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 New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023. These are all books I read and reviewed in 2023. I enjoyed all of them, some more than others (marked with an asterisk*).
The Flower Arranger at All Saints by Lis Howell was one of Prime Reader’s free books last year that I downloaded. I loved it! it’s my first 5* read of the year.
Synopsis
In quiet Tarnfield, local rivalries and parish feuds simmer under the genteel surface. It’s the sort of place where everyone knows each other’s business. And a new vicar wants to shake things up in the community. Then Phyllis the church flower arranger is found dead before the big Easter service. With fingers pointing and tensions rising, the village is in turmoil.
Chaotic mum-of-two, Suzy Spencer, has just arrived in Tarnfield. She needs a fresh start after her husband betrayed her. Now she finds herself entangled in the mystery along with quiet widower, Robert Clark. The killer is set to strike again with another floral flourish. Despite their differences, can Suzy and Robert stop the murderer before anyone else suffers?
My thoughts
There is a lot to like in this book. The setting is Tarnfield, a fictional Cumbrian village. The setting is described so well that I could ‘see’ it all. It’s picturesque, quiet and secluded, where everyone knows everybody’s business. The church plays a huge part in village life, but traditions are being upended by the new vicar and his fondness for playing the guitar during sermons.
And the characters are so ‘real’. I believed in them and even though there are many of them they’re all easily distinguishable and I loved the biblical references and flower clues – they’re intriguing. The plot too kept me keen to carry on reading, wanting to know the identity of the murderer. As Suzy and Robert try to get to the bottom of the mystery many secrets are revealed – and it looks as though a relationship between the two of them is developing.There are more deaths and red herrings with several twists and turns before the culprit is found.
Why haven’t I come across this author before and her Suzy Spencer mysteries? The Flower Arranger at All Saints is the first in the series and luckily there are four more for me to read!
About the author
Lis Howell is from Liverpool, UK. She is the author of the Suzy Spencer cozy mysteries. They are set around the fictional town of Norbridge, Cumbria in the North of England. In her varied life, Lis has spent a short time running a post office in a Cumbrian village; and she lived for several years near Hadrian’s Wall between England and Scotland. Lis is an award-winning TV journalist based in London and is now an academic. Like Suzy, she’s a confused churchgoer, although she married a churchwarden! Anglican traditions feature in her books, along with modern media, family life and village intrigue.
I’m taking part in the What’s In A Name Challenge? this year and this book fits into the category of a NFL team (New Orleans Saints).
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 Books I Meant to Read in 2023 but Didn’t. I have an enormous pile of books I’d love to read this year.
These are just ten of them, books I was so keen to read when I first got them, but for one reason or another I just never got round to actually reading them. And simply saying that I will read a book this year almost guarantees that I won’t. They’re listed in no particular order, because if I try to prioritise them that would be fatal:
Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith – Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno meet on a train. Bruno manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. “Some people are better off dead,” Bruno remarks, “like your wife and my father, for instance.”
Recalled to Life by Reginald Hill – Set in 1963, Dalziel and Pascoe re-investigate a crime of passion in one of England’s great houses, an open-and-shut case. But thirty years later, when the convicted nanny is freed, then spirited off to America before she can talk, Dalzeil wonders did the wrong aristocrat hang?
How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn – a story of life in a mining community in rural South Wales as Huw Morgan is preparing to leave the valley where he had grown up. He tells of life before the First World War.
Here Be Dragons by Sharon Penman – set in 13th century Wales this is the story of Llewelyn, the Prince of North Wales, and his rise to power and fame and his love for Joanna, the illegitimate daughter of King John.
The Secret of Annexe 3by Colin Dexter – Much too early on New Year’s Day, a grumpy Inspector Morse is summoned to investigate a murder at the Haworth Hotel. The victim is still wearing the Rastafarian costume that won him first prize at the hotel’s New Year’s Eve party; his female companion and the other guests in the annexe have vanished. It’s a mystery that’s a stretch even for Morse. But with pit-bull fervor he grabs the truth by the throat and shakes loose the bizarre secrets of a cold-blooded crime of passion. . . .
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – on the day of Nick and Amy’s fifth wedding anniversary, Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn’t true.
Birthright by Nora Roberts – a novel about an archaeological dig when five-thousand-year-old human bones are found, this has a sense of death and misfortune combined with a mystery about the archaeologist Callie Dunbrook’s past.
Earth and Heavenby Sue Gee – In the aftermath of the First World War, a young painter Walter Cox and the wood-engraver Sarah Lewis meet at the Slade, then set up home and a studio together. With their newfound happiness, and the birth of Meredith, then Geoffrey, the grief of war recedes. But children are unpredictable and have their own inner lives: events on a summer afternoon change everything …
Tangerine by Christine Mangan – Set in Morocco in the 1950s, this is described as a psychological literary thrillerand the perfect read for fans of Daphne du Maurier and Patricia Highsmith. The last person Alice Shipley expected to see since arriving in Tangier with her new husband was Lucy Mason. After the horrific accident at Bennington, the two friends – once inseparable roommates – haven’t spoken in over a year. But Lucy is standing there, trying to make things right.
When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Penman – the first book in the Eleanor of Aquitaine trilogy. Historical fiction about Stephen and his cousin, the Empress Maude, and the long fight to win the English throne.
which for me is The Invisible Man by H G Wells. The rules of the Spin are that this is the book for me to read by 3rd March 2024
Synopsis from Amazon
‘The man’s become inhuman … He has cut himself off from his kind. His blood be upon his own head.’
One night in the depths of winter, a bizarre and sinister stranger wrapped in bandages and eccentric clothing arrives in a remote English village. His peculiar, secretive activities in the room he rents spook the locals. Speculation about his identity becomes horror and disbelief when the villagers discover that, beneath his disguise, he is invisible.
Griffin, as the man is called, is an embittered scientist who is determined to exploit his extraordinary gifts, developed in the course of brutal self-experimentation, in order to conduct a Reign of Terror on the sleepy inhabitants of England. As the police close in on him, he becomes ever more desperate and violent.
In this pioneering novella, subtitled ‘A Grotesque Romance’, Wells combines comedy, both farcical and satirical, and tragedy – to superbly unsettling effect. Since its publication in 1897, The Invisible Man has haunted not only popular culture (in particular cinema) but also the greatest and most experimental novels of the twentieth century.
I was hoping I’d get one of the shorter books on my list – this one is just that at 192 pages. I’m looking forward to reading it.
Did you take part in the Classics Spin? What will you be reading?
Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Readerwhere you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.
I’m featuring The Hog’s Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts one of the books I’m currently reading. I’ve read about half of it and am enjoying it although it is a bit repetitive. It’s a “GoldenAge” mystery, first published in 1933.
Book Beginning:
‘Ursula! I am glad to see you!’ Julia Earle moved forward to the carriage door to greet the tall, well dressed woman who stepped down on the platform of the tiny station of Ash in Surrey.
Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head if Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.
Page 56:
‘Well,’ said Sheaf, with a keen glance,what does it look like to you?’ ‘
This was the sort of question which on principle French never answered. He was certainly not to give an opinion until he had had time to think over the facts and come to a reasoned conclusion.
Description from Goodreads:
Dr James Earle and his wife live in comfortable seclusion near the Hog’s Back, a ridge in the North Downs in the beautiful Surrey countryside. When Dr Earle disappears from his cottage, Inspector French is called in to investigate. At first he suspects a simple domestic intrigue – and begins to uncover a web of romantic entanglements beneath the couple’s peaceful rural life.
The case soon takes a more complex turn. Other people vanish mysteriously, one of Dr Earle’s house guests among them. What is the explanation for the disappearances? If the missing people have been murdered, what can be the motive? This fiendishly complicated puzzle is one that only Inspector French can solve.
~~~
What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?
The What’s In A Name Challenge is being hosted again for 2024 by Andrea at Carolina Book Nook. The challenge runs from 1st January to 31st December 2024. You can sign up at any time but can only count books you read between those dates. Read a book in any format (hard copy, ebook, audio) with a title that fits into each category.
The categories with my provisional choices are:
Double Letters The Secret Lives of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
An NFL Team Giant’s Bread by Agatha Christie
A natural disaster The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
A virtue Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
A shape Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars by Francesca Ward
