LoBeau (emphasis on the second syllable because it classes it up)

I just finished a fun to read mystery called 

Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage.

If you judge a book by it's first sentence, this one is a beauty:

Trouble cruised into Tupelo Landing at exactly seven minutes past noon on Wednesday, the third of June, flashing a gold badge and driving a Chevy Impala the color of dirt.

... and this is just the beginning. 


Mo LoBeau and her best friend Dale set out to solve a mystery, a murder, and a kidnapping all in the course of the summer.


Eleven years ago, Mo washed ashore in Tupelo Landing, North Carolina, tied to a makeshift raft after one of the biggest hurricanes in history. She lives with the Colonel and Miss Lana at their cafe.


The action is fast, the characters are wonderfully quirky, the villains are fierce, and the writing is beautiful.


I know I said that the first sentence was a beauty, but here are a few others that I found quite pretty too:

• Miss Lana's voice is the color of sunlight in maple syrup.
• No one's on their own in the eternal sense of things.
• Miss Lana reads my voice like tea leaves.
• Do you have hair like mine? If so, I offer my condolences.
• I slept restless and dreamed thin. My universe didn't fit together. My world spun wobbly, like a worn out top.
• There's nothing like camping to restore a sense of size, Soldier, remember that. When you lose your way, wait under the stars.
• Listen to me. We are born over and over, day by day. When you feel lost, let the stars sing you to sleep. You'll always wake up new.
• To the east, the clouds gathered like an invading army.
• As I watched them together, my earth found its axis and my stars found their sky.

(without giving any of the mystery away... like Mo is a goddess of free enterprise, Sheila Turnage is a goddess of the simile)