Happy Friday, all!

This has been a marvelous re-read week for me, hopscotching across eras and genres, starting off with Josephine Tey’s The Franchise Affair, in which a country lawyer’s quiet life is upended when he finds himself defending a pair of women accused of a bizarre crime.  I’ll never forget the experience of reading this for the first time, and watching the layers peeled away as what seemed impossible becomes slowly explicable.  Even knowing what happened, it’s a wonderful read– as Tey always is.

After that, it was on to The Left-Handed Booksellers of London for a supernatural romp through 1980s London.  If you haven’t read these (there’s going to be a third in a year or so!  I’m so excited), they’re close cousins to Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London or Daniel O’Malley’s The Rook.  When just turned eighteen year old Susan takes a little time in London before an art course to try to find out the truth about her missing father, she finds herself entangled with a mysterious underground world of ancient deities, modern evil, and the booksellers who police them.

Since I was madly genre-hopping, next it was time to pop over to World War II London with A.J. Pearce’s Dear Mrs. Bird.  Confession: I cannot stand most World War II books.  Unless I absolutely have to, I will not read them.  (I’m sure there are a lot of wonderful World War II books out there.  They’re just not for me.)  Dear Mrs. Bird is one of the rare exceptions.  When Emmie takes a job at a paper, thinking she’s going to be a hard-hitting correspondent, she instead finds herself working for the hidebound advice columnist Mrs. Bird– and can’t resist sneaking in some advice of her own.  I’d never thought the Blitz could be charming or fun, but this book makes the Blitz charming and fun.

Last but not least, there was Jennifer Crusie’s Maybe This Time, in which English teacher Andie reluctantly takes a job sorting out her ex-husband’s two wards, who live in a crumbling castle in Ohio and have scared away three nannies.  Or is it the ghosts?  Crusie brings her usual wonderful madcap humor, found family, and descriptions of baking to this retelling of The Turn of the Screw.

What have you been reading this week?