Books Read 2021, 22, 23 and 24.

JANUARY 2024

• Susan Scarlett- Murder While You Work. Fiction. (Furrowed Middlebrow Reprint 2022. Originally Published 1944) The author is better know as Noel Streatfield, she used this pseudonym for twelve lighter romances. Set in wartime Judy Rest meets Nick Parsons while travelling on a slow train to her new job in a munitions factory. She is billeted with a family which seems to have  some odd happenings. This is a murder mystery, romance and psychological story.
• George Bellairs - Death Spins the Wheel. Crime Fiction. (Published 1965) Inspector Littlejohn is visiting his friend on the Isle of Man when an elderly French Lady, who has been winning small sums at the newly opened island casino, is murdered. The story moves to France and Switzerland and back to the end of WWII and the French resistance.
• Tom Morton -  In Shetland; Tales from the last bookshop. Non Fiction (Published 2017) Journalist and small bookshop owner Tom Morton writes about life in Shetland, the weather, the ocean and the people.
• Cecily Gayford - Editor. - Murder in the Falling Snow. Crime Fiction Short Stories.(Published 2022) A small book containing several short crime stories set in winter. Authors include Arthur Conan Doyle, Gladys Mitchell and Michael Innes.
• Josephine Bell - The Port of London Murders. Crime Fiction (BLCC Reprint 2020. Originally Published 1938). This is a really good portrayal of life in the docks of London before the war. It revolves around the families existing in the slums about to be demolished and starts with an accident that brings together residents June Harvey and Harry Reed and June's young brother Leslie.
• Lin Anderson - Deadly Code. Crime Fiction. (Published 2005)  Forensic Scientist Rhona MacLeod is sent to the Isle of Skye after the grisly find of a decomposing foot in a fishermans net. But straight away the Ministry of Defence want the whole matter kept secret. This story is about scientists, murder and a young boys secret life.
• Anne Perry -  A Christmas Vanishing. Crime Fiction Novella. (Published 2023) Mariah Ellison has a planned visit to stay with her friend Sadie Alsop for Christmas. But when she arrives in the village Sadie has disappeared and no one seems bothered. Once she finds another friend to stay with she begins the search and it seems Sadie had secrets as do many other people in the village.
• Cora Harrison - Murder in the Mist. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023) Wilkie Collins has been invited to spend Christmas with his friend Charles Dickens and family and guests. The festivities are spoiled by the death of one of the guests - a rather obnoxious Irish man called Timmy O'Connor who seems to have a connection to some of the other guests. Is the murderer one of the convicts from the prison hulks moored in the estuary or one of Timmy's three nephews who all seem terrified of him, or one of the other guests?
• Martin Edwards (editor) Silent Nights; Christmas Mysteries. Crime Fiction Short Stories. ( A BLCC Publication from 2015) Ranging from Conan Doyle to more recent. These are all short stories set around Christmas. I realised this was a re-read from many years ago and written wrongly in my 'Book of Books Read'. But read it anyway. 
• Alexander McCall Smith - From a Far and Lovely Country. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023). Another in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series set in Botswana. The Cool Singles Evening Club is encouraging married men to pretend they are single to meet women and a lady from America arrives to look for ancestors. All sorted through Precious Ramotswe's good sense.
• Willa Cather - A Lost Lady. Fiction (Published 1923) This is the story of the lovely and enigmatic Marian Forrester and her life in the Western American town of Sweet Water. The novel is told from the perspective of her young neighbour, Niel Herbert, and he begins by recalling the early days when Marian was a young bride newly arrived in the prairie town and adored by her pioneering husband, Captain Daniel Forrester. Niel joins in the adulation of his beautiful older neighbour and falls in love with her and worships her from afar. However, the bloom soon fades and the days of optimism and possibility for Niel and the town of Sweet Water give way to a more cynical and jaded time. Marian is not the ideal woman that her husband and Niel has imagined her to be and the innocent days of the hardworking and noble pioneers of the American West eventually give way to the exploitation and materialism prevalent in the rest of the country. Niel grows up in Cather’s bittersweet coming-of-age tale to understand that things are rarely as simple as they seem. (precis from Amazon)

2 Fiction

4 Older Crime Fiction (2 Short Stories)

1 Non Fiction

4  Recently written Crime Fiction (1 Novella)

Total of 11 books read in January 

FEBRUARY

• Edmund Crispin - Swan Song. Crime Fiction. (Published 1947) An Opera Company gathers in Oxford for a post war production of Wagner. Nearly everyone involved has a reason to loathe Edwin Shorthouse who is singing a leading role. Then he is found hanging in his locked dressing room. Gervase fen, Oxford Don and amateur sleuth is called in to find the killer.
• Arthur Ransome - We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea. Childrens Fiction (Published 1937) . One of Ransome's books about the family featured in Swallows and Amazons. The Swallows are on holiday at Pin Mill in Suffolk and this story is all about the Orwell Estuary and the children's unexpected voyage across the North Sea in terrible weather. The details of the river and sailing are incredibly detailed.
• Kate Thompson - The Little Wartime Library. Fiction. (Published 2022) This story is based on the true events of the library that was opened over the tracks of the unused Bethnal Green Tube Station Shelter during the 1940s.Run by Clara Button, a widow and her friend Ruby Monroe, both have had tragedy's during the war but both love the library, the people of the East End and their work. A good story - heading toward romance.
• Cora Harrison -Season of Darkness. Crime Fiction. (Published 2019) This is the first in a series which feature Charles Dickens with his friend Wilkie Collins sorting out crimes in Victorian London. Dickens recognises the body of a young girl pulled from the Thames, a housemaid he had tried to help through his charity. They find Isabella has been blackmailing someone but what does her friend Sesina know that she's not telling.
• Nigel Richardson - The Accidental Detectorist; Uncovering an Underground Obsession. Non Fiction (Published 2022) A travel writer is stuck at home through the pandemic and buys a metal detector. He starts in the meadow behind his Hampshire home and then sets out to meet other detectorists and joins in rallies and is very quickly hooked by his new hobby. Travelling around the country looking for the illusive buried treasure he meets all sorts of characters and learns so much more about what's hidden.
• Mike Hollow - The Covent Garden Murder. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023). This is the eighth in the Blitz Detective series with inspector John Jago. This story takes them into theatre land and old grievances cause a murder. 
• Donna Leon -  A Venetian Reckoning. Crime Fiction. (Published  1995 ) This is one of the earlier on the Brunetti series set in Venice. This story starts with a terrible accident in the mountains when several girls from Eastern Europe being smuggled into the country are killed. Then an important lawyer is found shot dead in a railway carriage and as usual Guido has to find the answer to the murders while avoiding upsetting the high and mighty of Italy and his boss.
• Peter Ross - Steeple Chasing; Around Britain by Church. Non Fiction. (Published 2023). This isn't so much about churches but about the people involved with them and how they are surviving and have survived. He takes the reader around the country through the pandemic visiting St Pauls in London, Durham Cathedral, the forgotten churches of Norfolk, the holy wells in Wales and back to London with a few other places in between.
• 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.

1 Older Crime Fiction

1 Children's Fiction.

3 Recently Written Crime Fiction

2 Fiction

2 Non Fiction

9 Books Read in February

MARCH

• Lara Maiklem -  Mudlarking. Non Fiction. (Published 2019) This was a re-read but I enjoyed it second time around. Lara spent all her free time for years exploring the River Thames whenever the tide was low. This is a look at all the things she found and a little about their history.
• Elly Griffiths - The Great Deceiver. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023) This is the 7th book in the series set in Brighton where Edgar Stephens is a Police Superintendent and his wife - an ex WPC is now a private investigator. Once again the story involves theatre acts and Max Mestipho, Edgars friend from wartime. Cherry Underwood, who had been working as a magicians assistant is found murdered. All the acts appearing in a Variety Show revival are suspects.
• Agatha Christie writing as Mary Westmacott -Absent in the Spring. Fiction (Published 1944) Returning home by an overland route from a visit to her youngest daughter in Iraq, Joan Scudamore finds herself unexpectedly alone and stranded in a rest house when bad weather holds up her train across the desert. With nothing to do but walk and think, for the first time ever Joan has to look at the truths about herself and her family.  Looking back she examines her attitudes, relationships and actions and becomes very uneasy about how smug and un-seeing she has been.
  This is an unsettling book to read - Joan thinks she has been a perfect wife and mother but really has been completely selfish without realising the effect a very early decision has had on her husband and then her three children.
• Carol Carnac - Impact of Evidence . Crime Fiction (B.L.C.C. reprint 2024 Originally Published 1954.) In the Welsh border country, isolated by heavy snow and then floods old Dr. Robinson is involved in a tragic road accident - a collision with a jeep - ending up with the vehicles in the river. Neighbours from local farms all help but when the police arrive there is a mystery of a second body in the car.
• Catherine Aird - Constable Country. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023) The most recent in a long series started in 1966. This story read as if it's written in the 60's with the attitudes prevalent then but with mobile phones added in just to update it. Mike Wakefield's business partner absconds with all the money from their printing business but then one of their employers is found murdered after a party.
• Ann Cleeves - Murder in Paradise. Crime Fiction. (Published 1988) An early Cleeves' book featuring George Palmer-Jones. Newlyweds Jim and Sarah are welcomed home from their honeymoon to the Scottish Island of Kinness with the traditional huge party for the whole village. But there is a sinister turn when Mary, the grooms young sister who is deaf and has learning problems, disappears and is found dead after falling from the cliffs. George Palmer-Jones, birdwatcher and amateur detective, is visiting the island and is sure it wasn't an accident.
• Cathy Faulkner - Digging For Victory. Children's Fiction. (Published 2023) It's 1940 and the war is a long way off for Bonnie living on their quiet Devon Farm. She longs to be a Hero like her brother who is called up to fly Spitfires but then a mysterious stranger is billeted in their house, who is he and where does he go every night. Finding out will bring all sorts of dangers for Bonnie but she eventually does become a Hero - even though she can't tell anyone. 
• Cora Harrison -  Spring of Hope. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021). This is one of the author's Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins mystery series. March 1859 and it's the spring after the summer of   'The Great Stink', when the Thames became so polluted with sewage that Parliament was overwhelmed. Dickens has become friends with Joseph Bazalgette, a young engineer, who is trying to find a way to take the sewage from the Thames and win a big money prize. At the exhibition to show his plans a man is fatally injured and Dickens and Collins are not convinced it was an accident.
• Roger Morgan-Grenville -  Across a Waking Land; A 1,000 Mile Walk Through a British Spring. Non Fiction (Published 2023) Fed up with bleak headlines about biodiversity loss he decides in the aftermath of the pandemic to walk through Britain at the same speed as oak leaves emerge. On his way he visits as many different landscapes as possible and speaks to farmers, conservationists and people fighting for nature.

1 Non Fiction.

4 Recently Written Crime Fiction

1 Fiction

1 Older Crime Fiction

1 Children's Fiction

8 Books Read in March

APRIL

• Ethel Lina White -  Fear Stalks The Village. Crime Fiction (Originally Published 1932. BLCC reprint Published 2024) A convoluted tale of a village and it's inhabitants when someone starts sending poison pen letters.Very dated to the period.
• 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.
• Michael Morpurgo - All Around The Year. Non Fiction. (Originally Published 1979. A Little Toller Reprint 2023) This is a diary from 1976/7 of the daily happenings on Parsonage Farm in North Devon. Michael Morpurgo and his wife had bought a nearby house with plans to turn it into a place that city children could stay for a week and immerse themselves into everything that happens on a mixed farm. The Ward family are the farmers who farm the land all around and Morpurgo spends a year working alongside them everyday in the year before his charity "Farms For City Children" send the first children to stay. Poems by Ted Hughes and Photographs by James Ravilious.
• John Bude- A Telegram From Le Touquet. Crime Fiction (Originally Published 1956. BLCC Reprint Published 2024.  Nigel Denny visits his unpredictable Aunt Gwenny to find out why she doesn't want him to marry her ward Sheila. At Gwenny's Country house are some of the men Gwenny has "collected". But after a nasty incident between two of the men, Gwenny decides to pack up and head out to her country villa in the South of France. When Nigel receives a telegram asking him to travel to France he finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation. Inspector Blampignon investigates.
• Kate Webb - Stay Buried. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022.) First in a short series - so far- by a new author. D.I. Matt Lockyer has been side-lined to working on cold cases. He receives a phone call from prisoner Hedy Lambert - a woman he put in prison for murder 14 years earlier. She informs him that the man who she was originally accused of murdering has turned up at his fathers house. She begs him to reopen the case and because he has always had mixed feelings about Hedy he starts to investigate.
• Chris Nickson -  The Scream of Sins. Crime Fiction. (Published 2024) Sixth in the series featuring Simon Westow, the thief taker in the early years of 1800's Leeds.A maid has stolen important papers and Simon is asked to find them but during the search Simon's assistant Jane hears a horrific tale about young girls being stolen for use by rich men.
• Donna Leon - The Anonymous Venetian. Crime Fiction. (Published 1994). Another in the series featuring Commissario Brunetti and set in Venice. When a man's body wearing a red dress and high heels turns up with a face completely smashed in it starts a mystery of finding who he is and what the connection is to a bank and people paying very low rents for expensive Venetian apartments.
• Alexandra Benedict -Murder On The Christmas Express. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022). A modern crime story set on the sleeper train to Scotland. It has snow stopping the train, social media, vaping, a retired Police  detective going to visit her daughter and awaiting the birth of a granddaughter. Lots of young people and a few older. A bit of a silly and annoying story, too nasty to be cosy crime.
• Donna Leon -  The Girl of His Dreams. Crime Fiction (Published 2008) Commissario Brunetti helps to pull a young girl from the canals of Venice but no one has reported her missing. Earlier after the funeral of his mother, the priest who gave a blessing asks for Brunettis help in finding out about a mysterious priest asking for money. This is the 17th of the series 
• Christanna  Brand - Suddenly at His Residence. Crime Fiction (A BLCC reprint published 2023 Originally Published 1947)The 4 adult Grandchildren of Sir Richard March are visiting him and his second wife Bella at the country home in Kent for the annual celebration of his first wife's life. Annoyed by their silly behaviour and life choices he decides to alter his will there and then. This of course ends in his murder and then another murder. All this is happening as nearby London is suffering from the V2 rockets which also results in another death. Inspector Cockrill is called in.
• Derek Tangye - A Quiet Year. Non Fiction. (Published 1984) Mainly memories from the past as well as further stories of the animals at Minack, the clifftop home of the author and his wife in Cornwall. His 15th book about life in Cornwall.
• Molly Lefebure - Murder on the Home Front. Non Fiction. (Published 1954) This is the story of the secretary who worked for forensic pathologist Dr Keith Simpson during the blitz. He meticulously pursues the truth of the murder crimes 

. 

3 Older Crime Fiction

1 Fiction

3 Non Fiction

5 Recently Written Crime Fiction

12 Books Read in April

MAY

• Donna Leon - Wilful Behaviour. Crime Fiction. (Published 2002). One of Brunetti's wife's students comes to see him to ask about a pardon for a crime committed by  a long dead grandfather. But when the girl is found murdered it really does become Brunettis case. The case goes into the history of Austrian Jews during the war and collaboration and lies.
• Stephen Baxter - Stone Spring. Historical/ Fantasy Fiction( Published 2010) This story is set in the Mesolithic period  between 8,800 - 4,500BC. Europe is still attached to Britain and the people who live on that fertile plain that is now gone were in the centre of civilisation, trading with other groups for the nodules of flint they had and fishing and hunting. The author changes the history of that period so that the plain or Northland  (now known as Doggerland) wasn't covered by rising sea levels, and the people have become more settled and not the hunter-gatherers they once were. The story is about the clash between families and tribes and the plans for holding back the sea.
• S.J.Bennet - A Death in Diamonds. Crime Fiction. (Published 2024) This is the 4th in the series in which the Queen helps to solve a crime assisted by a personal private secretary. Now going back to 1957 with the new queens visiting other countries while someone close to her is plotting against her. New secretary Joan steps up to help.
• Kate Webb - Laying Out The Bones. Crime Fiction (Published 2023) 2nd book in this new series set in Wiltshire and featuring DI Matt Lockyer. Flash flooding on Salisbury Plain reveals a buried body which is from a man missing for nine years. Three other people with a connection have also died. The occupants of a farm commune seem to be hiding secrets. Lockyer's mother is in hospital with covid and he finds secrets about his brother who was killed many years ago and another secret about something that happened in his own house that his elderly neighbour knows about.
• 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.
• Lorna Nicholl Morgan - Another Little Christmas Murder. Crime Fiction (Originally Published 1947). Snowbound in Yorkshire Dilys Morgan is rescued by Inigo Brown who is on his way to visit his Uncle at a remote house. His Uncle has asked him to come urgently but when they arrive his uncles wife seems surprised to see them. Various other people turn up after being stranded and all the staff seem very odd. No one is who they say they are and Inigo's uncle then dies unexpectantly.
• Alexander McCall Smith - The Quiet Side of Passion. Fiction (Published 2018) I'm not sure why this series is classed as crime because no crimes are committed. This is another in the series about Philosopher Isabel Dalhousie, set in Edinburgh and as usual Isobel gets involved in other peoples problems and tries to solve them. This time she takes on two people to help her with her editing and with the house but both cause lots more problems. 
• H.E. Bates - Down The River. Non Fiction. (Originally Published 1937. Republished with new illustrations 1987) Most of this book is about the two rivers that Bates lived between in his youth, the Ouse and the Nene. He writes about the people, animals and life where one river was quiet and the other a busy highway.
• Amy Myers - Murder in hell's Corner Crime Fiction (Published 2006) A reunion of Spitfire pilots starts a case for investigative authors Peter and Georgia Marsh. The father and daughter team solve old crimes and then produce a book about it. Slightly cosy crime.
• 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.
• Dorothy Simpson - Element of Doubt. Crime Fiction. (Published 1987). Another in a long series featuring Inspector Thanet. Nerine Tarrant had everything a woman could want but her body was found on the terrace of her elegant home below her balcony - it's the classic did she fall or was she pushed. Family members and local people are questioned and all seem to be holding things back or lying. Nerine has many secrets.
• 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.

6 Recently Written Crime Fiction

4 Fiction

1 Older Crime Fiction

1 Non Fiction

 12 Books Read in May

JUNE

• 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.
• Catherine Aird - Learning Curve. Crime Fiction (Published 2016) This author has written 18 crime novels set in the fictional Callshire and featuring D.I. Sloan. Although this is a later story it seems very dated with morals and ideas from the 1960s. Callshire research chemist Derek Tridgell is dying but at the end of his life cries out that someone was murdered. His daughter and wife call in the police who have to find out who, when and where this murder occurred - if it actually did.
• Alys Clare - The Stranger in the Asylum. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) The 4th book in the World's End Bureau mystery series. Private Investigator Lily Raynor receives a visit from a lady claiming that her fiancé has been accused of murder and hurried off to a remote asylum in France. Lily and her assistant Felix Wilbraham journey to rural France to find Wilberforce but in the mean time he has been accused of another murder and has vanished.
• Marghanita Laski -  The Village. Fiction (Persephone Reprint Published 2004. Originally Published 1952.) A story about class and the changes in a village just as the war ends. When Margaret Trevor, eldest daughter of Major and Mrs Trevor, once wealthy but due to ill health and the war now impoverished, falls in love with Roy her childhood friend - the eldest son of her mothers cleaning lady - it causes all sorts of talk in the village. The breaking down of social barriers when the two women could be friendly at the Red Cross Post has straight away gone.
• Elly Griffiths -  The Last Word. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) This is the 4th in a series involving detective Harbinder Kaur, now working in the met. But this story is about Private Investigators Edwin and Natalka and her partner Benedict,who appeared in the 2nd book and set in Brighton.When a local writer is found dead her family are convinced it's murder and when Edwin reads an obituary written about her by someone who has also died there seems to be a link. 
• Jonathan Tulloch - Cuckoo Summer. Children's Fiction (Published 2022). Summer 1940 and in the Lake District two children find an enemy airman in the woods. Sally is a mysterious young evacuee from the North East of England billeted with nasty Mr Starcross who treats her like an animal. Tommy is living with his three aunties his mother died a while ago and his father is missing in action in France. Together their secrets and adventures will change both their lives.
• Donna Leon - Fatal Remedies. Crime Fiction (Published 1999) This is the 8th in the Commissario Brunetti mysteries set in Venice. This one starts with Brunetti's wife Paola being arrested for throwing a brick through the window of a travel agent as a one woman protest against sex-tourism. The story then takes a twist when the owner of the travel agent business is murdered.
• Ngaio Marsh - Photo Finish. Crime Fiction. (Published 1980) Almost at the end - book 31- of the series with her Policeman Roderick Alleyn and his wife. This time they've been invited to New Zealand for Troy Alleyn to paint a portrait of the opera Diva Isabella Sommita. Of course when she is murdered and the weather cuts off the house, Roderick has to take charge and investigate.
• Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer. Fiction (Published 2011) This is the second in The Northland Historical Fantasy series. Imagining that England is still attached to the continent where what we call Doggerland was the home of the people who had built a wall so tall that the North Seas are kept at bay and they have become rich from the fertile lands . Generations on from the first book and the  people of the Mesolithic period, this is a different Bronze age. Volcano eruptions have brought years of poor crops and the people of the drought affected Mediterranean areas are looking west and war is brewing.
• 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?
• Cecily Gayford(Editor).   Murder By The Seaside; Classic Crime Stories for Summer. Crime Fiction Short Stories.(Published 2022) 10 Short crime stories from well know crime authors from the past. All set in summer holidays or seaside.

7 Recently Written Crime Fiction.

2 Fiction

1 Children's Fiction

1Older Crime Fiction -Short Stories

11 Book Read in June

JULY

• Alexander McCall Smith. - Sweet Remnants of Summer. Fiction. (Published 2022) This is one of the Isobel Dalhousie Philosopher series.Set in Edinburgh. As usual Isobel finds herself involved in solving someone else's problems. Coping with her editorial work while Jamie cooks delicious food.
• Jacqueline Winspear - The Comfort of Ghosts. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) The very last of the Maisie Dobbs series. Sad to see it finished. It is 1945, war has ended but for many people there are still many challenges ahead, lack of housing, people squatting in empty London homes, men returning from prison camps with horrific stories and illness. Maisie has to deal with all these as well as looking after her adopted daughter.
• 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.
• Donna Leon -Drawing Conclusions Crime Fiction  (Published 2011) An old woman's body has been found in her very ordinary apartment. Her neighbour finds the woman after calling in to collect her post on return from a holiday. There seems to be some signs of force on the woman but Brunetti's boss would like this declared a simple accident and when the medical examiner rules she has died from a heart attack that should be the end. But Brunetti isn't sure and soon things left unsaid by people he speaks too have him doing some research on this not so simple old woman.
• Peter Tremayne -  Made For Murders. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) This is a collection of twelve crime stories in which ' Master Martin Drew investigates murder most foul'. These are set in Shakespeare's London where Master Martin Drew is Constable of the Bankside watch south of the river Thames. He has to negotiate his way through the changing religious problems of the period as Queen Elizabeth dies and James come down from Scotland to take the throne.
• Ysenda Maxtone Graham. British Summertime Begins: The School Summer Holiday 1930-1980. Non Fiction. Published 2021. Stories of what children were doing in the school summer holidays, abroad, at home, the journeys. Veering more to the tales from the 'upper classes' often in boarding school. A less structured time when everyone was happy to play by themselves or fight with their siblings. 
• Donna Leon - Suffer the Little Children. Crime Fiction. (Published 2007) Another Commissario Guido Brunetti story set in Venice. A band of armed men burst into the house of Dr Pedrolli and take away his 18 month old baby. But the men are from the Carabinieri and when Brunetti is involved he tracks down a story of illegal baby adoptions and a money making scam involving pharmacists and doctors and patient records.
• Christianna Brand - London Particular. Crime Fiction (Originally Published 1952. BLCC Republished 2024).A pea-souper fog hangs over London and Rose and her friend and family doctor Tedward struggle to get back to her home after the doctor gets a phone call from a dying man who is visiting the family at Rose's home. There are just seven people who could have murdered him but who is protecting another and who is lying. A twisty story to follow but a good read.
• Claire Keegan - Foster. Fiction. (Published 2010) A very short book about about a young Irish girl, from a large rowdy family sent to live with an aunt and uncle she doesn't know while her mother is having another baby.

4 Recently Written Crime Fiction

1 Older Crime Fiction

3 Fiction (1 Novella)

1 Non Fiction

9 Books Read in July

AUGUST

• Cecily Gayford (Editor)- Murder Takes A Holiday; Classic Crime Stories for Summer. Crime Fiction Short Stories. (Published 2021) Another collection of short crime stories set during holidays. Ranging from Conan Doyle to Ruth Rendall. From the 1900's to the 1980's.
• Rumer Godden - The Greengage Summer. Fiction (Published 1958). Soon after the end of WWI Mrs Grey takes her five children to a hotel in the French countryside for the summer. But when she becomes ill and goes into hospital her children are left in the care of the hotel staff and a charming Englishman. 'A tense evocative portrait of love and deceit set during a hot summer.....A coming of age story' I first read this when I was about 18 so it was long forgotten. A lovely story.
• Elly Griffiths - The man in Black & Other Stories. Fiction. Short Stories. (Published 2024) This is a collection of stories, mostly featuring characters from her other books including Ruth and Nelson from her Norfolk stories and Harbinder and Max Mestepho from her South coast crime books.
• Louisa Scarr - Under a Dark Cloud. Crime Fiction (Published 2021) 2nd in a series about DS Robin Butler and DC Freya West who both have secrets that the other knows  from their last case together. Butler is summoned to help his best friend Dr Finn Mason, a well known meteorologist who appears to be the murderer of another scientist. Meanwhile West is coping with her secrets, and a new DS while looking for the murderer of a homeless man found in a freezer. 
• Alexander McCall Smith - The Geometry of Holding Hands. Fiction. (Published 2020). Another Isabel Dalhousie and Jamie story set in Edinburgh with Isobel sorting out other peoples problems again.
• Donna Leon - A Refiner's Fire. Crime Fiction. (Published 2024) 33rd and most recent in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series set in Venice. Two teenage gangs are arrested including the son of a local hero. But perhaps he wasn't such a hero after all. Then a brutal attack on one of Brunetti's colleagues by a possible gang member takes all Brunetti's attention.. One of her best stories.
• E.C.R.Lorac - The Theft of The Iron Dogs. Crime Fiction ( B.L.C.C. reprint. Originally Published 1946) The best of the BLCC authors I think and one of her best stories. Set in the fells of Lancashire involving farmers, visitors and the 'potters' or gypsies. Written at the end of WWII Inspector MacDonald heads north to trace a man involved in coupon fraud who has disappeared.
• Donna Leon - A Sea of Troubles. Crime Fiction. (Published 2001) An earlier Commissario Brunetti story. This is quite different to others as real murders and danger are involved including to Brunetti himself.
• Christianna Brand - Heads You Lose. Crime Fiction. (Originally Published 1941) Pigeonsford Estate is hosting a group of friends when one is found dead. Oddly she is wearing her friend Francesca's hat, which the day before she'd said she wouldn't be seen dead wearing. This is Inspector Cockrill's first case. Several other books in this series have been reprinted by BLCC - this one by Mysterious Press.com.
• Kate Ellis - Coffin Island. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) The latest in the series featuring D.I.Wesley Peterson and set in Devon in the fictional Tradmouth - which is really Dartmouth. This is another predictable story with as usual a journal from the past which the present is mirroring. This time the island is definitely fictional and a storm washes away a cliff to reveal 3 skeletons, two very old and one much more recent.
• Edited by Martin Edwards. - Who Killed Father Christmas. Short Stories Crime Fiction.( BLCC reprint 2023. Originally published  1942-1995) Another collection of short crime stories that haven't been reprinted for a while.

4 Older Crime Fiction (2 Short Stories). 

4 Recently Written Crime Fiction

3 Fiction  (1 Short Stories)

11 Books Read in August

SEPTEMBER

• Christianna Brand -Tour De Force. Crime Fiction.(BLCC reprint 2024. Originally Published 1955) Inspector Cockrill has booked a holiday with a tour company to tour the Mediterranean. The people he is travelling with are a mixed bunch and after just a few days there are tensions between some of the group and romance between others. Six holiday makers are relaxing on the beach when somehow the 7th is murdered in her room. How did one of the 6 get out from the Inspectors gaze? A good story by my second favourite BLCC author.
• Angela Thirkell - Jutland Cottage. Fiction (Published 1953) This is the authors 22nd novel in the Barsetshire series. The people of the villages are mourning the death of George 6th but also trying to help Margo Phelps with her aging parents, welcoming the new incumbent at the church, giving parties and visiting each other.
• Barbara Pym - Quartet in Autumn. Fiction. (Published 1977) 1970's London and four elderly single people work in the same office but live separate and lonely lives. This is the quiet story of their day to day life, the things that annoy them, which seem so trivial and the things that worry them as they get to the end of their working lives.
  Like most of her books this explores relationships with a touch of humour and sadness too.
• 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.

  It is the return of Valentine and the two young girls and the changes that happen that is the main theme of the book. Dimperley is full of characters - Lady Irene Vere-Thissett, her middle son Cedric who suffered a brain injury as a ten year old and now is only able to say one sentence. Barbara, also Lady Vere-Thissett, the wife of the lost heroic son, Barbara's two daughters, who were sent off to America at the first sign of war and have returned as Americans used to showers, refrigerators and central heating - Dimperley has none of those. Then there is Miss Hershey, once Lady Irene's Ladies maid and now the only full time 'servant' having to look after everyone and everything. Finally Alaric, Irene's brother in law who spends all his time researching the history  of the Vere-Thissetts and writing a never ending book.

• Agatha Christie. - Autumn Chills. Crime Fiction - Short Stories (Published 2023) This is a collection of short stories that had previously appeared in magazines back in the 1930's, 40's and 50's. One was a Poirot story and another a Miss Marple. 

• 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. Summer 1914. A world on the brink of catastrophe. In London, 26-year-old Venetia Stanley - aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless - is having a love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state. As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer is assigned to investigate a leak of top secret documents - and suddenly what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that will alter the course of political history. 

2 Older Crime Fiction (1 Short Stories)

5 Fiction

7 Books Read in September

OCTOBER

• Rob Rinder - The Suspect. Crime Fiction. (Published 2024). The second in the series that feature junior barrister Adam Green. When the UK's favourite breakfast presenter dies live on air in front of millions of viewers it is obvious that she's had an allergic reaction from something in the food that's just been cooked by celebrity chef Sebastion Brooks. It soon becomes clear her death wasn't an accident and Adam is one of the team defending Sebastion who seems to be covering for the real murderer.
• Paolo Merrill - The Cottage Fairy Companion. Non Fiction (Published 2023) This book accompanies her youtube channel. Her quiet life alone in a cottage in a beautiful valley in Washington State as she notices the seasons passing and takes pleasure from small things.
• Lara Maiklem - A Mudlarking Year: Finding Treasure in Every Season. Non Fiction. (Published 2024). Her second book about the treasures found along the edges of the River Thames.
• Donna Leon - Unto Us a Son is Given. Crime Fiction (Published 2019) This is another book featuring Commissario Brunetti and set in Venice. Guido's Father in Law asks him to find out more about the man his friend wants to adopt as a son. 
• Julie Wassmer- Murder at the Allotment. Crime Fiction. (Published 2024) The 10th book featuring Pearl Nolan and set in the seaside town of Whitstable. The allotments were once peaceful until a town newcomer decides to take over. Then all the plot holders get warning notices which they assume are from this new to town woman. A day later she is found dead in the Hot Composting Bin!
• Alexander McCall Smith - The Great Hippopotamus Hotel. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) The latest in the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series set in Botswana. Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi sort out the problems occurring at the hotel when the new joint owners take over from their uncle.

4 Crime Fiction

2 Non Fiction

NOVEMBER

• Elizabeth O'Connor - Whale Fall. Fiction. (Published 2024) It is 1938, and Manod is a young girl, just finished school and living on a remote Welsh Island, where life has been unchanged for years. The population is declining as young people move away. The men, including her father, are fishermen who battle the weather and the seas and many have lost their lives. Mamod looks after her father and young sister while wishing she could get to the mainland. When a whale is washed up onto the beach, the villagers believe it to be a omen for what is to come and then two anthropologists arrive from a mainland university to study the people there and their way of life.
• Gilbert McCarragher -  Prospect Cottage; Derek Jarman's House . (Published 2024) mainly photos of the house on the Dungeness shingle where the film director lived before his death.
• John Ferguson - Death of Mr Dodsley. Crime Fiction (BLCC Reprint 2023. Originally Published 1937. Mr Dodsley owner of a second hand bookshop in London is found dead in the middle of the night. What does a new crime book by the daughter of a MP and a discussion between a policeman and a drunk man have to do with the murder. Private detective Macnab helps Scotland Yard find the killer after being called in earlier to work for Dodsley tracking down missing books.
• Louisa Scarr-  Blink of an Eye. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022). This is the 3rd in a series about DC Freya West who works with DS Robin Butler. On Christmas day the pair are called to a beach where one man is dead, another has serious frostbite and another man and two women are also found beside them, drugged and with hypothermia. What has brought these five together when the only connection is that they were once at university together 20 years ago but have had very little contact since. 
• Edited by Martin Edwards - Metropolitan Mysteries; A casebook of London's Detectives. Short Stories Crime Fiction (BLCC Published 2024) A collection of crime fiction stories  based in London from authors including Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham and Dickson Carr. All good stories.
• Chris Nickson - Them Without Pain. Crime Fiction. (Published 2024) Another in the series about Simon Westow, a thief taker, set in 1825 Leeds. These are always good stories showing the violence of the time in a rapidly growing industrial city.
• Jill McGown - Scene of Crime. Crime Fiction (Published 2001) This turned out to be a re-read as it had been republished with a sub-title of 'A Christmas Murder Mystery'. I didn't remember it at all. It has the characters that are in all her crime stories - DCI Lloyd and his girlfriend Judy Hill, also a Police Officer but now at a desk job as she is very pregnant.

1 Fiction

1 Non Fiction.

2 Older Crime Fiction (1 Short Stories)

3 Crime Fiction

7 Books Read in November.

DECEMBER

• 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.
• Alexander McCall Smith - The Conditions of Unconditional Love. Fiction (Published 2024)The most recent in his series about Isobel Dalhousie, her perfect husband Jamie, her children, housekeeper and her niece. As usual Isobel is sorting out other peoples problems.
• Mike Hollow - The Soho Murder. Crime Fiction. (Published 2024). December 1940 in London during the Blitz and D.I. John Jago finds a desolate woman sitting among the ruins of her bookselling business but he has to tell her that her husband has been found shot dead at their home in Soho. The story is about obsessive book collectors, dealers, night club owners and counterfeiters all in the darkness of the London blackout.
• Mike Ripley - Mr Campions Christmas. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) This is the latesta nd last book by the author writing about Margery Allinghams Campion. This time accidental Christmas visitors are not what the seem and Lady Amanda is drawn into the action. Set during the Cold War and the Freezing Winter of 1962/3.

Only 4 books read in December.

2 Fiction

2 Recently Written Crime Fiction

BOOKS READ 2023

JANUARY

• D.E.Stevenson - Young Mrs Savage. Fiction. ( A DSP/Furrowed Middlebrow reprint published 2022. Originally published 1947) A gentle story about a young widowed mother with 4 children. When her brother Dan returns from the war he suggests Dinah and the children have a holiday in their old family home, which is now a boarding house run by their old Nannie. This is really a Summer holiday story about Dinah meeting up with people she knew when they were young, the children's adventures on the beach and finding someone who she can love.
• Mike Hollow - The Camden Murder. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022) This is the 7th in the Blitz Detective series featuring DI John Jago and set in 1940's London. A man is found in a burning car but had died before the fire started. The victim is a commercial traveller for a chocolate company But he is soon found to have lots of secrets in his life.
• Ronald Blythe - Next to Nature; A Lifetime in the English Countryside. Non Fiction (Published 2022) The very last book to be published by this author prior to his death on the 14th January 2023. This is a collection of some of his earlier articles for the Church Times all about his life in the church as a Lay Reader, his home at Bottomgoms Farm on the Suffolk Essex border and the countryside around. Beautifully written as always.
• Rev. Richard Coles  - Murder Before Evensong. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022) First novel by this author. Canon Daniel Clement is Rector of Champton. When he announces plans to remove pews to make room for a toilet in the church the parish is divided and then there is a murder. Is there a connection or is the reason for this brutal killing somewhere in the past.
• Nancy Campbell -  Thunderstone. Non Fiction. (Published 2022) Subtitled 'A true story of losing one home and discovering another.' This is Nancy's story of the pandemic year when her relationship with her partner Anna was breaking down and then Anna has a stroke and Nancy stays to look after her before then finding an old caravan to live in and towing it to a spot beside the canal and the railway on the edge of Oxford. An odd story of someone who has been a quite successful author and has mainly written travel books and finds having to stay in one place very difficult. ( A Thunderstone is a fossilised sea urchin).
• D.E.Stevenson - Listening Valley. Fiction (Published 1944) Tonia has lived all her life in the quiet Scottish countryside looked after by a Nannie and ignored by her parents she can't imagine living anywhere else. But when her  older sister gets married and moves away, Tonia begins to wonder if there aren't bigger things on the horizon for her too. Marriage to a much older man and World War II take her to London but tragedy sends her back to Scotland and at last a home of her own that she loves. A typical Stevenson story but being written as the war unfolded and before the outcome was known makes it interesting.
• Donna Leon - Through a Glass, Darkly. Crime Fiction. (Published 2006). One of the early Brunnetti crime stories set in Venice. The polluting glass foundries of Murano have been targeted by eco-warriors. Then one of their workers is found dead - killed by the excess heat from a kiln.
• Alexander McCall Smith - The Forgotten Affairs of Youth. Fiction.(Published 2011). This is the 8th in a series featuring philosopher Isobel Dalhousie. It's the last of those I'd found second hand to read sometime. Once again Isobel is asked to interfere in something, that doesn't always have a happy ending. I shan't read anymore of these - they are all very similar.
• Thomas Firbank -  I bought a Mountain. Non Fiction (Originally Published 1940. New edition 2022) The story of how a young man returned from Canada in 1931, bought a hill farm with sheep in North Wales and farmed there for many years with all sorts of adventures. This was a re-read for me from about 45 years ago.
• E.C.R. Lorac - Death of an Author. Crime Fiction. ( British Library Crime Classic Published 2023 Originally Published 1935). Vivian Lestrange is a well known author of a mystery book but he's a total recluse. The only people who've seen him are his house keeper and his secretary. When he suddenly vanishes Inspector Bond and Chief Inspector Warner don't know what to believe and later a burned body in a remote part of the countryside seems to have a connection. This is the 9th by this author that BLCC have reprinted, one of their best authors and this title has been out of print since it's first edition. A very good story.

10 Books read in January........

3 Non Fiction

3 Recently Written Crime Fiction

1 Old Crime Fiction (pre 1960)

3 Fiction

FEBRUARY

• D.E.Stevenson - Charlotte Fairlie. Fiction. (DSP reprint 2022. Originally Published 1954.) Charlotte Fairlie is head of a girls boarding school, a job she loves but a lonely position. Her life changes when Tessa MacRynne, a girl from a Scottish Island, joins the school her mother asks Charlotte to look after her as sometime in the future she would need someone to talk to.  Out of print since the 1970s this is one of D.E.Stevensons gentle stories.
• Sara Sheridan - London Calling. Crime Fiction (Published 2013) Set in 1950s London and Brighton this is the second of a light series by this author featuring Mirabelle Bevan who had worked for the Secret Service during the war but now runs a debt collecting agency, but seems to get involved in all sorts of police investigations . I hadn't heard of this author  and picked up the book at a book sale but the library do have several more which I may read. Labelled as "Cosy Crime Noir"
• Norman Thelwell - A Millstone Round My Neck. Non Fiction(Published 1981) Thelwell was an author, landscape artist, cartoonist and illustrator best know for his books of pony cartoons. He was very interested in architecture and old buildings and in the late 1960's he and his wife bought Addicroft Mill near Liskeard in Cornwall, an old disused water mill, mill house and some derelict cottages, for £4,250. In the book the mill is called Penruin.They spent several years restoring first the mill house and then the mill. The book tells the story of the restoration, the unhelpful builders and the awful weather. All complemented by his line drawings. By the time the book was published in 1981 they had already sold the mill and house and bought and restored a house in Hampshire, which he wrote about in 'A Plank Bridge by a Pool' published in 1978.
• Elizabeth West - A Patch in the Forest. Non Fiction. (Published 2001) This was a re-read. After several years in suburbia following their move away from North Wales Elizabeth and Alan West retired to an old cottage in the Forest of Dean. This short book is about their garden and the wildlife they see around.
• Ann Cleeves - The Rising Tide. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022). This is the 10th in the Vera Stanhope series (although there have been many more TV programmes made). Much of this story is set on Lindisfarne, the island reached by a causeway from the Northumbrian mainland. Friends who went there on a school trip return every five years  for a reunion and now they are almost at retiring age.  Soon there is a murder that looks like a suicide but is the reason a modern one or something from a hidden past. Excellent story as always.
• Amy Jeffs -  Wild;Tales From Medieval Britain. Non Fiction(Published 2022). Classed as Non fiction but really is fiction as these are stories taken from early Medieval texts and manuscripts. Poems are translated at the end of the book. The stories show the way people of that time looked at and understood the world around them before science took over.
• Jim Eldridge - Murder at Aldwych Station. Crime Fiction (Published 2022) Another by this author featuring Detective Chief Inspector Coburg and set in London during the blitz. Bodies keep appearing in a disused underground tunnel and it all seems connected to a Jazz Club and Coburg's pianist wife Rose has often played there and knows the owner - this puts her in danger when she goes to ask questions.
• S.J. Bennett - Murder Most Royal. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022) This  is the 3rd in the "Her Majesty the Queen Investigates" series. With the help of her trusted Personal Assistant Rozie once again the Queen is quietly investigating a murder. This time a severed hand turns up on Snettisham beach very close to Sandringham where the Queen is spending Christmas. The Queen recognises the signet ring on the hand as being the relative of the owner of the neighbouring Norfolk Estate.
• J.R.Ellis - The Royal Baths Murder. Crime Fiction. (Published 2019). New to me author but this is the 4th in a series set in Yorkshire. This one takes place in Harrogate.  A famous crime writer is found murdered at the Victorian baths in the Yorkshire town of Harrogate during the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. When DCI Holroyd starts to investigate it seems Damian Penrose was the most hated crime writer around and it seems to almost be a 'locked room' mystery.
• W.F.Harvey - The Mysterious Mr Badman. Crime Fiction.(British Library Crime Classic Published 2022. Originally Published 1934).Athelstan Digby is on holiday in lodgings while visiting his nephew and agrees to look after the ground floor old bookshop while his host is away. On the first day a vicar, a chauffeur and an out-of-town stranger all come into the shop asking about a book ' Death of Mr Badman' . But then a copy of this mysterious book arrives in the shop in a bundle of books brought in to sell. But just a day later the book is stolen. This is the start of a very complicated mystery, soon involving a ruthless murder.                                                      This book has been out of print since it's first printing in a limited run in 1934.
• Julie Wassmer- Murder in Mount Ephraim. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022) This is the 9th in a series which features Pearl Nolan - a restaurant owner and private investigator and her Fiance Detective Chief Inspector Mike Nolan. Someone staying at Mount Ephraim house ready for a wedding has murdered the groom on the night before his wedding. Pearl is one of the guests in this 'closed house' murder. I found it a very poor read - bordering on silly!
• Willa Catha- O' Pioneers!. Fiction (Published 1913) A novel about Nebraska and the early settlers who came from Sweden at the end of the 19th century and the struggles they had with inhospitable land. The main character is Alexandra Bergson, who is left to look after the farm with her three brothers when their father dies young.
• Chris Nickson - A Dark Steel Death. Crime Fiction (Published 2022). The 10th in a series that is following Tom Harper in the Leeds Police Force from the end of the C19. It is now 1916 and wartime. Soldiers returning from the front with injuries often have severe mental health problems and one seems to be causing chaos all around the city.

2 Fiction 

7 Recently Written Crime Fiction

3 Non Fiction 

1 Old Crime Fiction (pre 1960)

13 Books read in February

MARCH

• Cecily Gayford - Editor - Murder in the Falling Snow. Crime Fiction Short Stories(Published 2022) A collection of short crime stories dating from Conan Doyle up to the 1960's. These are all set in winter. A quick read. Some stories were very odd.
• Anthony Horowitz - The Twist of a Knife. Crime Fiction (Published 2022) This is the 4th book in which Horowitz  writes himself into the book as one of the main characters. He is again helping Daniel Hawthorne who is a private investigator but this time it's Horowitz himself who is accused of the crime of murder. The woman killed is a critic who has written a very critical piece about his latest play. A excellent story where it becomes difficult to decide between fact and fiction.
• Christopher Stocks with Illustrations by Angie Lewin. - The Book of Pebbles. Non Fiction. (Published 2020) A small book about the pebbles and stones found on our beaches around the coast. Angie Lewin is a print maker who uses items from the natural world in her prints and engravings.
• Stella Gibbons - Enbury Heath. Fiction (Published 1935). Siblings Sophia, Harry and Francis have lost both parents in the last six months. They come from a difficult background with a father who had great variations in moods. When they decide to set up home together it doesn't always go well. 
• Anthony Berkeley - The Silk Stocking Murders. Crime Fiction. (Published 1928). Roger Sheringham, the popular novelist and amateur detective is investigating the disappearance of a vicars daughter in London only to find she is already dead, found hanging by her own silk stocking. Then he hears of reports of similar deaths.
• Oliver Darkshire - Once Upon a Tome. Non Fiction. (Published 2022) Oliver Darkshire had failed to hang onto a job for very long and after getting an apprenticeship at Henry Sotheran Ltd, Rare and Antiquarian Booksellers of Sackville Street (who had been trading since 1761) he expects to just stay for a year. However the eccentric staff and customers and the lure of finding a treasure, keep him there for several years. 
• 12 Various Authors - Marple:Twelve New Stories. Crime Fiction Short Stories (Published 2022) 12 modern day women crime writers write new stories featuring Miss Marple. Val McDermid and Elly Griffiths are among the 12.
• Candace Robb - A Fox in the Fold. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022) Historical crime set in York in 1376. This is the 14th in a series featuring Owen Archer - a retired soldier no working for the sheriff. A stripped and bloody body is found on the road north of York - at first Owen thinks there may be a link to the arrival in town of the out of favour William Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester.
• Mike Ripley - Mr Campion's Wings. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021) Books in this series - although this is the first I have read - continue the story of Margery Allingham's character Albert Campion. This is set in 1965 Cambridge when during his wife's Honorary Docturate Degree ceremony she is arrested on suspicion of breaking the Official Secrets Act. Albert sets out to discover more about the top-secret Goshawk Project in which Amanda is involved.
• Agatha Christie - Sinister Spring. Crime Fictions Short Stories. (Re-Published 2022) These are all short stories from various other books and some from magazines written through the 1930s to 1960s.

10 Books Read in March

3 Old Crime Fiction (2 Short stories)

4 Recently Written Crime Fiction (1 short stories)

2 Non Fiction

1 Fiction

APRIL

• Alys Clare - The Man in the Shadows. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022) London 1881 and the World's End Investigation Bureau is thriving. Their new cases take Lily to search for a newly arrived Jewish refugee - 12 year old Jakov who has disappeared leaving his Grandmother seriously ill in hospital. They have another case at the same time so Felix heads to Kent to clear the name of a man wrongfully hung for murder. This is the 3rd book in this series.
• Simon Brett - A Deadly Habit. Crime Fiction. (Published 2018). This is the 20th in a series that began in 1975. Charles Paris is the main character - he has been an actor all his life - often out of work and in small parts when he is in work - he drinks far too much and always seems to be around when a murder happens. In this story he has a 3 month part in a new play in the West End but is dismayed to find he is only there due to an actor he worked with years ago but who is now very famous.
• Elly Griffiths- The Last Remains. Crime Fiction (Published 2023) This is the 15th in the series set in Norfolk and featuring Archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway. When builders are renovating a café in Kings Lynn they find a human skeleton bricked up behind a wall. Ruth is called in to find out how old it is.                                                                                                                              As the ending to this story seems to tie up some loose ends I was left wondering if this is to be the last in the series.
• Lin Anderson-  The Innocent Dead. Crime Fiction. (Published 2020) A new-to-me-author but this is the 15th in a series featuring Scottish forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod. When the bones of a child are found buried in peat the connection is soon made to an eleven year old who disappeared 45 years ago. Advances made in the forensics field allow what really happened all those years ago to Mary and her friend Karen, to be finally solved. A good story and I have no idea how I'd not read any of this authors books before.
• Shaun Bythell - Remainders of the Day. Non Fiction (Published 2022). The fourth collection of diaries about his huge second-hand bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland's Town of Books. Another lot of funny stories of book buying and selling, the strange customers and his fellow villagers.
• J.R.Ellis -  The Nidderdale Murders. Crime Fiction. (Published 2020) 5th in a series featuring DCI Oldroyd and set in Yorkshire.When a retired judge is shot dead in front of a village pub there's a witness who saw everything. It seems that half the village dislike the Judge but there is no connection to the killer - who had now completely disappeared.
• Donna Leon  - So Shall You Reap. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023) The latest in the Commissario Brunetti mysteries set in Venice. A body is pulled from one of Venice's canals and Brunetti has to investigate the death of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant. Coincidentally he'd spoken to the man just the day before. With no official records for the man it's only memories and gossip that can be used to find out why he was murdered.
• Alexander McCall Smith - The Pavilion in the Clouds. Fiction. (Published 2021)One of his stand alone novels this is mainly set in Ceylon starting in 1938 and the final days of the British Empire. Bella, a eight year old lives with her Father Henry - owner of a tea plantation - and her mother Virginia. Bella has a governess Miss White and the story really centres on the interaction between adults and Bella and Bella and her two dolls. After an unfortunate series of events Bella returns to England for school. The second part of the book is about Bella at University in St Andrews Scotland and the guilt she still feels for something she did all those years earlier.
• Reg Snook & Phillip Murphy -Portrait of the Birds;50 Years of Birdlife in Christchurch Park. Non Fiction. (Published 2014) This is a look at the birds that have been seen in the Park in Ipswich through 50 years and which birds have decreased and those that have increased. A small book.
• Molly Clavering-Dear Hugo. Fiction. (Dean Street Press Furrowed Middlebrow 2021 Originally Published 1955). This is a book of letters from Sara Monteith to Hugo Jamieson who is the brother of her lost love Ivo killed in the war. Sara moves to the Scottish border village of Ravenskirk where Hugo and Ivo grew up but no one knows her reasons for moving there. She soon gets drawn into the active village social scene as well as suddenly becoming a guardian for her 13 year old Nephew Arthur. This is a gentle story of a village in the 50's. 

10 Books Read in April

6 Recently Written Crime Fiction

2 Non-Fiction

2 Fiction

MAY

• Donna Leon - In a Strange Country. Crime Fiction. (Published 1993) A very early book in the series about Commissario Guido Brunetti set in Venice. When the body of a young man is pulled from the canal Brunetti has to enter the separate world of the American Army post at Vicenza . There seems to be some high level covering up going on and then a Doctor from the American hospital is murdered but everyone decides it is suicide. What have the reports of two children with strange rashes and the theft of 3 paintings got to do with it.
• Shaun Bythell - Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops. Non Fiction (Published 2020) A humourous look at all the people he gets in his second-hand bookshop in Wigton. From 'Self Published Authors' to 'Experts'..
• Mike Ripley - Mr Campions Farewell. Crime Fiction. (Published 2014). This book was started by Margery Allinghams partner Pip Youngman Carter after her death in 1966. But after Carter's death in 1969 Mike Ripley was asked by the Margery Allingham Society to finish the novel. In this book Albert Campion goes to find out about a strange village in Suffolk where everything happens in Nines. (The village and it's history are loosely based on Lavenham).
• Katy Watson - Three Dahlias. Crime Fiction (Published 2022). This is the authors first crime book and is definitely a 'cosy crime' and a bit silly in places. The three Dahlias are 3 women who have played or about to play the part of Dahlia Lively in films and TV. The character who investigates crimes was created by Lettice Davenport and the 3 women, fans and the family of the late Lettice are all at a Crime Fiction Convention being held in Lettice's stately home. There is a death almost straight away but is it a heart attack or a murder?
• Anne Perry - The Traitor Among Us. Crime Fiction (Published 2023) This is the 5th in a series that features Elena Standish, photographer and MI6 agent - as was her Grandfather in years past. It is 1934 when retired MI6 Agent John Repton's body is found near Wyndham Hall in the Cotswolds. He was known to have been investigating the ties that the Wyndham family have with fascist sympathisers. Elena's sister Margo is about to become engaged to the  Lady Wyndham's brother and unaware that her sister is a spy invites her to a house party. The atmosphere becomes tense as the party meet with the man about to be King and his mistress Wallace Simpson.Who is the traitor in the party?
• Mike Ripley- Mr Campion's Abdication. Crime Fiction (published 2017) This book is set in 1970 but much of the story refers back to 1935 with a secret visit to a Suffolk archaeological dig by  the future Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson.
  In this story Campion finds himself pretending to be a film advisor to an Italian film company supposedly filming the visit of Edward and Mrs Simpson's visit to the Dig. In reality the story is different and involves non-existent treasure, the murder of an Italian girl back in 1935 and the disappearance of a newspaper reporter at the same time. No one is quite who they seem in this story and it's the end of the book before the we find out exactly what happened in 1935 and in 1970
• E.C.R. Lorac - Crook O'Lune. Crime Fiction ( British Library Crime Classic  Published 2022. Originally Published 1953)Chief Inspector Macdonald is staying with friends while visiting the Lancashire Dales with a view to buying a farm ready for his retirement but a deadly fire at nearby Aikengill house draws him into the investigation. Is this connected to sheep rustling or is it all due to something way back in history.
• Nina De Gramont - The Christie Affair. Fiction.(Published 2022) Another story of what might have happened during Agatha Christies mysterious 11 day disappearance in 1926. Written mainly from the perspective of Nancy - Archie Christie's mistress. A good story and well written.
• Jacqueline Winspear. -The White Lady. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023) In 1947 Elinor White, known as The White Lady is living a quiet solitary life in the Kent countryside. What her neighbours don't know is that she is a veteran of two world wars, a trained killed and former intelligence agent. The story goes back and forward between 1914, 1944 and 1947 because when she is drawn into the problems of her neighbour she needs to look back at the truth of those times.
• Cora Harrison - The Deadly Weed. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023). This is the 10th book in a series set in Cork, Ireland in the 1920's. Early one morning Reverend Mother gets news of a death in a fire at the new cigarette factory where several 'old girls' from her convent school are working. One of the girls is rumoured as being responsible. Reverend Mother has cousins and distant cousins all around Cork and one is the factory owner. She is not convinced that the rumours are true and thanks to Inspector Patrick Cashman and his friend, the journalist and law student Eileen MacSweeney, is able to find out more. 
• Simon Brett - A Decent Interval. Crime Fiction.(Published 2013) Charles Parris, a usually out of work and often drunk actor, gets a surprise job in a new version of Hamlet. He finds the production is to show off the "talent" of two winners of TV shows. When the young male lead is injured in an accident and then the female main character is found dead, Charles tries to find out why.

11 Books Read in May

8 Recently Written Crime Fiction

1 Older Crime Fiction

1 Non Fiction

1 Fiction

JUNE

• Molly Clavering - Near Neighbours. Fiction (Dean Street Press reprint 2021 Originally Published 1956) Two households are neighbours in Edinburgh . In one widowed mother Mrs Lennox lives with her 5 grown up children - in the other lives shy Miss Balfour who is suddenly alone after the death of her domineering sister.  This is a lovely story of how the two neighbours meet and become involved in each others lives.
• Chris Nickson - The Dead Will Rise. Crime Fiction (Published 2023) This is the 5th in a series set in Leeds in the early 1800's. Leeds is growing by the minute and crime is rife. Simon Westow and his partner Jane are always busy as Thief Takers - they are paid to look for thieves and get back whatever is stolen. Although the latest person to ask for their help sets off alarm bells and when there seems to be some connection to people opening and robbing new graves things get very dangerous.
• Rachel McLean - The Corfe Castle Murders. Crime Fiction (Published 2021) This is the first in a series featuring DCI Lesley Clarke who has been sent to work in Dorset police for a rest after being caught in bombings in her home city of Birmingham. It's an interesting story but is full of stereotypes - The Up-tight Sergeant annoyed at having a woman as boss, the devil-may-care Detective Constable, the timid female Constable. Then DCI Clarke discovers her husband has been having an affair and finally at the end of the book she decides she's probably gay!  The Jury's out on whether I will read more.
• Sara Sheridan - England Expects. Crime Fiction. (Published 2014) Another story featuring Debt Collector and investigator Mirabelle Sheridan .Set in Brighton in the 1950's Mirabelle and her business partner get mixed up in a suspicious death of a sports journalist and the Order Of Masons and their secrets.
• Molly Clavering - Touch Not the Nettle. Fiction. (Dean St Press Reprint 2021 Originally Published 1939) Jed Armstrong and his wife Susan are living a quiet but busy life on their Scottish Borders farm when they are asked to have Jed's cousin's daughter to stay with them for a while as her husband - an adventurous solo pilot is lost over the Amazon. There are some quite strong characters in this story with some darker back stories. Not such a light story as her previous books.
• Dorothy Simpson - The Night She Died. Crime Fiction (Published 1981).This is the first of a series featuring Inspector Luke Thanet. When Julie, a young woman, is found dead by her husband it seems that her power to attract men might be the cause or is the murder caused by something that happened when she was small the memories of which have started giving her nightmares.
• Dorothy Simpson- Six Feet Under. Crime Fiction. (Published 1982) Second in the series about Inspector Luke Thanet. At first he doesn't know what to make of the murder of a quiet mousy middle aged spinster. But he soon finds she has secrets and also like to ferret out the secrets of others in the village.
• Dorothy Simpson - Puppet For a Corpse. Crime Fiction (Published 1983) It's obvious that Dr Pettifer has committed suicide but why did he book a cruise and get his car repaired if he was planning to overdose? His young pregnant wife doesn't believe it nor do his fellow doctors. Inspector Luke Thanet is sure things are not as they seem but it takes a while and many questions to get to the truth
• Juliette De Bairacli Levy - Wanderers in the New Forest. Non Fiction (Little Toller Reprint 2023 Originally 1958). Know as the 'grandmother of herbalism' Juliette travelled widely researching and experimenting with herbal remedies. This book tells the story of her 3 years living in a small home in the New Forest and raising her two small children in the woods. Wild swimming, foraging and stories of the Gypsies who lived around her, this is a fascinating look at a way of life that would be impossible now.
• Derek Tangye - Sun on the Lintel. Non Fiction. (Published 1976) This is the 4th book written about Derek and Jeannie's life at Minack, their flower farm in Cornwall. Stories about their cats and donkeys.
• E. Arnot Robertson- Ordinary Families. Fiction. (Published 1933) This is a Virago Modern Classic reprint. Lallie is one of four children of the eccentric Rush family. Their whole life revolves around sailing and inter family rivalries at Pin Mill in Suffolk. As Lallie grows to adult hood she both loves and hates her ordinary family trying to make a place for herself in the shadow of her beautiful sister Margaret. Eventually she finds a man she wants to hold onto even though she may only be his second love.
• Christianna Brand - Green For Danger. Crime Fiction ( B.L.C.C reprint published 2022. Originally Published 1944).In 1943 a postman, Joseph Higgins is brought into the Kent military hospital - Heron's Park - with injuries following a bombing raid. The hospital has been open for a year and many of the nurses are new to the hospital. When Higgins dies unexpectedly on the operating table four nurses and 3 doctors are under suspicion. Inspector Cockrill is called in only to find one of the nurses has also been murdered.

3 Fiction

6 Recently Written Crime Fiction

1 Older Crime Fiction

2 Non Fiction.

12 Books Read in June

JULY

• Alys Clare - The Cargo From Neira. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023). This is the 5th in a series about Dr/Surgeon Gabriel Taverner set in the early C17. Gabe is summoned by his friend the coroner to examine two bodies which seem to have a connection to the young pregnant woman so recently pulled from the river barely alive. Everything that happens seems to be connected to the spices which she has hidden in a her bag and the mysterious disappearance of a ship traveling to the East on the spice route.
• Simon Brett - A Series of Murders. Crime Fiction. (Published 1989) Actor Charles Parris is actually in work although still drinking too much. He is playing a policeman in a TV series but as usual has to get involved in solving a real crime when first the female lead dies and then a stage manager is also murdered.
• Cora Harrison -Murder in the Cathedral. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022) 9th in the series set in 1920's Cork and featuring the Reverend Mother of the convent and school. A Christmas Day double murder in the Protestant Cathedral and one of those murdered is a seven year old Enda - one of her troublesome pupils and the other is the Archdeacon - who nobody seems to like. 
• Robert Gibbings - Sweet Thames Run Softly. Non Fiction. (Published 1940) Gibbings was an artist and engraver and wrote this book about a gentle trip down the Thames taken in 1939/40 just before and after the outbreak of war. An interesting book of nature and anecdotes.
• Simon Brett - Corporate Bodies. Crime Fiction. (Published 1991) Actor Charles Parris is doing some work making advertising films for a company who make bedtime drinks and other snacks. Unfortunately on the day they film in the warehouse with Charles playing the part of a fork-lift truck driver one of the secretarial staff is killed in what appears to be a nasty accident. Of course Charles knows she has been murdered and sets out to find out who by.
• Elizabeth Taylor - At Mrs Lippincote's. Fiction. (Published 1988). Mrs Lippincote's house with it's mahogany furniture and old photographs is a temporary home for Julia who has joined her husband Roddy who is in the RAF. With them is Oliver their 7 year old son and Roddy's cousin Eleanor. Eleanor thinks Julia isn't good enough for Roddy but Julia has never taken her role as the Leader of Men's little wife very seriously.
• Kristin Hannah - The Great Alone. Fiction. (Published 2018) 13 year old Leni is caught up in her parents tumultuous marriage. Her father Eart has changed since his return from Vietnam yet her mother Cora can't leave him. His latest crazy idea is moving them all to Alaska. Luckily  Matthew, the only boy her age at school is the one person there who seems to understand Leni. The descriptions of the remote landscapes and wildness and increasingly wild and violent behaviour of Eart form the main part of the story. Then two tragedies tear Leni and Mathew apart.
• Dorothy Simpson - Last Seen Alive. Crime Fiction (Published 1985) Another in a series featuring Inspector Thanet. Twenty years after she moved away from Sturrendon, when she was just a teenager, Alicia Parnell returns seemingly to attend a concert by an old school friend. But just a day later Alicia is found strangled in her hotel room. What is the connection between her life in Sturrendon of the past and London of the present.
• Dorothy Simpson - Dead On Arrival. Crime Fiction (Published 1986) Inspector Thanet is looking into the murder of Steven Long. Long's life has been tough from childhood and before losing his life he has lost his job, his wife and is estranged from all his family except his twin brother. There seem to be many suspects as Steven had a way of making people angry towards him.
• John Wyatt - The Shining Levels. Non Fiction (Published 1973).  The authors story of his time working as a forester in the Lake District. The Shining Levels is about the early days, before the National Park when he is working for one of the landowners at coppicing, hedging and ditching while living in a small rough hut - which comes with the job. He became the first Lake District Ranger.
• Roger Bax - Blueprint for Murder. Crime Fiction (Originally Published 1948) The planning for the crime is part of the story so there is no secret to 'Who Done It'. Arthur Cross is the nephew of industrialist Charles Collison, he is back from the war and very short of money so plans the perfect way to murder his uncle as he knows that he and Geoff - Collinson's son, are the beneficiaries of Collinson's will.
• Jim Eldridge - Murder at Down Street Station. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023) 5th book in a series set in London during the Blitz and featuring DCI Coburg. He is called to investigate the murder of a Russian fortune teller found dead in Down St Station underground station - now being used as a temporary secret office of the Prime Minister.

12 Books read in July

7 Recently Written Crime Fiction

1 Older Crime Fiction

2 Non Fiction

2 Fiction

AUGUST

• Kristin Hannah - Winter Garden. Fiction. (Published 2014). Meredith and Nina Whitson are sisters and very different. Their mother has always been a mystery to them, she appears to be a cold Russian woman. When all three come together at their fathers death bed he has one last promise to extract from all of them. From the apple orchards of Washington State in the year 2,000 to Leningrad in the 1940's and the fairy story their mother tells them and then onto Alaska the sisters realise they didn't know their mother at all. A very good  wide sweeping story - sad in places.
• Rory Clements - The English Fuhrer. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023) At the end of 1945 former spy Professor Tom Wilde has returned to teaching at Cambridge University and a quiet family life, until a phone call from a senior MI5 boss draws him back into the aftermath of war and the people who are still Nazis or Communists. There are rumours of chemical warfare and a Blacklist of people still to be killed. This list includes Tom and his wife Lydia who has managed to talk her way into training  to be a doctor in London.
• Ann Cleeves -  A Lesson In Dying. Crime Fiction. (Published 1990) One of her books from a series before Vera and Shetland. Inspector Ramsey is called in when a primary school headmaster is found hanging from a netball hoop on the night of a Halloween party. He soon finds that everyone in Heppleburn either hated or was afraid of the nasty Harold Medburn. The case seems straightforward and Hepburn's wife is soon on remand for his murder but Jack Robson who is the school caretaker is determined that she is innocent and starts asking questions around the village putting himself in danger.
• Irene Soper - The Romany Way. Non Fiction (Published 1994) The author had lots of contacts with Gypsies or Romanys when she lived in Wiltshire and then the New Forest and this little book is a bit about the history, the way they lived and travelled and the things they sold to make a living during the 1950s and 60's. Interestingly when she she lived in in the New Forest  she actually owned the small cottage that had been lived in by Juliette de Bairacli Levy while writing her book Wanderers in the New Forest . The Romany way of life is now mostly long gone so this is a little book of social history.
• Elly Griffiths - Bleeding Heart Yard. Crime Fiction (Published 2022) This is the 3rd book about Harbinder Kaur newly promoted to DI and now moved to London from the south coast to work in the Met. An M.P is murdered at his school reunion and one of his former classmates is  DS Cassie Fitzherbert  now working with Harbinder - Is Cassie now a suspect.? There seems to be a connection back 21 years to their final days at school when another classmate fell under a train. 
• L.J.Ross - Holy Island. Crime Fiction (Published 2015) First in a series featuring DCI Ryan. Ryan is taking a sabbatical on Holy Island when a young woman is found murdered among the Priory Ruins. Dr Anna Taylor who grew up on Lindisfarne is called in as an expert witness and soon she has to face up to her past at the same time as helping DCI Ryan when two more people are murdered. A connection to Pagan Ritual is a possibility.
• Jean Pearce Edwards -  Little Jean's War. Non Fiction. (Published 2008) This is the memories of young Jean growing up during the war on a farm on the Kent/Surrey border. She's just four at the beginning of the book but seems to have all sorts of amazing memories of being a tomboy and running wild with her cousin and neighbouring children accompanied by her beloved cat Tubby.
• Stella Gibbons - The Weather at Tregulla. Fiction (Furrowed Middlebrow Reprint 2021 Originally Published 1962). Una Broadbent is 19 and desperate to leave the "boring" Cornish countryside and get to London to start her acting career. The death of her mother means this isn't possible but her disappointment of being stuck working on her father's violet farm melts away with the arrival in the village for the summer of  artist Terence and his sister Emmeline. An interesting little story of life in the early 60's when even then the locals were moaning about the tourists.
• Mike Ripley - Mr Campion's Coven. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021) This is another story featuring Margery Allingham's character Albert Campion. - now retired. Mason Lowell Clay is a student from the US over here to find out more about a group of settlers who travelled from the mysterious Essex village of Wicken across to the States in the C16 and then back again. Albert Campion is the best person to help him because he has just been to Wicken to search for a lost dog belonging to Dame Jocasta Upcott.
• Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - The School At The Chalet. Children's Fiction (Published 1925) A Children's Classic which I'd never had the chance to read as a child. Madge Bettony aged 24 is left with very little money to look after her sister so she starts a school in Austria! This is the first of a series that went on for years. Now I know what I missed I won't bother with more.
• Rachel McLean - The Monument Murders. Crime Fiction (Published 2021) 4th in a series about DCI Lesley Clarke newly moved to Dorset.  When a body is found draped over Swanage's iconic Globe monument with a message written in blood "Go Home" everyone assumes is a hate crime as the deceased in a black guy recently arrived in Dorset from London. Or is it more to do with a controversial housing development he had designed?  At the same time Lesley is getting more involved with trying to find out why her predecessor committed suicide or perhaps he was murdered and just who is covering things up?
• Kate Ellis -  The Killing Place. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023) This is another in the very long series featuring DI Wesley Peterson and set in Dartmouth in Devon which she calls Tradmouth. The body of Patrick North is found in woodland adjoining Nesbarton Hall. He's been shot and is soon recognised as a private tutor for Darius Smithson, 13 year old son of a wealthy father who now own the estate. As usual with this series there are links to archaeology and history.
• Donna Leon - About Face. Crime Fiction (Published 2009) One of this authors long series set in Venice and featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti. A story that starts being about pollution and the environment in Venice but then involves the wife of one of Brunetti's Father-in-Law's friends.

13 Books Read in August

2 Fiction

8 Recently Written Crime Fiction

2 Non Fiction

1 Children's Fiction

SEPTEMBER

• Margery Sharp - Rhododendron Pie. Fiction (Furrowed Middlebrow Reprint 2021. Originally Published 1930). This is her first ever novel and had been very rare since it's original publication. It's the story of Ann Laventie, youngest of three children from a anti-social Sussex gentry and not quite the same as her elegant, modern siblings, Dick an artist and sculptor and Elizabeth a high brow writer. The two eldest spend more time in London bringing home unusual friends and Ann believes she is in love with one of them until she realises she just wants an ordinary life with John, a neighbour and bank-clerk and much too boring for the rest of the Laventie family.
• Jim Eldridge - Murder at The Savoy. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021) September 1940 and the height of the London Blitz. The Savoy hotel has advertised its prestigious hotel with substantial basement as the best place to stay during an air-raid which prompts the arrival of people from the East End demanding to be let in and then the murder of one of their important guest. Detective Chief Inspector Coburg is put in charge of the case - the fourth in this series set in the Blitz.
• Ann Granger - The Old Rogue of Limehouse. Crime Fiction. (Published  2023). 9th in a series set in Victorian London and featuring Inspector Ben Ross and his wife Lizzie. When Jacob Jacobus is murdered it's probably something to do with his occupation as an antiquarian,  fence, money lender and friend to villains. It happens at the same time as the disappearance of the priceless Roxby emeralds, a family heirloom owned by Mrs Roxby - a difficult woman who demands it's immediate return.
• Donna Leon - A Noble Radiance. Crime Fiction. (Published 1998) This is the 7th in the Commissario Brunetti series set in Venice. In a small village at the foot of the Dolomites a grave holding the body of a young man is discovered by the new owner of the farmhouse. A valuable signet ring is found in the grave which leads the police back to a very well known and wealthy Venetian family.
• H.E.Bates - Fair Stood the Wind for France. Fiction. (Published 1944). When John Franklin crash lands his Wellington bomber in occupied France in the Second World War, he has two things to concern him - the safety of his crew and his badly damaged arm. The family of a mill-owner risk their lives to hide him, find him doctors and look after him until he is well again. During that summer he falls in love with Françoise, the daughter of the family and together they have to escape as German patrols get closer.
• Edited by Martin Edwards - Crimes of Cymru. Crime Fiction Short Stories. (British Library Crime Classic 2023. Originally Published 1909 -1980s) 14 short stories either written by Welsh authors or set in Wales. Some are very odd, some OK.
• Jane Thynne- The Words I Never Wrote. Fiction. (Published 2020) This is the story of two English sisters  Irene and Cordelia born in the early 1900's. As they grow they are very close always confiding in each other but when Irene marries a German Industrialist in 1936 she is whisked away to Berlin. Cordelia then gets a job as a journalist in Paris. As Europe heads towards war Cordelia begs her sister to leave Germany but with her husband being a Nazi sympathiser it's not as easy as it sounds.  70 years later, in present day New York, Juno Lambert buys a 1931 Underwood Typewriter which once belonged to  well known American journalist Cordelia Capel and finds an unfinished novel.  Juno decides she wants to know more about Cordelia and Irene to fill in the blanks about why the sisters became estranged.
• Mo Wilde - The Wilderness Cure. Non Fiction. (Published 2022) Using her expert knowledge of foraging, botany and mycology Mo follows the seasons to find nutritious food from hundreds of species of plants, fungi and seaweeds around her home in Scotland. Surviving well on foraged food for a whole year.

3 Fiction

3 Recently Written Crime Fiction

1 Older Crime Fiction (Short Stories)

1 Non Fiction

8 Books Read in September

OCTOBER

• Margery Allingham - The Crime at Black Dudley. Crime Fiction (Published 1929). A suspicious death and a haunted family heirloom were not advertised when Dr George Abbershaw and a group of London's bright young things accepted an invitation. An odd death occurs and the party goers soon realise they are trapped in the remote mansion. Included in the number is an odd  young man that no one knows who says he will solve the mystery.  The first appearance of Albert Campion.
• Jade Angeles Fitton -  Hermit. Non Fiction ( Published 2023) .When Jade's partner leaves the barn that they moved into just weeks before, he leaves a dent in the wall and her life unravelled. Numbed from years in the destructive relationship, she faces an uncertain future and complete solitude. Slowly, with the help of Devon's salted cliffs and damp forested footpaths, Jade comes back to life and discovers the power of being alone.
• Edited by Martin Edwards. -  Many Deadly Returns; Celebrating 21 years of the Murder Squad. Crime Fiction Short Stories.(Published 2021) 21 crime stories by several well known crime writers including Ann Cleeves and Kate Ellis. Some of the stories were good, others weird and some very gruesome.
• Louise Doughty - A Bird in Winter. Fiction. (Published 2023) One day Heather gets up from a meeting in her office and walks out, not even going home before going on the run. The book goes back and forward in her life before this - eventually telling her story. She was in the army and then worked for the government as did her father before her. She changes her identity several times and reached Iceland before she feels safe - although that might be only temporary.
• Sara Sheridan - Highland Fling. Crime Fiction. (Published 2020)Another in the series featuring private investigator Mirabelle Bevan. The earlier ones are mainly set in wartime Brighton but this later one is in the 1950's during the cold war. Mirabelle and her fiancé Superintendent Alan McGregor are in Scotland to visit his cousin. But they had only just arrived when the body of  an American fashion buyer is found on the estate.
• Ethel Lina White - The Lady Vanishes AKA The Wheel Spins. Crime Fiction. (Published 1936) Iris Henderson is on a cross-Europe train journey and a woman she's been talking to in her compartment vanishes. Everyone else insists the woman didn't exist..
• Deborah Crombie - A Killing of Innocents.  Crime Fiction (Published 2023). Another in a series featuring Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his wife Gemma also a detective and set in London. This story revolves around the seemingly meaningless stabbing of Sasha Johnson a trainee doctor but when another hospital nurse is also stabbed there surely must be some connection. But where do the brothers of both the doctor and her flatmate Tully fit into the story.
• Donna Leon - Friends in High Places. Crime Fiction. (Published 2000). This is an early book in the series - the 9th - featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti and the crimes in his city of Venice.It starts with a visit to Brunetti by an official investigating the lack of approval for the Brunetti's apartment. Then later he is found dead at the base of some scaffolding and it is assumed to be an accident. Brunetti is not so sure. At the same time he is investigating drug selling and money lending in the city.
• Margery Allingham - Dancers in Mourning. Crime Fiction (Published 1937). A very early book by the author featuring Albert Campion. Song and dance man Jimmy Sutane is the victim of a series of malicious practical jokes and Albert Campion is called upon to find  out who is responsible. But the back stage pranks continue and then an aging Music Hall starlet is killed.

3 Older Crime Fiction

1 Non Fiction

4 Recently Written Crime ( 1 was Short Stories)

1 Fiction

9 Books Read in October

NOVEMBER

• Derek Jarman - Pharmacopoeia; A Dungerness Notebook. Non Fiction (Published 2022. Originally published between 1991 and 2000) This is a collection of writing by this author, gardener, photographer and film maker taken from his various books. They celebrate his garden made on the shingle of Dungerness and were written as he became ill.
• Mike Ripley - Mr Campion's Memory. Crime Fiction (Published 2023) Another book featuring Margery Allingham's character. In 1972 Albert Campions nephew Christopher, working in PR, needs his Uncle's help with a client. Lachlan McIntyre is a construction magnate in line for a peerage until a journalist who had been asking questions is found dead close to McIntyre's home. 
• Elizabeth Strout - Lucy by the Sea. Fiction. (Published 2022) This short book is about a woman, recently widowed through the first year of the pandemic in the US. Her scientist ex-husband tells her about the risks of Covid and persuades her to move from New York to Maine with him and arranges for their children to also move. It's about how the US changed through the virus and how secrets come out and people were changed.
• Donna Leon -  A Question of Belief. Crime Fiction (Published 2010) Another Commissario Brunetti crime story set in Venice. A mixture of crimes have occurred including the vicious death of a usher from the courthouse, discrepancies concerning a judge also at the courthouse and a plea from a colleague to help find out why his Aunt is withdrawing large sums of money and giving it to a dubious person. At the same time the heat in the City is tremendous and Brunetti should be away on holiday in the mountains.
• Donna Leon -  Acqua Alta. Crime Fiction. (Published 1996) An earlier Commissario Brunetti story. Brett Lynch, an art historian friend of Brunetti has suffered a savage beating and a warning not to contact the museum director Dottor Semenzato. Very soon his body is also found. What are the links to stolen Chinese treasures, dubious antique dealers and a mafia boss refurbishing an old Palazzo.
• Mark Pryor - The Bookseller. Crime Fiction. (Published 2012) Hugo Marston is head of security at the US embassy in Paris, he is also a collector of old books and has made a friend in Max on of the elderly booksellers who have their stalls beside the Seine. One day he watches helplessly as Max is kidnapped at gunpoint. He has help in tracking down what has happened by Claudia, a journalist with secrets. The story has links back to Nazi collaborators as well as modern day drug smuggling.
• Ann Cleeves - The Raging Storm. Crime Fiction (Published 2023) This is the third in the Two Rivers series featuring D.I. Mathew Venn and set on the North Devon Coast. Jem Rosco adventurer and local legend arrives back in Greystone, stays for a few weeks and then disappears, only for his body to be found in a dinghy anchored in Scully Cove, famous for it's own legends.
• Lucy Strange - Our Castle by the Sea. Junior Fiction (Published 2019) A children's book set at the beginning of WWII. 12 year old Petra lives in a lighthouse cottage, on the Kent coast as war starts all around them. Her father looks after the lighthouse, her older sister loves boats but the problem is that their mother is German. A story of a small girl who becomes part of the legend of the Daughters of the Stones.

8 Books Read in November

1 Non Fiction

4 Recently Written Crime Fiction

1 Older Crime Fiction

1 Fiction

1 Children's Fiction

DECEMBER

• Douglas Model - Memories of a Wartime Childhood. Non Fiction (Published 2022).A story of a small boy, his brother and parents living in Wembley during the blitz. He has an excellent memory of the time including the fear of the bombs, rationing, schools and friendships. Then he writes a chapter about his life after the war.
• J.L.Carr - What Hetty Did. Fiction. (Published 1988) A good story that made me smile. Hetty is a very intelligent sixth former at a backwater school in the Fens with an unlikely love of Browning and Keats encouraged by her English teacher. Her home-life isn't good as her father is violent and her mother down trodden and afraid, he brother is a nasty nuisance. In the first weeks after finishing her exams the violence becomes much worse and her mother tells her the truth that she is adopted. Hetty thankfully runs away to Birmingham to track down her real mother and after a chance encounter on the train she ends up in a Boarding house with a most unusual land-lady and eccentric residents.
• Paul Theroux -A Christmas Card. Children's Fiction (Published 1978) A very short book. A children's ghost story. Marcel, his brother and parents are driving to a cottage in the woods for Christmas when they get lost in the snow.
• Donna Leon - Beastly Things. Crime Fiction. (Published 2012) Another in the Inspector Brunetti series. When a disfigured body is found in a Venice canal there is no identification until Brunetti remembers where he has seen the man before. The search for the murderer leads to a slaughter house and a story of fraud, blackmail and eventually to the killer.
• D.E. Stevenson - Fletchers End. Fiction.(Published 1962)  An old house is brought back to life when Bel and Ellis move in. Another gentle story.
• Chris Nickson - Rusted Souls. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023) This is the 11th and final story about Tom Harper, just about to retire from being Chief Constable after his 40 years career. Before that day he has to solve a problem of blackmail, a spate of robberies from jewellery shops and the impending arrival of gangs of shoplifters on the trains from London.
• Donna Leon -  Death of Faith. Crime Fiction. (Published 1997) Another early story in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series set in Venice. A young woman comes to see Brunetti she has just left her vocation as a Nun and tells him about her doubts about the death of some of the patients at a nursing home - cared for by the nuns of her order.
• Judi Daykin -The Norfolk Beach Murders. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023) The 5th in a series with a detective who has moved from London to rural Norfolk. This story features criminals that have appeared in previous books plus people smugglers and a young girl sleeping rough.

8 Books read in December

1 Non Fiction

2 Fiction

1 Children's Fiction.

4 Recently Written Crime Fiction

TOTAL of 124 books read in 2023

BOOKS READ 2022

JANUARY

• Jill Paton Walsh - The Bad Quarto. Crime Fiction. (Published 2007) Imogen Quy is the nurse for St.Agatha's College, Cambridge.  This author wrote 4 books in this series - this is the 4th. In this story Imogen sorts out the mystery of the links between an amateur Shakespeare production, the death of a lecturer and the disappearance of an angry student.. A good well written story.
• Alison Uttley - Country Things. Non Fiction. (Published 1946). This is another little book gathering together her lovely descriptive memories of childhood in the 1880s growing up on a farm and a village in Derbyshire. I've enjoyed several of her books of essays and memories - sometimes fictionalised.
• Sylvia Townsend Warner - English Climate: Wartime Stories (Persephone 2020 Originally published 1939-46.) This is a collection of short pieces/stories many originally written for The New Yorker during the war by this author (1893-1978). Some are good short stories, others are a bit odd. A quick read.
  
• Rupert Latimer - Murder After Christmas. Crime Fiction ( British Library Crime Classic Published 2021. Originally published 1944). This is an author who only wrote a few crime books before he died at age just 48 in 1953. Its an odd story but with a touch of humour "a lively riot of murder,mince pies and misdirection.........a pacey light-hearted package". Totally unbelievable but a good read.
• Marion Todd - In Plain Sight. Crime Fiction,(Published 2020) This is the second story featuring DI Clare Mackay and set in St Andrews Scotland. When a baby disappears from her push chair at the start of a charity fun run - there seem to be no clues and no reason for her being snatched. But why are so many people hiding things and is the appearance of a known drug dealer in the area relevant.
• Roz Watkins - The Devil's Dice. Crime Fiction(Published 2018). The debut crime thriller from this author. Featuring DI Meg Dalton a police officer returning back to her home county of Derbyshire. When a lawyer is found dead in a cave some people think it's connected to a curse. -
  
• S.J. Bennett - The Three Dog problem. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021).This is the second in a series in which Rozie Oshodi, The Queen's Assistant Private Secretary, assists the Queen in solving a mystery. This one starts with the Queen spotting a painting she once owned in a collection at the Royal Naval Centre in Portsmouth but after asking Rozie to check out how it is there when it was once in Buckingham Palace, there are then two murders.
• Joan Strange - Despatches From the Home Front; The War Diaries. Non Fiction. (Edited by Chris McCooey. Published 2013).From January 1st 1939 to the end of the War, Joan Strange kept a diary. From the dramatic happening in other parts of the world to the local problems in Worthing. The book also includes a few newspaper  cuttings which are interesting.
• B.A.Steward- Farm Down the Lane. Non Fiction (Published 1946)
• B.A.Steward - Green Lane Farm. Non Fiction (Published 1982) Both these books are about a local Suffolk farm during the war years and just after. They are memories of the farm workers and village people, the land girls and the animals that were usual at the time on a small mixed farm.
• Jim Eldridge- Murder at the Fitzwilliam. Crime fiction(Published 2018) Set in the 1890's. Daniel Wilson made his name in London investigating the case of Jack The Ripper. Now he is working as a private enquiry agent and is called in to assist the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge when a dead body is found in a previously empty sarcophagus. The Egyptian collection is being catalogued by archaeologist Abigail Fenton and the two work together to solve the murder and mystery.
  

11 Books Read in January

FEBRUARY - 

• Mike Hollow -The Pimlico Murder. Crime Fiction(Published 2021). 6th book in The Blitz Detective series featuring Inspector John Jago. A young man is found battered to death in an Anderson shelter with two white poppies in his pocket. This looks at some dark aspects of Blitz life - protection rackets and looting.
• Marion Todd - Lies to Tell. Crime Fiction. (Published 2020) This is the 3rd in the series featuring DI Clare Mackay and set in St Andrews Scotland.A clever story involving computer hacking and money laundering.
• Esther Rowley - Dogs, Goats, Bulbs and Bombs;Wartime Diaries of Exmouth and Exeter. Edited by John Folkes. (Published 2010)These diaries were found in an auction and thanks to a letter found among the pages could be attributed to Esther, a single woman who was in her 30's and lived with her mother in a large house in Exmouth. It's a fascinating look at the life of those who had money at the time and were able to purchase things that many found difficult to find. Esther is in the ATS at the beginning of the diaries in 1940 but later has to leave to take care of her elderly mother. She spends lots of time out and about walking her dogs, visiting neighbours and friends for tea. playing tennis, swimming in summer and having picnics.Gardening is her main pleasure and there are good details of all the plants she buys - things I didn't think were available during the war.
• Diana Ashworth - Iolo's Revenge;Sheep Farming by Happy Accident in Mid Wales. Non Fiction. (Published 2018) A small book written by a retired doctor and how she and her husband came to own a 25 acre sheep farm on the Welsh border. The stories of sheep escaping, lambing problems and the death wish of sheep was all very familiar! A good read once I got used to idea of it being written in the 3rd person. She describes herself all through as The Retired Lady and her husband as The Retired Gentleman - a bit odd.
• Alan Bennett - The Uncommon Reader. Fiction (Published 2007). A Very quick read - took me just an hour. The Queen's corgis lead her to finding that a mobile library visits Buckingham Palace. She's never read for pleasure before but soon gets hooked on books. The only other library borrower is Norman and the Queen soon promotes him from the kitchen to be her personal reading assistant. She gets so involved in reading that she starts to neglect her duties and the staff are worried.
• Mel Starr - Master Wycliffe's Summons. Crime Fiction(Published 2021). This is the 14th in a series about Hugh de Singleton - a bailiff near Oxford in 14th Century England. The recurrence of the  plague is a back drop to this story when Hugh is called to Oxford to find out if a student really was struck by lightening.
• Mike Hollow - The Dockland Murder. Crime Fiction.(Published 2021) This is the 5th of The Blitz Detective series featuring Inspector John Jago. This is set mainly in the Port of London and Jago has to work with their own police force to find the murderer of one of the Home Guard members patrolling the docks at night.
• Alis Hawkins - In Two Minds. Crime Fiction ( Published 2019) A new to me author. This is the second in a series about Teifi Valley Coroner Henry Probert-Lloyd. Set sometime in the 1800's, (no specific date given). A good read but I wish the library had the 1st one. Henry Probert-Lloyd was forced home from being a barrister in London by encroaching blindness. When a faceless body is found on the beach at Tresaith Harry - as acting coroner must lead the inquest.
• Ronald Blythe - Village Hours. Non Fiction. (Published 2012) Another collection of short pieces that were first published in The Church Times.  He always writes so descriptively about the countryside, church and people he meets around Wormingford on the Essex/Suffolk border.
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9 Books Read in February

MARCH

• Chris Nickson - The Blood Covenant. Crime Fiction (Published 2021). This is the 4th in a series featuring Simon Westow, a thief taker in early 19C Leeds. Hearing about the brutal deaths of two young boys at one of the mills in Leeds reminds Simon of his own painful childhood. He and his assistant Jane are drawn into investigating.But this leads to Simon's family being at risk by two of the rich and wealthy of Leeds.The violence and descriptions of the poor at the time are very descriptive.
•  Duff Hart-Davis- Our Land at War:A Portrait of Rural Britain 1939-1945. Non Fiction (Published 2015). A thorough look at all the events of WWII which had any effect on the countryside. From farming to evacuees to air bases and Land Army Girls to country houses and secret hideouts. A very good read.
• Ann Granger -  Mystery in the Making. Short crime stories (Published 2021) There are 18 stories of various lengths in this latest book by a very prolific author. Some are quite dated as they were written many years ago for publication in magazines. 
• D.E. Stevenson - Winter and Rough Winter. Fiction (Originally Published 1951) This is a Dean St Press reprint.I had read this before but probably in 40+ years ago. Set in the Scottish Borders, this story is mainly about James Dering and his new wife Rhoda who is an artist moving to their new home on a remote farm.Rhoda finds life lonely after London but after she starts painting again and finds a boy with a talent she can help she begins to feel more at home.
• Anthony Berkeley - Murder in the Basement. (BLCC reprint 2021. Originally Published 1932). Two newly-weds discover a corpse buried in the basement of their new home and a long gruelling case begins. Amateur sleuth Roger Sheringham has just been teaching at a private school and has started a satirical novel about his colleagues and the case seems to lead Chief Inspector Moresby to the school and some of the staff there.
• Alys Clare - Magic in the Weave. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021) This is the 4th in a series featuring physician Gabriel Taverner and his friend - Coroner Theophilus Davey. The story is set in 1604 in Plymouth where a company of Players have fled London because of the plague. Somehow their performances seem to be employing magic to trick the audience.
• Beverley Nichols - Merry Hall. Non Fiction (Published 1951). Beverley Nichols was well known as a garden writer, journalist and broadcaster from the 50's through to the late 70's. This is the story of a large house and garden he bought just after the war. It really shows how making  garden is a labour of love  and the most important thing in his life. The author write amusingly about his inherited gardener and the village ladies as well as the flowers and trees he chooses.
• Marion Todd - What They Knew.  Crime Fiction,(Published 2021) This is the fourth story featuring DI Clare Mackay and set in St Andrews Scotland. At midnight on Hogmanay Alison Reid admits someone to her home who then murders her. But when the pathology results are in they seem to bear some resemblance to another woman found dead a few weeks earlier.
• William Powers- Twelve by Twelve; A One Room Cabin Off The Grid. Non Fiction.(Published 2010) William Powers is an international aid worker and accepts the offer to stay in an off grid cabin by No Name Creek in North Carolina. The owner is Dr Jackie Benton who lives a simple life to avoid paying tax and she is off travelling and campaigning. The book is described as "Walden for the global warming era". It's not so much about living in a small space but about the author working out which way he wants to go with his life.
• Cecily Gayford - Editor - Murder in Midsummer. Short Crime Stories. (Published 2019) The authors of these short stories are all well known including Conan Doyle, Ruth Rendell and Ellis Peters. All these murders happen in summertime, some are good - some not so readable. One or two have been included in British Library Crime Classic collections. 
• Anthony Berkeley - The Wintringham Mystery. Crime Fiction (Published 2021 Originally published 1927. Stephen Munro is a de-mobbed army officer but being short of money he takes a job as a footman at a country house where Lady Susan Carey is having guests to stay. Then one of the guests vanishes. This is a typical Country House Mystery of the period but is quite well written.

11 Books Read in March

APRIL

• Elizabeth Harland  - No Halt at Sunset; The Diary of a Country Housewife. Non Fiction.(Published 1951). Written as a diary covering the end of 1949 and through 1950, many of the entries first appeared in the Eastern Daily Press. They tell the story of a woman and her family running a small farm and writing books at the same time. This was a quick re-read for me.
• Judi Daykin - Under Violent Skies. Crime Fiction (Published 2020). A Debut novel set in Norfolk with a new officer up from London and not being made welcome. The story is set around the flat Fenland farms and foreign workers. DS Sara Hirst wants to know the truth about her father who she's not seen since she was two but she knows he moved to Norfolk. This story seemed similar to others with a black police officer out in the countryside where everyone is white.
• Bernard J.Farmer - Death of a Bookseller. Crime Fiction (British Library Crime Classic published 2022, originally published 1956.) This is the 100th in the BLCC reprints. Sergeant Wigan becomes a book collector after befriending Micheal Fisk who is celebrating a rare book find. A while later Fisk is found dead and because of his knowledge of rare books, booksellers and runners (the people who search out rare books to pass on to buyers or book shops) he is asked to help the CID track down the killer. Rare books can be dangerous things!
• Dorothy Whipple - Random Commentary. Non Fiction. (A Persephone Publication 2020 Originally Published 1966) This book was compiled from notebooks and journals written between 1925 and the end of WWII. An interesting look at the well known author and how she came to write some of her best loved novels. She gathered this book together from her diaries and published it just before her death.
• Elly Griffiths - The Locked Room. Fiction (Published 2022). The 14th in the Dr. Ruth Galloway series. I enjoy all her books even though they seem to be a bit repetitive and predictable sometimes. This one is written as covid hits Norfolk and everywhere else. Ruth has a new neighbour who then goes missing and one of the characters gets covid and is seriously ill in hospital.
• Eve Ibbotson - A Song For Summer. Young Adult Fiction (Published 1977) Ellens Father was killed at Ypres and she grew up with her Mother and two Aunts - they were all clever women and Ellen was equally intelligent but most of all she loved cooking and housekeeping and learns these and German from her Grandfathers housekeeper. Ellen gets a job working at a very unusual school in Austria where they concentrate on the English language, drama and music and is soon intrigued by the gardener Marek who has a secret. But then Hitler starts marching across Europe.
• Peter May - The Night Gate. Crime Fiction (Published 2021). Featuring the retired forensic police officer Enzo Macleod, the story is set in two time lines - one in occupied France during WWII and the other through the Covid lockdown of 2020. In a sleepy French village the body of a man shot through the head is disinterred by the roots of a fallen tree. A week later a famous art critic is murdered in a nearby house.
• D.E.Stevenson - Music in the Hills. Fiction (Originally Published 1950) A Furrowed Middlebrow/Dean St Press reprint. I should have read this before my re-read of Winter and Rough Weather last month as it's the beginning of that story. Set again in the Scottish Borders.
• Marion Todd - Next in Line. Crime Fiction (Published 2021) The 5th by this new author set in St Andrews Scotland and featuring D.I.Clare Mackay. Clare is in charge of a high profile case when a TV personality Gaby Fox's brother is shot dead while at his birthday party. His friends all seem to be hiding something. 

9 Books Read in April

MAY 

• Beverley Nichols -  Sunlight on the Lawn. Non Fiction (Published 1956)  The final book in the trilogy about his garden and home in Surrey. The ladies of the village feature again but its the flowers that are the main part of his books.
• Jim Eldridge - Murder at Claridges. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022). This is the 3rd set during the Blitz in London and featuring DCI Coburg. The body of a kitchen porter at Claridges is found but he wasn't killed by a bomb.
• D.E.Stevenson - Vittoria Cottage. Fiction (Originally Published 1949. Furrowed Middlebrow Reprint 2019.) This is a book that I should have read before Music in The Hills and Winter and Rough Weather ....see March and April books read.........as it is the back story of some of the people that feature in those later books. It is another gentle family story set while the war and rationing still feature. It's a re-read for me but read so long ago that I had no memory of it.
• Rachel Blok - Under the Ice. Crime Fiction. (Published 2018). A new to me author this is the first featuring a Dutch detective in St Albans. The frozen body of a young woman is found under the ice of the lake. A local women, an exhausted new mother, keeps dreaming about what happened on the night of the murder and why is she wandering around at night?
• E.C.R.Lorac - Post After Post-Mortem. Crime Fiction (British Library Crime Classic 2022 Originally Published 1936). Another crime story by one of BLCC's best republished authors. This is a clever story. The Surrays and their 5 grown up children are a family of writers and after a rare get together at the family home the middle daughter -Ruth- is found dead - supposedly by suicide. But after the inquest her brother Richard receives a letter from her that had been delayed in the post which seems to upset the suicide decision. Inspector MacDonald is called in  to investigate what must have been a meticulously planned murder.
• Robin Blake - Hungry Death. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022). In November 1747 County Coroner Titus Cragg has been called to the scene of a gruesome murder of a whole family who belong to a strange religious cult. This is the 9th in a series about Titus Cragg and his friend Dr Like Fidelis.
• D.E.Stevenson - Five Windows. Fiction ( A Furrowed Middlebrow re-print Originally Published 1953) . One of her better books and a story of a boy, told through his eyes, growing up in rural Scotland and then moving to Edinburgh for school and to London for work. It's a happy story and I first read it way back in the 70's.
• Ronald Blythe - Out of the Valley. Non Fiction. (Published 1999) This is the 2nd of his collection of writing originally written for the Church Times. It follows the calendars of the Church Year, the farming year and his own year of travels, his garden, the people he meets, preaching and talks to lots of groups on many literary subjects. 

8 Books Read in June

 JUNE

• Rory Clements - The Man in the Bunker. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022) This is the 6th book featuring Professor Tom Wilde. The war is over, so many countries are in ruins and Tom Wilde is asked to go to Germany to find out if Hitler really did die in the bunker. This again is a really good story and so well written.
• Phyllis Bottome - London pride. Fiction (Published 1941) Ben, a boy of the London dockyard slums is 7 years old and the main character of this book he spends his time during the days of the Blitz looking after his little sister Mabel. His mother is a char lady, his father and eldest brother work on the docks. An older sister works in a shop and the twins are sent off as evacuees to Cornwall. Ben's best friend is Emily next door a street wise nine year old whose parents are not as caring as Ben's. Together they do a bit of looting, get buried for 48 hours in a bombed house and then get bombed out of the hospital too. Such a unusual story. The TLS at the time said "her knowledge and understanding of  the character of the London slum child in particular cannot be done justice to in an outline of the book"
• Reg Snook - Mabel, Portrait of an Owl .Non Fiction (Published 2012) Mabel is an owl who decided to roost in full view of everyone in Christchurch Park in Ipswich for several years from 2008. She became quite famous and raised several young. Reg Snook is a local artist and previously involved in rescuing birds of prey and the book tells the story of Mabel in the park and other owls he has 'met'. This is a small book and a quick read.
• George Bellairs - Dead March for Penelope Blow. Crime Fiction (Published 2020) Originally Published 1951). Miss Penelope Blow visits Scotland Yard and asks for Inspector Littlejohn, he isn't there so she goes back the next day and the next and finally leaves a card for him. Unfortunately by the time Littlejohn sees the card and tries to contact her she has died by falling out of her bedroom window in unusual circumstances.  The Blow family are Bankers and very important in the town but among them is a touch of madness. Inspector Littlejohn has to find out what has happened without any help from the family.
• Adrian Bell - Apple Acre. Non Fiction. (Published 1942). Adrian Bell wrote 25 books while living on a farm in Suffolk in the 1940s, 50's and 60's. This one is the story of his farming life in the rural area with  wife and 3 small children (Martin Bell his son is a one time war correspondent and MP). The writing is wonderfully descriptive of a world of small farms and their farmers that have now disappeared from Suffolk.My 1964 edition has an update and lovely line drawings.
• Simon Barnes - On the Marsh; A Year Surrounded by Wildness and Wet. Non Fiction. (Published 2019) Simon Marsh was for many years a sports correspondent but now is free-lance writing books about wildlife and traveling to Africa in his work with a conservation trust. This book is about the acres of marshland he owns and cares for near the River Waveney in Norfolk and also about his son Eddie who has Downs Syndrome but who knows nearly as much about the birds and wildlife on their land as Simon does. A lovely book.
• Ellie Alexander -Caught Bread Handed. Crime Fiction.(Published 2016). This is a typical US "Cosy Crime" set in a bakery in a town which is themed for Shakespeare. It was a very light read, including lots of baking and recipes despite murder going on around. A book I picked up at a jumble sale.Not stocked in libraries here.
• Fiona J Houston - The Garden Cottage Diaries. Non Fiction.(Published 2009) A Re- read.The story of how she lived as a C18 woman in a Scottish cottage and garden. Learning all the ways they needed to survive and the food they ate.
• Stella Martin Currey- One Woman's Year. Non Fiction. (Persephone Reprint Published 2019. Originally Published 1953). This is a day book or anthology including recipes for each month by a writer and mother about her life in Essex just after the war.
• Alexander McCall Smith -   The Sunday Philosophy Club. Fiction. (Published 2004) The first in a series about Isabel Dalhousie, a philosopher and editor who gets involved in mysteries that are not really crimes in Edinburgh.
  

 10 Books Read in June (58 for 6 months)

JULY

• Alexander McCall Smith- Friends, Lovers, Chocolate. Fiction (Published 2005) Second in the Isabel Dalhousie series set in Edinburgh. When Isobel's niece Cat takes a holiday, Isobel offers to run the delicatessen for her. One of the customers has recently had a heart transplant and is now dreaming a recurring dream of a man he doesn't know. Isobel sets out to find why.
• Alexander McCall Smith- The Right Attitude to Rain. Fiction(Published 2006)Third in the series set in Edinburgh with Isobel Dalhousie deciding on moral and ethical issues and getting involved in other peoples problems
• Alexander McCall Smith - The Careful Use of Compliments. (Published 2007) Fourth in the Isobel Dalhousie series. Isobel at age 41 becomes a mother to her much younger lover's child.She's still editing The Review of Applied Ethics but suddenly finds she might be losing that job.
• June Thomson - Rosemary for Remembrance. Crime Fiction (Published 1988). Small book that's been on my shelves for years. At a summer school for creative writing the organiser Bernard Livesey has to deal with an annoying student, plus two tutors who cause him problems. But then 1 tutor is found drowned in the swimming pool and a student appears to have been murdered in his car. 
• Mark Cocker - A Claxton Diary. Non Fiction (Published 2019) Each day Mark Cocker walks 2 miles to the river near his cottage on the edge of the Norfolk Broads. This book is excerpts from his diaries over 5 years of the birds, insects,animals and plants he sees. With occasional visits to other parts of the country.
• P.D.James - Sleep No More. Crime Fiction Short Stories (Published 2017) These are short quickly read crime stories from her many years of writing.
• Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These. Fiction. (Published 2021) This is a very small book. Set in Ireland in the 1980's about a coal merchant, who stumbles across a girl shut in a shed at the convent. The secrets of the Magdalen Laundries  - the institutions for unmarried mothers run by the Catholic church seem to be known but hidden by everyone.
• Kristin Hannah -  The Four Winds. Fiction. (Published 2021) Elsa Martinelli was rejected by her family- she was never good enough but by 1934 she has found a life she loves with family and farm. Drought and dust storms force her and her two children away from Texas to find the 'land of milk and honey' that everyone is talking about in California. A sad story but good for finding out more about the Depression, migration and dust bowl of 1930's USA.
• Anthony Horowitz - The Word is Murder. Crime Fiction (Published 2017). A crime story in which the author puts himself as one of the main characters. Alongside Hawthorne an ex Police Officer who helps the police sometimes. One day a woman goes to an undertakers to arrange her funeral and six hours later she is murdered. Hawthorne goes to Horowitz and suggests his next book could be about the solving of the murder. Very well written and you often forget that what you are reading is all fiction!
• Rachel Hore - One Moonlit Night. Fiction (Published 2022) When Maddie and her daughters are bombed out of London during the early months of the war she takes them to her husbands old home in Norfolk. Her husband Phillip is missing after Dunkirk and at first she isn't made welcome by the remains of the family who live at Knyghton. There seem to be secrets and ghosts.
• Anne Perry - A Truth to Lie For. Crime Fiction (Published 2022). This is the 4th book featuring photographer Elena Standish who is also working for MI6 in the years before the WWII. This is set in Berlin as Elena is given the task of getting a scientist out of Germany. It is set around the Night of the Long Knives when up to a 1,000 Germans were killed, accused of plotting against Hitler.
• Lev Parikian - Into the Tangled Bank; Discover the quirks, habits and foibles of how we experience nature. Non Fiction (Published 2020). BBC Wildlife Magazine said " Lev's enduring child-like joy at even the smallest of encounters is infectious". It was a lovely read describing all of his trips around the country to find how to see nature more closely. A "feel good" book. 

• Adrian Bell -  Sunrise to Sunset. Non Fiction (Published 1944). In May 1940 there was much fear of invasion on the East Coast of England and Nora Bell took her three children to a rented home in the Westmorland village where her sister was a teacher. This little book is about Adrian Bell's visits from Suffolk up to Westmorland and his tales of helping on the farm there. The differences between a small stoney farm in the Cumbrian Fells and the flat fertile lands of Suffolk. A fascinating insight to how hard those farming families worked to earn a living on sloping poor land. 

13 books read in July

AUGUST

• John Bevis - An English Library Journey. Non Fiction . (Published 2022) "One man's eccentric quest to obtain a membership card from every library authority in England". An interesting little book that sadly gets into politics after Brexit. John Bevis started  this tour of libraries when, after an operation, he began driving his wife around the country for her work
• Sarah Steele-  The School Teacher of Saint-Michel.Fiction (Published in 2021). A duel time line story. In the present day Hannah finds a letter sent to her by her late much-loved grandmother Gigi. Gigi wants Hannah to travel to France to find someone called Lucie Laval to apologise - for what? Hannah has no idea about her Grandmothers past.                                                                In 1942, at the end of the day, a school teacher checks that her children have their identity passes before taking them to the border post between occupied and Free France which cuts their Dordogne village in half.   A lovely story based on real happenings of the time showing the bravery of the people, living in fear of their German invaders.
• Ann Cleeves - The Healers. Crime Fiction (Published 1995) An early Ann Cleeves crime novel. Middle aged farmer Ernie Bowles is found lying on his kitchen floor, he had been strangled. He was found by Lily Jackman who was living in an old caravan on the farm with her partner. Then in the town another woman is strangled - seemingly with no connection except perhaps through an alternative therapy centre.
• Ronald Blythe - In the Artist's Garden. Non Fiction ( Published 2015) Another collection of his writings originally written for the church times. It follows the calendars of the Church Year, the farming year and his own year of travels, his garden, the people he meets, preaching and talks to lots of groups on many subjects.
• Martin Edwards (Editor) -The Edinburgh Mystery And Other Tales of Scottish Crime. Short Crime Stories(Published 2022). A collection of short stories based in Scotland and dating from 1885 up to the 1960's. Many had been published in magazines at the time and never seen since.
• Alexander McCall Smith - The Comfort of Saturdays. Fiction (Published 2008) Fifth in the Isobel Dalhousie series in which the Philosopher once again gets involved in an ethical problem due to a chance conversation. Her son Charlie is now 1 year old and his father Jamie has more-or-less moved in with Isobel.
• Alexander McCall Smith - The Lost Art Of Gratitude. Fiction. (Published 2009) Sixth in the series set in Edinburgh where Philosopher Isobel Dalhousie is asked to help sort someone's problem. Jamie becomes her Fiancé in this story.
• Joan F. Hickson - Carry on Coping - Diary of a Doctor 1942-1945.  (Published 2013) Joan Hickson and her husband Eric were both doctors and  lived in Chippenham and had a practice in their home. They had 3 children  - the eldest was 18 at the end of the war. This diary starts after the Bath Blitz and continued to V.E day. It's a fascinating look at how GPs worked before the NHS. Joan was also an Eye doctor and did clinics in various places including a mental hospital. They had holidays in a punt on the Thames and lived a very comfortable life although very hard working. Back then GPs were called out in the middle of the night for home births and any other problems.  
• Marion Todd - Old Bones Lie. Crime Fiction (Published 2022) This is the 6th in a series featuring DI Clare Mackay and set in and around St Andrews in Scotland. This was a good story , lots of different pieces to it.
• Joyce Dennys- And Then There Was One. Non Fiction (Published 1983). This is a small book about the authors early life as the youngest daughter of a soldier serving in India. It was Large Print so a quick read. She was born in India in 1893 but spent her time with her mother and extended family in England while her Father was abroad and then when her mother went back  to India she attended various boarding schools - all cheap and not very good as her father was always in debt. She later wrote 2 humourous books about a woman in wartime.                                                                                                                    

10 Books Read in August

SEPTEMBER

• Kim Michele Richardson - The Book Woman's Daughter. Fiction (Published 2022) Set in the ruggedness of the Kentucky mountains and forests in the early 1950's. Honey Lovett has been hiding because her hands and feet turn blue during stress caused by a genetic problem, passed to her from her mother. Being "different" in 1950's Kentucky turns people against her. But her mother had worked as a Pack-horse Librarian - taking books to the remote farmsteads and after her parents are imprisoned she manages to get a job doing the same thing.                                      This is a really good story of strong women - based on the real Packhorse Librarians, the female Frontier nurses, the first women  coalminers and fire watchers.
• Anthony Horowitz - The Sentence is Death. Crime Fiction (Published 2018) The second in a series in which the author writes himself into the story featuring ex-detective, now Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne. Richard Pryce was a high powered divorce lawyer until he is found dead in his Hampstead Heath home. When a very old friend of Richard, who he's not seen for years, falls in front of a train not far from Richard's home just a day later there seems to be a link with something that happened many years ago. 
• Sally Coultard - The Barn. Non Fiction (Published 2022). The subtitle is 'The Lives, Landscape and Lost Ways of an Old Yorkshire Farm'. Although this is mainly about the history of farming around the barn in Yorkshire it could be any old barn - except for what it's built from. It was an interesting read.
• Donna Leon - Give Unto Others. Crime Fiction (Published 2022) This is the 31st of the series about Commissario Brunetti set in Venice. Brunetti is asked by a woman he last saw many years ago to investigate the suspicious behaviour of her son-in-law - off the record.
• Delia Owens - Where the Crawdads Sing. Fiction (Published 2018) Kya Clark is the 'Marsh Girl' living alone on the North Carolina coast from a very young age after her drunken father is the last to walk away, she is a mystery to the people of the nearby small town. The book is a coming of age story of how someone copes with being alone. A murder mystery and a love story.
• Catherine Munro - The Ponies at the Edge of the World. Non Fiction (Published 2022). This is mainly a story about Shetland Ponies on Shetland. Catherine Munro goes to live there to study them for her university dissertation. This is really interesting if you want to know more about  the ponies and their breeding and history but otherwise not so fascinating.
• Helen Cox - The Body in the Library. Crime Fiction. (Published 2019) This is an interesting story about the theft of some second-hand books but slightly "cosy crime" and gets a bit silly with the amount of involvement of the main character - Kitt Hartley and her friends - with the police investigation. It is set in York and Kitt is a university librarian whose new boyfriend is DI Malcolm Halloran. This is the 2nd in the series and results of the story in the first book are often mentioned, so I should have read that first. There are now 6 books in the series.
• Noel Streatfield - When the Siren Wailed. Children's Fiction. (Published 1974) The 3 Clark children are evacuated from London before the Blitz. They are billeted with the Colonel and looked after by his housekeeper and former Batman. Mrs and Mr Elk. But when the Colonel dies unexpectedly they run away back to their Mum in London except their house has gone and no one knows where their mother is. A story with a happy ending. Streatfield wrote childrens books for many years before the war and I was puzzled that this was written so many years after the war.

8 Books Read in September

OCTOBER

• Robert Harris -  Act of Oblivion. Historical Fiction. (Published 2022) 
1660 England and General Edward Whalley and his son in law Colonel William Goffe board a ship bound for the New World. They are on the run, wanted for the murder of King Charles I.
Now 10 years after the beheading Charles II is in power and the 59 men who signed the death warrant and took part in the execution have been found guilt of treason under the Act of Oblivion. Some are already dead and others have been captured and hung. But Edward and Willam have escaped.
Richard Naylor secretary of the Regicide Committee is given the job of finding them - dead or alive
• Donna Leon - Doctored Evidence. Crime Fiction. (Published 2003) An early book from the series about Commissario Brunetti in the Venice police. A wealthy but hated Venitian woman is found murdered and her Romanian maid tries to flee the country but is knocked down by a train.... that seems to be the end of the story. But a neighbour thinks otherwise.
• Lulah Ellender - Grounding; Finding a Home in a Garden. Non Fiction (Published 2022) This is a story about how a garden and growing can help through many ups and downs of life. Just after the death of her mother  Lulah is told that she may have to move from her rented house and garden where the family have lived for many years. She decides to carry on growing and tending and visiting other famous gardens to see her through the unsettling time.
• Judi Daykin - Into Deadly Storms. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021) This is the second featuring a black female police detective who moved to Norfolk. This story is about drugs and the "County Lines" that use local people to sell drugs for London dealers.
• Christianna Brand - Death of Jezebel. Crime Fiction.(British Library Crime Classic,Published 2022. Originally Published 1949). A grand exhibition space in post-war London is being used for a pageant including real horses, knights in armour and  damsel in a cardboard tower. Some of the main characters receive death threats which seem to be linked to the death of someone 9 years earlier and then the leading lady is strangled and thrown from the tower infront of the watching audience.
• Jen Benson - The Wild Year. Non Fiction (Published 2022). Facing mounting debts and homelessness after the birth of their second child Jen Benson and her husband Sim decide to spend a year camping around the wild places of England. They are authors, writing pieces for outdoor magazines and they are both outdoor  and running enthusiasts. This book shows the highs and lows of camping through all weathers with two small children.
6 Books Read in October


NOVEMBER


Alexander McCall Smith - A Song of Comfortable Chairs. Crime Fiction. (Published 2022). The 22nd book in the Ladies No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series. In this story Mma Ramotswe is able to help Grace Makutsi's husband with a threat to his furniture store and a troubled young boy, son of an old friend of Grace.  A quick read.
Mel Starr - Suppression and Suspicion . Crime Fiction. (Published 2022) The 15th in a series of Chronicles of Sir Hugh de Singleton, Surgeon and Bailiff at Bampton Castle set in the C14. A man who is well know for beating his wife disappears. No great loss but his body is found in a shallow grave by rooting pigs at the edge of the village and Hugh needs to search for the murderer. There is also a new Vicar in town causing problems. Another speedy read.
Anthony Horowitz - A Line to Kill. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021) This is the 3rd in a series where the author puts himself in the story. This time he is at a Literary Festival on the island of Alderney. Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne is with him as they are due to give a talk and answer questions on the book Horowitz is about to publish about their first investigation together. Very good story as usual.
Martin Edwards -Editor. - Final Acts, Theatrical Mysteries. Crime Fiction. (British Library Crime Classic Published  2022). Short stories based around theatres by various authors through the C20.
Judi Daykin- A Brutal Season. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021) 3rd in the series featuring D.S. Sara Hirst, a detective recently moved to Norfolk. The body of the Cromer Carnival Queen is found after the Carnival Ball and there are several suspects because everyone seems to be keeping secrets. This is set around the pier, and the theatre and the Carnival events.
Sebastian Farr - Death on the Down Beat. Crime Fiction. (B.L.C.C. Published 2022. Originally published 1941). The conductor of a provincial orchestra is shot dead during a performance in full view of the audience and no one saw a thing. This unusual book is written completely in the form of letters between the Detective in charge and his wife back at home and the members of the orchestra writing their statements and letters to D.I. Hope.
Judi Daykin -  An Artful Murder. Crime Fiction.(Published 2022). The 4th in the series set in Norfolk and featuring D.S.Sara Hirst. The team are suddenly given a new boss at the same time as a vicious murder. The University and the Sainsburys Centre for Visual Arts both  feature in this book.
Kate Ellis - Serpent's Point. Crime Fiction.(Published 2022) This is the 26th story set in South Devon and featuring D.I.Wesley Peterson. A woman is found strangled on the coast path next to a house called Serpent's Point where a film company are making an historical bodice ripper, while in a nearby field an archaeological dig looks to have uncovered a curse and a secret. Lot's of different crimes here for the police to sort out.
D.E.Stevenson- Smouldering Fire. Fiction (Originally Published 1935 Republished 2019 by Furrowed Middlebrow/Dean St Press). This is an unusual book by this author. Between 1935 and 2019 it was only ever re-printed much abridged. This might have been because of it's odd ending where one of the characters admits to getting away with murder..........all for making a happy ending for the main characters. Its a good story apart from that which is completely different to most of the authors Scottish stories.
Mary Considine - The Island House. Non Fiction (Published 2022) As a child Mary spent wonderful summer holidays on St Georges Island, just off the Cornish Coast at Looe. The Atkins sisters who lived there in the 60s and 70s had written about it in two books 'We bought an Island" and "Tales from our Cornish Island". The Island House is a mix of memories  of Mary's early visits and tales of Mary and her husband Patricks time on the Island after it had been left to The Wildlife Trust. Life on the island is hard, especially in winter but in the summer it's glorious but hard work.
D.E. Stevenson - The English Air. Fiction. (Published 2022. Dean St Press reprint. Originally Published 1940) An interesting story set just before and at the start of the war, about a German boy coming to stay with English cousins. Instructed by his father - a Nazi supporter - to find out more about the English outlook on life and war. Franz is astonished to find how friendly everyone is and how confident are the younger members of the family.                                                  Added interest by letters at the end of the story between the author and her publishers discussing if the book ought to be published in 1940 during the war or perhaps to wait.

11books read in November

DECEMBER

• Anne Perry - The Fourth Enemy. Crime Fiction (Published 2022) This is the sixth in a series featuring young Barrister Daniel Pitt and set just before WWI. Malcolm Vayne, an influential newspaper owner is about to be arrested for fraud and Pitt's chambers with new recruit Gideon Hunter KC is to prosecute. But is there enough evidence? A good story from this excellent and prolific author.
• D.E.Stevenson - Green Money. Fiction. (A Furrowed Middlebrow reprint 2022 Originally Published 1939). George Ferrier - a young man from a good home has an encounter with wealthy Mr Green who decides to make George a Trustee for his wealthy, but innocent daughter. This book about fortune and fraud, innocence and experience and a bit of romance was out of print for many years.
• Suzette A Hill - Shot in Southwold. Crime Fiction. (Published 2017). Set in 1960 Southwold. Lady Fawcett wants to check out her daughter's boyfriend who is a minor film producer currently making a strange film in Southwold. Lady Fawcett takes along a friend Rosy Gilchrist. When one of the cast is found murdered they set out to solve the murder. This is bordering on a Cosy Crime.
• D.E.Stevenson - The Musgraves. Fiction. (A Furrowed Middlebrow Reprint 2022. Originally Published 1960) A gentle family and village story about Esther Musgrave, who has been widowed for 3 years and her three daughters. Delia who is difficult and a member of the local Dramatic Club, Meg, happily married to sensible Bernard and Rose the youngest just out of school. Events in the village are enlivened by the arrival of a mysterious widow and Esther's estranged stepson.
• Alexander McCall Smith-  The Charming Quirks of Others. Fiction. (Published 2010) Another in the series in which Philosopher  Isobel Dalhousie sorts out other peoples problems in Edinburgh.
• Agatha Christie.- Cards on the Table. Crime Fiction. (Published 1936) A Poirot crime story. A re-read for me but as I read it first time about 50 years ago I didn't remember the story!
• Donna Leon -  Death at La Fenice. Crime Fiction. (Published 1992) The first in the long running series featuring Commissario Brunetti set in Venice. A famous conductor is poisoned during a performance of an opera. Lots of people seem to have reasons to be rid of him, but weren't at the opera.
• Cecily Gayford (Editor)  Murder on a Winter's Night. Crime Fiction Short Stories.(Published 2021) Various winter crime stories dating back to Conan Doyle and up to recent.
• Ann Granger - Deadly Company. Crime Fiction (Published 2022) Another in the Mitchell and Markby crime series which the author actually finished a few years ago but was asked to write another, so has set this back in 2005 before Superintendent retired. Callum Henderson, a garden landscaper is taking a short cut home from the pub across the old graveyard when he finds a body ....... one that has died in the last hour.
• Anthony Berkeley - Jumping Jenny. Crime Fiction. (British Library Crime Classic Published 2022 Originally Published 1933) A reverse formula crime story in which the murderer is known from the beginning.  The story is set at a crime costume house party with a gallows on the roof.

9 Books Read

Total of 117 books read in 2022

BOOKS READ 2021

JANUARY

• Martin Edwards (editor) - A Surprise For Christmas. Short Crime Stories. A British Library Crime Classic (Published 2020) A range of short stories dating from the first half of the C20 all set at Christmas.
•  Jan Morris  - In My Minds Eye: A Thought Diary. Non Fiction. (Published 2018) A daily diary of her thoughts through 2017
• Julian Symons - The Progress of a Crime.Crime Fiction (Published 2020 British Library Crime Classic Originally Published 1960). Based on a true story. This story of a crime which many people saw happen but no one quite knows who did it.
• Dorothy Evelyn Smith - O The Brave Music. Fiction. From The British Library Women Writers Series (Published 2020 Originally Published 1943) Ruan Ashley looks back at her childhood before the first World War. Her young life as the daughter of a Strict Non-conformist Minister, later at her mothers ancestral home and in the background  always the moors above the town, the love of  kind Rosie and always David , six years older but the one person who understands her.
• Mike Hollow  - The Blitz Detective.  Historical Crime Fiction (Published 2015) A new to me author as his books have just been re-printed (2020) with new titles and covers. A man's body is discovered in an unmarked van in London and when DI John Jago is called to the scene he recognises the victim as Charles Villiers a local Justice of the Peace. Unfortunately this is the start of the Blitz and a German bomb destroys the van and any evidence.
• Peter Shaffer - The Woman in the Wardrobe. Crime Fiction(Published 2020 BLCC Originally Published 1951). A very strange tale of an amateur detective helping the police sort out a crime in a seaside hotel. Very Poor I thought. 
• Anne Perry - Death With a Double Edge. Historical Crime Fiction. (Published 2020) Set in the years before WWI , this is the 4th in her series featuring young lawyer Daniel Pitt the son of Thomas Pitt, the head of special branch who was the main character in a previous long series. These are always well written with a good story line.

7 Books Read in January

 

FEBRUARY

• Lissa Evans - V for Victory. Fiction (Published 2020). This picks up the story started in Crooked Heart. Set in wartime London  with Noel now 15 still with his "auntie" looking after several lodgers in a house that isn't hers .I've read 3 of her books set in wartime including "Their Finest Hour and a Half" which was made into the film "Their Finest" 
• Mary Kelly  - The Spoilt Kill. Crime Fiction ( British Library Crime Classic 2020 Originally Published 1961). Written in the first person by Hedley Nicholson a private investigator called in to find out who is leaking designs from the long established pottery of Shentalls . Then a body is found in the liquid clay vat. 
• Rennie Airth - The Decent Inn of Death. Crime Fiction (Published 2020). The 6th in a series featuring John Madden, now a retired Police Inspector. This is set in the early1950s. 

Only 3 Books Read in February

MARCH  

• Elizabeth Fair - Landscape in Sunlight. Fiction (A Furrowed Middlebrow Reprint 2017 Originally Published 1953). Life in the village of Little Mallin is dominated in summer by preparations for the August Church Fete. The vicars wife - Mrs Custance is in charge but her life is complicated by Mrs Midge and her son Lucan - who really should have gone back to London after the war, and her daughter Cassandra who she would like to see happily married.
•  Andrew Wilson - I Saw him Die. Crime Fiction. (Published 2020). The 4th in a series featuring Agatha Christie solving a crime in between writing her own books. In this one she is taking a holiday with her daughter on the Isle of Skye before her wedding to Max Mallowen - something that actually happened. Except in the book she has been asked to help the owner of a big house find out who is planning to kill him - there are many suspects. 
• Richard Osman - The Thursday Murder Club. Crime Fiction (Published 2020). If you want a serious police procedural story then don't bother with this but if you're prepared to suspend reality of how the police work then it's just a bit of fun. The four residents of Coopers Chase Retirement Village are of various ages and backgrounds and meet on Thursdays bringing different areas of expertise when looking at old unsolved crimes. When a murder happens right there in the Coopers Chase the club soon acquire a couple of tame police officers to help them solve the crime and when a second murder happens it all gets very complicated.
• Alexander McCall Smith - How to Raise an Elephant. Crime Fiction.(Published 2020). Another in this long series about the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and set in sunny Botswana. Things are very quiet at the Agency but then Mma Ramotswe has a visit from a distant relative, new neighbours move in and strange damage occurs to her little white van. This was a quick read and very light reading with no crime this time.
• Elly Griffiths - The Postscript Murders. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021) The second in a new series featuring DS Harbinder Kaur and set in Sussex. A very good story  in which the carer of a 90 year old lady doesn't believe her death was natural and involves another occupant of the old peoples flats, her friend from the coffee shop and also Harbinder in sorting out the mystery.
• Robert Harris -  V2. Fiction (Published 2020). The book is based on fact and set over 5 days in November 1944 and begins on the Dutch coast, in an area still held by the Germans. It's from this spot in the forest that they have been firing the lethal V2 rockets to destroy London. The story is mainly about Rudi Graf a young German scientist  whose interests in rockets for space travel means he is soon involved in the building, testing and firing of the V2 rockets.
  In London an officer in the WAAF - Kay Caton-Walsh - finds herself surviving one of the rocket attacks while in the home of her lover. Almost immediately she joins a small team of WAAFs sent out to Belgium to help work out from where the V2 rockets are being fired.
  The last part of the jacket blurb says "But for every action on one side there is an equal and opposite reaction on the other. As the death toll soars, the separate stories of Graf and Kay ricochet off one another until,in a final explosion of violence, their destinies are forced together"
  Both find they have been lied to by those in charge. 
• Chris Nickson - The Molten City. Crime Fiction.(Published 2020) Set in Leeds in 1908. There’s going to be a riot. Detective Superintendent Tom Harper can feel it. Herbert Asquith, the prime minster, is due to speak in the city. The suffragettes and the unemployed men will be out in the streets in protest. It’s Harper’s responsibility to keep order. Can he do it? Plus he's also received an anonymous letter claiming that a young boy called Andrew Sharp was stolen from his family fourteen years before. The file is worryingly thin. A missing child should have been headline news. Why was Andrew’s disappearance ignored?
• Cora Harrison - Death of a Prominent Citizen. Crime Fiction (Published 2020). This is the 7th in a series set in Ireland in the 1920s. The Reverend Mother has been summoned to her cousin's home - along with some other relatives - to find out what wealthy widow Charlotte Hendrick has decided to do with all her money when she dies. Next morning she is found dead.

8 Books Read in March

APRIL

• Nap Lombard - Murder's a Swine. Crime Fiction (British Library Crime Classic 2021 Originally Published 1943). This is a witty, lighthearted murder set in London in the early years of WWII before bombing started. It reminded me of Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence mysteries. Nap Lombard was a pseudonym of Pamela Hansford Johnson and her then husband Gorden Neil Stewart who both served as Air Raid Wardens and this book starts with the discovery of a body behind sandbags in an air raid shelter.
• Chris Nickson -  To The Dark. Crime Fiction. (Published 2020)All of this authors books are set in Leeds but in different periods. This is the 3rd featuring thief-taker Simon Westlow during the  1820's. The city is in the grip of winter, but the chill deepens for Simon and his young assistant, Jane, when the body of Laurence Poole, a petty local thief, emerges from the melting snow by the river at Flay Cross Mill.
  
• Julie Wassmer - Murder on the Downs. Crime Fiction. (Published 2020). The 7th in the Whitstable Pearl series. A controversial new property development is planned in Whitstable which will encroach upon the green open space of the downs. A campaign starts to stop the development but soon one person is dead. A Very Quick Read! 
• Mike Hollow - The Custom House Murder. Crime Fiction (Published 2017 and re-named and re-published in 2020) September 1940 and a month into the London Blitz this is the 3rd in a series featuring  DI John Jago.
• Robin Blake - Secret Mischief. Crime Fiction (Published 2021). This is the 7th in a series of historical crime fiction set in the early 18C in Lancashire around the Preston area. It features the coroner for the area Titus Cragg and his friend Dr. Luke Fidelis  . This story centres around a Tontine which is a way of leaving money to the "last man standing" from a group of friends.
• Anne Hart - Miss Marple; The Life and Times of Miss Jane Marple. Fictional Biography. (Published 1986). Using all the Agatha Christie short and longer stories featuring Miss Marple, Anne Hart collects together all the pieces of information to provide a 'biography' of the crime solving sleuth. A small book - quickly read.
• Barbara Whitton -  Green Hands. Fiction. (And IWM reprint . Originally published 1943) This fictional account of two Land Girls working hard on farms in 1943. The author worked as a Land Girl in 1939.
• Mike Hollow - The Stratford Murder. Crime Fiction (Published as Firing Line in 2018. Renamed and re-printed in 2020). The 4th in a series set in The London Blitz and featuring DI John Jago. 
• Elizabeth Fair - Seaview House. Fiction. ( A Furrowed Middlebrow reprint 2017. Originally Published 1955. Her books are always described as comedies of domestic life. This one is set in a seaside boarding house. A gentle easy read.
• John Coates -  Patience. Fiction. ( Persephone reprint 2012. Originally published 1953). This book was banned in Ireland when it was originally published. It's the story of a Catholic girl married to a man 15 years her senior who believes all there is to life is babies and being a good wife who feeds her husband and submits to his attention. Then she meets Phillip and suddenly she falls in love which is very complicated - involving Sin. This is a lovely happy but sad story. Maureen Lipman wrote a new preface and said she hoped  Persephone would reprint more of Coates writing but so far they haven't. 
• Jane Johnson - The Sea Gate. Fiction. (Published 2020) Saw this mentioned on someone's blog, this is one of those books that moves between past and present. In the present Rebecca is recovering from cancer when her mother dies  and on clearing the house she finds some letters to her mother from Olivia, an elderly cousin in Cornwall who needs help with house repairs to enable her to be allowed home from hospital. In the past Olivia is 16 and abandoned in Cornwall by her mother in the middle of WWII. A well written book with an interesting story of family secrets kept for far too long. 
• Donna Leon - Trace Elements. Crime Fiction (Published 2020) The most recent of this Very long series set  in Venice. Featuring Commissario Brunetti. When a doctor at the Hospice calls to say a dying patient wants to speak to the police, Brunetti finds a story that threatens the water supply of Venice. 

12 Books Read in April!  

 MAY

• Nicola Upson  - The Dead of Winter. Crime Fiction. (Published 2020)This is the 9th by this author featuring the real life author and playwright Josephine Tey. Josephine and her friend Chief Inspector Archie Penrose are invited for a Cornish Christmas on St Micheal's Mount. Penrose has been charged with looking after famous Actress Marlene Dietrich.The weather closes in and two strange and tragic deaths occur and Penrose has to make sense of it all. 
• Robin Blake- Death and the Chevalier. Crime Fiction.(Published 2019). I read the most recent by this author last month and found there was a 2019 book I'd not seen. This is the 6th in a series set in 18C Preston. At this time The Young Pretender - Charles Edward Stuart was trying to take the English Crown from the Hanoverian George II.
• E.C.R.Lorac - Two-Way Murder. Crime Fiction (British Library Crime Classic written in 1950's and Published for the first time in 2021) BLCC have published several by this author but this is the first book that had never been published before. Martin Edwards has written an introduction explaining how this story was found and guessing at why it wasn't published before the author's death. 
• Robert Harris - Munich. Fiction. (Published 2017) Set over 5 days in 1938 and mixing fiction into fact. This tells the story of the meeting in Munich between Chamberlain and Hitler. Hitler is determined to start a war and Chamberlain wants peace. Two young men - one British and one German who met at Oxford University have secrets that could be dangerous. 
• Judith Cutler - Green and Pleasant land. Crime Fiction. (Published 2014) This is an author I had read before but not lately. Newly retired ex-Chief Superintendent and her Husband Mark - also retired from the police force - are asked to assist a police force to look at an old un-resolved crime from twenty years ago. But no one seems willing to help or tell the truth. 
• Elly Griffiths -  The Night Hawks. Crime Fiction (Published 2021). Another in the Dr Ruth Galloway series set on the bleak Norfolk coast and the fictional University of North Norfolk. These stories always mix archaeology with modern day crime and are good easy reading.  
• Jan Morris - A Writer's House in Wales. Non Fiction (Published 2002). Jan Morris was such a good descriptive writer so this little book really gives a good look at the house in Wales that was her home for so many years.  
• Rebecca Schiller - Earthed. Non Fiction. (Published 2021) . Rebecca, her husband and their two children have moved to a 2 acre smallholding in Kent but the stress of having to work so hard both on and off the holding have put a strain on her already fragile mental health. This book goes through a year  as she struggles to find out why she feels this way. The eventual diagnoses of ADHD - apparently very under diagnosed in women - helps her see a way through.   

8 Books Read in May

JUNE

• Alys Clare - The Lammas Wild. Crime Fiction.(Published 2021) I raced through this as it has been a very good series of mystery, magic and crime and this is the last one. It is the year 1100 and Lassair the healer from the Fens has is returning from Spain where she has been for 7 years learning more about the mysterious skills she possesses. Before she can return to her family she has to retrieve a chest that was left for her by the Kings spy. 
• Josie George - A Still Life. Non Fiction (Published 2021) This is a memoir about her life with an unexplained painful illness that sometimes reduces her to having to rest for days on end. She writes about her small world between her home, her son's school, her friend's home and the community centre . It is beautifully written, noticing all the small things and finding joy in life as it is for her. 
• Stuart Pawson - The Judas Sheep. Crime Fiction (Published 1996) I read a couple by this author many years ago . They now seem very dated. D.I. Charlie Priest is on sick leave but gets called back to help with the murder of a wealthy tycoons chauffeur and disappearance of the mans wife - about which he doesn't seem to be at all bothered .
• Jacqueline Winspear - The Consequences of Fear. Crime Fiction(Published 2021). London 1941 and 12 year old Freddie Hacket is a message runner for a government office. On one errand he sees two men  fighting, quickly hides and realises he is watching a murder and then is terrified to discover the man he has just seen is the person to whom he has to deliver the message. The police do not believe him so he turns to Maisie Dobbs - the private investigator. This is the 14th in this series and once again Maisie uses all her skills to find the answer while still working secretly for the Special Operations Executive.
• Danie Couchman - Afloat. Non Fiction. (Published 2019). Fed up with flat sharing and the rush of central London, on one of her walks Danni finds the Regents Canal and after a while she buys a Narrow boat. Moorings are too expensive so she has to be a continuous cruiser, moving every 2 weeks along the canals through London. In between all the work involved in owning and moving a boat she is a continuity broadcaster and voice over person for many different TV channels and advertising companies. Underlying the whole story is something that happened years ago that she has struggled to come to terms with. 
• Jini Reddy - Wanderland; A Search for Magic in the Landscape.. Non Fiction. (Published 2020).One review says " A witty, gentle, original and very modern quest for the magical(not the mythical) in Britains landscape."  Jini travels all over the country finding unusual people and places.
• Griffiths Family with Alun Gibbard - Life in the Coal House. Non Fiction. (Published 2010). Just a small book with  the story of the Griffiths' family during their time as the stars of the BBC Wales Coal House series.. This book relates the story from the perspective of various members of the family. Why did they go on the show? What was it like to live in such conditions?

7 Books read in June

JULY

• Rachel Hore - A Beautiful Spy. Fiction. (Published 2021) A quick read , not as good as her previous books I thought. This is a fiction but based on a real person - Olga Grey who really did work as a spy for British Intelligence during the 1930s and brought Percy Glading to trial for treachery in 1938 for sharing secrets with the Russians
  

• Mary Paulson-Ellis - The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing.Fiction (Published 2019). France 1918 and in the final weeks of the war a group of British Soldiers shelter in an abandoned farmhouse. They pass the time by placing bets using whatever objects they possess. Then tragedy. 100 years later Heir Hunter Solomon Farthing is tipped off about the death of an old man in a care home who possesses nothing except an old pawn ticket and £50,000 sewn into his burial suit . I found this a complicated read trying to work out what was happening and who was who in the two timelines.
• Ruth Hogan - The Keeper of Lost Things. Fiction. (Published 2017). Anthony Peardew was once a well know author of short stories and has spent half his life collecting and lovingly caring for things other people have lost. As he approaches his last days he leaves his house and the collection to his assistant Laura - giving her the task of finding the owners of all the Lost Things. This is a gentle story of co-incidence and serendipity.
• Donna Leon - Falling in Love. Crime Fiction (Published 2015) This is another in the series featuring Commissario Brunetti and set in Venice. Flavia Petrelli is an opera star and used to adoring fans but when she is inundated with yellow roses - even some left inside her locked apartment she begins to feel frightened. Luckily Brunetti is an old friend and is soon on the case.
• Cal Flyn - Islands of Abandonment:Life in the Post-Human Landscape. Non Fiction (Published 2021) "This is a book about abandoned places:ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man's lands and fortress islands - and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim it's place.   From Chernobyl to a Scottish Island, Cal Flyn has visited places that for various reasons are now not inhabited by humans. In many places nature is reclaiming the land or has adapted to move in. A fascinating book both frightening and hopeful.
• Cora Harrison - Murder in an Orchard Cemetery. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021). Another in a series set in Cork in Ireland in the 1920s. The Reverend Mother is on an annual retreat although this year it has changed as the Bishop has invited the 5 people who are hoping to be elected Alderman. When a bomb goes off killing one of the men it's initially thought to be the IRA. But maybe not........
• Ronald Blythe - Stour Seasons. Non Fiction. (Published 2016). The 10th collection of his writing that first appeared in The Church Times. From his home on the Suffolk/Essex border (once the home of Artist John Nash) He writes about his garden, the countryside, the people he knows and knew - now in his nineties he knew many famous artistic people, - his travels and the Church year.

7 Books Read in July

AUGUST 

•  Hope Bourne - A Little History of Exmoor.(Published 1968). An interesting easy reading book with history of Exmoor from the earliest times, through the Domesday book right up to when Exmoor became a National Park 
• Martin Edwards-(editor) - Guilty Creatures. Short Stories (Published 2021) A British Library Crime Classic collection of stories dating from the early 1900's up to the 1960s. Not one of the best collections in my opinion.
  
• Charles Foster - The Screaming Sky.Non Fiction. (Published 2021) A study of Swifts. As they migrate across the world Charles Foster follows them. A fascinating informative book by an author obsessed with these birds.Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2021.
  
• Chris Nickson - Brass Lives. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021). Another one in the series set in Leeds and featuring Deputy Chief Constable Tom Harper This one has moved on to 1913.
• Neil Ansell - The Circling Sky. Non Fiction (Published 2021). Coincidentally this is another book long listed for The Wainwright Nature Writing Book Prize. Neil Ansell like to do things on his own - his first book Deep Country was about his 5 years in a remote Welsh cottage. This time he is walking in the New Forest. He's love of the area started as a child and in this book he re-visits places he knew as well as parts of the forest he didn't know before. He visits over 30 times in 2019 recording all he sees - although his main interest is birds.
• Hilary McKay- The Swallows Flight. Children's Fiction (Published 2021). This is a follow up to The Skylarks War. Although these are classed as children's books they are rather books about children. The children are now grown with children of their own and this story is mainly about two young girls in England and two young boys in Germany growing up in the interwar years and their time in in WWII. A lovely book.
• Sarah Maine- Women of the Dunes. Fiction (Published 2018). In the present day Libby is an Archaeologist who gets the chance to work on the coast at Ullaness in West Scotland. She has been told tales of this place from her grandmother back in Canada. Ellen is a servant girl in the 1800's getting unwanted attention from the eldest son master of the house and back in 800AD Ulla lands here fleeing from her lovers killer.
• S.J.Bennett - The Windsor Knot. Crime Fiction (Published 2020). Her Majesty the Queen Investigates crime with help from her trusted Personal Secretary Rozie. The morning after a dinner party one of the guests is found murdered in his room and the police suspect the Queens loyal servants. The mystery needs solving before  the news is leaked to the press. This is a well written lighthearted book with much details about the inside workings of Windsor Castle. This is the first in a series.

8 Books Read in August

SEPTEMBER

•  Clare Leighton.- Country Matters. Non Fiction. (Little Toller Reprint  2016 Originally Published 1937) These pieces were written after she moved to the Chilterns in the 1930s. She was already a well renowned engraver.They tell the stories of a village at the time - The local pub, the flower show, chair bodgers, the village witch etc.
• John Lewis-Stempel  - Woodston; The Biography of  an English Farm. Non Fiction. (Published 2021)  The story of a farm situated on the Herefordshire/Wales border from Neolithic to the present. Using old books and records he finds the owners through history and details of the way they farmed the land. His family have had links to the farm from times long gone and his Grandfather became Farm Manager there in the 1930's and he, himself, has farmed not far away for many years so is ideally placed to write this fascinating book.
  Amazon describes it well....................
  With his combined skills of farmer and historian, Lewis-Stempel digs deep into written records, the memories of relatives, and the landscape itself to celebrate the farmland his family have been bound to for millennia. Through Woodston's life, we feel the joyful arrival of oxen ploughing; we see pigs rootling in the medieval apple orchard; and take in the sharp, drowsy fragrance of hops on Edwardian air. He draws upon his wealth of historical knowledge and his innate sense of place to create a passionate, fascinating biography of farming in England
• Rory Clements -  A Prince and a Spy. Fiction.(Published 2021) The fifth in a series featuring Tom Wilde, an American Cambridge Don who is also now working for for the USA government during WWII. The book is based around the fact that Prince George Duke of Kent and brother to the king was killed in a plane crash over the Scottish Highlands in 1942. On behalf of President Roosevelt - a friend of the Duke, Tom Wilde is sent to find out the hows and whys of the crash. This is so well written and a really good fiction story based on some facts.
• Helen Hoover - A Place in the Forest. Non Fiction (First Published 1969) In the mid 50's during a summer holiday in the wilds of Northern Minnesota, Helen and Ade Hoover decide to buy a cabin and not return to their well paid jobs in Chicago. This book tells the story of the first years when they had no money and no wilderness skills. The locals laid bets on them not lasting the first winter. There are lovely descriptions of a simple life in the woods filled with animals through snow covered winters and beautiful summers. The book isn't all about a perfect life as they sometimes live on very little variation on food, the summers have biting black flies and a fire burns down a storage cabin. I really enjoyed this book.
• Kate Ellis - The Stone Chamber. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021). The umpteenth book in the series featuring DI Wesley Peterson and set in the West Country around Dartmouth (called Tradmouth in the book). As always these stories include history and archaeology - this time with writings "found" from the 1950's and the 14th century.
• Donna Leon - The Golden Egg. Crime Fiction (Published 2013). A Commissario Brunetti story and set in Venice as usual. When a local deaf-mute man is found dead with an empty bottle of pills it looks like suicide but when no record of the man's birth or life are found the case looks more sinister.

6 Books Read in September

OCTOBER 

• Ann Granger - The Truth Seekers Wife. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021) This is the 8th in a series set in Victorian times featuring Inspector Ben Ross and his wife Lizzie.
•  Matt Gaw - Under The Stars; A Journey into Light. Non Fiction. (Published 2020). The author lives in Bury St Edmunds and visits various parts of the country at night to find the darkest places for star-gazing.He also visits London at night to see how the light affects wildlife. 
• Anne Perry - A Darker Reality. Crime Fiction (Published 2021). This is the 3rd in a series featuring Elena Standish, a photographer now working for MI6, between the wars. A really well written story - as are all her books. 
• Margaret Kennedy - Where Stands A Winged Sentry. Non Fiction (Originally Published only in the USA in 1941. This edition published with Notes and a Forward in 2021 by Heldheld Press) Margaret Kennedy was already a well known novelist before she wrote this during the 6 months in 1940 between the evacuation of Dunkirk and the Start of the Blitz. It's a journal of her thoughts and experiences as she moves her children from Surrey to Cornwall. At the time things were very tense as an invasion was expected at any time so she writes about what the government and the people are saying . Because she writes so well and right in the moment, the fear and uncertainty really come through. A very good read.
• Jane Christmas- Open House; A life in Thirty-two Moves. Non Fiction. (Published 2020) There are good reasons for her latest house move, but after viewing sixty homes, Jane and her husband succumb to the emotional fatigue of an overheated English housing market and buy a wreck in the town of Bristol that is overpriced, will require more money to renovate than they have and that neither of them particularly like.
• Martin Edwards (Editor) - Murder By The Book. Crime Fiction Short Stories. (British Library Crime Classic Published 2021) Another collection of crime stories dating from the 1930's to 1960's. This time the stories all feature books, book sellers or collectors.(Published 2021).
• Lin Anderson- The Killing Tide. Crime Fiction (Published 2021) This is the latest in a long series featuring Forensic Scientist Rhona MacLeod who works in Glasgow. I'm not sure about reading earlier stories. 
• Leo Walmsley - Love in the Sun. Fiction. (First published 1939. Reprinted 2011) Based on his life although not a biography. In the early 1930's during the depression, a young couple run away from Yorkshire to Cornwall. He wants to write but they have no money. They manage to rent an old army hut and do it up bit by bit. This is the story of their first years there. It's fascinating to know it was based on real life.
  

8 Books Read in October

NOVEMBER

• Ann Cleeves - The Heron's Cry. Crime Fiction (Published 2021) The second in the new Mathew Venn series set on the North Devon coast. An excellent read and well written as always. Even better as I'd just watched the first book "The Long Call" on TV so was up to date with all the people mentioned.
• Helen Hoover - The Long-Shadowed Forest. Non Fiction. (Published 1963). This is her first book written before A Place in the Forest which I read in September. This book is a close look at all the flora and fauna around their home in the North Minnesota forest. The number of different birds that visit their cabin for the food they put out is amazing.
• John Lewis-Stempel - The Wood: The Life and Times of Cockshutt Wood.
  For four years John Lewis-Stempel managed Cockshutt wood,three and half acres of mixed woodland in south west Herefordshire. John coppiced the trees and raised cows and pigs who roamed free there. This is the diary of the last year, by which time he had come to know it from the bottom of its beech roots to the tip of its oaks, and to know all the animals that lived there - the fox, the pheasants, the wood mice, the tawny owl - and where the best bluebells grew. 
  
• Alexander McCall Smith -  The Joy and Light Bus Company. Crime Fiction (Published 2021)The most recent in the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency series set in sunny Botswana, as usual Precious Ramotswe is able to sort out several problems including the worry of her husbands possible purchase of a bus company.
• Candace Robb - The Riverwoman's Dragon. Historical Crime Fiction (Published 2021). This is the 13th in the series set in 14C York and featuring Owen Archer and his wife Lucie who is an apothecary. This story centres on Magda the Wise Woman.
• Mike Hollow - The Canning Town Murder.(Published 2020) This is the second in a series of 5 so far, set in WWII with DI John Jago - The Blitz Detective. I've read 3 others before the library got this one in stock and the 5th is on order.
• Anne Perry - A Christmas Resolution. Historical Crime Fiction Novella. (Published 2020) Another of her Christmas novellas that feature people from her other historical crime series. The main characters in this are Celia Hooper and her husband  John Hooper who is a detective in the Thames River Police. It seemed to come to a very sudden and hurried conclusion.
• E.C.R. Lorac - These Names Make Clues. Crime Fiction (British Library Crime Classic 2021. Originally Published 1937) This author is one of the best that BLCC have re-published. This story is a 'country house' murder and luckily Chief Inspector MacDonald is among those invited. There are fake names, clues and codes and alibis before the murderer is found. 
• Katherine May - Wintering. Non Fiction. (Published 2020) This is subtitled "The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times". This is a book using her own experiences of how we should accept the darker times of our lives.
  

8 Books read in November

DECEMBER

• Donna Leon - Transient Desires. Crime Fiction . (Published 2021). This is the 30th book in the series set in Venice and featuring Commissario Brunetti, his family and the police. This time a serious subject of human trafficking.
• Julie Wassmer - Strictly Murder. Crime Fiction (Published 2021) The 8th in the series featuring Pearl Nolan - Restaurant owner and private investigator and set in Whitstable. This story revolves around the new owners of a dancing school. It tends to turn into a romance in places. Apparently this series is being made for TV - probably not on a terrestrial channel.
  
• Anne Perry - Three Debts Paid. Crime Fiction(Published 2021) This is the 5th in the most recent series by this good and  prolific author and is set in Edwardian London in the years before WWI . Daniel Pitt is asked to defend in court a lecturer from his old university but in the meantime his friend Inspector Ian Frobisher is searching for a killer nicknamed 'The Rainy Day Slasher'.
• Louise Dickinson Rich - We Took To The Woods. Non Fiction.(Published 1942).The story of an English teacher who moved to the remote woods of Maine with her husband. For most of the year they are isolated between two lakes and the only way out is over the ice in winter or by forest tracks. In summer they have company round about with loggers and fishermen. This is a good story answering all the questions everyone always asks her about their life.
  
• Jim Eldridge - Murder at the Ritz. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021). Set at the beginning of the Blitz in London. Chief Inspector Corburg is called in to investigate  a murder in The Ritz Hotel in the suite of an exiled king. New to me author. Good story.
• Katya Balen - October, October. Childrens Fiction. (Published 2021). 10 year old October lives with her father on the edge of a wood. She has lived with him alone since her mother left them when she was 4. She doesn't go to school but learns everything about the woods and nature. Then on her 11th birthday everything changes. I came across this book simply because the cover is illustrated by print maker Angela Harding and I was looking at books by her and this sounded good. It's a lovely story.
• Madeline Martin - The Last Bookshop in London. Fiction (Published 2021). This starts in the early days of WWII and is set in London through the war. It is written by an American and uses the American words for things rather than English. The story is good but the writing is stilted and annoying. 
• Anne Perry - A Christmas Legacy. Crime Fiction Novella (Published 2021). A short novella featuring someone from her previous books. This story has Gracie (the first maid that Charlotte Pitt had in the William Pitt series) moving into a house where a maid has become very frightened about what is happening there.
• Marion Todd - See Them Run. Crime Fiction. (Published 2019) A new to me author and a good story set in St. Andrews and the Scottish countryside. Featuring DI Clare MacKay. Someone is running over men and leaving a number by them, with seemingly no connection between the men, the police are racing to track down the killer before another man is killed.
• Elly Griffiths - The Midnight Hour. Crime Fiction.(Published 2021) Brighton, 1965. When theatrical impresario Bert Billington is found dead in his retirement home, no one suspects foul play. But when the postmortem reveals that he was poisoned, suspicion falls on his wife, eccentric ex-Music Hall star Verity Malone. Frustrated by the police response to Bert's death and determined to prove her innocence, Verity calls in private detective duo Emma Holmes and Sam Collins. This is their first real case. As always a good story. This is the 6th in her Brighton Mysteries series but feature Emma and Sam as well as the police.

10 Books read in December 

Total 104  =

24 Fiction (1 Short Stories)

45 Crime Fiction Recently Written

20 Older Crime Fiction Written Many Years Ago

12 Non Fiction

3 Childrens Books