Reading, Writing, and Sourdough

  Richard Osman gets credit for inventing a new detective, in this case, a crew of detectives. In addition to a pair of peripheral police officers in a small town outside London, the primary investigators into a series of murders are four residents of a senior living center. They suffer from mobility issues. They pay undue attention to who sits with whom in the dining room. They drink wine while pretending to work on jigsaw puzzles and they tell stories in the long-winded, gossipy way of old people. But they haven't lost their mental acuity. At least not yet. The Thursday Murder Club is comprised of two widowers (Ron, whose son at least still visits from time to time, and Ibrahim), a widow (Joyce, who maintains a keen eye for newly arrived single men) and Elisabeth, whose husband is rapidly disappearing into the ravages of dementia. They gather in the jigsaw room - before Zumba - every Thursday to try to solve old cases left in files by one of their founding members, Penny, a forme...

  Eric Rusch, patriarch of Breadtopia.com , as best I can tell was into baking for a long time, but until relatively recently mostly they guy to turn to if you wanted to purchase gear and supplies for making bread. The on-line store is stocked with nearly everything a bread baker could wish for. Over the years, Breadtopia has added on-line tutorials, videos, blogs, discussion forums, and an occasional newsletter with new bread recipes. Many of the recipes extend to the global repertoire of breads, and in contrast to Maurizio Leo's precise formulae (see The Perfect Loaf ), Rusch's recipes leave more space for interpretation, trial, and error. But his recipes are nonetheless fantastic. These sourdough bialys were light without being starchy, soft without being doughy, and firm without becoming too crisp. Most of all, the caramelized onion topping, doused with olive oil and sprinkled with poppy seeds were so beguilingly sweet I had to double check that no sugar was included at an...

  Fifth in the JK Rowling series of crime novels in which private detective Cormoran Strike and now-profesional-partner Robin Ellacott get paid to investigate crimes. Naturally, they receive a lot of requests to track down philandering husbands and business partners suspected of skimming the books, but also once per book they also have to cope with someone truly despicable and dangerous. Troubled Blood  is a request from the daughter of a mother that went missing decades ago. At the time of the incident the disappearance was pinned on a pathological serial killer, but the evidence was shaky and the investigating policeman was losing his mind. Rowling is a master of multiple storylines: we find ourselves tied up in more than a search for a presumed killer. We want to know whether Cormoran and Robin can keep their relationship strictly professional and how each will grow following losses in their personal lives. It matters how the two of them relate to their parents, struggling ...