The Books Read in 2024

 A Grand Total of  104  books read in 2024, compared to 124 in 2023, so down a lot - no idea why.

These were divided into:-

24 Fiction (including 1 book of short stories) 

45 Crime Fiction More recently written  (roughly in the last 50 years) 

20 Crime Fiction written many years ago and often re-published by British Library Crime Classics (this includes 6 collections of short stories)

12 Non Fiction 

3 Children's books

My Reading the Seasons 'Challenge' had me reading books I wouldn't have read normally and the details of all those are HERE

Below are details of some of my favourites from the year.   All I read are on the separate Books Read 2024 page

• Evie Woods -The Lost Bookshop. Fiction (Published 2023) This story moves between two timelines, three countries and three different people. In the 1920's Opaline Carlisle runs away from London to France to avoid marrying the man her brother is forcing her to marry. In modern day Dublin Martha has at last got away from her abusive husband and Henry is searching for information about a book and a bookshop to make his name as a book dealer. A really good story with magic and history.
• Rumer Godden -  The Peacock Spring. Fiction. (Published 1975). 15 year old Una and 12 year old Hal are summoned from their English boarding school to start a new life with their diplomat father in India. When Una discovers their beautiful governess Alix is actually her father's mistress, she is furious and starts spending time with the mysterious gardener Ravi.
• Rob Rinder - The Trial. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023). The first crime story by the well known barrister, writer and TV personality. It was a very good story inspired by his own experiences. Hero policeman Grant Cliveden dies from a poisoning in the Old Bailey. The evidence is clear and points to one man. This is trainee barrister Adam Green's first big case defending Jimmy Knight who has much history with Cliveden in the past.
• Molly Clavering -  Mrs Lorrimer's Quiet Summer. Fiction (Published 1953 - A DSP Furrowed Middlebrow reprint 2021).Mrs Lorrimer is an author with 4 grown children and this story takes her through a summer in the Scottish borders when she is between books . She worries about all her children and their families and has them all to stay, meets the new people who've just moved in, has a great friendship with Grace Douglas, another author. The book is almost autobiographical as Clavering lived in Scotland and was great friends with author D.E. Stevenson.
• R.F.Delderfield - The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon. Fiction (Published 1963) Nowadays it would be called a 'Mid Life Crisis' - the day that Mr Sermon walks out of his job - at a second rate prep school and his family - who don't seem to need him anymore, and hops on a train and finds himself in a seaside town many miles from London. In the weeks that follow he discovers he is much more useful than he thought as he gets to learn about auctions and second-hand furniture, rescues a child from the sea, becomes a beach superintendent, saves a coach load of tourists from being stranded and also becomes aware that women find him very interesting. Without my Reading the Seasons challenge I would never had read this and I enjoyed it immensely.
• Anthony Horowitz - Close to Death. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) This is the 5th in the Hawthorne and Horowitz mysteries in which he writes himself into a fictional story that Private Investigator ex policeman has been involved with. The stories are so good that it's sometimes difficult to remember they are fiction. This one is about a death from the past set in a close of houses in the up market area of Richmond -on -Thames.
• Rory Clements - Munich Wolf. Crime Fiction (Published 2024). Munich 1935 and the city is a favourite of Hitler and some of his cronies as well as attracting young and rich people from Great Britain to learn German. When an English girl is murdered Detective Sebastian Wolff is ordered to solve the crime - and quickly. Wolff is already walking a tightrope between falling foul of the secret police and doing his job without upsetting anyone high up in the Nazi party. Is there anyone left to trust in Munich?
• Kristin Hannah - The Women. Fiction. (Published 2024). 1965 and Frances 'Frankie' McGrath ships out to Vietnam to work as a nurse in the Vietnam war . Her brother is her fathers favourite and declared a hero as he goes out to fight. Frankie has only just qualified and landing in Vietnam is like landing in Hell. Luckily her two bunk mates have been there a while and help her to settle in. This is the untold story - based on facts - of Frankie's years there, she falls in love, learns to become a really good nurse and copes with the dreadful conditions.  When she goes home it isn't to a heroes' welcome but finds her father was too embarrassed to say where she was and no one understands what nurses went through - or even believes there were women working there. A wide sweeping well written story.
• Lissa Evans - Small Bomb at Dimperley. Fiction. (Published 2024). In 1945 Corporal Valentine Vere-Thisset is on his way home. Home is Dimperley a vast and dilapidated country house, built in the 1500's, with many odd additions and now up to it's eaves in debt. Following the death of his heroic older brother Valentine is now Sir Valentine and responsible for it all and frankly terrified.Zena Baxter doesn't see Dimperley as a wreck because, after being evacuated there with her small daughter, it's the first real home she has ever known.Zenas husband is still abroad and after evacuees go home she stays at Dimperley as Alarics secretary.
• Robert Harris - Precipice. Fiction (Published 2024).  I had no interest in the WWI Prime Minister H.H. Asquith and his correspondence  with a woman less than half his age during the start of the war, but Robert Harris writes so well that it's impossible not to get drawn in. This story, as are many of his books, is fiction but built around fact.
• Stella Gibbons - The Woods in Winter. Fiction. (First Published 1970 DSP reprint 2021) Ivy Gover is a middle aged lady with witchy type skills with animals and when she inherits a dilapidated cottage in Buckinghamshire she moves there with a rescued dog. Gradually she has surprising effects of her new neighbours and the 13 year old boy who turns up in her garden. The story is set just before WWII although the final chapter is 40 years later in the 70's.

I wonder what the library van will bring me in 2025............Which favourite authors will publish new books? Will I find new authors?

 Lots to look forward to.

Back Soon 

Sue