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Looking for something mysterious and exciting?
“The Augusta McKee Mysteries” are unique in that each has music as part of the plot, but in different ways. The first book, The Case of the Slain Soprano, took place on a college campus while preparing for the performance of an operetta, The Pirates of Penzance. This is where Augusta met Cincinnati Homicide Detective Malcolm Mitchell, the other half of our sleuthing team. In the second book of the series, The Case of the Disappearing Director, the story’s setting expands to include members of a Mafia family in the nearby town of Newport, Kentucky. All this while Augusta was directing a “ghostly” opera workshop production at the other college…
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View Club Favorites 2023
2023 is about done, so we’ve taken a look back at all we’ve watched and read and experienced this year to pick our favorite moments. A lot of them are disturbingly murder-y, which happens a lot with this group! Thankfully, at least one of us is filled with gratitude. <3 Sahar Abdulaziz The Chelsea Detective Have you ever been in the mood to watch something that is not too heavy, not too light, not corny but witty… but with fascinating characters? I’m not a big TV watcher. In fact, I barely watch TV at all, but once in a while, when my mind needs a break, and I want to…
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Another Day, Another Avian Adventure
The alert came in at 6:30 AM and my collaborator texted me the particulars. I had dressed but still needed a strong cup of coffee to be of any use to her. Less than fifteen minutes later, she began the journey to my location. I had just enough time to change into my hunting clothes and prepare my vehicle. A vigilant spotter had arrived at first light to see if our target had moved during the night. We knew it would not hang around for very long. A stranger to this region, the creature’s habitat reached far into Alaska and to the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean during its…
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Politics, Corruption, and Kindness
Welcome to the October edition of the Shaggy Dog View Club. We have another all-book edition from last month with three of our authors recommending three very different books. Kelly Jensen I remember seeing this book on a list somewhere, recommending books with politics and intrigue. The books were rated in order of intricacy from least to most with The Goblin Emperor near, if not at the end. I decided against reading it. My attention span can be difficult to pin down and I utterly fail at politics. Many months later, however, when looking for more challenging reads, I referred back to that list and picked a book at random.…
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Slow Dancing with the Asphalt
I recently got my driveway repaved. It had been over twenty years since it had first been laid and the freeze/thaw cycle of Pennsylvania winters had taken its toll despite regular maintenance. It started to crumble in spots and if I didn’t get it done now when the base could still be salvaged, it would cost a lot more to remove the old asphalt, lay a new base, and then let it settle over the winter before adding a new layer. The crew began showing up at eight in the morning on what promised to be an absolutely gorgeous day. Sunny, temperature in the low seventies, light winds and low…
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New Release: ASHES and DUST
ASHES and DUST are two heart-pounding novella-thrillers in Sahar Abdulaziz’s Evil Never Dies Series that will captivate readers with their gripping narratives and suspenseful storytelling. In ASHES, Abdulaziz thrusts readers into a world of intrigue and danger after Tobias Brandt is found dead. His eldest son, with the support of his siblings, writes an obituary and has it published in the local newspaper. But instead of celebrating their father’s accomplishments and honoring his memory, it’s a scathing, contemptuous, and revealing account of the legacy of damage he caused. Without closure, Tobias’s death ignites an unforeseeable sequence of events that force his surviving children to unravel, one perilous upset after the…
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Conquering the Acropolis of Athens
A (Very Brief) History of Athens, Greece Athens, Greece is the oldest capital in Europe. The highest hill in the city, The Acropolis, consists of a flat-topped rock over one-hundred-fifty meters high with three incredibly steep sides. An easily defended fortress and military base from both land and sea, it only became a religious center dedicated to the worship of the goddess Athena much later during the rise and fall of the Mycenae civilization near the end of the Bronze Age. For the next four hundred years, Greece plunged into a dark age when little is known. What we think of as Ancient Greek civilization began around the fifth century…
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Murder, Murder, and Found Family
We have an interesting mix of reviews for you this month on SDP! Murder, Murder, and Found Family. But while one of these things is not like the other, the list does illustrate why our group works so well: we’re all very different writers and quite different readers and viewers. This makes for great variety when we’re writing reviews for our blog and great conversations when we get together. But we also value these different perspectives when we’re giving each other advice and critique. Often, one of us sees the things no one else does! And, apparently, this month it’s mostly murder. So let’s start there. Sahar Abdulaziz Murder Your…
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Ode to a Grecian Spring
Many countries celebrate May First as International Labor Day, but it’s more commonly referred to as Protomagia throughout Greece. Literally, the first day of May. It all started with the ancient Greeks who honored the Greek Goddess Maia, who was somehow related to a Roman goddess of fertility. Festivals and parades abound. The locals go out to the country to gather wildflowers or attempt the season’s first swim. This year it fell on a Monday, and being a major holiday, Athenians decided to enjoy a long weekend. Even the land celebrated; the countryside overflowed with flowers. Arriving in Athens later than expected on Friday, we barely had time for a…
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A LIFETIME IS NOT ENOUGH FOR MUSIC
The second book I wrote, Eli’s Heart, is a love story and more. Krissy Porter and Eli Levin meet as young teens when Eli, who is a piano prodigy, visits his older sister in Krissy’s town in Tennessee in the summer of 1953. They become good friends and are on the verge of romance, but their relationship is ended by Eli’s over-protective family. They find their way back to each other while college students and marry on Krissy’s twentieth birthday. The story continues as each of them builds a career in the music world. While Eli was born with an unusual gift for music, he also was born with a seriously damaged…