A little late, this week but here are two books that
are easy beach or pool side reads. Both of them fairly short. Not awe inspiring but
fun reads if you are an armchair traveler.
One takes you to the Cote d’Azur of France and the other
to the mountains of Colorado. Enjoy
A
Rocky Road by Glen Ebisch
After the death of her father, Susan Cantwell hopes
to make a new life for herself away from her demanding brothers in New Jersey.
Leaving her job as a schoolteacher in the east, she takes a job as a guide with
a tour company in Denver, Colorado. She likes the thought of the freedom living
in the Wild West hopefully will give her.
However, when one of her guests dies in a mysterious
fall down a hotel staircase on the second night of the tour, she wonders if she
has taken on more than she bargained for. Especially when the one young
handsome passenger on the tour turns out to be a private detective, the company
has hired to look out for fraudulent passengers.
Rather a nice little
mystery plus a hint of romance all against the gorgeous background of Mesa
Verde and Rocky Mountain Park. I always like a book that takes me travelling
and this one provides a nice tour through the wonders of Colorado. This is a
few pages too long to be considered a novella but it is definitely an easy
summer read.
By Tobi 87 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0
The
Corsican Caper by Peter Mayle
Although this short novel
is written in Peter Mayle's light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek style and chock full
of good food and excellent wines, there's really not much to this book. At
around 160 pages, it really is a novella.
A wealthy Russian named
Vronsky, who modus operandi is
generally to have those who stand in the way of what he wants put out of
business. In other words, killed. He never is caught because he's always far
away when these murders happen. He is now determined that he must have for
himself an impressive Riviera mansion owned by a Monsieur Francis Reboul, who
refuses to sell. Enter Mayle’s master sleuth, Sam Levitt, who just happens to
be vacationing on the Riviera. (Who wouldn’t if they could?)
Even though it's a
mystery, there's very little in the way of suspense or cliff hanging moments.
Just enough of a plot to whet your appetite for a substantial meal. A little
disappointing compared to his other books.
Cannes Harbor by Guy Lebègue (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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