Skip to main content

Friday Finds


The Murders of Richard III, by Elizabeth Peters. From the author of the Amelia Peabody series, this is a mystery that centers around a group of Ricardians, who gather for a house party, where a prankster begins to emulate Shakespeare’s account of Richard’s crimes.

The Needle in the Blood, by Sarah Bowers. Historical fiction set around the Bayeaux Tapestry. Recommendation comes to me courtesy of A Work in Progress.

The following are from the list of 100 Favorite Mysteries from the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association:

A Broken Vessel, by Kate Ross. Mystery set in 1820s London.

The Circular Staircase, by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Published in 1908, the book features a spinster who takes a house in the country. Soon, a murder occurs.

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, by Laurie King. Historical whodunit featuring Sherlock Holmes and his new apprentice.

An English Murder, by Cyril Hare. “Warbeck Hall is an old-fashioned English country house and the scene of equally English murders. All the classic ingredients are there: Christmas decorations, tea and cake, a faithful butler, a foreigner, snow falling and an interesting cast of characters thrown together. The murders and detective work are far from conventional though...”

The Tiger in the Smoke, by Margery Allingham. “Jack Havoc, jail-breaker and knife artist, is on the loose. It falls to Albert Campion to pit his wits against the killer and hunt him down through the city’s November smog before it is too late.” Allingham has been compared to Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.

Comments

Terri B. said…
I read Tiger in the Smoke recently. I had to have my library pull it from their storage facility! I really enjoyed it and might try tracking down a used copy to own. When I checked a few months ago, it didn't look like it was currently in print. Darn!

Popular posts from this blog

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars...

Review: The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher is a complicated novel. On the surface, it’s about a love affair between two British ex-patriots in Hong Kong in 1952-3. Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong with her husband Martin at a time when the world is still recovering from WWII; Claire takes up work as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family, where she meets Will Truesdale, the Chens’ enigmatic chauffeur. The book jumps back in time between the 1950s and the beginning of WWII, when Will is interned in Stanley, a Hong Kong camp for enemies of Japan. On “the outside” is Tudy Liang, Will’s beautiful Eurasian lover. There’s no doubt that Lee’s writing is beautiful. But there’s something lacking in this short, terse novel that I can’t quite put my finger on. First, I think it’s the tenses she uses when taking about each story: that which is set in the 1950s is in the past tense, while the war scenes are talked about in the present tense (confusing, no?) The interpersonal relationships of the m...