Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Waiting on Wednesday: THE WEED THAT STRINGS THE HANGMAN'S BAG by Alan Bradley


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A Flavia de Luce Mystery

Publisher: Delacorte Press
Category: Fiction - Mystery & Detective
Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
On Sale: March 9, 2010
Price: $24.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-34231-5 (0-385-34231-4)

Description (from the publisher): 
From Dagger Award–winning and internationally bestselling author Alan Bradley comes this utterly beguiling mystery starring one of fiction’s most remarkable sleuths: Flavia de Luce, a dangerously brilliant eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders. This time, Flavia finds herself untangling two deaths—separated by time but linked by the unlikeliest of threads.

Flavia thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacy are over—and then Rupert Porson has an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. The beloved puppeteer has had his own strings sizzled, but who’d do such a thing and why? For Flavia, the questions are intriguing enough to make her put aside her chemistry experiments and schemes of vengeance against her insufferable big sisters. Astride Gladys, her trusty bicycle, Flavia sets out from the de Luces’ crumbling family mansion in search of Bishop’s Lacey’s deadliest secrets.

Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she’s letting on? What of the vicar’s odd ministrations to the catatonic woman in the dovecote? Then there’s a German pilot obsessed with the Brontë sisters, a reproachful spinster aunt, and even a box of poisoned chocolates. Most troubling of all is Porson’s assistant, the charming but erratic Nialla. All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can’t solve—without Flavia’s help. But in getting so close to who’s secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head?

Click here to visit the author's website.

About the author (from the publisher):
Alan Bradley received the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award for The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, as well as the first Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award for Children’s Literature. He is the author of many short stories, children’s stories, newspaper columns, and the memoir The Shoebox Bible. Bradley lives in Malta with his wife and two calculating cats, and is currently working on the next Flavia de Luce mystery, A Red Herring Without Mustard.

10 comments:

Wall-to-wall books said...

This one sounds really interesting, kind of on the edge of your seat interesting.
The cover is kinda freaky though!LOL

Darlene said...

Hey, this sounds really good. I love the title!

bermudaonion said...

I haven't read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, so I'm not quite ready for this one!

Anonymous said...

Can't wait to read this one, loved the first book!

(Diane) Bibliophile By the Sea said...

Me too; love the first book by Bradley.

Mary (Bookfan) said...

I've seen this on the Library Thing early reviewers site. Haven't read the first book but I know many people will be waiting for this!

holdenj said...

I'm waiting on this too! First time I've seen the title for the third one.

bookmagic said...

I loved Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, I can't wait for this one. Flavia is great!

Stephanie said...

I love the titles of the books in this series!

Lisa said...

I've got to get started on this series!