Dear Abby - Favorite Dog Movies

Dear Friends,

I hope you are having a wonderful week!  We are having up and down weather here - cold then warm, dry then rainy - so it has been an adventure in dog walking here.

I have a new series coming up about Favorite Dog Movies and I would love to hear about YOUR favorite dog movies.

I'll share my favorites -- but look for longer posts about them in the future!  My all time favorite is The Ugly Dachshund.  It is a live action Disney movie starring Suzanne Pleshette, Dean Jones, a Great Dane, and of course, several Dachshunds!

I also love Lady and the Tramp.  Momma says it is her favorite childhood animated movie.  I say it is actually a love story (sigh!).

And then there is the great Disney classic 101 Dalmatians!

What are YOUR favorite dog movies?  I would love to hear about them so I can feature some of your favorites in future weeks.

Wishing you a great weekend!

Love,
Abby xoxoxo

Book Review and Giveaway - The Body in the Casket by Katherine Hall Page

Book Synopsis

The inimitable Faith Fairchild returns in a chilling New England whodunit, inspired by the best Agatha Christie mysteries and with hints of the timeless board game Clue.

For most of her adult life, resourceful caterer Faith Fairchild has called the sleepy Massachusetts village of Aleford home. While the native New Yorker has come to know the region well, she isn’t familiar with Havencrest, a privileged enclave, until the owner of Rowan House, a secluded sprawling Arts and Crafts mansion, calls her about catering a weekend house party.

Producer/director of a string of hit musicals, Max Dane—a Broadway legend—is throwing a lavish party to celebrate his seventieth birthday. At the house as they discuss the event, Faith’s client makes a startling confession. “I didn’t hire you for your cooking skills, fine as they may be, but for your sleuthing ability. You see, one of the guests wants to kill me.”

Faith’s only clue is an ominous birthday gift the man received the week before—an empty casket sent anonymously containing a twenty-year-old Playbill from Max’s last, and only failed, production—Heaven or Hell. Consequently, Max has drawn his guest list for the party from the cast and crew. As the guests begin to arrive one by one, and an ice storm brews overhead, Faith must keep one eye on the menu and the other on her host to prevent his birthday bash from becoming his final curtain call.

Full of delectable recipes, brooding atmosphere, and Faith’s signature biting wit, The Body in the Casket is a delightful thriller that echoes the beloved mysteries of Agatha Christie and classic films such as Murder by Death and Deathtrap.

Book Details

Genre: Mystery
Published by: William Morrow
Publication Date: December 5th 2017
Number of Pages: 238
ISBN: 0062439561 (ISBN13: 9780062439567)
Series: Faith Fairchild, 24

Purchase Links:  
Amazon 🔗 | Barnes & Noble 🔗 | Goodreads 🔗

My Review
The Body in the Casket tells the story of Faith Fairchild, a caterer who plans a big 70th birthday party for Broadway legend Max Dane.  The problem?  One of the guests wants Max dead.  Faith juggles her catering work and sleuthing to solve the mystery.

This is my first Faith Fairchild mystery, and I really enjoyed it.  I would like to go back and read the other novels in this series by Katherine Hall Page, but this book does work as a standalone.

The Body in the Casket is a wonderful traditional mystery.  I found the rambling old mansion setting fascinating and loved the description of the house.  I also enjoyed the theater details.  I worked in theater in my 20's and thought these details were particularly well done.

I loved the storytelling in The Body in the Casket.  The mystery was intriguing and kept me guessing for quite a while.  The characters were well developed.  I especially liked Faith and enjoyed the different aspects of her life -- part time sleuth, caterer, wife, and mother.

There were some unique elements of The Body in the Casket that I particularly liked.  Faith received a list of guests from Max Dane's assistant early in the novel, so this also shared a list of characters with readers.  There are a number of characters (and suspects!) and I found this list really helpful.

There are also italicized glimpses into the lives of the guests/suspects.  The first time this occurred in the novel, I found it a little disconcerting because the style and perspective suddenly changed without a character attribution.  However, once I realized these were scenes involving the dinner party guests, I found them very interesting and appreciated what they added to the story.

The book also includes several recipes in a section cleverly titled "Have Faith in Your Kitchen."   The most intriguing recipe to me was Himmel und Erde (Heaven and Earth), a dish that includes Russet potatoes and apples.

The Body in the Casket is a very enjoyable read, and I would recommend it to other mystery fans.  I am off to explore the rest of the series!

Author Bio
Katherine Hall Page is the author of twenty-three previous Faith Fairchild mysteries, the first of which received the Agatha Award for best first mystery. The Body in the Snowdrift was honored with the Agatha Award for best novel of 2006. Page also won an Agatha for her short story “The Would-Be Widower.” The recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at Malice Domestic, she has been nominated for the Edgar Award, the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and the Macavity Award. She lives in Massachusetts, and Maine, with her husband.

 

Catch Up With Our Author On:

Website 🔗, Goodreads 🔗, & Facebook 🔗!

 

Giveaway

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Katherine Hall Page and Witness Impulse. There will be 3 winners of one (1) physical copy of Katherine Hall Page’s The Body in the Casket. The giveaway begins on December 4, 2017 and runs through January 14, 2018. This giveaway is open to US addressess only. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received a copy of this book from Partners in Crime Tours. 

Book Spotlight and Giveaway - Ginger Snapped: A Spice Shop Mystery by Gail Oust

Book Synopsis

Piper Prescott and Police Chief Wyatt McBride might have gotten off on the wrong foot but, over the past year, their interactions have evolved into a friendship of sorts. And when the body of Shirley Randolph is found floating in a fishing hole, their relationship reaches entirely new territory.

Shirley, the town’s Realtor of the Year, was also Wyatt’s suspected romantic interest, and now the residents of Brandywine Creek are speculating that Wyatt is responsible for her death. As the town council moves to suspend the handsome lawman, Piper springs into action to save his reputation and possibly his freedom. She enlists the aid of her BFF, Reba Mae Johnson, along with Wyatt himself, to help solve the puzzle and find Shirley’s real killer.

Pointing them toward high-powered real estate tactics and possible affairs, the investigation soon becomes personal when Piper’s shop, Spice It Up!, is burglarized, and she’s forced off the road late one night, narrowly escaping serious injury. Realizing that she must be close to uncovering the truth, and that the evidence against Wyatt is no longer circumstantial, Piper resorts to drastic measures to prevent a grave miscarriage of justice.

Author Bio

Friends often accuse Gail Oust of flunking retirement.  While working as a nurse/vascular technologist, Gail penned nine historical romances under the pseudonym Elizabeth Turner for Avon, Pocket, Berkley, and Kensington.  It wasn’t until she and her husband retired to South Carolina that inspiration struck for a mystery.  Hearing the words, “maybe it’s a dead body,” while golfing with friends fired her imagination for the Bunco Babe Mystery series originally published by NAL.  In conjunction with Beyond the Page Publishing, the Bunco Babe series has  been republished in digital format as the Kate McCall Mysteries  complete with new titles and a whole new look.  Gail has written five Spice Shop Mysteries for Minotaur/St. Martin’s.  Her favorite pastimes are reading, traveling, and hanging out with friends.

Author Links

Webpage – www.gailoust.com, Gail Oust Author on Facebook, and Goodreads.

Purchase Links
Amazon   B&N  kobo  Google Play  BAM

Giveaway
(1) Autographed Print Copy of Ginger Snapped by Gail Oust (U.S. Only).  Ends January 13.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Dear Abby - Vintage New Year Dachshunds

Happy New Year, Dear Friends!

I am so glad to be back chatting with you.  I had a wonderful break with my Momma and am eager to visit with you here.   I have some fun plans for the upcoming weeks on my blog, but today I thought I would share a few vintage New Year dachshunds with you.

A dachshund helps her person blow up balloons on this Calling All Girls magazine cover, January 1960.

This Calling All Girls cover features a dachshund helping her person make noise (January 1963).

The rest of the pictures are from vintage postcards.  Some dachshunds sample champagne!

This dachshund contemplates a beverage.

These dachshunds find January 1 on a calendar.  (They also have some clover for luck!)

Another dachshund finds a calendar ... this time in an old fashioned basket.

These dachshunds make a snowman!

They even protect their snowman with an umbrella!

I hope you enjoyed these vintage images.  Please visit again next week - I have a fun question for you!

Have a wonderful weekend, and Happy New Year!

Love,

Abby xoxoxo

Book Review and Giveaway - The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen by Collins Hemingway

Book Synopsis
Everyone should marry once for love – Even Jane Austen

Jane Austen, single and seemingly comfortable in the role of clergyman’s daughter and aspiring writer in the early 1800s, tells friends and family to hold out for true affection in any prospective relationship. Everybody, she says, has a right to marry once in their lives for love.

But when, after a series of disappointing relationships, the prospect of true love arrives for her, will she have the courage to act? The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen re-imagines the life of England’s archetypal female by exploring what might have happened if she had ever married. It shows how a meaningful, caring relationship would have changed her as a person and a writer.

It also takes her beyond England’s tranquil country villages and plunges her info what the Regency era was really about: great explorations and scientific advances, political foment, and an unceasing, bloody war.

In such times, can love—can marriage—triumph?

Amazon | Austen Books | Barnes and Noble

My Review
I love the novels of Jane Austen.  They are comfort reads for me.  I have print editions but also carry them in e-book format on my phone.  That said, I have read relatively little about Jane Austen's life, so I found the premise of The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen particularly intriguing.

This novel tells an alternate history of Jane Austen's life and love, with a glimpse at how this difference might have effected her writing.

It was a pleasure to spend time with Jane Austen and a lively cast of characters in this novel.  I enjoyed the way Jane approached the world, with grace and wit.  I also enjoyed her interplay with Ashton Dennis.  Their balloon ride was my favorite scene in the novel -- and it was great fun.

This story is beautifully told.  The author's voice is elegant and quick, and invokes the spirit of Jane Austen's writing.

The historical details of this novel were fascinating.  I loved descriptions like this:

"When Jane and Cassandra stepped out the front door of their house, every imaginable noise of the city assaulted them.  Vendors hawked their wares:  muffins, milk, cheese, newspapers.  'Hot spice gingerbread, smoking hot!' cried one.  'Milk below, maids!' cried another - though the ill-fed city cows produced thin milk.  Housewives and servants haggled with the peddlers over the prices of all the food needed for the day's meals, a reminder that living costs were higher in Bath because the Austens could not grow their own food as they had in Stevenson.  Carriages clattered in and out of the entrance to the Sydney Hotel across the street.  Banging and thumping came from the tavern behind them, where workers hauled in barrels of fresh beer and mead.  The crowds made Jane long to turn toward the open fields -- toward the sun -- rather than walk into the heart of the city" (p. 10).

This is the first of a three part series, and I look forward to continuing the story.  I recommend The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen highly for Janeites, literature lovers, and fans of historical fiction. 

Author Bio
Whether his subject is literature, history, or science, Collins Hemingway has a passion for the art of creative investigation. For him, the most compelling fiction deeply explores the heart and soul of its characters, while also engaging them in the complex and often dangerous world in which they have a stake. He wants to explore all that goes into people’s lives and everything that makes tThe hem complete though fallible human beings. His fiction is shaped by the language of the heart and an abiding regard for courage in the face of adversity.

As a nonfiction book author, Hemingway has worked alongside some of the world’s thought leaders on topics as diverse as corporate culture and ethics; the Internet and mobile technology; the ins and outs of the retail trade; and the cognitive potential of the brain. Best known for the #1 best-selling book on business and technology, Business @ the Speed of Thought, which he coauthored with Bill Gates, he has earned a reputation for tackling challenging subjects with clarity and insight, writing for the nontechnical but intelligent reader.

Hemingway has published shorter nonfiction on topics including computer technology, medicine, and aviation, and he has written award-winning journalism.

Published books include The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen trilogy, Business @ the Speed of Thought, with Bill Gates, Built for Growth, with Arthur Rubinfeld, What Happy Companies Know, with Dan Baker and Cathy Greenberg, Maximum Brainpower, with Shlomo Breznitz, and The Fifth Wave, with Robert Marcus.

Hemingway lives in Bend, Oregon, with his wife, Wendy. Together they have three adult sons and three granddaughters. He supports the Oregon Community Foundation and other civic organizations engaged in conservation and social services in Central Oregon.

For more information please visit Collins Hemingway’s website and blog. You can also find him on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Goodreads.

Giveaway
During the Blog Tour we will be giving away two paperback copies of The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen! To enter, please enter via the Gleam form below.  

Giveaway Rules 
– Giveaway ends at 11:59pm EST on January 12th. 
-- You must be 18 or older to enter. 
– Giveaway is open to residents INTERNATIONALLY. 
– Only one entry per household. 
– All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any suspect of fraud is decided upon by blog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion. 
– Winner has 48 hours to claim prize or new winner is chosen.  

The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen

I received a copy of this book from Historical Fiction Virtual Blog Tours.