Category: Book Beginnings on Friday

Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56: Archangel by Robert Harris

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring Archangel by Robert Harris, one of my TBRs, a book I bought five years ago. It is a thriller set in late 20th century Russia.

Book Beginning:

Late one night a long time ago – before you were even born, boy – a bodyguard stood on the verandah at the back of a big house in Moscow, smoking a cigarette.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

Stalin had suffered a catastrophic haemorrhage in the left cerebral hemisphere some time when he was alone in his room between 4 am and 10 pm on Sunday March 1 1953. Academician Vinogradov, who examined the brain after death, found serious hardening of the cerebral arteries which suggested Stalin had probably been half-crazy for a long while, maybe even years.

Synopsis from Amazon:

When historian Fluke Kelso learns of the existence of a secret notebook belonging to Josef Stalin he is determined to track it down, whatever the consequences. From the violent political intrigue and decadence of modern Moscow he heads north – to the vast forests surrounding the White Sea port of Archangel, and a terrifying encounter with Russia’s unburied past.

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What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56: The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, the last book I bought. It’s set in 18th century England, beautifully written, and it’s weird and wonderful!

Book Beginning:

People like to say they seek the truth. Sometimes they even mean it. The truth is they crave the warm embrace of a lie.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

The De Lacy family swiftly became my new obsession. I spent many hours up in the attic in that autumn of 1739, wedged between a moth-eaten crocodile, a broken astrolabe, and the tusk of a narwhale, curiosities banished here by Mrs Freemantle.

Description from Amazon:

Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s The Square of Sevens is an epic and sweeping mystery set in Georgian high society, a dazzling story offering up intrigue, heartbreak, and audacious twists.

A girl known only as Red, the daughter of a Cornish fortune-teller, travels with her father making a living predicting fortunes using the ancient method: the Square of Sevens. When her father suddenly dies, Red becomes the ward of a gentleman scholar.

Now raised as a lady amidst the Georgian splendour of Bath, her fortune-telling is a delight to high society. But she cannot ignore the questions that gnaw at her soul: who was her mother? How did she die? And who are the mysterious enemies her father was always terrified would find him?

The pursuit of these mysteries takes her from Cornwall and Bath to London and Devon, from the rough ribaldry of the Bartholomew Fair to the grand houses of two of the most powerful families in England. And while Red’s quest brings her the possibility of great reward, it also leads her into grave danger . . .

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What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56: The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring The Case of the Golded Fly by Edmund Crispin, a Gervase Fen Mystery, one of my TBRs – a locked room mystery, first published in 1944.

Book Beginning:

Prologue in Railway Trains

To the unwary traveller, Didcot signifies the imminence of his arrival at Oxford; to the more experienced, another half-hour at least of frustration.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

In the big entrance hall, lit only by a single bulb in the roof, the night porter dozed uncomfortably in his box and so failed to see either the person who flitted silently up the big staircase to Peter Graham’s room, or what that person was carrying out on its return.

Description from Amazon:

The very first case for Oxford-based sleuth Gervase Fen, one of the last of the great Golden Age detectives. As inventive as Agatha Christie, as hilarious as P.G. Wodehouse, this is the perfect entry point to discover the delightful detective stories of Edmund Crispin – crime fiction at its quirkiest and best.

A pretty but spiteful young actress with a talent for destroying men’s lives is found dead in a college room just yards from the office of the unconventional Oxford don Gervase Fen. Anyone who knew the girl would gladly have shot her, but can Fen discover who did shoot her, and why?

Published during the Second World War, The Case of the Gilded Fly introduced English professor and would-be detective Gervase Fen, one of crime fiction’s most irrepressible and popular sleuths. A classic locked-room mystery filled with witty literary allusions, it was the debut of ‘a new writer who calls himself Edmund Crispin’ (in reality the choral and film composer Bruce Montgomery), later described by The Times as ‘One of the last exponents of the classical English detective story . . . elegant, literate, and funny.’

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What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56: I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh, a book I’m currently reading. It won Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in 2016, beating J K Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith. I’ve had this book since 2017 and I started to read it then but as it begins with a tragedy I didn’t feel up to reading it and put it back on the shelf for a while. I picked it up again recently when I discovered that Clare Mackintosh, a former police officer, is a member of Crime Cymru, a consortium of Welsh crime writers to promote Welsh crime fiction. And as March is Reading Wales Month I think it’s a good time to read it now.

Book Beginning:

Prologue: The wind flicks wet hair across her face, and she screws up her eyes against the rain. Weather like this makes everyone hurry: scurrying past on slippery pavements with chins buried into collars.

and then Chapter One:

Detective Inspector Ray Stevens stood next to the window and contemplated his office chair, on which an arm had been broken for at least a year.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head if Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

Ray sighed. Puberty had turned his son into a grunting, uncommunicative teenager, and he was dreading the day the same thing happened to his daughter. You weren’t supposed to have favourites, but he had a soft spot for Lucy, who at nine would seek him out for a cuddle and insist on a bedtime story.

Description from Amazon:

A tragic accident. It all happened so quickly. She couldn’t have prevented it. Could she?

In a split second, Jenna Gray’s world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh. Desperate to escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast, but she is haunted by her fears, her grief and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever.

Slowly, Jenna begins to glimpse the potential for happiness in her future. But her past is about to catch up with her, and the consequences will be devastating . . .

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What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56: The Secret Life of Bees

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring The Secret Lives of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd one of the books I hope to read soon.

Book Beginning:

At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how the bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew in circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head if Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

We stared across the water at each other. In the dark she looked like a boulder shaped by five hundred years of storms.

Description from Goodreads:

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four years old. Now, at fourteen, she yearns for forgiveness and a mother’s love. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh and unforgiving father, she has only one friend, Rosaleen, a black servant.

When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily chooses to flee with her. Fugitives from justice, the pair follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world as about the mystery surrounding her mother.

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What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56: The Hog’s Back Mystery

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring The Hog’s Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts one of the books I’m currently reading. I’ve read about half of it and am enjoying it although it is a bit repetitive. It’s a “Golden Age” mystery, first published in 1933.

Book Beginning:

‘Ursula! I am glad to see you!’ Julia Earle moved forward to the carriage door to greet the tall, well dressed woman who stepped down on the platform of the tiny station of Ash in Surrey.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head if Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

‘Well,’ said Sheaf, with a keen glance,what does it look like to you?’ ‘

This was the sort of question which on principle French never answered. He was certainly not to give an opinion until he had had time to think over the facts and come to a reasoned conclusion.

Description from Goodreads:

Dr James Earle and his wife live in comfortable seclusion near the Hog’s Back, a ridge in the North Downs in the beautiful Surrey countryside. When Dr Earle disappears from his cottage, Inspector French is called in to investigate. At first he suspects a simple domestic intrigue – and begins to uncover a web of romantic entanglements beneath the couple’s peaceful rural life.


The case soon takes a more complex turn. Other people vanish mysteriously, one of Dr Earle’s house guests among them. What is the explanation for the disappearances? If the missing people have been murdered, what can be the motive? This fiendishly complicated puzzle is one that only Inspector French can solve.

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What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?