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A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful

Edmund Burke and Paul Guyer

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'Pain and pleasure are simple ideas, incapable of definition.' In 1757 the 27-year-old Edmund Burke...

Isaac Rosenberg: 21st-century Oxford Authors

Vivien Noakes

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This volume, part of the the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series, presents all of the surviving...

Macanudo #2

Mara Faye Lethem and Liniers

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Macanudo #2 collects more of Liniers's great daily strip (the first selection of which appeared in...

Poems Retrieved

Frank O'Hara, Bill Berkson and Don Allen

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Originally published under Donald Allen's classic Grey Fox Press imprint, Poems Retrieved is a...

The Blue Horse

Philip Miller

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Recently bereaved, George Newhouse, is an art historian and newly appointed curator at the National...

Making Out in the Mainstream: GLAAD and the Politics of Respectability

Vincent Doyle

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Making Out in the Mainstream is the first full-length study of LGBT media activism, revealing the...

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2200 KP) rated Death at a Country Mansion in Books

Dec 24, 2020

Dead Diva

Dame Serena Levante was a world-renowned opera singer. She’s also the mother of Daisy Thorne’s best friend, Floria, so when news comes that Serena is dead, Daisy rushes to Serena’s mansion outside of the English village of Edgemead. The police quickly see that it was murder, and they believe that robbery was involved since an expensive painting is also missing from the mansion. Daisy owns the local hair salon, and it is a hub of gossip. As a result, she begins to hear things that might help the police in their quest to find out what happened. Can she get the gruff inspector to listen to her?

I wasn’t planning to read this book until I started hearing great things about it, and I’m glad I picked it up. The mystery starts out right away, and we have plenty of twists and turns. The climax wraps everything up neatly for us. Serena was the kind of woman who left behind many suspects, something I always enjoy. We don’t get to know all the suspects super well, but because we like Daisy and Floria, we care about the outcome. We meet some other regulars, and I’m looking forward to spending more time with all of the cast. There are a few things that could have been smoothed out better, including a timeline issue, but they are minor overall. The book is shorter than many today, but there wasn’t a wasted scene. Overall, this is an enjoyable debut, and I’m looking forward to visiting Daisy again soon.