Summer's Grand Finale

At Café Grumpy, Chelsea; by Sanam Erfani.

It's been hot here, way more so than we're used to by this time of year. The local expression is, "Fair time, first frost" -- referring to the annual agricultural fair with all the trimmings, from midway to cow barns to quilt exhibits and tractor sales. The Caledonia County Fair was last week ... and we've been close to 60 degrees above frost.

Dave and I took a couple of days to hunt down more mysteries, and I filled the last two weeks of August with house and yard projects and massive amounts of copyediting. It's good to be back in the blogging saddle again.

The photo here probably looks a bit like Paris -- but it's in the NYC/Chelsea version of Café Grumpy, taken by my close friend Sanam Erfani in between her performances in Cats Don't Grin during the New York International Fringe Festival. The tender colors are another sign of summer's ending: all that brightness is softening at last. The kids are headed back to school.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of items I've been meaning to pass along:

1. A nifty list of espionage fiction written by former CIA or other professional espionage agents: http://missoulian.com/lifestyles/territory/article_d4894d84-b219-11df-82f7-001cc4c002e0.html

2. "Laura Lippman’s thriller, “I’d Know You Anywhere,” went on sale Aug. 17, and in its first five days sold 4,739 e-books and 4,000 physical hardcovers, said News Corp.’s HarperCollins Publishers." Get all the details here: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/08/26/new-thriller-sells-more-e-books-than-hardcovers

3. For some reason, the New York Times Book Review on Sunday announced that Alan Furst's Spies of the Balkans had just been released. Gee, my calendar showed it on the market in June. Here's the review we offered back then: http://kingdombks.blogspot.com/2010/06/civilized-work-of-espionage-alan-furst.html

4. Scheduled for tomorrow, Sept. 1: The newest Billy Boyle/World War II mystery from James Benn. It's a good one -- check in tomorrow for a full review.

5. Our top seller recently: signed copies of Lisa Brackmann's ROCK PAPER TIGER. For good reason.