Catching Up – Again!
I’m afraid I have been severely negligent of both my own blog and those of all my friends during the past couple of weeks. Once again I have what I consider to be the excellent, if unwelcome, excuse...
View ArticleWWW Wednesday ~ July 31st 2019
WWW Wednesday is hosted by Taking on a World of Words The Three Ws are: What are you currently reading? What did you recently finish reading? What do you think you’ll read next? Currently Reading...
View ArticleBetween Silk and Cyanide ~ Leo Marks
When in 1969 Helene Hanff finally managed to get to London her beloved bookshop, 84 Charing Cross Road, had closed. However, as she recalls in her memoir, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, waiting for...
View ArticlePreparing For Summer School
Tomorrow sees the start of this year’s Summer School and we will be reading and discussing three novels grouped together under the title Paying the Price. The books, A Whispered Name by William...
View ArticleCafé Conversation ~ August 25th
Well, that’s the Summer School over for another year. In some ways I think it was probably the best ever, although it was also the most tiring ever too. When I came home on Friday evening I was more...
View ArticleCafé Conversation ~ September 1st
Somehow, I seem to have lost my blogging mojo for the moment. I suspect that as much as anything this is to do with the time of year. I apologise to all my on-line friends who are having to face…...
View ArticleNothing To Hide ~ James Oswald
Nothing To Hide is the second book in James Oswald’s new series featuring DC Con Fairchild. When we first met Con in her previous outing, No Time To Cry, she was a member of the Met’s undercover squad...
View ArticleThe Last Detective ~ Peter Lovesey
I have recently been given a monthly book subscription as a gift. I look on these as something of a two-edged sword. It’s lovely to have a ‘free’ book dropping through the letter box each month but,...
View ArticleCafé Conversation ~ Sunday September 15th 2019
What do you do when a book you have really been looking forward to not only fails to live up to expectations but also leaves a sour taste in your mouth? This is the situation I find myself in this…...
View ArticleThe Bad Place ~ M K Hill
Twenty-six years ago six children were taken, only five came back. One of them, Becky Haskell, was cruelly murdered by their abductor, Jerry Swann, who was then shot dead by an armed police officer....
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Challenges and Projects ~ Blah!
From time to time I will be tempted either by a challenge or a project that someone else in the book blogging world has suggested or even one that I dream up for myself. And every time it turns out to...
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Police at the Funeral ~ Margery Allingham
When I first set out to reacquaint myself with Marjorie Allingham’s strangely self-effacing private detective, Albert Campion, I knew that some of the books would turn out to be re-reads while others...
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Remain Silent ~ Susie Steiner
Remain Silent, the third in Susie Steiner’s series about DI Manon Bradshaw, is not an easy book to write about. Superficially it is a police procedural, and like all good police procedurals these days...
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Writers & Lovers ~ Lily King
Why have I not come across the writer, Lily King, before? I wouldn’t have come across her now had it not been for Susan‘s recommendation of her latest book, Writers & Lovers, and her comment that...
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Rounding Up and Looking Forward ~ May ~ June 2020
I’m sure no one will need to ask why if I say it’s been an unsettled month. Halfway through I suddenly found that the speed at which I was doing everything had been cut by half and so a lot of the...
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Six Degrees of Separation: from Normal People to
The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Every month a book is chosen as a common starting point and each blogger then links to six other books to form...
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Negative Capability ~ Michèle Roberts
In 1817, in a letter to his brothers, the poet John Keats wrote it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I...
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The Snow-Walker Trilogy ~ Catherine Fisher
Catherine Fisher is one of the children’s authors I most regret not having kept up with since I retired. Her works always explore the darker side of human nature in worlds that, while differing from...
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The Curator ~ M W Craven
Were you disappointed with a Christmas present you received last year? Was it not quite what you been expecting? Perhaps it was even something that made you feel slightly queasy? Whatever it was, I...
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Cut To The Bone ~ Roz Watkins
Research tells us that one in a 100 people is a psychopath. If you start to explore specific jobs then apparently 21% of managing directors are psychopaths. I wonder if anybody has ever made...
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