By Catherine Coles
One Book, One L&A, our community reading program, entered its fourth year when it relaunched in May with 2017’s featured book: Elementary, She Read by Vicki Delany.
Elementary, She Read is the first in a new cozy mystery series titled Sherlock Holmes Bookshop. You can reserve this title at your local branch of the County of L&A Libraries or online at www.CountyLibrary,ca. Individuals, book clubs, organizations, employers – everyone – is invited to take up the challenge of the One Book, One Community initiative and organize their own way of “getting on the same page” by reading this fun title. Elementary, She Read, already a very popular title at our libraries, is a hit with both cozy mystery readers and Sherlock Holmes fans (“Sherlockians”).
The story follows Gemma Doyle, a transplanted Englishwoman, who has returned to the quaint town of West London on Cape Cod to manage her Great Uncle Arthur’s Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium. Located at 222 Baker St., this shop specializes in all things Sherlock Holmes — it even has a cat aptly named Moriarty. When Gemma stumbles upon a rare and potentially valuable magazine containing the first Sherlock Homes story hidden in the bookshop, she and her friend/colleague Jayne (who runs the adjoining tea room) set off to find the owner, only to discover her dead body. If you haven’t already guessed it yet, Gemma is a Holmes-like character (to Jayne’s Dr. Watson) and naturally she must put her powers of deduction to work to solve the crime before she is implicated.
The OBOC program will culminate with the library’s fourth annual Author Gala with Vicki Delany, which will be held in October during Canadian Library Month, on Oct. 28, 2 p.m. at the L&A County Museum and Archives. Vicki Delany is a prolific Canadian mystery novelist who writes under more than one pen name. She is the author of the Constable Molly Smith mystery series, set in the fictional British Columbia town of Trafalgar (a thinly-disguised Nelson, BC), and the Klondike Mystery series, set in Dawson City, Yukon during the Gold Rush of 1898. She also writes psychological suspense novels and – on the other end of the spectrum – cozy mysteries. Born in Winnipeg, Delany currently lives in Prince Edward County – almost local!
Tickets for the gala will go on sale in September and we expect they will go fast. Body on Baker Street, the follow up to Elementary, She Read will be released mid-September – just in time for the gala.
For more information, visit www.CountyLibrary.ca.
Catherine Coles is the Manager of Library Services for L&A County.