by Tamar Myers
|
| List Price: | $6.99 |
| Amazon Price: | $6.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
| Average Rating: |  |
| Lowest New Price: | $1.65 |
| Availablitiy: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
|
 |
|
Product Description
Petite, indomitable North Carolinian Abigail Timberlake rose gloriously up from the ashes of divorce--parlaying her savvy about exquisite old things into a thriving antiques enterprise: the Den of Antiquity. Now she's a force to be reckoned with in Charlotte's close-knit world of mavens, eccentrics and cuttthroat dealers. But a superb, gilt-edged 18th-century French armoire she purchased for a song at estate auction has just arrived along with something she didn't pay for: a dead body. Suddenly her shop is a crime scene--and closed to the public during the busiest shopping season of the year--so Abigail is determined to speed the lumbering police investigation along. But amateur sleuthing is leading the feisty antiques expert into a murderous mess of dysfunctional family secrets. And the next cadaver found stuffed into fine old furniture could wind up being Abigail's own.
Customers who bought this item also bought
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Myers has done it again!, 2006-02-09
I began with the Magdalena Yoder books and then discovered the Den of Antiquity series. These are marvelous reads! Myers is able to transfer the same zaniness that we love to a very different character without any repetitiveness. This is a very refreshing author who knows just how to keep the reader inthralled until the last moment.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
Mix & Match Menageries; Don't Miss the Merry Mayhem!, 2005-10-08
The easy flow of Abby's sunny sarcasm, her smoothing of the satiric-edge trademark of Magdelana Yoder gave me a cozier live in, in Tamar Meyers's DEN OF ANTIQUITY series than I experienced in the Pen Dutch literary gourmet style, though both series are awesome in their humorous capture of human foibles at their least and most sublime. What a writer!
The mansions, restaurants, coffee or tea breaks, and munching while clueing all served to keep me reading onward, happy as a clam. I quickly and contentedly sliped into reading along with a relaxed writer/artist who obviously has fun with her craft as she's creating.
Considering the flow of this novel in retrospect, I'm intrigued that I recall no feeling of author angst or effort underlying the movement of plot, fleshing of characters, click of dialogue, or lay out of descriptions. Maybe Tamar's unusual background could expalin her obvious confidence in her work and its process:
She grew up in the Belgian Congo as a member of a missionary family, passed a childhood in that conflict-rich environment with religious upbringing, returned as a teen to the USA by force of cultural growing pains in the Congo, met her husband-to-be the first day at a US school, accomplished a MA in English, then worked 23 years to launch her two currently successful series. What a perfect background for evolving into a literary pundit.
I believe what I enjoy most about this series is the various routinely-natural and effortlessly-entertaining ways Abby worries out her mystery and interviews suspects, often over a meal in a luxury setting or at least one with rich aromatic ambiance of one intensity or another. Hey. I'm a culinary cozy addict. I couldn't ask for more.
Here are a couple of my favorite Abby clue-strewing scenes:
Bubble bath contemplations with her cat batting bubbles ...
Ex husbands' current wife gives Abby a makeover as the current "homemaker" moans over now being the other woman, while Abby soothes the angst of her exhusband's wife with whom he cheated on Abby ... Yeah. And the scene works with both irony and warmth!
That's all great setting and satire, but this might take the cake:
>> "I really need to smoke while I eat," she (woman Abby was "grilling") said. To be truthful, she didn't sound nasty about it at all. Merely desperate.
>> "I'm sure you'll find enough second-hand smoke to fill your dietary needs," I (Abby) said kindly.
>> She looked genuinely torn between lunch with me and a solitary pack of coffin nails.
>> "Okay, you can smoke, but blow that nasty stuff away from my plate. I mean, you wouldn't like it if I farted on your food, would you?" <<
This was quite descriptively good as well:
>>I exhaled loudly, for all the world sounding like a punctured tire.<<
The humor in this author effervesces so easily there's probably quite a bit of it which slides right by, making second and third reading a rewarding venture. Whatever Myers offers you can bet on its being uniquely complex, edgy and hilarious, intriguing and natural in a funny, off-beat way.
Of course Abby's excursions & exchanges with the gay Rob & Bob are delightfully warm & funny, and the gutsy gourmet meals Bob concocts which Rob & Abby beg to avoid are interestingly mouth watering ... from a distance.
Really enjoyed the way Abby dealt with her approach/avoidance conflict (romancing ever-after Vs dragging feet) as her relationship with trained police investigator Greg Washburn grows more intimate and skidds toward commitment.
This is a work of sheer and simple entertainment with a backwash of stereotypes squashed and genuine relating relished. Lots of hilarious mix & mismatch is stirred effervescently into the kettles of cuisine, means of marriage, ways of mystery, and action-packed menageries.
Take it. You won't leave it for long.
Excellent storytelling and wordsmithing, Tamar! You prove the blessing and richness of your talent with every breath and every keystroke. Believe it.
Linda Shelnutt
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Pass the Sweet and Sour Okra Please, 2005-05-15
Abigail Temberlake, the owner of an antique shop in Charlotte, North Carolina buys an expensive 18th century French armoire at an auction and this story begins when the armoire is delivered to her shop. The armoire is not what kicks off the story; it is instead the body that she finds inside. The police don't suspect her in the murder but they close down her shop while they investigate and she finds herself momentarily out of business with Christmas just weeks away. Needing desperately to get her shop opened back up, Abigail decides to use her newly found free time to do some investigating of her own.
Abigail is not, nor does she consider herself to be a detective, which is a refreshing change within the genera of book. She bumbles and stumbles her way along the trail of clues with all the subtlety of the proverbial bull in a china shop. Along the way her shop is burglarized, her house is broken into while she soaks in the tub and an elderly lady with whom she is about to have tea is poisoned. Finally, while following a false trail she stumbles onto the real killer and once again finds herself in mortal danger.
Many of the characters from the first book are inexplicably missing from this story. I can't help but wonder why the author spent so much time introducing her readers to the Charlotte antique community in the first book of this series if she were just going to drop them in the second. Especially noticeable is the absence of Tony who inherited the shop next to Abigail's in the last book. Suddenly there is a new person in that shop named Jane who the other shop owners refer to as CJ, short for Calamity Jane. She comes from out of nowhere to play a major role in this story, second only to Abigail who is of course the heroine. Rob and his partner Bob still have major roles in this story as does Yankee Bob's cuisine, which includes fish broth. Rob keeps asking for steak or hamburger and one cold night he and Abigail sneak out onto the patio and eat a box of doughnuts after a dinner of roasted eel. Wynnell is also still a very visible character and she still blames all misfortune on Yankees.
These characters and the very Southern atmosphere more than make up for a plot that gets a little lost at times. Abigail is a little brash for a Southern lady, or gentleman for that matter but she does run to the store and stock up on milk and bread after the radio weather mentions snow. We Southerners do tend to panic when we hear the s word. I absolutely fell in love with Bubba's China Gourmet, a restaurant that specializes in Southern Chinese food. Not food from Southern China, Abigail explains, but Chinese food from the South. Their specialties include stir-fried collard greens, sweet and sour okra and moo goo gai grits. There is also a Catholic Funeral at which a very tall Presbyterian gentleman sits up front having no idea when to sit, stand or kneel. Since most of the people at the service are also not Catholic and have no idea what to do they follow the lead of the man up front. Needless to say half of the crowd is always doing the wrong thing at the wrong time making a shambles of the funeral.
This is obviously not a hard core mystery but there are still areas of the book where I couldn't wait to see what happened next. This is a light-hearted, happy mystery that will make you laugh out loud and maybe even crave some stir-fried collards. The last chapter is almost like a scene out of the Waltons that ends not with "good night John-Boy" but with "shut up Jane" and "a Merry Christmas was had by all", even Jewish Rob. Just like the merry time you will have as you journey with Tamar Myers through this engaging and hilarious Southern mystery.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
cute southern spitfire, 2003-11-14
Contrary to the Publisher's Weekly reviewer, I found a lot of the South in this book, but then, I've lived there. Abby may have a trashy mouth sometimes, but she's a modern woman, and she's hilarious (she does go overboard sometimes, but a lot of funny people do, especially when they've found a body in their new armoire). Her mother is about a generation too late to be mourning gloves in church and to be wearing crinoline to clean house, but that anachronism doesn't ruin the book. The characters may be somewhat shallow, but this is a lighthearted mystery, not a candidate for the Pulitzer prize. I laughed out loud. P.S. To the reviewer from Australia, Greg reminds Abby in Chapter 2 that she's just turned 48.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Another Antique Cozy., 2003-09-23
I never know what to rate Ms. Myers' books. I do enjoy them, and they are quite humourous, but the writing is not the best. She quite often slips into the "slapstick" in the books, and I don't really enjoy that either. If she would stick to the story, and keep introducing interesting characters like CJ (Calamity Jane) in this book, the books would be much better for it. In this book, our Abigail finds a dead body in a Louis XV armoire that she has just purchased at an estate sale. As she tries to track down the murderer in order that she'll be able to open up her antique shop again, she uncovers a very disfunctional family with any member with a solid motive for the killing. Then this is where the book breaks down. Why does Abigail try to apprehend the killer by herself? It's always this part of the book (the denouement) where Ms. Myers plotting breaks down, and the book verges on the slapstick. I'm not sure about Ms. Myers two series - Magdalena Yoder and Den of Antiquity.
Price is accurate as of the date/time indicated. Prices and product availability are subject to change. Any price displayed on the Amazon website at the time of purchase will govern the sale of this product.
|
Store Categories
|