Kittling: Books
Birds fly. Dogs bark. Fire burns. I read. (Mostly mysteries.)
Monday, March 18, 2024
Kill for Me Kill for You by Steve Cavanagh
Sunday, March 17, 2024
On My Radar: Michael Connelly's The Waiting!
Available November 5, 2024! |
Meanwhile, Ballard’s badge, gun, and ID are stolen—a theft she can’t report without giving her enemies in the department the ammunition they need to end her career as a detective. She works the burglary alone, but her solo mission leads her into greater danger than she anticipates. She has no choice but to go outside the department for help, and that leads her to the door of Harry Bosch.
Finally, Ballard takes on a new volunteer to the cold case unit. Bosch’s daughter Maddie wants to supplement her work as a patrol officer on the night beat by investigating cases with Ballard. But Renée soon learns that Maddie has an ulterior motive for getting access to the city’s library of lost souls."
Thursday, March 14, 2024
The Best Laid Plans Weekly Link Round-Up
- Libraries are on the front lines of America's problems.
- The celebrity book club lives on.
- One writer's winter with Edith Wharton.
- What is the dominant emotion in 400 years of women's diaries?
- The real history behind FX's Shogun.
- Phillipa Gregory on how the Norman Invasion brought patriarchy to England.
- A Massachusetts library system will let you pay fines with cat pictures.
- Amazon's big secret.
- Why daylight saving time messes with your brain.
- Redford (Michigan) Union Schools remove a controversial book due to concern over its original title. (Think Agatha Christie, and you should be able to guess which book, and... for crying out loud!!!)
- The New York Public Library continues its nationwide "Books for All: Teen Banned Book Club" with The Downstairs Girl.
- Shouts erupt in New Hampshire over a proposal critics said would create a "state-run book banning process."
- Tensions still run high one year after The Glass Castle challenge in Grinnell, Iowa.
- A Denton, Texas grandparent challenges library books in a local independent school district.
- Wellington, Colorado has a plan to tackle censorship: banning book bans.
- The Virginia Beach (Virginia) School Board passes an amendment to ban "sexually explicit content" in elementary school libraries.
- Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) schools changes eBook app over "Parents' Bill of Rights" concerns.
- An Oregon bill that challenges book bans in schools has passed its Senate.
- Beaufort, South Carolina, schools return most books to shelves after an attempt to ban 97 of them.
- In Georgia, a bill to cut all ties with with the American Library Association is advancing.
- The Llano County (Texas) public librarian fired for not banning books is suing the county and library commissioners.
- This medieval sword spent 1,000 years at the bottom of a Polish river.
- Dozens of ruins-- up to 4,000 years old-- have been unearthed in the mountains of Oman.
- Vittrup Man violently died in bog 5,200 years ago. Now researchers know his story.
- A 3,500-year-old shipwreck-- one of the world's oldest-- sank carrying items in hot demand.
- Archaeologists were amazed to find that a 1,700-year-old chicken egg still has liquid inside.
- A stunning rock art site reveals that humans settled the Colombian Amazon 13,000 years ago.
- Archaeologists say that this snake artifact was used in shamanic rituals 4,000 years ago.
- Archaeologists have discovered a 19th-century chocolate factory in Barcelona.
- The first-ever white rhino IVF sparks hope that the "doomed species" could still be saved, despite there being no males left.
- Civilization without horses: the Epizootic of 1872. (Growing up in central Illinois, whenever someone got sick, it was common to hear someone ask, "Got the epizootic?" I didn't know it was a real thing!)
- Hungry sea otters help prevent erosion on California's coast.
- Fifty years after Jaws, we've learned a lot about great white sharks.
- A twelve-year-old vanished in frigid weather. Then Massachusetts police K-9 Biza picked up the child's scent.
- Bald eagle dad Shadow has been anxiously waiting for his turn to tend to eggs in a snow-covered nest in California.
- A nocturnal creature with a bushy tail was caught in a trap in Madagascar. It's a new species.
- Could fish sex be keeping Floridians up at night?
- Near the site of the Gettysburg Address, these Black Civil War veterans remain segregated, even in death.
- Ninety years of the Orient Express.
- Drones fired "seed missiles" into the dirt. A year later, the trees are already twenty inches tall.
- An Italian photographer waited six years to get a perfectly aligned photo of the moon, a mountain, and a basilica.
- Larry McMurtry's library.
- How English took over the world.
- The largest wildfire in Texas history is raging. Here's what you need to know.
- How a microbe from Yellowstone's hot springs could help feed the world.
- Why some Spartan women had two husbands.
- Mary Cardwell Dawson, founder of a trailblazing opera company, put Black singers at center stage.
- Juanita Sheridan and the Lily Wu Quartet: a rediscovered gem from the Golden Age of detective fiction.
- "Mrs. Sherlock Holmes" and the other real female sleuths who were written out of history.
- The long-lost story of Joseph Laroche, the only Black man on the Titanic.
- The "sad, happy life" of Carson McCullers.
- How Richard Wright's Native Son eventually made it to the big screen.
- Mark Twain's obsession with Joan of Arc.
- 35 lesser-known inventions of famous inventors.
- Eight historical mysteries set outside the U.S.
- Mysteries where the sleuth is wrongly accused.
- The literary film and TV you need to stream in March.
- Older sleuths get the job done in these new mysteries and thrillers.
- Eleven riveting non-fiction books similar to The Wager.
- Fifteen absorbing historical novels set during the Gilded Age.
- The best mystery and thriller movies of the 1970s.
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
While Miz Kittling Knits: I, Claudius
Monday, March 11, 2024
Dark Dive by Andrew Mayne
Sunday, March 10, 2024
On My Radar: Michael Bennett's Return to Blood!
Available May 21, 2024! |
When her daughter finds another young woman’s skeleton in the sands, Hana soon finds herself awkwardly involved. Investigators suspect that this is Kiri Thomas, a young Māori woman who disappeared four years earlier, after battling years of drug addiction. Hana and her daughter Addison are increasingly captivated by the story behind this unsolved crime, but without the official police force behind her, Hana must risk compromising her own peace and relationships if justice is to be served.
Expanding the range of vivid characters who made Michael Bennett’s first book, Better the Blood, so appealing, and offering a shocking twist at the end, Return to Blood takes readers further into Māori culture and traditions as it engages us more deeply into the story of Hana Westerman."
Thursday, March 07, 2024
The Best Kind of Luck Weekly Link Round-Up
- Inside the biggest art fraud in history.
- To make Tiffany & Co. a household name, the luxury brand's founder cashed in on the trans-Atlantic telegraph craze.
- What one reader discovered when she cleared her Goodreads TBR.
- When Goodreads reviews go bad.
- How the pandemic ruined our understanding of "free" time.
- Bring back the big, comfortable bookstore reading chair.
- When Ian Fleming got sick of James Bond.
- Why are we all so obsessed with book clubs now?
- New Mexico's anti-book ban bill is dead.
- The Georgia GOP senators seek to ban sexually explicit books from school libraries and reduce sex education.
- The Utah House gives finally passage to legislation that clarifies school library book challenges.
- Ron DeSantis wants to rebrand the book banning mess he created.
- Moms for Liberty takes aim at Howard County (Maryland) school library books.
- Calgary (Canada) police are investigating after LGBTQ+-themed library books are returned damaged.
- Newfane Public Library (New York) board president and other trustees have resigned.
- Spring Branch (Texas) Independent School District confirms imminent elimination of all school librarian positions.
- The Kenosha County (Wisconsin) Board votes 16-5 against a plan calling for adult-only sections in libraries.
- Citizens speak out against censorship in Metropolis (Illinois) Public Library.
- A Georgia school board upheld the firing of a teacher for reading a book about gender identity to fifth graders.
- Book ban wars expand in deep-red Texas county.
- A bill to end book bans is on the table in Minnesota.
- This Bronze Age treasure was crafted with extraterrestrial metal.
- Archaeologists discover a rare Roman funerary bed buried beneath London.
- Was this villa Pliny the Elder's front-row seat to Mount Vesuvius' eruption?
- A new discovery has revealed that Romans kept poisonous, narcotic seeds concealed in bone vials.
- An 11,000-year-old submerged stone wall discovered off the coast of Germany was once used to trap reindeer.
- A metal detectorist found a rare 3,000-year-old dress fastener.
- Ancient rock art in an Argentinian cave may have transmitted information across 100 generations.
- An 1,800-year-old "Iron Legion" Roman base discovered near "Armageddon" is the largest in Israel.
- Dolphins are "literally acting like jerks" by beating up baby manatees.
- Camouflaged animals are hiding in every one of these photos. Can you spot them all?
- Officials now have a theory as to why animals are acting strange at an Arizona national park.
- Alligators survived a cold snap by becoming "frozen solid" in North Carolina and Texas ponds.
- Scientists announced that they're changing the names of birds named after people. Things are about to get complicated.
- Why NASA is watching where Idaho's parachuting beavers landed.
- These parrots won't stop swearing. Will they learn to behave-- or corrupt the entire flock?
- Flaco, the famous owl that escaped the Central Park Zoo, dies after hitting a building.
- Experts are shocked by the record-breaking longevity of Death Valley's phantom lake.
- This app lets Inuit combine traditional knowledge with scientific data.
- 38,000 sandhill cranes flock to Nebraska in a record-breaking start to spring migration. Seeing thousands of these birds at one of their winter homes is a favorite memory of mine.
- Nuremberg: city of dreams and nightmares.
- Sixteen places every cheese lover should visit.
- The real-world locations of fourteen Sci-Fi dystopias.
- The Highlands noir of Inverness.
- Mexico City could be just months away from running out of drinking water.
- Tom Baragwanath on becoming an accidental crime novelist.
- The true story of Pocahontas is more complicated than you might think.
- James Cook has been using only a typewriter to create drawings for the last ten years.
- Jon Foreman turns found stones and shells into beautiful beach installations.
- Paul McCartney was reunited with his bass guitar that disappeared 50 years ago-- with a little help from his fans.
- Meet Smithsonian scientist Dr. Dave Pawson who has spent decades exploring the ocean depths.
- Anaxagoras and the eclipse: the first to get it right.
- Mary Jackson: Black women were also lynched.
- Seven noir books set in Hollywood.
- Twelve discontinued breakfast cereals.
- Six friends-to-frenemies thrillers.
- Nine historical mysteries that have been adapted to film.
- Fifteen new historical mysteries and thrillers to read in 2024.
- Nine of the most thought-provoking mysteries ever written.
- Five of the best books about grief.
- Twelve of the best accessories to personalize your Kindle.