Wednesday, the 27th of October, and time for Shelf Control once again! Shelf Control is a weekly feature hosted by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies, and celebrates the books waiting to be read on your TBR piles/mountains. To participate, all you do is pick a book from your TBR pile, and write a post about it--what…
Book Review: The Story of the Country House by Clive Aslet
My thanks to Yale University Press and NetGalley for a review copy of this interesting and informative read. [Country houses] are a document on which is written their owners’ changing lives, tastes and sources of income. In The Story of the Country House: A History of Places and People, architectural historian and writer Clive Aslet…
Book Review: The Caravan Family by Enid Blyton
Looking at my 2021 reads so far (since we are heading towards the end of the year), I realised that I hadn’t read/re-read a single Blyton book in 2021, which is quite rare for me. So, to remedy that I picked up the first of a series I’ve been planning to read for a while,…
Book Review: Death of a Busybody by George Bellairs
Death of a Busybody (1942) is the third of a series of nearly sixty mystery books featuring Inspector (later Chief Inspector, etc.) Thomas Littlejohn, published between 1941 and 1980. Death of a Busybody brings us to one of twin villages, Hilary Magna (the other being Hilary Parva), where the skinny and scholarly vicar, Rev. Ethelred…
Shelf Control #156:Murder, She Wrote: The Murder of Sherlock Holmes by James Anderson
Wednesday, the 20th of October, and time for Shelf Control once again! Shelf Control is a weekly feature hosted by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies, and celebrates the books waiting to be read on your TBR piles/mountains. To participate, all you do is pick a book from your TBR pile, and write a post about it--what…
Book Review: The Dust Never Settles by Karina Lickorish Quinn
My thanks to Oneworld Publications and NetGalley for a review copy of this book. The Dust Never Settles is described by the author as her ‘love letter’ to her country Peru. Opening with mythology/origin stories which tie in to the book wonderfully later, we are introduced to Anaïs Echeverría who has a Peruvian mother and…
Book Review: A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively #1976Club
The wonderful A Stitch in Time was my third and final pick for the #1976Club hosted by Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon at Stuck in a Book. In A Stitch in Time, we meet eleven-year-old Maria Foster who is heading down to Lyme Regis with her parents for a month of summer holiday.…
Book Review: The Golden Gate by Alistair MacLean #1976Club
The Golden Gate by Alistair MacLean is my second pick for the #1976Club hosted by Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon at Stuck in a Book. The Golden Gate is a suspense–thriller, around a meticulously planned, daring kidnapping. The book opens with master-criminal Branson, who with his crew is beginning to give effect to…
Shelf Control #155: Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
Wednesday, the 13th of October, and time once again for Shelf Control! Shelf Control is a weekly feature hosted by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies, and celebrates the books waiting to be read on your TBR piles/mountains. To participate, simply pick a book from your TBR pile, and write a post about it--what its about, why…
Book Review: Princes Gate by Mark Ellis
My thanks to the author, Mark Ellis for a review copy of the book via Booktasters. Prince’s Gate is the first in a series of mysteries/police procedurals set in Second-World-War London, the DCI Frank Merlin series, and is set against a background of war time politics, diplomacy but also the shadier underbelly of the city.…
Literary Potpourri 