I read two mysteries this past summer but have not discussed them before now because they were gifts for my “secret sister” at church, and naturally I needed to keep them secret til after I let her know who I was. 🙂 She likes mysteries, so I checked out a couple to pass on to her.

A Penny For Your Thoughts by Mindy Starns Clark is the first in her Million Dollar Mystery series. Callie Webber had previously been an investigator but opted later to use her skills to check out charities her elusive but wealthy and well-connected boss wanted to contribute to. When her newest client, a friend of her boss, is murdered, her boss asks her to investigate the death as a personal favor. As Callie uncovers family and business secrets, soon her own life is in danger. I stewed a bit over not liking the murderer’s reasoning until I realized that, duh, any murderer is going to be a little warped in his or her thinking. I liked this book a lot, and though I don’t gravitate to mysteries generally, I am tempted to read others in this series mainly because I think I know who Callie’s boss might be (she knows his name but has never met him) and I want to see if I am right. 🙂

A Penny For Your Thoughts is Christian fiction; The Map In the Attic by Jolyn Sharp is not, but it is a very clean story. Annie Dawson is cleaning out her grandmother’s attic (I don’t know if the similarity in name is purposeful between Annie of Grey Gables and Anne of Green Gables, but the similarity is only in name) when she finds an old piece of needlework stuffed in a cookie jar in a box marked for a yard sale. She shows the piece to her fellow Hook and Needle Club members, and someone realizes it is not abstract art but a detailed map. The ladies then want to know, of course, a map of what. Evidently someone else knows or wants to know, too, because someone tries to steal the map — more than once.

Overall it was a pretty interesting book. It ended rather abruptly, suggesting it is leading to another book in the series. After a bit of research I discovered this book (which I had received in a book swap) is evidently part of a series in a book club, which I have no desire to join, but some of the books are available used in places like Amazon.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)