Category: spell the month in books

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 Winter, Christmas, or Christian themes… I’ve chosen mainly mystery stories set at Christmas.

The links in the titles of each book go to my posts on the books, where they exist, or to Amazon, or Goodreads for the books I haven’t read.

D is for Dalziel and Pascoe Hunt the Christmas Killer & Other Stories by Reginald Hill – a TBR

A vicar nailed to a tree in Yorkshire.
The theft of a priceless artefact during a fire.
A detective forced to tell the truth for 24 hours.
A body hidden in a basement.

From the restless streets of London to the wilds of the Lake District, displaying all his trademark humour, playfulness and clever plotting, this landmark collection brings together the very best of Reginald Hill’s short stories for the first time, complete with a foreword from Val McDermid. (Goodreads)

E is for An English Christmas by John Julius Norwich – a TBR

The snow is thick, the phone line is down, and no one is getting in or out of Warbeck Hall. With friends and family gathered round the fire, all should be set for a perfect Christmas, but as the bells chime midnight, a mysterious murder takes place.
Who can be responsible? The scorned young lover? The lord’s passed-over cousin? The social climbing politician’s wife? The Czech history professor? The obsequious butler? And perhaps the real question is: can any of them survive long enough to tell the tale? (Amazon)

C is for  A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – I’ve read this many times over the years since I was about 10!

A Christmas Carol tells the story of a bitter old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation into a gentler, kindlier man after visitations by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.

The book was written at a time when the British were examining and exploring Christmas traditions from the past as well as new customs such as Christmas cards and Christmas trees. Carol singing took a new lease of life during this time. Dickens’ sources for the tale appear to be many and varied, but are, principally, the humiliating experiences of his childhood, his sympathy for the poor, and various Christmas stories and fairy tales. (From Amazon)

E is for Edie Kiglatuk’s Christmas by  M. J. McGrath – a TBR.

The shortest day of the year didn’t count for much up on Ellesmere Island. By the time 21 December arrived, the sun hadn’t come up for two months and it would be another two before it managed to scramble over the High Arctic horizon. Objects, animals and even people could disappear during the Great Dark without anyone much noticing. Which was why no one reported Tommy Qataq missing . . .

Christmas is fast approaching on Ellesmere Island, in the vast frozen landscape of the High Arctic, and half Inuit ex polar bear hunter Edie Kiglatuk is drawn into a mystery when a young man dies in suspicious circumstances. (Amazon)

M is for A Maigret Christmas by Georges Simenon (my review)

It’s set in Paris on Christmas Day – Inspector Maigret has the day off. Madame Martin and Mademoiselle Doncoeur, who live in the apartment opposite, visit him to tell him that Colette, a little girl staying with her aunt and uncle, Madame Martin and her husband, had woken in the night. She said she had seen Father Christmas in her room, making a hole in the floor. He gave her a present, a big doll and then held up his finger to his lips as he left. But who was he and why was he trying to take up the floorboards?

B is for The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries: 100 of the Very Best Yuletide Whodunnits edited by Otto Penzler – I’ve read several of these stories and will be reading more this Christmas.

Festive felonies, unscrupulous santas, deadly puddings, and misdemeanors under the mistletoe…

From Victorian detective stories to modern mysteries, police procedurals to pulp fiction, comic gems to cozy crime, there’s something for every festive mood in this must-read collection starring sixty of the world’s favourite detectives. (Amazon)

E is for An English Murder: The Golden Age Classic Christmas Mystery by Cyril Hare – a TBR

The snow is thick, the phone line is down, and no one is getting in or out of Warbeck Hall. With friends and family gathered round the fire, all should be set for a perfect Christmas, but as the bells chime midnight, a mysterious murder takes place.
Who can be responsible? The scorned young lover? The lord’s passed-over cousin? The social climbing politician’s wife? The Czech history professor? The obsequious butler? And perhaps the real question is: can any of them survive long enough to tell the tale? (Amazon)

R is for Ryan’s Christmas: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 15) by L J Ross – a TBR.

Christmas can be murder…

After a busy year fighting crime, DCI Ryan and his team of murder detectives are enjoying a festive season of goodwill, mulled wine and, in the case of DS Phillips, a stottie cake or two—that is, until a freak snowstorm forces their car off the main road and into the remote heart of Northumberland. Their Christmas spirit is soon tested when they’re forced to find shelter inside England’s most haunted castle, where they’re the uninvited guests at a ‘Candlelit Ghost Hunt’. It’s all fun and games—until one of the guests is murdered. It seems no mortal hand could have committed the crime, so Ryan and Co. must face the spectres living inside the castle walls to uncover the grisly truth, before another ghost joins their number…

Murder and mystery are peppered with romance and humour in this fast-paced crime whodunnit set amidst the spectacular Northumbrian landscape. (Amazon)

The next link up will be on January 6, 2024 when the theme will be New (interpret as you wish: new releases, recent acquisitions, “new” in the title, 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!

The theme this month is Books about music/musicians. At first I thought I had so few books about music and musicians I wouldn’t use this theme, but when I checked I found that I’d read two with another two books in my TBRs waiting to be read. The rest I haven’t read.

The links in the titles of each book go to my posts on the books, where they exist, or to Amazon, or Goodreads for the books I haven’t read.

N is for Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro,  a quintet of stories exploring the themes of love, music and the passing of time. All have narrators who are musicians. These stories are full of longing and regret, something which I think Ishiguro does well. My favourite story is Nocturne, in which the narrator, a saxophonist whose manager has demanded he get plastic surgery in order to compete with less proficient but handsomer players, rooms next to a wealthy American woman while he is healing from his surgery. Their friendship results in absurdity, hilarity, and a surprisingly tender and devastating conclusion.

O is for Orfeo by Richard Powers

In Orfeo, composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab—the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to find music in surprising patterns—has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security. Panicked by the raid, Els turns fugitive and hatches a plan to transform this disastrous collision with the security state into an unforgettable work of art that will reawaken its audience to the sounds all around it. ((Goodreads)

V is for  A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

 A book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to Powerpoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both-and escape the merciless progress of time-in the transporting realms of art and music. (taken from Amazon uk)

E is for An Equal Music by Vikram Seth, one of my TBRs.

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 … this 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. (from Amazon UK)

M is for The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce, one of my TBRs.

1988. Frank owns a music shop. It is jam-packed with records of every speed, size and genre. Classical, jazz, punk – as long as it’s vinyl he sells it. Day after day Frank finds his customers the music they need. Then into his life walks Ilse Brauchmann. lse asks Frank to teach her about music. His instinct is to turn and run. And yet he is drawn to this strangely still, mysterious woman with her pea-green coat and her eyes as black as vinyl. But Ilse is not what she seems. And Frank has old wounds that threaten to re-open and a past he will never leave behind . (Amazon UK)

B is for Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, Opera is a centralising theme on many levels throughout the story; the operatic term bel canto literally means ‘beautiful singing.’

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country’s vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera’s most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. (from Goodreads)

E is for Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan

Lost and alone in a forbidden forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and suddenly finds himself entwined in a puzzling quest involving a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica. Decades later, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California each, in turn, become interwoven when the very same harmonica lands in their lives.(from Goodreads)

R is for The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross

A sweeping history of twentieth-century classical music, winner of the Guardian First Book Award, is a gripping account of a musical revolution.

The landscape of twentieth-century classical music is a wild one: this was a period in which music fragmented into apparently divergent strands, each influenced by its own composers, performers and musical innovations. In this comprehensive tour, Alex Ross, music critic for the ‘New Yorker’, explores the people and places that shaped musical development: Adams to Zweig, Brahms to Björk, pre-First World War Vienna to ‘Nixon in China’.

Above all, this unique portrait of an exceptional era weaves together art, politics and cultural history to show how twentieth-century classical music was both a symptom and a source of immense social change. (Amazon UK)

The next link up will be on December 2, 2023 when the theme will be: Winter, Christmas, or Christian themes.

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 Title contains a number or colour – I’ve chosen a mix of numbers and colours.

The links in the titles of each book go to my posts on the books – where they exist.

O is for One Two Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot and Inspector Japp investigate the apparent suicide of Mr Morley, Poirot’s Harley Street dentist, who was found dead in his surgery, shot through the head and with a pistol in his hand. This really is a most complicated plot, and even though the facts are clearly presented and I was on the lookout for clues, Agatha Christie, once again fooled me. Not all the characters are who they purport to be and the involvement of international politics and intrigue doesn’t help in unravelling the puzzle.

Written in 1939, this book reflects the economic and political conditions of the time, with  a definite pre-war atmosphere of a world on the brink of war. But Poirot is concerned with the truth, with the importance of the lives of each individual, no matter how ordinary or insignificant they may seem.

C is for The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon

Historical fiction set in London in 1924, with Britain still coming to terms with the aftermath of the First World War. Evelyn Gifford, one of the few pioneer female lawyers, lives at home with her mother, aunt and grandmother, still mourning the death of her brother James in the trenches. Evelyn is woken in the early hours one morning to find Meredith and her child, Edmund, aged 6 on the doorstep, claiming that Edmund is James’s son. Evelyn and the other women are thrown into confusion as Meredith upsets their memories of James.

T is for Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer

Moving at a fast pace the book follows the events during the thirteen hours from 05:36 when Rachel, a young American girl is running for her life up the steep slope of Lion’s Head in Capetown.  The body of another American girl is found outside the Lutheran church in Long Street. Her throat slit had been slit. An hour or so later Alexandra Barnard, a former singing star and an alcoholic, wakes from a drunken stupor to find the dead body of her husband, a record producer, lying on the floor opposite her and his pistol lying next to her.DI Benny Griessel is mentoring two inexperienced detectives who are investigating these crimes.

The two cases move along parallel to each other, keeping me desperate to know what happened next in both. The book also reflects the racial tension in the ‘new South Africa’ with its mix of white, coloured and black South Africans. There is a strong sense of location, not just from the cultural aspect but also geographical because although I know nothing about Capetown I had no difficulty in visualising the scenes from Meyer’s descriptions.

O is for One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes

This is a beautiful, poetic novel about England in 1946 after the Second World War had ended. It was written in 1946 and published in 1947 and although it recalls an England that had disappeared with the war it also looks forward with optimism to the future. It’s a novel vividly evoking life in the post-war period. I was fascinated and drawn into this book right from the start. Part of my fascination was because it made me think of what life was like for my parents, picking up their lives together after the war and part was because of the wonderful imagery and sense of time and place.

B is for The Black Book by Ian Rankin, the fifth Inspector Rebus novel.

When a close colleague is brutally attacked, Inspector John Rebus is drawn into a case involving a hotel fire, an unidentified body, and a long forgotten night of terror and murder.

Pursued by dangerous ghosts and tormented by the coded secrets of his colleague’s notebook, Rebus must piece together the most complex and confusing of jigsaws.

But not everyone wants the puzzle solved – perhaps not even Rebus himself…

E is for Eight Months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantel

Life in Saudi Arabia seen through the eyes of Frances, the wife of an ex-pat British engineer. The streets are not a woman’s territory; confined in her flat, she finds her sense of self begins to dissolve. This was her fourth novel, inspired by the four years she lived in Jeddah.

The regime is corrupt and harsh, the expatriates are hard-drinking money-grubbers, and her Muslim neighbours are secretive, watchful. The streets are not a woman’s territory; confined in her flat, she finds her sense of self begin to dissolve. She hears whispers, sounds of distress from the ’empty’ flat above her head. She has only rumours, no facts to hang on to, and no one with whom to share her creeping unease. As her days empty of certainty and purpose, her life becomes a blank – waiting to be filled by violence and disaster.

R is for Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong, the first book featuring Chief Inspector Chen.

Chen is a reluctant policeman, he has a degree in  English literature and is a published poet and translator. This is as much historical fiction as it is crime fiction. There is so much in it about China, its culture and its history before 1990 – the Communist regime and then the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s – as well as the changes brought about in the 1990s after the massacre of Tiananmen Square.

It’s a fascinating book on several levels and one I enjoyed reading. I liked the characterisation, Chen and Yu in particular are clearly drawn, distinctive characters, and the setting is superb. I also liked the many descriptions of food.

The next link up will be on November 4, 2023 with the theme: Books about music/musicians.

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 From your TBR list.

The links in the titles of each book go to Amazon UK and the descriptions are from Amazon UK, Goodreads, or LibraryThing.

S is for Small Wars by Sadie Jones

Set on the colonial, war-torn island of Cyprus in 1956, Jones tells the story of a young solider, Hal Treherne, and the effects of this “small war” on him, his wife, Clara, and their family. Reminiscent of classic tales of love and war such as The English Patient and Atonement, Jones’s gripping novel also calls to mind the master works of Virginia Woolf and their portrayal of the quiet desperation of a marriage in crisis. Small Wars is at once a deeply emotional, meticulously researched work of historical fiction and a profound meditation on war-time atrocities committed both on and off the battlefield.

E is for End in Tears by Ruth Rendell,

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.

P is for The Pursuit of Happiness by Douglas Kennedy

Manhattan, Thanksgiving Eve, 1945. The war was over, and Eric Smythe’s party was in full swing. All his clever Greenwich Village friends were there. So too was his sister Sara — an independent, canny young woman, starting to make her way in the big city. And then in walked a gatecrasher, Jack Malone — a U. S. Army journalist just back from a defeated Germany, and a man whose world-view did not tally with that of Eric and his friends. Set amidst the dynamic optimism of postwar New York and the subsequent nightmare of the McCarthy witch-hunts, The Pursuit of Happiness is a great tragic love story; a tale of divided loyalties, decisive moral choices, and the random workings of destiny.

T is for Thirteen by P D James, It’s the fifth book in the Eddie Flynn series of crime thrillers.

It’s the murder trial of the century. And Joshua Kane has killed to get the best seat in the house and to be sure the wrong man goes down for the crime. Because this time, the killer isn’t on trial. He’s on the jury.
But there’s someone on his tail. Former-conman-turned-criminal-defense-attorney Eddie Flynn doesn’t believe that his movie-star client killed two people. He suspects that the real killer is closer than they think, but who would guess just how close?

E is for Every Man For Himself by Beryl Bainbridge

For the four fraught, mysterious days of her doomed maiden voyage in 1912, the Titanic sails towards New York, glittering with luxury, freighted with millionaires and hopefuls. In her labyrinthine passageways the last, secret hours of a small group of passengers are played out, their fate sealed in prose of startling, sublime beauty, as Beryl Bainbridge’s haunting masterpiece moves inexorably to its known and terrible end.

M is for The Master Bedroom by Tessa Hadley

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 Broadchurch by Erin Kelly

It’s a hot July morning in the Dorset town of Broadchurch when Beth Latimer realises that her eleven-year-old son, Danny, is missing. As Beth searches desperately for her boy, her best friend, local police officer DS Ellie Miller, arrives at work to find that the promotion she was promised has been given to disreputable Scottish outsider DI Alec Hardy.

When Danny’s body is found on the beach Ellie must put her feelings aside as she works with DI Hardy to solve the mystery of Danny’s death. As the case becomes a murder investigation the news hits the national press, jolting sleepy Broadchurch into the national spotlight.

As the town’s secrets begin to unravel, members of this tight-knit community begin to consider those in their midst. Right now it’s impossible to know who to trust…

E is for The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan

Gwenni Morgan is not like any other girl in this small Welsh town. Inquisitive, bookish and full of spirit, she can fly in her sleep and loves playing detective. So when a neighbour mysteriously vanishes, and no one seems to be asking the right questions, Gwenni decides to conduct her own investigation.

Mari Strachan’s unforgettable novel was one of the most acclaimed and successful debuts of 2009. It is a heart-breaking and hugely enjoyable story.

R is for Rowan’s Well by C J Carter

Who’s the one person you’d trust with your life? Your husband? Your best friend? Your father? Think again…
Mark Strachan has everything: good looks, doting wife, great job, loyal best friend… and a hidden flaw that goes to his very core. A deep secret he’ll wreck lives to protect.
At Rowan’s Well, a house full of secrets on North Yorkshire’s rugged cliffs, Mark will force his family, and best friend Will, to face the consequences of trusting a man like him.
Mark is about to change all their lives forever. He’s going to commit a crime so shocking there’ll be no going back.
Unless someone can stop him.

The next link up will be on October 7, 2023 when the theme will be: Title contains a number or color

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the second 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 Series – Books that are part of a series, or the name of the series itself.

These are all books I’ve enjoyed – the links to my reviews are in the titles of each book.

A is for Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie, a Poirot murder mystery.

This is set in the Middle East, where the Boyntons and Dr Gerard are travelling through the Judean desert to Petra. Also in the group are Jonathan Cope, a family friend, Sarah King, a newly qualified doctor, Lady Westholme, a member of Parliament and Miss Annabel Pierce, a former nursery governess. The beginning of the book is taken up with relating their journey to Petra and the complicated relationships between the characters. It comes to a climax when Mrs Boynton is found dead.

This is a quick, easy read, with a lot of dialogue in a relatively short book (less than 200 pages) in which Poirot, through questions, analysis and psychological reasoning, identifies the murderer.

U is for Underworld by Reginald Hill, the 10th Dalziel and Pascoe novel, set in the small mining town of Burrthorpe (a fictional town) in Yorkshire. There are two mysteries facing Dalziel and Pascoe. One is current when a man is found dead in the mine, and the other is a case that had appeared to have been resolved several years earlier, when Tracy Pedley, a young girl disappeared. Her body was never discovered.

Dalziel brings a touch of humour to the book as his down to earth approach to the miners gets more results than Pascoe’s middle class attempts to understand them.

G is for Gallows Court by Martin Edwards, the first in the Rachel Savernake Golden Age Mystery series. It’s set in London in 1930. A headless corpse; an apparent suicide in a locked room; a man burned alive during an illusionist’s show in front of thousands of people. Scotland Yard is baffled by the sequence of ghastly murders unfolding across the city and at the centre of it all is mysterious heiress Rachel Savernake. Daughter of a grand judge, Rachel is as glamorous as she is elusive.

U is for An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P D James, the first in the Cordelia Gray series. This is Cordelia’s first assignment on her own after the suicide of Bernie Pryde, her partner in Pryde’s Detective Agency. People assume she won’t carry on the Agency on her own as, of course, “it isn’t a suitable job for a woman”. Cordelia has other ideas and takes on an assignment from Sir Ronald Callander, a famous scientist, to investigate the death of his son, Mark who had been found hanged in suspicious circumstances. It soon becomes clear to her that this is not suicide, but something much more sinister – murder. 

S is for The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz, the second Hawthorne book. Daniel Hawthorne is an ex-policeman, now a private investigator, who the police call in to help when they have a case they call a ‘sticker’. This is a clever and a different type of murder mystery in which Horowitz, himself plays a major role, recruited by Hawthorne to write books about him and the cases he investigates. Divorce lawyer When Richard Pryce is found dead in his home, there are several clues and many suspects in this entertaining and perplexing murder mystery.

T is for Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham, the first book in the Fiona Griffiths crime thriller series. Fiona is Welsh, single and at the start of the book is aged 26, being interviewed for a job with the South Wales Police in Cardiff. Fiona does not play by the rules and when she is asked to help with the investigation of the brutal murders of Janet Mancini, a part-time prostitute, and April, Janet’s 6 year old daughter she doesn’t hesitate to use her initiative. 

But there is a problem as she has a two year gap in her CV around the time of her A Levels and she doesn’t want to talk about it. Fiona is desperate to put the past behind her but as more gruesome killings follow, the case leads her inexorably back into those dark places in her own mind.

The next link up will be on September 2, 2023 when the theme will be: From your TBR list.

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the second 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 Red, White, and/or Blue on the cover or in the title. I’m featuring two books with predominantly blue covers and two with white covers.

These are all books I’ve enjoyed – the links to my reviews are in the titles of each book.

J is for The Jigsaw Maker by Adrienne Dines

Lizzie Flynn has a shop in a village near Kilkenny, a sort of knick-knack shop selling a variety of goods, cards, flower arrangements, home-made sweets, that needs brightening up and bringing up to date. Her settled life is turned upside down with the arrival of the Jigsaw Maker – Jim Nealon, a stranger who walks into her shop one morning and asks her to sell his beautiful jigsaws.

This is a beautifully written book, one with pace and tension in just the right places. There are plenty of repressed secrets that come to the surface as Lizzie helps Jim by writing about the scenes in his jigsaws. But who is Jim? Why has he come to the village and why did he ask Lizzie in particular to help him?

U is for The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

This tells the story of Her Majesty, not named, but she has dogs, and is married to a duke. She comes across the travelling library, thanks to the dogs, parked next to the bins outside one of the kitchen doors at Buckingham Palace and ends up borrowing a book to save the driver/librarian’s embarrassment.

She borrows books regularly and this changes her life. This little book is full of interesting ideas about books and the nature of reading and society. As the Queen expands her range she realises that ‘Books did not care who was reading them, or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth: letters a republic.’

L is for Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Ursula Todd was born on 11 February 1910 at Fox Corner during a wild snowstorm. But in the course of the book Ursula dies many deaths and there are several different versions that her life takes over the course of the twentieth century – through both World Wars and beyond. Each time as she approaches death she experiences a vague unease, before the darkness falls. As she grows older she experiences different outcomes to the events that lead up to that feeling of unease, and finds that sometimes she can prevent the darkness from falling. By the end of the book I had a complete picture of a life lived to the full.

The whole book is full of ‘what ifs’ – what if this character had behaved differently, what if that had not happened, what if you’d made a different choice of subject to study or a different career, or married a different person?  

Y is for The Year Without Summer by Guinevere Glasfurd

This is a most remarkable book, telling how the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora on Sumbawa Island in Indonesia in 1815 had a profound and far reaching impact on the world. It led to sudden cooling across the northern hemisphere, crop failures, famine and social unrest in the following year, which became known as The Year Without Summer and in North America as Eighteen hundred and froze to death. But it wasn’t until the mid twentieth century that volcanic eruptions were shown to affect climate change.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It’s more like a collection of short stories than a novel, but it works very well for me, highlighting the global connections. It is of course about climate change, showing the far-reaching effects of the Tambora eruption, which weren’t limited to 1815 and 1816. It led to hardships in 1817 and 1818 with the outbreak of cholera and typhoid epidemics triggered by the failure of monsoons.

The next link up will be on August 5, 2023 when the theme will be Series – Books that are part of a series, or the name of the series itself.