Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Summer 2022 To-Read List

Published on by Margaret18 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: Books On My Summer 2022 To-Read List.

As I’m taking part in the 20 Books of Summer Challenge I’m featuring 10 of those books. Some of these books are ones that have been on my TBR list for ages, some are library books and some are more recent additions from NetGalley.

  1. Winter Garden by Beryl Bainbridge – described on the back cover as ‘surreal’ (TLS) and ‘very funny as well as a frightening book’ (Guardian), I’m not sure what I’ll make of this book about a womaniser who begins an extra-marital affair, but I’ve liked other books by Beryl Bainbridge.
  2. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker – historical fiction, retelling the story of the Trojan war from the point of view of the women. 
  3. Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith – a psychological thriller about two men whose lives become entangled after one of them proposes they “trade” murders.
  4. Killing the Lawyers by Reginald Hill – the 3rd book in the Joe Sixsmith series about a redundant lathe operator turned private eye from Luton.
  5. The Children Act by Ian McEwan – I loved Atonement, but I’m not sure I’ll like this one about a judge’s ruling that decides the fate of a teenage boy in ways she never intended or imagined.
  6. I’ll Never Be Young Again by Daphne du Maurier – her 2nd novel about a young writer in Paris who is obsessed by his love for a young music student.
  7. Undercurrent by Barney Norris – a novel described as: Filled with hope and characteristic warmth, a moving and intimate portrait of love, of life and why we choose to share ours with the people we do.
  8. Unnatural Death by Dorothy L Sayers – the 3rd book in the Lord Peter Wimsey series in which a wealthy old woman died much sooner than the doctor expected. Did she suddenly succumb to illness–or was it murder? 
  9. King Solomon’s Carpet by Barbara Vine – Jarvis Stringer lives in a crumbling schoolhouse overlooking a tube line, compiling his obsessive, secret history of London’s Underground. 
  10. The Invisible Man by H G Wells – science fiction about a man trapped in the terror of his own creation.

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Published on by Margaret20 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where 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.

One of the books I’m reading is Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. This is a book that I’ve been hesitating about reading for a while. For one thing I had no idea what crawdads are – they’re crayfish and apparently they don’t actually sing – and for another it has mixed reviews. Anyway, I decided it was worth trying and I started to listen to the audiobook on BorrowBox, but had to return it unfinished and have now borrowed a paperback copy from the library. I’ve got to return it by 7 July as someone else has reserved it, which puts me under pressure to read it right now. It’s obviously in demand!

It begins with a Prologue:

1969

Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky.

Followed by Chapter I Ma:

1952

The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh’s moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog. The palmetto patches stood unusually quiet except for the low, slow flap of the heron’s wings lifting from the lagoon. And then, Kya, only six at the time, heard the screen door slap.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where 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:

Every warmish day of winter and every day of spring, Pa and Kya went out, far and up and down the coast, trolling, casting, and reeling. Whether the estuary or creek, she scanned for that boy Tate in his boat, hoping to see him again.

Synopsis from Amazon

For years, rumors of the ‘Marsh Girl’ have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life – until the unthinkable happens.

~~~

It’s looking good so far. Have you read it – if so, what did you think of it?

A Tapping At My Door by David Jackson

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Zaffre/ 2016/ e-book/ Print length: 315 pages/ My own copy/ 4*

It’s that time of year ago when I’ve been reading and not reviewing – spending more time gardening as the grass grows so quickly and the weeds multiply. And I want to do some more family history . As it’s too hot to do much gardening today I’ve got some time to write a short review.

A Tapping At My Door is a crime thriller, the first in David Jackson’s DS Nathan Cody crime thriller series. I bought it not long after it had been published in 2016, but I’ve only just got round to reading it. I wrote about the opening in this post. Even though this book is more scary and, in parts more gruesome, than I like to read, I did finish it, and enjoyed it for the characters and the plot.

I liked Nathan immediately. He works in the Major Investigation Team in Liverpool, but was previously an undercover officer. It’s obvious that something had gone wrong whilst he was working undercover, which had affected him very badly. He can’t sleep, has a quick temper and flares up very easily, especially with the local reporter and he acts recklessly with little regard for his safety.

The mystery begins as Terri Latham is disturbed late one night by a ‘tapping, scratching, scrabbling noise at her back door’. When she goes outside to investigate she sees a large black bird trapped at her window and she is then struck with something hard and heavy, rammed into her skull. What follows is not a quick death and when the police find her, it is with the dead bird’s wings unfurled and spread across her where her eyes had been, and her cheeks. There is a note attached to the bird’s leg, with the message: ‘Nevermore‘, a reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, The Raven.

There are more bodies, each accompanied by a dead bird and a cyptic note, and it is soon obvious that the murderer is targeting the police. This book is full of tension, it’s very creepy and in places it is utterly gross. Although, I’m giving it 4 stars I am not at all sure I’ll read any more of the books in this series, but if you have a stronger stomach than me you’ll probably love them.

I have a backlog of reviews to write, so this is the first of several short reviews so that I can catch up!

Library Books 18 June 2022

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

It’s time for another Library Books post – here are my current library loans. From the bottom up they are:

The Women of Troy by Pat Barker – the continuation of the story of Troy following on from The Silence of the Girls (which I have, but have not read yet). It is a retelling of The Iliad from the perspective of the women of Troy who endured it. I hope I’ll be able to read both before I have to return it.

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood, a retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, one of my favourites of his plays. I’ve seen it performed on stage twice, once at the Barbican in London and then at the Royal Shakespeare Company Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Margaret Atwood is one of my favourite authors, so I’m expecting this will be good.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Now, this is a book I’ve wondered about reading ever since I saw other book bloggers’ reviews. It seems to be a book that some people love and others don’t, varying from five to one star ratings. I started to listen to the audiobook, but had to return it unfinished. It’s described as ‘part murder-mystery, part coming-of-age novel’ set in the North Carolina marshlands.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, a Poirot murder mystery. I have read this book, but I fancied reading it again, even though I do know who murdered Mr Ratchett, an American tycoon who was murdered in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. I really like the cover of this book!

What have you been reading from the library recently?

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: A Tapping at My Door by David Jackson

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where 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 currently reading A Tapping at My Door by David Jackson, one of my 20 Books of Summer. It’s the first in his DS Nathan Cody crime thriller series.

Listen.

There it is again. The sound. The tapping, scraching, scrabbling noise at the back door.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where 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.

56%:

‘We can’t keep operating like this. We can’t treat every suspicious call as if it’s leading us to an unexploded bomb. We haven’t got the resources and pretty soon the public is going to start wonderingwhy we’re taking so long to deal with minor crimes.

Synopsis from Amazon

When police are called to a murder scene in the Liverpool suburbs, even the most jaded officers are disturbed by what they find.

DS Nathan Cody, still bearing the scars of an undercover mission that went horrifyingly wrong, is put on the case. But the police have no leads, except the body of the bird – and the victim’s missing eyes.

And then the killer strikes again, and Cody realises the threat isn’t to the people of Liverpool after all – it’s to the police.

~~~

The beginning of this book is so scary that I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to read it, but I am and I’m enjoying it. Jackson quotes from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven before Chapter 1, which gives you a hint of what is to follow.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

The Hiding Place by Simon Lelic

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Penguin UK| 22 May 2022| 340 pages| e-book| Review copy/5*

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Synopsis:

Four friends. One murder. A game they can’t escape . . .

‘It was only a game.’ Until a boy went missing. ‘No one was meant to get hurt.’ But a body has been found. ‘Just some innocent fun.’ Except one of them is a killer. Ready or not, here I come.

It’s time to play hide and seek again.

My thoughts:

I’ve read two of Simon Lelic’s books previously and enjoyed both of them, but I think The Hiding Place is the best. It’s the second book featuring D I Robin Fleet and D S Nicola Collins, first seen in The Search Party.

It’s set across two timelines – 1997 when Ben Draper, a 14 year-old teenager with a troubled background, and a history of absconding from school, started at Beaconsfield, a prestigious boarding school. He is bullied, disliked and feels shunned and despised, but he does make three friends, Callum, Lance and Melissa. Longing to be accepted, he thinks they are his friends, but then he is drawn unwillingly into their plot to damage the school. After playing a game of Hide and Seek with them, that ended in terror, he went missing and his body was never found. Until, that is, in the present day, when his skeleton was found in an abandoned crypt in the school grounds – Fleet and Collins are assigned to investigate the case.

I was soon thoroughly gripped by this book as it moves between the two time periods. The detectives interview the headmaster, who seems to be more concerned about the school’s reputation than about finding out what had happened to Ben. The investigation is made more difficult as Callum is now a well-known TV celebrity and aspiring politician, which means the case is potentially a political scandal and that Fleet’s hands are tied. The detectives efforts to trace the other two pupils, Lance and Melissa are also hampered.

What emerges is a fantastic story, with many complications, red herrings and plot twists. Lelic is a terrific storyteller and writes a really compelling story that moves along at a fast pace. It is full of tension and suspense that kept me enthralled.The characterisation and the school setting, surrounded by thick woodland full of ancient trees and a graveyard, are excellent. I really like Fleet, and the way he stands up to his boss, Superintendent Burton, a yes man whose main concern is to keep the politicians happy. It examines the problems caused by loneliness and feelings of being a misfit in an unfeeling elitist education system where bullying and manipulation is largely unchecked. I was never sure how it would end, or who was responsible for Ben’s death until the final dramatic conclusion. I think it is one of the best books I’ve read so far this year.

Many thanks to Penguin UK for a review copy via NetGalley.