by
Kylie Logan
Back in the day (and I do mean
back!) our local grocery store ran a promotion that these
days, sounds pretty odd.
For every purchase you made,
you could choose a framed print of an art masterpiece.
I don’t know how many of
the pictures my mother ended up with, but I do clearly remember
one of them, "A Young Girl Reading," painted by
Jean-Honore Fragonard, a French artist, in 1776. Aside from
the fact that it’s a pleasant picture, that the colors
are warm and easy on the eyes and that the girl looks so content
and so downright comfortable, there is a reason this particular
pictures stays in my mind–my mother always said it reminded
her of me.
Nose in book.
When I was a kid, I always had
my nose in a book.
At the time, I wasn’t much
for contemporary authors. Maybe that’s because back
then (there’s that phrase again!) there weren’t
many authors who catered to the YA market. That left me at
my favorite place–the library–with a whole host
of possibilities, most of them classics of literature.
I
read Lorna Doone (I don’t recommend it), and
Scaramouche (all because of the movie, of course,
and the crush I had on Stewart Granger). I devoured Prisoner
of Zenda (see the last comment) and The Scarlet Pimpernel
and all of Jane Austen, and Conan Doyle and Dumas (pere and
fils). When I went to college, I majored in English. How else
could I justify my nose constantly being in one of those books?
All that being said, I guess
it’s only natural that when I was looking for a hook
for a new mystery series, the idea of classical literature
popped into my head. Books . . . ah, there was something I
was comfortable with, something I knew readers loved to learn
more about, something that would surely get my creative juices
flowing.
It worked! From that idea grew
the concept for the League of Literary Ladies mysteries. The
League is based on South Bass island off the Ohio mainland
in Lake Erie, and consists of four members: Bea Cartwright
is new to the island and owns a B&B. Chandra Morrisey
is the island kook, a tarot and crystal reader. Kate Wilder
is all business. Since she owns the island’s biggest
winery, it’s no wonder. Elderly Luella Zak has taken
over her late husband’s fishing charter business. She’s
as tough as any Great Lakes skipper ever was.
Four different women, with four
different tastes. Brought together by one thing–books.
Well, that and the fact that they’re always feuding
and the judge gets so tired of them taking each other to court,
he orders them to get to know each other better by sentencing
them to become a book discussion group.
The
results are anything but predictable, especially when in the
first installment of the series, Mayhem at the Orient
Express, the Ladies discover a body and must use the
Christie classic they’re reading as a blueprint for
finding the killer.
This
month, the League of Literary Ladies is back in action with
A Tale of Two Biddies. It’s summer, and the
islanders are marking Bastille Day with a week-long celebration.
What better choice for reading than Charles Dickens’s
A Tale of Two Cities with its French Revolution background
and its story of secrets, lies and people who might–or
might not–be what they seem.
In the confusion, somebody’s
bound to lose their head!
To indulge my inner book geek
I also added a Charles Dickens look-alike and trivia contest.
It’s only natural–this time, the League must turn
to Dickens as a guide to solving the murder of the island
nobody who might not be as much of a nobody as everyone thought.
I don’t know about where
you are, but here in Ohio, it’s gray, gloomy and cold.
I can’t promise summer weather to go along with my summer
story, but I can say an adventure with the League of Literary
Ladies is bound to be a Dickens of a good time!
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