I have just spent half an hour sorting through my TBR table and shelving books I have written about, put to one side those I will not be reading or reviewing and then another heap of books to feature in this post. I also have a bag for the charity shop so am feeling a tad better about the pile which is now somewhat reduced. (I went to a book fair over the weekend and came back with another twelve so I needed to make some space....)
Tenterhooks - Ada Leverson. Some years ago I found a book called The Little Ottleys in a second hand bookshop. It was one of those wonderful Virago Green editions and I never let those go. I knew nothing about the author and had never heard of the title but I brought it home, sat down and read it and simply loved every word. I blogged about it here.
This is the second in the series and has been reissued as a stand alone by Mike Walmer who runs a small publishing company in Australia and who has sent me some lovely books over the years (he has also reissued the first in this trilogy). I will keep my battered old Virago copy, natch, but this one will sit alongside it. If you click on the link I have inserted in the above paragraph it will take you back to my original review which, to my astonishment, I note was in 2016. Time flies when you are having fun.
As you all know by now the British Library Classic Crime series is top of my list of favourite publishers and this week a knock on the door and a delivery of a nice padded bag and inside three from BritLib. Death in Fancy Dress - Anthony Gilbert. This is a name that keeps popping up when I am chatting to detective fiction lovers and I have yet to read any of his titles. This will now be rectified.
The action takes place at a country house (well of course it does) where a fancy dress ball is in full swing and in the middle of the revelry Sir Ralph Feltham is found dead. OK now that sounds to me a simply perfect setting and I am looking forward to reading this one.
The Christmas Egg by Mary Kelly. "Chief Inspector Nightingale and Sargeant Beddoes have been called to a gloomy flat off Islington High Street. An elderly woman lies dead and her trunk has been looted. The woman is Princess Olga Karukhin, an emigree of Civil War Russia and her trunk is missing its glittering treasure..."
Well if you don't want to read this after that blurb then I will have nothing more to do with you...
The Pocket Detective 2 - puzzles, brainteasers etc. I have yet to finish No 1 but delighted to receive this and though I hate the expression Stocking Filler this is just perfect to pop in a sock or whatever you use.
Shakespeare for every Day of the Year - edited by Allie Esiri. This is a simply gorgeous book. It looks lovely with a beautiful cover and just begs you to open it up. As the title says this book has a quote or a passage or a scene from Shakespeare for every single day. I have this on my bedside table and have been checking it in the morning while drinking my tea. Today it is the turn of All's Well that ends well, Act 2, Scene 3. Now I do not know this play, my ignorance is total, and the scene is set by a summing up of the action before you read.
"A young aristocrat called Bertram is forced into a marriage by the King of France to Helena the orphan of a mere doctor. In this passage the King promises to pay her dowry. It is possible that Shakespeare played the part of the King, as a contemporary report notes that he played 'kingly parts'"
Tomorrow which is Halloween we have, of course we do, the Three Witches from Macbeth...
I am trying to avoid mentioning CHRISTMAS but have to say that this would make a gorgeous pressie to a Shakespeare loving/book loving friend. Sure we all have a few of those.
I still have more titles to go but it is coffee time. In the words of the great Arnold Schwarzenegger "I'll be back"...
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