Category: Books

The Classics Club Spin Result

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

Classics Club

The spin number in The Classics Club Spin was announced yesterday. It’s number …

9

which for me is He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr. The rules of the Spin are that this is the book for me to read by August 31, 2018.

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My copy is a Golden Age Mystery, one of the Green Penguin Crime and Mystery series paperbacks, published in 1953 (first published in 1946). It features Dr Gideon Fell.

Here’s the blurb from Goodreads:

At the edge of the woods by the river stands the tower. Once part of a chateau since burnt down, only the tower remains. The inside is but a shell with a stone staircase climbing spirally up the wall to a flat stone roof with a parapet.

One that parapet the body of Howard Brooke lay bleeding. The murderer, when Brooke’s back was turned, must have drawn the sword-cane from it sheath and run him through the body. And this must have occurred between ten minutes to four and five minutes past four, when the two children discovered him dying.

Yet the evidence showed conclusively that during this time not a living soul came near him.

I’m looking forward to reading He Who Whispers as I  haven’t read any of Carr’s books before and I’m really pleased one of the crime fiction novels I listed came up in the Spin.

Did you take part in the Classics Spin? What will you be reading?

Classics Club Spin

Published on by Margaret16 Comments

It’s time for another Classics Club Spin. The Club has four new moderators – Brona, Deb, Kay and Margaret (not me). And I’m pleased to see they are carrying on with the Classics Club Spin!

The Spin rules:

  •  List any twenty books you have left to read from your Classics Club list.
  • Number them from 1 to 20.
  • On Wednesday 1st August, the Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on your Spin List, by 31st August, 2018.

This is my list:

All Quiet on the Western FrontAppleby's EndBirdsongClouds of Witness: Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery…The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin (Maigret #10)

  1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
  2. Appleby’s End by Michael Innes
  3. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
  4. Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers
  5. The Dancer at the Gai Moulin by Georges Simenon

Far From the Madding CrowdGreenmantle (Richard Hannay, #2)Gulliver's TravelsHe Who Whispers (Dr. Gideon Fell, #16)Love in the Time of Cholera

6. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
7. Greenmantle by John Buchan
8. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
9. He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr
10.Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Man in the Queue (Inspector Alan Grant, #1)Oliver TwistParade's EndThe Return of the NativeThe Riddle of the Third Mile (Inspector Morse, #6)

11.The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey
12.Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
13.Parade’s End by Ford Maddox Ford
14.The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
15.The Riddle of the Third Mile by Colin Dexter

Ruling Passion (Dalziel & Pascoe, #3)The Shadow PuppetThe Saint-Fiacre Affair (Maigret, #13)Sweet ThursdayThree Men in a Boat (Three Men, #1)

16.Ruling Passion by Reginald Hill
17.The Shadow Puppet by Georges Simenon
18.The Saint- Fiacre Affair by Georges Simenon
19.Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
20.Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome

It shouldn’t matter which one comes up as I do want to read these books – but I’d like it to be one of the shorter books!

WWW Wednesday: 25 July 2018

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

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WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

I’m currently reading: The Woman in Cabin 10  by Ruth Ware, one of my 10 Books of Summer, and I’ve nearly finished it.

The Woman in Cabin 10

Travel journalist Lo Blacklock  is on a luxury press launch on a boutique cruise ship when she is woken in the night by screams from cabin 10, her next door cabin. She believes a murder has taken place even though the records show that the cabin was unoccupied. This is a locked house type mystery that begins quite slowly and builds to a climax. But it is testing my scepticism somewhat.

As I’ve nearly finished The Woman in Cabin 10 I’ve just started reading The Story Keeper by Anna Mazzola, which will be published on 26th July 2018. I’m only in Chapter 2 but I am totally captivated so far.

The Story Keeper

 

Synopsis

Audrey Hart is on the Isle of Skye to collect the folk and fairy tales of the people and communities around her. It is 1857 and the Highland Clearances have left devastation and poverty, and a community riven by fear. The crofters are suspicious and hostile to a stranger, claiming they no longer know their fireside stories.

Then Audrey discovers the body of a young girl washed up on the beach and the crofters reveal that it is only a matter of weeks since another girl disappeared. They believe the girls are the victims of the restless dead: spirits who take the form of birds.

Initially, Audrey is sure the girls are being abducted, but as events accumulate she begins to wonder if something else is at work. Something which may be linked to the death of her own mother, many years before.

And I’m also reading Wedlock: How Georgian Britain’s Worst Husband Met His Match by Wendy Moore, non fiction about Mary Eleanor Bowes who was the richest heiress in 18th century Britain. She fell under the spell of a handsome Irish soldier, Andrew Robinson Stoney. When Mary heard her gallant hero was mortally wounded in a duel fought to defend her honour, she felt she could hardly refuse his dying wish to marry her. Fascinating reading that if it was fiction you’d say you couldn’t believe it

Wedlock: How Georgian Britain's Worst Husband Met His Match

I’ve recently finished:  No Further Questions by Gillian McAllister. I thought  her first book Everything But the Truth was brilliant and this one has lived up to my expectations – another brilliant book. I’ll write more in a later post.

Synopsis:

The police say she’s guilty.

She insists she’s innocent.

She’s your sister.

You loved her.

You trusted her.

But they say she killed your child.

Who do you believe?

My next book could be: Absent in the Spring by Agatha Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott.

Absent In The Spring

A striking novel of truth and soul-searching.

Returning from a visit to her daughter in Iraq, Joan Scudamore finds herself unexpectedly alone and stranded in an isolated rest house by flooding of the railway tracks.
Looking back over the years, Joan painfully re-examines her attitudes, relationships and actions and becomes increasingly uneasy about the person who is revealed to her…

Famous for her ingenious crime books and plays, Agatha Christie also wrote about crimes of the heart, six bittersweet and very personal novels, as compelling and memorable as the best of her work.

Have you read any of these books?  Do any of them tempt you? 

First Chapter First Paragraph: Out of Bounds by Val McDermid

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Every Tuesday First Chapter, First Paragraph/Intros is hosted by Vicky of I’d Rather Be at the Beach sharing the first paragraph or two of a book she’s reading or plans to read soon.

This week I’ve chosen the last book I bought just a few days ago. It’s Out of Bounds by Val McDermid, the fourth Karen Pirie book and her 30th novel.

Out of Bounds (Inspector Karen Pirie, #4)

 

‘Some night, eh. boys?’ Ross Garvie flung a sweaty arm round the neck of Wee Grantie, his best mate in the world.

‘Some night, right enough,’ Wee Grantie slurred. The two youths swung their hips in rough unison to the deep dark bass beat that shuddered through the club.

Blurb (Amazon):

‘There are lots of things that ran in families, but murder wasn’t one of them . . .’

When a teenage joyrider crashes a stolen car and ends up in a coma, a routine DNA test could be the key to unlocking the mystery of a twenty-year-old murder inquiry. Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie is an expert at solving the unsolvable. With each cold case closed, justice is served. So, finding the answer should be straightforward, but it’s as twisted as the DNA helix itself.

Meanwhile Karen finds herself irresistibly drawn to another case, one that she has no business investigating. And as she pieces together decades-old evidence, Karen discovers the most dangerous kinds of secrets. Secrets that someone is willing to kill for . . .

What do you think? Would you keep reading?

The Karen Pirie books read well as standalone books, but as they continue Karen’s own story I think they are best read in order – and for once I am reading these books in order! I wasn’t sure after I’d read the third book, Skeleton Road that I’d read any more in the series, but this one does tempt me and I like the combination of a cold case linked to a current case.

I see that the fifth Karen Pirie book, Broken Ground is to be published on 23 August 2018.

WWW Wednesday: 18 July 2018

Published on by Margaret15 Comments

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WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

I’m currently reading: The Tudor Crown by Joanna Hickson. I know very little about Henry VII, so I’m thoroughly enjoying reading this book. It begins in 1471 as Henry, then aged 14,  and his uncle, Jasper Tudor, the Earl of Pembroke, are at sea off the coast of South Wales on course for France, when a storm forces them to land in Brittany. There they found refuge with Francis, Duke of Brittany for the next 14 years.

 

Synopsis

When Edward of York takes back the English crown, the Wars of the Roses scatter the Lancastrian nobility and young Henry Tudor, with a strong claim to the throne, is forced into exile.

Recently widowed and vulnerable, his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, forges an uncomfortable alliance with Edward’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville. Swearing an oath of allegiance to York, Margaret agrees to marry the king’s shrewdest courtier, Lord Stanley. But can she tread the precarious line between duty to her husband, loyalty to her son, and her obligation to God and the king?

When tragedy befalls Edward’s reign, Richard of York’s ruthless actions fire the ambition of mother and son. As their destinies converge each of them will be exposed to betrayal and treachery and in their gruelling bid for the Tudor crown, both must be prepared to pay the ultimate price…

I’ve recently finished: Camino Island by John Grisham, which was not what I expected. It begins well with a daring robbery but then slows down almost to a snail’s pace.

Camino Island

 

Synopsis:

The most daring and devastating heist in literary history targets a high security vault located deep beneath Princeton University.

Valued at $25 million (though some would say priceless) the five manuscripts of F Scott Fitzgerald’s only novels are amongst the most valuable in the world. After an initial flurry of arrests, both they and the ruthless gang of thieves who took them have vanished without trace.

Now it falls to struggling writer Mercer Mann to crack a case that has thwarted the FBI’s finest minds.

My next book is most likely to be No Further Questions byGillian McAllister. I thought  her first book Everything But the Truth was brilliant, so I have high hopes for this book.

 

Synopsis:

The police say she’s guilty.

She insists she’s innocent.

She’s your sister.

You loved her.

You trusted her.

But they say she killed your child.

Who do you believe?
_________________

Have you read any of these books?  Do any of them tempt you? 

First Chapter First Paragraph: End in Tears by Ruth Rendell

Published on by Margaret24 Comments

Every Tuesday First Chapter, First Paragraph/Intros is hosted by Vicky of I’d Rather Be at the Beach sharing the first paragraph or two of a book she’s reading or plans to read soon.

This week’s book is End in Tears by Ruth Rendell, one of the books for my 10 Books of Summer Challenge.

End In Tears (Inspector Wexford, #20)

 

When he lifted it off the seat the backpack felt heavier than when he had first put it into the car. He lowered it on to the soft ferny ground. Then he got back into the driving seat to move the car deep into a cave made by hawthorn bushes and brambles, and the hop vines which climbed over everything in this wood. It was late June and the vegetation was very dense and luxuriant.

Blurb (Goodreads):

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.

As a man with a strained father-daughter relationship himself, Wexford must struggle to keep his professional life as a detective separate from his personal life as husband and father. Particularly when a second teenage girl is murdered – a victim unquestionably linked to the first – and another family is shattered…

What do you think? Would you keep reading?

I’ve had this book for about three years and I think I’ve started it once before – the opening chapter looks familiar. I’ve had mixed reactions to Ruth Rendell’s books, preferring the ones she’s written under the name, Barbara Vine. It may be one I’ll pass on – if you’ve read it do let me know what you think.