Newsletter – October 10, 2025
Tabitha Deferred
The saga of Tabitha has reached a stalemate for the time being. She will not re-enter the cage to eat food and spring the trap, but after several days of not eating she showed up at our back door looking thin and forlorn. So we fed her…with medication. She ate more than one-and-a-half cans.
She still needs to have her sutures removed, but her rear end didn’t look swollen last time we could see it. Maybe she bit through them while cleaning herself?
Hopefully she’ll trust us once more to provide food and care and have her stitches out at the vet, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Meanwhile, I have an excellent book to recommend:
The Maid, by Nita Prose
Like me, you’ve probably seen this book cover several times over the last few years. It was selected for the GMA Book Club, among other things. I saw the audiobook on sale and decided to give it a spin.
I like whodunnits and, having worked retail, served coffee and bartending, I figured I could relate to the service aspect of a hotel maid.
But Molly is a maid with a difference.
Molly is the first person narrator, so her perspective isn’t entirely explained. She seems to be on the autism spectrum, as she admits to having difficulty discerning other people’s emotions. She is also obsessive about cleaning rooms, her clothing, and her apartment.
Molly is also very observant, like her TV hero Columbo. She and her Gran used to watch that show together all the time, making her a perceptive detective.
When Molly enters to clean a room in The Grand Hotel she discovers the dead body of a very rich man. She becomes a prime witness, and later the prime suspect.
Molly’s point of view is delivered with perfection by Lauren Ambrose in the audiobook, conveying her confusion, frustration, and emotions. I suspect that if you read the book yourself, you’ll also hear Molly’s voice in your mind. The narrative is written that well.
No spoilers here, but I will say that I was surprised by a few twists and turns near the end of the novel and even got a bit choked up by the sentiment in that part of the story.
Speaking of the end, do not skip the epilogue. Writers these days are discouraged from presenting a prologue or an epilogue because, they say, it should just be part of the book. I don’t have an opinion on that, but if you skip the epilogue of The Maid you’ll miss the most interesting twist of all.
I see that Nita Prose has written additional books for this character, but this first book is completely self-contained, no cliff-hanger or unanswered questions. You could start and stop with this first book and feel very satisfied.
Thanks, Nita, I appreciate that. I don’t like those stray hairs any more than Molly does.
TTFN
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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles
Eric Margerum 