Dorothy Gilman was born June 25, 1923 and  her first book was published in 1949.   Two of her books have been adapted to movies, one with Rosalind Russell and the other with Angela Lansbury.  For more information check out her fan club site – mrspollifax.com – or her Wikepedia entry  – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Gilman

When someone is in the hospital or “in the dumps” I give them a Mrs. Pollifax book to read.  It is positive,  madcap and enjoyable.   With the cold war no longer being openly fought and old enemies are now allies, her book’s subject matter seems passe.  Her writing style isn’t.  She defines the term cozy to a “T”!

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The other gift I would love to give is time.   If you are the one that is underemployed how about giving time?  I know from my end that is the one thing I don’t have enough of is time.  If someone offered to run errands for me, help put some books on the data base or clean my kitchen I would be so happy.    Often times it isn’t the dollar amount but the thought that counts.

If they are a collector and you know what authors they collect or what they have  (their want lists), you can always call us or some other bookseller to find that special book.   For example if they collect early Avon or William Irish they might be interested in The Avon Mystery Story Teller #86.   Hobs

I know I don’t like to use book plates because they bring down the value of a book.   They do provide some “protection” to a book because once you place them in a book they are hard to take out.  That way when you lend that book to someone they know who gave them that book and better return it!  I tend to buy extra copies of books that I would want to lend out to people because somehow they never seem to come back!

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First let me tell you about the organization.  I have been wanting to do this for a very long time.  I went through all the overstock and organized it by vintage and “newer” ones with ISBN then by subject.   Now we have a better idea of what we have in overstock.  We also pulled out the more recent movie/TV books so most of those should be on the database.

As I have been going through the books I have also so been pulling out the ISBN ones that might be of interest at the next few conventions, etc.   Those are the 2,000 that we have put on the database!  We still need to price them but at least now we know what we have.  I still have about 1,000 left to go of additional pulled books to enter.    In the process of sorting I found over 300 Ace Doubles.  I wish they were all D’s but they are all across the board.

We also upload more books on the website including several Lions, Dell Mapbacks, Gold Medals,  and MacFaddens.

Lion 146

Hope you have a great holiday and a safe one.   We have had snow/rain which has helped us with staying indoors with our project!

Hobs.

Dell Map Back

“The fog-shrouded streets of Victorian London”? (Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes)

Or perhaps it is the “Men who slunk through the urban jungles with a will to survive and prosper, but still with an underlying code that ultimately forced them to do the right thing”? (Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade)

Katherine Hall Page (author of the Agatha Award-winning series  featuring amateur sleuth/caterer Faith Fairchild), Aaron Elkins (Edgar and Nero Wolfe award-winning author of 20 novels), and Michael A. Black (author of the popular Ron Shade series) respectively offered just those answers in regards to that question of inspiration. And might not we, as readers and perhaps writers as well, find that same seminal spark of inspiration in the writings of these forerunners, these precursors of great genre writing? Could we not all use a muse?

Go ahead. Get inspired. Find a muse. Find two or three and then some. Learn what makes great writing great by reading the books that sparked the remarkable writing of today’s popular authors. Need ideas for who to read? “Mystery Muses: 100 Classics That Inspire Today’s Mystery Writer” edited by Jim Huang and Austin Lugar and published by Crum Creek Press is a great place to segue from today’s sought after authors to those early authors that inspired them.

Wayne and Deb at Hooked on Books enthusiastically offer an awesome variety of just such books in economical, easily carried paperback versions.  It’s great to see first or early printings with the colorful covers.

Mrs. P  (Linda Piwowarczyk)

At Bouchercon, for the first time we were sold out of the Arthur Upfield books that we had brought.  At previous conventions no one had requested him. This time we had 4 people ask for him! At one SF convention we just happened to bring some TV/Movie books that included Babylon 5 and Alienation.  A lady from New Orleans had lost her collection in Katrina and was trying to replace her Babylon 5 and Alienation series. She was thrilled to find many of the books she was looking for as she almost wiped us out!   We try to bring the books that haven’t been reprinted or are hard to find but we still have to limit the number of books we bring because of the size of our tables and the van!  So if you are looking for that special author or that special series we will make room in the van if you send us your want lists before the conventions!

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Seems we should.  I know we can.

Take Craig Johnson, acclaimed author of the popular Walt Longmire Mystery Series, for example. What makes him so good? Lots of room for answers there, but let’s note one surprising answer that Craig Johnson himself noted in an interview.

Poetry.

Poetry? Yes, poetry. “Poetry is like jet fuel,” said Johnson, citing Wendell Berry, Yeats, and Rudyard Kipling, “just to name a few.”  It was easy for me to appreciate Johnson’s poetic turn—in his illustrations and his diction, in the lean outer manner of his Wyoming sheriff Longmire and the sheriff’s inner deft sensitivity to people and place. I just hadn’t connected the dots to realize what had influenced his aptitude with description and storytelling—one of the “causes of good performance” that Gino and Pisano say we tend to fail to investigate. It was poetry. Johnson reads poetry. And it fuels him.

And it can fuel you as well. Wayne and Deb at Hooked on Books can help you find vintage poetry in economical pocketbook-size versions, as well as stories by popular mystery writers of past and present. You can browse their online bookstore at vintageandcollectiblepaperbacks.com.  If you have a list of books you’d like to have but can’t seem to find, or need some help finding what authors to read next, give Wayne and Deb a call at 630 378-2002. They’d love to hear from you and help you find just what you are looking for.

For today’s emerging poets, Copper Canyon Press continues to illuminate poets such as Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin, Lao-Tzu as translated by Red Pine, and Richard Jones—one of my favorite recent reads—who punctures the surface of the mundane to pull out the significance, connecting the outer world of this-n-that to the inner world of emotional clutter—securing a personal and shared sanity and spirituality for modern life.

Mrs. P (Linda Piwowarczyk)

Kathleen Ernst is the author of the Chloe Ellefson  series that takes place in Wisconsin.

Jessie Chandler has written the Bingo Barge Murder that takes place in Minneapolis, MN.

One thing I did note is that a good number of the books coming out are cozies.  Now I enjoy a good cozy, especially after a hard day but where are the good puzzlers like Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers?  I  do enjoy a good puzzler, whether it be a forensic, court room, psychological thriller or bloody psycho terror,  all of which I’ve read and enjoyed at times.  But I miss the good old fashion mystery puzzler and I’m not talking about a niche mystery either.

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Dorothy L. Sayers is often ranked with Agatha Christie as being one of the finest mystery writers, especially of the Golden Age of Detective fiction, the ’20′s, 30′s, and 40′s.  But where Christie was known for her exquisite and tricky plots, Sayers became known for her engaging characters, chiefly the apt-named Sir Peter Wimsey, and later, Wimsey’s true love, Harriet Vane.  Many critics feel that Harriet Vane is a disguised characterization of Sayers herself.  Many events in the real-life Sayers mirror those of the fictional Harriet Vane – although Sayres was never arrested for murder, which is how we are introduced to Harriet Vane.    The romance and courtship of Wimsey and Vane continue over the course of several books.  Sayers is then also one of the first mystery writers to write several novels in a story arc, whereas before  writers wrote stand-alone adventures.

Sayers was more than just a crime writer.  She was also a  student of classical and modern languages, and one of the first women to graduate from Oxford University.  She was known as a  poet, playwright, essayist,  and translator.   Sayers herself considered her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy to be her best work.   She was one of the first academics to also write mysteries.  The depth of her knowledge is evident in much of her work.  She considered mystery novels to be a modern form of medieval morality plays.  But while her novels address morality, and many social issues of her time, she retains a charming and entertaining tone that make her novels a delight to read decades later.

In 1998, Jill Patton Walsh, herself an accomplished scholar, picked up the task of completing Sayers unfinished Wimsey manuscript, Thrones, Dominations.  In 2002, Patton published A Presumption of Death, based on The Wimsey Papers, a collection of articles that Sayers wrote during the second World War.  In 2010, Patton published The Attenbury Emeralds, a  Wimsey pastiche based on Sayers’ novels.

 Sayers’ work is still in print in many different editions.  I am particularly fond of the HarperCollins editions -  very handsome black oversize paperbacks with nice easy-to-read print.  I was thrilled to find an almost complete set of them rummaging through an indoor flea market one day.  I added two more to the set at a library sale.  Harper also does a very nice regular- sized edition which I have only seen at a bookstore.  But there is a wide variety of editions to be had at used bookstores/library sales.  Thrones, Dominations are considered Sayers’ works, and can be found easily in libraries, or the used book market.  Walsh’s other two novels are more difficult to find in the used book market, but are of course available on Amazon or regular bookstores.

Sayers’ books are a real treat, and should be a part of anyone’s mystery library.

Miss Read