Tasteless, yes. But it got your attention.

I just finished a new mystery/thriller called The Yard and, to borrow freely from one of the esteemed writer and critic James Agee’s most incisive movie reviews, “I liked it alright.”

I know it’s rooted in the literary snob in me, but I tend to regard mysteries in the same way that I do commercial television. I wish I could shake the feeling that I could be spending my leisure time to better purpose and just relax and enjoy them for what they are. The Yard certainly fulfills its obligation to maintain a high level of escapist entertainment and I never regarded it with the same level of reverence with which I approached Intruder In the Dust. I pretty much got what I expected and there are a lot of things much worse than that. I once told myself that Mamma Mia! couldn’t be all that bad because Meryl Streep was in it. Talk about a babe in the woods!

The novel is set in London in 1889, the year after Jack the Ripper’s killing spree ended. Scotland Yard was internally demoralized by their inability to nab the Whitechapel killer and the citizenry held them in low esteem for the failure. Jack, after all, was still out there somewhere.

It was a very inopportune time for another series of gruesome murders to commence, but that is exactly what happened.

A trunk is found at Euston Station. In it lies the mangled body of  a police inspector, his arms and legs broken to accommodate the confines of  his makeshift coffin, his lips and eyelids sewn shut by a heavy thread. Three needles and a length of a thinner thread are also found nearby. None of the circumstances or the clues pointed to a reemergence of the Ripper. It just wasn’t his style.

Neither was the terrible death of a five-year-old boy found wedged into a chimney in the East End and suffocated by his own body heat. On the surface, the two crimes didn’t seem related. I may be an admitted neophyte in the genre, but I suspected that they were.

Author Alex Grecian has structured his novel like an old time movie serial. The end of each chapter tends to leave the reader hanging. Although it encourages forging on into the wee small hours, it also has a tendency to be annoying and even frustrating. The conceit necessitates a number of subplots with varying degrees of interest, although none of them appreciably intrude upon the book’s brisk pacing.

Among the characters are a medical examiner who thinks that there many be a future in fingerprinting, a hulking simpleton called “the dancing man,” a mysterious and possibly lethal beauty, and  a shrewd inspector named Day, whose name gives his colleagues priceless opportunities for dim witticisms such as “There’s a new Day dawning.” Mr. Grecian seems fond of catchy names. Inspector Boring doesn’t do much in the book and might exist only as an example of its author’s wit, although I sincerely hoped not.

There is also an undisciplined young policeman of the type that turns up quite frequently in Mel Gibson’s early films and, perhaps most memorably, two lesbian hookers from Whitechapel. Mr. Grecian should have used the odd pair for his title. Lesbian Hookers from Whitechapel has a lot more punch than The Yard, don’t you think? I almost used it as the title for my blog, but I was worried that I might offend someone in management. I don’t like to make waves, so I settled for the PG-13 version above.

The novel is spiced by the same elements that make the actual Ripper murders so endlessly fascinating. It is steeped in the foggy, rainy, gaslit menace that actually prevailed in London during the fall of 1888. Within its intricately woven storyline, there are jarring looks at the enormous economic chasms that existed between the social classes in Great Britain at the time, especially pertaining to children and the mentally ill. London was a city that didn’t need a Jack the Ripper to make it seem like a hell on earth.

The fictitious mystery path is one I seldom trod. This one was at least an entertaining ramble, even if it didn’t tempt me to make the journey more often.

The Yard will be published by Putnam in June.

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A year ago I did my first blog. The nephew who inspired it has since healed, grown a foot taller than I am and still plays baseball, video games and reads. His brothers also enjoy a good book now and again (much to the glee of their book-indulging aunt). So in their honor a few gems for their (and your) reading enjoyment:

Jon Scieszka is at it again with the second installment of his Guy Reads series. This time thrills and chills abound with Guys Read: Thriller. These short stories for ages 10-14 are done by some of today’s best loved authors. Each is a thrilling story that will have you keeping the lights on and the shivers down your back. Plus, a few giggles and a couple of groans….. (but don’t mind those…it is just the ghosts looking for treasure……!)

Julia Alvarez started with How Tia Lola Came to Stay and continued Tia Lola’s story with How Tia Lola Learned To Teach; How Tia Lola Saved The Summer and How Tia Lola Ended Up Starting Over. We have seen Miguel and his family move to Vermont from NYC, seen how a community can come together to help each other and a beloved new friend.  We have even learned how to speak Spanish! Now we see that families come in all shapes, sizes and strengths! And those strengths can come in handy even when we do not realize that we need a little help…help that sometimes comes from an unusual source.

Uncle Jed’s Barber Shop by Margaree King Mitchell touches on many different subjects: family, history of race and dreams. Sarah Jean’s Uncle Jed was the only black barber in their county. He was kind and hoped to someday save enough money for his own barbershop. But as a black man in 1920’s in the South, Uncle Jed has many difficulties to overcome, the least probably is having to travel to his customers. And saving money is difficult, too. Something always comes up: from Sarah Jean’s operation to the Great Depression. Will Sarah Jean ever get to swirl in Uncle Jed’s very own barber chair? The rich and beautiful illustrations by James Ransome move this story of hopes, dreams and realizations to its heartwarming ending.

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate has many levels of fun: paintings, gorillas and a baby elephant! Ivan has been taken from the jungle as a young gorilla and raised as a human baby. But when he becomes too big to take care of, he is put into a domain (a cage) at a local mall that has an elephant named Stella, a creaky-music carousel, parrot and a ring where some animals perform. But when baby Ruby (a curious baby elephant) joins their motley crew, Ivan has bigger problems than getting enough bananas, TV time and a comfortable spot when Bob the dog sleeps on his tummy. He promises Stella he’ll help Ruby get to a zoo! Sweet, funny, informative, sad, thoughtful and hope-filled this is delightfully illustrated and a story to read aloud or for the child ready for a more solid novel. Sparse text packs a punch that will have you laughing; crying and sharing with your gorilla…I mean children…family and friends!

And let’s wrap this smorgasbord of jewels with a little mayhem, mystery, madness and even ghosts! The Dead of Winter by Chris Priestly will chill your bones as Michael (orphaned after the death of his mother, the only parent he knew) spends the holiday season with his new guardian, Sir Stephen Clarendon. But things are not as they seem! The cold old house is haunted by the dark secrets of its past. And even the care Michael finds among the servants and Sir Stephen’s sister, Charlotte, cannot hide the strange sounds, feelings, shadows and visions he has? Who was the strange woman by the side of the road? Who is crying (but unseen) every night? How did a mirror break when no one touched it? As the truth unfolds, more questions than answers occur and Michaels’’ life will never be the same!

Nor will yours when you pick up one of these great stories! Stories you can find on the pages….the shelves of the Northshire Bookstore.

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Otherwise, we strongly suggest the following: this weekend’s events (including updated info about the Rachel Maddow event), bookseller Bill Lewis talking to WAMC’s Joe Donahue about a great list of history titles, and events in March.

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Sarah Pinneo will appear at the Northshire Bookstore on Friday, February 17 at 7 pm.

Julia’s Child is a comedy about the foibles of a mom who underestimates the difficulty of pushing her scrupulously organic children’s products into the world. As a journalist and a cookbook author, I’ve always written about food. A saner girl than I would have taken her big ideas straight to the non-fiction section of the bookstore. But I had an inkling that contemporary comedy was the right vehicle to explore all the loony contradictions in our food (and parenting) culture. Julia’s Child is the result.

Julia wants very badly to see her organic toddler foods in the freezer case at Whole Foods. Early in the story she observes that starting a business begins with “the crazy idea that you have something the world needs.”

Alas, the same is true with novel writing. As an author who wanted very badly to see her “baby” on the bookstore shelves, it wasn’t difficult to channel Julia’s yearning. And as I interviewed real-life foodie entrepreneurs as research for Julia’s Child, it became apparent that success in the food industry—just as in fiction—was slippery and elusive. The “mompreneurs” I spoke to maxed out their credit cards to start their companies. They filled orders in their basements. They sold baby food at the farmers’ market with infants strapped to their chests.

If I were ever unsure that Julia’s Child should be a comedy, the entrepreneurs who spoke to me put those doubts to rest. La Verne Lesznik of Vermont’s own Cottage Hill Farm is living proof that mompreneurs are in a slapstick business. She makes delicious organic cake mixes. She strapped her one year-old granddaughter into the car seat, and then set a single chocolate cake on the opposite side of the car. The cake was destined for a potential retail distributor.

By the time Lesznik reached her destination, the little girl had gotten her hands on that cake, smeared her only sample around the back of the car, and all over herself.

But where there was humor and mishap, there was also heart. One of my favorite conversations was with Chris Kaiser, founder and “dadpreneur” of Vermont Peanut Butter. “I love peanut butter,” said Kaiser. “I’ve always eaten it, I’ve always made milkshakes with it. I’ve always made crazy sandwiches with it. To make a living you have to sell something. I thought wouldn’t it be nice to sell something that makes people really happy?”

Wouldn’t it? Indeed.

Be it comedy, or be it peanut butter, that’s all an entrepreneur—or an author of comedy—really wants: to make a quality product. To make people smile.

Sarah Pinneo is the author of Julia’s Child (Plume 2012) and the co-author of The Ski House Cookbook (Clarkson Potter 2007). She worked in finance for more than a decade before making the transition from breadwinner to bread slicer.  She holds a degree in economics from Yale University.  Sarah has lived in Grand Rapids, MI, New York City, Ludlow, VT and now Hanover, NH where the occasional moose or black bear is spotted in her back yard.

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This coming Saturday the 18th at 1:00 PM marks the long anticipated arrival of the Pitchapalooza world tour to the Northshire Bookstore. Is it possible you haven’t heard of Pitchapalooza? Outrageous! Unthinkable! I’m joking, of course, but it has become a fairly big deal around here and it becomes harder and harder to imagine not having heard of it.

The Pitchapalooza Bible

Known sometimes as “American Idol” for writers, Pitchapalooza is all about giving undiscovered authors an opportunity to make their mark in the publishing world. David Henry Sterry and Arielle Eckstut’s book The Essential Guide to

Getting Your Book Published is one of the preeminent “getting-into-print guides” on the market. For more information on the details of Pitchapalooza, please visit here. But the bottom line is this; in the course of this event, Eckstut and Sterry will hold forth on their tried and true techniques for “birthing” a book from conception to publication, schedule a 20 minute future consult for all purchasers of their book and, most excitingly, from a pool of 20 participants selected, at random, to present a 60 second pitch for their book concept, choose a Pitchapalooza winner- the prize being an introduction to an agent or publisher.

A few words about being an unpublished writer. It’s not much fun. Certainly that four word statement may be a bit of an overgeneralization- the act of writing itself can and should be and frequently is fun and extremely rewarding. Nevertheless, feeling the burn of the untold stories within oneself and not knowing exactly how to break through to join that exclusive, yet seemingly bountifully populated, club of published authors is- as the hundreds of thousands or more of such unpublished creatures roaming the countryside can attest- quite often painfully frustrating. The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published contains some of the most detailed and practical advice I have ever read as to how to go about making one’s big “breakthrough”- from tightening up one’s concept and pitch, to locating appropriate agents and editors and working as productively and sanely as possible with your agent, editor and publisher. Eckstut and Sterry leave no stone unturned, no proverbial base uncovered as they verbally illuminate the myriad of details they have learned from their own careers as agent and writer, respectively, as well as offering countless inserted, pertinent quotes from established authors on their own experiences in the world of publishing. An informative, well researched and finely crafted book of “writing on writing”, to be sure!

We’ll see you all on Saturday.

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The jacket for the book Envy by Gregg Olsen has the phrase: Murder is such a dirty word. It is also messy: the planning; the execution; the cleaning up; the cover-up.

I have always loved a good mystery. The suspense, the drama, the wondering who-done-it.  Two delightfully harrowing cases are, of course, Envy and Silence of Murder by Dandi Daley Mackall.

In Envy, Olsen (his first whack at young adult novel; but not the last) takes the headlines of today and enters a world of cyber-bulling, suspense and even a little supernatural. No one is really what they seem. No one does not have at least a secret or two.  When local teen, Katelyn (one of only three girls to survive a bus crash on their Daisy-Girl Scout outing many years before) is found dead in her bathtub on Christmas, the secrets start coming out. After all, with twins like Hayley and Taylor Ryan it is hard to keep them silent.  From even before they survived the bus crash as well, the girls have always been in tune with the other-worldly.  And they will stop at nothing to find out how their friend died and who is responsible. A noisy reporter, jealous “friends”, a mother who will do anything to make her daughter the star she wanted to be and other quirky, interesting, real characters haunt the pages.  Was Katelyn’s death an accident? Suicide? Or murder?

Dandi Daley Mackall takes a more traditional approach to murder in The Silence of Murder. Hope Long’s life is her older brother Jeremy. So when Jeremy is accused of killing the town’s baseball coach (a man Jeremy adored), Hope does not understand how to move on. The town is convinced Jeremy is guilty. But is Hope’s love and belief enough to save him? But when she decides to find answers, and probably is a lot closer to the truth than even she knows, she is threatened by an unknown person or persons. Having really only been her and Jeremy for so long, Hope is unsure of who she can trust. Can she trust anyone?

Both titles are a thrilling mystery with many twists and turns. You might think you have it figured out, but then again, do you have the mind of a cold-blooded killer? Find out with these and other titles, when you visit the Northshire Bookstore. Please do not mind the chalk out lines on the floor……

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