Weekly Reading Round-Up
Happy Friday, all! It’s been a stay-up-too-late reading week for me with two wonderful upcoming books that I gobbled up to the extreme detriment of my sleep schedule and ability to function. So, when these books come out, don’t say you weren’t warned….
First up was Marie Benedict’s The Mystery of Mrs. Christie. It’s no secret to anyone who follows me here that I might just have a wee bit of a Golden Age mystery obsession. (ALL the Poirots! But only the David Suchet Poirots. Not the new ones. Just saying.) I’ve also always been fascinated by Agatha Christie’s missing days, the two weeks when the author went missing, inspiring a major manhunt that included Dorothy L. Sayers and Arthur Conan Doyle (no, seriously!). The author herself claimed temporary amnesia, so no one really knows what actually happened, where she went, or why she disappeared in the first place. Marie Benedict takes those missing days and spins a novel that’s part biographical fiction, part Golden Age mystery, and part domestic thriller– and all I can say is, when you read it, you’ll feel like this finally cracks the case. (And then go watch all your Miss Marples.)
After that I was afflicted by Sue Meissner’s The Nature of Fragile Things, about a mail order bride, a young Irish woman, who travels to San Francisco to marry a man she’s never met– and finds everything she thought she knew unraveling in the wake of the 1906 earthquake. All I can say is, I am too old for three in the morning reading (that is for people whose toddlers don’t wake them before six), but I just couldn’t put the book down. I needed to know. It was like every Phyllis A. Whitney gothic I used to love combined with every Susan Meissner book I already love. I wish I could think of more to say about it, but after those two hours of sleep I’m going to need more Nespresso before my brain starts working again. (I blame you, Sue!)
What have you been reading this week?
Bookish and the Beast by Ashley Poston is another wonderful entry in her Once Upon a Con series, retelling of various fairy tells in a modern day, fannish culture. One of the heroine’s viewpoint chapters also includes a paean to the glory of books themselves which I immediately identified with 🙂
Just finished The Fifth Avenue Story Society by Rachel Hauck and really enjoyed that. Now I am on the third in the Tradd Street series, The Strangers on Montagu Street by Karen White. The series is very well done and, though I just now started this one, I expect it will be another absorbing story.
I read Pirate Women: the Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers that Ruled the Seven Seas by Laura Sook Duncombe, which was enjoyable but occasionally dragged a bit when it strayed too far from the topic of pirates, The Second Mother by Jenny Milchman, a very fun thriller, and Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick by David Wong, a completely hilarious SF action novel in a series I’ve been waiting for more of for a long time.
They did a movie recently about Christie’s missing days called The Truth of Murder, it’s on Netflix and has a great cast, including some Blackadder cast members, but doesn’t live up to it’s potential… Still reading The Luminaries, still loving it.
Just finished A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Murder by Dianne Freeman – 3rd in her Lady Harleigh series and it was so cute. Cozy mystery with a lite romance and I just love the dynamic between Frances and George.
I also read Milla Vane’s A Heart of Blood and Ashes – fantasy “historical” romance – I was shocked how engaged I was in this book! Already ready to read the second in the series.
I’m on the second book in Amy Maroney’s The Miramonde Series. So very good.
I’m reading Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans (made into a movie called Their Finest). It’s about a propaganda film in Britain in WWII and the people who work on it – lots of memorable and lovable characters!
Read “The Last Mrs. Summers” by Rhys Bowen. It was delightful. I bought the new Kat Ashley story “Murder In the East End” by Jennifer Ashley, but haven’t had time to dive into it yet. It’s calling to me.
Just started “How the Penguins Saved Veronica” and so far so good 🙂