Weekly Reading Round-Up

Happy Friday!  This week I read something old, something new, something borrowed– but nothing blue.

Did anyone else read the Charlotte MacLeod Sarah Kelling mysteries back in the day?  I read them all in grad school, which was longer ago than I like to acknowledge, so I was happily surprised to rediscover what great fun they are, with a snarky sense of humor woven into the narrative.  And, of course, the wonderful time capsule quality of reading a book that was contemporary fifty years ago.  I jumped back in with the fourth book in the series, The Bilbao Looking Glass.  I thought of seguaying right into book five, The Convivial Codfish, but, instead, I’m saving that one for closer to Christmas.  Because seasonal reading.

Moving on to something new, I picked up Hank Phillippi Ryan’s The Murder List, her latest twisty thriller, set in the world of Boston politics and law enforcement.

Right now, I’m kicking off my October reading with a book my infallible college roommate recommended: The Twisted Ones, by T. Kingfisher.  It’s a little Simone St. James, a little old school Lois Duncan, and a lot of fun.  A wonderful, sensible first person narrator who goes to empty out her horrible grandmother’s cluttered house and finds herself up against something creepy in the woods.  All I want to do right now is brew a cup of tea and plunge back into the story.  If there weren’t that pesky matter of books to write….

What have you been reading this week?

5 Comments

  1. Barbara Luffman on October 4, 2019 at 10:02 am

    I am reading Lost Roses, the prequel to Martha Hall Kelly’s sensational novel, Lilac Girls, and I highly recommend both!

  2. Karlene Barger on October 4, 2019 at 10:07 am

    I loved Charlotte MacLeod’s books back in the day! More recently, I’ve been reading Love and Death Among the Cheetahs by Rhys Bowen.

  3. Kristen A. on October 4, 2019 at 12:24 pm

    I read American Radicals by Holly Jackson, which was quite early especially the part that covered the early 19th century. Then I read The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates, very good historical fiction but with a lighter touch of magical realism than I was expecting given how much of a big deal everybody made about that. And yesterday I read The Rat-Catcher’s Daughter by K.J. Charles, a nice, fun little asexual romance novella with the best use of defenestration that I’ve seen in a book in a long time.

  4. Dianna on October 4, 2019 at 12:52 pm

    thanks for the reminder… read all her books!!! In a similar vein (quirky family… humor and mystery) just finished Donna Andrews newest “Terns of Endearment” (yes, that is the correct spelling…always has a bird name for a twist in the titles). Meg Langslow mystery series (this is the 25th book in the series with a Christmas book coming out Oct. 15th “Owl be Home for Christmas”). If you have read these you are in for a treat!!! (Start from Book #1),

  5. Diane (bookchickdi) on October 4, 2019 at 3:39 pm

    I just finished Lara Prescott’s The Secrets We Kept and it was so wonderful. I’m starting Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House next.

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