Happy Friday, all!  This week was a comfort read/ edgy read sandwich for me.

I reverted back to Patricia Wentworth with one of her stand alone novels, Silence in Court.  I was a bit skeptical– the premise is that a Miss Carey Silence is on trial for the murder of an elderly friend of the family, who might have been about to disinherit her, hence Silence in court– but despite the hokey title, it was a thoroughly satisfying Wentworthian Wentworth filled with eccentric relations, money-grubbing would-be heirs, and last minute courtroom drama.  The courtroom aspect– and the heirs– reminded me a bit of Dorothy Sayers’s Strong Poison, but with an American cousin playing besotted deus ex machina in place of Lord Peter Wimsey.

After that, it was back to my enormous TBR pile of New Books I Really Ought to Read Because Everyone Else Is for Alexandra Andrews’s Who Is Maud Dixon?, in which a low level publishing employee is hired as personal assistant for a mysterious and reclusive bestselling author and Very Dark Things Ensue.  For everyone who enjoyed Tangerine a few years ago, this one’s for you– it had a very similar feel with the compulsively readable prose, the exotic location (Morocco), the deceits upon deceits, and the twisted female relationships.

Then it was back to more comfort reading with the next in the Cadfael series, The Sanctuary Sparrow, which was charmingly Cadfaelian.

Right now, I have two books by friends on the TBR: Tracy Grant’s latest in her Regency-set mystery series, The Westminster Intrigue (which we’ll be discussing on Zoom next Thursday!), and Jenny Judson’s and Danielle Mahfood’s debut novel, The Last Season, about the tangled relationship of a stable boy and an heiress and their fortunes rise and fall in Victorian England.

Oh, and the Pink Carnation Read Along is still underway!  This month is The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, which I really do need to start re-reading, since Donna Thorland I will be discussing it in just under two weeks, on Wednesday, June 30th.  (There just might be some discussion that evening about the Pink Carnation tv series… but more on that later.)

What have you been reading this week?