Throw Back Thursday: Second Looks at Past Books

Today I'm taking a look at another series that has proved to be one of the reads I look forward most to each year.  It is the delightful, brilliant creation of Alan Bradley, the Flavia de Luce series.  We are introduced to this eleven-year-old genius child, who conducts chemistry experiments in her family's decaying mansion and has a special predilection for poisons and solving murders, in Book #1, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  Flavia lives with her distracted father (her mother is long dead) and her two tormenting older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne.  Flavia rides a bicycle she named Gladys.  These characters and the intriguing plots that Bradley comes up with taking place in the English village of Bishop's Lacey provide readers with witty, entertaining reads that can also go dark with murder and heartache.  

Jacket Description:
It is the summer of 1950–and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath.

For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”