Book of the Month: October

My best book for this month is Susan Wittig Albert's Hemlock. It is a cozy mystery that normally takes place in Pecan Springs, TX. However, Albert has sent her protagonist to the east coast to assist a librarian friend in locating a missing rare book titled A Curious Herbal. I have found that when a series author changes the setting, that the book is not as good as usual. Here we have a great example of how to change setting and still have an interesting novel. I was also impressed with the addition of an alternating plot in Hemlock. Again, Albert has not done this before but she wrote a fascinating tale about a fifteenth century women, Elizabeth Blackwell, who wrote a book containing drawings of over 500 herbs and plants that apothecaries used to treat people. The book had vanished from its locked display case in the library of Hemlock House in the North Caroline mountains. I thought that the fifteenth century plot was more interesting than the current era story. Hemlock is a cozy, art theft mystery and historical fiction all rolled in to one novel. It was superb!