Spell the Month in Books – January 2024

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

The theme this month is New (interpret as you wish: new releases, recent acquisitions, “new” in the title, etc.) But I just couldn’t come up with any titles on this theme. So, I decided to use a selection of books on my LibraryThing TBRs list.

The links go to the descriptions on Amazon or Goodreads.

J is for The Joys of My Life by Alys Clare

May 1199. Abbess Helewise has been summoned by Queen Eleanor to discuss the building of a chapel at Hawkenlye Abbey. Meanwhile, Sir Josse dAcquin is on the trail of a group of mysterious knights rumoured to be devil worshippers. As Helewise heads for home, Josse follows his quarry to Chartres, where he meets the last person he expects: Joanna. And she has grave problems of her own . . .

A is for After the Crash by Michel Bussi

On the night of 22 December 1980, a plane crashes on the Franco-Swiss border and is engulfed in flames. 168 out of 169 passengers are killed instantly. The miraculous sole survivor is a three-month-old baby girl. Two families, one rich, the other poor, step forward to claim her, sparking an investigation that will last for almost two decades. Is she Lyse-Rose or Emilie?

Eighteen years later, having failed to discover the truth, private detective Credule Grand-Duc plans to take his own life, but not before placing an account of his investigation in the girl’s hands. But, as he sits at his desk about to pull the trigger, he uncovers a secret that changes everything – then is killed before he can breathe a word of it to anyone…

N is for Now is the Time by Melvyn Bragg

In this gripping novel, Melvyn Bragg brings an extraordinary episode in English history to fresh, urgent life.

At the end of May 1381, the fourteen-year-old King of England had reason to be fearful: the plague had returned, the royal coffers were empty and a draconian poll tax was being widely evaded. Yet Richard, bolstered by his powerful, admired mother, felt secure in his God-given right to reign.

Within two weeks, the unthinkable happened: a vast force of common people invaded London, led by a former soldier, Walter Tyler, and the radical preacher John Ball, demanding freedom, equality and the complete uprooting of the Church and state. They believed they were rescuing the King from his corrupt ministers, and that England had to be saved. And for three intense, violent days, it looked as if they would sweep all before them.

Now is the Time depicts the events of the Peasants’ Revolt on both a grand and intimate scale, vividly portraying its central figures and telling an archetypal tale of an epic struggle between the powerful and the apparently powerless.

U is for Unnatural Death by Dorothy L Sayers

The third book in Dorothy L Sayers’ classic Lord Peter Wimsey series,

No sign of foul play,’ says Dr Carr after the post-mortem on Agatha Dawson. The case is closed. But Lord Peter Wimsey is not satisfied… With no clues to work on, he begins his own investigation.

What is going on in the mysterious Mrs Forrest’s Mayfair flat?

A is for Arms and the Women by Reginald Hill

This is the 18th Dalziel and Pascoe mystery in which Ellie, Pascoe’s wife is in danger at a decaying seacoast mansion.

Someone attempts to abduct Ellie Pascoe, and her friend, Daphne Alderman, is assaulted by a man keeping watch on the Pascoe house. Dalziel, Pascoe and Wield feel certain there must be a link here with one of Pascoe’s cases, either current or past. Only DC Shirley Novello wonders whether perhaps these events might have more to do with Ellie than her husband.

While the men concentrate on their individual theories, Ellie, her daughter Rosie, Daphne, and Novello (their official minder) head for the coast to the supposed safety of the Alderman’s holiday home, Cleets Cottage. But their flight proves somewhat futile as Ellie’s would-be abductor continues to send her letters of possibly threatening intent, composed in a strange Elizabethan English.

R is for The Racketeer by John Grisham

Given the importance of what they do, and the controversies that often surround them, and the violent people they sometimes confront, it is remarkable that in the history of the USA only four active federal judges have been murdered.

Judge Raymond Fawcett just became number five.

His body was found in the small basement of a lakeside cabin he had built himself and frequently used on weekends. When he did not show up for a trial on Monday morning, his law clerks panicked, called the FBI, and in due course the agents found the crime scene. There was no forced entry, no struggle, just two dead bodies – Judge Fawcett and his young secretary.

I did not know Judge Fawcett, but I know who killed him, and why.

I am a lawyer, and I am in prison.

Y is for The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

The sun brightens in the east, reddening the blue-grey haze that marks the distant ocean. The vultures roosting on the hydro poles fan out their wings to dry them. the air smells faintly of burning. The waterless flood – a manmade plague – has ended the world.

But two young women have survived: Ren, a young dancer trapped where she worked, in an upmarket sex club (the cleanest dirty girls in town); and Toby, who watches and waits from her rooftop garden.

Is anyone else out there?

The next link up will be on February 3, 2024 when the theme will be Comfort Reads -escape from reality.

Six Degrees of Separation from Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow to The Hog’s Back Mystery

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

It’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month starts with Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin a book I haven’t read. It’s the story of Sam and Sadie, who are both gamers, but according to Amazon this is not a romance but a story about love.

I’ve seen this reviewed in numerous places but never been tempted to read it until I read Kate’s review @ Books are my favourite and best. Like Kate I also thought it was about gaming and so not for me. But she explained that it wasn’t really about gaming but relationships, so maybe it could be.

Anyway, I’m starting my chain with a book with another character called Sadie. It’s The Search Party by Simon Lelic. Sixteen year old Sadie Saunders is missing and five of her friends set out into the woods to find her. At the same time the police’s investigation, led by Detective Inspector Robin Fleet and Detective Sergeant Nicola Collins, is underway.

My second link is to another crime fiction set in woods – In the Woods by Tana French. It’s set in Ireland mainly around an archaeological dig of a site prior to the construction of a motorway. Most of the wood that covered the land had already been cleared, but a small section remains. A little girl’s body is discovered on the site. Is her death connected to the disappearance of two twelve year-olds 20 years earlier? It’s Tana French’s debut novel.

My third link is to another debut novel – The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan. It’s a harrowing account of the atrocities of Srebrenica in 1995 and the search for justice forms the basis of this novel. Alongside that is the investigation by detectives Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty into the death of Christopher Drayton who fell from the heights of the Scarborough Bluffs, Ontario. Was it suicide, or an accident? Ausma Zehanat Khan is a Canadian author.

As is Sheena Kamal, whose book Eyes Like Mine, was also a debut novel. It’s a dark, compulsively readable psychological suspense novel. The main focus of the book is Nora, a recovering alcoholic, who works for a private investigation firm in Vancouver, and her search for her daughter, Bonnie, now a teenager, who she gave away as a new-born baby.

My fifth link is His and Hers by Alice Feeney, in which there is another recovering alcoholic. The narrative moves between two characters ‘Him’, Jack Harper and ‘Her’, Anna Andrews. Jack is a Detective Chief Inspector, who has recently moved to Blackdown in Surrey to be in charge of the Major Crime Team there. When a woman is murdered in Blackdown village, both Anna and Jack are suspects.

And my final link is another book set in Surrey. It is The Hog’s Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Croft. Hog’s Back is a ridge in the North Downs in the Surrey countryside. It was first published in 1933 during the Golden Age of detective fiction between the two world wars. It’s an Inspector French murder mystery where first one person then others disappear. Have they been murdered?

My chain has taken me from the USA to the UK and Canada, ending back in the UK. There are three debut novels and all six books are crime fiction novels.

Next month (February 6, 2024), we will start with the book you finished on this month (or the last book read).

Top Ten Tuesday: Favourite Books of 2023

Published on by Margaret22 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 this week is Favourite Books of 2023. The links are to Goodreads or to my review if I wrote one. I’ve recently posted a list of Ten Five Star Books of 2023, so for this post I’m listing ten different five star books I read in 2023.

Virginia Woolf: A Biography vol 1 1882 – 1912 by Quentin Bell, her nephew. It tells of Virginia Stephen’s childhood and that of her sister Vanessa up to her decision to marry Leonard Woolf. The front cover shows the painting of Virginia Woolf by Roger Fry, a painter and designer and a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

Death is Now My Neighbour by Colin Dexter, the penultimate book in the Inspector Morse series Morse is nearing retirement and he is not a well man and his drinking is causing him problems, enough to make him go to the doctor, who diagnoses diabetes. But does Morse follow his doctor’s advice?

The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths, the 14th Ruth Galloway mystery novel. Forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway and DCI Harry Nelson are on the hunt for a murderer when Covid rears its ugly head. But can they find the killer despite lockdown?

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, a novel that has received both good and bad reviews. I loved it. Set on the island of Bougainville, part of Papua New Guinea in the 1990s during the Bougainville civil war, it’s narrated by Matilda (aged nearly 14). Guided by their teacher Mr Watt, a white man, the children have been reading the story of Pip in Great Expectations, which provides an escape for Matilda from the fear and violence of the horrific events that engulfed the island during the civil war.

The Hairy Bikers Blood, Sweat & Tyres: The Autobiography by Si King and Dave Myers – a fascinating book written in alternate chapters by Si and Dave. It’s funny, informative, sad and happy, revealing the tough times they went through, their health issues, family losses, how they came to work on TV and above all their friendship.

Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister, the fifth book by her that I’ve read and one of the best books I read in 2023. It’s tense, tightly plotted and completely compelling reading, as DCI Julia Day investigates the disappearance of 22 year old Olivia.

A Winter Grave by Peter May. This is cli-fi, about the effects of climate change on human society, set in an independent Scotland in 2051. Addie, a young meteorologist checking a mountain top weather station, discovers the body of a man entombed in ice.

The Vanishing Tide by Hilary Tailor, her debut novel, beautifully written. When Isla inherits the cliffside cottage where she spent her childhood, she must face dark shadows of her past—the mother who rejected her in favour of her art, the aunt whose death haunted them both, and the silence that permeated every room. Digging through the belongings of someone she realises she never really knew, Isla finally has the chance to find answers to the secrets her mother spent a lifetime hiding.

Ultra-Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken, subtitled ‘Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … And Why Can’t We Stop?’ I kept hearing about ultra processed food, but had little idea what exactly it is, so when I saw this book I thought it would be ideal – and it’s by Chris van Tulleken, who has impressed me on numerous TV programmes on nutrition. It is absolutely fascinating and a real eye opener!

The Sixth Lie by Sarah Ward, the 2nd Mallory Dawson crime thriller. Six lies killed Huw Jones.On New Year’s Eve 2011, Huw Jones disappeared from his bedroom while his father and five friends were downstairs. His body was later discovered on the nearby cliffs at St Non’s. That night, all six friends lied in their statements to the police. Over a decade later, Huw’s mother, Heledd is found dead. Mallory Dawson, a former police police detective, must uncover the lies lurking in the tight-knit community of St Davids. But someone has kept their secrets for years, and they would kill to protect them.

My Life in Books 2023

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Happy New Year to you all! I’m wishing you all health and happiness for 2024 and lots of good books to read.

With thanks to Annabookbel for the reminder about this annual meme…Using only books you have read this year answer these prompts. Try not to repeat a book title.  (Links in the titles will take you to my reviews where they exist)

Ten Five Star Books of the Year 2023

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

2023 has been a good time for reading books, but not a good time as far as writing reviews goes and I am way behind. I’ll probably never catch up.

These are 10 of the 21 books I rated 5 star reads this year. I’ve listed them in a-z author order, with links to my reviews where they exist.

The Rising Tide by Ann Cleeves – this is the 10th Vera Stanhope mystery novel. I love the Vera books and this one is no exception. Ann Cleeves is a superb storyteller. Her books are deceptively easy to read,  moving swiftly along as the tension rises. They are layered, cleverly plotted and above all convincing. It’s set on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, a tidal island just off the coast of Northumberland, only accessible across a causeway when the tide is out.

The Road Towards Home by Corinne Demas – I thoroughly enjoyed this book, a complete and welcome change from crime and hisrorical fiction. It’s about the friendship between Cassandra and Noah, two retired people who had first met in their youth. They were reacquainted when they moved to Clarion Court an ‘an independent living community’. Noah invites Cassandra to rough it with him at his Cape Cod cottage, and their relationship unexpectedly blossoms after several ups and downs.

The Dancing Bear by Francis Faviell – a moving memoir of the Occupation. Set in Berlin it covers the years from autumn 1946 to autumn 1949 and is mainly about her friendship with the Altmann family. Frances is horrified by the conditions she found. There were deaths from hunger and cold as the winter approached and queues for bread, milk, cigarettes, cinemas, buses and trams. I was fascinated by it all – the people, their situations, and their morale and attitudes as well as the condition of Berlin in the aftermath of World War Two. The realities of living under occupation are clearly shown, as well as the will to survive despite all the devastation and deprivation.

Underworld by Reginald Hill – the 10th Dalziel and Pascoe novel, set in the small mining town of Burrthorpe (a fictional town) in Yorkshire. The majority of the book is about the miners, their families, their hatred of the bosses, and their distrust and dislike of the police. There are two mysteries facing Dalziel and Pascoe. One is current and the other is a case that had appeared to have been resolved several years earlier, when a young girl disappeared. Dalziel has just a minor role as Pascoe leads the investigation. And it’s left to Dalziel to bring a touch of humour to the book. His down to earth approach to the miners gets more results than Pascoe’s middle class attempts to understand them.

Empire by Conn Iggulden – this is the first book in Conn Iggulden’s Golden Age series set in the 5th century BCE. I thoroughly enjoyed it which surprised me as generally speaking I’m not keen on reading battle scenes and the book starts and ends with battles. But I had no problem with following the action of the battles between the Greeks and the Persians, and was able to visualise what was going on without any difficulty. 

A Sea of Troubles by Donna Leon – the 10th Commissario Guido Brunetti novel. Brunetti is one of my favourite detectives. He is happily married with two children. He doesn’t smoke or drink to excess and often goes home for lunch to his beautiful wife Paolo, who is a wonderful cook. In this book he investigates the deaths of two clam fishermen, father and son, off the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, when their boat had suddenly exploded. He found himself in a web of political intrigue, corruption and secrets. From a slow start the ending is dramatic and action packed with Brunetti and Elletra, his boss’s secretary, in danger of their lives.

A Memoir of My Former Self by Hilary Mantel – a selection of articles and essays including newspaper and periodical articles, film reviews, and her Reith lectures. She wrote about episodes from throughout her life and about a huge variety of topics, including her thoughts on her own historical fiction, explaining how and why she wrote the Wolf Hall trilogy, her love for Jane Austen’s novels, her thoughts on nationalism, and on identity – being European and ‘English’ that I found particularly fascinating and thought-provoking.

I read it totally out of order and want to go back and can read it all again before writing any more about it. If you like Mantel’s work it’s a ‘must read’.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym – set just after the end of the Second World War, about the everyday life of Mildred Lathbury, an unmarried woman – in other words a spinster – in her early 30s. The daughter of a clergyman she is one of those ‘excellent women’ who could be relied upon to help out at Church jumble sales, garden fêtes, to make tea when required or to make up numbers at social gatherings. Pym is such a keen observer of human nature, giving the little details that bring the characters to life. I found them all totally believable, each with their own eccentricities. She writes so simply but with such depth. It’s a slow-paced book but all the better because of that. 

On the Beach by Nevil Shute – I think this is a terrifying and incredibly sad book, and yet it all seems low key. People go about their everyday lives but set against the background that the world is about to end. It was first published in 1957 and is set sometime in the early 1960s about a group of people living in Melbourne and on the USS submarine, Scorpion, as they await the arrival of deadly radiation spreading towards them from the Northern Hemisphere, following a nuclear war the previous year. 

The Shadows of London by Andrew Taylor – the 6th book in his James Marwood and Cat Lovett Restoration series. I’ve read all of the previous books, set in 17th century England, during the reign of Charles II, and thoroughly enjoyed each one. When a man’s brutally disfigured body is discovered in the ruins of an ancient almshouse it is obvious he has been murdered, and Whitehall secretary James Marwood is ordered to investigate. One of the things that I really enjoyed in this book is the picture it paints of John Evelyn, the writer and diarist, bibliophile and horticulturalist. He was a contemporary of Samuel Pepys. His diary covers the years from 1640 to 1706 when he died. And now I want to find out more about him.

Top Ten Tuesday: The Ten Most Recent Additions to My Bookshelf

Published on by Margaret8 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 this week is The Ten Most Recent Additions to My Bookshelf. The links are to Goodreads.

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler – Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend tells him she’s facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah’s door claiming to be his son.

These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah’s meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever.

Past Lying by Val McDermid – It’s April 2020 and Edinburgh is in lockdown, but that doesn’t mean crime takes a holiday. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot—the streets all but empty, an hour’s outdoor exercise the maximum allowed—but when a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie’s team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it’s game on again. What unspools is a twisted game of betrayal and revenge, but no one quite expects how many twists it will turn out to have. 

The Complete Works of George Orwell: Novels, Poetry, Essays: (1984, Animal Farm, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, A Clergyman’s Daughter, Burmese Days, Down … Over 50 Essays and Over 10 Poems),

A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing by Hilary Mantel – In addition to her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel contributed for years to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. “Ink is a generative fluid,” she explains. “If you don’t mean your words to breed consequences, don’t write at all.” A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades.

The Snow Angel by Anki Edvinsson  (Detectives von Klint and Berg Book 1) – A teenage suicide. A murdered pharmacist. A missing girl. Is the obvious connection the right one?

Relocating from Stockholm with her teenage daughter, Detective Charlotte von Klint expected Umeå to be a quiet backwater, a snow-covered change of pace from fighting the criminal underworld of the capital. But when a pharmacist is found brutally murdered in her apartment, and a young girl and her dealer boyfriend vanish without a trace after a party, suddenly Umeå doesn’t seem so benign. And the boy on the bridge doesn’t feel like an isolated incident.

The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods – On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found…

For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives. But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder… where nothing is as it seems.

The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks – When a young American academic Talissa Adam offers to carry another woman’s child, she has no idea of the life-changing consequences.

Behind the doors of the Parn Institute, a billionaire entrepreneur plans to stretch the boundaries of ethics as never before. Through a series of IVF treatments, which they hope to keep secret, they propose an experiment that will upend the human race as we know it.
Seth, the baby, is delivered to hopeful parents Mary and Alaric, but when his differences start to mark him out from his peers, he begins to attract unwanted attention. The Seventh Son is a spectacular examination of what it is to be human. It asks the question: just because you can do something, does it mean you should? Sweeping between New York, London, and the Scottish Highlands, this is an extraordinary novel about unrequited love and unearned power.

Blue Murder by Cath Staincliffe – Meet Janine Lewis. A single mum of three and Manchester’s newest detective chief inspector. Her cheating husband walked out the day she got promoted. Now she’s six months pregnant with his baby and in charge of her first murder case.

The body of a deputy head teacher is found on a lonely allotment. Gutted — his stomach sliced open — and left for dead, The only witnesses are a dying elderly man and a seven-year-old girl. And now the prime suspect has disappeared . . .

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know? by Dov Waxman – No conflict in the world has lasted as long, generated as many news headlines, or incited as much controversy as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet, despite, or perhaps because of, the degree of international attention it receives, the conflict is still widely misunderstood. While Israelis and Palestinians and their respective supporters trade accusations, many outside observers remain confused by the conflict’s complexity and perplexed by the passion it arouses.The Israeli-Palestinian What Everyone Needs to Know? offers an even-handed and judicious guide to the world’s most intractable dispute. Writing in an engaging, jargon-free Q&A format, Dov Waxman provides clear and concise answers to common questions, from the most basic to the most contentious. Covering the conflict from its nineteenth-century origins to the latest developments of the twenty-first century, this book explains the key events, examines the core issues, and presents the competing claims and narratives of both sides. Readers will learn what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about, how it has evolved over time, and why it continues to defy diplomatic efforts at a resolution.

All Creatures Great and Small: The Classic Memoirs of a Yorkshire Country Vet by James Herriot – The first volume in the multimillion copy bestselling series.

Delve into the magical, unforgettable world of James Herriot, the world’s most beloved veterinarian, and his menagerie of heartwarming, funny, and tragic animal patients.

For fifty years, generations of readers have flocked to Herriot’s marvelous tales, deep love of life, and extraordinary storytelling abilities. For decades, Herriot roamed the remote, beautiful Yorkshire Dales, treating every patient that came his way from smallest to largest, and observing animals and humans alike with his keen, loving eye.

In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school.