false 6218281 21 In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950—and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia’s family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. <i>“I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”<br></i><br>To Flavia the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions, and connections. Soon her father, a man raising his three daughters alone, is seized, accused of murder. And in a police cell, during a violent thunderstorm, Colonel de Luce tells his daughter an astounding story—of a schoolboy friendship turned ugly, of a priceless object that vanished in a bizarre and brazen act of thievery, of a Latin teacher who flung himself to his death from the school’s tower thirty years before. Now Flavia is armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together, to examine new suspects, and begin a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself. Of this much the girl is sure: her father is innocent of murder—but protecting her and her sisters from something even worse….<br><br>An enthralling mystery, a piercing depiction of class and society, <b>The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie</b> is a masterfully told tale of deceptions—and a rich literary delight. 4543476 28 4 2009 The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie total:2089|5:479|4:986|3:490|2:115|1:19| 2089 8058 5024 940 5 6 false false Fri Sep 05 11:10:15 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 05 11:17:10 -0700 2008
I absolutely loved Sweetness. The narrator-protagonist is one of the cleverest, liveliest, most entertaining characters I have had the pleasure to meet in many a year. I laughed aloud many times and couldn't wait to get back to rea...more...]]> 3 3 false false Mon Oct 05 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 07 07:50:39 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 08 09:37:11 -0700 2009
After very high...more...]]> 4 2 false false Thu Aug 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 10 22:29:17 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 23 09:58:52 -0700 2009
At first glance it is a traditional whodunnit with a twist: an exceptionally bright (and exceptionally wo...more...]]> 4 6 false false Sun Mar 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 12 21:13:15 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 15 18:14:10 -0700 2009 4 5 false false Sat Jul 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 22 21:47:03 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 05 22:32:55 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 1 false false Wed May 27 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue May 26 13:12:22 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 08 07:03:11 -0700 2009
Unfortunatley, this one did not. I found it terribly dry and borderline nodded off at several points. I guess I was hoping for mor...more...]]> 2 6 false false Tue Feb 17 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 13 23:21:45 -0800 2009 Wed Mar 18 14:32:23 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Oct 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 30 22:07:12 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 30 22:08:33 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Oct 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 26 10:42:12 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 26 12:11:18 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Oct 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 25 19:57:50 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 25 20:01:08 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 13 11:31:31 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 13 11:33:21 -0700 2009 I picked up an advance reader’s copy of this little wonder at the Ann Arbor Book Festival (http://www.aabookfestival.org) in May. It took me only a few chapters to fall under the spell of the audacious, feisty, slightly sociopathic Flavia de Luce, a child chemistry prodigy who shares a rambl...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 03 23:10:04 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 03 23:23:33 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 02 07:47:27 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 02 07:51:18 -0700 2009
Who cares for all the crinkling of the pie?

William King, "The Art of Cookery" (1708)


I added my name to the waiting list for "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" at #72. By the time it came in at...more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Sep 28 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 28 08:06:12 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 28 08:57:37 -0700 2009
I was immediately taken with the impish protagonist, Flavia De Luce. An 11 year old, with a penchant for organic chemistry, namely the concoction of poison, her youthful wit and swift deductive reasoning makes her feel like a combination of Trixie Belden an...more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Sep 03 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 27 08:56:50 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 27 08:58:23 -0700 2009 An Elementary Study of Chemistry to the floor while scaling the bookshelves of her family’s library, her life is changed forever by a consuming fascination with chemistry. She spends her days on the top floor of the East Wing of Buckshaw, the ancestral home of the de Luc...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Sep 03 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 03 06:16:55 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 03 06:25:37 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Aug 28 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 28 13:16:58 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 28 13:43:40 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Aug 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 28 07:15:55 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 28 08:03:07 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Aug 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 17 08:35:51 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 17 08:37:44 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 08 11:41:53 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 08 11:43:02 -0700 2009 The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie was a pretty decent mystery - I did not see the ending by a long shot. Sure, I figured Flavia would probably solve the case, but the final reveal caught me off-guard. I kept on guessing the who and the what happened all throughout the book, and I was not ...more...]]>