Category: Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday:Love in Crime Fiction

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

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

This week’s topic is a Love Freebie and I’m featuring Love in Crime Fiction. Some detectives are loners, some are happily married and here are eight of them.

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford who first appeared in Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary in 1922, are, by the end of the book in love and get married. My favourite book of theirs is By the Pricking of My Thumbs, which is about the mystery of what had happened in the house by the canal, whose child had died and how, and where was Mrs Lancaster? They also appear in a collection of short stories in Partners in Crime, N or M? , By the Pricking of My Thumbs, and Postern of Fate .

Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane first appear in Dorothy L Sayers Strong Poison, in which Lord Peter Wimsey, the aristocratic amateur detective, and Harriet Vane, a crime fiction writer, first met. Harriet is on trial for the murder of her former lover, Philip Boyes, who died from arsenic poisoning. Wimsey, attending the trial, is convinced she is innocent and sets out to prove it … and falls in love with her. In Gaudy Night she agrees to marry him and they get married in Busman’s Honeymoon.

Another happily married couple is Commissario Guido Brunetti and his beautiful wife Paola. He often goes home for lunch with Paola, who is a wonderful cook. One of my favourite books from the series is A Sea of Troubles, in which she treats him to a delicious apple cake made with lemon and apple juice and ‘enough Grand Marnier to permeate the whole thing and linger on the tongue for ever.’

Georges Simenon’s Inspector Jules Maigret also has a happy marriage and is another policeman who likes to go home for his lunch with Madam Maigret whenever he can. Is it the food or the wife, I wonder? They also like to take walks after dinner and go to the movies. In A Maigret Christmas Maigret has the day off and had planned to spend a quiet morning cocooned in their apartment and are feeling sad at being childless, particularly so at Christmas.

Dr Watson and Mary Morstan in Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books are also happily married. They met and fell in love in The Sign of Four when she visits Baker Street to ask Sherlock Holmes to investigate a bizarre case involving the disappearance of her father and the sending of a single pearl to her every year for the past six years.

Cold case Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie in Val McDermid’s DCI Karen Pirie books is not married, but she was deeply in love with Phil Parhatka, a fellow officer who was killed. McDermid does not write specifically about his death. It occurs in between two books The Skeleton Road and Out of Bounds, in which Karen is grieving for Phil. He was the love of her life, having fallen for him the first week they worked together.

Then there is forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway and her lover DCI Harry Nelson in the Ruth Galloway Mysteries by Elly Griffiths. They have one child and an on/off relationship throughout the series. In the last book, The Last Remains they finally confront their feelings for each other.

And finally Detective Superintendent Roy Grace and Cleo, a mortuary technician in the Roy Grace series by Peter James. Before the series started Roy’s wife, Sandy disappeared and despite all his efforts he was unable to find out why and what happened to her. When he met Cleo they fell in love and after Sandy was declared to be dead they married. Throughout the series more information about Sandy is revealed and her story is finally told in They Thought I was Dead.

Top Ten Tuesday: New-To-Me Authors I Read in 2025

Published on by Margaret20 Comments

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

The rules are simple:

Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to Jana in your own Top Ten Tuesday post. Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists. Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

The topic this week is Bookish Discoveries I Made in 2025 (New-to-you authors you discovered, new genres you learned you like, new bookish resources you found, friends you made, local bookshops you found, a book club you joined, etc.)

I decided to list 10 of the 24 New-to me- authors I read last year. I’ll be looking out for more books by these authors.

Gordon Corera – The Spy in the Archive, nonfiction about Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB archivist who defected to Britain in 1992. Mitrokhin, a quiet, introverted and determined man, was a reluctant defector, because whilst he loved Russia he came to hate the KGB and the Soviet system.

Sarah Freethy – The Seeker of Lost Paintings, historical fiction set in two timelines, one in the 1940s in Italy and the other in 1997 in London and Italy, about the mystery surrounding a lost painting by Carravagio. 

William Horwood – The Boy With No Shoes: a Memoir, (the author of the Duncton Chronicles, which I haven’t read). This is a long and detailed book. It is beautifully written and as he tells the story of his very early life there are many times when it moved me to tears. His writing is so clear that the places and people he describes spring to life as you read. I loved it, one of the best books I read last year!

Alex Howard – The Ghost Cat, a novella and historical fantasy fiction about Grimalkin’s nine lives from 1887 to 2022. As well as the main story there are Grimalkin’s observations and notes explaining various events and technological changes that had taken place in each period.

Ruth Jones – By Your Side, an emotionally charged book as Linda Standish takes on her last case for the Council’s Unclaimed Heirs Unit, tracking down Levi Norman’s next of kin.

Jess Kidd – Murder at Gull’s Nest, crime fiction set in the 1950s in a seaside town. At times it feels like a cosy crime mystery, but it’s also rather dark and foreboding, whereas at other times there’s some humour and also a hint of a romance.

Rhiannon Lewis – My Beautiful Imperial, historical fiction set in the 19th century in both Wales and Chile. It begins in Wales in March 1865 with Davy Davies, a young teenager who is at the age when he must decide whether to work at the mill or to be a sailor like father. It’s based on the actual events of the Civil War in Chile and the experiences of the author’s ancestor, Captain David Jefferson Davies. 

Hannah Richell – One Dark Night, crime fiction, with a spooky, tense atmosphere about the police investigation into the body of a young woman is discovered in the woods the morning after Halloween. I loved it, one of the best books I read last year.

Lynda Rutledge – West With Giraffes, historical fiction with a colourful cast of characters, about the twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. It conjures up a vivid picture of America in 1938 during the Great Depression and the Great Hurricane of 1938, the most destructive storm to strike New England in recorded history until 2012’s Hurricane Sandy.

Owen Sheers – Resistance. I love historical fiction, but this is different – it is alternate history. Sheers speculates upon how the course of history might have been altered if Germany had won the Second World War and invaded and occupied Great Britain, an alarming prospect. The plot centres on the inhabitants of the isolated Olchon valley in the Black Mountains of south-east Wales close to Hereford and the border between Wales and England.

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Recent Additions to My Bookshelf

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

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

The topic today is Most Recent Additions to My Bookshelf.

Top Ten Tuesday: The Ten Most Recent Additions To My Wishlist

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

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

The topic today is Books I Hope Santa Brings/Bookish Wishes, I’ve picked the Ten Most Recent Additions To My Wishlist.

  • The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker – the 2nd book in her World War One trilogy (Regeneration Trilogy Book 2).
  • Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym, a funny, poignant and hopeful story of human connection.
  • Venetian Vespers by John Banville, an eerie, Venice-set novel.
  • Victim of the Aurora by Thomas Keneally. In the waning years of the Edwardian era, a group of gentlemen wait out a raging blizzard in the perpetual darkness of the Antarctic winter, poised for a strike at the South Pole.
  •  Tolstoy: A Russian Life by Rosamund Bartlett, a biography of Count Lev Tolstoy.
  • Voices of the Dead (A Raven and Fisher Mystery Book 4) by Ambrose Parry.
  • The Ghost Ship (The Joubert Family Chronicles Book 3) by Kate Moss, a swashbuckling tale of adventure and buccaneering, love and revenge, stolen fortunes and hidden secrets on the high seas.
  • Green for Danger by Christianna Brand, book 7 of the Inspector Cockerill Mysteries.
  • Normal Women: 900 Years of Women Making History by Philippa Gregory
  • Unfinished Portrait by Agatha Christie writing as Mary Westmacott. Agatha Christie also wrote about crimes of the heart, six bittersweet and very personal novels, as compelling and memorable as the best of her work.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books On My Winter 2025-2026 to-Read List

Published on by Margaret16 Comments

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

The topic today is Books On My Winter 2025-2026 to-Read List. The first three are books on my NetGalley shelf and will be published early in the New Year. The rest are books from my TBR lists. I do enjoy making lists and sometimes I stick to them!

  1. The Fox of Kensal Green by Richard Tyrrell – a quiet neighbourhood of London is about to be shattered.
  2. The Living and the Dead by Christoffer Carlsson – a haunting murder mystery, set in a rural Swedish town, where one community’s secrets will be laid bare over the next twenty years
  3. Warning Signs by Tracy Sierra – a thriller set in the Colorado mountains during a ski-weekend.
  4. The Vanishing of Margaret Small by Neil Alexander – a mystery that takes readers into a fascinating past, and introduces an unforgettable literary heroine.
  5.  Goodbye Mr Chips by James Hilton – the classic story of a quiet, unassuming man and the many lives he touches.
  6. Exiles by Jane Harper – Investigator Aaron Falk finds himself drawn into a complex web of tightly held secrets in South Australia’s wine country.
  7. The Christmas Clue by Nicola Upson – a Christmas murder mystery featuring the real-life couple who invented Cluedo.
  8. Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz – Susan Ryeland has had enough of murder.
  9. Miss Willmott’s Ghosts: the extraordinary life and gardens of a forgotten genius: by Sandra Lawrence – a biography.
  10. Tyrant: The Ruthless Rise of Roman Emperor Nero by Conn Iggulden – the second book in the Nero Trilogy. I’ve read the first book, which I thought was excellent.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books Set in Snowy Places

Published on by Margaret36 Comments

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

The topic today is Books Set in Snowy Places. These are some of the books I’ve read set in snowy places demonstrating the awesome power and danger to be found in the snow!

  1. The Shining by Stephen King, set in the Overlook Hotel in the Colorada Rockies with Jack Torrance and his family. The winter weather closes in on the hotel and they are cut off from the rest of the world. Terrible things had taken place at the hotel and as psychic forces gather strength ghosts begin to surface and both Jack and his five year old son, Danny are their target. Terrifying!
  2. The Corpse in the Snowman by Nicholas Blake. Set in 1940 at Easterham Manor in Essex, where the isolated home of the Restorick family is cut off from the neighbouring village by snow. There’s a death and a body hidden in a snowman that is only discovered when a thaw sets in. 
  3. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. Set in Newfoundland in its frozen, storm-ridden isolation, surrounded by icebergs “like white prisons” is the old, dilapidated Quoyle family house on Quoyle’s Point that had stood empty for forty-four years, a “gaunt building … lashed with cable to iron rings set in the rock”. Quoyle’s job on the local Newfoundland weekly paper the Gammy Bird is to report on the shipping news, the boats coming in and out of the port and to cover the local car wrecks.
  4. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. Poirot is on the Orient Express, on a three-days journey across Europe. But after midnight the train comes to a halt, stuck in a snowdrift. In the morning the millionaire Simon Ratchett is found dead in his compartment his body stabbed a dozen times and his door locked from the inside. It is obvious from the lack of tracks in the snow that no-one has left the train. So the murderer must be on the train.
  5. The Mist by Ragnar Jonasson Nordic Noir. Jonasson’s writing brings the scenery and the weather to life – you can feel the isolation and experience what it is like to be lost in a howling snowstorm. The emotional tension is brilliantly done too, the sense of despair, confusion and dread is almost unbearable. 
  6. The Body in the Ice by A J Mackenzie, the 2nd Hardcastle and Chaytor Mystery set in Romney Marsh and the surrounding countryside in 1796-7 when the winter was exceptionally harsh and cold and on Christmas Day a body is found, frozen in a pond. There’s no modern technology, just old-fashioned crime detection and deduction and a certain amount of intuition.
  7. To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey. The story ofLieutenant Colonel Allen Forrester’s journey in 1885 from Perkins Island up the Wolverine River in Alaska. The Wolverine is the key to opening up Alaska and its rich natural resources to the outside world, but previous attempts have ended in tragedy.
  8. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. As well as striking and memorable characters the setting is  beautifully described – a ‘mute and melancholy landscape, an incarceration of frozen woe‘, in the isolated village of Starkfield (a fictional New England village). This is a tragedy but there is light to contrast the darkness, and there is love and hope set against repression and misery.
  9. The Chalet by Catherine Cooper, a fast-paced murder mystery, set mainly in La Madière, a fictional ski resort in the French Alps. Two young men ski into a blizzard… but only one returns. 20 years later four people connected to the missing man find themselves in that same resort. Each has a secret. Two may have blood on their hands. One is a killer-in-waiting. Someone knows what really happened that day.
  10. Dark Matter: a Ghost Story by Michelle Paver, set in the High Arctic, where the isolation of the long, dark Arctic winter is oppressive and unrelenting. Set in 1937 when Jack Miller was part of an expedition to study its biology, geology and ice dynamics and to carry out a meteorological survey. Right from the start things begin to go wrong. Jack’s unease turns into dread when is left alone at the camp and his nightmare really begins. This really is a page-turner and a good old-fashioned and seriously scary ghost story!