More Excellent Books

Two of the books bought with the free gift card have been read and both were good.

First.........



British Library Crime Classics have already reprinted a few books by this author under her pseudonym of E.C.R. Lorac and they were all well written and this one is a good read too.

 This was written in 1952, one year after the author had her own holiday in the alps
.
In London, still recovering from WWII, Inspector Brook of Scotland Yard looks at the victim of a ruthless murder who lies burnt beyond recognition, his possessions and papers destroyed by fire. But there is one strange, yet promising, lead – a lead which suggests the involvement of a skier.

Meanwhile,  sunshine beams down on the sparkling snow of the Austrian Alps, where a merry group of holidaymakers are heading towards Lech am Arlberg. They are a ski party organised among friends and colleagues consisting of eight men and eight women and travelling out from London to enjoy some time on the slopes. Some of the 16 are known to each other but a few are friends of friends stepping in to fill the gaps when others dropped out. The story moves between London and Austria  as  the ski party are soon to become sixteen suspects. Perhaps one of their number is not who they claim to be.



Secondly.................... and thank you to whoever it was (if it was a blogger) that mentioned "The World My Wilderness" by Rose Macaulay.
What a treat this book was.

It is 1946 and the people of France and England are facing the aftermath of the War. 17 year old Barbary Deniston has spent her childhood years in the sunshine of Provence living with her beautiful mother and stepfather. During the War she ran wild with the French Resistance, experiencing collaboration, secrecy and murder.
 In peacetime she is sent to live with her very proper and upright barrister father and young stepmother in the drab austerity of postwar London life. 
Confused and unhappy, she discovers the flowering bomb craters around St Paul's Cathedral. Here, in the bombed heart of London, with the outcasts living on the edge of society, she finds a world similar to the way she lived during the war.
Then an accident among the ruins of churches and homes brings her mother to her from France.


Originally published in 1950 this was first reprinted by Virago in 1983.
I loved it and raced through it in all spare moments - and there are plenty of those now!

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Sue