A Victorian Mystery Series

The Inspector and Mrs. Jeffries by Emily Brightwell is another one of those cozy mysteries that are popular with people who don't want too much real life and violence. There is a slower pace to the story, a little bit more character development, and more detail to give the readers a better sense of the place and the time. These mysteries are set in Victorian England, mostly at the home of the Inspector, and his sympathetic employees. They all want him to succeed in his investigations that they are willing to "help" him out. The main character, Mrs. Jeffries, is a widow housekeeper who was married to a police investigator. She is above intelligence, known to sit and have a quiet cuppa tea with her employer and let him open up about his case. He likes her to sit with him while he has his dinner and they have a good chat as she is an excellent listener. This leads to her gathering the help of the rest of the staff as they unknowingly get involved with the investigation at hand. A good first to a series that has been going strong since 1993 with 30 separate mysteries to date.

The Beginning of a New Book Discussion Group

This Thursday, September 15 at 1 p.m. I will be having a meeting of people who are interested in starting a Classics Book Discussion Group at the Tipp City Public Library. I am following the National Endowment of the Arts book selections for the first three books:
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: October 13th , 1 p.m.
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton : November 17th, 1 p.m.
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan: December 15th, 1 p.m.
After these three the group could start selecting their own favorite classics to discuss. Get on board for the beginning of this great new discussion group and you can help create this group the way you would like it to be. If you are not sure check out this link on why being in a book group is interesting.

Cutting for Stone

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese was written in 2009, his first novel. It is a saga, a family story full of mystery and hidden symbolism. Twin boys are born in Addis Ababa, at the mission hospital of the Catholic Matron, called Missing Hospital due to the incorrect pronunciation of the title Mission. It is a small place, with a few doctors and a few nurses, trying to offer the people of Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia, what little nursing and doctor's care that can. The story begins in 1947 as Sister Mary Joseph Praise leaves her village in India with another nurse, Sister Anjali, nuns of the Carmelite Order of Madras who had taken the nursing courses at the Government General Hospital in Madras. On her voyage she loses her best friend to typhus and meets Thomas Stone, surgeon at Missing Hospital. She follows him there to do the Lord's work and stays for seven years. The mystery of Sister Mary Joseph Praise and her life story is slowly uncovered, and the story is told by one of the twin boys, Marion. The novel is written skillfully, dramatically, with much information about surgery and historical aspects of Ethiopia. Woven into the story of Missing Hospital are tales of a family's love for these twin brothers, and love and service to the hospital and it's mission. Told by an surgeon who is now living in California and teaching at Standford University School of Medicine, this book is an excellent example of American literature written gracefully by a citizen with a foreign background that makes this book all the more beautiful and rich.