The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag (Flavia de Luce, #2)

by Alan Bradley

It is a simple fact of nature that while most men can walk right past a weeping woman as if their eyes are blinkered and their ears stopped up with sand, no female can ever hear the sound of another in distress without rushing instantly to her aid.

It is never possible, at least at St. Tancred’s, to burst forth from the church into the sunshine like a cork from a bottle. One must always pause at the door to shake hands with the vicar, and to make some obligatory remark about the sermon, the weather, or the crops. Father chose the sermon, and Daffy and Feely both chose the weather—the swine!—with

Even the thought of Rupert’s murder and its messy aftermath did little to cheer me.

This was an interesting thought; it had never occurred to me that one’s name could be a compass.

a fib is not only permissible, but can even be an act of perfect grace.

If there was one sin of which Cynthia Richardson was not guilty, that sin was vanity. Just one look at her was enough to know that makeup had never soiled that pale ferret face; jewelry had never dangled from that scrawny neck or brightened up those matchstick wrists. To put it politely, the woman was as plain as a pudding.