Stacking the Shelves – BooksPlease

Adding to the TBRs

Published on May 7, 2016 by Margaret4 Comments

As usual I am behind with writing about the books I’ve read, with four to do. I’m in the middle of writing about The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf, but it is taking me longer than I’d hoped and I haven’t finished my post yet.

So, here’s a post about the four books I’ve added to my TBRs this week:

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Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves. This means you can include ‘˜real’ and ‘˜virtual’ books (ie physical and ebooks) you’ve bought, books you’ve borrowed from friends or the library, review books, and gifts.

I’ve added one paperback and three e-books:

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. A friend recommended this book to me and I was delighted to see that it is one of the Kindle Daily Deals this morning. It’s steam-punk, a genre completely new to me! It is described as:

Utterly beguiling, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street blends historical events with dazzling flights of fancy to plunge readers into a strange and magical past, where time, destiny, genius ? and a clockwork octopus ? collide.

I hope I’ll like it as much as my friend did!

John Le CarrÃ©: the Biography by Adam Sisman, because I want to know more about the author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Night Manager and his other espionage books. During the 1950s and the 1960s, he worked for the Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service, and began writing novels under a pen name. This is the definitive biography of a major writer, described by Ian McEwan as ‘perhaps the most significant novelist of the second half of the twentieth century in Britain’.

Time Heals No Wounds: a Baltic Sea crime novel by Hendrick Falkenberg. This is one of the free books for Amazon Prime members in May. German author Hendrik Falkenberg studied sports management and works in sports broadcasting. The magical allure that the sea holds for him comes alive in his stories, which are set on the north German coast. His first book, Die Zeit heilt keine Wunden (Time Heals No Wounds), was a #1 Kindle bestseller in Germany and has been translated for the first time into English.

And lastly, HeavenAli held a draw to give away some of Virginia Woolf’s books and I’m delighted that I won Orlando in the giveaway.

Orlando tells the tale of an extraordinary individual who lives through centuries of English history, first as a man, then as a woman; of his/her encounters with queens, kings, novelists, playwrights, and poets, and of his/her struggle to find fame and immortality not through actions, but through the written word. At its heart are the life and works of Woolf’s friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, and Knole, the historic home of the Sackvilles. But as well as being a love letter to Vita, Orlando mocks the conventions of biography and history, teases the pretensions of contemporary men of letters, and wryly examines sexual double standards.

I’m looking forward to reading these books in the coming months!

Stacking the Shelves: 9 April 2016

Published on April 9, 2016 by Margaret9 Comments

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I’ve borrowed three library books this week, books by authors whose books I’ve read in the past and enjoyed:

The Cleaner of Chartres by Salley Vickers – I borrowed this because I’ve some of Salley Vickers’ books and loved them, in particular Miss Garnet’s Angel and Mr Golightly’s Holiday and Where Three Roads Meet, so I’m hoping I’ll love this one too.

Blurb:

There is something special about the ancient cathedral of Chartres, with its mismatched spires, astonishing stained glass and strange labyrinth. And there is something special too about AgnÃ¨s Morel, the mysterious woman who is to be found cleaning it each morning.

No one quite knows where she came from – not the diffident AbbÃ© Paul, who discovered her one morning twenty years ago, sleeping in the north porch; nor lonely Professor Jones, whose chaotic existence she helps to organise; nor Philippe Nevers, whose neurotic sister and newborn child she cares for; nor even the irreverent young restorer, Alain Fleury, who works alongside her each day and whose attention she catches with her tawny eyes, her colourful clothes and elusive manner. And yet everyone she encounters would surely agree that she is subtly transforming their lives, even if they couldn’t quite say how.

But with a chance meeting in the cathedral one day, the spectre of AgnÃ¨s’ past returns, provoking malicious rumours from the prejudiced Madame Beck and her gossipy companion Madame Picot. As the hearsay grows uglier, AgnÃ¨s is forced to confront her history, and the mystery of her origins finally unfolds.

Oscar Wilde and and the Murders at Reading Gaol by Gyles Brandreth – the sixth in the Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries series featuring Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle. It was years ago that I read the first book (Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders) – I’ve missed the next five!

Blurb:

Reading Gaol’s most famous prisoner is pitted against a ruthless and fiendishly clever serial killer. ‘Intelligent, amusing and entertaining’ Alexander McCall Smith It is 1897, Dieppe. Oscar Wilde, poet, playwright, novelist, raconteur and ex-convict, has fled the country after his release from Reading Gaol. Tonight he is sharing a drink and the story of his cruel imprisonment with a mysterious stranger. He has endured a harsh regime: the treadmill, solitary confinement, censored letters, no writing materials. Yet even in the midst of such deprivation, Oscar’s astonishing detective powers remain undiminished – and when first a brutal warder and then the prison chaplain are found murdered, who else should the governor turn to for help other than Reading Gaol’s most celebrated inmate?
In this, the latest novel in his acclaimed Oscar Wilde murder mystery series, Gyles Brandreth takes us deep into the dark heart of Wilde’s cruel incarceration.

The Good Thief’s Guide to Venice by Chris Ewan – I read and enjoyed the first in the Good Thief series (The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam) years ago. This one is the fourth in the series – they’re each set in different cities.

Blurb:

Charlie Howard ‘“ struggling crime-writer by day, talented thief by night ‘“’¯has gone straight. But holing himself up in a crumbling palazzo in Venice in an attempt to concentrate on his next novel hasn’t got rid of the itch in his fingers. And to make matters worse, a striking Italian beauty has just broken into his apartment and made off with his most prized possession, leaving a puzzling calling card in its place.

It looks as though kicking the habit of a lifetime will be much more of a challenge than Charlie thought.

Sneaking out into Venice’s maze of murky canals, Charlie’s attempts to tame a cat burglar embroil him in a plot that is far bigger and more explosive than he could ever have imagined.

We should treasure our libraries.

Stacking the Shelves: 2 April 2016

Published on April 2, 2016February 20, 2018 by Margaret8 Comments

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I bought three books this week.

I loved watching The Night Manager, adapted from John le Carré’s novel, so when I went to Main Street Trading on Tuesday I hoped they would have a copy. They didn’t – but they did have Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a book I’ve wanted to read ever since I watched the BBC adaptation many years ago (Alec Guinness was George Smiley).

Blurb:

George Smiley, who is a troubled man of infinite compassion, is also a single-mindedly ruthless adversary as a spy.

The scene which he enters is a Cold War landscape of moles and lamplighters, scalp-hunters and pavement artists, where men are turned, burned or bought for stock. Smiley’s mission is to catch a Moscow Centre mole burrowed thirty years deep into the Circus itself.

Yesterday I went shopping and passing Berrydin in Books I had to go in and, of course, I had to buy a book – well two actually. First another book that I was prompted to read by a TV adaptation in 2012 – Birdsong by Sebastian Foulks.

Blurb:

A novel of overwhelming emotional power, Birdsong is a story of love, death, sex and survival. Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman, arrives in Amiens in northern France in 1910 to stay with the Azaire family, and falls in love with unhappily married Isabelle. But, with the world on the brink of war, the relationship falters, and Stephen volunteers to fight on the Western Front. His love for Isabelle forever engraved on his heart, he experiences the unprecedented horrors of that conflict – from which neither he nor any reader of this book can emerge unchanged.

And also Citadel by Kate Mosse, because I like time-slip books. The main story is set in 1942-44 in Nazi-occupied Carcassonne in France and moves back in time to 342, with a monk, Arinus trying to find a hiding place for a forbidden Codex.

Blurb:

1942, Nazi-occupied France. Sandrine, a spirited and courageous nineteen-year-old, finds herself drawn into a Resistance group in Carcassonne – codenamed ‘Citadel’ – made up of ordinary women who are prepared to risk everything for what is right.

And when she meets Raoul, they discover a shared passion for the cause, for their homeland, and for each other.

But in a world where the enemy now lies in every shadow – where neighbour informs on neighbour; where friends disappear without warning and often without trace – love can demand the highest price of all…

As soon as I read some of my TBR books (6 in March) it seems I just have to find more – at least it’s only three this time.

Bartering, Borrowing and Buying Books

Published on February 6, 2016 by Margaret7 Comments

This is a Stacking the Shelves post in which you can share details of the books you’ve added to your shelves, be it buying or borrowing.

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In a week that began painfully with a dentist appointment where I had to suffer water torture during my visit to the hygienist, when the weather was mostly grey and miserable and when the national and international news continued to be bad, I was cheered up by bartering, borrowing and buying books.

Bartering:

Last Tuesday I had another visit to Barter Books in Alnwick. I always enjoy going there and never fail to find books I want to read. One of the joys of going is that you never know what you’re going to find. I like to browse the shelves, looking for books by authors I haven’t read before as well as by my favourite authors.

On Tuesday I’d gone prepared with my list of books to check out, including some of Agatha Christie’s short story collections. It’s either feast or famine at Barter Books for Christie’s books and this time there was only one book of hers, which I’ve already read.

So I decided to browse and picked up a book, which caught my eye from one of the displays at the end of a bookcase and began reading it, sitting down at one of the tables with my cup of coffee. It’s by James Naughtie, a broadcaster who used to be one of the main presenters of Radio 4’s Today programme, so not entirely unknown to me but I haven’t read any of his books before. The Madness of July is his first novel. I read a few pages whilst I sat there, finishing my coffee, and realised that although it’s not the usual sort of book I like – it’s a political/spy thriller – I was enjoying what I read and wanted to read more. So into my basket it went.

Then I went to see if any of the books on my list were on the shelves. I found two – A Place of Execution by Val McDermid and An Officer and a Gentleman by Robert Harris, both books I’d read about on other book blogs – Val McDermid’s book on Kay’s A Reading Life and the Harris book on Roberta’s Books to the Ceiling.

I’ve been meaning to read McDermid’s books for a while now and when I read the opening paragraphs and blurb of A Place of Execution on Kay’s blog, I thought it sounded a book I would like, crime fiction set in the Peak District in the early 1960s about the disappearance of children – a taut psychological suspense thriller.

I seem to be on a roll with Robert Harris’s books, having recently read the last two of his Cicero trilogy. An Officer and a Spy tells the story of the Dreyfus Affair, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Alfred Dreyfus, a French military officer convicted of spying for the Germans, was sentenced to to life imprisonment at Devil’s Island.

I continued browsing, wandering round the book cases in the different rooms and finally settled on two more crime fiction books – a W J Burley book, Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin, set in Penzance, in which a young girl goes missing after playing the part of the Virgin Mary in the local nativity play; and The Girl in the Cellar by Patricia Wentworth, in which Miss Silver helps Anne, who has lost her memory, but who thinks she has witnessed a murder.

Borrowing:

I went to the library yesterday morning to pick up a book I’d reserved, Slade House by David Mitchell, a much shorter book than Cloud Atlas, which I eventually enjoyed very much. This one is a scary collection of novellas about Slade House between the years 1979 to 2015 in which something nasty happens every nine years at the end of October.

And then because you can’t leave the library without at least a quick look at the shelves I also borrowed Watson’s Choice by Gladys Mitchell, which I gathered from the title and the pipe and deerstalker on the cover has some connection with Sherlock Holmes. And it does because at a party given to celebrate Homes’ anniversary the Hound of the Baskervilles turns up along with the other (invited) guests.

What a coincidence that both these books are by authors named Mitchell! Gladys Mitchell (21 April 1901 ‘“ 27 July 1983) was an English author best known for her creation of Mrs. Bradley, the heroine of 66 detective novels. And David Mitchell, the author is not to be confused with David Mitchell, the comedian.

Buying:

Earlier in the week I bought the e-book of The Queen’s Man by Sharon Penman, when it was on offer as one of the Kindle Daily Deals. It’s set in 1193 when rumours abounded that Richard the Lionheart was dead. And this morning I chose Winter Men by Jesper Bugge Kold as my Kindle First book for February, about two brothers who were both coerced into serving in the SS and their guilt after Germany’s defeat.

Then yesterday afternoon when I was at the village hall playing carpet bowls (there’s a bookcase of secondhand books in the hall) I bought Impressionist Gardens by Judith Bumpus, a beautiful book of Impressionist paintings, from artists including Monet, Renoir, Pissaro and Sisley. I’m hoping this will inspire my efforts at painting.

I hope some books have come your way too this week!

Stacking the Shelves: 23 January 2016

Published on January 23, 2016 by Margaret7 Comments

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Last night I finished reading Lustrum by Robert Harris, the second in his Cicero Trilogy (the first is Imperium). It ends as Cicero goes into exile and so this morning I had to buy the third book, Dictator, which covers the last fifteen years of his life.

There was a time when Cicero held Caesar’s life in the palm of his hand. But now Caesar is the dominant figure and Cicero’s life is in ruins. Exiled, separated from his wife and children…

I’ve also borrowed these books from the library. My summaries are adapted from the blurbs.

From top to bottom they are

Blue Genes by Val McDermid – I was put off reading her books several years ago when I just couldn’t stomach watching the violence and torture scenes in the TV series of The Wire. This sounds a bit different as it is a Kate Brannigan mystery, set in Manchester. The back cover reveals that Kate is having a bad week – her boyfriend has died, her plan to capture a team of fraudsters is in disarray and a neo-punk band wants her to find out who’s trashing their flyposters. It delves into the world of medical experimentation – I’m hoping it won’t be too gory!

Hunting Season by Andrea Camilleri – I’ve read a few of his Inspector Montalbano mysteries, but this is historical crime fiction set in VigÃ ta in Sicily in 1880, when a young man arrives in town and opens a pharmacy – then death arrives an the town and its most noble family will never be the same again …

Grace and Mary by Melvyn Bragg – he is one of my favourite authors. This novel is about memory and the slow fading of the mind as John visits his mother in a nursing home and finds that most of all she is longing for her mother, Grace, the mother she barely knew. Reaching from the late 19th century to the present, this becomes a deeply moving, reflective elegy on three generations linked by a chain of love, loss, and courage.

No Man’s Nightingale by Ruth Rendell, another favourite author. This is the 24th Inspector Wexford novel. The woman vicar of St Peter’s Church may not be popular among the community of Kingsmarkham. But it still comes as a profound shock when she is found strangled in her vicarage. Inspector Wexford is retired, but he retains a relish for solving mysteries especially when they are as close to home as this one is.

Stacking the Shelves: 19 December 2015

Published on December 19, 2015 by Margaret3 Comments

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I’ve added just one book to my Kindle this week:

The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries: The Most Complete Collection of Yuletide Whodunits Ever Assembled

Blurb

Here, for your yuletide reading pleasure, are the collected crimes of Christmases Past and Present: sixty classic Christmas crime stories gathered together in the largest anthology of its kind ever assembled. And its an all-star line-up: Sherlock Holmes, Brother Cadfael, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Rumpole of the Bailey, Inspector Morse, Inspector Ghote, A.J. Raffles, Nero Wolfe and many, many more of the world’s favourite detectives and crime fighters face unscrupulous Santas, festive felonies, deadly puddings, and misdemeanors under the mistletoe. Almost any kind of mystery you’re in the mood for – suspense, pure detection, humour, cozy, private eye, or police procedural – can be found within these pages.

Includes stories from (many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else): Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, Isaac Asimov, Sara Paretsky, Ed McBain, Agatha Christie, Ellis Peters, Mary Higgins Clark, H.F Keating, Donald E. Westlake and John Mortimer and more.

I couldn’t resist getting it! Some of the authors are familiar to me, some I’ve heard of and some are completely new-to-me. I hope to read some before Christmas.

I’ve also borrowed two from the library this week, which I’ll probably leave until after New Year. They are:

Freeze Frame : an Enzo Macleod investigation by Peter May

Blurb

A promise made to a dying man leads forensics ace Enzo Macleod, a Scot who’s been teaching in France for many years, to the study which the man’s heir has preserved for nearly twenty years. The dead man left several clues there designed to reveal the killer’s identity to the man’s son, but ironically the son died soon after the father.

So begins the fourth of seven cold cases written up in a bestselling book by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin that Enzo rashly boasted he could solve (he’s been successful with the first three). It takes Enzo to a tiny island off the coast of Brittany in France, where he must confront the hostility of locals who have no desire to see the infamous murder back in the headlines. An attractive widow, a man charged but acquitted of the murder–but still the viable suspect, a crime scene frozen in time, a dangerous hell hole by the cliffs, and a collection of impenetrable messages, make this one of Enzo’s most difficult cases.

I’ve enjoyed Peter May’s Lewis Trilogy. I hope this works well as a stand alone book as it’s the fourth Enzo Macleod book and I haven’t read the first three.

And

The Inspector and Mrs Jefferies by Emily Brightwell

Blurb

This charming series of Victorian murder mysteries features mild-mannered Inspector Witherspoon of Scotland Yard and, more importantly, Mrs Jeffries, his housekeeper. A policeman’s widow herself, her quick wits allow her to nudge the Inspector in the right direction to solve the crime.

When a doctor is discovered dead in his own office, Mrs Jeffries is on the look-out for a prescription for murder, determined to discover the culprit, despite how her employer feels about interviewing suspects . . . “He hated questioning people. He could never tell whether or not someone was actually lying to him, and he knew, shocking as it was, that there were some people who lied to the police on a regular basis.”

Emily Brightwell is a new-to-me author. I thought I’d see what this one is like.

Stacking the Shelves: 26 September

Published on September 26, 2015March 5, 2020 by Margaret6 Comments

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Here are my recent additions to my bookshelves. First crime fiction:

Blood Atonement etc P1010673

Murder in the Afternoon by Frances Brody – the 3rd Kate Shackleton Mystery. I’ve read the first two. Crime fiction set in the 1920s.
Blood Atonement by Dan Waddell – the 2nd Nigel Barnes novel. I’ve read the first one, Blood Detective. Barnes is a genealogist helping DCI Grant Foster to solve modern day crimes.
The Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell – a psychological thriller. The death of a child sets in motion a chain of deception, kidnap and murder.

And also these:

Moon Tiger Gate of Angels P1010674

The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald – described on the back cover as a metaphysical novel and a love story, amusing, disturbing and provoking reflection. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1990.
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively – 1987 Booker Prize winner – a novel about a historian in her seventies looking back over her life.

What books have you added to your shelves this week?

Stacking the Shelves: 12 September 2015

Published on September 12, 2015 by Margaret9 Comments

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Even though I have plenty of TBR books I couldn’t resist adding a few books this week:

First on Kindle is The Moth Catcher by Ann Cleeves. This was first published this week and is the seventh and latest book in the Vera Stanhope series. Set in a lonely valley in Northumberland, Patrick, a young ecologist is found dead in a ditch and a second body is found in the attic of the house that Patrick was looking after whilst the owners were away. I have started to read this already!

I’ve also downloaded In Bitter Chill by Sarah Ward. This is her debut book, published in June this year. Sarah Ward writes a blog reviewing crime fiction – Crimepieces, which I regularly read. She has also reviewed for Eurocrime and Crimesquad and is a judge for the Petrona Award for Scandinavian translated crime novels. In Bitter Chill is set in Derbyshire, where in 1978 two girls, Rachel and Sophie had gone missing. Rachel returned and when Sophie’s mother commits suicide thirty years later, she is determined to find out what had happened and the case is reopened.

Lastly, I received a copy of The Monocled Mutineer by John Fairly and William Allison for review courtesy of the Souvenir Press Ltd. With a new introduction by John Fairly this is the 2nd revised edition of the original book first published in 1979. I remember watching the 1986 BBC dramatisation of this with Paul McGann playing the role of Percy Toplis, the leader of an army mutiny in 1917 in Ã‰taples in northern France ‘“ a story that has remained one of the best-kept secrets of the First World War. Although Toplis was named as the ringleader of the Mutiny, there are still a host of unanswered questions about him and his role, if any.

What books have you added to your shelves this week?

Stacking the Shelves: 11 July 2015

Published on July 11, 2015August 2, 2018 by Margaret6 Comments

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Another visit to Barter Books on Tuesday resulted in bringing these books home – a fair exchange for some computer books I thought. (If you can visit Alnwick it’s well worth looking in at Barter Books.)

Books July15 From top to bottom they are:

Poirot’s Early Cases by Agatha Christie. I’ve been hoping this book would turn up at Barter Books – a collection of short stories, all first published in magazines between 1923 and 1935.
Death is Now My Neighbour by Colin Dexter – the 12th Inspector Morse mystery. I haven’t read many of the Morse books, although I’ve watched all the TV adaptations. A young woman is murdered – the trail leads Morse to Lonsdale college where there is a contest for the coveted position of Master.
He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr. As I’ve been reading The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards I looked for books by the authors he mentions in his book. He Who Whispers was the only book I found (I don’t think it’s mentioned in Edwards’ book). It’s a Doctor Gideon Fell murder mystery, first published in 1946. My copy is a green and white Penguin paperback.
Old Filth by Jane Gardam (Failed in London Try London). I first read this several years ago – a library book – but as I’ve been reading the next two in the trilogy I wanted to refresh my memory about this first one.
Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty, described as a psychological thriller. The quotes on the back cover convinced me to try this book – ‘Brilliant and bruising. Obsession, betrayal and blood letting …‘ Ian Rankin and this from Val McDermid, ‘ Realised I’d been holding my breath for the last forty pages. Gripping.’

Do let me know if you’ve read any of these and what you found to add to your shelves this week.

Stacking the Shelves: 4 July 2015

Published on July 4, 2015December 6, 2020 by Margaret13 Comments

Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves. This means you can include ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ books (ie physical and ebooks) you’ve bought, books you’ve borrowed from friends or the library, review books, and gifts.

I’ve added just a few books this last week. First an e-book – Crooked Little Lies by Barbara Taylor Sissel – a Kindle First Pick. The paperback is due to be published on 1st August 2015. A new-to-me author, but I see she has written five other books.

Blurb:

On a cool October morning, Lauren Wilder is shaken when she comes close to striking Bo Laughlin with her car as he’s walking along the road’s edge. A young man well known in their small town of Hardys Walk, Texas, Bo seems fine, even if Lauren’s intuition says otherwise. Since the accident two years ago that left her brain in a fragile state, she can’t trust her own instincts – and neither can her family. Then Bo vanishes, and as the search for him ensues, the police question whether she’s responsible. Lauren is terrified, not of what she remembers but of what she doesn’t.
Unable to trust herself and unwilling to trust anyone else, Lauren begins her own investigation into the mystery of Bo’s disappearance. But the truth can prove to be as shocking as any lie, and as Lauren exposes each one, from her family, from her friends, she isn’t the only one who will face heart-stopping repercussions.

Second a paperback – Thin Air by Ann Cleeves, the sixth in her Shetland series. I’ve read the other 5 books, so I just have to read this one too.

Blurb:

A group of old university friends leave the bright lights of London and travel to Unst, Shetland’s most northerly island, to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends to a Shetlander. But late on the night of the wedding party, one of them, Eleanor, disappears – apparently into thin air. It’s mid-summer, a time of light nights and unexpected mists. The following day, Eleanor’s friend Polly receives an email. It appears to be a suicide note, saying she’ll never be found alive. And then Eleanor’s body is discovered, lying in a small loch close to the cliff edge.
Detectives Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves are dispatched to Unst to investigate. Before she went missing, Eleanor claimed to have seen the ghost of a local child who drowned in the 1920s. Her interest in the ghost had seemed unhealthy – obsessive, even – to her friends: an indication of a troubled mind. But Jimmy and Willow are convinced that there is more to Eleanor’s death than they first thought.
Is there a secret that lies behind the myth? One so shocking that someone would kill – many years later – to protect?
Ann Cleeves’ striking Shetland novel explores the tensions between tradition and modernity that lie deep at the heart of a community, and how events from the past can have devastating effects on the present.

And finally these library books, all from the mobile library van that visits here once a fortnight:

I love the library visits and always find a good variety of books to choose from. From top to bottom they are:

Country Dance written and illustrated by Henry Brewis – a Northumberland author. This was first published in 1992 and is described on the back cover as a ‘contemporary fable, the story of a family farm being dismembered and ‘developed’, of newcomers face-to-face with the old peasantry.’
The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory – about Mary Queen of Scots, after she fled from Scotland and was imprisoned by Elizabeth I. When I first saw this I thought I’d read it – but then realised I hadn’t, I’d read The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory (a bit confusing having two similar titles).
A Possible Life: a Novel in Five Parts by Sebastian Faulks. This looks like five separate stories about five people at different times and in different places. At the moment I don’t know how they are linked.
This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon, set in 2008 in Dublin, where Bruno, an American, has come to search for his roots. He meets and falls in love with Addie, an out-of-work architect, recovering from heartbreak while looking after her infirm father.

Do let me know if you’ve read any of these and what you found to add to your shelves this week.