Library Loot: A Prodigal Returns

It's been quite a long time since I've participated in Library Loot, a weekly event co-hosted by Claire and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.

Mainly, I've been absent because I am making a dedicated effort to read books off my own shelves. I've picked up a book from the library here and there in order to meet some challenge requirements, but never enough to feel like I needed to make a special post. However, this week I scooped up several books that I just had to tell you all about....

Current Loot:

• Capacity for Murder by Bernadette Pajer: the newest installment in her Professor Bradshaw mysteries set at the dawn of the 20th Century.  I've been waiting and waiting for this to be available.
• The Scarlet Macaw by S.P. Hozy: Entwined mysteries unfold in two time periods in Singapore as artist Maris Cousins, devastated by the sudden death of her mentor, gallery owner Peter Stone, becomes immersed in fictional stories of love and betrayal from the city's past, mysteriously left to her by Stone. Soon she is caught up in circumstances involving smuggling and even murder. [Picked up for a reading challenge]
•  Murder by the Book by Eric Brown: London, 1955. When crime writer Donald Langham's literary agent asks for his help in sorting out 'a delicate matter', little does Langham realize what he's getting himself into. For a nasty case of blackmail leads inexorably to murder as London's literary establishment is rocked by series of increasingly bizarre deaths.    
• Dead Old by Maureen Carter: Elderly women are being attacked by a gang of vicious thugs in Birmingham. When retired doctor Sophia Carrington is murdered, it's assumed she is the gang's latest victim. But DS Bev Morriss isn't convinced... [Picked up for a challenge--had to find a book with a main character who had my name.  Do you know how difficult it is to find "Bev" in fiction?]  

Recently Read from the Library (click titles for reviews:
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr. [text by Burt Boyar] 
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern 
If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won't) by Betty White