Yesterday I went to my favourite bookshop Barter Books, one of the largest secondhand bookshops in Britain. This is where you can ‘swap’ books for credit that you can then use to get more books from the Barter Books shelves.
These are the books I brought home:
River of Darkness by Rennie Airth – I was hoping to find this book as Cafe Society recommended it. It’s the first book in his John Madden series. Inspector John Madden of Scotland Yard investigates the murder of a family in the post-World War I British countryside. A veteran of the war, Madden immediately recognizes the work of a soldier, but discovering the motive will take longer.
Ruling Passion by Reginald Hill. I always check to see if there are any of his books on the shelves that I haven’t got/read, so I was pleased to find this one. It’s the third Dalziel and Pascoe book in which Pascoe finds his social life and work uncomfortably brought together by a terrible triple murder. Meanwhile, Dalziel is pressuring him about a string of unsolved burglaries, and as events unfold the two cases keep getting jumbled in his mind.
Beryl Bainbridge is another author whose books I always look out for, and this visit I found Every Man for Himself. This novel is about the voyage of the Titanic, on its maiden and final voyage in 1912.
Sirens by Joseph Knox. I wasn’t looking for this book, or for books by Knox, but it caught my eye as I browsed the shelves and I remembered that earlier this year I’d read and thoroughly enjoyed The Smiling Man. Set in Manchester, Sirens is Knox’s debut book featuring DC Aidan Waits. Young women are lured into enigmatic criminal Zain Carver’s orbit and then they disappear.
Once more I’m torn between reading these as soon as possible, or reading from my TBR shelves and review copies from NetGalley. It’s a dilemma 🙂
What do you think? Have you read any of these? Do they tempt you too?
BooksPlease 
River of Darkness really does have a solid sense of place and time, Margaret. I hope you’ll like that one. And, of course, it’s hard to go wrong with Reginald Hill. You got a nice lot of books there!
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I love visiting used bookstores and the fact that you get to ‘shop’ with your credits is a lot of fun. I’ve heard of a couple of these, but have read none of them. Always a dilemma, right? What to read next? We’ll never run out of books!
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Good haul! I’ve not read any of these but do have two Rennie Airths on the shelf. Love used book stores and doing the credit thing! Have a huge bag of books sitting here now waiting for the trip to Knoxville.
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I love the Rennie Airth books, so I hope you enjoy it. They’re a bit slower than most but that gives them room to give a real feel for the time and setting. And of course you can’t go wrong with Reginald Hill!
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I’ve read Every Man for Himself, I wasn’t sure about reading it due to the subject matter being so common/popular, but I like Beryl Bainbridge and I ended up really enjoying it.
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For some reason I’m not seeing the picture but it sounds like you got a good haul from the descriptions. I do love the sound of the set-up there… taking along books you’ve finished with and getting credit sounds like an excellent idea.
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I read Rennie Airth’s “River of Darkness” several years ago and remember I thought it was quite good. So much so that I bought the next two John Madden titles as well.
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