#apocketfullofmurder

Just finished reading #apocketfullofmurder and I enjoyed every minute of it! Quiz and Isaveth are just the CUTEST little beans, so of course I had to draw them😂 Thank you @rjandersonwriter for letting me know what color Vettie’s eyes were! Haha

It’s another entry in #mybookalphabet! Today’s was a tricky one, as I don’t have many character names or story elements that begin with this letter. But then I remembered Orien, the well-respected governor of Tarreton College, whose untimely death kicks off the plot of A POCKET FULL OF MURDER. . At the beginning of POCKET, Master Orien, the governor of the prestigious Tarreton College, has just offered Isaveth’s hard-working but unemployed Papa a job that could save him and his four daughters from destitution. All seems well until the Lawkeepers turn up at the door, and arrest Urias Breck as the prime suspect in Orien’s murder. . Isaveth knows her father has no motive to kill Master Orien — in fact the opposite — but nobody else seems to believe that he didn’t do it. So she sets out to find the real murderer before it’s too late. In the excerpt I’ve included, she disguises herself as a maid at Tarreton College so she can investigate the scene of the crime, and also get a chance to talk to Orien’s proud and rather prickly secretary about who else visited the Master that day and what really happened. . In many of the Golden Age mystery novels that inspired POCKET and its sequel, the murder victim is a deeply unpleasant person who seems to have earned his or her grisly fate. But real life is seldom so neat or satisfying, and I wanted to explore the impact of a good man’s death on the people left to mourn him — including a couple of characters who turn out to have been somewhat closer to Orien than my heroine Isaveth ever guessed… . If you enjoy reading mysteries, which case or detective have you found the most memorable, and why? . . . #uncommonmagic #apocketfullofmurder #middlegrade #middlegradebooks #middlegradereads #middlegradefiction #middlegradefantasy #middlegrademystery #middlegradelit #mglit #bookstagram #books #booknerd #booklover #bookstagrammer #bookworm #bookwormlife https://www.instagram.com/p/B_V9QxIgC0d/?igshid=1oi6mded1b0bk

The next letter in #mybookalphabet is a vitally important character from A POCKET FULL OF MURDER, even though we don’t see that much of him in the story — Isaveth’s beloved Papa, Urias Breck. . Like the other names in the Breck family and in the Moshite community to which they belong, Urias’s name is a modified version of an old Biblical name, that of Uriah the Hittite. Uriah was a faithful soldier under King David, known for his loyalty, integrity and courage — but when King David wanted Uriah’s wife Bathsheba for his own, he arranged to have Uriah put on the front lines of the battle so he would be killed. In a similar way (though for very different motives), Isaveth’s honest and hardworking father becomes an innocent scapegoat, accused of a murder he didn’t commit. . The quote in this image carousel comes from early in the book when Urias is arrested and dragged off to prison, leaving Isaveth and her three sisters alone. Unlike her older sister Annagail, who works long hours in a shirt factory to help support their family, twelve-year-old Isaveth is too young to have a full-time job — but not too young to realize that she can’t depend on Tarreton’s corrupt political and legal system to clear her Papa’s name. If anyone’s going to find the real murderer and prove Urias’s innocence, it has to be Isaveth herself… . . . #uncommonmagic #apocketfullofmurder #middlegrade #middlegradebooks #middlegradereads #middlegrademarch #middlegrademarch2020 #middlegradefiction #middlegradefantasy #middlegrademystery #middlegradelit #mglit #bookstagram #books #booknerd #booklover #bookstagrammer #bookworm https://www.instagram.com/p/B-XufvPAk3q/?igshid=1vz8tnagc8o86