild young woman who is twenty years younger than he is.

This is a very interesting tale. In the first part Leonie serves the Duke as a page, but eventually he sends her to Britain to learn to be a young noblewoman. Then he brings her back to Paris and introduces her to Paris high society as his adopted daughter. Let the fun begin!

Wikipedia has an entry about These Old Shades. 

Legacy

 

By Jeanne C. Stein

Book Four of the Anna Strong Chronicles

Anna is a human turned vampire unwillingly and who has been having a hard time accepting her new reality. For example, she has not shared her new status with her parents.

 She fell in with a vampire who promised to help her adjust but Avery turned out to be a complete nightmare. Eventually they had a showdown and Anna killed him, saving her business partner David's life, all of which occurred in previous books. 

David is in love with Gloria, a woman that Anna despises and she has been trying to convince David to dump. So it was quite unexpected when Gloria came to Anna for help because she was being blackmailed. Gloria's business partner has been pressuring her and now he has been murdered and Gloria is the main suspect, thanks to his vengeful wife's lies. 

Meanwhile, Anna has encountered a gang of werewolves and their leader, Sandra, has sparked a strange and inexplicable lust in Anna. Anna suspects some kind of spell or dark magic and so she agrees to meet Sandra at Avery's old mansion. Sandra and Avery used to be together and for some reason, Anna inherited his estate, which Sandra doesn't like. During their meeting, Anna sees Avery has possessed Sandra and she flees the mansion. She is completely unprepared to deal an Avery that is somehow still alive and living inside Sandra.  

This was an interesting story and easy to follow even without having read any of the earlier Anna Strong novels. The author gives you the data you need to understand the backstory without being boring or longwinded. The story is well written and held my interest all the way through. 

A Taste of Magic

 

By Tracy Madison

Life has not been going well for Liz lately. Her divorce has been finalized and her ex is happily settled into his new life with his new wife. Liz was blindsided by his sudden decision to end their marriage and has been feeling empty and lonely ever since.

Life is about to get more interesting though. Because her grandmother is giving Liz a very special birthday present: magic. According to the grandmother, Liz is descended from a long line of gypsy women with magical powers. Grandmother is in her eighties, so Liz doesn't take her claims about magic too seriously. That is until she accidently casts a spell on to some desserts she has made. And sees the results of those spells on the people who ate the magical desserts. Too bad that the spells were just wishful thinking and not well thought out. Liz's next attempts are more on target, but still with unplanned for side effects that are messing with some of her closest friends' lives in way she never intended. Including the ex-husband who Liz was trying to punish but instead seems to have revived his interest in her, the last thing she wants now that she has a hunky, single policeman living right next door who is as interested in Liz as she is in him.

This was an ok read. Actually found it dull, for the most part. I suppose all Liz's mistakes with her magic are supposed to be funny but I didn't find them to be so. Halfway through, I got pretty bored with it and was ready for it to be done. I kept thinking, given her first failures, that Liz should stop messing with peoples lives with her fumbling spells and just leave magic alone. 

Also, the vibe was coming through that it is the first book in a series, which it is, the second book, A Stroke of Magic, is about Liz's sister, Alice, with whom Liz shares her magical abilities.