Quotes from the evolution of calpurnia tate

"Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really."


— Jacqueline Kelly (The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate)



 "It was too bad, but sometimes a little knowledge could ruin your whole day, or at least take off some of the shine."

last night, when SanJuanna had cleared the main course and brought dessert in, my mother called for quiet and said,

"Boys, I have an announcement to make. Your sister made the apple pies tonight. I'm sure we will all enjoy them very much."

"Can I learn how, ma'am?" said Jim Bowie.

"No, J.B. Boys don't bake pies," Mother said.

"Why not?" he said.

"They have wives who make pies for them."

"But I don't have a wife."

"Darling, I'm sure you will have a very nice one someday when you're older, and she'll make you many pies. Calpurnia, would you care to serve?"

Was there any way I could have a wife, too? I wondered as I cut through the browned C and promptly shattered the entire crust."

— Jacqueline Kelly (The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate)



"Lula," I said, "do you ever think about getting married?"

I guess I do. Doesn't everybody?"

You have to let your husband kiss you once you're married. And you have to kiss him back."

No," she said.

Yes." I nodded, as if I knew everything there was to know about husbands and wives kissing. "That's what they do together."

Do you have to?"

Oh, absolutely. It's the law."

I never heard of that law," she said dubiously.

It's true, it's Texas law," I said."

— Jacqueline Kelly (The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate)









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Stones's Fall

A return to the form that launched Iain Pears onto bestseller lists around the world: a vast historical mystery, marvelous in its ambition and ingenius in its complexity.

In his most dazzling novel since the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone, financier and arms dealer, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets, industries, and indeed entire countries and continents.



A panoramic novel with a riveting mystery at its heart, Stone’s Fall is a quest to discover how and why John Stone dies, falling out of a window at his London home.



Chronologically, it moves backwards–from London in 1909 to Paris in 1890, and finally to Venice in 1867– and in the process the quest to uncover the truth plays out against the backdrop of the evolution of high-stakes international finance, Europe’s first great age of espionage, and the start of the twentieth century’s arms race.



Like Fingerpost, Stone’s Fall is an intricately plotted and richly satisfying puzzle–an erudite work of history and fiction that feels utterly true and oddly timely–and marks the triumphant return of one of the world’s great
 I did not think I would ever get through this book but it was worth it and I wish I had taken notes.

French Pressed Cleo Coyle

This was a fun book and i loved the recipes and the information gleaned about coffee.

Clare Cosi's daughter, Joy, is interning-and falling- for a top New York chef when his kitchen turns cutthroat, and Joy becomes a murder suspect. Clare knows she must catch the real killer-even if it lands her in the hottest water of her life

The Haunting by Joan Lowery Nixon

I liked this book the premise  Lia's great grandmother on he death bed gives he plantation home to Lias mother. No one has lived there forever but it has been kept up.  She tells her to read the diary of her great great grandmother for clues.  I loved it the plantation and the story.Fifteen-year-old Lia comes from a long line of courageous women, dating back to a Civil War survivor who single-handedly saved her Louisiana plantation house, Graymoss, from destruction. But Graymoss is haunted by a terrible evil.




With clues from a diary and Favorite Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Lia, who doesn't feel as if she's inherited any family genes of courage, must figure out what--or who--the evil wants. When Lia's parents decide to move into Graymoss, Lia isn't sure how to convince them to change their minds. But it's up to her to chase away the horror lurking inside the old house. Can she find the courage to deal with a noisy ghost who wants vengeance?

Shutter Island I loved the book but wish it could have ended different

Know this: Lehane's new novel, his first since the highly praised and bestselling Mystic River, carries an ending so shocking yet so faithful to what has come before, that it will go down as one of the most aesthetically right resolutions ever written. But as anyone who has read him knows, Lehane, despite his mastery of the mechanics of suspense, is about much more than twists; here, he's in pursuit of the nature of self-knowledge and self-deception, and the ways in which both can be warped by violence and evil. In summer 1954, two U.S. marshals, protagonist Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, arrive on Shutter Island, not far from Boston, to investigate the disappearance of patient Rachel Solando from the prison/hospital for the criminally insane that dominates the island. The marshals' digging gets them nowhere fast as they learn of Rachel's apparently miraculous escape past locked doors and myriad guards, and as they encounter roadblocks and lies strewn across their path-most notably by the hospital's chief physician, the enigmatic J. Cawley-and pick up hints of illegal brain surgery performed at the hospital. Then, as a major hurricane bears down on the island, inciting a riot among the insane and cutting off all access to the mainland, they begin to fear for their lives. All of the characters-particularly Teddy, haunted by the tragic death of his wife-are wonderful creations, but no more wonderful than the spot-on dialogue with which Lehane brings them to life and the marvelous prose that enriches the narrative. There are mysteries within mysteries in this novel, some as obvious as the numerical codes that the missing patient leaves behind and which Teddy, a code breaker in WWII, must solve; some as deep as the most profound fears of the human heart. There is no mystery, however, about how good this book is; like Mystic River, it's a tour de force.

With the same compelling narrative style and sharp characterizations that made Mystic River such a splendid read, Dennis Lehane delivers another story that stretches the boundaries of the mystery genre but stays close enough to satisfy.




The year is 1954, and U. S. Marshal Teddy Daniels travels to Shutter Island, home of Ashcroft Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of patient Rachel Solando. The mystery he encounters, however, is as much about this place, and him, as it is about the missing woman.



Teddy is still reeling in grief over the death of his wife, Delores: “Teddy wondered, and not for the first time, not by a long shot, if this was the day that missing her would finally be too much for him. If he could turn back the years to that morning of the fire and replace her body with his own, he would. That was a given. That has always been a given. But as the years passed, he missed her more, not less, and his need for her became a cut that would not scar over, would not stop leaking.”



With pain that deep, it would seem that perhaps Teddy has come to Shutter Island to kill the man who set the fire that consumed his apartment and his wife, but he has as much difficulty finding Laeddis as he did in locating Rachel. In fact, it seems like the head doctor and the administrator are working against him, which leads Teddy and his partner, Chuck, to wonder what is being covered up.



This is a dark and brooding tale, with just enough bright patches of humor to provide a welcome reprieve, and a hurricane presents a perfect backdrop. The sea and wind are as turbulent and relentless as Teddy’s emotions. Relief comes only in short periods of calm before the plot is ratcheted up another notch.



In classic Lehane style, the descriptions are so vivid one can feel the spray of the sea, hear the shrieks of the patients, feel the intensity of Teddy’s migraine pain, and smell the musky odor that evokes vivid memories of Delores. It is the kind of writing that begs the reader to take time to savor phrases and words and the images those words evoke.



Some readers might be disappointed in the ending, which is hard to explain without giving it away, and a bit more of a classic dénouement might have been more satisfying. But then, Lehane doesn’t promise the traditional "happy ending" for his tales because they are more like life than fiction, and life doesn’t always come to a satisfying conclusion.







© 2003 by Maryann Miller for Curled Up With a Good Book








Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Shutter Island

I read this book and it was good but it made me mad. I didn't want it to be his pschiacosis.  He definetly had ptsd

The Kitchen House LOVED IT.....

I just finished the kitchen house by Kathleen Grissom and  I loved it. it is painful the abuse and history and the whole history of slavery but I loved the characters and the strength. They have.. when I saw the picture on the front of the book I knew I had seen the house before and it was a abandoned plantation picture I had found on line.

In 1790, Lavinia, a seven-year-old Irish orphan with no memory of her past, arrives on a tobacco plantation where she is put to work as an indentured servant with the kitchen house slaves. Though she becomes deeply bonded to her new family, Lavinia is also slowly accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. As time passes she finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds and when loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare and lives are at risk. The Kitchen House is a tragic story of page-turning suspense, exploring the meaning of family, where love and loyalty prevail. "You will be thrilled by this intimate and surprising story that connects us with an unexpected corner of our history. Kathleen Grissom gives us a new and


unforgettable perspective on slavery and families and human ties in the Old South, exploring the deepest mysteries of the past that help define who we are to this day."








A few years ago, my husband and I restored an old plantation tavern in Virginia. While researching its past I found an old map on which, near our home, was a notation, ‘Negro Hill.’ Unable to determine the story of its origin, local historians suggested that it most likely suggested a tragedy. For months it played on my mind. Each morning, I walked across our land to go down to the stream where I would meditate, and on my return trip I faced the direction of Negro Hill and wondered aloud what had happened there?


Finally, one morning when I returned from that walk, I sat down to do my daily journaling. What happened next left me baffled. In my mind’s eye I saw a scene play out as clear as a movie. I began to write, and the words flew onto the paper. I followed in the footsteps of a terrified little white girl, running up the hill behind her frantic mother. When they reached the top, through their eyes, I saw a black woman hanging from the limb of a large oak tree. I set my pencil down, appalled at the story line. I had written the prologue to The Kitchen House. Although fascinated by antebellum history, I abhorred the thought of slavery and had always shied away from the subject. Quickly I slipped the writing in my desk drawer, determined to forget about it.

Some weeks later, during a conversation with my father, I learned that an acquaintance of his had traced his ancestry back to Ireland. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, this man’s Irish ancestors had come over on board ship and, on that journey, both of the parents had died. Two brothers had survived, along with their little sister. They were able to track what had happened to the boys but they couldn’t find any trace of the little girl. As my father related the story, a deep chill ran through me. In my deepest core, I knew immediately what had happened to her. She was brought home to the Captain’s plantation as an indentured servant in Southside Virginia, and put to work in the kitchen house with the kitchen slaves. She awaited me in my desk drawer.

I began to do the research. I visited the many plantations in the area, particularly Prestwould Plantation. I studied slave narratives from that time period and interviewed African American people whose ancestors had been slaves. I spent hours in local libraries, the Black History Museum, the Virginia Historical Society and Poplar Forest. I visited Colonial Williamsburg many times over. Finally I began to write. Each day more of the story unfolded and when I finished, often emotionally spent, I was left to wonder what the following day would bring. The only time the work came to a standstill was when the characters took me to an event or to a place where I had not yet done my research.

I tried on a number of occasions to change some of the events (those that I found profoundly disturbing) but the story would stop when I did that, so I forged ahead to write what was revealed.

I am forever grateful to the souls who gifted me with their sharing. I can only hope I have served them well.