The Long Way Home / by Robin Pilcher

English-born Claire Barclay's mother remarried Leo after the family lost their father to cancer. It may have been a blessing in disguise because Leo became more beloved by Claire than her biological father could have been. So when Claire, now living in New York as a restauranteur with her adoring husband Art, receives word that Leo is ill and needs full-time care, she flies back to Britain, back to Leo's quaint Scottish manor, to be with him. The situation may seem relatively uncomplicated--Leo's physically incapable of living alone but refuses to leave his home--but it presents a problem for Claire and Art who, even though they agree to relocate temporarily to Scotland, are presented with Leo's lingering financial woes as well as his medical ones. To add to things, Claire's teenage love Jonas Fairweather is back on the scene as a local realtor/financier and Claire has to deal with her emotional feelings--she abandoned her romance with Jonas after meeting Art by chance just prior to her first year of college--as well as the logistical constraints relating to Leo.

Pilcher is actually the son of Rosamund Pilcher (cozy romance author of titles like Winter Solstice and An Ocean Apart) and shares many of his mother's stylistic charm and delicate relationship nuances. He's been well-received for previous titles and has found success in the mainstream as well as niche markets, however this book is a bit bland by comparison. While the plot is perfectly plausible, the story hovers too much around Claire's issues and though intermingling segments highlight her earlier life as well as her now happy partnership with her husband, there really isn't enough conflict to involve the reader in her story or emotions. The other characters read a little too formulaic. They're all a little too much like one another to provide any originality as the drama unfolds, leaving things a little too tame, even by cozy standards. The author's clearly not another Nicholas Sparks, nor is he Debbie Macomber, but his other titles may intrigue readers more than this one. (FIC PILCHER)

The Five Red Herrings: A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery / by Dorothy Sayers

All Lord Peter Wimsey wanted for his holiday in the highlands was to sleep late, reflect on his misspent youth, catch some trout and possibly fit in a round of golf. The quaint village that he and Bunter take up residence is actually a type of artist colony where an assortment of painters--all a bit odd but talented in their own way--have set down roots. One among them isn't really odd though, he's just mean. Campbell Quick is a barrel-chested, red-bearded Scotsman with a temper to match his drinking habits and a peevishness overshadowing any artistic skill he possesses. "He's a devil when he's drunk and a lout when he's sober", they all say. So when he turns up dead in the river the day following an evening in which he rowed with six of his fellow artists, the question for Lord Peter is to find out which one of them murdered Campbell, a man best characterized by Wimsey's eulogy, "Nothing in his life quite became him like the leaving of it." To do so the gentleman sleuth and his crafty manservant will need to eliminate the five artists,  the "five red herrings", who had the motive and possibly the means but not the opportunity to dispose of the undesirable Campbell.

If you didn't know him, it might be easy to overlook Lord Peter Wimsey as a minor fictional sleuth from the golden age of mystery fiction. The amateur "gentleman detective" is nothing like the big names of the period--Poirot, Maigret, Mason, etc.--who are all 'in the business' so to speak, all detectives by trade with solid credentials and proper training. And though he usually shirks the perception as quickly as it's made, Wimsey can come off as something of a nosy, entitled aristocrat. He doesn't work at job or need money, his butler does everything for him short of clip his toenails and though he's an amateur criminologist of the highest order, he has no real reason other than avid interest to associate himself with crime and murder. But while not featured in the sheer volume of fiction occupied by a Poirot or a Perry Mason, he's aged as well as any of them, his "mind like a razor", discernible eye for detail and inimitable charisma winning over hoards of readers. Always the bon viveur with an incurable optimism and contagious confidence, Wimsey can't help but, well, project 'whimsy' everywhere he goes, winning as much respect as admiration and garnering appeal with his sophisticated charm and personality. It's here where Sayers, with her manifestation of the 'gentleman detective,' really distinguished herself, managing to create an admirable, truly estimable character from someone with a manservant, lots of money and lots of free time--later works would see Wimsey take a seat in the House of Lords but for the most part he's just another member of the idle rich set bouncing around Europe's glamorous hotspots. It's harder than it looks because with a few discrepancies, the svelte, polished protagonist might have easily become a buffoon like Bertie Wooster or even a distancing snob, something like James Bond maybe. But it's nothing like that. When people are difficult, Wimsey is class and composure personified. Where they might feel inferior, he deftly erases social barriers. Where there's a case to be solved, he never oversteps his authority but never capitulates to official crime solvers who sometimes resent the butting-in of a posh member of the nobility. He may not be officially affiliated with law enforcement, but he's amply capable, has a free maneuverability, abundant resources and is never afraid to get his hands dirty--all things which make the books, every one of them, serious fun. (MYS SAYERS)

Time Travel Romance

Charming the Highlander / by Janet Chapman
When a plane crashes in the snowy Maine wilderness, scientist Grace Sutter is the only one to survive. Or so she thinks. Amidst the wreckage she soon locates a man named Greylen MacKeage who’s medieval Scottish getup proves to be no joke. Greylen is an actual highland warrior who’s traveled through time seeking the woman he’s destined to love. This is the first book in Chapman’s “Highlander” series. (FIC CHAPMAN)

Outlander / by Diana Gabaldon
In 1945, Claire Randall is on a second honeymoon with her husband in the Scottish highlands when she happens to step inside an ancient stone circle and is transported back to the year 1743. There she confronts a world at war with the Scots bravely fighting the English to preserve their native homeland and heritage. Immediately swept up in the drama, Claire is harbored by the Fraser clan and eventually forced into marrying a highland warrior. This is the first book in Gabaldon’s (soon to be eight-part) “Outlander” series. (FIC GABALDON)

Dark Seduction / by Brenda Joyce
Malcolm of Dunroch is a master of the dark arts in medieval Scotland, a place where peace is hard to come by and fair maidens whom he can seduce—to his and their ultimate doom—are never far away. Knowing the destructive force his powers can potentially have, Malcolm tries to deny himself all forms of pleasure until a beautiful young girl, Claire Camden, who’s had her own problems with escaping conflict, is sent back from the future. This is Joyce’s first book in her “The Masters of Time” series. (FIC JOYCE)



One Enchanted Evening / by Lynn Kurland
Costume designer Pippa Alexander has been asked to provide her expertise at a party being held at an old English castle. Ultimately, she and all of the other guests, including her sisters, arrive at the party donned in Faerie regalia only to suddenly be plunged back in time to the 13th century. There a man named Montgomery de Piaget, the official Lord of the original castle, thinks the girls really are fairies and it’s up to Pippa to tell him otherwise. This book is a part of Kurland’s “Di Piaget” time travel series. (FIC KURLAND)

Touch of Enchantment / by Teresa Medeiros
Tabitha Lennox has always considered herself more rational than most. But when she looks closer at a strange amulet which her mother bequeathed to her, one she's been told holds special powers, she’s suddenly hurled back in time to the fourteenth century and directly into the path of a chain-mailed knight on horseback. But Tabitha's not the only one taken by surprise. It’s also the last thing the medieval warrior, Sir Colin of Ravenshaw, expected as a knight returning home from the crusades. (FIC MEDEIROS)

The Time Traveler’s Wife / by Audrey Niffenegger
Clare is desperately in love with her husband Henry De Tamble and is sure that they are destined to be together forever. The only problem is that Clare never knows when Henry will be ‘present’ because Henry is a time traveler, stricken with a strange genetic disorder causing him to live his entire life skipping back and forth through time. (FIC NIFFENEGGER)

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict: A Novel / by Laurie Viera Rigler
Courtney Stone is still grieving over her broken wedding engagement when she suddenly wakes up in a different place in a different time—and in another woman’s body. Transplanted back to the nineteenth century in a regency England she finds familiar due to her love of Jane Austen, Courtney plays along with the setup, acting as the woman she’s supposed to be and sorting out the love life she’s intended to have. (FIC RIGLER)

Knight Errant / by Rodrigo Garcia y Robertson
American Robyn Stafford takes a trip from California to England to surprise her boyfriend on his birthday only to discover that he’s actually married with a family. To recoup from the discovery, she takes a few days to sightsee some of the medieval ruins in the area when she suddenly encounters a knight on horseback who identifies himself as Edward Plantagenet, Earl of March. He thinks it’s the year 1459 and at first believes Robyn to be a boy because she wears pants. But after this is sorted out, Plantagenet asks Robyn if she’d like to ride along, an offer she graciously agrees to. This is the first of Robertson’s “Knight Errant” series. (SF ROBERTSON)


Time After Time / by Constance O’Day-Flannery
Recently widowed Kelly Brennan is still going through the grief process when she reluctantly agrees to be a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding. The Southern-styled ceremony, held outdoors near an old plantation home, gets even weirder for Kelly when she’s sucked into a mysterious oak tree and transported back to antebellum New Orleans. Shocked by her surroundings, she agrees to be aided by a young girl whose father, it turns out, is also widowed and bears a strange resemblance to Kelly’s late husband. (FIC ODAYFLAN)

Trainspotting (DVD) 1996 / a film by Danny Boyle; based on the novel by Irvine Welsh; starring Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Kelly MacDonald, Johnny Lee Miller & Ewan Bremner

"Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?"

Mark "Rent Boy" Renton and his friends Spud and Sick Boy are heroin junkies in Edinburgh. For Mark and friends, getting stoned--though they'd never call it that ("People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that . . . which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it.")--is 'the means' and 'the end' of their existence. It constitutes everything about their daily routine; sober individuals are the ones with the abnormal lifestyle as they see it. That each are petty criminals, stealing almost unconsciously to support their habit, goes without saying. And as especially exemplary representatives of their skid row sector of society, they keep company with some of the most degenerate individuals including one guy, Begbie, a ferocious, nearly psychotic hothead, who they admit to being too scared not to hang out with. But though absent of responsibility or maturity, it's not as if Mark or his friends are incapable of normal lives. On the contrary, all are middle class and most come from relatively decent families. Mark himself is intelligent and insightful with two caring parents whose honest attempts at intervention have simply been offset by his own determined efforts at waywardness.
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Periodically, they all try to quit the habit, even succeeding for short intervals. After all, nothing's more harshly sobering than when Tommy, another member of their clique and ironically the least addicted of them all, tests positive for HIV and dies. At one point Mark himself walls up permanently inside a one room and, in an obscenely wretched affair in which he's sick constantly and hallucinates frequently, he finally gets clean. He subsequently manages the straight path for a while, landing a job in London where he steers clear of bad influences until his friends locate him with an offer he can't pass up. They've stumbled upon a stash they know they can sell for thousands if they just play their cards right. Of course none of them trust the other now that sobriety has entered their lives and so all bets are off until the transaction is made. But even then, who are they to obey the rules?
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Trainspotting is nothing short of brilliant. Wildly popular almost instantaneously upon its release--Welsh's equally successful novel preceded the cinema adaptation by two years--it remains a film of timeless fascination. It's become almost an institution, really. Through the provocative, if countercultural message it communicates, it depicts individuals who go through life's conflicts and challenges simply by refusing to confront them at all. Of course they're also individuals who will likely never make a positive contribution to society. The lives of Renton and his crew (as well as their dream lives) indelibly revolve around getting high, causing trouble, destroying themselves and others and generally going about life the hard way by always taking the easy way out. But Trainspotting avoids extremes: it's not a film to preach the ills of depravity or glorify drug escapism. Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and the stellar cast, McGregor and Carlyle in particular, help ensure that drugs are never celebrated, that the lifestyle's never glamourized or social dissidence never approved of as a viable option to common problems. But neither is a domineering moral code given license to ruin any fun. With enlightening juxtaposition, it manages to show a world which is at the same time deeply disturbing and ironically charming, frighteningly immoral and candidly honest, perfectly practical and manically absurd; at all times a vivid, moving and highly satisfactory right up until the last scene. (DVD TRAINSPO)