Just a Quick Pre-Heading Back to Comox Post

Dashwood Manor

Well, our three days in Victoria is coming to an end. Jo and I had a lovely time. We had to find a new place to stay as the Harbor Towers had closed down as a hotel. So Jo checked around and found this B&B, Dashwood Manor, on Cook Street. Lovely place, nice room, very comfortable. We'll stay here again.

We had a very nice time here. I managed to visit both Russell Books and the Chronicles of Crime / Sorenson Books and last night we went to Stars on Ice. Jo loved it of course and I really enjoyed. All of our favorite Canadian figure skaters and also Javier Fernandez, our honorary Canadian / Spanish figure skater. Great show and I have a feeling there wasn't a dry eye in the house, if I go by what I saw around me..

Bonnie looks like she's having fun.. :)

All in all a very nice couple of days. Heading back to Comox shortly to pick up the puppies at Poochies and then home. The dogs will of course be exhausted and need baths as soon as we get home..

Jo is busy packing so I'll limit my Book Purchase post to the two books I bought on the way down to Victoria, at Chapters in Nanaimo... Tomorrow I'll update on the other books I purchased in Victoria.

Books from Chapters

1. A Stranger in my Grave by Margaret Millar. Millar has become one of my favorite mystery writers. She tells such great stories and I've been searching for her books. I was pleasantly surprised to find this one, a re-release of a 1960.








"Young housewife Daisy Harker’s world is upended when a blank spot in her memory and a reoccurring nightmare link her to an unsolved murder and a decades-old conspiracy.

Jim and Daisy Harker are a young, well-to-do couple in San Felice, California, and though childless they maintain the sort of domestic happiness that others can only aspire to. But a darkness exists at the outer edges of Daisy’s mind and she has no idea why it’s there. In a series of reoccurring nightmares she wanders a cemetery, eventually finding her own gravestone. According to the dream, December 2nd, 1955 is the day she died.

Street smart but honorable, Stevens Pinata is a man with his own mysteries. An orphan left on a church doorstep as a child, he isn’t even certain of his ethnicity, let alone his goals in life. As a private investigator he works with bail bonds and quick shakedowns. But when a pretty young woman like Daisy Harker comes into his office with a crazy request to “find her lost day” he is intrigued. He is too decent to take advantage of a crazy woman, but Mr. Harker is a wealthy man and who is Pinata to turn down money?

What unfolds is a masterpiece of suspense and one of the books that forever changed the domestic thriller. Millar’s razor sharp prose cuts a masterful plot and slashes at the racism, sexism, and entitlement endemic to an era otherwise celebrated for its prosperity."

2. The Green Mill Murder by Kelly Greenwood.  This is the 5th book in the excellent Phryne Fisher mystery series, set in Australia in the early 1900's, after World War I.










"Phryne Fisher is doing one of her favorite things - dancing at the Green Mill (Melbourne's premier dance hall) to the music of Tintagel Stone's Jazzmakers, the band who taught St Vitus how to dance. And she's wearing a sparkling lobelia-coloured georgette dress. Nothing can flap the unflappable Phryne--especially on a dance floor with so many delectable partners. Nothing except death, that is.

The dance competition is trailing into its last hours when suddenly, in the middle of "Bye Bye Blackbird" a figure slumps to the ground. No shot was heard. Phryne, conscious of how narrowly the missile missed her own bare shoulder, back, and dress, investigates.

This leads her into the dark smoky jazz clubs of Fitzroy, into the arms of eloquent strangers, and finally into the the sky, as she follows a complicated family tragedy of the great War and the damaged men who came back from ANZAC cove.

Phryne flies her Gypsy Moth Rigel into the Australian Alps, where she meets a hermit with a dog called Lucky and a wombat living under his bunk....and risks her life on the love between brothers."

There you go for now. Tomorrow I'll talk about the other books I purchased; from Russell Books and the Chronicles of Crime / Sorenson Books. It might take a couple of days.

Enjoy the rest of your week!!!