Dear Reader,
Ann Claire is today’s guest author. What a pleasure to have her visit our book club. Ann earned degrees in geography, which took her across the world. Now she lives with her geographer husband in Colorado, where the mountains beckon from their kitchen windows. When she's not writing, you can find her hiking, gardening, herding housecats, and enjoying a good mystery, especially one by Agatha Christie.
In Ann’s new book, Dead and Gondola, a mysterious bookshop visitor dies under murderous circumstances, compelling the Christie sisters and their cat, Agatha, to call on all they've learned about solving mysteries from their favorite novelist.
You can reach Ann at [email protected]
Enter to win one of five copies of Dead and Gondola: click here.
Tomato Tales
In summer 2021, I was one of those gardeners. The type overly smug about her tomatoes.
I grew heirlooms from seed. See? I'm still boasting. The seeds came with backstories worthy of classic literature. I fell for those stories as much as the promises of taste, size, and days to maturity.
Discovery is big in tomato tales. Tomato collectors trek to distant lands to bring back rare gems. Most of us will never see these places--the high Andes, Siberia, a hidden garden behind a French chateau--but we can taste their tomatoes.
Good fortune appears too. Picture a tomato scientist nearing the end of a humdrum career. Then, a surprise arrives, a letter containing seeds saved by a family for generations. The resulting tomatoes are the most exquisite the scientist has ever tasted, and he gets to put his name on them. Here, the mystery writer in me imagines untold sagas of family drama and tomato treachery. Those don't make seed catalogs. They're all about success.
Like my 2021 tomato harvest!
This year, I was out of town during prime planting weeks. That's my excuse, but it doesn't explain my utter failure. My neighbor runs a garden shop and held plants for me. One appeared stunted, a French heirloom named Jaune Flammée, the Yellow Flame. My neighbor was reluctant to send Jaune home with me. He proposed to toss her out.
Poor Jaune! I had space, I assured him. We'd share the bounty from the other varieties.
Maybe it was overconfidence. I come from a family of rural pessimists and should know better. Perhaps it was hubris. I imagined impressing my gardening-pro neighbor with tomato excess.
As I write this, the growing season is almost over in Colorado. The nights are cold. The remaining tomatoes are green nubs. Last week, I texted my neighbor with a seemingly casual Want some tomatoes? I carried over all I could gather, a scant pint of Jaune Flammée. The weakling was the only plant that produced.
Jaune was as promised, exceptional in flavor and beauty (tomato literature puts a lot of pressure on looks). My neighbor gifted me honey from a backyard beekeeper. In fiction and real life, this constitutes a sweet ending--a good neighbor and an underdog prevailing.
The garden will rest over the winter. I, however, am already plotting. What varieties will I choose? How will I do better? Fellow gardeners, it's never too early to plan, right? After all, half the fun is the dreaming and all those good stories.
-- Ann Claire
Here is my cat Lill, inspecting my 2022 tomato harvest. She’s also the model for Agatha, the bookshop cat in Dead and Gondola.
Enter to win one of five copies of Dead and Gondola: click here.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
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