Murder in Belleville by Cara Black

Murder in Belleville
by Cara Black

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Published: 2000
Publisher: Soho Press
Genre: Mystery, France, Paris
Hardback: 341
Rating: 4

Aimée Leduc Investigation series:
Murder in the Marais (1999)
Murder in Belleville (2000)
Murder in the Sentier (2003)
Murder in the Bastille (2004)
Murder in Clichy (2005)
Murder in Montmartre (2006)
Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis (2007)
Murder in the Rue de Paradis (2008)
Murder in the Latin Quarter (2009)
Murder in the Palais Royale (2010)
Murder in Passy (2011)
Murder at the Lanterne Rouge (2012)
Murder Below Montparnasse (2013)
Murder In Pigalle (2014)
Murder on the Champ de Mars (2015)
Murder on the Quai (2016)
Murder in Saint-Germain (2017)
Muder on the Left Bank (2018)
Murder in Bel-Air (2019)

First sentence(s):
Aimée Leduc's cell phone rang, startling her, as she drove under the leafy poplars tenting the road to Paris.

Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc finds herself involved with a secretive North African radical group the French government would rather she didn’t investigate

When Anaїs de Froissart calls private investigator Aimée begging for help, Aimée assumes her best friend's sister wants to hire her to do surveillance on her philandering husband again. Aimée's too busy right now to indulge her. But Anaїs, a politician's wife with an unhappy marriage and a young daughter, insists Aimée must come, that she is in trouble and scared. Aimée tracks Anaїs down just in time to see a car bomb explode, injuring Anaїs and killing the woman she was with.

Aimée, who saw her father die in a car bomb five years earlier, is shaken by the attack, but manages to escort Anaїs to safety. But Anaїs can't explain what Aimée just witnessed. The dead woman, Anaїs says, is Sylvie Coudray, her cheating husband's long-time mistress, but she has no idea who wanted her dead, and Anaїs officially hires Aimée to investigate.

As she digs into Sylvie Coudray's murky past, Aimée finds that the dead woman may not be who Anaїs thought she was. Her Belleville neighborhood, full of North African immigrants, may be hiding clues to who Sylvie really was. As a prominent Algerian rights activist stages a hunger protest against new immigration laws, Aimée begins to wonder whether Sylvie's death was an act of terrorism, and who else may be at risk. To make matters worse, Yves, Aimée's ex-boyfriend, a journalist who seems to appear in and disappear from Aimée's life without any regard for her feelings, is back in town. Just the kind of distraction she doesn't need right now.

My two-bits:

Got the North African immigrants vibe with investigations in and around the Belleville district for Paris.

Aimée's love life although precarious is moving forward.

Love how this mystery series highlights each arrondissement (districts) of Paris.

~*~
* part of Paris in July (here)

Paris Letters by Janice MacLeod

Paris Letters
by Janice MacLeod
narrated by Tavia Gilbert

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Published: 2014
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Genre: Memoir, Art, France, Paris
Paperback: 272
Rating: 5

series:
Paris Letters
A Paris Year

First sentence(s):
I'm in love with the butcher," I told Summer.

Finding love and freedom in a pen, a paintbrush...and Paris

How much money does it take to quit your job?

Exhausted and on the verge of burnout, Janice poses this questions to herself as she doodles on a notepad at her desk. Surprisingly, the answer isn't as daunting as she expected. With a little math and a lot of determination, Janice cuts back, saves up, and buys herself two years of freedom in Europe.

A few days into her stop in Paris, Janice meets Christophe, the cute butcher down the street-who doesn't speak English. Through a combination of sign language and franglais, they embark on a whirlwind Paris romance. She soon realizes that she can never return to the world of twelve-hour workdays and greasy corporate lingo. But her dwindling savings force her to find a way to fund her dreams again. So Janice turns to her three loves-words, art, and Christophe-to figure out a way to make her happily-ever-after in Paris last forever.

My two-bits:

LOVED this memoir of making it in Paris with romance to boot.


Artwork: July in Paris letter available at Etsy shop

~*~
* New York Times bestseller, 2015

* Listened to audiobook version.

* part of Paris in July (here)

Lovely Books and Things - 7.27.19

Lovely Books and Things
My Weekly Books and Films Update
Linking up with:
Sunday Post (details)
Mailbox Monday (details)

~*~
HAPPY THINGS:

1. Volunteer ushering for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

2. Starting a new work project

3. Scrub treatment at Pearl Spa (here) - ahhh, so nice. It was my first one to experience and it was glorious ;-)

~*~
Author event:

Booksmith hosted a reading, Q&A and conversation with Homay King.

In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard, to international fame belied a different sort of tragedy -- the underconsumption that led to Karen's death at age thirty-two from the effects of an eating disorder.

In Why Karen Carpenter Matters, Karen Tongson (whose Filipino musician parents named her after the pop icon) interweaves the story of the singer's rise to fame with her own trans-Pacific journey between the Philippines -- where imitations of American pop styles flourished -- and Karen Carpenter's home ground of Southern California. Tongson reveals why the Carpenters' chart-topping, seemingly whitewashed musical fantasies of "normal love" can now have profound significance for her -- as well as for other people of color, LGBT+ communities, and anyone outside the mainstream culture usually associated with Karen Carpenter's legacy. This hybrid of memoir and biography excavates the destructive perfectionism at the root of the Carpenters' sound, while finding the beauty in the singer's all too brief life.

Why Karen Carpenter Matters
by Karen Tongson
-Biography, Memoir, Music, Filipino | Goodreads

Library:

The Bookseller
(Hugo Marston #1)
by Mark Pryor
-Mystery, France, Paris | Goodreads
FOR my face-to-face group, Foreign Mystery Book Club August pick. Also, just in time for my Paris in July reading pile.


For Review:

The Sea of Japan
by Keita Nagano
-Women's Fiction, Japan
courtesy of author -Thanks! | Goodreads
AND watched: on DVD for Paris in July

Lourdes (2010)
Director/Writer: Jessica Hausner
Writers: Géraldine Bajard (dramaturgy)
Stars: Sylvie Testud, Léa Seydoux, Bruno Todeschini
-Drama, France | imdb | my rating: 5
In order to escape her isolation, wheelchair-bound Christine makes a life changing journey to Lourdes, the iconic site of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees Mountains.

LOVED it for the views and prompts on thinking about disabilities and miracles.


AND watched: in theatre

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)
Director/Writer: Joe Talbot
Writers: Jimmie Fails, Rob Richert
Stars: Jimmie Fails, Jonathan Majors
-Drama, San Francisco | imdb | my rating: 5
Q&A with director
A young man searches for home in the changing city that seems to have left him behind.

CAPTURES some of the vibe on the housing situation in current San Francisco. Left the theatre with a heavy heart.


AND watched: in theatre for San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (here)

Seder-Masochism (2018)
Director/Writer: Nina Paley
Stars: Barry Gray, Hiram Paley, Nina Paley
-Animation, Jewish | imdb | my rating: 4
Q&A with director
Loosely following a traditional Passover Seder, events from the Book of Exodus are retold by Moses, Aharon, the Angel of Death, Jesus, and the director's own father. But there's another side to this story: that of the Goddesses, humanity's earliest deities. 'Seder-Masochism' resurrects the Great Mother in a tragic struggle against the forces of patriarchy.

COLORFUL imagery of patriarchy vs. matriarchy with a contemporary hits soundtrack.

Gefilte (2018)
Director: Rachel Fleit
-Short, Documentary, Jewish | website | my rating: 5
Each year the Hermelin family of Detroit comes together to celebrate Passover by eating gefilte fish. The signature dish becomes a lightning rod in which the Hermelins project their feelings about family, identity, tradition, struggle, loss-and as always, love.

LOVED this short on a family's perspective and tradition story.

My Antosha (2019)
Director: Garret Price
-Documentary | imdb | my rating: 5
Q&A with director and producer
A portrait of the extraordinary life and career of actor Anton Yelchin.

ASTOUNDED to learn how much work and dedication this actor had during his lifetime. Makes me want to go on a binge watch of some of his 49 films.

Give Me Liberty (2019)
Director/Writer: Kirill Mikhanovsky
Writer: Alice Austen
Stars: Lauren 'Lolo' Spencer, Chris Galust, Maxim Stoyanov
-Comedy | imdb | my rating: 4
Q&A with director
When a riot breaks out in Milwaukee, America's most segregated city, medical transport driver Vic is torn between his promise to get a group of elderly Russians to a funeral and his desire to help Tracy, a young black woman with ALS.

LIKED this chaotic wild ride with quiet reflective moments sprinkled in.

The Keeper (2018)
Trautmann (original title)
Director/Writer: Marcus H. Rosenmüller
Writer: Nicholas J. Schofield
Stars: David Kross, Freya Mavor, John Henshaw
-Biography, Drama, Romance, U.K. | imdb | my rating: 5
The Keeper tells the extraordinary love story between a young English woman and a German PoW, who together overcome prejudice, public hostility, and personal tragedy. While visiting a PoW camp near Manchester at the end of WWII, Margaret Friar, the daughter of the manager of the local football team, notices young German soldier Bert Trautmann. Her father is so taken by Bert's prowess as a goal-keeper that he gets him out of the camp to play for his local team. Margaret and Bert's love blossoms despite local hostility and resentment of the German PoWs. In the meantime, Bert's heroics in goal are noticed by Manchester's City Football Club. Rather than going back to Germany like nearly all the other camp inmates, Bert marries Margaret and signs for Man City. His signing causes outrage to thousands of Man City fans, many of them Jewish. But Margaret wins support from an unexpected direction: Rabbi Altmann, a Man City supporter who fled the Nazis, who publishes an open letter opposing the campaign against Bert. Bert's path to acceptance begins and peaks at the 1956 FA Cup Final when he secures victory for Man City by playing on despite breaking his neck. Yet fate twists the knife for both Margaret and Bert. Alienated and alone, Margaret's and Bert's loyalty to each other will be put to the test once more. Heartbroken, Bert wants to give up. Equally heartbroken, Margaret insists that they move forward and that he keeps on playing.

LOVED the power of passions for good that propelled the people in their lives.

The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019)
Operation Brothers (original title)
Director/Writer: Gideon Raff
Stars: Chris Evans, Haley Bennett, Alona Tal
-Drama, History, Thriller, Africa | imdb | my rating: 4
Q&A with director
Israel's Mossad agents attempt to rescue Ethiopian Jewish refugees in Sudan in 1977.

ONE of those eye-opening films with bits of history.

~*~
* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Pancakes in Paris by Craig Carlson

Pancakes in Paris
Living the American Dream in France
by Craig Carlson
narrated by Donald Corren

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Published: 2016
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Genre: Memoir, Food, France, Paris
Paperback: 320
Rating: 5

First sentence(s):
If you had met me as a kid and seen where I came from, you would have never in a million years imagined that one day I would end up living in France.

Zombie sighting:
"Remember Craig," my first investor Todd once said to me when he saw me with dark circles under my eyes picking french fries off the floor like a zombie, "you're living your dream."
-chapter one

Paris was practically perfect...

Craig Carlson was the last person anyone would expect to open an American diner in Paris. He came from humble beginnings in a working-class town in Connecticut, had never worked in a restaurant, and didn't know anything about starting a brand-new business. But from his first visit to Paris, Craig knew he had found the city of his dreams, although one thing was still missing-the good ol' American breakfast he loved so much.

Pancakes in Paris is the story of Craig tackling the impossible-from raising the money to fund his dream to tracking down international suppliers for "exotic" American ingredients... and even finding love along the way. His diner, Breakfast In America, is now a renowned tourist destination, and the story of how it came to be is just as delicious and satisfying as the classic breakfast that tops its menu.

My two-bits:

This was an American male perspective of living in Paris. Loved the drive and determination Craig has to make his dreams come true despite the rocky road.

Got a peek into how businesses run in Paris. What a difference! especially in regards to employees.

PeekAbook:

~*~
* Listened to audiobook version.

* part of Paris in July (here)

The Hashtag Hunt by Kristina Seek

The Hashtag Hunt
by Kristina Seek
narrated by Andrea Emmes, Tim Paige

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Published: March 2019
Publisher: self
Genre: Romance
Paperback: 211
Rating: 5

First sentence(s):
Lauren tapped her beer bottle against her best friend's martini.

Zombie sighting:
If box number one is a bust, we can open zombie defense system and taxidermy school projects.
-chapter 6

The only reason Lauren entered the Hashtag Hunt was for the $10,000 grand prize. She needed seed money for her startup, and it sounded easy enough: twelve hours to text twelve photos to someone called the Wizard. For hashtag number five, Lauren needs a #HottieInTheWild, and with the help of her best friend, Ivy, she finds the perfect subject.

The only reason Brenner entered Barkley’s Pub was to have beers with Scott, an Army brother back in town. The reunion is interrupted when a woman is caught crouched in a dark corner, taking pictures of Brenner. Lauren explains, and though embarrassed, she accepts Scott and Brenner’s offer to help with hashtag number six.
While hunting for hashtags, Lauren finds adventure and romance with her #Hottie, but she must stay focused to beat the clock and win the cash.

My two-bits:

Fun scavenger hunt vibe with love found along the way for more than one couple. Loved how friends and team work was a strong theme.

~*~
* Listened to audiobook version.

* review copy courtesy of tour