Teaser Tuesday 18.1.2011

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by LizB of Should Be Reading.

The rules are:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page
• Be careful not to include spoilers
• Share the title and author too so that other Teaser Tuesday participients can add the book on their TBR lists, if they like your teasers!

I'm fast falling into the "read-too-many-books-at-once" trap this January. I would like to read all my library loans and my new acquisitions simultaneously! This means that while I'm still only 1/3 into Pinkerton's Sister I got impatient and wanted to read a shorter book before continuing with the junkster. I was in mood for a nice historical mystery with a likable and maybe a bit unconventional heroine. I seem to have found just such a book in Mark of the Lion by Suzanne Arruda. I'm almost half way through this mystery set in 1919 in colonial Africa and enjoying the book very much. Young American Jade del Cameron, who rode an ambulance in the Great War and can kill a hyena with a clean shot, is rapidly becoming one of my favorite sleuths. :) My teaser is from page 67.  Jade has just suggested Lord Colridge that she would like to join a hunting party trying to eliminate a hyena problem.

"'You forget, sir, that I was raised out west. I'm accustomed to hunting.'
'We are not going after rabbits, Miss del Cameron,' he exclaimed with a snort.
'When I was sixteen, a mountain lion took some of our stock. We lost several lambs.'
'And I suppose your father took you along on the hunt, did he?'
Jade looked directly at the aristocrat until he felt the weight of those emerald eyes boring into him. She kept the tone of her voice very factual, careful to omit any trace of bragging. 'No, sir. My father was gone at the time. I took out that cat myself.'"

As Mark of the Lion is first in a series I'm already looking forward to reading more about Jade's adventures in the future.