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Eleanor Luhar (47 KP) rated The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories in Books

Jun 24, 2019

It's getting a bit late to post these festive reviews so I'll keep it short. It's only a short book, anyway.

This book contains four short stories, all crime/detective tales, starting with The Mistltoe Murder. My personal favourite was the final story, The Twelve Clues of Christmas. Every story was great, though, and A Very Commonplace Murder was particularly surprising.

James manages to include a fantastic little hint/twist at the end of the stories, changing your whole perception on what you've just read. This made the crimes so much more interesting and real. They were relatively simple crimes - stabbings, poisoning - but there's always a lot more going on under the surface than you'd expect.

A fantastic little collection, with a foreword by Val McDermid too. 4 stars.

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Fireworks

Angela Carter

10.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

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"I started to write short pieces when I was living in a room too small to write a novel in." So says...

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2063 KP) rated Crime de Cocoa (A Chocoholic Mystery #1-3) in Books

Mar 9, 2018

The collection of the first three Chocoholic mysteries plus the short story that was set and released before the series started. If you haven't started the series, this might be the place to start. The stories are light but fun and the characters are great.

Read my full review at <a href="http://carstairsconsiders.blogspot.com/2013/02/book-review-crime-de-cocoa-by-joanna.html">Carstairs Considers</a>.

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Sequential Drawings

Richard McGuire

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Richard McGuire has been an illustrator at the world-renowned New Yorker magazine for over a decade....

Jonathan Kellerman recommended The Stories of John Cheever in Books (curated)

"Any collection of John Cheever’s short stories. I’m not a big fan of much of what passes itself off as literary fiction, finding it to be insipid, self-indulgent, plotless, and pointless. However, Cheever could write about everyday life and make it fascinating. His psychological insights are deft, never heavy-handed, and sometimes, as in his story “The Enormous Radio,” he veers into some really strange territory."

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David Sedaris recommended Taking Care in Books (curated)

Taking Care

Joy Williams | 1985

(0 Ratings)

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"Another strong stylist that I imitated for a while was a woman named Joy Williams who had a short story collection called Taking Care. She has such a singular voice. It hasn’t really changed over the years. I remember she was talking about a girl having a fantasy about her beau and she said, ‘He was feeling fine, and fancy too.’ It was such music to me."

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