Friday Memes: Death of a Toy Soldier by Barbara Early

Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

Cathy slammed the receiver down, and the phone's eyes wiggled. Yes, our telephone has eyes. These things happen when you work in a vintage toy shop and your phone was custom painted - and mounted on wheels - to resemble an iconic pull toy.

Friday 56: 

Othello had been the inspiration for another pet project of mine: missing game pieces. He loved disrupting games and chasing stray pieces so much I realized that other households with pets or small children must have the same problem.

This week I am reading Death of a Toy Soldier by Barbara Early. I got this ARC from the publisher. Here is the description from Amazon:

Liz McCall grew up in a playful winter wonderland but it was never her dream to manage her father’s vintage toyshop. However, after he sank his entire police pension into the business, someone needed to help him turn his dreams into reality—and keep him from sneaking off to patrol the not-so-mean streets of East Aurora, NY.

The mood goes from nice to naughty when a nervous man, who was trying to have his antique toys appraised, is found in the shop with a lawn dart through his chest. Suddenly, Liz’s business plan is plunged into deep freeze, while she and her father find themselves toying with a cold-blooded killer who’s playing for keeps.

Now, it looks like Christmas might be cancelled for the neighborhood kids if Liz can't wrap up the case in Barbara Early's delightful debut Death of a Toy Soldier.