The Silkworm (A Cormoran Strike Novel) / Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

The big scuttlebutt in the publishing world last summer was the debut of crime writer Robert Galbraith, who, it was discovered in pretty short order, was none other than Harry Potter’s creator J.K. Rowling. Of course after the true identity of the author was revealed sales skyrocketed, but the attention, it turned out, was warranted.

In the first novel in the series, The Cuckoo’s Calling, Galbraith/Rowling introduced the reader to a London-based detective by the name of Cormoran Strike, an ex-soldier from the war in Afghanistan, illegitimate son of a famous British rocker. The Silkworm starts its narrative thread several months after the events in Cuckoo, in which Strike embarrassed the metropolitan police force by more or less independently solving a high-profile case involving a young Kate Moss-type character. This time the story centers on the grisly murder of a midlist author, which grabs the tabloid headlines and captures the imagination of the capital. It all takes place in the rarefied world of publishing, something Rowling must know a thing or two about, where reputations and egos have to be stroked and nurtured, and there exist many grudges and motives for murder.

The Silkworm makes the perfect eBook to read on a tablet. There are so many places and landmarks you want to look up to document with pictures, or refresh your memory as the case may be: the Talgarth Road artists studios where the murder took place, Hamley’s on Regent Street, the music shops on Denmark Street, the River Café, etc. etc. I’m all for picturing things in your mind’s eye, but when it’s based on a real place in a real city, and one that I'm quite partial to, I love to be an armchair traveler with the help of my iPad!

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Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Pippi Longstocking meets Miss Marple in the character of precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters in a once well-to-do family in early 1950s rural England. This first mystery in an intended series finds Flavia beating the local police inspector at his own game in solving the mystery surrounding the murder of an old school mate of her father's in their back garden (in the cucumber patch no less). Clues include a bird indigenous to Norway, a rare stamp, and a bit of flaky pie crust. This nostalgic and innocent whodunnit will have you at the edge of your seat by its suspenseful climax. I can see BBC/PBS picking up on the popularity of this charming mystery. The second in the series has already been published and the third is soon to follow. And by the way, here's a great library quote from Flavia on page 50: "... it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No

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