HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Happy Halloween, Part 2

Happy Halloween, Part I

Happy Punctuation Day!

It's that time of year again, when we dust off our apostrophes, polish our colons and have a drink with our old friend, the question mark. That's right - today, September 24, is NATIONAL PUNCTUATION DAY.

I wanted my daughter to write this post, since she is the true punctuation/spelling geek in our family, but she's at work. In the meantime, here's a toast to all of you who cringe when a hyphen is left out, sigh when your editor removes every semi-colon and have palpitations when you read freestyle prose with - shock! horror! - no punctuation at all.

This is the one day of the year we can celebrate our geekdom and find others like us. I'll be the first to admit I love commas and em-dashes a little more than I should, but while I pepper my speech with enthusiastic words, I rarely use exclamation points when I write. I'd love to hear from you all -- (damn, how do I make an em-dash on Blogger?). So tell me, what are your favorite, and least favorite, punctuation marks?

SLEUTHS AND SILHOUETTES

Before I knew the meaning of either of those words, I discovered the magic of Nancy Drew. (A magic which, sadly, does not carry over to the present when I reread her books, but still ...)

The first mystery I ever read was called THE SECRET OF THE OLD POSTBOX, and it made me seek out more books with secrets to discover. At the library I looked for books with similar titles and was amazed to find shelf after shelf of those titles by an author called "Carolyn Keene."

Today's Nancy Drew books have been adapted for a modern audience, and include brightly colored covers. That makes me sad, because there was magic in those old silhouettes and black-and-white illustrations.

Nancy Drew introduced me to mysteries, a love that has continued and grown stronger over time. Nancy and her father, Carson Drew, the housekeeper, Hannah Gruen, Nancy's boyfriend, Ned Nickerson and her best chums George and Bess remain as fresh in my mind as her cool coupe. One of the first Nancy Drew books I read was THE HAUNTED SHOWBOAT, and I think THE SECRET OF THE OLD CLOCK was next.

As an eight-year-old, my vocabulary probably doubled as a result of reading these books. I had to ask what a hearth was (and for YEARS thought it was pronounced "HERth"), not to mention "coupe," "roadster," "sleuth," "bungalow," "bayou" and any number of unfamiliar words.

The florid titles were perfectly mysterious and made me crave more:

THE SECRET OF THE OLD CLOCK
THE BUNGALOW MYSTERY
THE SECRET AT SHADOW RANCH
THE SIGN OF THE TWISTED CANDLES
THE PASSWORD TO LARKSPUR LANE
THE WHISPERING STATUE
THE CLUE OF THE BROKEN LOCKET
THE CLUE OF THE TAPPING HEELS
THE MYSTERY OF THE MOSS-BOUND TRUNK
THE SECRET IN THE OLD ATTIC
THE CLUE IN THE CRUMBLING WALL
THE MYSTERY OF THE TOLLING BELL
THE CLUE OF THE LEANING CHIMNEY
THE MOONSTONE CASTLE MYSTERY

I read every Nancy Drew book my small library branch carried and was frantic when I couldn't find more. My lovely aunt  Em bought me new Nancy Drews - non-birthday or Christmas gifts, which made them all the more treasured. Once I discovered these books, I copied the titles of all the ones I hadn't read and didn't rest until I'd read them all. That has become a habit of a lifetime, with every author I've read and loved, from Agatha Christie to Nora Roberts to Jenny Crusie to Dick Francis and more.

My daughter never got into Nancy Drew - for her it was Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's "Alice" books, Ann Martin's Babysitters Club series and Lois Duncan's mysteries. I read Lois' books when I was young, too, so I was thrilled when my daughter became obsessed with those. With my son, J.K. Rowlings' wonderful Harry Potter books turned him from a non-reader into a reader, and I will always owe her a debt of thanks for that.

As I mentioned, the Nancy Drew books lost a bit of their shine when I reread a few of them recently, but scanning those titles still brings back the thrill of finding an unread book and a breathtaking mystery to be solved. The exciting worlds between the covers of books have always had a strong gravitational pull for me. I wonder if authors really appreciate what a gift they give us when they share their stories?

It really is a gift of magic, which is one reason I love moderating the Mystery Book Club at Barnes & Noble (BN.com). There's nothing more exciting than introducing a reader to a wonderful book!

"The Boy with the Moon and Star on His Head"

A gardener's daughter stopped me on my way, 

on the day I was to wed.
"It is you who I wish to share my body with", she said. 

"We'll find a dry place under the sky with a flower for a bed.
And for my joy, I will give you a boy with a moon and
star on his head."

Her silver hair flowed in the air, laying waves across the sun.
Her hands were like the white sands, 

and her eyes had diamonds on.

We left the road and headed up to the top of the
Whisper Wood. And we walked 'till we came to where 

the holy magnolia stood. 

And there we laid cool in the shade singing songs and
making love, with the naked earth beneath us 

and the universe above. 

The time was late, my wedding wouldn't wait; 

I was sad, but I had to go. So while she was asleep, 

I kissed her cheek for cheerio.

The wedding took place and people came from many
miles around. There was plenty merriment, 

cider and wine did abound. 

But out of all that I recall, I remembered the girl I met.
'Cause she had given me something 

that my heart could not forget.

A year had passed and everything was 

just as it was a year before ... 

As if it were a year before ... 

Until the gift that someone left, a basket by my door.
And in there lay the fairest little baby 

crying to be fed;

I got down on my knees and kissed 

the moon and star on
his head.

As years went by the boy grew high and the village looked
on in awe. They'd never seen anything like the boy 

with the moon and star before.

And people would ride from far and wide just to seek the
word he spread. "I'll tell you everything I've learned,"

and "Love is all"... he said.

By Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam

This song is an old favorite of mine. This isn't the way it's shown on lyric sheets, but to me it reads like a poem. The only thing I'm not sure of is whether the last line might be better this way: and "Love" is all ... he said.

Alfred, Agatha and Me

There are few things I like better than a nice, juicy murder, especially if it has a surprising twist at the end. I like to read stories so scary I have to sleep with every light on, the kind that get into your head and won't go away.

I blame Alfred Hitchcock.

Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden books were my first introduction to mysteries, but it was Alfred Hitchcock's short story collections that clinched the deal. I discovered short stories when I was about 12 - DeMaupassant's "A Piece of String," Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt," "The Ravine" and his heartwrenching story, "I See You Never." I read every short story collection I could get my hands on, by those authors (although the Hitchcock collections only bore his name) as well as Isaac Asimov's "The Black Widowers" and Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone" collections.

There was magic in those stories that I still remember some 45 years after I first read them. I saved my favorites, dragging them with me to England and back, to New Jersey, Chicago and to Cincinnati. One of those books is Alfred Hitchcock's STORIES MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME. Grace Amundson's "The Child Who Believed" still gives me chills, and Bradbury's "The Wind" still haunts me. "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles" by Idris Seabright remains one of the scariest stories I've ever read. "For All the Rude People" by Jack Ritchie, from STORIES NOT FOR THE NERVOUS, is a brilliant morality tale -- every title in these anthologies brings back memories.

I need to go through these books and find the story I've been trying to remember, where the murder victim wishes for a smart cop, and the wish is granted. There's another story I'd like to read again, with a boy and dogs and a series of murders, but that one is just a fading memory. I've read so many short story collections now, it could have been in any of them.

For years I read all the Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen mystery magazines, plus short story collections by Agatha Christie, Michael Gilbert, Daphne DuMaurier, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen King, Frederick Forsyth and more. In recent years, I've read anthologies by Laura Lippman, a couple edited by Lee Child and all those Sisters in Crime, Malice Domestic collections - you name it, and if it was a mystery short story collection, odds are I've read it.

I read my first Agatha Christie, FUNERALS ARE FATAL, at age 15 while visiting my aunt in Albuquerque. That same summer I worked my way through all the books my aunt's friend Lois Duncan had written, including RANSOM. (When my daughter was about the same age, she also fell in love with Lois' books. Her favorite is DAUGHTERS OF EVE.) Not long after that, back in the Chicago suburbs, I was reading a Christie mystery when the people I was babysitting for came home. The woman - Mrs. Murgle - was thrilled, and promptly packed up a box of her Christie paperbacks for me. I still have every one of those books.

Short stories may not be as popular today as they once were, but they'll always be favorites of mine - short and sweet and scary as all get-out. And, in some cases, unforgettable.