Category: e-books

The Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton, a Novella

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Rating: 3 out of 5.

This has been on my TBR list for several years, so I thought it was about time I read it. It was written in 1898, but not published until 1916, one of the short stories in Xingu and Other Stories, set in a working class neighbourhood in New York.

In the days when New York’s traffic moved at the pace of the drooping horse-car, when society applauded Christine Nilsson at the Academy of music and basked in the sunsets of the Hudson River School on the walls of the National Academy of Design, an inconspicuous shop with a single show-window was intimately and favourably known to the feminine population of the quarter bordering on Stuyvesant Square.

It was a very small shop in a shabby basement, in a side-street already doomed to decline; and from the miscellaneous display behind the window-pane and the brevity of the sign surmounting it (merely ‘Bunner Sisters’ in blotchy gold on a black background) it would have been difficult for the uninitiated to guess the precise nature of the business carried on within. (page 1)

As the title indicates it’s about two sisters, Ann Eliza the elder, and Evelina the younger, who have a small shop selling artificial flowers and small handsewn articles. The sisters, both unmarried, have fallen on hard times.They meet Herbert Ramy, a German immigrant who also has a small shop, when Ann Eliza buys a clock from him as a birthday present for Evalina.

This is a sad tale, very readable and very descriptive. The characters are memorable, well drawn and are clearly distinguishable. Their lives are mainly filled with daily routine. But there’s a growing sense of foreboding and mystery, especially surrounding Ramy. As he gradually becomes an important part of their lives, the sadness becomes overwhelming, eventually turning into tragedy.

The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Little, Brown Book Group UK| 18 July 2024 | 495 pages|e-book |Review copy| 3*

Description from the publishers

FORGET WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW
THIS IS NOT THAT CRIME NOVEL

You know Penny Coyne. The little old lady who has solved multiple murders in her otherwise sleepy village, despite bumbling local police. A razor-sharp mind in a twinset and tweed.

You know Johnny Hawke. Hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective. Always in trouble with his captain, always losing partners, but always battling for the truth, whatever it takes.

Against all the odds, against the usual story, their worlds are about to collide. It starts with a dead writer and a mysterious wedding invitation. It will end with a rabbit hole that goes so deep, Johnny and Penny might come to question not just whodunnit, but whether they want to know the answer.

A cross-genre hybrid of Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly, The Cracked Mirror is the most imaginative and entertaining crime novel of the year, a genre-splicing rollercoaster with a poignantly emotional heart.

My thoughts:

I’ve read several books by Chris Brookmyre and those he’s co-written with his wife, Marisa Haetzman under the pseudonym Ambrose Parry and thoroughly enjoyed each one. The Cracked Mirror is not like any of his other books and it took me quite a while to get into it.

First of all there’s the title – as the publishers’ description alludes to, it’s not another version of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, but it is a cross-genre hybrid of Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly. I’ve read all of Christie’s crime fiction novels and none of Michael Connelly’s books, so I didn’t know quite what to expect. Maybe a mash-up of British/American crime fiction/thriller, and that is what it is, with plenty of twists and turns, complications and rollercoaster fast action chases, most of it unbelievable. It’s brutal, violent, with quite a bit of dark humour thrown in. It’s also tense and full of suspense.

At first I was happily reading about Penny Coyne – think a sort of Miss Marple like character, a Scottish elderly spinster with a successful record of solving murder mysteries in her home village. The book begins as a body is found in the confessional booth of the chapel of Saint Bride’s in Glen Cluthar, where Ms Penelope Coyle lives. And then I was suddenly confused when I came to read a completely different story about Johnny Hawke, an LAPD homicide detective, not bothered about sticking to the rules. He’s investigating an apparent suicide of a screen writer in LA. But, as their cases came together I settled into this bizarre book and it became a unified whole. It has a very clever plot (maybe just too clever for me) that kept me guessing right to the end.

My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for the ARC.

The Cracked Mirror: Book Beginnings & The Friday 56

Published on by Margaret7 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 Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre, which was published yesterday. My full review will follow shortly.

Chapter One:

There was a body in the chapel of Saint Bride’s.

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.

‘Does your being an LAPD office help us here?’ ‘Not up the coast. And not while I’m under suspension. So I need you to understand that we might have to break a few rules. This could involve theft, fraud, trespass, or all three.’

Description

FORGET WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW
THIS IS NOT THAT CRIME NOVEL

You know Penny Coyne. The little old lady who has solved multiple murders in her otherwise sleepy village, despite bumbling local police. A razor-sharp mind in a twinset and tweed.

You know Johnny Hawke. Hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective. Always in trouble with his captain, always losing partners, but always battling for the truth, whatever it takes.

Against all the odds, against the usual story, their worlds are about to collide. It starts with a dead writer and a mysterious wedding invitation. It will end with a rabbit hole that goes so deep, Johnny and Penny might come to question not just whodunnit, but whether they want to know the answer.

A cross-genre hybrid of Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly, The Cracked Mirror is the most imaginative and entertaining crime novel of the year, a genre-splicing rollercoaster with a poignantly emotional heart.

~~~

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

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

I’ve read Alice Feeney’s debut novel, Sometimes I Lie and His and Hers and loved them. So I had high hopes for Daisy Darker, her fifth book.  Sadly, I was disappointed and I have to say that I didn’t enjoy it. I’ll even go as far as admitting, which I really don’t want to say because I don’t like being negative about a book, I think it is dire. But there are plenty of other readers who enjoyed it, even loved it, so I’m in the minority here. Don’t let me put you off reading it, if it appeals to you. This is just my opinion.

Description (Goodreads)

After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.
The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows… Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide comes in and all is revealed.

With a wicked wink to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Daisy Darker’s unforgettable twists will leave readers reeling.

My thoughts:

I’m going to be brief. The beginning, was promising and made me interested enough to read on as the Darker family reunited for their Nana’s 80th birthday party at Halloween. They all arrive, Daisy, her father Frank, her mother Nancy, her siblings Rose and Lily and her niece, Trixie. Nana lives on a tidal island, which means that when the tide was in they couldn’t leave, making this a variation on the ‘locked room murder’ mystery, which I generally like. So, I read on, as hour by hour, one by one they’re all found dead. There’s a poem written in chalk on the back wall of the kitchen about the Darker family. As each death occurs the lines about each person are struck through. The poem is pure doggerel and painful to read.

The story quickly began to drag for me and I got fed up with the repetition of how many hours were left until low tide. I got tired of the unlikable characters in this dysfunctional family, the platitudes scattered throughout the book and the increasingly stupid plot, culminating in a surreal supernatural conclusion. I was glad to get to the end.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books with My Favourite Colour on the Cover

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

The topic this week is Books with My Favourite Colour on the Cover. Here they are in various shades of red:

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz – a prime example of a puzzle-type of crime fiction combining elements of the vintage-style golden age crime novel with word-play and cryptic clues and allusions to Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s also a novel within a novel, with mystery piled upon mystery. I loved it.

The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz – the second book in the Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series in which Daniel Hawthorne, an ex-policeman, now a private investigator, who the police call in to help when they have a case they call a ‘sticker’. What I found particularly interesting was the way that Anthony Horowitz inserted himself into the fiction, recruited by Hawthorne to write a book about him and the cases he investigates.

Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz – the fifth literary whodunit in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, Detective Hawthorne is once again called upon to solve an unsolvable case—a gruesome murder in an idyllic gated community in which suspects abound, aided by Horowitz, as a fictional character.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel – historical fiction, the story of Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith, and his political rise, set against the background of Henry VIII’s England and his struggle with the Pope over his desire to marry Anne Boleyn. This is the first in the Wolf Hall trilogy, based on the life of Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485-1540), who rose from obscurity to become chief minister of King Henry VIII of England.

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie, a pre-Second World War crime fiction novel. It shows Agatha Christie’s interest in Egypt and archaeology and also reflects much of the flavour and social nuances of the pre-war period. In it she sets a puzzle to solve –  who shot Linnet Doyle, the wealthy American heiress? Although the novel is set in Egypt, an exotic location, it is essentially a ‘locked room mystery’.

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Chistie in which Poirot investigates the death of Simeon Lee, the head of the Lee family. None of his family like him, in fact most of them hate him and there are plenty of suspects for his murder. He is found dead with his throat cut in a locked room – locked from the inside.

Wild Fire by Ann Cleeves, the 8th and last book in Ann Cleeves’ Shetland series. I have loved this series ever since I read the first book, Raven Black, back in 2010. And because I began reading the books before they were televised my picture of Inspector Jimmy Perez is drawn from them rather than from the dramatisations. There are some significant changes  between the TV dramatisations and the books. I love the books, but still enjoyed the TV adaptions.

Red Bones by Ann Cleeves, the third book in her Shetland Quartet. It’s set on Whalsay, where two young archaeologists, excavating a site on Mima Williams’s land, discover human bones. They are sent away for testing – are they an ancient  find or are the bones more contemporary?

Blacklands by Belinda Bauer, crime fiction. This is an absolutely gripping battle of wits between Stephen aged twelve and serial killer Arnold Avery as they exchange letters about the whereabouts of Stephen’s uncle’s body.

The Sun Sister by Lucinda Riley – the only book on this list that I haven’t yet read. It’s the sixth book in The Sven Sisters series, the story of love and loss, inspired by the mythology of the famous star constellation. It’s one of my TBRs only because I’m reading the series in order and so far I’ve read the first three books.

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Books Releasing During the Second Half of 2024

Published on by Margaret27 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

The topic this week is Most Anticipated Books Releasing During the Second Half of 2024. I don’t own any of these books – but I do fancy reading them:

To be published 2 July 2024:

The Moonlight Market by Joanne Harris, a ‘modern fairy tale’ about a secret market that appears only in moonlight, where charms and spells are bought with memories.

To be published 18 July 2024:

A Refiner’s Fire by Donna Leon, the 33rd Commissario Guido Brunetti in which he confronts a present-day Venetian menace and the ghosts of a heroism that never was.

City of Woe by A.J. Mackenzie, the 2nd Simon Merrivale mystery. Florence, 1342. A city on the brink of chaos. Restored to favour at court, King’s Messenger Simon Merrivale accompanies an English delegation to Florence, to negotiate a loan to offset King Edward III’s chronic debt.

To be published 22 August 2024:

The Voyage Home by Pat Barker, the 3rd book in the Troy series, historical fiction, the follow-up to The Women of Troy and The Silence of the Girls.

To be published 29 August 2024:July 2024:

The Dark Wives by Ann Cleeves , Vera, Book 11, crime fiction, following on from The Rising Tide, which I loved.

Precipice by Robert Harris, historical fiction, summer 1914, 26-year-old Venetia Stanley – aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless – is having a love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age.

Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers, a novel about love, family and the joy of freedom.

To be published 12 September 2024:

The Black Loch by Peter May, the return of Fin Macleod, hero of the Lewis Trilogy. A body is found abandoned on a remote beach at the head of An Loch Dubh – the Black Loch – on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis.

To be published 10 October 2024:

Midnight and Blue by Ian Rankin, a John Rebus thriller. John Rebus spent his life as a detective putting Edinburgh’s most deadly criminals behind bars. Now, he’s joined them…

To be published 24 October 2024:

Silent Bones by Val McDermid. Book 8 in the Karen Pirie series. At the moment there is little information about this book, but as I’ve read a lot of the earlier books I’m expecting this one to be good. ‘The ingenious plot kept me guessing all the way through. It delivers on every level‘ MARIAN KEYES