Sunday Salon - Birthdays and Books and Hallowe'en

It has been a very busy weekend; Hallowe'en of course, but it is also my eldest's son's 20th birthday (on Hallowe'en) and my youngest's 4th birthday today, so in between trick-or-treating and carving pumpkins, we have had two birthdays to celebrate! So I cooked a celebration birthday dinner yesterday for 7 adults and 2 children, and today, my mother left to go back to Kitchener, and I am needing a day to unwind. Aside from Graham unwrapping the rest of his presents later today, we have nothing blissfully planned. So I have a date shortly with Fred Vargas' Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands, which I have been longing to read since I bought it last spring sometime. It won the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger, which replaces the British Dagger Awards that used to be handed out for mysteries. So I will spending today in darkest Paris with an excellent mystery.

However, on this wonderfully quiet Sunday, I do want to share with you the lovely books I bought when my mother and I made our annual visit it Prime Crime, Ottawa's local mystery bookstore. We went on Friday morning, after I finished carving the pumpkin. We always spend well over an hour meandering from one shelf to another, asking each other, "Have you read this book yet?", and our piles grow huge and in my case, toppled over once! Here is what I bought:
- Stalin's Ghost, Martin Cruz Smith (an Arkady Renko mystery! I've loved this series ever since Gorky Park, and I forgot this was coming out.)
- Seeking Whom He May Devour - Fred Vargas (an older one in the series, but I'm reading them as I can find them since they are translated. I have to lend this to my mother after, since she knows she is getting Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands for Christmas).
- What Came Before He Shot Her - Elizabeth George (catching up in this series)
- Skinny Dip - Carl Hiaasen ( I love his funky bizarre characters involved in hilarious mysteries and coincidences set in Florida, all of which Mom says have their basis in real-life cases)
- A Deeper Sleep - Dana Stabenow ( I love Kate Shugak! Now she could run for V-P and I would vote for her!!)
- Winter's Child - Margaret Maron (Deborah Knott series, who couldn't love a judge whose father was the town bootlegger? and her 10 brothers)
- Friend of the Devil - Peter Robinson (I can hardly wait to read this one, new in paperback, a continuation of the Alan Banks series set in Yorkshire)
- Dead Cold and The Cruellest Month - Louise Penny. ( I reviewed Still Life last spring, the very first in the series, and these are the next two. Cruellest Month is new in paperback, and my mother, who I gave Still Life to last year for Christmas, has already read both of these and enjoyed them so much she bought #4, which came into the store in trade paperback while we were there! It's just come out! I will wait until I read these ones.)
- Missing Justice - Alafair Burke - (I keep reading about this author and her Samantha Kincaid mysteries, so I'm trying my first one.)
- Winter House - Carol O'Connell ( a Kathy Mallory mystery, I have two to catch up on, but I grabbed this so that I have it to read. Mom has already read it and says it's good, so the dip in the series is gone, thankfully. Mallory is too good a character to surround with lazy plotting and writing.)
- The Witch is Dead - Shirley Damsgaard. (An Ophelia and Abby mystery, Ophelia is a witch and Abby is her cat. A fun series which I can't seem to buy as they come out, so I grab when I see one).
- A Harvest of Bones - Yasmine Galenorn. ( A Chintz and China mystery, have never read this before, but the amateur sleuth is supposed to be a medium so it should be fun!!)

and finally, for my writing, from the How Dunit Series, "Deadly Doses, a Writer's Guide to Poisons", by Serita Deborah Stevens (with Anne Klarner).

I love my new pile of books!

So, I wish you all happy reading on this Sunday, and maybe some left-over Hallowe'en candy to munch on, wherever you go in your reading today. I have two birthday cakes to munch on! One is Nigella Lawson's delicious Quadruple Chocolate Loaf Cake (from her cookbook Feast), yummy. Now for a lovely cup of tea, and I'm set for a lovely long afternoon of reading.