Published in 1886 (a year before Sherlock Holmes’ first appearance), The Mystery of a Handsom Cab by Fergus Hume is a murder mystery set in Melbourne of the time. While Hume was English, his family had relocated to New Zealand when he was 3, and he himself moved to Melbourne after he graduated, and worked…
Book Review: Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann #GermanLitMonth
The delightful, clever and entertaining Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann (translated by Carol Brown Janeway) tells us the stories of two eccentric geniuses—the explorer, geographer and polymath Alexander von Humboldt and mathematician and physicist, Carl Friedrich Gauss. Our story begins in September 1828 when the German Scientific Congress is being held in Berlin, and…
Book Review: The Hangman’s Daughter by Oliver Potzsch #GermanLitMonth
The Hangman’s Daughter is the first in a series of historical mysteries set in seventeenth-century Bavaria, and combines a historical background and characters with a fictional plotline to give us an interesting but intense read. The book takes us to the town of Schongau, where Jakob Kuisl is the hangman/executioner, having taken over the job…
Shelf Control #161: The Familiars by Stacey Halls
Wednesday, the 24th of November, 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: An Unusual Grief by Yewande Omotoso
My thanks to Cassava Republic Press and NetGalley for a review copy of this book. An Unusual Grief is a story of grief but it is also the story of a woman’s journey to understand herself, and her relationships—one might even say her life so far. Mojisola Owolabi has travelled to Johannesburg to pack up…
#NonFictionNovember: My Non Fiction Reads in 2021
While I haven't been keeping up with the prompts for #NonFictionNovember, I still do mean to sneak in at least one non-fiction read in what's left of the month, but in the meantime, here's a roundup of the non-fiction titles I have read so far in 2021. To my own surprise, I read 12 non-fiction…
Book Review: The Village of Eight Graves by Seishi Yokomizo
My thanks to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for a review copy of this book. While I have read and enjoyed a fair few Japanese titles, despite all good intentions, I hadn’t gotten down to picking up any mystery title yet; this book gave me the chance to remedy that, and I enjoyed it very much…
Book Review: Death in the Stocks by Georgette Heyer
The first of the mysteries featuring Superintendent Hannasyde published in 1935 was a very enjoyable read with plenty of humour, eccentric but fun characters, sparkling dialogue, and a pretty good mystery as well. Our story opens in the village of Ashleigh Green, where Constable Dickenson is returning from night patrol. In the stocks, he spots…
Shelf Control #160: Umberto’s Circus by Eduard Bass
Wednesday, the 17th of November, 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: Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie
Destination Unknown, first published in 1954, is a standalone by Christie that falls firmly into her thriller category, in fact even more so than some of her other thrillers I have read/reread recently as we have no murder mystery at the start (as for instance, in The Man in the Brown Suit, They Came to…
Literary Potpourri 