Category: Books

First Chapter First Paragraph: The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas

Published on by Margaret14 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’m featuring The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas, one of my favourite authors. I’ve read some of her Commissaire Adamsberg books and loved them. This one is the first in the Three Evangelists series.

The Three Evangelists (Three Evangelists, #1)

It begins:

‘Pierre, something’s wrong with the garden,’ said Sophia.

She opened the window and examined the patch of ground. She knew it by heart, every blade of grass. What she saw sent a shiver down her spine.

Blurb from the back cover:

The opera singer Sophia Siméonidis wakes up one morning to discover that a tree has appeared overnight in the garden of her Paris house. Intrigued and unnerved, she turns to her neighbours: Vandoosler, an ex-cop, and three impecunious historians, Mathias, Marc and Lucien – the three evangelists. They agree to dig around the tree and see if something has been buried there. They find nothing but soil.

A few weeks later, Sophia disappears and her body is found burned to ashes in a car. Who killed the opera singer? Her husband, her ex-lover, her best friend, her niece? They all seem to have a motive.

Vandoosler and the three evangelists set out to find the truth.

∼ ∼ ∼

This looks so different from her Adamsberg books – and yet at the same time so similar – quirky, with eccentric characters and with a mystery to solve.

What do you think – would you read on?

My Friday Post: A Dying Note by Ann Parker

Published on by Margaret9 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.

This week’s book is A Dying Note by Ann Parker, her latest book in the Silver Rush Mysteries, which was published on 3 April 2018. I’ve just finished it, so my review will up soon.

 

It begins:

Not my hands!

Throat crushed, blood gurgled, words choked so they screamed only in the mind.

A dramatic opening to this novel set in 1881.

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%:

Inez allowed herself to consider what life might have been like if she, her then-husband Mark Stannert, and their business partner, Abe Jackson, had come all the way to San Francisco as originally planned. Perhaps they would have built a drinking and gaming establishment to capture some of the fortune from gambling fever that clutched the golden city.

But that was not what happened. Seduced by the possibilities in the silver mining boom town of Leadville they had lingered in the city in the clouds, then settled in.

Description (Goodreads):

It’s autumn of 1881, and Inez Stannert, still the co-owner of Leadville, Colorado’s Silver Queen saloon, is settled in San Francisco with her young ward, Antonia Gizzi. Inez has turned her business talents to managing a music store, hoping to eventually become an equal partner in the enterprise with the store’s owner, a celebrated local violinist.

Inez’s carefully constructed life for herself and Antonia threatens to tumble about her ears when the badly beaten body of a young musician washes up on the filthy banks of San Francisco’s Mission Creek canal.

~~~

This is a fascinating historical mystery – I loved it.

What do you think? Have you read it – or are you planning to read it?

My Week in Books: 11 April 2018

Published on by Margaret21 Comments

This Week in Books is a weekly round-up hosted by Lypsyy Lost & Found, about what I’ve been reading Now, Then & Next.

IMG_1384-0

A similar meme,  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?

Currently reading: I’m reading three, Little Dorrit, Saint Thomas’s Eve, but my main book – the one I’ve been read most of the time this week is

 A Dying Note by Ann Parker, her latest book in the Silver Rush Mysteries, which was published on 3 April 2018

Description:

It’s autumn of 1881, and Inez Stannert, still the co-owner of Leadville, Colorado’s Silver Queen saloon, is settled in San Francisco with her young ward, Antonia Gizzi. Inez has turned her business talents to managing a music store, hoping to eventually become an equal partner in the enterprise with the store’s owner, a celebrated local violinist.

Inez’s carefully constructed life for herself and Antonia threatens to tumble about her ears when the badly beaten body of a young musician washes up on the filthy banks of San Francisco’s Mission Creek canal. Inez and Antonia become entangled in the mystery of his death when the musician turns out to have ties to Leadville, ties that threaten to expose Inez’s notorious past. And they aren’t the only ones searching for answers. Wolter Roeland de Bruijn, “finder of the lost,” has also been tasked with ferreting out the perpetrators and dispensing justice in its most final form. Leadville’s leading madam Frisco Flo, an unwilling visitor to the city with a Leadville millionaire, is on the hook as well, having injudiciously financed the young musician’s journey to San Francisco in the first place.

Time grows short as Inez and the others uncover long-hidden secrets and unsettled scores. With lives and reputations on the line, the tempo rises until the investigation’s final, dying note.

I’ve recently finished 

The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor, published on 5th April 2018

Description:

Somewhere in the soot-stained ruins of Restoration London, a killer has gone to ground…

The Great Fire has ravaged London, wreaking destruction and devastation wherever its flames spread. Now, guided by the incorruptible Fire Court, the city is slowly rebuilding, but times are volatile and danger is only ever a heartbeat away.

James Marwood, son of a traitor, is thrust into this treacherous environment when his ailing father claims to have stumbled upon a murdered woman in the very place where the Fire Court sits. Then his father is run down and killed. Accident? Or another murder…?

Determined to uncover the truth, Marwood turns to the one person he can trust – Cat Lovett, the daughter of a despised regicide. Marwood has helped her in the past. Now it’s her turn to help him. But then comes a third death… and Marwood and Cat are forced to confront a vicious and increasingly desperate killer whose actions threaten the future of the city itself.

I’ll post my review soon – I loved this book, following the story that began with The Ashes of London.

What do you think you’ll read next:

Now the difficult part – what to read next! I say difficult because I often change my mind when the time comes to start another book. At the moment I’m thinking it could be:

Time is a Killer by Michel Bussi, which was published on 5 April 2018

Description:

‘One of France’s most ingenious crime writers’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘Bussi breaks every rule in the book’ JOAN SMITH

It is summer 1989 and fifteen-year-old Clotilde is on holiday with her parents in Corsica. On a twisty mountain road, their car comes off at a curve and plunges into a ravine. Only Clotilde survives.

Twenty-seven years later, she returns to Corsica with her husband and their sulky teenage daughter. Clotilde wants the trip to do two things – to help exorcise her past, and to build a bridge between her and her daughter. But in the very place where she spent that summer all those years ago, she receives a letter. From her mother. As if she were still alive.

As fragments of memory come back, Clotilde begins to question the past. And yet it all seems impossible – she saw the corpses of her mother, her father, her brother. She has lived with their ghosts. But then who sent this letter – and why?

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

I Spy Book Challenge

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

I saw this on Cleopatra Loves Books blog and immediately wanted to do it too – after all I love lists as well as books. It’s not as easy as I hoped!

Find a book on your bookshelves that contains (either on the cover or in the title) an example for each category. You must have a separate book for all 20, get as creative as you want and do it within five minutes!! (or longer if you have way too many books on way too many overcrowded shelves!)

Links, where they exist, are to my posts on the books.

1. Food

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck – a TBR

The Grapes of Wrath

2. Transportation

Girl on a Train by A J Waines – I haven’t read this yet, although I have read the ‘other’ book The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.

Girl on a Train

3. Weapon

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman – the second book in His Dark Materials trilogy. I loved these books.

The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, #2)

4. Animal

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney – my review post is on its way!

The Tenderness of Wolves

5. Number

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, one of my TBRs

6. Something you Read

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

 The Nightingale: Bravery, Courage, Fear and Love in a Time of War by [Hannah, Kristin]

7. Body of Water

The Sea Detective by Mark Douglas Home

The Sea Detective by [Douglas-Home, Mark]

8. Product of Fire

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco – another TBR

9. Royalty

The King’s Evil by Edward Marston

The King's Evil (Christopher Redmayne Book 1) by [Marston, Edward]

10. Architecture

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

11. Item of Clothing

The Boy with No Shoes by William Horwood – one of my TBRS

12. Family Member

Sins of the Fathers by Susan Howatch – a book I read pre-blogging days

Sins Of The Fathers by [Howatch, Susan]

13. Time of Day

4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie

14. Music

Exit Music by Ian Rankin

15. Paranormal Being

The Ghost by Robert Harris – TBR

16. Occupation

The Gravedigger’s Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates

17. Season

Winter in Madrid by C J Sansom

Winter in Madrid by [Sansom, C. J.]

18. Colour

The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards

The Golden Age of Murder by [Edwards, Martin]

19. Celestial Body

The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman

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20. Something that Grows

The Daffodil Affair by Michael Innes

Wow all twenty items found quite quickly but it took much than five minutes to compile this post …

How many are on your bookshelf? Consider yourself tagged if you enjoyed this post!

Six Degrees of Separation from Memoirs of a Geisha to …

Published on by Margaret18 Comments

I love doing 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.

This month the chain begins with Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, a book I haven’t read.

Memoirs of a Geisha

It’s described on Goodreads as the extraordinary story of a geisha -summoning up a quarter century from 1929 to the post-war years of Japan’s dramatic history, and opening a window into a half-hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation. A young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. She tells her story many years later from the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

Japan is the first link in my chain with An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro.

An Artist of the Floating World (Faber Fiction Classics) by [Ishiguro, Kazuo]

It is set in 1948 as Japan is rebuilding her cities after the calamity of World War Two. The celebrated artist, Masuji Ono, fills his days attending to his garden, his house repairs, his two grown daughters and his grandson. He spends his evenings drinking with old associates in quiet lantern-lit bars. But his memories continually return to the past – to a life and career deeply touched by the rise of Japanese militarism  and a dark shadow begins to grow over his serenity.

The word ‘world‘ takes me to the next link – Eowyn Ivey’s To the Bright Edge of the World a novel about Lieutenant Colonel Allen Forrester’s journey in 1885 from Perkins Island up the Wolverine River in Alaska. The Wolverine is the key to opening up Alaska and its rich natural resources to the outside world, but previous attempts have ended in tragedy. It’s a book full of love, the love of Allen and Sophie, his wife, and the love of the country, the landscape and its people.

A Cold Day for Murder (Kate Shugak #1)

Also set in Alaska is A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow, the first in her Kate Shugak series. This is crime fiction in which Kate Shugak returns to her roots in the far Alaskan north, after leaving the Anchorage D.A.’s office. Her deductive powers are definitely needed when a ranger disappears. Looking for clues among the Aleutian pipeliners, she begins to realise the fine line between lies and loyalties–between justice served and cold murder.

Silver Lies (Silver Rush, #1)

The next link is also to crime fiction – Silver Lies by Ann Parker, historical fiction set in 1879/80 in the silver-mining town of Leadville, Colarado in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. Leadville was a colourful place, a boom-town, bustling with life -everything is there – the Silver Queen saloon and the Crystal Belle Saloon, Leadville’s leading parlor house, a brick built opera house, whose patrons ‘swelled the after-midnight crowds’ in the Silver Queen saloon, five banks and a small white church with a steeple.

Pompeii

Pompeii by Robert Harris is also historical fiction, set in August AD 79, recounting the eruption of Vesuvius destroying the town of Pompeii and killing its inhabitants as they tried to flee the pumice, ash and searing heat and flames. My favourite character is the hero of the book, engineer Attilius. Before Vesuvius erupted he realised the danger when the aqueduct Aqua Augusta failed to supply water to the people in the nine towns around the Bay of Naples, and attempted to repair the aqueduct.

Part of the book’s appeal to me was because I visited Pompeii and had a trip up to the summit of Vesuvius some years ago and so I could easily picture the location.

Murder on the Eiffel Tower (Victor Legris, #1)

This leads me on to Murder on the Eiffel Tower by  Claude Izner because this is also a place I’ve visited. It’s also historical fiction featuring a crime – that of the murder of Eugénie Patinot when she takes her nephews and niece to the newly-opened Eiffel Tower in 1889. She collapses and dies, apparently from a bee-sting. This book is full of historical detail but the mystery element is not really convincing.

My chain this month has a lot of crime fiction and historical fiction, but it has travelled through time and space from the first century AD to the 20th century through Japan, Alaska, Canada, Italy and France. It has followed artists, explorers, silver miners and detectives and looked in on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the opening of the Eiffel Tower.

Next month  (May 5, 2018), we’ll begin with Barbara Kingsolver’s bestselling novel, The Poisonwood Bible.

My Friday Post: Saint Thomas’s Eve by Jean Plaidy

Published on by Margaret11 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.

This week’s book is St Thomas’s Eve by Jean Plaidy, one of my TBRs that I’ve only just started to read. It’s the sixth in her Tudor Saga, telling the story of Sir Thomas More and his ambitious daughters.

Saint Thomas's Eve: (Tudor Saga) by [Plaidy, Jean]

It begins:

‘And who is this man who dares oppose us?’ demanded the King. ‘Who is this Thomas More? Eh? Answer me that.’

I like this opening, setting the scene with an angry King (Henry VII) as he questions the identity of Thomas More who had refused to grant him the money he wanted.

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.

Page 56:

The King was dead. And fear had died with him.

A new King had come to the throne – a boy not yet eighteen. He was quite different from his father; there was nothing parsimonious about him, and the people looked forward to a great and glorious reign. The household of Thomas More need not now consider uprooting itself.

Blurb (Amazon):

Henry VII once warned his son, the future King of England, not to trust Thomas More; years later that same son made More his confidante and advisor. But the allegiance is dangerously one-sided. A family man, lawyer and writer, More’s ambitions are humble, whilst Henry’s are endless.

As More’s career at court rises so too does his religious fervour, much to the concern of his eldest daughter, Margaret More. Meg, as she is fondly called, is torn between her heretic husband and the secrets her father has confided in her, and already fears that one day her father will make the ultimate sacrifice for his faith.

~~~

Jean Plaidy is the pen name of the prolific English author Eleanor Hibbert, also known as Victoria Holt. I read many of Jean Plaidy’s books years ago, but I’m sure I haven’t read all of them. I just read all I could find in my local library. So, I may have read this years ago but I don’t remember it now. Although I know quite a lot about Thomas More from other books and films, when I saw this book in a secondhand book sale I just had to buy it, if only to see if I still love Jean Plaidy’s books as much now as I did years ago.

Will it live up to my expectations, I wonder? If you’ve read this or any of Jean Plaidy’s books what do you think?