For the one of my co-workers...

After my co-worker teased me about my messy desk, I found a title on the shelf to match her fondness for felines. She is without a doubt a *big* cat lover and, as to be expected, a long-time cat owner. Oh, and she has worked as a librarian for years and the protagonist of this series is a librarian.

Author Miranda James who has started "a cat in the stacks" series with librarian Charlie Harris has a second in her series with Classified as Murder on shelves this year. Mississippi is the setting for these cozy stories with librarian Charlie playing detective with his helpful cat, "Diesel" helping him in murder investigations.

The first novel was published the previous year and is entitled Murder Past Due.

Writer Lilian Jackson Braun dies--

To live into your nineties is seen as a blessing and that hopefully was the case for mystery writer Lilian Jackson Braun. Today's news outlets report that she died last week in South Carolina (and here's a googled photo).

Braun was a fixture on the mystery book shelves with her long-running "The Cat Who..." series. A devotee to the cozy mystery genre, she retired from newspaper work in 1984 and turned to writing mysteries full-time until retiring again in 2007.