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Things In Jars

"But for now Bridie smokes her pipe and lets everything she knows, and doesn't know, and thinks she knows, wash over her.  The cast of this pantomime present themselves in the playhouse of her mind.  Bridie watches them file onstage."

 Bridie Devine isn't quite like the other ladies of Victorian London.  She spends her days solving mysteries.  Her latest mystery, the kidnapping of six-year-old Christabel Berwick, takes her on a journey through her past.  With the ghost of Ruby Doyle by her side, Bridie unearths secrets and legends to get Christabel back where she belongs.

Things in Jars, by Jess Kidd, was my November Book of the Month pick and by far one of my favorite books this year!  I know...I say that all the time.  It's always true.  The world of literature never ceases to please and amaze me.

Things in Jars offers a nice little mix of history and folklore.  It's a mermaid tale like none I've read before.  And Bridie is such a fun leading lady with peculiar past.  Throughout the entire book I thought about how fun it would be to sit and have a drink with her.  Like a female Sherlock Holmes, but enough of her own character that she doesn't mimic the real thing too closely. 

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