Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!
The theme this month is a Freebie and I’m featuring books I’ve recently acquired and books I read before I started my blog, so I haven’t reviewed any of them and have linked the titles to the descriptions on Amazon.
‘Dr Federica is a human encyclopaedia when it comes to the science of food and health. This book contains the most critical answers to nutrition that we’ve all been searching for. A must read’– Steven Bartlett
‘A cracking plot, colourful local characters and descriptions of the hot, dry countryside so strong that you can almost see the heat haze and hear the cicadas – the perfect read to curl up with’― Guardian
R is for Road Rage by Ruth Rendell, crime fiction.
‘With immaculate control, Ruth Rendell builds a menacing crescendo of tension and horror that keeps you guessing right up to the brilliantly paced finale’― Good Housekeeping
Set in the small village of Mellstock in Thomas Hardy’s fictional Wessex, this is both a love story and a nostalgic study into the disappearance of old traditions and a move towards a more modern way of life. (Amazon)
‘This book explains antisemitism and the danger it poses—not just to Jews, but to all of us. It also reveals the breathtaking history and resilience of the Jewish people and the beauty of Jewish tradition’ – Van Jones, CNN Host and New York Times bestselling author
Returning to his stately English home from the chaos of World War I, a shell-shocked officer finds that he has left much of his memory in the front’s muddy trenches. (Amazon)
Published in 1937, this was Virginia Woolf’s most popular novel during her lifetime. It’s about one large upper-class London family, spanning three generations of the Pargiter family from the 1880s to the 1930s. (Amazon)
The next link up will be on March 7, 2026 take your pick from Pi Day, March Madness, or Green Covers.
Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!
The theme this month is New, interpreted as you wish: new releases, recent acquisitions, “new” in the title, etc, new-to-you books, new additions to your TBR list, recently published books, or something else that you connect with the word ‘New’.
These books are all fairly recent acquisitions, new-to-me (just one of these is by a new-to-me author) and are books I haven’t read. The links go to the descriptions on Amazon.
With classic recipes for every part of Christmas dinner, veggie alternatives, clever ways to use up all of those leftovers, top tips for cooking meat perfectly, and even recipes for edible gifts and Christmas cocktails – he really has thought of everything!
Like A.S. Byatt’s Booker Prize-winning novel, Possession, these two mesmerising novellas are set in the nineteenth century. In Morpho Eugenia, an explorer realises that the behaviour of the people around him is alarmingly similar to that of the insects he studies. In The Conjugal Angel, curious individuals – some fictional, others drawn from history – gather to connect with the spirit world. Throughout both, Byatt examines the eccentricities of the Victorian era, weaving fact and fiction, reality and romance, science and faith into a sumptuous, magical tapestry.
In Underland, Robert Macfarlane takes us on a journey into the worlds beneath our feet. From the ice-blue depths of Greenland’s glaciers, to the underground networks by which trees communicate, from Bronze Age burial chambers to the rock art of remote Arctic sea-caves, this is a deep-time voyage into the planet’s past and future. Global in its geography, gripping in its voice and haunting in its implications, Underland is a work of huge range and power, and a remarkable new chapter in Macfarlane’s long-term exploration of landscape and the human heart.
Mental health categories are shifting and expanding all the time, radically altering what we consider to be ‘normal’.
Genetic tests can now detect pathologies decades before people experience symptoms, and sometimes before they’re even born.
And increased health screening draws more and more people into believing they are unwell.
An accurate diagnosis can bring greater understanding and of course improved treatment. But many diagnoses aren’t as definitive as we think. And in some cases they risk turning healthy people into patients.
Drawing on the stories of real people, as well as decades of clinical practice and the latest medical research, Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan overturns long held assumptions and reframes how we think about illness and health.
Micah Mortimer measures out his days running errands for work, maintaining an impeccable cleaning regime and going for runs (7:15, every morning). He is in a long-term relationship with his woman friend Cassia, but they live apart. His carefully calibrated life is regular, steady, balanced.
But then the order of things starts to tilt. Cassia is threatened with eviction, and when a teenager shows up at Micah’s door claiming to be his son, he is confronted with another surprise he seems poorly equipped to handle.
Can Micah, a man to whom those around him always seem just out of reach, find a way back to his perfectly imperfect love story?
The Years follows the lives of the Pargiters, a large middle-class London family, from an uncertain spring in 1880 to a party on a summer evening in the 1930s. We see them each endure and remember heart-break, loss, radical change and stifling conformity, marriage and regret. Written in 1937, this was the most popular of Virginia Woolf’s novels during her lifetime, and is a powerful indictment of ‘Victorianism’ and its values.
The next link up will be on February 1, 2026 when the theme will be a Freebie.
Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!
This month’s theme is Giftable – Books you would give or would like to receive as a gift. I’ve chosen a medley of crime fiction novels for people new to crime fiction. These are by some of my favourite crime fiction authors and all are books I’ve really enjoyed.
D is for A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine, a pseudonym for Ruth Rendell. This is psychological crime fiction, you know right from the beginning who the murderer is, but not why or how the murder was committed. It’s not even clear immediately who the victim is.
E is for The Evidence is Against You by Gillian McAllister. A brilliant psychological thriller, this is a character-driven story of conflict, of broken lives, of the destruction of families, and of devastating trauma as secrets from the past come to the surface; a story full of twists and turns.
C is for Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie, one of the best of her books. In her Foreword she states that it is not the sort of detective story where the least likely person is the one to have committed the crime. This story has just four suspects and any one of them ‘given the right circumstances‘ might have committed the crime. She goes on to explain that there are four distinct types, the motives are peculiar to each person and each would employ a different method. It kept me guessing until the end
E is for Exit Lines by Reginald Hill, a Dalziel and Pascoe crime novel. There are three deaths in one night. All three victims were elderly and died violently and a drunken Dalziel is a suspect in one, as it seems he was driving the car that hit an elderly cyclist. The third victim was found dying, having fallen whilst crossing the recreation ground. The plot is intricate, with the separate cases all linked in one way or another.
M is for Murder by Matchlight by E C R Lorac, a Golden Age mystery featuring Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, a shrewd detective, not easily ruffled or fooled. It’s set in London in 1945. A murder takes place in Regents Park in the darkness of the blackout as the bombs are still falling, witnessed by Bruce Mallaig who heard it happen and briefly saw both the victim and his assailant by the light of a struck match. It is not only darkness that shrouds the mystery – who is the victim?
B is for The Blackhouse by Peter May, the first in the Lewis trilogy, set on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. There’s a murder and a mystery. Detective Fin Macleod is seconded from the Edinburgh police force to help with the investigation into the murder. As the story unfolds, the narrative splits in two – one, set in the present day, following the murder investigation and the other, as Fin recalls the events of his childhood on the island.
E is for Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin, book 20 in the Inspector Rebus series. He is on his second retirement, when DI Siobhan Clarke asks him to act in a ‘consultative capacity’. Clarke’s been investigating the death of a senior lawyer whose body was found along with a threatening note. Then Big Ger Cafferty, Rebus’s long-time nemesis, receives an identical note and a bullet through his window. This is a complex book, with more deaths, and many twists and turns.
R is for Raven Black by Ann Cleeves, first book in the Shetland series. A teenage girl’s body is found dead in the snow strangled with her own scarf, ravens circling above. Inspector Jimmy Perez, originally from Fair Isle, is part of the investigation team. It has a strong sense of location and a terrific atmosphere – the landscape, the sea, the weather, the circling ravens and the spectacle of Up Helly Aa (the Fire Festival), all anchor the story and bring the book to life.
The next link up will be on January 3, 2026 when the theme will be: New – interpret as you will (new releases, new to you, etc)
Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!
This month’s theme is Nostalgia! I’ve chosen books that I enjoyed and that bring back happy memories of the times I first read them, most of them pre-blog.
N is for The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco – It reminds me of the time when I worked in the Buckinghamshire County Archives Department many years ago and it was recommended to me by one of the archivists. Historical fiction set in 14th century Italy about Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate.
O is for The October Horse by Colleen McCullough – I loved her series of books, The Masters of Rome. This one is the final book in the series set in the last days of the Roman Republic in 48 BC when Julius Caesar was in the prime of his life and at the height of his powers.
V is for The Verneys by Adrian Tinniswood – another book from the time I was working in the County Archives Department. The Verneys are a local family, who lived at Claydon House not far from where I used to live. The sub-title is A true story of love, war and madness in seventeenth century England, which sums up the book.
E is for Empire of the Sun by J G Ballard – because it was one of the books I read and loved for my Open University degree, a semi-autobiographical novel, set during the Second World War, the novel draws on Ballard’s childhood experience in the Japanese-controlled Lunghua civilian internment camp in China.
M is for Mary Anne by Daphne du Maurier, historical fiction set during the Napoleonic Wars and based on du Maurier’s own great-great-grandmother. I still have the paperback copy I read when I was a teenager and avidly read Du Maurier’s books.
B is for By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie, the first Tommy and Tuppence story I read. Outwardly they are an ordinary couple, but appearances are deceptive, they are private detectives. In this book they investigate events in a gothic nursing home where Tommy’s elderly Aunt Ada had died.
E is for Enduring Love by Ian McEwan I read this many years ago. One windy spring day in the Chilterns Joe Rose’s calm, organised life and his love for his wife is shattered by a ballooning accident.
R is for Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier There is something special about reading a book when you know the characters and what happens to them and yet at the same time you want it to turn out differently – to prevent the disaster happening, and to help them understand where they’re going wrong. I first read it as a young teenager and was instantly captivated by the story. It asks just who was Rebecca, what was she really like and what lead to her death.
The next link up will be on December 6, 2026 when the theme will be: Giftable – Books you would give or would like to receive as a gift.
Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!
This month’s theme is Trick or Treat: books that you feel strongly about, whether positively or negatively.
I don’t like tricks so my books are all books I’ve enjoyed – real treats!
Reginald Hill’s 17th Dalziel and Pascoe novel, set in a Yorkshire village, Dendale. Three little girls had gone missing from the village one summer. Their bodies were never found, and the best suspect, a strange lad named Benny Lightfoot, was held for a time, then released. Fifteen years later another little girl, Lorraine, aged seven went out for a walk one morning with her dog before her parents got up and didn’t return home, reviving memories of the missing children from fifteen years earlier. It was a case that has haunted Dalziel.
This book is tightly plotted with many twists that made me change my mind so many times I gave up trying to work out who the murderer was and just read for the pleasure of reading. Hill’s descriptive writing is rich and full of imagery. The main characters are fully rounded people and the supporting cast are believable personalities, often described with wry humour.
Mirren is looking for a copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, a particular one that had belonged to her Great Aunt Violet. It was a special edition, with hand-drawn plates by Aubrey Beardsley and now Great Aunt Violet, who is in hospital seriously ill would love to see the book for Christmas. I loved that book as a child, so this is what made the story irresistible for me. She went to the book town Hay-on-Wye, bookshops in Edinburgh and a secondhand bookshop in Northumberland that sounds very like Barter Books in Alnwick, my favourite bookshop. She bumps into mysterious, charming Theo, who, unbeknownst to her, is searching for the same book for reasons of his own…
It was a real treat to read Tamburlaine Must Die, a short book of only 140 pages, that I read in a day. Weaving together fact and fiction and set in 1593 this is a tense, dramatic story of the last days of Christopher Marlowe, playwright, poet and spy. Accused of heresy and atheism, his death is a mystery, although conjecture and rumours abound. It has an immediacy, that drew me into the late Elizabethan world.
I loved the spooky, tense atmosphere and as soon as I started reading it knew I was going to enjoy this book. The settings are vividly described, the characters come across as real people, and the plot is amazing, multi- layered, with plenty of suspects for the murder and numerous twists and turns to throw me off the scent. For quite a while you don’t even know the name of the victim, who was found in the woods, called ‘Sally in the Wood’. It’s a police procedural centred on Ellie, a pupil at the private school, where her mother Rachel works as the school counsellor and her father, Ben, a detective sergeant who is on the investigation team
I loved this book. Barbara Kingsolver writes in such a way that I can easily visualise the scenes, beginning with the opening paragraph in which she describes a tractor tire blowing up, flinging a man up in the air and throwing him over the top of a Standard Oil sign. Taylor (originally called Marietta/Missy) grew up in rural Kentucky. She left home when she had saved enough to buy a car, an old VW. She changed her name to Taylor after the first place where she ran out of petrol, which just happened to be Taylorville. She drove on until the car broke down in the middle of nowhere, on land owned by the Cherokee tribe. And it was there at a garage that an Indian woman abandoned a baby girl in Taylor’s car – she called the baby, Turtle.
This the story of Morgan’s voyage on the Titanic, divided into four days as he tells it. It’s mainly about the young rich people as they drink and party their way across the Atlantic. Morgan is part of the crowd but he is not rich, and although he has connections, he’s a young American who has to earn his living. Day four is the day the Titanic sank. I could easily imagine what it was like to be a passenger, people rushing about the boat, trying to get on the lifeboats and being separated from friends and family. And the final scenes bring home the reality that it really was a case of every man for himself with the callous attitude towards the steerage passengers, the lack of lifeboats and the disregard of the ice warnings. And so the boat described as unsinkable, sank.
R is for Raven Black by Ann Cleeves, the first in her Shetland series, crime novels set in the Shetland Islands, to the north of mainland Scotland. This is a murder mystery investigated by Inspector Jimmy Perez.
It begins on New Year’s Eve as Magnus Tait is seeing the new year in on his own, until two teenage girls knock on his door to wish him a Happy New Year. A few days later one of the girls is found dead in the snow not far from Magnus’s house, strangled with her own scarf.
The book has a strong sense of location and a terrific atmosphere – the landscape, the sea, the weather, the circling ravens and the spectacle of Up Helly Aa (the Fire Festival), all anchor the story and bring the book to life.
Upcoming Themes
November 1: Nostalgia
December 6: Giftable – Books you would give or would like to receive as a gift
January 3, 2026: New Books – Ones you have received recently or are looking forward to reading or seeing published this year
Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!
The optional theme this month, which is Something to Savour. I’m including books that have been on my TBR a long time, some of them are also long books, some very long books. Some of them I’ve had, and still haven’t read, for very many years. I began cataloguing my books in 2007 on LibraryThing, so the books listed for 2007 are books I’d already acquired before then.
These are books that I’d almost forgotten about, some double shelved and so hidden behind others. Some I think I haven’t read as there are so long. The links in the titles of each book go to Amazon UK.
On an ill-fated art expedition of the Southern Shan State in Burma, eleven Americans leave their Floating Island Resort for a Christmas morning tour – and disappear. Through the twists of fate, curses and just plain human error, they find themselves deep in the Burma jungle, where they encounter a tribe awaiting the return of the leader and the mythical book of wisdom that will protect them from the ravages and destruction of the Myanmar military regime.
High-spirited, witty and passionate, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote some of the most enduring novels of the Victorian age, including Mary Barton, North and South and Wives and Daughters. This biography traces Elizabeth’s youth in rural Knutsford, her married years in the tension-ridden city of Manchester and her wide network of friends in London, Europe and America. Standing as a figure caught up in the religious and political radicalism of nineteenth century Britain, the book looks at how Elizabeth observed, from her Manchester home, the brutal but transforming impact of industry, enjoying a social and family life, but distracted by her need to write down the truth of what she saw.
New York, 1945 – Sara Smythe, a young, beautiful and intelligent woman, ready to make her own way in the big city attends her brothers Thanksgiving Eve party. As the party gets into full swing, in walks Jack Malone, a US Army journalist back from a defeated Germany and a man unlike any Sara has ever met before – one who is destined to change Sara’s future forever.
But finding love isn’t the same as finding happiness – as Sara and Jack soon find out. In post-war America chance meetings aren’t always as they seem, and people’s choices can often have profound repercussions. Sara and Jack find they are subject to forces beyond their control and that their destinies are formed by more than just circumstance. In this world of intrigue and emotional conflict, Sara must fight to survive -against Jack, as much as for him.
In this mesmerising tale of longing and betrayal, The Pursuit of Happiness is a great tragic love story; a tale of divided loyalties, decisive moral choices, and the random workings of destiny.
Roger Dykmans, a university student, is living with his brother Hans, an international emissary who’s secretly working against the Nazis. As time goes by, Roger finds himself increasingly drawn to Magda, Hans’ Jewish wife, and soon they are involved in a passionate love affair. But their secret world is turned upside down when Magda and her young daughter, Anna, are arrested by the Nazis. The Gestapo make a deal with Roger: if he hands over information about Hans’ operations, they’ll set Magda and Anna free. Suddenly, Roger is faced with an impossible decision – should he betray his brother to save the woman they both love?
Spanning decades and continents, The Things We Cherished explores the strength of true love under the worst of circumstances.
In 604 AD, Edwin, the deposed king of Northumbria, seeks refuge at the court of King Raedwald of East Anglia. But Raedwald is urged to kill his guest by Aethelfrith, Edwin’s usurper. As Edwin walks by the shore, alone and at bay, he is confronted by a mysterious figure–the missionary Paulinus– who prophesies that he will become High King of Britain. It is a turning point.
Through battles and astute political alliances Edwin rises to great power, in the process marrying the Kentish princess Aethelburh. As part of the marriage contract the princess is allowed to retain her Christian faith. But, in these times, to be a king is not a recipe for a long life.
This turbulent and tormented period in British history sees the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon settlers who have forced their way on to British shores over previous centuries, arriving first to pillage, then to farm and trade–and to come to terms with the faith of the Celtic tribes they have driven out.
M is for The Master Bedroom by Tessa Hadley – 352 pages, a TBR since 2008.
Kate Flynn has always been a clever girl, brought up to believe in herself as something special. Now Kate is forty-three and has given up her university career in London to come home and look after her mother at Firenze, their big house by a lake in Cardiff. When Kate meets David Roberts, a friend from the old days, she begins to obsess about him: she knows it’s because she’s bored and hasn’t got anything else to do, but she can’t stop.
Adapting to a new way of life, the connections Kate forges in her new home are to have painful consequences, as the past begins to cast its long shadow over the present…
B is for Blood Hunt by Ian Rankin, writing as Jack Harvey – 432 pages, a TBR since 2010
It begins with a phone call. Gordon Reeve’s brother has been found dead in his car in San Diego. The car was locked from the inside, a gun was in his hand. In the US to identify the body Gordon realises that his brother has been murdered. What’s more, it’s soon obvious that his own life is in danger.
Once back in Scotland he finds out his home has been bugged by professionals. But Reeve is a professional too. Ex-SAS, he was half of a two-man unit with someone he came to fear, then to hate. It looks like his nemesis is back…
E is for An Equal Music by Vikram Seth – 496 pages, a TBR since 2013.
A chance sighting on a bus; a letter which should never have been read; a pianist with a secret that touches the heart of her music . . . AN EQUAL MUSIC is a book about love, about the love of a woman lost and found and lost again; it is a book about music and how the love of music can run like a passionate fugue through a life. It is the story of Michael, of Julia, and of the love that binds them.
R is for Ralph’s Party by Lisa Jewell – 368 pages, a TBR before 2007.
Meet the residents of 31 Alamanac Road . . .
Ralph and Smith are flatmates and best mates. Nothing can come between them – until the gorgeous Jemima moves in. They’re both falling for her, but which one of them does Jem want?
Upstairs, Karl and Siobhan are happily unmarried and have been for fifteen years – until Cheri, in the flat above, fixes her sights on Karl. Why should a little problem like his girlfriend get in her way?
Sooner or later it’s all going to come to a head – and what better place for tears and laughter, break ups and make ups than Ralph’s party?
BooksPlease 