Category: Stacking the Shelves

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.

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.

This week I’ve added two books to my Kindle:

• After the Fire by Jane Casey, which was published on 18 June. It’s the sixth Maeve Kerrigan book. I’ve read the previous five and just have to read this one too.
• The One I Was by Eliza Graham – I read her first book, Playing with the Moon  back in 2007 and have been meaning to read more of her books, so when this one came up on the Kindle Daily Deal earlier this week I snapped it up. She’s written three more books since then, which I’ve missed.

and a pile of library books:

They are from top to bottom:

• Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L Sayers – a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery.
• The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths – the sixth Ruth Galloway book. I’m behind with this series – the seventh book was published earlier this year.
• The North (And Almost Everything In It) by Paul Morley – this is about the north of England. I can’t remember where I read about this book, but it looked interesting and as I’m a northerner I thought I’d have a look at it and reserved it.
• The Balmoral Incident (Rose McQuinn series 8) by Alanna Knight. I’ve read the first book in the series, so this is another series I’ll be reading out of order.
• The Monogram Murders (The new Hercule Poirot mystery) by Sophie Hannah – I’m not at all sure that I’ll read this book. My experience of reading prequels and sequels by a different author than the original has not been good. I’ve read reviews both praising and criticising this book, so when I saw it in the library I was tempted to borrow it.
• An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield. I saw Chris Hadfield on Sunday Brunch on Channel 4 a little while ago and thought he was brilliant and after I read Jackie’s review on her Farm Lane Books Blog I reserved the book.

Books like these are the reasons I don’t get round to reading my own unread books – those to-be-reads that I’ve had for years!

If you’ve read any of these do let me know what you think of them and also what you found to add to your shelves this week.

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 two e-books- A Man of Some Repute by Elizabeth Edmundson – a Kindle First pick. The paperback is due to be published on 1st July 2015.

Blurb from Amazon

Truth is rarely pure and never simple’¦

Selchester Castle in 1953 sits quiet and near-empty, its corridors echoing with glories of the past.

Or so it seems to intelligence officer Hugo Hawksworth, wounded on a secret mission and now reluctantly assuming an altogether less perilous role at Selchester.

The Castle’s faded grandeur hides a web of secrets and scandals’”the Earl has been missing for seven years, lost without a trace since the night he left his guests and walked out into a blizzard.

When a skeleton is uncovered beneath the flagstones of the Old Chapel, the police produce a suspect and declare the case closed.

Hugo is not convinced. With the help of the spirited Freya Wryton, the Earl’s niece, he is drawn back into active service, and the ancient town of Selchester is dragged into the intrigues and conspiracies of the Cold War era.

With a touch of Downton Abbey, a whisper of Agatha Christie and a nod to Le Carré, A Man of Some Repute is the first book in this delightfully classic and witty murder mystery series.

And also Red Clover by Florence Osmund.

Blurb from Goodreads

Imagine feeling like an outsider. Now imagine feeling like an outsider in your own family.

The troubled son of a callous father and socialite mother determines his own meaning of success after learning shocking family secrets that cause him to rethink who he is and where heʼs going. In Lee Winekoop’s reinvention of himself he discovers that lifeʾs bitter circumstances can actually give rise to meaningful consequences.

I was delighted to receive a copy of A Game for All the Family by Sophie Hannah  from Lovereading. It’s due to be published on 13th August:

 

Blurb from Lovereading:

Justine thought she knew who she was, until an anonymous caller seemed to know better… After escaping London and a career that nearly destroyed her, Justine plans to spend her days doing as little as possible in her beautiful home in Devon. But soon after the move, her daughter Ellen starts to withdraw when her new best friend, George, is unfairly expelled from school. Justine begs the head teacher to reconsider, only to be told that nobody’s been expelled – there is, and was, no George. Then the anonymous calls start: a stranger, making threats that suggest she and Justine share a traumatic past and a guilty secret – yet Justine doesn’t recognise her voice. When the caller starts to talk about three graves – two big and one small, to fit a child – Justine fears for her family’s safety. If the police can’t help, she’ll have to eliminate the danger herself, but first she must work out who she’s supposed to be…

Finally this book from the mobile library which visited this week:

Blink of an Eye by Cath Staincliffe – This one looks good and according to Ann Cleeves (on the back cover) it’s a ‘book about courage and compromise, about how sometimes it’s kinder and braver to lie. Stunning.’

Blurb from the back cover:

Imagine a sunny Sunday afternoon. A family barbecue. A celebration. Then tragedy strikes. You wake in hospital, traumatized. Your mother tells you about the accident, a nine-year-old dead, your partner bloody and bruised, the lives of three families torn apart.

You face prosecution for causing death by dangerous driving. It could mean 14 years in jail. What have you done?

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 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.

A bumper week for adding to the TBRs! I took back a pile of books to Barter Books in Alnwick and came home with these:

 

When I go to Barter Books I take a list of books to look for. This time I found three  – shown in the basket from left to right:

• Like This For Ever by S J Bolton, the 3rd in the Lacey Flint series. I’ve read the first one, Now You See Me and have the second one which I haven’t read yet, so it will be a while before I get round to reading this one.
• In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson, the 10th in the Inspector Banks series. I’m reading this series as I find the books not in the series order and I wrote about the 7th book, Dry Bones That Dream on Monday. Kay commented that she had enjoyed In a Dry Season very much so when I saw it on the shelf at Barter Books I put it in my basket.
• Letters From Skye by Jessica Brockmole. I saw this book on Irene’s blog – she’s reading it and I thought it looked interesting so when I found it on the shelf as well I thought it was too much of a coincidence not to get it. It’s a novel told in a series of letters written spanning the years from the First World War to the Second between a poet living on Skye and a fan of hers living in Illinois.

Next I just browsed the shelves for anything that caught my eye and found these:

Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes (shown in my photo in the basket cover face down! on top of a stack of books). This is from the Golden Age of crime fiction, first published in 1937, the second of his Inspector Appleby series. I’ve read the first book in the series, Death at the President’s Lodging, which I enjoyed immensely.

Underneath Hamlet, Revenge! is a sealed pack of 6 crime fiction books, containing:

• Last Seen in Massilia by Stephen Saylor
• A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell
• The Soul Catcher by Alex Kava
• Frost at Christmas by R D Wingfield
• Good News Bad News by David Wolstencroft
• Break No Bones by Kathy Reichs

These are books that you can’t take back to Barter Books and cost just £1.20. I bought the pack because it contains books by Ruth Rendell, R D Wingfield and Steven Saylor – I don’t know the other authors.

On the way home from Barter Books we stopped at Cragside for a snack lunch, but it was packed with people and there was a long queue for the cafe, so I just went in the NT shop and couldn’t resist buying Scone With The Wind: Cakes and Bakes with a Literary Twist by Miss Victoria Sponge. It contains 72 novel recipes – like Life of Pecan Pie, Don Biscotti, Much Ado About Muffins and Wuthering Bites and many more.

And finally when we went shopping yesterday there was a secondhand book sale in the Buttermarket and I bought The Riddle and the Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville by Giles Milton – an investigation into Mandeville’s claim in 1322 that it was possible to circumnavigate the globe. I’ve read and enjoyed Milton’s Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, so I’m hoping I’ll like this book too.

It’s no wonder I never get to the end of my TBRs – but there are so many tempting books out there, it would be a shame to miss out too many!

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.

This last week has been an excellent week for Stacking the Shelves, as I’ve added seven new/new-to-me books – two of them on Kindle.

These are the physical books – the first three all arrived on the same day – Thursday:

I’ve been looking forward to reading The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards and I ordered it to arrive on its publication day – which was Thursday. I have, of course, already started to read it and it’s promising to be excellent.

From the back cover:

The Golden Age of Murder tells for the first time the extraordinary story of British detective fiction between the two World Wars, and the fascinating people who wrote it. A gripping real-life detective story, this book investigates how Agatha Christie and her colleagues in the mysterious Detection Club transformed crime fiction. Their work cast new light on unsolved murders whilst hiding clues to their authors’ darkest secrets, and their complex and sometimes bizarre lives.

Civil War by Peter Ackroyd was also published in paperback on Thursday. This is volume III of Ackroyd’s series, The History of England. I’d read Jessica’s review of the book on The Bookworm Chronicles and thought I’d like to read it.

It’s the history of the 17th century, the monarchy and the Civil War which led to the execution of Charles I and the despotic reign of Oliver Cromwell. It also covers the cultural and social life of the period including Shakespeare’s later plays, the poetry of John Donne and Milton, as well as details of the lives of ordinary people against the backdrop of constant disruption and uncertainty.

The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C Morais is my book group’s choice for June.

This is the story of Hassan Haji, a boy from Mumbai, and his family who open a restaurant in a French village. A culinary war ensues against the cordon bleu Michelin starred restaurant opposite. Full of eccentric characters, delicious meals and hilarious cultural mishaps, according to the back cover.

I bought A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey from the secondhand book table at the village hall when I went to vote on Thursday.

It’s an Inspector Grant mystery.  A beautiful young film actress is found lying dead on the beach one morning. Is it suicide or murder?

The last of the physical books is a complimentary copy of William and Kate’s Britain: an Insider’s Guide to the haunts of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge by Claudia Joseph – it contains one of my photos of the Hirsel Country Park at Coldstream.

There are many more photos in this beautiful book – photos of royal palaces, castles,  churches, hotels, pubs, towns and villages as well as country parks and much more. It’s packed with fascinating facts.

I also got an e-book of Agatha Christie’s first full length novel featuring Miss Marple – The Murder at the Vicarage. I’ve read (and re-read) many of her books, but missed this one.

Colonel Protheroe is found shot dead in the vicar’s study. There are many suspects for Miss Marple to question about the murder as he was not a popular man and everyone including the vicar seems to have a reason to want the Colonel dead.

And finally, fellow blogger Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen sent me an e-copy of her third standalone novel, Crystal Nights, a Scandinavian psychological mystery of the violence and evil that rips through a cosy and peaceful Danish village in the 1960s. It begins with a quotation from Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen, one of my favourite fairytales!

And what about you?  What books did you find this week?

 

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.

This week I borrowed these books from the library:

Ragnarok by A S Byatt – I first came across this book a few years ago on a book blog (not sure now which one) and thought it looked interesting.

Blurb:

Recently evacuated to the British countryside and with World War Two raging around her, one young girl is struggling to make sense of her life. She is given a book of ancient Norse legends and her inner and outer worlds are transformed…

The Ragnarok myth, otherwise known as the Twilight of the Gods, plays out the endgame of Norse mythology. It is the myth in which the gods Odin, Freya and Thor die, the sun and moon are swallowed by the wolf Fenrir, and the serpent Midgard eats her own tail as she crushes the world and the seas boil with poison. This epic struggle provided the fitting climax to Wagner’s Ring Cycle; Byatt has taken this remarkable finale and used it as the underpinning of a highly personal and politically charged retelling.

Dry Bones that Dream by Peter Robinson, the 7th Inspector Banks book. I’m reading these books totally out of order, just as I find them.

Blurb:

It was 2.47am when Chief Inspector Alan Banks arrived at the barn and saw the body of Keith Rothwell for the first time. Only hours earlier two masked men had walked the mild-mannered accountant out of his farmhouse and clinically blasted him with a shotgun.

Clearly this is a professional hit ‘“ but Keith was hardly the sort of person to make deadly enemies. Or was he? For the police investigation soon raises more questions than answers. And who, exactly, is Robert Calvert?

The more Banks scratches the surface, the more he wonders what lies beneath the veneer of the apparently happy Rothwell family. And when his old sparring partner Detective Superintendent Richard Burgess arrives from Scotland Yard, the case takes yet another unexpected twist . . .

Poirot and Me by David Suchet – an absolute must read for me. David Suchet was Poirot!

From the book cover:

Through his television performance in TV’s Agatha Christie’s Poirot, David Suchet has become inextricably linked with the ‘little Belgian’, a man whom he has grown to love dearly through an intimate relationship lasting more than twenty years. …

In Poirot and Me, he shares his many memories of creating this iconic television series and reflects on what the detective has meant to him over the years.

Also new this week is an advance proof copy of The Lost Garden by Katharine Swartz, due to be published in May:

Blurb:

Marin Ellis is in search of a new start after her father and his second wife die in a car accident, and at thirty-seven she is made guardian of her fifteen-year-old half-sister Rebecca. They leave Hampshire for the picturesque village of Goswell on the Cumbrian coast, and settle into Bower House on the edge of the church property. When a door to a walled garden captures Rebecca’s interest, Marin becomes determined to open it and discover what is hidden beneath the bramble inside. She enlists the help of local gardener Joss Fowler, and together the three of them begin to uncover the garden’s secrets.

I’d better get reading!