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Advent of Mystery, Day 5: Murder for Christmas
Continuing our exploration of Christmas Manor House Mysteries, we’re looking at Murder for Christmas by Francis Duncan, featuring aging amateur sleuth Mordecai Tremaine. Before we get into the details, let’s take a moment to admire the immaculate cover art for this one. It’s the perfect design to evoke a Manor House Christmas in the Golden…
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Advent of Mystery, Day 4: The Santa Klaus Murder by Mavis Doriel Hay
So far, many of the the stories this week have been Christmas-adjacent. (Somehow, even having Christmas in the title is not enough to guarantee a Christmas-centric timeline.) That ends today. From here on out, it is straight manor house closed-circle mysteries that take place on Christmas. Some poor unfortunate soul invites a bunch of friends…
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Advent of Mystery, Day 3: Midwinter Murder by Agatha Christie
The holidays are a busy time for everyone, and it can be tricky to find the time to read a full-length novel. Luckily, we have short stories to fill that gap – bite-sized wintry puzzles that can fulfill your mystery fix. Recently, the folks at William Morrow have pulled together a new collection of Agatha…
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Advent of Mystery, Day 2: Death Comes at Christmas by Gladys Mitchell
One of my goals for this series is to read new Golden-Age mystery authors, and Death Comes at Christmas is my first attempt to do so. Gladys Mitchell wrote 66 books about Mrs. Bradley, who’s also a doctor and an established psychoanalyst. (You’ll notice the same “human expertise” vibes as Poirot and Miss Marple, but…
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Advent of Mystery, Day 1: The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers
Welcome to the first day of Advent of Mystery! I was first introduced to Dorothy Sayers as “kind of like Agatha Christie, but more literary.” My first Sayers read was Gaudy Night, and I feel in love with her writing style and with Lord Peter Wimsey’s understated wit. Reading the series always feels like returning…
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Introducing the Advent of Mystery: a week of Golden-Age murder mysteries for your winter celebrations
It’s the most wonderful time of the year… Here at The Cozy Owlet, we’re huge fans snuggling up with a great book when it’s cold (and windy) outdoors. It’s a great time of year to appreciate the comforts of a warm home and a supportive community. Of course, there’s no better way to throw that…
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Reading reflections for 2022 (and some challenge commitments!)
This has been really interesting year. I managed to read 140 (!) books this year, and it was around book 100 that I realized I wanted to think more critically about my reading materials. That launched this blog, an experiment: how would my reading experience change if I forced myself to engage with a prompt?…
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A Murder is Announced, Pt. 2: The risks of sensationalism
I have a confession to make. After the last three adaptation posts in this series, I was getting ready to quit. It had started to feel like every post came back to the same points: BBC adapted the plot, iTV adapted the themes, and iTV came out on top. And while I like to think…
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TCO Reviews: The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell
It’s raining today in the Bay – the skies are grey and the wind is blowing the water drops nearly sideways. It’s the perfect day to cuddle up under a warm blanket with a piping hot mug of Earl Grey, accompanied by a great story. And since I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands…
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A Murder is Announced, Pt. 1: Perfecting the pattern
I have to say, when I started this series, I was not anticipating having this many thoughts on the evolution of the Miss Marple books themselves. I genuinely expected that I would write brief overview for each story before jumping in to the adaptations. But here we are, book 4, and I still have Thoughts…