2 lighter mysteries

I've been doing a lot of travel lately which leads to lots of reading time for me and so I'm struggling this year to keep up with my own commitment to review the books I read. And in an ironic twist, on my last plane ride I was the only one for rows with a real book, therefore, I needed a real light and mine was broken. Everyone else had their personal glow-y readers.


http://www.amazon.com/Grace-Under-Pressure-Manor-Mysteries/dp/0425235211
Grace Under Pressure by Julie Hyzy
 The idea here is a young art historian who has been hired as a assistant curator for a mansion spread from her home town. Grace is in her probationary period of the job when the curator is killed and the pressure mounts. The mansion's owner lives upstairs, the staff is suspicious of grace, and her inherited home is falling apart. She needs to figure out who the bad guy is before she ends up losing her job or herself. I liked Grace and cheered for her along the way.

http://www.haileylind.com/brush-with-death.php
Brush with Death, an art lovers mystery, by Hailey Lind
Hailey Lind actually is a pseudonym for two ladies that write this series. One is an artist, the other a historian, so they make for a variety of information in the story. It's an easy read and they had some hilarious dialogue lines now and then. The mystery is set in California in the Oakland/San Francisco area and this one in a particular graveyard. There were some good hooks of using the graveyard as a specific place. How does this tie to art you might ask? The faux finisher Annie, the protagonist, was repairing a antique ceiling in a columbarium - a sort of mausoleum building but huge. I enjoyed this and didn't have the murderer figured out like I thought I did. This is not the first in the series, but the first one I ran into.