Weekly Reading Round-Up
Happy Friday from the frozen Hudson Valley where I’ve been working on Cuba book revisions and supervising Zoom school!
Between revisions and remote school, I’ve been going in heavily for comfort reads this week. I kicked off the New Year with a theme read of Patricia Wentworth’s The Clock Strikes Twelve, in which Miss Silver must get to the bottom of a murder on— you guessed it!— New Year’s Eve.
Right now, I’m peacefully reading my way through Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn series, which she began writing in the early 1930s and continued straight on into the 1980s. I’m fascinated by the way the series is evolving as I read it. I’d found the first one a bit meh, but it’s growing on me book by book (although nothing will ever challenge Dorothy Sayers or Josephine Tey for me!). I’m currently off to New Zealand with book five in the series, Vintage Murder, and I’m very curious to see if the tone of the book will change away from the traditional London setting.
What have you been reading this week?
I love Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver mysteries. Right now I’m reading Devil May Care by Elizabeth Peters which is NOT an Amelia Peabody.
I read “The Haunting Season: Eight Ghostly Tales for Long Winter Nights” which, as with short stories by many authors, was a mixed bag. There were some truly spooky tales and some that I just couldn’t stand. Now I’m reading my book for book club, “Where the Forest Meets the Stars” which is very… well, nothing really happens, it’s about a “girl from the stars” and how she changes two people’s lives. It’s kind of like a book version of a juice cleanse. It’s enjoyable but mindless. Should finish that today or tomorrow and I can’t decide what to start next.
Just started the Heather Wells Mysteries by Meg Cabot (writer of the Princess Diaries). Frivolous and fun and silly, and the main character is so likeable. Heather is a 29-year-old ex-teen pop star a la Britney who breaks up with her famous boyfriend (a member of a boys pop band) when she catches him cheating on her. Meanwhile her mother has absconded with her money…and now Heather is an assistant dorm director at one of New York’s top colleges. Female students start dying. Shenanigans ensue when Heather decides to play detective. Very entertaining in these extraordinary times!
Just finished the sixth Ruth Galloway mystery The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths. I love the moody Norfolk setting and the intelligent and quirky main character. After reading an article about new Georgia authors, I was inspired to read a police procedural set in Atlanta, so I started Out of the Blues by Trudy Nan Boyce last night and like it so far.