I've Been Reading

 The July list copied from my Books Read 2026 Page...............

• Dorothy L Sayers - The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Crime Fiction (Published 1928) Lord Peter Wimsey finds the body of ancient General Fentiman. How did the General die, who is Mr X why  is he difficult to find and which of the General's heirs, also members of the Bellona Club, is lying.
• Heather Peck - Death on the Norwich Express. Crime Fiction Novella. (Published 2024) A DCI Greg Geldard story. The sudden death of the passenger in the seat opposite seriously disrupts DS Chris Matthew's journey home.
• Carlos Whittaker- Reconnected. Non Fiction (Published 2024) In the summer of 2022, podcaster and author Carlos Whittaker spent 7 weeks entirely screen free splitting his time between a monastery, an Amish Farm, and home with his family. A mix of experiment with guidance ideas.
• Heather Peck - Secret Places. Crime Fiction. (Published 2021) This is the first in the DCI Greg Geldard Series and is set in Yorkshire and then in Norfolk. A chance visit by archaeologists to her smallholding uncovers an old secret bunker and a skeleton. Tristan Smith , goat farmer, cheese maker and weaver knows it is nothing to do with her but tracking down the previous owners takes Greg down to the Norfolk broads.
• Sara Woods - Bloody Instructions. Crime Fiction. (Published 1962) The first in a long series of books about barrister-sleuth Antony Maitland and his Uncle Sir Nicholas Harding. Who stabbed mild mannered solicitor James Winter and why do two accounts of people seen entering the building seem to differ?
• Rhys Bowen - The Rose Arbor. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) It is 1968 and a village, abandoned since the war, seems to hold a memory for Liz Houghton, a journalist who accompanies her police friend Marissa to Dorset in the hopes of finding a missing girl or details of other children missing since wartime evacuations.
• D.E.Stevenson - Kate Hardy. Fiction. (Published 1947) The arrival of writer Kate Hardy to the Dower House in Old Quinings has the whole village talking. Kate bought the house without visiting and is escaping from her selfish sister and niece. She is welcomed by many including Mrs Stack who helps with the cleaning. When Mrs Stack's son Walter returns from the war he finds readjustment to village life very difficult but finds a friend in Kate.
• Jessica Mann - Funeral Sites. Crime Fiction (Published 1981).Phoebe Britton dies in an accident in the Swiss Alps but that doesn't stop her husband, Aiden, on his progress to being Prime Minister. After her funeral her sister Rosamund realises just how far her brother-in-law will go to secure his ambition. Rosamund has to go on the run as she has information about something that happened when Aiden was at university twenty years earlier.

Library Van Cancelled

 I was hoping to pick up at least 7 books from the mobile library today but Rachel rang yesterday to say the van was off the road and wouldn't be round. She's put my reservations ready to go on the delivery van to Stowmarket Library where I'll pick them up next week.

I'd already run out of library books so had been reading from my shelves anyway - and had already finished this very old (1947) small book that had been on my shelves a while - but where from and why?

I answered the first question by looking at my accounts on Amazon and Abebooks and found I'd bought it from the latter last August. But Why? and How did I know or find out about it? Because it isn't even listed in Josephine Bell's list of publications on Fantastic Fiction.

Josephine Bell was a well known author of crime fiction from the 1930's to the 1970s and BLCC reprinted one of her books in 2020 but that doesn't explain how I knew about this book in 2025... it isn't even one of her crime fiction.

After a bit of googling I came across a mention of it on Scott's Furrowed Middlebrow blog  (much missed since he moved to Portugal) about his favourite books of 2024

This is part of what he said then..............

This is the first of Bell's non-mysteries I've read and I enjoyed it tremendously. Tracing the fictional mid-sized town of Haverington through the war, beginning to end, it offers a fascinating glimpse, á la Winifred Holtby's South Riding, of the practical logistics of wartime—accommodation of refugees, rationing, bombs, and all. Its flaw for me, probably introduced by a publisher who felt the logistics themselves wouldn't sell books, is a melodramatic romance element that's rather drab, but it's nevertheless a fascinating read.

That must be where I found out about it.

I enjoyed it too as the details about village life through the war and the machinations of the women in the WRVS is interesting. The in-fighting and back biting reminded me of the much more well known book 'Nella Last's War, The Diaries of Housewife 49'.

Now to pick another from my shelves to read....................

Thank you everyone for comments yesterday on the Art Exhibition. There were over 400 pieces on show so I only photographed a few.

Another hot one today - hope you are all managing to stay cool enough. I had the front door propped open for a through draught yesterday and couldn't believe the amount of traffic going by - I think everyone who would normally walk to school, shop, doctors etc was driving with air-con on to keep cool! Or maybe I don't notice it when doors and windows are shut.

Under the Weather...............

....................is, when you think about, a very strange saying . Most weather comes from above so we are always under it.

Anyway, I've been under it all week. Just feeling bleurgh...........not seasick (or any sort of sick!) like the original meaning................

The expression has maritime roots. In 19th-century sailing terminology, sailors or passengers who felt seasick or ill during rough, stormy conditions would go below deck to hide from the elements. By doing this, they were literally going "under" to escape the bad weather, which eventually transformed into the idiom we use today.

I even missed Keep Moving Group, which is complicated because at the moment I take the attendance chart, take the money and pass it to the Village Hall treasurer, buy/take the milk for coffees, find the meditation thing on the phone and lead half the exercises. I seem to be the only person who doesn't have holidays or Tuesday doctor/hospital appointments and goes regularly to the Group, so  have been lumbered with all the jobs. I took everything to the hall, apologised, and left it to everyone else to sort out and went home again!

Last weekend I mentioned hoping  the weather would be fine for the men's tennis at Queens club so it was on TV to watch  and it was fine and due to feeling grotty I was able to spend all afternoons watching it - which wasn't really as planned........................ I should be careful what I hope for!

Plenty of reading has been done too. I've now read all of the Inspector Ramsey books that Ann Cleeves wrote in the 90's before she wrote the Vera and Shetland series and read this...........

In this book the author does five walks around different areas of Suffolk and writes about the authors who've also walked/written/lived in those areas, from the C17 right up to date................

"...nor had I made allowance for the endless switchbacks and the roads reduced to single file and the mess being made of this part of Suffolk by the building of the Sizewell C nuclear power station.............the thousands of trees that have been felled............how to restore the generations of creatures that would have lived in them " Did they at least allow the archaeologists to have a look round?" I asked our taxi driver as we went past more skinned earth, more red and white tape curving in the breeze, and he said yes, they did, and very glad he was of it, the archaeologists being the only ones who drank, who needed lifts to and from the local pubs. Those building Sizewell C, he said put not a penny into the local economy:not in the shops, the pubs, or the restaurants. They sit in their block-booked holiday cottages all week then disappeared at the weekends..................."

 (it's the archaeologists who've kept YD in work and partly Son too of course! Local people have had a love/hate relationship with the Sizewell Power Stations since the 1960's. The only new shop to open in Leiston is one selling Hi Viz and work gear - while many others have closed.)

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Anyway, I'm fine again now but still doing nothing because the much, much warmer weather that had been predicted for a week arrived yesterday. Positively HOT. I got the grass cut early and then stayed inside with the doors and windows wide and curtains closed. I watched young Arthur Fery get knocked out of the tennis. If I go out over the weekend it will be early - to an Art Exhibition in Debenham Church  and car boot sales too of course. The  semis and finals of the tennis to watch and I'm looking forward to seeing some of the Wimbledon qualifying and the Eastbourne tournament on BBC red button next week .................by choice rather than necessity.

British Library Crime Classics

 One of BLCC recent reprints was a new author for them - Leo Bruce.

It's always interesting to read Martin Edwards introductions to these books and their authors. Leo Bruce was the pen-name of Rupert Croft-Cooke (1903 - 1979) who also wrote poetry, plays, novels and non-fiction including 27 volumes of memoirs. Apparently in his obituary in The Times there is no mention at all of his crime fiction which is odd as there 23 titles featuring his school teacher/detective/criminologist Carolus Deene and before that he'd had a successful series featuring Sergeant Beef.

Edwards says that Croft's  Deene series (1955-1974) seem to have never been published in paperback and some  had been out of print for decades. Maybe because they were written in Golden Age style at a time when other authors were writing grittier and more psychological stories.

In Jack on the Gallows Tree (originally published in 1960) Carolus Deene is recovering from a bout of jaundice and is sent off to a health spa type hotel at Buddington. No sooner has he arrived and settled in and there are two murders only linked by a lily being left on the bodies. Deene has been told by the headmaster of his school Not to get involved with any murders again as it will give the school a bad name. But as usual Carolus Deene does get involved and manages to work out the who and the why before the police.

I wonder if BLCC will publish more of this authors books - hopefully they will as it was a good read.

Back Soon

Three Interesting Books

 A Christmas present book that I read while waiting for the library van day last week.  I've read a couple of his other books and 'Deep Country' about his 5 years in a remote Welsh cottage is a favourite. I've reserved it to re-read.

Neil has been gradually losing his hearing for many years and this  book is about his attempt to listen to all the birds in this country that he's never heard, before his hearing goes completely. It's fascinating how he has to plan to be in the right place at the right time and his travels to many remote places.

This is a podcast where Neil talks about the book.  

It was sad to hear that he had Lyme Disease which triggered Rheumatoid Arthritus and was unwell when this recording was made.

Completely different was this little book by Rumer Godden published in 1969. 

It's difficult to explain the story but  the definition of Fugue is about music 'in different voices' and  the book is written in many different voices through the time that the family lived in a London house. 

 Grizel Dane, a servicewoman in the US army arrives during the war to stay with her elderly Great Uncle, Sir Rollo Dane, but that doesn't happen until the last part of the book. Through Rollo's memories and voices of the others who lived there we hear the history of the Dane family and Lark Ingoldsby. Lark was adopted after being orphaned in a train crash and finds herself in the middle of sibling rivalry, loved by Rollo and his older brother Pelham but hated by sister Selina.

It only a small book and was read in an evening, once I'd got used to the way it is written in different voices and times, often overlapping and going backwards and forwards.

Maybe the earliest written book I've read for a while is this - originally published in 1898. Another very small book quickly read.

A fictionalised  account of her garden and family and how making the garden is her sanctuary from the Man of Wrath (husband), children, servants and unwanted house guests. She is a witty writer and the book doesn't seem dated at all.

Back Tomorrow

Trying, Not Finishing and Persevering

 Seems I give up easily!

I really tried with the one on the left 'The Crooked Cross' by Sally Carson until it got too depressing. It's a 2025 Persephone publication originally published in 1934 by an English author who spent a lot of time in Germany pre war. The story is an account of the fictional Kluger family, including daughter Lexa, who at Christmas 1932 is engaged to be married to a young doctor with a Jewish name - Moritz Weissman and how their lives are changed  during the rise of the Nazis.

Persephone have now published the follow up to this story 'The Prisoner'. I won't be reading it.

Then I tried the middle book, which is  2013 crime fiction by a American author but set in the UK despite misgivings, as sometimes US authors have not bothered to use our English words for various things that have different names across the pond. This story is the 13th in a long series featuring American Dorothy Martin who lives in the UK with her retired British Chief Constable Alan. I was getting on OK with it and then the author starts to mention several times that Dorothy hasn't had time to floss her teeth! For goodness sake - talk about padding the word count!

Having abandoned two books quarter of the way in, I hoped to actually finish the book on the right 'The Weather Watcher ' by Claire Anders. It turned out to be a lighter than I thought read, a coming of age story about a young Scottish girl, who, when her mother decides she ought to marry the son of a family friend just before the War starts, decides instead to join the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and train as a Meteorology  Assistant.  I might have given up as it's leaning towards being a romance but persevered as the details about a 'Weather Watcher' were interesting and hopefully researched and accurate. There was information of something I'd never heard of despite it happening in Felixstowe - Operation Outward.  I've read so many books about  WWII but never heard of this.

Picture from Wikipedia of balloons being released on the east coast for Operation Outward

I've still got 6 other library books to try before the library van is round again at the end of the month and only one of those I definitely know to be readable, so there may well be another post about trying and failing to finish!

Back Tomorrow

The End of the Week

 Eldest Daughter and the two Grandsons in Surrey were due on Tuesday for a three night stay. We were planning to get all the cousins together for a couple of trips out, to the seaside and RSPB Minsmere maybe.

She rang me Easter Sunday to say both boys had picked up tummy bugs. Oh Dear. The nearly 10 year old recovered in a day but the 4 year old wasn't so lucky. No chance of them travelling up on Tuesday after all.

Luckily YGS recovered and so they were able to come on Wednesday. We soon got the two Surrey boys  meeting up with their three Suffolk cousins in my bungalow = chaos.

 

Just one trip out, meeting up at Aldeburgh for a picnic, sailing boats on the boating pond, loading the beach stones into toy dumper trucks for the two youngest while the three eldest zoomed up and down a slope on two - much too small balance bikes - belonging to the two youngest - weird, but it kept them amused for ages.

Ice creams for all!  By chance they are sitting here in age order, Eldest Granddaughter is still taller than Eldest Grandson, but he's catching up.

After much too short a time they were off back to Surrey.

Now it will be a quiet weekend, car boot sales of course - weather permitting. Plus I must get the electric propagator onto the windowsill in the spare room and get some seeds started. 

And reading..............

Several people said they'd enjoyed reading 'The Eights' by Joanna Miller when it was in my library book photo and I did too. I'd  found details of it on a blog and a vlog and it had good reports.

It is the first book by this author and on a blog someone commented they hoped there was a sequel and it certainly sets itself up for more of the story.

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1,000 year history, the world's most famous university has admitted female students.

This is the story of four women, all very different, who find themselves in adjoining rooms in their first weeks at university. It follows them through their first year, their secrets, fears and hopes for the future - just two years after the war which still casts a long shadow. 

 

Have a good weekend folks, I'll be back Monday 

 

Towards the End of March

Weird weather week here in Mid Suffolk and Wednesday had a really cold wind. Thursday morning a very thin layer of snow on the car roof. March Many Weathers for sure. 

It's good to have all the new ladies at Keep Moving Group but they all know each other so tend to only talk amongst themselves - difficult to get them to help with things too and to get them to stop talking!! Oh well, it's my fault for putting the group details on the local villages facebook pages! but previously it's just been one or two new people at a time. 11 is a bit overwhelming. The lady who has been leading our exercises for  a year now has been poorly so me and another lady have been sharing the leading. We have all the exercises written down and have been doing them for 3 years now so it's just a case of standing at the front and  working through them.

Being short of blog ideas I've already posted about virtually everything done in the kitchen this week except for making a big pan of pizza topping. It was two tins of plum tomatoes without the juice, onion chopped small and almost all of a red pepper, I saved a piece for my salad. Seasoned the mix with  oregano and divided into 5 portions.

I walked up the road to post a letter and saw this bundle of rhubarb for sale out the front of a house, luckily I had £1 in my pocket. I wiped them all and chopped and popped in the freezer. I shall add to some apple I have in the freezer and make a big crumble for when family are here after Easter.

This book below was a good read, a small girl growing up during the war years on the edge of London. 

In 1939, Valerie Braunston and her family hoped the war would pass them by in the quiet neighbourhood of Bush Hill Park, Enfield. But as the Blitz began, her carefree childhood became a daily fight for survival. Valerie endured air raids, rationing and a fractured education while London was battered for eight relentless months. By 1944, V-1 and V-2 rockets forced her evacuation to a pig farm in Lincolnshire, but she quickly plotted her return to London to pursue her dream of becoming an actress.

Years later, after Valerie moved into care at 88, her son found a manuscript while clearing out her house. Discovered beside a jammed-up typewriter, it captured her memories of that time, infused with her humour and resilience.

I've also finished the book by James Rebanks - The Place of Tides.

One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich, but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on.

Back at home, Rebanks couldn’t stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly – and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island.

This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter, to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for gathering, like feathered gold.

Another excellent book and the last of my library books until next week- reading from my shelves for the next few days then.

 Clocks Forward this weekend, have to remember how to do the car clock again - it's easy - once I remember. Have a good weekend - I'll be back Monday.

How The Countryside Has Changed

This is such a well written book, I really enjoyed it once I got into it.

The story of Miss White, a woman who lived in the author's village 80 years ago, a pioneer who realised her ambition to become a farmer during the Second World War, and how she worked to become accepted within this community. Nicola Chester, too, dreamed of becoming a farmer but working with horses was the only path open to her. Was it easier for women to become farmers in the 1940s than it is now? Moving between Nicola's own attempts to work outdoors and Miss White's desire to farm a generation earlier, Nicola explores the parallels between their lives - and the differences. Miss White buys a derelict farm and begins to renovate and modernize it. As ghost (barn) owls flit between these two worlds, Nicola draws connections with farming and rural life in both times, from the role of women in rural communities in the modern day to Miss White's experience in the 1940s.

The difference between the wildlife on the farmland then and now is quite frightening. Nicola is fighting to help preserve the few birds that remain, fighting against Big Business - which is what most farms are now. Living as a tenant in a farm cottage neighbouring the farm where Miss White farmed during the war Nicola  finds all the information Miss White left in the record office and finds the stone that marks her burial in the churchyard.

Spring Arrives in Books

 In January I wrote a post about Winter Books  and   I've got library books reserved about winter that I'll not get to read until spring but this was a book about Spring that I read last week - while we are still surviving winter.

Simon Barnes - Spring is the Only Season: How it Works, What it Does and Why it Matters.

This book covers every aspect of spring - From birds and butterflies to agriculture and literature , mythology, religion and art.

The library website says..........

Spring is the time of renewal and rebirth, a celebration of the resilience of life. As the year turns, animals and plants that have struggled to survive the winter find new hope and create the next generation. The season has inspired some of humanity's greatest art and many of its most significant religious festivals. Simon Barnes provides a fresh and compelling look at this period of the year. He explains the science of the seasons, which are caused by the planet's 23.5 degree tilt; he also highlights the music, the paintings and the poetry that have tried to capture it.

This took several days to read, there was so much of interest in it  but it comes with a warning...........

However, while the Earth will continue to spin on its tilting axis, he reveals how our impact on the planet is beginning to destroy the natural course of the seasons, and that elements of the beloved spring - from migrating birds to emerging butterflies - are endangered by climate change. But it's not too late. Not yet. We can still make a difference and so continue to enjoy the pleasures of spring. 

One tiny patch of celandines for spring down the road from home

The  other spring book here that I needed to read before spring arrives as it's due back at the library is 'Spring - The Story of a Season' by Michael Morpurgo. (Second of four books commissioned from authors who usually write fiction, the post about the Winter book is HERE )

This book is a look at the arrival of Spring on the farm and land around where Michael and his wife Clare have lived for many years in a remote area between Dartmoor and Exmoor. Here they are now retired to a small cottage but live next to the farms that are part of the charity started by them 'Farms for City Children'. 

Review from Waterstones website

As the weeks pass, we accompany Michael as he watches the lambing on the farm, walks through the bluebell woods, and feeds the birds in his garden in his wellies and dressing gown. He describes dramatic encounters with sparrowhawks, hares and otters, while sharing other magical discoveries, new poems and reminiscences about childhood and springs gone by.

This is an uplifting burst of springtime joy from one of the nation's best loved authors.

Another Spring book 'The Nature of Spring' by Jim Crumley will go back to the library unread - for the second time. It's just too wordy!

A couple of the Winter themed books I have reserved still have long waiting lists, so I might cancel them and make a note to re-reserve next Autumn ready for next Winter. 

A Small Book

  Winter, The Story of a Season by Val McDermid is a small book but interesting. This is a book about the joys of winter rather than just surviving it. She is the same age as me and grew up in Scotland but some of her memories of things like childhood Christmas Decorations, the winter of 1963 and  November 5th firework nights are similar to mine.

From the jacket blurb...........

"In Winter she takes us on an adventure through the season, from the icy streets of Edinburgh to the windblown Fife coast, from Bonfire night and Christmas to Burns Night and Up Helly Aa. She remembers winter from childhood, the thrill of whizzing over a frozen lake on skates, carving a 'neep' (swede) for Halloween and being taken to see her first real Christmas tree in the town centre, lights twinkling bravely in the dark night".

She writes about how she sits down to write her books each January, a winter train journey across Russia, birdwatching, Christmas lights, Hogmanay celebrations past and present and soup!

 

I came across a book blog that gives a good write-up on Winter HERE . I'd love to write book reviews like this but mine are much shorter as I'm always in a hurry to get on with reading the next book!

Winter is one of 4 books about the seasons commissioned from well known fiction authors. Spring is by Michael Morpurgo, Summer and Autumn are not yet published but will be by Bernadine Evangelista and Kate Mosse.

Back Tomorrow

Cinema Visit? Weird Aircraft and a Good Book

There is much promoting at the moment of a film called Hamnet due out tomorrow. One of my very few trips to cinema in the last 10 years was to see the film  about Shakespeare.........All is True. This was about Shakespeare's last years when he returned from London to live with his family and him finding out the 'truth' about Hamnet's death. All is True was full of famous actors but didn't have much publicity. I'm thinking about going to see Hamnet, if I can be bothered. Could have sworn that I'd read the book by Maggie O' Farrell on which the film is based but no mention of it in my Book of Books Read, so obviously not.

A loud noise and rumbling over the bungalow and I looked out to see one of these . On the Globe  Watch Airplanes Live website it told me what it was an MV-22 belonging to USA Military, a cross between helicopter and VTOL plane. The odd thing was it seemed to start from a big Country house in Gloucestershire and land by the river on the Suffolk coast. Who knows what's going on.

I'm not at all sure about doing the jigsaw I mentioned yesterday, started sorting the edges and it didn't go well. So went back to reading The Red Shore by William Shaw and finished it - a really good story by a new-to-me author. (Sure, Shaw and Shore - no wonder people struggle to learn English!!)

He's written several others previously so might try one of those. The Red Shore is the first of a new series set in Teignmouth area of Devon - a lovely part of the country and features Detective Sergeant  Eden Driscoll, a Met. detective who suddenly finds his estranged sister, Apple, is missing and he has a young nephew he knew nothing about. Upon arrival at his sisters home in Teignmouth he begins to suspect that his sister wasn't just washed overboard  from her yacht - she would never have gone to sea at night or locked the boy - Finn- in a cabin. When he starts to investigate it brings back memories of his and Apple's own strange childhood and puts him and Finn in real danger. I've made a note to look for the next book in June. 

 I did manage a letter to one penfriend and walked up to the post box - the half inch of snow has gone but it was still very cold.

The Best Books of 2025

 I read a total of  108  books in 2025. Almost all were library books - what would I do without them!

 As usual mostly crime fiction written in the last 60 years  but also 14 older crime fiction written before that, 17 ordinary fiction and 12 non-fiction plus just 2 children's books.

Some of my favourites were .............

Kristin Hannah - The Nightingale. This is such a well written story about what it was like to be a woman in France during WWII.  Vianne and Isabelle Mauriac are two sisters, separated by years and experiences, each on their own path to survival through their occupied Nation......    The film of this book  will be released in this country in February....Hope it shows locally.

Evie Woods - The Story Collector. Fiction (Published 2024) In 1911 Ireland, Anna, a young farm girl, volunteers to help an intriguing American visitor translate the old stories of the fairy world for his university studies. In 2011 Sarah Harper boards a plane for the west coast of Ireland, she was supposed to be heading to her parents home in Boston - running away from sadness and a failed marriage.

Rory Clements - A Cold Wind From Moscow. Crime Fiction ( Published 2025) MI5 has a mole, who is it. The boss Freya Bentall can't trust anyone except Tom Wilde to find out. He was hoping to return to his quiet life as a Professor of History in Cambridge but when a man is murdered in his university rooms he is soon draw back to help find the person spreading the secrets of Atomic Bomb making to Russia. 8th in this series. 

PLUS Evil in High Places. Crime Fiction. (Published 2025). Second book about Chief of Police Seb Wolff  in pre-war Munich. This one is set during the winter Olympics of 1936. When a famous actress disappears Wolff is ordered to find her but she happens to be the mistress of Goebbels, Hitler's right-hand man. In a country full of corruption Wolff has to tread the line between justice and jeopardy, High Society and dark corners.

Robert Peston - The Whistle Blower. Crime Fiction/Thriller  (Published 2021) It is 1997 and a desperate government clings to power in the run-up to the General Election. The opposition are just as desperate to win and political journalist Gil Peck watches. He is a respected commentator on politics and thinks he knows all the rules. But when his estranged older sister dies in a hit in run  he begins to believe it was no accident because Clare knew some of the more sensitive secrets in government and one of them might have got her killed.

Tracy Chevalier- The Glass Maker. Fiction (Published 2024) Venice 1486, Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here - like the glass the islands maestros spend their lives learning to handle. Women are not meant to work with glass, but Orsola Rosso flouts convention to save her family from ruin. She works in secret, knowing her creations must be perfect to be accepted by men. But perfection may take a lifetime. Skimming like a stone over water through the centuries, we follow Orsola as she hones her craft through war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss. Very unusual book - difficult to explain as the people stay the same through 600 years - but it works beautifully.

Elif Shafak - There are Rivers in the Sky. Fiction (Published 2024) A magical story that brings together different times in history all linked by water. In ancient Ninevah hidden in the sand are fragments of a long lost poem. In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born on the mud banks of the Thames. In Turkey in 2014 Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the Tigris and her grandmother travel through war torn lands to reach the sacred valley of their people. In London in 2018,  Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames after the break up of her marriage.

Nevil Shute - The Far Country. Fiction. (Published 1952)  Out in Australia the Dorman family have had an excellent pay check for the years wool production. Jane Dorman had moved away from England several years previously when she met her Australian husband-to-be after the war. Jane writes regularly to her Aunt, the only person who had supported her move. When she realises her Aunt is very poor she sends money.   The money arrives too late to help, but Aunt Ethel gives the money to her granddaughter Jennifer . When Jennifer is left the money specifically to visit Australia she has the chance to leave drab post-war London. The comparisons between dull England and bright new Australia are so interesting to read about.

Susie Dent - Guilty by Definition. Crime Fiction (Published 2024) This is such a clever and well written story set in the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary offices in Oxford, ( No doubt based on her work at the Oxford English Dictionary).In this story, her first novel, a cryptic anonymous coded letter arrives at the offices and seems to have a connection to Dictionary compiler Martha's sister Charlie who disappeared from Oxford 10 years earlier. Martha has just returned to Oxford after working in Berlin. More letters and postcards arrive sent to anyone who knew Charlie and even some who didn't. The team use their knowledge of the history of words to decipher the letters to find out exactly what happened.The book mentions all sorts of unusual and unknown words and their origins and makes for a really good story.

Christina Koning. - Murder at Bletchley Park. Crime Fiction (Published 2023). This is the 8th in a series about a man blinded in the Great War who goes on to help his police friend solve mysteries. He uses the other senses and a remarkable memory to spot what sighted  people don't notice.

PLUS all the other books in this series.

Evelyn Shillington - Eve's war. Non Fiction. (Published 2017) In 1935 Evelyn Shillington started a diary which she continued for the next 12 years. Eve was an army wife and with no children was able to accompany her husband Rex where ever he was posted. He was a career soldier working in army ordnance, and retiring eventually as a Brigadier. The diaries were left to a cousin, passed to the cousin's daughter and then ultimately bought at auction and recognised as worth publishing. They are a really good insight into army life in barracks, at home and abroad through the abdication crisis and right through the war and in Italy just after war ended.

Val McDermid - Out of Bounds. Crime Fiction. (Published 2016) A teenage joyrider crashes a car, killing his three companions. When his DNA test links to a twenty year old crime Karen Pirie and her team in the cold Case Unit think this will be an easy one to solve. But it's not so clear and then another death also links back to another unsolved crime  and soon she is stepping on the toes of another investigation.

PLUS others in the Karen Pirie series.

Everything I've read this year is on the Books Read 2025 page. 

I still have most of December's Mobile Library heap to read, the books I had for Christmas to browse or put on the shelf for reading whenever I run out of library books and the mobile is round again in less than two weeks time where there are already 10 available for pick-up. 

It really is a case of too many books, so little time!

British Library Crime Classics

The first BLCC book that I came across was 'Mystery in White' by J. Jefferson Farjeon which was their 5th book reprinted and timed for Christmas 2014. It had a very appealing cover and was an instant best seller, introducing many people to these reprints.

They've just reprinted it again this year in a hardback copy with lovely cover although I think I like  the paperback cover better.

In the 11 years since the beginning there have now been 144 Crime Classics, from authors who originally wrote in the early 1900's right up to the 1960s and most are books that had completely disappeared and had never been reprinted. Number 145 is published this month and is by an author they've already published many times  before -  E.C.R Lorac. She also wrote as Carol Carnac and her books are always good, they've got another one coming out in February.

The book they published specially for the Christmas market this year is this one. Luckily the library bought a copy and I read it last month.

It was a really good read, a very clever story with lots of suspects, originally published in 1952. (Details Here)  One of the things I like about the Crime Classics  is the bit at the beginning, an introduction to the author by Martin Edwards. (Martin Edwards is a crime author in his own right and also edits and compiles the several collections of short stories in the BLCC collection). Susan Gilruth was the pen name of Susannah Margaret Hornsby-Wright and she only ever wrote 7 crime books between 1951 and 1973 which were mainly aimed at the library market so old copies became very hard to find and were never reprinted although some of her books were turned into BBC radio serials.

The story of the covers they use for the reprints is also interesting. Occasionally they are able to use original covers but many of their earlier books used some of the old tourist illustrations used in railway carriages in the 1930s and 40s. The cover of Death in Ambush above is an illustration by Gwen White so I googled her and found she was an author and illustrator who died in 1986.This is one of her books and she also illustrated many Enid Blyton stories.

Finding out more about the authors and illustrators can be nearly as interesting as reading the book.

Yesterday's  coffee  for  advent was 'French Vanilla' -it was nice but I couldn't find any vanilla flavour!

Told By A Ghost!

Library Books -  reading or not reading?

Did I want to read a book written from the point of view of a ghost? No. (A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor)

Then there were the two by Alex Pine, I read one of these a few months ago and it was OK so I'd reserved two from earlier in the series, but these seemed so stilted, with  conversations that sounded really artificial, so I didn't bother finishing either.

That wasn't a good start to my reading after the library van collection almost a fortnight ago. So it had to be something guaranteed to be good next, ............... Murder in Berlin by Christina Koning. Set in 1933 Berlin when things were beginning to get very nasty in Germany. It was a good read as I expected. That's two books set at much the same time read in the last few weeks - the other was Evil in High Places by Rory Clements, set during the 1936 Winter Olympics. Both capture the fear as Hitler comes to power, military on the streets and everyone is suddenly afraid of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person and no one quite trusts their friends and neighbours anymore.

Next I read The Skeleton in the Rosebed by Alys Clare. This is the 5th in a series set in 1880's London with Lily Raynor and Felix Wilbraham who run the World's End Investigation Bureau. Three elderly siblings come to the bureau asking for help with a skeleton they've found in a rose bed in their garden. They believe it to be a relative from 300 years earlier. Unfortunately for Lily and Felix, it is something happening nearby that really causes them problems and when Felix is almost beaten to death it takes all of the residents of 3, Hobs Court and other friends to look after him and to find out who attacked him and why.

Then I pulled out The Odd Flamingo by Nina Bawden, This is a British Library Crime Classic originally published in 1954 and just republished this year. Nina Bawden is better know for children's fiction although I've never read any of her books. I just couldn't get into this, so abandoned it after a chapter.

After that I read the short crime stories in the British Library Crime Classic Continental Crimes this was published in 2017 but for some reason I'd not read it. There are some very old and odd stories, I skipped one or two.

Finally, now I'm reading the new to me author Sally Smith and her first book set in the early 1900's , 'A Case of Mice and Murder' in which Barrister Gabriel Ward , working in London's Inner Temple trips over the body of the Lord Chief Justice and is asked to find who, among everyone working there, is the murderer. But his mind would rather be on his latest case defending a publisher of the book 'Millie the Temple Church Mouse'. by an unknown author.

 So far it's a really good read and will definitely be finished, probably before this post is published!

 I'm looking forward to  reading the other two books I collected by Christina Koning but there's still nearly two weeks left before the library van is round again so I'm spreading them out..

It's a complicated business choosing which library books to read in which order!  

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Books About Books

 I've just finish 'Bookish' by Lucy Mangan. This is the second book by her that I've read and I wrote a whole post about the first one - 'Bookworm: A Childhood Memoir' way back in July 2018.

I said then that her memories of early reading are completely different to mine, where the only regular reading was a weekly 'comic' (Jack and Jill, Judy, Jackie and Fab 208 are the ones I remember), books were only given to me as birthday or Christmas presents by aunties and I didn't even know library buildings existed until I was about 14! 

This new book starts with Lucy's  teenage years and university and again she read much more widely and more classics and well know books  than I did then. My reading from age 14 onwards were books by Alistair McLean and Agatha Christie but then once I started work in the library age 16, I read Catherine Cookson, Mary Stewart, R.F Delderfield, Howard Spring and lots of sagas while Lucy was at Cambridge reading a long list of books that make me glad I didn't go to uni to do an English degree!

Then onto marriage and motherhood and the post natal depression. Once again her reading material is completely different to my journey through books. She has lists at the back of the book for reading in different personal circumstances - I'd only read a couple out of all the lists.

I finished the book thinking "Thank goodness we are all so different, and don't have to read the same books as other people!"

Other people have written books about books and reading. 'Howards End is on the Landing' and 'Jacobs Room' is full of Books are both by Susan Hill. 'Ex Libris;Confessions of a Common Reader' and 'At Large and At Small' by Anna Fadiman. I know there are more but can't think of them at the moment!

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The Good, the Not So Good and the Other One

 The good, the not so good and the other one.................that's my take on 4 books read in the last couple of weeks from the most recent mobile library collection.

The good were two crime fiction books by two authors I'd read before and enjoyed. Both of these authors originally wrote some of their crime series over 10 years ago but I've only just discovered them.

The library have all the Christina Koning series which have all been recently republished either in stock or on order, as I suggested they purchase the two in the series they didn't have.

There are very few of Jim Kelly's older books in the library. He's written three different series going back to early 2000's. They've got all of his most recent Cambridge Nighthawk series (2018 - 2025) which I've read but the one below is from  The Detective Inspector Shaw and DS Valentine series (2008- 2016) set on the Norfolk coast and they only have a couple of these. I don't know if they had them all at any time in the past.

The not so  good  was this collection of short modern crime stories all written recently specially for this book by various authors. Some were so weird I couldn't follow the story at all. Most of the authors I'd never heard of and won't be looking for more of their work for sure!

The other one was this non-fiction book by Lucy Easthope, an emergency planner who has been called in to advise and support survivors in many disaster situations. She has stories of how some help in these situations is really no help at all and more about how long recovery can take. Not sure I learned from it although there is one idea that often comes up on 'prepper' websites and that is to have a 'grab bag' ready just in case it's necessary to leave home very quickly.

 Just last week people living near Whitby in Yorkshire were advised to have a bag ready in case they were told to leave due to the huge moorland fires that were sometimes out of control around them. 

Hopefully recent rain there has helped.

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