The Cozy Mystery List Blog

Cozy Mystery (and Other Favorite) Books, Movies, and TV

Sharon Pape, Debbie Steever, Sara Woods, & Suzanne Young … Four New Additions to the Cozy Mystery Site…

I have finally added some new mystery authors to the Cozy Mystery site! I have so many authors who you all have recommended as belonging on the site, and I know that I should get them posted faster. But, of course, there are no excuses for taking this much time…

So, here are the four newest mystery author additions to the Cozy Mystery site:

Sharon Pape used to be a teacher. She is now writing the Portrait of a Crime Mystery Seires which will fall under the paranormal subgenre. Her main sleuth (Aurora – Rory McBain) is a police sketch artist who has inherited her uncle’s Victorian mansion AND an 1870s federal marshal who inhabits the old house.

Debbie Steever writes Stand Alone mysteries. One of them involves two brothers and a journal full of family secrets that their father left them after his death. Another of Steever’s Stand Alone mysteries is about a highschool reunion that goes terribly wrong… for both the corpse and the suspect…

The next author has several aliases:
Sara Woods: Antony Maitland Mystery Series
Mary Challis: Jeremy Locke Mystery Series
Margaret Leek: Stephen Marryat Mystery Series
All three of the above series have British barristers as their sleuths.
Anne Burton: Richard Trenton Mystery Series
The above series has a British banker as its sleuth.

Suzanne Young has her degree in English, which she parlayed into a very varied career, which included working as the project director on a National Science Foundation grant at MIT. Young writes the Edna Davies Mystery Series. Edna is an amateur herbalist who lives in Rhode Island (on the coast) and solves mysteries.

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Elizabeth R Television Miniseries with Glenda Jackson

There are a few PBS British miniseries that I believe are classics: Upstairs, Downstairs, I Claudius, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and the 1970s version of Elizabeth R, starring Glenda Jackson.

Elizabeth R follows Elizabeth, the daughter of Ann Boleyn and Henry VIII as she goes from being a young red-head beauty to the gray-haired (red-wigged) reigning queen of Great Britain. Glenda Jackson stars as Queen Elizabeth I her entire adult life. They did not switch out actresses as she aged.

The make up and costumes showed this royal trend-setting woman age, I want to say, at least sixty years. Glenda Jackson was able to depict the vulnerability, intelligence, and strength of this monarch at every age-stage of her life. Jackson (and her make up) was terrific!

The sets are regal, you can almost touch the deep royal blue and crimson velvet. The magnificent jewels make you wonder why there were poor people suffering under her reign…

The people at the BBC outdid themselves on this Emmy award winning production.

We watch as Elizabeth goes from being the banished “bastard” child of Henry VIII, to a strong queen who must put aside her personal feelings to do what she thinks is best for her kingdom. (Her mother was indeed married to Henry, although he labeled her as being that.) The threat posed by Mary, Queen of Scots must be resolved, she insists on making her won decision about marriage, and she must hold on to (and expand!) her country’s borders.

Elizabeth R is a six-part miniseries, which is actually six plays that have been pieced together. Glenda Jackson takes us seamlessly through the Virgin Queen’s life. Robert Hardy (yes, the same Robert Hardy from All Creatures Great & Small) was delightful as “Robin,” Elizabeth’s special friend.

I strongly recommend this 1970s BBC miniseries.

If you would like to see more TV and Movies suggestions, click here.

Jesse Stone 2011 – Tom Selleck – Innocents Lost – Robert B. Parker

Yikes! I almost forgot to tell all of you who are Jesse Stone fans and/or Tom Selleck fans:

Don’t forget to watch (or record) the latest Jesse Stone movie tonight on CBS!

Most of you who are fans of Robert B. Parker‘s Jesse Stone mysteries already know about this, but I thought I would just remind you…

Take Me Home, Country Roads…

As I was driving cross country a while back, I saw some things that I thought were interesting:

1) I drove on a patch of highway that had to have had one dead skunk on the side of the road every ten miles. (Is there a place that boasts of being the Skunk Capital of the World?)

2) I saw windmills, windmills, and more windmills. Wouldn’t it be great if wind and sun could be our main sources of energy?

3) Which takes me to the next item on my list. I saw a lot of oil drills. Those things always remind me of that Rock Hudson, James Dean, and Elizabeth Taylor movie Giant. (I’m not even sure if there were oil drills in that movie…)

4) Oh my goodness! How neat is it to drive through a little Dairy Queen-type of town and see those beautiful, old courthouses?!?

5)Yikes! There’s a place called “Cannibal Draw”. I don’t even want to know how that place got its name!!!

6) You are not going to believe this: I pass by a functioning Drive-In Theater on my regular route. Oh my goodness! That takes me way back to days when we (even our Cocker Spaniel!) would go to a drive-in movie and feel all snug in the comfort of our car- watching the movie as fireflies fluttered around, anticipating the cold, sweet watermelon that awaited us in my grandmother’s kitchen.

Sometimes it seems that a long, boring drive through the flat, barely inhabited plains can be a lot more picturesque than one would expect…

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