SPEEDY DEATH is Gladys Mitchell's first novel, and begins with the death of the famous explorer Everard Mountjoy - drowned in his bath. There is, however, one particularly odd thing about the corpse: the man was not a man - but was instead a woman - which complicates both detection and personal matters, especially when the victim was engaged to the spinsterish and pathologically jealous Eleanor Bing, who is later found drowned in the bath - before coming back to life...

As with the best of Gladys Mitchell's work, the book is surreal and pokes fun at several cliches of detective fiction: in this case, the detective. Mrs. Beatrice Bradley is Gladys Mitchell's series detective, and the most original detective ever to have appeared. She is a combination of a wicked witch, a psychologist, and a pterodactyl with the smile of the Cheshire Cat. She investigates, cackling to herself, and is promptly arrested for the second murder in the book. All manner of complications ensue, with broken clocks, fob-watches in water jugs and bathroom stools all taking on sinister qualities. The plot is memorable and lively, the characterisation is excellent (the two best being Eleanor Bing and Mrs. Bradley), and the detection and courtroom dramas are also first-class. All in all, an excellent mixture of wit, satire and originality.

I bought this book for a grad. class for Reading Specialists. It is an amazing resource for anyone who teaches spelling. It explains why we need to teach children HOW to spell (giving them strategies and skill in spelling) rather than having them memorize a word list every week. The theory is well explained and makes great sense! The strategies given are easily applicable to any classroom. If you are looking to get away from spelling lists and move to individualized spelling this book will effectively guide your transition.

This book, with a section for each month of the year, tells about Gladys Taber's Conneticut farm, Stillmeadow. In between Gladys's stories about the plants and animals of the farm, including her Abbyssinian, Amber, are delightful anecdotes about her first days on the farm when everything seemed to go wrong. She also shares her personal insights and opinions on the youth and political issues of that time. Some may argue that she only wrote about nature so much for profit, but, if read, this book puts a stop to that argument. No one who was in it just for profit could have written anything so loveingly about nature, let alone several books.

All in all, this book will truly make you appreciate nature in all of its forms, from wisteria to skunks and back again!

In this book, Taber is successful in taking us through the year one month at a time, season by season. One can imagine themselves living at Stillmeadow in the quiet, country atmosphere.

Throughout the book, Taber muses on different subjects such as wildlife, cooking, bird watching, pets, flower arranging, weather, and other country items of interest.

This is a book for anyone who enjoys living in the country or who desires to live in the country. It is a book to read at leisure so that you can savor it page by page.

As a former country dweller and a now-reluctant city dweller, it brings back many fond memories of my childhood growing up in the country.

I love Gladys Taber's books.

In STILLMEADOW ROAD, Taber diaries life in her Connecticut farmhouse, circa 1960. Perhaps the charm of her books is in the simplicity of the life she describes. Perhaps it's in her delight in words as well as in her existence. Certainly it's in the phrasing she uses, the verbal portraits she paints of her life, her dogs, her friends. Here is warmth and love and charm in print. Here are simple vignettes to warm the reader's heart and challenge her to find the same delight in life wherever she may be.

"We have an appointment with winter," she writes in the beginning, "and we are ready. The wood is stacked with seasoned applewood and maple, the snow shovel leans at the back door, the shelves are jammed with supplies. When the first innocent flakes drift down, we put out more soot and fill the bird feeders. When the snow begins to come in all directions at once and the wind takes on a peculiar lonely cry, we pile more wood on the fire and hang the old iron soup kettle over it, browning the pot roast in diced salt pork and onion. As the blizzard increases, the old house seems to steady herself like a ship against a gale wind. . . Snow piles up against the windowpanes, sifts under the ancient sills, makes heaps of powdered pearl on the ancient oak floors. But the house is snug in the twilight of the snow and we sit by the fire and toast our toes feeling there is much to be said for winter after all."

Appreciation of life flows through these pages, sparkling with common sense and wisdom like wave-caps glistening in the sunlight of wise reasoning.

Of August she writes: "For after the vigorous growth of the spring and summer, nature comes to a pause, and the countryside has a dreamy look. We need to pause, too, in the midst of pickling and canning and freezing, and let the serenity of the season give us tranquility...It is time to sit quietly in the shade of the apple trees...There is more to living than the endless activities we all pursue. Most of us indeed seem to live on a wheel which revolves faster and faster but has no true destination...But since we have just so much time alloted to us, some of it should be spent in reflecting, and some in pursuits which have nothing to do with our daily lives...because life isn't a business; it is a precious gift."

Gladys Taber's legacy is a celebration of life as she chose to live it. Her books are gems of poetic but light prose with depth, perception and feeling. The shallow and pseudo-sophisticated reader may label her "sentimental" but there is nothing idealistic or shallow about her writing. She simply lives and appreciates a simpler life than most choose.

STILLMEADOW is a book you can put away when life interferes with your reading and it's interesting enough to pull you back, eager to take up where you left off.

Gladys Taber writes of her home, Stillmeadow, in the Connecticut Hills, her parntership with college roommate, Jill, as they raise their children together, both widowed. Anything Gladys wrote is guaranteed to drop the blood pressure, calm the mind, center the heart and touch the spirit. The day I discovered Gladys was Christmas Morning in my soul!

For those who love the country or simply love Taber's accounts of her beautiful country home Stillmeadow, Stillmeadow Seasons does not disappoint. This book allows the reader to absorb and meditate on country living while gaining an understanding of the appeal Gladys Taber and her friend Jill found when they fled city life to move to Stillmeadow.

With her life-treasuring anecdotes, Taber opens up her world of good food, fanciful pets, friends, and a plentiful earth to the reader, while also being entertaining and nostalgic.

I find each Taber book unique. After having read several others, Stillmeadow Seasons captured the true Taber style that had me hooked the moment I picked up her first book. Her writing is poetic, at times matter of fact but always insightful and with a good message. She truly understands the language of the country and its lessons and truths.

Stillmeadow Seasons is a must-read for Taber fans and non-fans alike.

Are you tired of language books that define "fluency" as the ability to order dinner and hail a taxi? Do you feel that language pedagogy has been reduced to teaching culturally inept businessmen to parrot Berlitzesque trivialities? If so, then Galdys Hird's book will bring you a wonderful surprise. Although intended for the absolute beginner, this book leads one through the Swedish language at a prodigious pace. Each chapter of the grammar section is filled with descriptive vocabulary, in-depth explanations of grammar and structure, and texts of real cultural and historical importance. In the reader section, Mrs. Hird has chosen August Strindberg's short play "The Stronger," as well as various newspaper articles. Indeed, any "elementary" reader that sees the student able to read Strindberg by its completion is an outstanding book!

This is Mitchell's 30th book, and, being her 30th book, it is in many ways more of a celebration of her style than any of her previous '10' books (e.g. Skeleton Island (1967), Late, Late in the Evening (1976), or Lovers Make Moan (1982)) - it bears all the complexity of the best Mitchells, the psychological portraits (much less of caricatures than Ruth Rendell's), and the skilled evocation of place. Printer's Error (1939) and Death and the Maiden (1947) are also celebrations of Mitchell's work - but they are more to do with the anthropological side of Mitchell's work than with the marked complexity that marks this book.

The setting is the stylised island of Hombres Muertos in the Canaries - the island of dead men to which Mitchell's unique detective, the psychologist and witch Dame Beatrice Bradley, comes for a holiday. (Islands were always a favourite setting with Mitchell - e.g. Come Away Death (1937), The Worsted Viper (1942), Skeleton Island (1967), Lament for Leto (1971), The Murder of Busy Lizzie (1973), The Whispering Knights (1980), and Lovers Make Moan (1982)). The island resembles nothing more than a lunatic bin, with a full cast of murderers (one by manslaughter in England, now come to the island for a rest), a wife whose unwanted husband was murdered by thugs while her brother stood by and watched, lunatics (a mad botanist and a mad ornithologist named Mrs. Bluetit Angel), and a Don Juan who goes missing and is later found stabbed to death, his body dressed as one of the 23 dead kings in the cave - a cave to which an expedition was organised - an expedition which provides a clue.

Dame Beatrice investigates the crime, and finds that every suspect has secrets to hide - bastardy, murder, secret liaisions, the lot. The complexity does not strain believability, but rather it enhances the enjoyment.

The murder plot is ingenious, complex and slightly improbable. The island is evoked memorably, the characters are one of the best group of suspects outside of an Agatha Christie (who is a fairly dull writer and uninspired compared to Mitchell), and Dame Beatrice's investigations are fascinating.

After reading Mrs. Flick's first book OVER YONDER HILL, I couldn't wait to read her second one, UPON THIS ROCK. It is a very romantic book about the American Revolutionary War, and it's been said there just aren't enough romantic books written about that war. Mrs. Flick has written one of the most romantic, suspenseful, can't-put-it-down books about the American Revolution anyone could find. I'm so anticipating a sequel to this historical book which would take William and Mary further into their lives in America. This surely is a book to be enjoyed by historians, men and women, and by everyone in the family.