This is so great. My 9yr ds loves the Diary of a Whimpy Kid series. He also likes Beast Quest and Goosebumps. Both my kids have always loved encyclopedias and history type books. We picked up a book on tanks and army machines recently. I did not allow my dd 12yrs to read Twilight because she is struggling with boy/girl stuff and told her she could in highschool. She loves the Riordan books and is also reading the books Glass, Impulse, Crank. The library rarely has these in so she has had to wait. She reads them over and over. This weekend she read one in just a few hours. I know these are very grown up but these kids are being forced to grow up so fast. She is studying sexual reproduction in Science and this is not the class we had 30 years ago. They say it is because our kids are being forced to grow up to fast these days that we need to teach them about sex way earlier. I remember my mom not wanting me to see "the movies" in science because she simply did not want us to know anything. But these days your 12yr old will end up pregnant if you don't teach them early. At least the teacher she has is really taking this from a scientific approach which is a great way to learn. I told ds that she will learn why things happen the way they do, where most of the boys in her class just think it is all funny when the teacher uses certain phrases. When she comes home it is easier to then take the scientific info she now has and apply it to real life. So when she reads these books about addiction and abuse she looks at the subjects more deeply and we then discuss them. I really want her to see how harmful things can be and how it really can ruin your life and everyone around you. She likes to have these kinds of talks so that makes me happy. She never liked the Little House series for some reason. She recently read Uncle Tom's Cabin and has picked up Pride and Prejudice but has not completed it. I am seriously going to look into some of these other series for her. It is so hard to tell if one is going to like something or not. The folks at our used bookstore were really helpful in suggestions too.

In addition to ones already listed: Nevada Barr, her heroine is a National Parks Ranger Stuart Woods - only those where the protagonist is a female former sheriff. These are set in a locale in Florida very close to where I live (Central Florida, east coast) Dorothy L Sayers - Lord Peter Whimsy Colin Dexter - he wrote a series featuring Inspector Morse. The public TV stations aired numerous movies based on Morse, on the Mystery series.

Am I the only person here who was a 'slower reader'? I grew up in what was technically my Grandfather's house. He and my Father had moved into it on the death of my grandmother in the 1930's and had been looked after/waited on by a housekeeper. During WWII my Father married and brought my Mother to live there . . . and boy did she resent Grampy . . . and being told by neighbours that she was lucky to have a roof over her head, as though she had been rescued from the gutter. So, I was often left with Gramps, who between sleeping and looking at the sports pages would read to me. My Grandmother who worked in a US book store/library often sent American books, so I had several little Golden books plus a few early 'Ladybird' books. I loved listening to stories but never once did it occur to me to try and read them myself. Reading was just something that Grown-ups did. I really struggled at school with reading and can still remember the incomprehension when given a card with pictures on it. A cat, a dog a doll etc. With the card came a small tin containing individual words. Of course the idea was to match the words to each picture. This I could not do because I never recognised any of the words! It appeared no-one (certainly not the teacher a kindly young woman) knew how to help me. Spelling tests were equally dreaded. I always go nothing out of ten and was late home to lunch as I had to write out my many mistakes five times each. I remember the 'correct' words were written on the board but I never knew which was which! As we were never given words to learn or take home and practice, the tests must have been hit and miss anyway. 'Reading' took place in small groups and I was so useless the 'best reader' leading the group would kindly let me off my turn for which everyone was grateful. It wasn't until I was probably nearly seven and had received a copy of What Katie Did for a Christmas present from US Granny, that my Father, not a 'family man' by nature, and bored with all this quality time told me to read the book to him. He sat me on the floor gripping me with his knees and soon found it was quite beyond me. I clearly remember him turning to my Mother and saying 'Why can't she read?" Mother probably answered "I don't know, that's why we send her to school, shouldn't they be teaching her?" She most likely went on "Well I was reading Scott and Dickens when I was seven/eight." Our parents loved to tell us how good they were at 'stuff' and how useless we were! That seemed to be the Damascene moment. It still took me some years to be able to cope with a 'proper' book, but fear (of my Father) was the starting point. And I still don't know what it was that Katie did. ;-)

also, on the stop you're killing me website, there is a "read-alike" feature, and these appear under mysteries featuring cats: Garrison Allen ⢠Penelope Warren: ex-Marine mystery bookstore owner, and Mycroft (Big Mike), a 25 pound Abyssinian, in Empty Creek, Arizon Marian Babson ⢠Non-series mysteries featuring cats Lorna Barrett (L.L. Bartlett) ⢠Tricia Miles: running a mystery bookstore, HavenâÂÂt Got a Clue, and the cat Miss Marple, in fictional small-town Stoneham, New Hampshire, a town full of bookstores Lilian Jackson Braun ⢠Jim Qwilleran: journalist, with cats Koko and Yum Yum in Pickax, northeast central United States Rita Mae Brown ⢠Mary Minor Haristeen: postmistress and her cat, Mrs. Murphy, in Crozet, Virginia Susan Conant ⢠Felicity Pride: author of a mystery series about cats, in Massachusetts Carole Nelson Douglas ⢠Temple Barr: public relations freelancer, and Midnight Louie, tomcat sleuth, in Las Vegas, Nevada The Gordons ⢠D.C. Randall: a Persian cat in Los Angeles, California Evan Marshall ⢠Jane Stuart: widowed literary agent, and Winky the cat, in Shady Hills, New Jersey Alex Matthews ⢠Cassidy McCabe: psychotherapist, and her calico cat Starshine, in Oak Park, Illinois Shirley Rousseu Murphy ⢠Joe Grey: cat and private investigator Clea Simon ⢠Theda Krakow: cat-loving, freelance writer in Cambridge, Massachusetts ⢠Dulcie Schwartz: Harvard doctoral candidate living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the ghost of her cat Mr. Grey Fran Stewart ⢠Biscuit McKee: librarian, and her cat, Marmalade, in Martinsville, a small town in northern Georgia Leann Sweeney ⢠Cats in Trouble series and one of Carolyn Hart's series, the Death on Demand books, feature two cats and a mystery book store. In M.C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin series, Agatha has two cats-but sometimes the only mention of them is they are off to stay with her charwoman while Agatha is solving the mystery.