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Life isn’t Always a Fairy Tale: Nursery Crimes, The Sorcerer’s Appendix, The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, and Grimm

2 May

Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales are often thought of as being just for kids, but they are packed with crimes like theft (Beauty and the Beast), breaking and entering (Goldilocks), and attempted murder (Hansel and Gretel), that have inspired authors to create adult mystery series based on the classics that we all know. Here are 3 book series and a TV series you will want to check-out if you enjoy your fairy tales or nursery rhymes with a dash of investigation and a sprinkle of humor.

The Fourth Bear and The Big Over Easy
by Jasper Fforde
fourth_bear
You may remember that I mentioned Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series in my lists of favorites.  In the same alternate book universe where book characters are real, Jasper Fforde has written two books in his Nursery Crime Series.  In The Big Over Easy, detective Jack Spratt and his assistant Mary Mary look into the death of a certain Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III.  In the second novel in the mystery series, The Fourth Bear, Spratt and Mary must stop one tough cookie aka the Gingerbread Man from a murderous spree and find the missing Goldilocks.

The Sorcerer’s Appendix
by P.J. Brackston
sorcerers_appendix
If you ever wondered what happened to Gretel after she escaped the witch and her Gingerbread house in the woods; Brackston’s answer is that she is now all grown up and working as a private investigator in a whimsical fantasy version of 18th Century Bavaria inhabited both by historic characters like Mozart and fairy tale ones like big bad wolves. The Sorcerer’s Appendix is the latest in Brackston’s humorous Brothers Grimm Mystery Series.  In this outing story, Gretel must make her way back into the woods and discover whether a sorcerer who disappeared leaving behind only his appendix is really deceased or still alive.  Gretel is a prickly heroine who makes you route for her despite her less than perfect princess demeanor.

The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse
by Robert Rankin
chocolate_bunnies_apocalypse
In The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, Robert Rankin imagines a Toy City where the classic nursery rhyme characters are the rich and famous elite, who are a target of a serial killer.  The only ones that can stop the murdering psychopath are the city’s sole detective Eddie Bear and his BFF Jack.  You can also check out the sequel The Toyminator, if you want to read more about Eddie and Jack’s humorous adventures.

Grimm
Grimm
Last year the long running TV series, Grimm, ended its 6 year run. Grimm was based on the idea that the creatures or “wesen” from the Brother’s Grimm stories were real and hiding among us only able to be viewed by “Grimms” like Nick, the detective main character of the show.  My favorite characters in the show were two of the “wesen”, Rosalie and Monroe, who helped Nick on his adventures.  I’ll miss the series, but luckily all six seasons are available on DVD to rewatch again and again.

Written by Aimee Harris, Head of Reference

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40 Years of Favorite Part Two: My Favorites From My Twenties

9 Feb

You may remember I started a list of my favorite books or series of books through the years in honor of my milestone 40th birthday with books I loved as child and teen.  I thought I’d finish out my 40th year with part two and three of that post and look at favorite books from my twenties (and in the next post my thirties).

21. The Works of Tanith Lee

white-as-snow
I went through a period as a teen into my early twenties of being a huge fan of the dark fantasy of Tanith Lee and it would be impossible for me to pick only one of her works as a favorite from that time period; unfortunately not all of her prolific work is currently in print.  For vampire fans check out Personal Darkness available from BCCLS libraries.  For those who enjoy retellings of Fairytales, like I do, check out a very adult retelling of Snow White, White as Snow.  You can borrow her Lionwolf Trilogy as eBooks from Hoopla.

22. Ray Bradbury’s From the Dust Returned

from-dust-returned.jpg

Ray Bradbury’s prose always hooks me into his stories. From the Dust Returned is composed primarily of a series of short stories Bradbury wrote decades earlier, centering on a family of monsters, vampires, and ghosts named the Elliotts. When I was in college I remember being on a Goth Music Discussion email list (these were the days before Facebook and even Myspace) where one of the participants was in love with one of the stories in From Dust Returned and encouraged everyone to check it out; I did and it remains a favorite. The cover art for the novel was provided by Charles Addams, who created his own macabre family, The Addams Family.

23. Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls and 24. Drawing Blood

drawing-blood

Poppy Z. Brite, pen name of transgendered author Billy Martin, was known in the early 90’s for his horror stories.  My two favorites from that time are the haunted house tale Drawing Blood and the vampire novel Lost Souls.  Brite then went on to write several dark comedies in the late 90’s/early 2000’s set in the culinary world of New Orleans in the Liquor series.  Hopefully Martin will chose to come out of authorly retirement and start writing again sometime soon since I’d be curious to see what he has for his next chapter.

25. Spider Robinson’s Callahan Series, 26. John DeChancie’s Castle Perilous Series, and 27. Alan Dean Fosters’s Spellsinger series

spellsinger

Following my dark fantasy period, there was a time in the 90’s where I couldn’t get enough of funny fantasy and science fiction.  Spider Robinson’s Callahan series is set in a bar where the regulars include a talking dog, a time traveler, and alien life forms; many puns and shenanigans ensue.  Several of Robinson’s books are available from BCCLS Libraries.  John DeChancie’s Castle Perilous series features a castle with thousands of doors, each of which opens onto another dimension; those who enter often receive surprising magical abilities.  Alan Dean Foster’s Spellsinger series features a student who is pulled into a world where animals talk and behave like humans, and the protagonist gains the power of using music to cast spells.  Books in these series are all available from Hoopla as eBooks or digital audiobooks.

28. Connie Willis’s Bellwether

bellwether

You may remember my post about Connie Willis’s terrific books about time travel; our book discussion group even read Doomsday Book one month. The book of hers I first picked up my freshman year of college when it came out was Bellwether which looks at a group of scientist who are attempting to study what causes and how to create a fads. Looking back on it now Bellwether seems predictive of the current fad of viral marketing and social media influencers, though at the time I just fell in love with the funny, quirky book.

29. Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic

practical-magic

I have written previously about my love of my Alice Hoffman’s magical fantasies which feature bold female heroines either in historical or contemporary settings. My first and still one of my favorites is her novel Practical Magic. It is definitely worth rereading since she just published in 2017 a prequel The Rules of Magic, where she writes about an earlier generation of the Owens family: Franny, Jet, and Vincent, set in the 1960’s.

30. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

handmaids-tale

Speaking of Dystopian works, The Handmaid’s Tale was shocking and thought provoking to me when I read it as a college freshman. The story has gotten a renewed buzz with its adaptation as a streaming series. I also enjoyed Atwood’s other fiction and poetry.  I got to see her at a reading/Q&A when I was in graduate school at a Non-for-Profit Theater in Brookline, MA, which for a book nerd was practically a holy experience at the time.

-Written by Aimee Harris, Head of Reference

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