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Harold Arlen is not a household name - not in the average home, anyway. Yet Harold Arlen was the composer to some songs that are still well known nearly 90 years after they were first written. Not sure who he is yet? Have you ever heard or sung the song "Stormy Weather"? Maybe, maybe not? "Blues in the Night"? "It's Only a Paper Moon"? "Get Happy"? How about "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" or "Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead"? That's right, Harold Arlen is the genius composer behind the songs in The Wizard of Oz . As a theatre major in college and huge fan of the stage and screen musical, I've been aware of Harold Arlen for a long time, but I knew very little about him. Biographer Walter Rimler provides a solid sketch of the man, giving us facts and details relevant to a biography - we do not get a lot of extraneous details (ie parents and siblings, what elementary school was like, the social mores of the time, etc). We ...

Jarrod Jarvis is a former child television star in Hollywood. Now he lives in Palm Springs where he writes and directs for the local community theatre. Every day Jarrod quietly mourns the loss of his partner, a former police detective, Charlie. Jarrod tries to maintain a positive outlook, especially for his adult daughter, Liv. Liv is working toward a criminal justice degree. Her relationship with Jarrod has been rough, especially since Charlie's death. Liv is currently Zel, a young, ambitious documentary filmmaker. Zel's current project is to track down the surrogate mother who gave birth to Liv. Liv is getting cold feet on the project but Zel is ignoring her.  Liv's life is turned upside when Zel is murdered. Jarrod is at Liv's side as soon as humanly possible to support his daughter. Using her criminal justice skills, Liv begins to investigate Zel's death. She is surprised at her father's history of solving murders in Hollywood some twenty years ago. Together...

This was the oldest book in my ARC queue. It took me awhile to get to reading this not because of a lack of interest but because a death of a Kindle and a change in Kindle behavior meant I had lost the book to digital atoms. It's because I DID want to read this that I pursued getting my own copy. I can't imagine anyone who reads fantasy not being familiar with L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (probably first from the movie) even if they aren't aware that there were many books in the series. The student-geared abridged version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was the first book I ever read cover to cover in one day when I was in second grade during a snow day in 1969 (yes, it was special enough that I remember it quite well). Editors John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen have collected an all-star group of authors to add their own Oz stories into the mythology. I've wondered why the book has so much appeal, but I think Gregory McGuire nails it in his Foreword:...

Ann Cleeves has written the books from which some of my favorite BritBox TV shows are based. Shetland (based on the Shetland Island series) has been fantastic and Vera (from the Vera Stanhope series) is a must-watch for mystery/police procedural fans. When I saw this book, the first book in a different series, being offered up as an ARC I thought I was going to be in early on a new series. However, this is actually one of Cleeves' earliest series, first published in 1990, given new life, being rereleased. One wonders if maybe someone is looking for a new television contract...? In any event, this book features an Inspector Ramsay - a dedicated though somewhat frustrated Inspector working in the small village of Heppleburn when the headmaster, Harold Medburn, of the local school is murdered. The tight-knit community doesn't seem to mourn Medburn's death at all, and Inspector Ramsay has no shortage of possible killers ... no one, not even his wife, seemed to like the man. T...

I feel sad for children today who won't grow up with newspapers in their house. Children who won't know the joy of thumbing through the inky paper for the comics page every day, with a special section, IN COLOR, on Sunday. Children who won't get to know Dennis, Calvin, Beetle, and of course the Peanuts Gang. Fortunately, someone's been wise enough to keep Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy and all the gang in front of people by putting the old strips together into book-length collections. This is book #18 in a Peanuts collection. For those of us old enough to remember reading the daily strips and are somewhat familiar with the gang, this is certainly on the more "recent" end of the strip. While we see all the familiar characters (most of whom originated in the 1950's, we also see a fair amount of Peppermint Patty and Marcie, the latter not appearing in the strip until 1971. There's also a bit of Snoop's cousin Spike who did not appear in the strip ...

Katharine Kerr is a name I recognize from my days browsing through the science fiction/fantasy bookstore shelves many years ago.  For no particular reason (except possibly money was tight and I wasn't ready to spend it on someone I wasn't sure about) I never read any of her work. When I saw this book - not apparently part of a longer series - I thought it was time to give Kerr a try. We're three thousand years in the future with a republic of planets governed by the Rim Council and protected by a military known simply as The Fleet. This multi-planet civilization uses hyperspace travel to get around among the planets. But there are rumors coming from the outer rim that these hyperspace 'shunts' are having problems. To explore and study this problem, The Fleet puts together a special ops team of misfits - an AI expert, an alien gunner with perfect aim, a soldier who has an uncanny ability to detect patterns in time and space, a medic and engineer married couple, and a...

The strength of a long-lasting friendship shines through this beautiful tale - possibly the best book yet by Fredrik Backman. I'm not sure if there's any author out there writing today that is better at capturing what it means to be human, than Fredrik Backman. I think I've said the same thing about Anne Tyler, but Backman captures humanity - both what makes us good and what makes us evil - and lays us bare in front of ourselves. We'll usually get a smile along the way. This story centers around four friends, teenagers twenty-five years ago, and a current teen who becomes becomes part of their group incidentally. The group of four, unlikely friends include Joar, sharp-humored and fiercely protective; Ali, quick-witted, street smart, and wary of violent men; Ted, introverted, caring, and probably considered boring by most; KimKim, a natural artist uncertain of his own abilities and battling depression. The artists' three friends work to get KimKim's painting into...

Valerie Corbin is a retired caterer and after a beautiful vacation in Hilo Hawai'i with her wife Kristen, the couple have decided to move to the 50th state permanently. Some of the fun in the move is getting to know their new neighborhood and they've become good friends with local restaurant manager, Sachiko, and her partner Isaac. Knowing of Valerie's experience in the catering business, Sachiko asks if Valerie can fill in at the bar as one of the employees, Hank, has gone missing. Valerie enjoys the opportunity and gets to hear a lot of gossip about the area and the people in it. When Hank's body is found at the base of a waterfall, the police's attention turns to Sachiko. Valerie can't believe that her new friend killed her own employee, but she's determined to learn the truth - diving right in to investigate where the police didn't think to look. Not too long ago I read an article about some of the best mysteries to read with a Hawai'i setting. T...

GRAPHIC NOVEL WEEK Sometime about the mid-1970's I discovered Michael Moorcock's Elric books and became a big fan of the series. When I saw that there was a graphic novel, written by Moorcock, that told the origin of the albino, I was definitely interested. Sometimes there are books you are interested in reading and you eagerly open it up and quickly realize that the book you're looking at really needs your full attention and this is not the time to read it. That was the case for me with this book. I first opened it about a year ago, got a chapter in and realized that I was not ready for this book - I needed to read it when I could give it my fullest attention. I'm quite glad that I waited. This is Michael Moorcock. That means that it is FULL f meaning, intensity, complication, history, potential. Nothing is wasted which means every word has implications. It's an origin story, but I'm really not sure how much this will appeal to someone not already familiar with...

GRAPHIC NOVEL WEEK  It is 1964 and C.O.W.L. (Chicago Organized Workers League) is the first superhero union in the country. The union is now looking to go national, with the union leaders tasting a bit of power. But the members who made up the union are no longer a cohesive force, having scattered or retired. Not everyone is happy about this turn of events and there are those who hope to bust this union before it gets too big for itself. I'm frankly not too sure what to make of this book. There's a clever germ of an idea here, though it reminds me a little too much of Watchmen without the superheroes. You read that right ... without the superheroes. Mostly this is an alternate earth Chicago mob story where a few of the individuals involved have powers and some once (or possibly still) wore spandex costumes. The people in costume that we do see - we're not too sure if they're heroes or villains, the line being pretty muddy (which of course is not a new theme in superhe...

GRAPHIC NOVEL WEEK I've been in a mood lately to read some graphic novels and was looking for something new and also a first in a series when I stumbled on this, The Domain . Three friends head out to where an actual UFO may have landed. One of the friends has been actively tracking such events and fortunately this one seems to be close enough for them to go and check it out. It is just what they hoped for - an alien ship with some bona-fide aliens aboard. Though most of the aliens appear to have died in the crash. Since the aliens have no use for anything, the three youngsters help themselves to some pretty fancy wristbands. The bands, though, give the humans super powers! Sort of like Green Lantern's ring, whatever they can imagine seems to happen. There's a catch, though. Only one can use the power of the bands at a time. So if one of them happens to be in the middle of a superhero action and one of the other friends decide to make use of a power, the one in the middle o...

GRAPHIC NOVEL WEEK A thousand years from now, on a space ship acting as an ark preserving Earth's fauna the young boy Dale Arden, who is the caretaker for the Ark, sees what he believes is a comet that comes crashing to the ground. He discovers it's an escape pod of some sort and from the pod emerges a young girl about his age. She has no idea who she is or where she comes from. Seeing words on the pod, she assumes it can only be her name - Flash Gordon. The ark is attacked and Flash and Dale are taken captive and brought to the capital of Omnia where they meet the Merciless Emperor. There, Prince Azimuth is both fascinated and irritated by the rambunctious Flash and Princess Aurora appreciates Flash's spirit. Flash rescues Dale who's been imprisoned by the Prince, and the Prince discovers something special about Flash's background. This was ... this was ... I don't know what to make of this. I'm not against a reboot of a classic character, but what's th...

GRAPHIC NOVEL WEEK I'm starting a week of graphic novels - something I was in the mood for - and I decided to start my week with this, Rook: Exodus . I'm really glad I did, because this absolutely rocked! It is centuries in the future and Earth is dying. Corporations have jumped on this and have profited from the destruction by terraforming distant planets and either charging large sums of money to travel to these places, or by hiring desperate laborers. When his generations-old family farm was destroyed by a fire, Rook takes a job and a one-way trip to Exodus where everything is under human control. That includes all specially designed earth-like animals. Wearing specially designed helmets which allow a human to communicate with a specific animal species, a human Warden exerts great control. But the planet failed, the rich departed, the laborers were left behind and the criminals found a way to take charge. Rook, who controls the scavenger bird population, has a few Warden fri...