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Your Just Desserts hiatus reading assignment – 2015: Holiday Mysteries

Just Desserts Logo 225mistletoeminiDuring the Nov/Dec 2015 hiatus between meetings of the Just Desserts mystery fiction discussion group, we encourage regular attendees to continue to participate as a group…but in a virtual way. While we may not have an actual meeting scheduled during these two months, this blog is available to keep everyone active with their mystery reading and discussions.

Our “hiatus assignment” for 2015 is “Holiday Mysteries” — including Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, or New Year’s.

One of the most popular annual book displays at the Bennett Martin Public Library every year is the Mistletoe Mysteries display that goes up at the beginning of December…in fact, it’s hard to keep it fully loaded for all of December, as so many titles get grabbed by eager readers. In conjunction with that display, a special Mistletoe Mysteries booklist was created several years ago, and is updated each year on our website to reflect new additions to the “Christmas Mystery” category, as well as withdrawals of older titles no longer being read.

You can certainly wait until the start of December and check out the book display downtown, or you can click on the Mistletoe Mysteries links in this blog entry to jump straight to the online booklist, which will give you dozens, if not hundreds, of mystery reading choices for this festive time of year! So — your assignment is: read one or more Holiday Mysteries (either novels or short story collections), and respond to the question at the bottom of this post!

We look forward to seeing your comments here over the course of the next two months, until Just Desserts meets again in January 2016!

So…here’s your question:

Which of the “Holiday Mystery” novel or short story collection did you read, and what was your opinion?

8 thoughts on “Your Just Desserts hiatus reading assignment – 2015: Holiday Mysteries

    420
  1. Marlene Crombie

    I just read The Christmas Train by David Baldacci, for my other book club. Good read.

    November 12, 2015 at 1:29 pm
  2. 450
  3. Betty Misener

    I read New York Christmas by Anne Perry. It was a good read for a cozy, but very predictable.

    November 21, 2015 at 7:45 am
  4. 506
  5. Cathy Tallon

    I read A Charmed Death by Madelyn Alt. The main character, Maggie O’Neill, works in a small town and is coming to terms with her new witchy type of powers. Meanwhle a local teenage Obnoxious princess type turns up dead. O’Neill tries to find out what happened. It was okay but not my favorite.

    December 6, 2015 at 8:58 pm
  6. 507
  7. Cathy Tallon

    I read a China Bayles book called Holly Blues by Susan Wittig Albert. I liked this much better. China’s husband’s ex-wife is back and trouble follows.

    December 6, 2015 at 9:00 pm
  8. 508
  9. Cathy Tallon

    I listened to an Agatha Christie book called Hercule Poirot’s Christmas. Poirot just happens to be visiting an old friend who is also a police superintendent when the very rich and very nasty head of a family dies in a locked room. I liked it.

    December 6, 2015 at 9:04 pm
  10. 524
  11. Marlene Crombie

    Just read The Alpine Christmas, an Emma Lord mystery by Mary Daheim. I liked it, the characters, the story line.

    December 10, 2015 at 10:46 am
  12. 598
  13. Cathy Tallon

    I read The LIfe and Times of Christmas Calvert – Assassin. This book has nothing to do with Christmas other than it is the guy’s first name. The book was ok and went back and forth into his early life in England and then when he was recruited to join the Button Squad – a group of people recruited to make people disappear as needed during the war. He goes on to being a killer for hire after the war.

    January 7, 2016 at 6:56 pm
  14. 601
  15. Brandon Robertson

    This holiday season I went with a series which I am trying to read more faithfully–Craig Johnson’s story about Walt Longmire, Spirit of Steamboat. Given that this is only my second Longmire book, I am not well-versed with Johnson’s narrative, outside of the Longmire TV show. The story was still rather strong. The central action, retold from a ‘Christmas Past’, snaps along at a quick pace with the stakes and circumstances becoming more dire until the end. The retelling of the flight on Christmas Eve 1988 gives the background needed to understand the present day situation and its ‘moral’ and ethical significance comes through Walt’s reading of A Christmas Carol and the cowboy mythos of the American West.

    Lucian has the largest part in the story, and he is as crotchety as ever. The story has as much to do with him as with what is doing for the child he is transporting to Denver.

    This novella gives me more impetus to pick up reading more of Johnson’s series.

    January 8, 2016 at 12:00 pm

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