With the end of Daylight Savings Time, this is now the perfect time of year to snuggle up by the fireplace and read a good book. Here are some great books to help ages nine through adult to do just that!
The Viscounti House, by Elsbeth Edgar, is part mystery and part realistic fiction and will enrich the reader to life down under with a summer atmosphere during school and Christmastime. Laura feels like an outcast in her new school where she doesn’t know anyone. She lives in an old Italian manor, the Viscounti House, where parts of the house are in great need of repair. Her artist parents are a bit different from the norm which also makes her feel odd. When a boy, Leon, moves into his grandmother’s house, he seems to be ostracized from the rest of the school kids, but she ignores him. However, as she delves into the mystery of why this huge house was built, she befriends Leon and together they set out to solve who built the house – and why. This is the author’s first book but it is so well written that all ages will immediately become engaged! Also, you’ll find the inspiration of how this book was written at the back of the book. I wish other authors would write a brief note at the back of their books as to why they wrote it because it just might ignite future story writers.
Pie, by Sarah Weeks, is a story rich in language, family and pies. It’s 1955 and ten-year-old Alice is saddened from the death of her beloved Aunt Polly, the “Pie Queen of Ipswich”. Her aunt has mysteriously bequeathed her piecrust recipe to her cat, Lardo, and has left her cat for Alice. And so begins the story of Alice and her family and the tale of her friendships, family relationships and what happens with her labored relationship with her own mother. Aunt Polly would be richly rewarded in heaven knowing how this tale turns out. The fourteen recipes found throughout are mouthwatering yummy pie concoctions.
Icefall, by Matthew J. Kirby, may well prepare you for winter, but this story makes for a long, cold and traitorous season. Solveig and her siblings are waiting out a long and hard winter far away from their castle as their father, the king, has sent them away from the impending war in order to protect them. But as the cold permeates their skin and food becomes scare, they begin to wonder where the assailants really are. Could they be right in their midst? This well-written book, by “The Clockwork Three” author, keeps the pace going all the way to the frozen tundra finish.
Circle of Secrets, by Kimberly Griffiths Little, has eleven-year-old Shelby having to go live with her estranged mom after her father has to work overseas for several months. Her mother left her father and her a year earlier and Shelby is full of bitter hurt and wants nothing to do with her mom. But moving into her grandmother’s old Louisiana bayou cabin and living once again with her mom, forces her to rethink her attitude towards her mother. Shelby becomes friends with a mysterious girl, Gwen, and soon discovers that perhaps Gwen may be a ghost. Gwen’s life becomes entangles in her life as well as her mom’s past and she learns some mysterious events from the past. This is a ghost story that is less scary and with more overtones of friendship and resolution.