A Crazy Little Thing Called Death by Nancy Martin is the sixth novel in the Blackbird Sisters Mysteries. The Blackbird family is an old one, and fairly high up in Philadelphia High Society. But the family has been cursed since colonial times - each of the family's daughters will love bad boys and become young widows. The three daughters of this generation of the Blackbird family have all fallen under the curse - they are all attracted to bad boys, and are all young and beautiful widows. They are also impoverished, as their parents spent off the family fortune and fled overseas, leaving he girls with multimillion dollar tax bills and nothing to pay them with. The sensible and sensitive red headed sister, Nora has agreed to marry her Mafia prince. Eldest sister, the blonde earth mother Libby, wants to plan the wedding of Nora's dreams, but is only being a pain. And dark haired sister, the horse crazy and athletic Emma, has started taking strange phone calls from men at all hours, leading her sisters to wonder if she has turned to the world's oldest profession to make ends meet. In the midst of all of this family madness, a movie star from a famous Philly society family vanishes and is declared dead. She leaves Nora a very interesting bequest. And her family makes the Blackbirds look normal. Did they kill her? Where might she possibly be - either dead OR alive?
Undead and Uneasy by Mary Janice Davidson is the seventh novel in her Queen Betsy series about vampires in the Twin Cities. Betsy Taylor, beautiful blonde former model, and lover of designer shoes, is the Queen of the vampires. She is all set to marry Eric Sinclair, even though Eric believes them to already be married. But as the wedding evening comes ever closer, one by one, Betsy's entourage of friends and family members seems to vanish. And all of a sudden, for the first time, since becoming a vampire, Betsy is alone and having to take care of matters with her own two undead hands.
I have always enjoyed the good natured books about Queen Betsy, who is rather silly and vain, but very devoted to her friends, and who always tries to do the right thing. This one was more serious than the others, so there are fewer laughs. But it was good seeing Betsy finally taking some responsibility and acting like a Queen.
The Lark's Lament by Alan Gordon is the sixth book in the wonderful Fool's Guild Mystery series. The premise behind the series - that the fools, jesters, and troubadours of Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages were all part of a Guild that worked behind the scenes to promote peace - is a wonderful one. Gordon continues the story of one Shakespeare play in one of the novels, and tells the "real" story behind another play in a different novel. So the books are wonderfully intelligent, as well as being filled with great banter and huge amounts of interesting history. In this particular novel, our favorite family of fools (Theo, Claudia, their baby Portia, and their apprentice Helga) are traveling around the south of France in the year 1204. They have been sent to find a former troubadour, now abbot, and ask him to intervene on behalf of the Guild with the Pope, who is cracking down on the Guild. The very night they reach the abbot's monastery, a murder occurs. The abbot tells them to find the killer if they want his help. Finding clues in old songs, they compete with the killer/s to find the people who can help them solve the mystery.
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