Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Flavia de Luce~ {Not your typical kid sleuth}

To help familiarize you with our May book club read I wanted to get you excited to meet Flavia de Luce, kid sleuth.

Picture an ancient country house somewhere in England. The year is 1950.
      Picture a girl who lives there with her most unusual family. Her name is Flavia de Luce—and she’s almost eleven.
           Picture a long-abandoned Victorian chemistry laboratory; no one ever goes there but Flavia. Put them all together and you’ll have a new kind of detective fiction . . .


I am in LOVE with all the amazing international covers!
 

Personally, I am really enjoying this book!  Bradley's writing style is unlike anything I've read before, it's funny, smart, descriptive, interesting and clever. I fully plan on reading the other books in this series as the Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie always leaves me with a smile on my face when I have to put it down to do something else.

SYNOPSIS: "Great literary crime detectives aren’t always born; they’re sometimes discovered, blindfolded and tied up in a dark closet by their nasty older sisters. Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce’s bitter home life and vicious sibling war inspires her solitary diversions and “strange talents” tinkering with the chemistry set in the laboratory of their inherited Victorian house, plotting sleuth-like vengeance on Ophelia (17) and Daphne (13), and delving into the forbidden past of her taciturn, widowed father, Colonel de Luce. It comes as no surprise, then, that the material for her next scientific investigation will be the mysterious corpse that she uncovers in the cucumber patch.
Fearless and darkly imaginative, Flavia hurries to solve the murder and acquit her father of suspicion. Following the lead of its clever protagonist, Sweetness is entirely inventive, fast-paced, and quick-witted, with tongue-in-cheek humour that derides the macabre seriousness of subject.
Alan Bradley plants the story deep into the setting of 1950s England, with a portrait of an eccentric home life that is all too wickedly familiar. The story’s twists are supported by the time and place as well as the unusual interests of the characters which range from stamp-collecting to making poisons all of which are highly researched and ingeniously incorporated."

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is the first in the 'Flavia de Luce series' of which is currently slated to have six books. The first three books in the series are already out in bookstores and the fourth will be coming out this November, 2011.



Books 1, 2 and 3
 

-Book four will be titled, "I Am Half-Sick of Shadows"
-Book five will be titled,  "Seeds of Antiquity"
-Book six will be titled, "The Nasty Light of Day"

We will meet on June 7th to discuss this book.
Happy Reading!

 {Remember, books 1-3 in the Flavia de Luce series are on the FTP site under the "NEW" folder}

2 comments :

Brooke Hargett said...

Why are the american book covers so boring?? Those other ones you found are fantastic!!

Kellie H said...

the only thing I am having trouble wrapping my head around is that we are inside the head of an eleven year old girl and she definately doesnt sound like an eleven year old.