Month: September 2023

Spell the Month in Books – September 2023

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

The theme this month is From your TBR list.

The links in the titles of each book go to Amazon UK and the descriptions are from Amazon UK, Goodreads, or LibraryThing.

S is for Small Wars by Sadie Jones

Set on the colonial, war-torn island of Cyprus in 1956, Jones tells the story of a young solider, Hal Treherne, and the effects of this “small war” on him, his wife, Clara, and their family. Reminiscent of classic tales of love and war such as The English Patient and Atonement, Jones’s gripping novel also calls to mind the master works of Virginia Woolf and their portrayal of the quiet desperation of a marriage in crisis. Small Wars is at once a deeply emotional, meticulously researched work of historical fiction and a profound meditation on war-time atrocities committed both on and off the battlefield.

E is for End in Tears by Ruth Rendell,

The twentieth book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford.

A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The young woman in the car behind is spared. But only for a while…

A few weeks later, George Marshalson lives every father’s worst nightmare: he discovers the murdered body of his eighteen-year-old daughter on the side of the road.

P is for The Pursuit of Happiness by Douglas Kennedy

Manhattan, Thanksgiving Eve, 1945. The war was over, and Eric Smythe’s party was in full swing. All his clever Greenwich Village friends were there. So too was his sister Sara — an independent, canny young woman, starting to make her way in the big city. And then in walked a gatecrasher, Jack Malone — a U. S. Army journalist just back from a defeated Germany, and a man whose world-view did not tally with that of Eric and his friends. Set amidst the dynamic optimism of postwar New York and the subsequent nightmare of the McCarthy witch-hunts, The Pursuit of Happiness is a great tragic love story; a tale of divided loyalties, decisive moral choices, and the random workings of destiny.

T is for Thirteen by P D James, It’s the fifth book in the Eddie Flynn series of crime thrillers.

It’s the murder trial of the century. And Joshua Kane has killed to get the best seat in the house and to be sure the wrong man goes down for the crime. Because this time, the killer isn’t on trial. He’s on the jury.
But there’s someone on his tail. Former-conman-turned-criminal-defense-attorney Eddie Flynn doesn’t believe that his movie-star client killed two people. He suspects that the real killer is closer than they think, but who would guess just how close?

E is for Every Man For Himself by Beryl Bainbridge

For the four fraught, mysterious days of her doomed maiden voyage in 1912, the Titanic sails towards New York, glittering with luxury, freighted with millionaires and hopefuls. In her labyrinthine passageways the last, secret hours of a small group of passengers are played out, their fate sealed in prose of startling, sublime beauty, as Beryl Bainbridge’s haunting masterpiece moves inexorably to its known and terrible end.

M is for The Master Bedroom by Tessa Hadley

Kate Flynn has always been a clever girl, brought up to believe in herself as something special. Now Kate is forty-three and has given up her university career in London to come home and look after her mother at Firenze, their big house by a lake in Cardiff. When Kate meets David Roberts, a friend from the old days, she begins to obsess about him: she knows it’s because she’s bored and hasn’t got anything else to do, but she can’t stop.

Adapting to a new way of life, the connections Kate forges in her new home are to have painful consequences, as the past begins to cast its long shadow over the present…

B is for Broadchurch by Erin Kelly

It’s a hot July morning in the Dorset town of Broadchurch when Beth Latimer realises that her eleven-year-old son, Danny, is missing. As Beth searches desperately for her boy, her best friend, local police officer DS Ellie Miller, arrives at work to find that the promotion she was promised has been given to disreputable Scottish outsider DI Alec Hardy.

When Danny’s body is found on the beach Ellie must put her feelings aside as she works with DI Hardy to solve the mystery of Danny’s death. As the case becomes a murder investigation the news hits the national press, jolting sleepy Broadchurch into the national spotlight.

As the town’s secrets begin to unravel, members of this tight-knit community begin to consider those in their midst. Right now it’s impossible to know who to trust…

E is for The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan

Gwenni Morgan is not like any other girl in this small Welsh town. Inquisitive, bookish and full of spirit, she can fly in her sleep and loves playing detective. So when a neighbour mysteriously vanishes, and no one seems to be asking the right questions, Gwenni decides to conduct her own investigation.

Mari Strachan’s unforgettable novel was one of the most acclaimed and successful debuts of 2009. It is a heart-breaking and hugely enjoyable story.

R is for Rowan’s Well by C J Carter

Who’s the one person you’d trust with your life? Your husband? Your best friend? Your father? Think again…
Mark Strachan has everything: good looks, doting wife, great job, loyal best friend… and a hidden flaw that goes to his very core. A deep secret he’ll wreck lives to protect.
At Rowan’s Well, a house full of secrets on North Yorkshire’s rugged cliffs, Mark will force his family, and best friend Will, to face the consequences of trusting a man like him.
Mark is about to change all their lives forever. He’s going to commit a crime so shocking there’ll be no going back.
Unless someone can stop him.

The next link up will be on October 7, 2023 when the theme will be: Title contains a number or color

20 Books of Summer 2023

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Cathy’s 20 Books of Summer Challenge 2023 has ended. There were options to read 10 or 15 books instead of the full 20. And you could swap a book, or change the list half way through if you wanted. And you could drop your goal from 20 to 15 or 10 if you wanted to.

As I’ve not been well since last year I’ve not been reading as many books as I usually do, so I dropped my goal to 15 books and I did read all 15. But it is only a partial success as I only managed to review five of them.

These are the books I read, the first five are linked to my reviews.

  1. A Sea of Troubles by Donna Leon
  2. Loch Down Abbey by Beth Cowan-Erskine
  3. The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths
  4. Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister
  5. Empire by Conn Iggulden
  6. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
  7. The Birthday Girl by Sarah Ward
  8. The Vanishing Tide by Hilary Taylor
  9. Death is Now My Neighbour by Colin Dexter
  10. The Last Remains by Elly Griffiths
  11. The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths
  12. Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
  13. Lady’s Well by L J Ross
  14. The Cut by Christopher Brookmyre
  15. A Dirty Death by Rebecca Tope

Six Degrees of Separation from Wifedom to

Published on by Margaret19 Comments

2 Sept 2023

It’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

The starting book this month is Wifedom by Anna Funder, a novel about George Orwell’s wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy.

My first link is an obvious one via Orwell:

to George Orwell’s novella Animal Farm an allegorical novella, of the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. It tells the story of a farm where the animals rebel against the farmer, Mr Jones, and throw him off the land. They hope to create a society where they are all equal, free and happy.

My second link is via Farming to:

James Rebank’s non fiction book, English Pastoral, about farming. His family farm in the Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. It is beautifully written. I enjoyed his account of his childhood and his nostalgia at looking back at how his grandfather farmed the land. And I was enlightened about current farming practices and the effects they have on the land, depleting the soil of nutrients.

My next link is via English to:

The English by Jeremy Paxman, more non fiction He writes about food, sport, football hooligans, language, individualism, education, religion, ‘John Bull’, cities and the countryside – the English idyllic village, class structure and social tone, attitudes to women, business and trade to name but a few topics. It’s well researched and very readable, with a bibliography listing all the books he mentions plus others that presumably he has used.

My next link is via Jeremy to

Another author called Jeremy, Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: the Left Bank World of Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer. A memoir of the author’s refuge at the Paris bookshop, Shakespeare & Co. on the banks of the River Seine opposite Notre Dame. Jeremy Mercer, a Canadian crime reporter, packed his bags and headed for Paris after receiving a death threat. He arrived during the last days of 1999 and shortly afterwards found his way to Shakespeare & Co, where he was amazed to find not only is it a bookshop but also a place providing beds for a number of writers. 

My fifth link is via Shakespeare to:

Shakespeare’s Restless World by Neil MacGregor, non fiction recreating Shakespeare’s world through examining twenty objects. It reveals so much about the people who lived then, who went to see Shakespeare’s plays in the 1590s and 1600s, and about their ideas and living conditions.

My final link is via a retelling of one of Shakespeare’s plays:

Macbeth by Jo Nesbo, a retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It sticks well to Shakespeare’s version (which itself wasn’t original!) – it has the same themes and plot lines. Inspector Macbeth, an ex-drug addict is the head of the SWAT team. All the characters are here, including Duncan, the new police Chief Commissioner, Malcolm his deputy, Banquo, Macbeth’s friend and his son, Fleance, Inspector Duff (Shakespeare’s Macduff, Thane of Fife), head of the Narcotics Unit, Caithness, the three witches, Lennox and so on. 

My chain is mainly non fiction. I’ve read all six books.

Next month (October 7, 2023), we’ll start with a classic – I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.