Category: Books

My ABC of TBRs

Published on by Margaret15 Comments

For the past few months I’ve been taking a look at my TBR shelves, to encourage me to read them, or maybe even to recycle a few (click on the headings to see my original posts on my TBRs). These are all, with the exception of 2 e-books, physical books on my bookshelves.

As a result I’ve read just 4 of these books – could do better, I think – and found a few that I’ll probably recycle). But it has been an enjoyable exercise and I’m thinking of trawling through my e-books in a similar way.

A, B and C

TBRs abc_edited

I haven’t started any of these three, but they are all books I still want to read:

  • The Appeal by John Grisham – now I have another Grisham to read – Camino Island. It too, sounds good –  ‘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.’
  • The Blood Doctor by Barbara Vine – small font
  • The Children’s Book by A S Byatt – a long book that’s quite heavy to hold

D, E and F

I’ve read one of these!

  • David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
  • Extraordinary People by Peter May –READ – I liked it, but not as good as his Lewis trilogy
  • The Floating Admiral by Members of the Detection Club

G, H and I

a-z tbrs ghi P1020304

The problem with these three is that they are all in a small font – hard on the eyes!

  • The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell
  • Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes
  • The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

J, K and L

TRBs jkl

  • The Journeying Boy by Michael Innes –  will probably not read this, some of those who commented were in favour, but others were not.
  • Ghost Walk by Alanna Knight
  • The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson – READ and loved this one!

M, N and O

MNO bks P1020320

  • Mercy by Jodie Picoult – doubtful that I’ll read this.
  • Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale – READ – Café Society sang the praises of this book, and I’m pleased to say she was right and I loved it.
  • An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris – Helen commented that this is probably her favourite Robert Harris book so far, so I’m very keen to read this one soon.

P, Q and R

The Power HouseThe Queen's ManResistance

All these received favourable comments!

  • The Power House by John Buchan – a short book, should be a quick read.
  • The Queen’s Man by Sharon Penman (Kindle) – loved her Sunne in Splendour – why haven’t I read this one before now? As a result of comments I now have added Welsh Princes books, especially Here Be Dragons – love that title!
  • Resistance by Owen Sheers – apparently this is not an easy read, but some people recommended it.

S and T

IMG_20180308_091608245_HDR.jpg

  • The Stranger House by Reginald Hill – I’ll definitely read this one.
  • Slipstream: A Memoir by Elizabeth Jane Howard
  • The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson – Simon T  thinks this ‘is one of her best – much starker and darker than most of her others (dark in atmosphere – not gory or anything) but so brilliantly written.’
  • The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney – READ – I was encouraged by the comments on this. I did enjoy it, particularly the descriptions of the landscape and climate that set it in geographic context, but it just took so long to read particularly with so many sub-plots to hold in my head! I think some of the sub-plots that don’t contribute much to the story could easily have been developed into books in their own right. And the ending seemed so abrupt. I’m not sure I want to read any more of Stef Penney’s books.

U, V and W

U V W books

  • The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce – I’m put off by the title – too gimicky, but I will at least begin this book – sometime.
  • The Various Flavours of Coffee by Anthony Capella – this one may get recycled.
  • The Water Horse by Julia Gregson – definitely a book to read.

X, Y and Z

IMG_20180517_155637127_HDR.jpgimg_20180610_124437297_hdrimg_20180610_124417342

I’m still hoping to read these, especially Margaret Atwood’s book after watching the BBC One programme Imagine where she talks to Alan Yentob in Toronto.

  • Xingu and other stories by Edith Wharton (Kindle)
  • The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
  • Zoo Time by Howard Jacobson

Looking Forward to Reading …

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Some of my favourite authors have new books coming out this year! Here they are in order of publication:

26 July 2018

Careless Love by Peter Robinson – the twenty fifth in his DCI Banks series.

Careless Love (Inspector Banks, #25)

 

‘With a deceptively unspectacular language, [Robinson] sets about the process of unsettling the reader.’ Independent

A young local student has apparently committed suicide. Her body is found in an abandoned car on a lonely country road. She didn’t own a car. Didn’t even drive. How did she get there? Where did she die? Who moved her, and why?

Meanwhile a man in his sixties is found dead in a gully up on the wild moorland. He is wearing an expensive suit and carrying no identification. Post-mortem findings indicate he died from injuries sustained during the fall. But what was he doing up there? And why are there no signs of a car in the vicinity?

As the inconsistencies multiply and the mysteries proliferate, Annie’s father’s new partner, Zelda, comes up with a shocking piece of information that alerts Banks and Annie to the return of an old enemy in a new guise. This is someone who will stop at nothing, not even murder, to get what he wants – and suddenly the stakes are raised and the hunt is on.

6 September 2018

Wild Fire (Shetland Island, #8)

Wild Fire by Ann Cleeves –  the eighth, and final book,  in her Shetland series featuring Detective Jimmy Perez.

Shetland: Welcoming. Wild. Remote.

Drawn in by the reputation of the islands, an English family move to the area, eager to give their autistic son a better life.

But when a young nanny’s body is found hanging in the barn of their home, rumours of her affair with the husband begin to spread like wild fire.

With suspicion raining down on the family, DI Jimmy Perez is called in to investigate, knowing that it will mean the return to the islands of his on-off lover and boss Willow Reeves, who will run the case.

Perez is facing the most disturbing investigation of his career. Is he ready for what is to come?

18 October 2018

Tombland (Matthew Shardlake, #7)

Tombland is the seventh novel in C. J. Sansom’s Shardlake series.

Spring, 1549.

Two years after the death of Henry VIII, England is sliding into chaos . . .

The nominal king, Edward VI, is eleven years old. His uncle Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford, rules as Protector. The extirpation of the old religion by radical Protestants is stirring discontent among the populace while the Protector’s prolonged war with Scotland is proving a disastrous failure and threatens to involve France. Worst of all, the economy is in collapse, inflation rages and rebellion is stirring among the peasantry.

Since the old King’s death, Matthew Shardlake has been working as a lawyer in the service of Henry’s younger daughter, the Lady Elizabeth. The gruesome murder of Edith Boleyn, the wife of John Boleyn – a distant Norfolk relation of Elizabeth’s mother – which could have political implications for Elizabeth, brings Shardlake and his assistant Nicholas Overton to the summer assizes at Norwich. There they are reunited with Shardlake’s former assistant Jack Barak. The three find layers of mystery and danger surrounding Edith’s death, as a second murder is committed.

And then East Anglia explodes, as peasant rebellion breaks out across the country. The yeoman Robert Kett leads a force of thousands in overthrowing the landlords and establishing a vast camp outside Norwich. Soon the rebels have taken over the city, England’s second largest.

Barak throws in his lot with the rebels; Nicholas, opposed to them, becomes a prisoner in Norwich Castle; while Shardlake has to decide where his ultimate loyalties lie, as government forces in London prepare to march north and destroy the rebels. Meanwhile he discovers that the murder of Edith Boleyn may have connections reaching into both the heart of the rebel camp and of the Norfolk gentry . . .

Also 18 October 2018

A new Detective John Rebus novel – In a House of Lies – the 22 in his Rebus series.

In a House of Lies by [Rankin, Ian]

IN A HOUSE OF LIES…

Everyone has something to hide
A missing private investigator is found, locked in a car hidden deep in the woods. Worse still – both for his family and the police – is that his body was in an area that had already been searched.

Everyone has secrets
Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke is part of a new inquiry, combing through the mistakes of the original case. There were always suspicions over how the investigation was handled and now – after a decade without answers – it’s time for the truth.

Nobody is innocent
Every officer involved must be questioned, and it seems everyone on the case has something to hide, and everything to lose. But there is one man who knows where the trail may lead – and that it could be the end of him: John Rebus.

~~~

I am really looking forward to reading all these books!

Books Read in June

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

Ten books this month – more than I thought possible in a month when gardening begins to take priority over reading. Click on the links to read my reviews:

  1. Bats in the Belfry by E C R Lorac 4*
  2. The Craftsman by Sharon Bolton 4.5*
  3. Come a Little Closer by Rachel Abbott 3*
  4. Stalker by Lisa Stone 3*
  5. Watching You by Lisa Jewell 5*
  6. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 5+*
  7. On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill 5*
  8. The Kappillan of Malta by Nicholas Monsarrat 4*
  9. The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas 4.5*
  10. Fire in the Thatch by E C R Lorac 4*

I still have four to write about – for now these are brief notes, but I hope to write more in later posts:

Watching YouThe Grapes of WrathOn Beulah Height (Dalziel & Pascoe, #17)The Kappillan of Malta

Watching You by Lisa Jewell – to be published 12 July 2018. An absolutely gripping story! This is the first book I’ve read by Lisa Jewell – it won’t be the last as I loved it. It opens with a crime scene – someone has been murdered, but neither the victim nor the killer are revealed until much later in the book. The story revolves around the charismatic head teacher of the local secondary school. It kept me guessing throughout as what happened is gradually revealed, helped by the inclusion of transcripts of police interviews.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. An outstanding book! It is so good I want to give it 5++ stars – I enjoyed it immensely. I loved all of it – all the details of the Joad family’s journey in the 1930s Great Depression from the dust bowl of Oklahoma to the ‘promised land’ of California where their dreams of a better life were destroyed and they experienced such poverty and hardship and struggled to survive. Steinbeck’s writing is powerful, wonderfully descriptive and his characters stand out as real people.

On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill.  Another really good read – crime fiction at its best. It’s a compelling mystery about a little girl who went missing on the Yorkshire fells, reviving memories of two other little girls who had gone missing twelve years earlier before the village of Dendale had been flooded to create a reservoir. What I particularly enjoy with Hill’s Dalzeil and Pascoe novels is that they are fully rounded novels, not just crime fiction with characters slotted into a murder mystery.

The Kappillan of Malta by Nicholas Monsarrat – historical fiction about the siege of Malta from 11 June 1940  to 15 August 1942. “Father Salvatore–a simple priest, or kappillan, serving the poor–finds himself caught in the drama of World War Two. In the fragile safety of catacombs revealed by the explosions, he tends to the flood of homeless, starving, and frightened people seeking shelter, giving messages of inspiration and hope. His story, and that of the island, unfold in superbly graphic images of six days during the siege.”

The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

The Three Evangelists (Three Evangelists, #1)

I love Fred Vargas’s books. She writes such quirky crime fiction, with eccentric characters and intricate plots that I find so difficult to solve.

The Three Evangelists, set mainly in Paris, is an excellent example and the three title characters are thirty-something historians, Mathias, Marc and Lucien, all specialists in three different periods of history and all down on their luck. Together with Marc’s uncle and godfather, Armand Vandoosler, an ex-policeman,  they have just moved into a ‘tumbledown disgrace’ of a house next door to retired opera singer Sophia Siméonidis and her husband Pierre. When a tree unexpectedly appears in Sophia’s garden she asks for their help in digging around the tree to see if something has been buried there. They find nothing but soil.

Then Sophia disappears and her body is found burned to ashes in a car. The evangelists and Armand use their expertise to find out what happened. Did her husband kill her, or her best friend; had she run off with an ex-lover and how does her niece figure in the mystery?

Sophia’s past life comes under scrutiny by the three historians, helped by Vandoosler and his friend, a current policeman. The trail leads back into Sophia’s past as an opera singer, a past full of intrigue, jealousy and desire. I loved all the characters in particular the three historians, each one unique, entertaining and completely eccentric. The clever plot had me completely bamboozled and the ending was so unexpected as the twists and turns had led me up the wrong garden path, so to speak.

Now, I’m keen to read the other two books in the series – Dog Will Have His Day and The Accordionist.

  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage (4 Jan. 2007) (First published in 1995)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0099469553
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099469551
  • Source: Library book
  • My rating 4.5*

 

 

 

Come a Little Closer by Rachel Abbott

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Once again I’ve fallen behind with writing reviews! This is the first post in a series of short reviews of the books that I’ve read this year and not reviewed.

Come A Little Closer (DCI Tom Douglas #7)

Come a Little Closer by Rachel Abbott. I had high hopes for this book as I’ve seen Rachel Abbott’s books praised on other book blogs and highly rated on Amazon and Goodreads, but I’d never read any of them. This is the seventh in the DCI Tom Douglas series, but I was encouraged by Rachel Abbott’s reassurance (on Goodreads author questions) that ‘each story is entirely standalone, but the character of Tom Douglas does run through the whole series. There are bits in each story about his life, but nothing that would require you to have read previous books. So please feel free to read them in any order you like. Many people do.’

Synopsis:

They will be coming soon. They come every night. 

Snow is falling softly as a young woman takes her last breath. 

Fifteen miles away, two women sit silently in a dark kitchen. They don’t speak, because there is nothing left to be said. 

Another woman boards a plane to escape the man who is trying to steal her life. But she will have to return, sooner or later. 

These strangers have one thing in common. They each made one bad choice – and now they have no choices left. Soon they won’t be strangers, they’ll be family…

When DCI Tom Douglas is called to the cold, lonely scene of a suspicious death, he is baffled. Who is she? Where did she come from? How did she get there? How many more must die? 

Who is controlling them, and how can they be stopped? 

My thoughts:

I have mixed thoughts about this book – I didn’t ‘like’ it (although I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads), but it held my interest and I read to the end. It reads OK as a standalone, although it probably would have helped to have known more about Tom Douglas, but the police investigation isn’t the main focus of the book.

The main focus is on Callie and the mess she gets herself into. Her relationship with her boyfriend, Ian is awful, he’s just sponging off her and treating her like a doormat. Although she tells him to leave, by the time she returns from a trip to Myanmar, he is still living in her flat. She then goes to stay with a couple she met on the cruise ship, without knowing that she is letting herself in for a nightmare scenario.

Here’s where the two women mentioned in the synopsis come into the story – a story that left me feeling sick. It’s not blood thirsty or gory – it’s just sick as the protagonists set about manipulating their victims. It’s full of action and barely credible coincidences. About halfway in I could see where this was going – and I didn’t like it. I was glad to finish it. It’s easy to read, but the characters seemed shallow and the only ones I liked were Tom his team and his brother, Nathan – now that sounds as though it’s a more interesting story.

What do you think? Should I read any of the other Tom Douglas books – or are they all like this one?

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 6326 KB
  • Print Length: 406 pages
  • Publisher: Black Dot Publishing Ltd (15 Feb. 2018)
  • Source: Kindle Users Lending Library
  • My rating: 3*

My Friday Post: Fire in the Thatch by E C R Lorac

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

Book Beginnings Button

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, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

The book I’m featuring this week is Fire in the Thatch by E C R Lorac, which is the book I’m planning to read next. It’s set as the Second world War is drawing to a close, but it was not published until 1946.

 

It begins:

Colonel St Cyres stepped out of the French window on to the terrace and drew in a deep breath of frosty air, conscious of the exhilaration of a glorious December morning. He always felt better out of doors. In the open air the worries and irritations of life seemed less immediate, and he felt that he lost a burden when he closed the window behind him.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56These are the rules:

  1. Grab a book, any book.
  2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.
  3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
  4. Post it.
  5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

56%:

Well, the plain fact is this: gossip around Mallory Fitzjohn is saying that Gressingham was out in his car on the night of the fire, and that he’s denied the fact.

Description (Amazon)

The Second World War is drawing to a close. Nicholas Vaughan, released from the army after an accident, takes refuge in Devon – renting a thatched cottage in the beautiful countryside at Mallory Fitzjohn. Vaughan sets to work farming the land, rearing geese and renovating the cottage. Hard work and rural peace seem to make this a happy bachelor life.

On a nearby farm lives the bored, flirtatious June St Cyres, an exile from London while her husband is a Japanese POW. June’s presence attracts fashionable visitors of dubious character, and threatens to spoil Vaughan’s prized seclusion.

When Little Thatch is destroyed in a blaze, all Vaughan’s work goes up in smoke – and Inspector Macdonald is drafted in to uncover a motive for murder.

~~~

I enjoyed Bats in the Belfry by E C R Lorac, so I’m hoping I’ll enjoy this one too, another case for Chief Inspector Macdonald of Scotland Yard.

What about you? Does it tempt you or would you stop reading?