Weekly Reading Round-Up
I’ve been happily living in the post-World War II era all this week with more mystery novels by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Patricia Wentworth.
This week, it was Mary Roberts Rinehart’s ominously titled The Swimming Pool, in which the descendant of a once wealthy New York family, now eking out a living writing novels at their old country estate, has to contend with a dead body in the pool– and a family scandal that goes back to the year of the Great Crash.
Then I moved back across the Pond to investigate with Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver in Miss Silver Comes to Stay, in which a broken engagement long, long ago (villages have long memories, don’t you know) might just have something to do with the bludgeoning of the returned heir to the local great house. Currently, I’m in the middle of Mr. Brading’s Collection, which is shaping up to be a locked room sort of mystery, if I don’t miss my guess. These books are the most Miss Marpliest things ever and I’m adoring them. (Although Mr. Brading is feeling a little more Poirot than Miss Marple right now, which is also good.)
One of these days I will actually read some of the new books on my pile! But I’m loving living in this England that never was too much to leave just yet. It feels like binge-watching all the old PBS Miss Marples.
In other news, if you haven’t seen it yet, the Pinkorama entries are going up! I’ve posted the first one today, and we’ll have a fresh one every day for the next week. I don’t want to give too much away, but I can tell you that they’re all gorgeous! But watch out for annoyed sheep and flying stoats….
If you’re at loose ends for a book, The English Wife is on e-sale this week! You can find it reduced to $1.99 on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo.
In other happy reading news, the wonderful Beatriz Williams has been posting weekly installments of a free serial novel on her website! It’s called The Library Passage and you can find it here.
What have you been reading this week?
I read The Death’s Head Chess Club by John Donoghue, in which an Auschwitz survivor competing in a chess tournament crosses paths with a former SS officer with whom he has a history, John Adams Under Fire by Dan Abrams and David Fisher, about the Boston Massacre trials, and Our Sister Republics by Caitlin Fitz, about the relationship between the United States and Latin and South America during the first few decades of the 19th century.
I read an ARC of A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Murder by Dianne Freeman. I love this series! Also Fields’ Guide to Pharaohs by Julie Mulhern. What You Wish For by Katherine Center. All good!
I vividly remember my mother reading and loving Mary Roberts Rineheart! Thank you for such a nice memory of my mother today, on Mother’s Day weekend! My mother at 86 has been in Memory Care now for more than a year and sadly doesn’t know me anymore. But this triggered such a nice memory! When the libraries reopen, you know I will be reading Mary Roberts Rinehart! I have been so lucky to have met with Team W twice at a Book Club Girls event in NYC and just this past January in Darien. Happy Mother’s Day, Lauren!
The Governess by Mary Kingswood was very good, first in the Sisters of Woodside mysteries/Regency romances. Now reading the second in series, The Chaperon.
Just read A View Across the Rooftops by Suzanne Kelman – WW II novel set in Amsterdam. Really liked the tale which wove together a few stories during the duration of WW II in that city. Great characters in a story that brought all the terror and reality of the times together.
I am reading a new author to me, Mary Lancaster. It is a 3 part series set at the Congress of Vienna in 1814. They are a mix of spies, mystery and romance. The first book The Vienna Waltz was very good and I’m reading the second Vienna Woods which is great so far.