Books: 476
RHS Chelsea Flower Show: A Centenary Celebration
Brent Elliot
Francis Lincoln Ltd.
$40
Decade by decade, author Elliott, librarian and archivist to the Royal Horticultural Society describes the birth, growth, and present-day flowering of this grand event. Interleaved through the narrative are “My Chelsea” sections by noted designers, gardeners and many other individual witnesses, including RHS Show Director. Trends have come and gone, royalty has passed through, and high society and hoi polloi have braved heat and rain to participate in this annual gala that is both a British social event, and arbiter of garden design, planting styles, and taste. American readers can immerse themselves in RHS Chelsea Flower Show’s ambiance, while cribbing marvelous ideas for their own garden projects. More than 200 photographs drawings and maps illustrate this handsome 100-year celebration of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
Jump the Gun
Lori L. Lake
Quest Books
$18.95
St. Paul’s Dez Reilley is back, and Lake has you from the first pages with the murder of one of Dez’s dear friends–and a fellow officer. Still reeling under this blow, while on her way to the Federal Building on another case involving Russian mobsters (see Have Gun Will Travel), Dez sees the case’s prime witness murdered before her eyes. As in Lake’s other novels, there are plots, subplots and well-crafted twists and turns that nevertheless stay firmly believable and consistent with the book’s inner logic. Dez’s lover, officer Jaylynn Savage, is also at risk and Dez must balance her inner and outer lives with force and delicacy to survive. Lake skillfully reveals how Dez grows in depth and breadth through these recent trials.
Love Can Be Murder
Marilyn Rausch & Mary Donlon
North Star Press of St. Cloud
$14.95
Rausch and Donlon’s device–it works superbly––is a novel within a novel. Protagonist Chip Collingsworth, groomed to follow his dad as a well-known neurosurgeon, is now reduced to a thrice-divorced mystery writer in the depths of Turners Bend, Iowa. His first, Cranium Murders, hit it big–his exes as villains–and now he’s working on Mind Games, in which the plot also follows his life both in murder and romance: As Chip’s protagonist, stalwart neurosurgeon Dr. John Goodman, yearns for red-headed FBI agent Jo Schwann, so Chip falls for local veterinarian, ginger Jane Swanson. The authors handle the double plots deftly using crisp writing and humor to move everything along to a satisfying end. If you haven’t yet, also read Headaches Can Be Murder.
Capolovoro di Uomo: Masterpiece of Man
Capolavoro Publishing
Adam P. Kennedy & Renée Kennedy – publishers
$89.95
The work of forty-six artists is displayed in over 350 pages of the explicit and erotic, widely and wildly varied, and drawn from around the globe. Gonzalo Orquín’s moody oils offer glimpses into shadowy, everyday sensory worlds; New Zealander Josef Szekeres lush, illusory pieces hint at his background at Walt Disney Animation Australia (Little Mermaid II, etc.); Comic book artist Logan Kowalsky’s versions of Santa, Pornomicon, and fantastic digital paintings; Brute by Simon’s giant hero celebrates the common man, as he says, “discerning beauty where few others can find it,” and Minneapolis’s own Marc Debauch who invests his oils and gouaches with intimate and erotic moments like “Kirby in the Shower,” and “Mid-Morning Light.” A beautifully realized collection with something for anyone who loves Man. Men.
