AGATHA RAISIN AND THE VICIOUS VET by M.C. Beaton

FIC/MYS

BEATON, M.

This book is a delightful English "cozy," i.e. a mystery set in a quaint village. Agatha Raisin is not exactly the Miss Marple type, however. She has retired from her public relations company in London and settled down to the deceptively peaceful idyll of the Cotswolds.

She might be retired, but Agatha wouldn't be averse to a little romance and excitement. When a handsome new vet arrives in town, Agatha-true to her charmingly self-centered, vaguely dishonest self will try anything to get her claws into him. Whoops! He winds up dead!

MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH by Ariana Frankllin

FIC

FRANKLIN
A serial child murderer is on the loose in 12th-century Cambridge and suspicion has fallen on the local Jewish population. King Henry II wants to find the killer (and needs the Jewish tax revenues). He sends for a medical examiner, or master of the art of death, from one of the most advanced medical schools of the time, the University of Salerno. What he gets is a “mistress of the art of death” in the form of young Dr. Adelia Aguilar who must do her work in secret because of the English prejudice against female doctors. The mystery is entertaining but perhaps more interesting are the many historical details of life in this distant time.