[Muncle]

Boom, you've hit yet another of my many weaknesses.

Finding an author and especially appealing main characters is such a treat. Once one reads their first Christie, Marsh, or Sayers, he's hooked for every book in the author's (what's that word?) collection. While living in the DC area, I got addicted to dead people sales. Many had a lot of books at great prices. There I stumbled upon Anne George and her Southern Sisters. The masterful dialogue in these otherwise standard mysteries was some of the best written and funniest I'd ever read, and I kept up with them until Ms George passed away. A couple other series authors I discovered at these sales were Rita Mae Brown, Nancy Atherton, and Anne Perry. And of course once you read any Ellis Peters, be it the old monk or the modern cop, you've opened a huge trove of treasures.

Some of these writers are current and I keep an eye on Amazon to get the new releases immediately. But many of them are older books written long ago. This just feeds my love of used book stores. And the nice thing there is that you never know when you're going to stumble upon a new (to you, at least) author with a great character and series. And, of course, there is that surprise/joy of finding a favorite author has an entire different series written under a different pen name.


"Give me my books, my golf clubs and my leisure, and I would ask for nothing more. My ideal in life is to read a lot, write a little, play plenty of golf and have nothing to worry about." Lord Balfour



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