Way back when this blog was starting out, I did one of my very first posts on International Mysteries. I love mystery novels, and I especially enjoy ones set in other countries. This time around, I’m going to share some mystery TV shows set in other countries (and not only the United Kingdom because there are a million of those!). International travel might be off the table right now, so here’s the alternative – you get to see another country, and there’s a zero-percent chance of getting murdered!
There are five seasons of this show (which ended in 2017). They are set in (and were made in) Australia, but they are also historical – specifically, the late 1950s. Dr. Blake is a medical doctor who also works as the medical examiner when needed, which leads to him getting involved in investigating murders. The supporting characters are also good – especially the foil his character has in his housekeeper, Jean.
It’s that time of year when we can take a moment to look back on our experiences of the past year and look forward to what’s to come in the new year. I decided to take a look back on what our young readers checked out the most this past year. Books from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series were the top six circulating titles from our children’s fiction collection. This series has maintained its popularity for over a decade now! The series follows a boy named Greg as he records his humorous experiences with middle school in his journal. Comical illustrations accompany his daily journal entries in this series that now includes 15 books. For fans of this series who may be looking for a new-to-you series for the new year, I’ve created a list for you all to check out below. I’ve included our catalog summaries of the first book of the series with each recommendation. Be sure to click the links below to request your copy through our catalog!
“Who wouldn’t want to live in a treehouse? Especially a 13-story treehouse that has a bowling alley, a see-through swimming pool, a tank full of sharks, a library full of comics, a secret underground laboratory, a games room, self-making beds, vines you can swing on, a vegetable vaporizer and a marshmallow machine that follows you around and automatically shoots your favorite flavored marshmallows into your mouth whenever it discerns you’re hungry. Life would be perfect for Andy and Terry if it wasn’t for the fact that they have to write their next book, which is almost impossible because there are just so many distractions, including thirteen flying cats, giant bananas, mermaids, a sea monsters pretending to be mermaids, enormous gorillas, and dangerous burp gas-bubblegum bubbles!” Take a look at the rest of The Treehouse series here.
According to the New York Times list of best selling books, some likely suspect heavy hitters top the list for 2020 including James Patterson and Ernest Cline. While I totally understand the comfort of a favorite author, why not ring in the New Year with some new authors? Below, I listed three best-selling books or authors of the year and their lesser-known read-alike counterparts.
Did you like Ready Player Two (2020) by Ernest Cline? Try Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (2015) by David Wong.
Ernest Cline hit the big time in 2011 with his massively popular Ready Player One. You read it. I read it. The neighbor kid read it. It was a satisfying, if vacuous bit of distracting fun, and while I haven’t read the sequel, I suspect RP2 is much the same. Where RP1 was heavy on pop-culture references and 1980s nostalgia, David Wong is all about the future, baby! In Futuristic Violence, protagonist Zoey Ashe unexpectedly inherits billions from her estranged father. She and her cat Stench Machine are then forced to contend with a city full of jacked up monster men out to live-stream her demise. I’ve been a fan of Wong since his days as editor-in-chief over at Cracked, and his genre fiction does not disappoint. How funny is this book? Two words: burrito drone. On the other side of the funny coin is some truly gut-churning (futuristic) violence, so a big heads-up to you on that.
Understanding and communicating feelings can be challenging for young children. They don’t always have the words to express the feelings they are experiencing. You can help them learn how to express themselves by modeling appropriate ways to express your own feelings, describing how and why people feel the way they do in certain situations, and complimenting children when they use their words to describe their feelings. Reading picture books about characters going through different feelings, and discussing them is a fun way to help children to understand their own feelings as they relate to the characters. You can point to the characters’ facial expressions and ask what they are likely feeling and why, as well as ask the child if they have ever felt that way before. Learning to recognize and manage feelings is an important skill for children to learn. It will help them to build strong relationships and guide them in making good choices for themselves. There are many children’s books with characters experiencing different feelings. I have some recommendations below that are available from our children’s library.
This is a really fun book that uses fruits and vegetables with faces carved into them as delightful illustrations. Each face has a different facial expression to go along with simple rhyming text that covers many different feelings and asks the reader how they feel in different situations. Have your child answer the rhyming prompts, and have them look at the facial expressions of the characters and try to describe what they think the characters are feeling.
This year has been a torment. I don’t need to list all the reasons why, but my number one reason this month is missing out on all the Halloween festivities. The 31st falls on a Saturday AND lasts for 25 hours thanks to Daylight Savings. Like, we get it. No fun allowed in 2020, please stop driving the point home. Since we can’t cavort with our fellow ghouls and ghosts like nature intended, I’m going to stay home and read like the big, boring, health-conscious person this year has forced me to become. Now, please do not take that statement the wrong way. Reading is my favorite respite from reality and I don’t know where my mental health would be without the comfort of checking out five thousand library books to keep me company. Since parties are off the table for me (and everyone else I surely do hope), I’m going to keep things spooky and within the spirit of America’s Best Holiday (patent pending) by reading my favorite horror novels. Below I listed four of my recent favorites.
It’s finally October! Start carving your pumpkins. Pick up a bag of your favorite candy. And put something scary on the TV because there’s not much else to do with the pandemic still going on. Like last year, I’ve written up a list of a few of my favorite horror movies.
Crowley is not a good movie. It’s one of those movies that’s so bad it’s good. The premise itself is fairly outrageous, a guy using virtual reality gets possessed by the ghost of Aleister Crowley via the internet. The actors chew up the scenery. Crowley’s antics lean more towards raunchy than evil. The music is the one genuinely good part since it’s handled by Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden.
October is my favorite month of the year. I love the chill in the air and the spooky vibes that come along with Halloween. It’s the perfect time of year to curl up under a cozy blanket with a scary story! There are many horror stories written for middle grade readers ranging from the mildly creepy to downright terrifying! I have some recommendations below that can be found in our children’s collection. Click on the titles that interest you to request your copy straight from our catalog.
Ease young readers into horror stories with this ghostly murder mystery! 12 year-old Amy has an extended visit with her aunt who is cleaning out her deceased great-grandparents’ home. Their deaths happened many years before Amy was born and have always been a mystery to her. The mystery begins to unravel when she uncovers a beautiful dollhouse modeled after their house, stashed away in the attic. The dolls in the dollhouse seem to move on their own. Are they trying to tell her something? Any mention of the dollhouse or the great-grandparents upsets her aunt, so Amy has to do her own research to uncover what really happened to her family years ago. This story has a low level of supernatural creepiness that pairs well with its fascinating family mystery.
Dungeons and Dragons is a fun game, whether as a player or a dungeon master. Being the dungeon master can be difficult, though. It’s part memorizing rules, acting, writing, and people wrangling. Writing an adventure or an entire campaign setting can sometimes be the most difficult part of being a dungeon master. That’s why this week’s blog post is all pre-written adventures, it won’t help with rule memorization or the voice acting, but I can’t do everything for you.
Ravenloft has been a part of Dungeons and Dragons since the very first edition. Curse of Strahd is the fifth edition’s return to the lands that the vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich rules over with an iron fist. This adventure has more of a gothic horror taste than the usual D&D adventure. The part that got this one on my radar was that it has rules for using a Tarokka deck, a pseudo-tarot deck, to influence where monsters and artifacts will show up in the adventure. I can’t promise that your party will survive Strahd once they enter Castle Ravenloft, though.
Interactive picture books provide an engaging reading experience. They are fun for young listeners/readers, and are an especially great option for those not ready to sit for a full story. These books require active participation in the story by encouraging readers to complete a small task before turning the page. The story may request for you to shake or tilt the book, blow on or trace a picture with your finger, spin the book or your body, clap your hands, or even count to a certain number to help move the story along. Once you’ve completed your task, turn the page to see the effect your action had on the story! There are many entertaining interactive children’s books available in our library. I’ve listed some of my favorites below!
You will be busy taking care of your cat in this fun book. Once you’ve woken him up, you will have to pet him, squish some fleas, dry him off after he gets wet, try to scare away a bird so he doesn’t eat it, and then help him go to sleep. Readers of all ages will enjoy interacting with this cute kitty!
While there is never a bad time to dig into a mystery, summertime is when I want to break out some Agatha Christie while basking in the sun to enjoy the off-screen demise of a country squire or unsuspecting rich auntie. This summer, escapism is more important than ever, so listed below is a brief breakdown of how to access some excellent murder mystery media at Mead. While I have highlighted some personal favorites, these searches can be adjusted to any particular genre of your liking.
What’s the best thing about Hoopla besides access to thousands of books, movies, and music CDs? NO WAIT TIME! Another thing I like about Hoopla is the intuitive search features. Click on “Browse” to the left of the search bar and select “Television”. The next screen will list all the subject categories so naturally, I chose “Mystery” which is listed as a “Top Category”. The top result was Death in Paradise Season One (2011) which is a great top result because the show is fabulous. Who wouldn’t love a fish-out-of-water cozy in a lush, tropical setting? Make yourself a pina colada to drink while you watch for verisimilitude. What if I’ve already seen this show and want to see more like it? Click on the thumbnail and from the next screen click on “BBC Studios”. This will take you to a new list of results; all media produced by BBC Studios. There’s also a way to search by publisher, which can be found under “Advanced Search” at the top of the page. Try searching “Acorn” in that field to get an astonishing list of BBC mystery series. There’s tons of Agatha Christie-inspired media like Marple and Poirot as well as more modern, gritty series like Wire in the Blood and Vera. Everyone should take some time to explore the wide range of television content Hoopla has on offer. You might be surprised because it is A LOT.
Not looking for a TV show or movie? Select “Audiobooks” from the “Browse” menu. From the next page it’s fun to see what everyone else has been reading, so under “SORT BY” select “Popularity” and feast your eyes. Lucy Foley’s excellent The Hunting Party (2018) appears near the top of this list, with good reason. Fans of locked-room, or snowed-in mysteries will get a kick out of the unreliable narrators and the sense that you are overhearing something not meant for your ears.
I also like to use the “User Ratings” setting of the “SORT BY” drop-down menu. Not everyone rates their checkouts on Hoopla so the results don’t line up with “Popularity”. Apparently, users really like The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Anthony Boucher. Will someone please read one of these to tell me if they’re any good?
Folks, I do not enjoy camping because in my mind, that is how one gets murdered by some unkillable psychopath who thirsts for the blood of co-ed campers. Confusingly, I cannot stop listening to true crime audiobooks that describe the psychology and pathology of the worst sorts of criminals. Hop on over to RBDigital to download some of the finest true crime you’ll ever encounter. First, there’s Robert Hare’s Without Conscience (1993). Hare is the man credited with creating the Psychopath Checklist and therefore a giant in his field. He’s also interviewed in Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test (2011) which is available on Hoopla. Now that some context has been laid, read Whoever Fights Monsters (1992) by Robert K. Ressler. This fella, right here, is credited with coining the term “serial killer” in the late 1970s. He also acted as a consultant to Thomas Harris while he wrote The Silence of the Lambs. More recently, he was fictionalized as Agent Bill Tench on the popular Netflix series Mindhunter. Quite the career!
Too much murderer talk? Check out Death’s Acre (2004) by William M. Bass. This man is responsible for the creation of the so-called Body Farm located at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Bass’ contributions to the field of forensic science are pretty staggering. His research facility allowed scientists to study the decomposition of human bodies in open air, buried in barrels, submerged in water, and on and on. This research has been extrapolated to aid in murder investigations around the world. Death’s Acre focuses on the science behind crime scenes as opposed to the psychology of the criminal which I thought made the content less graphic. Plus, Bass seems like a big old sweety and I enjoyed his tone.
Once again, if murder mysteries or true crime are not your favorite things, rest easy in the knowledge that all three of our digital book platforms have thousands upon thousands of titles to choose from. If that is a daunting task, I will let you in on a little secret: librarians LOVE the chance to provide old-school library services such as reader’s advisory in this ever-modernizing library landscape. Please do not hesitate to reach out for book picks, or for help using our array of super awesome digital services.
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