lyzard's list: once more unto the obscurity, dear friends - Part Five

The barking owl is a medium-sized species found along the eastern and northern coasts of Australia, as well as in New Guinea and on the Maluku Islands. A separate population is found around Perth in Western Australia, however due to habitat destruction sightings in this area are becoming rare.

Barking owls are found in woodland and forest areas, often near waterways. They are territorial and require significant hunting grounds, which means that loss of habitat impacts these birds severely; on the other hand, their broad, non-specific diet allows them to survive where other owls cannot.

Barking owls have a wide range of vocalisations but, as their name suggests, they are best known for the "bark" which is often mistaken for that of a small dog. They also use a series of howls to indicate different levels of threat; the most extreme of these sounds like a woman or child crying out in pain, hence the occasional alternative name of "Screaming Woman Owl".

    

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Currently reading:



Lords Of The Housetops: Thirteen Cat Tales by Carl Van Vechten (ed.) (1921)

January:

1. Murder At Wrides Park by J. S. Fletcher (1931)
2. Tom Strong, Washington's Scout: A Story Of Patriotism by Alfred Bishop Mason (1911)
3. Fear Stalks The Village by Ethel Lina White (1932)
4. Murder At The College by Victor L. Whitechurch (1932)
5. The Princess Passes by Ruby M. Ayres (1931)
6. The Billiard-Room Mystery by Brian Flynn (1927)
7. The Porro Palaver by Adam Broome (1928)
8. Amos The Wanderer by William Babington Maxwell (1932)
9. 13 Thirteenth Street by Natalie Sumner Lincoln (1932)
10. The Lady Of The Decoration by Frances Little (1907)
11. Murder In The Maze by J. J. Connington (1927)
12. The Secret Of The Morgue by Frederick G. Eberhard (1932)
13. They Were Defeated by Rose Macaulay (1932)
14. The New Woman And The Victorian Novel by Gail Cunningham (1978)
15. Lonesome Road by Patricia Wentworth (1939)
16. April Lady by Georgette Heyer (1957)
17. Murder In The Mews: And Other Stories by Agatha Christie (1937)
18. Mrs Tim Carries On: Leaves From The Diary Of An Officer's Wife In The Year 1940 by D. E. Stevenson (1941)
19. All This, And Heaven Too by Rachel Field (1938)

February:

20. Marriage by Susan Ferrier (1818)
21. Lucia's Progress by E. F. Benson (1935)
22. The Murder Of Mrs Davenport by Anthony Gilbert (1928)
23. The Owl's Warning by Herman Landon (1932)
24. Love's Hour by Elinor Glyn (1932)
25. The Murder Of Caroline Bundy by Alice Campbell (1932)
26. The Madonna Of Seven Moons by Margery Lawrence (1931)
27. Mr Crewe's Career by Winston Churchill (1908)
28. Trent's Last Case by E. C. Bentley (1913)
29. The Three Taps: A Detective Story Without A Moral by Ronald Knox (1927)

March:

30. Sylvester; or, The Wicked Uncle by Georgette Heyer (1957)
31. Trouble For Lucia by E. F. Benson (1939)
32. Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie (1937)
33. The Imperfect Crime by Bruce Graeme (1932)
34. Dusty Death by Clifton Robbins (1931)
35. Rupert Of Hentzau by Anthony Hope (1898)
36. The Inner Shrine by Basil King (1909)
37. The Fortress by Hugh Walpole (1932)
38. Venetia by Georgette Heyer (1958)
39. As A Thief In The Night by R. Austin Freeman (1928)
40. The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln (1920)

April:

41. I Spy by Natalie Sumner Lincoln (1916)
42. Inspector French And The Cheyne Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts (1926)
43. The Crooked Cross by Charles J. Dutton (1926)
44. Hangman's Holiday by Dorothy L. Sayers (1933)
45. The Mystery Of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens (1870)
46. Epilogue by Bruce Graeme (1933)
47. The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer (1959)
48. The Rosary by Florence L. Barclay (1909)

May:

49. Death On The Nile by Agatha Christie (1937)
50. The Merrivale Mystery by James Corbett (1929)
51. The "Canary" Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine (1927)
52. Murder In A Haystack by Dorothy Aldis (1931)
53. Strange Murders At Greystones by Elsie N. Wright (1931)
54. The Room With The Tassels by Carolyn Wells (1918)
55. The Unseen Ear by Natalie Sumner Lincoln (1921)
56. The Riddle Of The Night by Thomas Hanshew, Mary Hanshew and Hazel Hanshew (1916)
57. The Riddle Of The Purple Emperor by Thomas Hanshew, Mary Hanshew and Hazel Hanshew (1918)

June:

58. Elsie's Womanhood by Martha Finley (1875)
59. The Return Of Clubfoot by Valentine Williams (1922)
60. Seeds Of Murder by Frederick Van Wyck Mason (1930)
61. Colonel Gore's Second Case by Lynn Brock (Allister McAllister) (1925)
62. Tish Marches On by Mary Roberts Rinehart (1937)
63. The Harvester by Gene Stratton-Porter (1911)
64. Kai Lung's Golden Hours by Ernest Bramah (1922)
65. Appointment With Death by Agatha Christie (1938)
66. The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley (1929)
67. Pistols For Two, And Other Stories by Georgette Heyer (1960)

July:

68. No Other Way by Gordon Holmes (1912)
69. Patty In Paris by Carolyn Wells (1907)
70. No Other Way by Louis Tracy (1913)
71. The Inside Of The Cup by Winston Churchill (1913)
72. Hunting Shirt by Mary Johnston (1931)
73. Seven Times Seven by John Creasey (1932)
74. Mrs Red Pepper by Grace S. Richmond (1913)
75. Some Do Not... by Ford Madox Ford (1924)
76. Lisarda; or, The Travels Of Love And Jealousy by H. Cox (1690)
77. The Mystery Woman by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry (1924)
78. Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout by Alfred Bishop Mason (1919)
79. The Ginger King by A. E. W. Mason (1940)
80. The House In Lordship Lane by A. E. W. Mason (1946)
81. Arsène Lupin Contre Herlock Sholmes by Maurice Leblanc (1908)
82. Mrs Tim Gets A Job by D. E. Stevenson (1947)

August:

83. Hargrave by Frances Trollope (1843)
84. The Doctor, His Wife And The Clock by Anna Katharine Green (1895)
85. That Affair Next Door by Anna Katharine Green (1897)
86. Ruth Fielding In Moving Pictures; or, Helping The Dormitory Fund by Alice B. Emerson (1916)
87. The Yellow Streak by Valentine Williams (1922)
88. The Eyes Of The World by Harold Bell Wright (1914)
89. The Lost Pearl by Francis D. Grierson (1925)
90. Murder In Four Degrees by J. S. Fletcher (1931)
91. The Law Of The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace (1921)
92. Strange Wine by Harlan Ellison (1978)
93. Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie (1938)
94. A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer (1961)

September:

95. Emma by Jane Austen (1815)
96. Dead Man Twice by Christopher Bush (1930)
97. The Mystery Girl by Carolyn Wells (1922)
98. Whitehall by E. V. Timms (1931)
99. Vanessa by Hugh Walpole (1933)
100. Lady Lisle by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1862)
101. The Turmoil by Booth Tarkington (1915)
102. Amberwell by D. E. Stevenson (1955)
103. Mr Dooley In Peace And In War by Finley Peter Dunne (1898)
104. The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Hornung (1899)
105. The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer (1962)

October:

106. Murder In The House Of Commons by Mary Agnes Hamilton (1931)
107. The Murder Of Harvey Blake by Raymond Goldman (1931)
108. My Particular Murder by David Sharp (1931)
109. Indian Summer Of A Forsyte by John Galsworthy (1918)
110. In Chancery by John Galsworthy (1920)
111. Red Altars by John Gordon Brandon (1928)
112. The Girl From Nowhere by Mrs Baillie Reynolds (1910)
113. The Avenging Parrot by Anne Austin (1930)
114. Seventeen by Booth Tarkington (1916)
115. False Colours by Georgette Heyer (1963)
116. The Five Flamboys by Francis Beeding (1929)
117. From Beowulf To Virginia Woolf: An Astounding and Wholly Unauthorized History of English Literature by Robert Manson Myers (1952)
118. The Essex Murders by Vernon Loder (1930)
119. Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison (1975)
120. Murder Is Easy by Agatha Christie (1939)
121. Frederica by Georgette Heyer (1965)

November:

122. The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope (1876)
123. Love In Hiding by Barbara Cartland (1959)
124. Shaken Down by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry (1925)
125. A Dark Matter by Peter Straub (2010)
126. Death Of An Editor by Vernon Loder (1931)
127. The Eyes Of Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah (1923)
128. Affectionately, Eve by Upton Sinclair (1961)
129. Mr Britling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells (1916)
130. The Shapes Of Midnight by Joseph Payne Brennan (1980)
131. La Nuit Du Carrefour by Georges Simenon (1931)
132. Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham (1933)
133. The Voice Of The Seven Sparrows by Harry Stephen Keeler (1924)
134. Miscellaneous Pieces, In Prose by John Aikin and Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbauld (1773)
135. The Fall Of Faction; or, Edmund's Vision by Anonymous (1789)
136. Calavar; or, The Knight Of The Conquest: A Romance Of Mexico by Robert Montgomery Bird (1834)
137. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939)

December:

138. The Holy Lover by Marie Conway Oemler (1927)
139. Every Eye by Isobel English (1956)
140. Death In The Tunnel by Miles Burton (1936)
141. Red Stain by Vernon Loder (1931)
142. The Merriweather Girls In Quest Of Treasure by Lizette M. Edholm (1932)
143. The Frozen Flames by Hazel Phillips Hanshew (1920)
144. The U. P. Trail by Zane Grey (1918)
145. Red Danger by Patricia Wentworth (1932)
146. Ashton-Kirk: Secret Agent by John McIntyre (1912)
147. Follow The Blue Car by R. A. J. Walling (1933)
148. Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie (1940)
149. Black Sheep by Georgette Heyer (1967)
150. Ermina Montrose; or, The Cottage Of The Vale by Emily Clark (1800)
151. Lords Of The Housetops by Carl Van Vechten (ed.) (1921)

Reading projects 2016:

Blog reads:
Chronobibliography: Gallantry Unmask'd; or, Women In Their Proper Colours
Authors In Depth: The Mother-In-Law by E. D. E. N. Southworth
Reading Roulette: Ermina Montrose; or, The Cottage Of The Vale by Emily Clark / Had You Been In His Place by Lizzie Bates
Australian fiction: The Hermit In Van Diemen's Land by Henry Savery
Gothic novel timeline: Miscellaneous Pieces, In Prose by John and Anna Laetitia Aikin / Julia De Roubigné by Henry Mackenzie
Early crime fiction: The Mysteries Of London by Paul Feval
Related reading: Gains And Losses by Robert Lee Wollf

Group / tutored reads:
Completed: Marriage by Susan Ferrier (thread here)
Completed: The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope (thread here)

Suspended: Emma by Jane Austen (thread here)

Upcoming: Camilla by Fanny Burney
Upcoming: Deerbrook by Harriet Martineau

The evolution of detective fiction:
Next up: The Mysteries Of London by Paul Feval (R. Stephenson, translator)

Virago chronological reading project:
Next up: Deerbrook by Harriet Martineau

America's best-selling novels (1895 - ????):
Next up: The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

Agatha Christie mysteries in chronological order:
Next up: One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

Georgette Heyer historical romances in chronological order:
Next up: Cousin Kate

Random reading 1940 - 1969:
Next up: The Taking Men by Anne Hepple

Potential decommission:
Next up: More Tales Of The Unexpected by Roald Dahl

Possible future reading projects:
- Nobel Prize winners who won for fiction
- Daily Telegraph's 100 Best Novels, 1899
- 1898 C.K. Shorter List of Best 100 Novels
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize
- Berkeley "Books Of The Century"
- Mystery League books (and their covers)
- Collins White Circle Crime Club / Green Penguins
- Dell paperbacks

Books in transit:

On interlibrary loan / branch transfer / storage request:
Forgive Us Our Trespasses by Lloyd C. Douglas
Summerhills by D. E. Stevenson
Hatter's Castle by A. J. Cronin

Purchased and shipped:
Mystery Stories For Girls by Agnes Miller
Feathers Left Around by Carolyn Wells
Woman's Fiction: A Guide To Novels By And About Women In America, 1820-1870 by Nina Baym

On loan:
**And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (16/01/2017)
The Greene Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine (23/01/2017)
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers (23/01/2017)
**Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham (23/01/2017)
Burglars In Bucks by G. D. H. & M. Cole (23/01/2017)
The Barrakee Mystery by Arthur Upfield (23/01/2017)

Follow up:
The Sign Of the Glove by Carlton Dawe {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
Daylight Murder by Paul McGuire {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}

Wanted! by Carlton Dawe {State Library Special Collections}
One-Man Girl by Maisie Greig {State Library Special Collections}
The Prince Of Poisoners by Ladbroke Black {State Library Special Collections}

Hatter's Castle by A. J. Cronin {Sutherland stack}

Find The Clock by Harry Stephen Keeler {Kindle}

1931:
None Of My Business by David Sharp {owned}
Death By Appointment by "Francis Bonnamy" (Audrey Walz) {Rare Books}
The Bell Street Murders by Sydney Fowler (S. Fowler Wright) {Rare Books}
Devil's Due (aka The Wind In His Fists) by Phyllis Bottome {State Library}
Bread And Vinegar by H. A. Manhood {Rare Books}
The Murderer Invisible by Philip Wylie {Rare Books}

Shopping list:
The Orange Divan by Valentine Williams
The Seventh Passenger by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry
Gray Terror by Herman Landon
The Pelham Murder Case by Monte Barrett
Flying Clues by Charles J. Dutton
Prove It, Mr Tolefree by R. A. J. Walling
The Taking Men by Anne Hepple

Series and sequels 1866 - 1920:

(1866 - 1876) **Emile Gaboriau - Monsieur Lecoq - The Widow Lerouge (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1867 - 1905) **Martha Finley - Elsie Dinsmore - Elsie's Motherhood (5/28) {ManyBooks}
(1867 - 1872) **George MacDonald - The Seaboard Parish - Annals Of A Quiet Neighbourhood (1/3) {ManyBooks}
(1878 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Ebenezer Gryce - Lost Man's Lane (9/12) {Project Gutenberg}
(1896 - 1909) **Melville Davisson Post - Randolph Mason - The Corrector Of Destinies (3/3) {Internet Archive}
(1894 - 1898) **Anthony Hope - Ruritania - Rupert Of Hentzau (3/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1895 - 1901) **Guy Newell Boothby - Dr Nikola - Dr Nikola (2/5) {ManyBooks}
(1897 - 1900) **Anna Katharine Green - Amelia Butterworth - Lost Man's Lane (2/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1898 - 1915) **Kate Douglas Wiggins - Penelope - Penelope's English Experiences (1/4) {Project Gutenberg}
(1899 - 1909) **E. W. Hornung - Raffles - The Black Mask (aka Raffles: Further Adventures Of The Amateur Cracksman) (2/4) {Project Gutenberg}
(1900 - 1974) *Ernest Bramah - Kai Lung - Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (3/6) {Roy Glashan's Library}

(1901 - 1919) **Carolyn Wells - Patty Fairfield - Patty's Friends (6/17) {Project Gutenberg}
(1901 - 1927) **George Barr McCutcheon - Graustark - Graustark (1/6) {Project Gutenberg}
(1903 - 1904) **Louis Tracy - Reginald Brett - The Albert Gate Mystery (2/2) {ManyBooks}
(1905 - 1925) **Baroness Orczy - The Old Man In The Corner - Unravelled Knots (3/3) {Project Gutenberg Australia}}
(1905 - 1928) **Edgar Wallace - The Just Men - The Three Just Men (5/6) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1906 - 1930) **John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - Awakening (4/11) {Project Gutenberg}
(1907 - 1912) **Carolyn Wells - Marjorie - Marjorie's Vacation (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1907 - 1942) *R. Austin Freeman - Dr John Thorndyke - Mr Pottermack's Oversight (17/26) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1907 - 1941) *Maurice Leblanc - Arsene Lupin - The Hollow Needle (3/21) {ManyBooks}
(1908 - 1924) **Margaret Penrose - Dorothy Dale - Dorothy Dale: A Girl Of Today (1/13) {ManyBooks}
(1909 - 1942) *Carolyn Wells - Fleming Stone - Feathers Left Around (14/49) {AbeBooks}
(1909 - 1929) *J. S. Fletcher - Inspector Skarratt - Marchester Royal (1/3) {Kindle}
(1909 - 1912) **Emerson Hough - Western Trilogy - 54-40 Or Fight (1/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - 1936) *Arthur B. Reeve - Craig Kennedy - The Treasure-Train (6/11) {ManyBooks}
(1910 - 1946) A. E. W. Mason - Inspector Hanaud - The House In Lordship Lane (7/7) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1910 - ????) *Edgar Wallace - Inspector Smith - Kate Plus Ten (3/?) {Project Gutenberg Australia}
(1910 - 1930) **Edgar Wallace - Inspector Elk - The Joker (3/6?) {ManyBooks}
(1910 - ????) *Thomas, Mary and Hazel Hanshew - Cleek - The Riddle Of The Mysterious Light (7/12) {Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - 1918) **John McIntyre - Ashton-Kirk - Ashton-Kirk: Special Detective (3/4) {HathiTrust}
(1910 - 1931) *Grace S. Richmond - Red Pepper Burns - Red Pepper's Patients (3/6) {Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - ????) *Jeffery Farnol - The Vibarts - The Way Beyond (3/?) {Project Gutenberg Canada}

(1911 - 1935) G. K. Chesterton - Father Brown - The Scandal Of Father Brown (5/5) {branch transfer}
(1911 - 1937) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Letitia Carberry - Tish Marches On (5/5) {Kindle}
(1911 - 1919) **Alfred Bishop Mason - Tom Strong - Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout (5/5) {Project Gutenberg}
(1912 - ????) **Gordon Holmes (Louis Tracy) - Steingall and Clancy - One Wonderful Night (2/3) {ManyBooks}
(1913 - 1928) **Louis Tracy - Winter and Furneaux - The Strange Case Of Mortimer Fenley (2/9) {ManyBooks}
(1913 - 1934) *Alice B. Emerson - Ruth Fielding - Ruth Fielding Down In Dixie (10/30) {Project Gutenberg}
(1913 - 1973) Sax Rohmer - Fu-Manchu - The Bride Of Fu-Manchu (6/14) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1913 - 1952) *Jeffery Farnol - Jasper Shrig - Peregrine's Progress (2/9) {ManyBooks}
(1914 - 1950) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Hilda Adams - Episode Of The Wandering Knife (5/5) Better World Books}
(1914 - 1934) *Ernest Bramah - Max Carrados - The Bunch Of Violets (short story) (3/5) {ManyBooks}
(1916 - 1941) John Buchan - Edward Leithen - Sick Heart River (5/5) {Fisher Library}
(1915 - 1936) *John Buchan - Richard Hannay - The Thirty-Nine Steps (1/5) {Fisher Library / Project Gutenberg / branch transfer / Kindle}
(1915 - 1923) **Booth Tarkington - Growth - The Magnificent Ambersons (2/3) {Project Gutenberg / Fisher Library / Kindle}
(1916 - 1917) **Carolyn Wells - Alan Ford - Faulkner's Folly (2/2) {owned}
(1916 - 1927) **Natalie Sumner Lincoln - Inspector Mitchell - The Nameless Man (2/10) {AbeBooks}
(1917 - 1929) **Henry Handel Richardson - Dr Richard Mahony - Australia Felix (1/3) {Fisher Library / Kindle}
(1918 - 1923) **Carolyn Wells - Pennington Wise - The Man Who Fell Through The Earth (2/8) {Project Gutenberg}
(1918 - ????) *Valentine Williams - Okewood / Clubfoot - Clubfoot The Avenger (4/?) {ManyBooks}
(1919 - 1966) *Lee Thayer - Peter Clancy - The Key (6/60) {expensive / Rare Books}
(1919 - 1921) **Octavus Roy Cohen - David Carroll - The Crimson Alibi (1/3) {Rare Books}
(1920 - 1939) E. F. Benson - Mapp And Lucia - Trouble For Lucia (6/6) {interlibrary loan}
(1920 - 1948) *H. C. Bailey - Reggie Fortune - Mr Fortune, Please (4/23) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}
(1920 - 1949) William McFee - Spenlove - The Beachcomber - (3/6) {AbeBooks / Better World Books}
(1920 - 1932) *Alice B. Emerson - Betty Gordon - Betty Gordon At Bramble Farm (1/15) {ManyBooks}
(1920 - 1975) Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot - One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (21/39) {owned}
(1920 - 1921) **Natalie Sumner Lincoln - Ferguson - The Unseen Ear (2/2) {HathiTrust}
(1920 - 1937) *H. C. McNeile - Bulldog Drummond - Bull-Dog Drummond (1/10 - series continued) {Project Gutenberg / Fisher storage}

*** Incompletely available series
** Series complete pre-1931
* Present status pre-1931

Series and sequels 1921 - 1929:

(1921 - 1929) ** / ***Charles J. Dutton - John Bartley - Flying Clues (8/9) {AbeBooks}
(1921 - 1925) **Herman Landon - The Gray Phantom - Gray Terror (3/5) {Amazon}
(1922 - 1973) *Agatha Christie - Tommy and Tuppence - N. Or M.? (3/5) {owned}
(1922 - 1927) *Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry - Jerry Boyne - The Seventh Passenger (4/5) {Amazon}
(1922 - 1931) *Valentine Williams - Inspector Manderton - The Orange Divan (2/4) {AbeBooks}
(1923 - 1937) Dorothy L. Sayers - Lord Peter Wimsey - Murder Must Advertise (10/15) {Sutherland stack / Fisher Library}
(1923 - 1924) **Carolyn Wells - Lorimer Lane - The Fourteenth Key (2/2) {eBay}
(1923 - 1931) *Agnes Miller - The Linger-Nots - The Linger-Nots And The Mystery House (1/5) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1923 - 1927) **Annie Haynes - Inspector Furnival - The Abbey Court Murder (1/3) {Kindle}
(1924 - 1959) Philip MacDonald - Colonel Anthony Gethryn - Persons Unknown (aka "The Maze") (5/24) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held / Kindle upcoming}
(1924 - 1957) *Freeman Wills Crofts - Inspector French - Inspector French And The Starvel Tragedy (3/30) {academic loan / State Library NSW, Rare Books / Rare Books / Kindle upcoming}
(1924 - 1935) * / ***Francis D. Grierson - Inspector Sims and Professor Wells - The Zoo Murder (5/13) {owned}
(1924 - 1940) *Lynn Brock - Colonel Gore - Colonel Gore's Third Case: The Kink (3/12) {Kindle}
(1924 - 1933) *Herbert Adams - Jimmie Haswell - The Crooked Lip (2/9) {Rare Books}
(1924 - 1944) *A. Fielding - Inspector Pointer - The Charteris Mystery (2/23) {AbeBooks / Rare Books Kindle, Resurrected Press}
(1924 - 1928) **Ford Madox Ford - Parade's End - No More Parades (2/4) {ebook}
(1925 - 1961) ***John Rhode - Dr Priestley - Death In The Hopfields (25/72) {HathiTrust / State Library NSW, held}
(1925 - 1953) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Superintendent Wilson - The Murder At Crome House (4/?) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1925 - 1937) *Hulbert Footner - Madame Storey - Madame Storey (2/10) {mobilereads / Project Gutenberg Canada}
(1925 - 1932) *Earl Derr Biggers - Charlie Chan - The Chinese Parrot (2/6) {feedbooks}
(1925 - 1944) *Agatha Christie - Superintendent Battle - Towards Zero (5/5) {owned}
(1925 - 1934) *Anthony Berkeley - Roger Sheringham - The Second Shot (5/10) {academic loan / Rare Books}
(1925 - 1950) *Anthony Wynne (Robert McNair Wilson) - Dr Eustace Hailey - The Double-Thirteen Mystery (2/27) (aka "The Double Thirteen") {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1925 - 1939) *Charles Barry (Charles Bryson) - Inspector Lawrence Gilmartin - The Smaller Penny (1/15) {AbeBooks}
(1925 - 1929) **Will Scott - Will Disher - Disher--Detective (aka "The Black Stamp") (1/3) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1926 - 1968) * / ***Christopher Bush - Ludovic Travers - Murder At Fenwold (3/63) {Rare Books}
(1926 - 1939) *S. S. Van Dine - Philo Vance - The Greene Murder Case (3/12) {State Library, interlibrary loan / Fisher Library storage}
(1926 - 1952) *J. Jefferson Farjeon - Ben the Tramp - The House Opposite (2/8) {Kindle / State Library NSW, held}
(1926 - ????) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Everard Blatchington - Burglars In Bucks (aka "The Berkshire Mystery") (2/6) {Fisher Library}
(1927 - 1933) *Herman Landon - The Picaroon - The Picaroon Does Justice (2/7) {Book Searchers}
(1927 - 1932) *Anthony Armstrong - Jimmie Rezaire - The Secret Trail (2/5) {Kindle}
(1927 - 1937) *Ronald Knox - Miles Bredon - Footsteps At The Lock (2/5) {mobilereads}
(1927 - 1958) *Brian Flynn - Anthony Bathurst - The Case Of The Black Twenty-Two (2/54) {Amazon / Internet Archive}
(1927 - 1947) *J. J. Connington - Sir Clinton Driffield - Tragedy At Ravensthorpe (2/17) {Murder Room ebook / Kindle}
(1927 - 1935) *Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Scott Egerton - Death At Four Corners (3/10) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1927 - 1932) *William Morton (aka William Blair Morton Ferguson) - Daniel "Biff" Corrigan - Masquerade (1/4) {expensive}
(1927- 1929) **George Dilnot - Inspector Strickland - The Crooks' Game (1/2) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1928 - 1961) Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver - In The Balance (aka "Danger Point") (4/33) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}
(1928 - 1936) *Gavin Holt - Luther Bastion - The Garden Of Silent Beasts (5/17) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - ????) Trygve Lund - Weston of the Royal North-West Mounted Police - In The Snow: A Romance Of The Canadian Backwoods (4/?) {AbeBooks}
(1928 - 1936) *Kay Cleaver Strahan - Lynn MacDonald - October House (4/7) {AbeBooks}
(1928 - 1937) *John Alexander Ferguson - Francis McNab - Murder On The Marsh (2/5) {Internet Archive / Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - 1960) *Cecil Freeman Gregg - Inspector Higgins - The Murdered Manservant (aka "The Body In The Safe") (1/35) {rare, expensive}
(1928 - 1959) *John Gordon Brandon - Inspector Patrick Aloysius McCarthy - The Black Joss (2/53) {State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - 1935) *Roland Daniel - Wu Fang / Inspector Saville - Wu Fang (2/6) {expensive}
(1928 - 1946) *Francis Beeding - Alistair Granby - Pretty Sinister (2/18) {academic loan}
(1928 - 1930) **Annie Haynes - Inspector Stoddart - The Man With The Dark Beard (1/4) {Project Gutenberg Australia / Kindle}
(1928 - 1930) **Elsa Barker - Dexter Drake and Paul Howard - The Cobra Candlestick (aka "The Cobra Shaped Candlestick") (1/3) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1928 - ????) Adam Broome - Denzil Grigson - Crowner's Quest (2/?) {AbeBooks / eBay}
(1929 - 1947) Margery Allingham - Albert Campion - Death Of A Ghost (6/35) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1929 - 1984) Gladys Mitchell - Mrs Bradley - Death At The Opera (5/67) {interlibrary loan}
(1929 - 1937) ***Patricia Wentworth - Benbow Smith - Walk With Care (3/4) {Kindle}
(1929 - ????) Mignon Eberhart - Nurse Sarah Keate - Murder By An Aristocrat (aka "Murder Of My Patient") (5/8) {Rare Books / Kindle US / academic loan}
(1929 - ????) ***Moray Dalton - Inspector Collier - ???? (3/?) - Death In The Cup {unavailable}, The Wife Of Baal {unavailable}
(1929 - ????) * / ***Charles Reed Jones - Leighton Swift - The King Murder (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1931) Carolyn Wells - Kenneth Carlisle - Sleeping Dogs (1/3) {Amazon / eBay / Rare Books}
(1929 - 1967) *George Goodchild - Inspector McLean - McLean Of Scotland Yard (1/65) {State Library NSW, held}
(1929 - 1979) *Leonard Gribble - Anthony Slade - The Case Of The Marsden Rubies (1/33) {AbeBooks / Rare Books / re-check Kindle}
(1929 - 1932) *E. R. Punshon - Carter and Bell - The Unexpected Legacy (1/5) {expensive, omnibus / Rare Books}
(1929 - 1971) *Ellery Queen - Ellery Queen - The Roman Hat Mystery (1/40) {interlibrary loan}
(1929 - 1966) *Arthur Upfield - Bony - The Barrakee Mystery (1/29) {Fisher Library}
(1929 - 1931) *Ernest Raymond - Once In England - A Family That Was (1/3) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}
(1929 - 1937) *Anthony Berkeley - Ambrose Chitterwick - The Piccadilly Murder (2/3) {interlibrary loan}
(1929 - 1940) *Jean Lilly - DA Bruce Perkins - The Seven Sisters (1/3) {AbeBooks / expensive shipping}
(1929 - 1935) *N. A. Temple-Ellis (Nevile Holdaway) - Montrose Arbuthnot - The Inconsistent Villains (1/4) {AbeBooks / expensive shipping}
(1929 - 1943) *Gret Lane - Kate Clare Marsh and Inspector Barrin - The Cancelled Score Mystery (1/9) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1961) *Henry Holt - Inspector Silver - The Mayfair Mystery (aka "The Mayfair Murder") (1/16) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1930) *J. J. Connington - Superintendent Ross - The Eye In The Museum (1/2) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1941) *H. Maynard Smith - Inspector Frost - Inspector Frost's Jigsaw (1/7) {AbeBooks, omnibus}
(1929 - ????) *Armstrong Livingston - Jimmy Traynor - The Doublecross (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1932) Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson - Sir John Saumarez - Re-Enter Sir John (3/3) {Fisher Library storage}
(1929 - 1940) *Rufus King - Lieutenant Valcour - Murder By The Clock (1/11) {AbeBooks, omnibus / Kindle}
(1929 - 1933) *Will Levinrew (Will Levine) - Professor Brierly - Murder On The Palisades (2/5) {Rare Books}
(1929 - 1932) *Nancy Barr Mavity - Peter Piper - The Body On The Floor (1/5) {AbeBooks / Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
(1929 - 1934) *Charles J. Dutton - Professor Harley Manners - Streaked With Crimson (1/6) {AbeBooks / Amazon}

*** Incompletely available series
** Series complete pre-1931
* Present status pre-1931

Series and sequels 1930 - 1955:

(1930 - ????) ***Moray Dalton - Hermann Glide - ???? (3/?) {see above}
(1930 - 1932) Hugh Walpole - The Herries Chronicles - Vanessa (4/4) {Fisher Library storage}
(1930 - 1932) Faith Baldwin - The Girls Of Divine Corners - Myra: A Story Of Divine Corners (4/4) {owned}
(1930 - 1960) ***Miles Burton - Desmond Merrion - The Platinum Cat (17/57) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1960) ***Miles Burton - Inspector Henry Arnold - The Platinum Cat (18/57) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1933) ***Roger Scarlett - Inspector Kane - In The First Degree (5/5) {unavailable}
(1930 - 1941) *Harriette Ashbrook - Philip "Spike" Tracy - The Murder Of Sigurd Sharon (3/7) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1943) Anthony Abbot - Thatcher Colt - About The Murder Of The Night Club Lady (3/8) {AbeBooks / serialised}
(1930 - ????) ***David Sharp - Professor Fielding - None Of My Business (3/?) {owned}
(1930 - 1950) *H. C. Bailey - Josiah Clunk - Garstons aka The Garston Murder Case (1/11) {HathiTrust}
(1930 - 1968) *Francis Van Wyck Mason - Hugh North - The Vesper Service Murders (2/41) {Kindle}
(1930 - 1976) *Agatha Christie - Miss Jane Marple - The Body In The Library (3/12) {owned}
(1930 - ????) *Anne Austin - James "Bonnie" Dundee - Murder Backstairs (2/?) - {Kindle}
(1930 - 1950) *Leslie Ford (as David Frome) - Mr Pinkerton and Inspector Bull - The Hammersmith Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1930 - 1935) *"Diplomat" (John Franklin Carter) - Dennis Tyler - Murder In The State Department (1/7) {Amazon / Abebooks}
(1930 - 1962) *Helen Reilly - Inspector Christopher McKee - The Diamond Feather (1/31) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1933) *Mary Plum - John Smith - The Killing Of Judge MacFarlane (1/4) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1930 - 1945) *Hulbert Footner - Amos Lee Mappin - The Mystery Of The Folded Paper (aka The Folded Paper Mystery (1/10) {mobilereads / omnibus}
(1930 - 1940) *E. M. Delafield - The Provincial Lady - The Provincial Lady In Wartime (4/4) {Fisher Library}
(1930 - 1933) *Monte Barrett - Peter Cardigan - The Pelham Murder Case (1/3) {Amazon}
(1930 - ????) Vernon Loder - Inspector Brews and Ned Hope - Death Of An Editor (2/2) {Kindle}

(1931 - 1940) Bruce Graeme - Superintendent Stevens and Pierre Allain - An International Affair (3/8) {AbeBooks}
(1931 - 1940) Bruce Graeme - Superintendent Stevens - Epilogue (1/?) {owned}
(1931 - 1951) Phoebe Atwood Taylor - Asey Mayo - The Mystery Of The Cape Cod Players (3/24) {AbeBooks / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1955) Stuart Palmer - Hildegarde Withers - Murder On Wheels (2/18) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1951) Olive Higgins Prouty - The Vale Novels - Now, Voyager (3/5) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1931 - 1933) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cleveland - Arresting Delia (4/4) {Book Depository / Rare Books / online}
(1931 - 1934) J. H. Wallis - Inspector Wilton Jacks - The Capital City Mystery (2/6) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1931 - ????) Paul McGuire - Inspector Cummings - Daylight Murder (aka "Murder At High Noon") (3/5) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1937) Carlton Dawe - Leathermouth - The Sign Of The Glove (2/13) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1947) R. L. Goldman - Asaph Clume and Rufus Reed - Murder Without Motive (2/6) {Wildside Press}
(1931 - 1959) E. C. R. Lorac (Edith Caroline Rivett) - Inspector Robert Macdonald - The Murder On The Burrows (1/46) {rare, expensive}
(1931 - ????) Clifton Robbins - Clay Harrison - The Man Without A Face (2/?) {owned}
(1931 - 1972) Georges Simenon - Inspector Maigret - Un Crime en Hollande (8/75) {interlibrary loan}
(1931 - 1934) T. S. Stribling - The Vaiden Trilogy - The Store (2/3) {academic loan / State Library, held}
(1931 - 1935) Pearl S. Buck - The House Of Earth - Sons (2/3) {Fisher Library}
(1931 - 1942) R. A. J. Walling - Garstang - The Stroke Of One (1/3) {Amazon}
(1931 - ????) Francis Bonnamy (Audrey Boyers Walz) - Peter Utley Shane - Death By Appointment (1/8){AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1931 - 1937) J. S. Fletcher - Ronald Camberwell - Murder In The Squire's Pew (3/11) {Kindle / State Library NSW, held}

(1932 - 1954) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cambridge and Mr Jellipot - The Bell Street Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1932 - 1935) Murray Thomas - Inspector Wilkins - Buzzards Pick The Bones (1/3) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1932 - ????) R. A. J. Walling - Philip Tolefree - Prove It, Mr Tolefree (aka The Tolliver Case) (3/22) {AbeBooks}
(1932 - 1962) T. Arthur Plummer - Detective-Inspector Andrew Frampton - Shadowed By The C. I. D. (1/50) {unavailable?}
(1932 - 1936) John Victor Turner - Amos Petrie - Death Must Have Laughed (1/7) {Rare Books}
(1932 - 1944) Nicholas Brady (John Victor Turner) - Ebenezer Buckle - The House Of Strange Guests (1/4) {Kindle}
(1932 - 1932) Lizette M. Edholm - The Merriweather Girls - The Merriweather Girls At Good Old Rockhill (4/4) {HathiTrust}
(1932 - 1933) Barnaby Ross (aka Ellery Queen) - Drury Lane - The Tragedy Of Z (3/4) {Rare Books}
(1932 - 1952) D. E. Stevenson - Mrs Tim - Mrs Tim Flies Home (5/5) {interlibrary loan}
(1932 - ????) Richard Essex (Richard Harry Starr) - Jack Slade - Slade Of The Yard (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1932 - 1933) Gerard Fairlie - Mr Malcolm - Shot In The Dark (1/3) (State Library NSW, held}

(1933 - 1959) John Gordon Brandon - Arthur Stukeley Pennington - West End! (1/?) {AbeBooks / State Library, held}
(1933 - 1940) Lilian Garis - Carol Duncan - The Ghost Of Melody Lane (1/9) {AbeBooks}
(1933 - 1934) Peter Hunt (George Worthing Yates and Charles Hunt Marshall) - Allan Miller - Murders At Scandal House (1/3) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1933 - 1968) John Dickson Carr - Gideon Fell - Hag's Nook (1/23) {Better World Books / State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}
(1933 - 1939) Gregory Dean - Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Simon - The Case Of Marie Corwin (1/3) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1933 - 1956) E. R. Punshon - Detective-Sergeant Bobby Owen - Information Received (1/35) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held / Rare Books}
(1933 - 1970) Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richlieu - The Forbidden Territory (1/11) {Fisher Library}
(1933 - 1934) Jackson Gregory - Paul Savoy - A Case For Mr Paul Savoy (1/3) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1933 - 1957) John Creasey - Department Z - The Death Miser (1/28) {State Library NSW, held}
(1934 - 1936) Storm Jameson - The Mirror In Darkness - Company Parade (1/3) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1953) Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown) - Colonel John Primrose and Grace Latham - The Clock Strikes Twelve (aka "The Supreme Court Murder") (NB: novella) {owned}
(1934 - 1949) Richard Goyne - Paul Templeton - Strange Motives (1/13) {unavailable?}
(1934 - 1941) N. A. Temple-Ellis (Nevile Holdaway) - Inspector Wren - Three Went In (1/3) {unavailable?}
(1934 - 1953) Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr) - Sir Henry Merivale - The Plague Court Murders (1/22) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1968) Dennis Wheatley - Gregory Sallust - Black August (1/11) {interlibrary loan / omnibus}
(1935 - 1939) Francis Beeding - Inspector George Martin - The Norwich Victims (1/3) {AbeBooks / Book Depository / State Library NSW, held}
(1935 - 1976) Nigel Morland - Palmyra Pym - The Moon Murders (1/28) {State Library NSW, held}
(1935 - 1941) Clyde Clason - Professor Theocritus Lucius Westborough - The Fifth Tumbler (1/10) {unavailable?}
(1935 - ????) G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Dr Tancred - Dr Tancred Begins (1/?) (AbeBooks, expensive / State Library NSW, held / Rare Books}
(1935 - ????) George Harmon Coxe - Kent Murdock - Murder With Pictures (1/22) {AbeBooks}
(1935 - 1959) Kathleen Moore Knight - Elisha Macomber - Death Blew Out The Match (1/16) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1936 - 1974) Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Arthur Crook - Murder By Experts (1/51) {interlibrary loan}
(1936 - 1952) Helen Dore Boylston - Sue Barton - Sue Barton, Student Nurse (1/7) {interlibrary loan}
(1939 - 1942) Patricia Wentworth - Inspector Lamb - Who Pays The Piper? (aka "Account Rendered") (2/3) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}
(1947 - 1974) Dennis Wheatley - Roger Brook - The Launching Of Roger Brook (1/12) {Fisher Library storage}
(1948 - 1971) E. V. Timms - The Gubbys - Forever To Remain (1/12) {Fisher Library / interlibrary loan}
(1953 - 1960) Dennis Wheatley - Molly Fountain and Colonel Verney - To The Devil A Daughter (1/2) {Fisher Library storage}
(1955 - 1956) D. E. Stevenson - The Ayrton Family - Summerhills (2/2) {interlibrary loan}

*** Incompletely available series
** Series complete pre-1931
* Present status pre-1931

Unavailable series works*:

John Rhode - Dr Priestley
The Paddington Mystery (#1)
Tragedy At The Unicorn (#5)
The Hanging Woman (#11)

Christopher Bush - Ludovic Travers
The Plumley Inheritance (#1)

Moray Dalton - Inspector Collier
>#3 onwards (to end of series)

Moray Dalton - Hermann Glide
>#3 onwards (to end of series)

Miles Burton - Desmond Merrion / Inspector Arnold
>everything from #2 - #11 inclusive

David Sharp - Professor Fielding
When No Man Pursueth (#1)

Francis D. Grierson - Inspector Sims and Professor Wells
Secret Judges (#2)
The Double Thumb (#3)

Roger Scarlett - Inspector Kane
>#4 onwards (to end of series)

Tom Strong - Alfred Bishop Mason
Tom Strong, Boy-Captain (#2)
Tom Strong, Junior (#3)
Tom Strong, Third (#4)

Wu Fang - Roland Daniel
The Society Of The Spiders (#1)

(*Treating works held by my academic library's Rare Books section as 'available')

Timeline of detective fiction:

Pre-history:
Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams by William Godwin (1794)
Mademoiselle de Scudéri by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1819)
Richmond: Scenes In The Life Of A Bow Street Officer by Anonymous (1827)
Memoirs Of Vidocq by Eugene Francois Vidocq (1828)
Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac (1835)
Passages In The Secret History Of An Irish Countess by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1838); The Purcell Papers (1880)
The Murders In The Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (1841, 1842, 1845)

Serials:
The Mysteries Of Paris by Eugene Sue (1842 - 1843)
The Mysteries Of London - Paul Feval (1844) (Internet Archive, R. Stephenson)
The Mysteries Of London - George Reynolds (1844 - 1848)
The Mysteries Of The Court Of London - George Reynolds (1848 - 1856)
John Devil by Paul Feval (1861)

Early detective novels:
Recollections Of A Detective Police-Officer by "Waters" (William Russell) (1856)
The Widow Lerouge by Emile Gaboriau (1866)
Under Lock And Key by T. W. Speight (1869)
Checkmate by J. Sheridan LeFanu (1871)
Is He The Man? by William Clark Russell (1876)
Devlin The Barber by B. J. Farjeon (1888)
Mr Meeson's Will by H. Rider Haggard (1888)
The Mystery Of A Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume (1889)
The Queen Anne's Gate Mystery by Richard Arkwright (1889)
The Ivory Queen by Norman Hurst (1889) (Check Julius H. Hurst 1899)
The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill (1892)

Female detectives:
The Diary Of Anne Rodway by Wilkie Collins (1856)
The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester (1864)
Revelations Of A Lady Detective by William Stephens Hayward (1864)
The Law And The Lady by Wilkie Collins (1875)
Madeline Payne; or, The Detective's Daughter by Lawrence L. Lynch (Emma Murdoch Van Deventer) (1884)
Mr Bazalgette's Agent by Leonard Merrick (1888)
Moina; or, Against The Mighty by Lawrence L. Lynch (Emma Murdoch Van Deventer) (sequel to Madeline Payne?) (1891)
The Experiences Of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by Catherine Louisa Pirkis (1893)
Dorcas Dene, Detective by George Sims (1897)
- Amelia Butterworth series by Anna Katharine Grant (1897 - 1900)
Miss Cayley's Adventures by Grant Allan (1899)
Hilda Wade by Grant Allan (1900)
Dora Myrl, The Lady Detective by M. McDonnel Bodkin (1900)
The Investigators by J. S. Fletcher (1902)
Lady Molly Of Scotland Yard by Baroness Orczy (1910)
Constance Dunlap, Woman Detective by Arthur B. Reeve (1913)

Related mainstream works:
Adventures Of Susan Hopley by Catherine Crowe (1841)
Men And Women; or, Manorial Rights by Catherine Crowe (1843)
Hargrave by Frances Trollope (1843)
Clement Lorimer by Angus Reach (1849)

True crime:
Clues: or, Leaves from a Chief Constable's Note Book by Sir William Henderson (1889)
Dreadful Deeds And Awful Murders by Joan Lock

Books currently on loan:



        

Reading projects:

Blog:

        

  

Other projects:

        

      

Short-list TBR:

        

        

The other day I sat down and (for want of anything else remotely constructive to do) gave my TBRs a thorough overhaul; finally putting together a definitive "I *will* draw a line through 1931!" list, and another of series that have previously been put aside for one reason or another.

Given how long I've lived with my OCD, it's curious to note that I'm occasionally still surprised by the weirdly intense rush of satisfaction I get when I stop doing things more or less randomly, and can instead consult A LIST...

So how badly do I want to read Anne Austin's The Avenging Parrot?

Badly enough to sign up for one week's free trial of newspapers.com (note to self: don't forget to unsubscribe!) and use it to access those newspapers from late 1929 - early 1930 in which this novel was serialised...

Both in its original edition and its later reissue by the sometimes dodgy Resurrection Press, copies of The Avenging Parrot are ridiculously expensive, and I've been going around in circles about this book for months; so it's nice to find another option!

Mind you---while I say "unsubscribe", I need to keep in mind that this may well prove a good source of obscure American mysteries from the 20s and 30s, and might be worth a proper subscription.

And while I'm blathering on, I should again let everyone know that there will be a group read of Anthony Trollope's The Prime Minister beginning the first weekend in November.

I'm so excited! :)

Happy new thread, Liz!

Happy New Thread, Liz!

I have the orange dress cover of A Civil Contract. And I am also proof that one can change one's mind. I hated it in my 20s when I first read it, but I think now that I very much appreciate the connection between Adam and Jenny and often want to strangle/slap Julia silly these days. Good review!

Is there a library near you with a Newspapers.com subscription? I know genealogy libraries often have it. If the library lets you save articles to a flash drive, you could collect the full run of the story and take it home to read without having to pay printing fees.

>16 lyzard: I do like AJ Cronin who is much neglected these days.

Have a lovely Sunday, Liz, and happy new thread.

>18 lyzard:, >22 casvelyn: Or at least make the subscription even more worth the cost: do a little searching for articles with your family surnames in their hometown papers--you never know what you can find in obscure newspapers!

Happy new thread, Liz!

>20 harrygbutler:

Thanks, Harry! BTW, my Mrs Baillie Reynolds book turned out to be a very odd duck... :)

>21 ronincats:

Hi, Roni! Yes, I do find it's one of those where opinions often shift as readers get older. Are you saying you didn't *always* want to slap Julia?? :D

>22 casvelyn:

Unfortunately I'm in the wrong country! I do have access to digitised copies of old local papers through our library system (and those sometimes have serialised British novels), but I can't get direct access to the American databases. The same with the HathiTrust, which is often frustrating because they have a lot of digitised novels not freely available.

>23 PaulCranswick:

Hi, Paul - thanks! Cronin is one of those rare authors where I've seen more of the films than I've read the books, so I'm glad to finally be getting to him.

>24 kac522:

My sister's the genealogist---I leave all that to her! She's done a very good job exposing the shocking family secrets we were always lied to about... :)

>25 scaifea:

Hi, Amber - thank you!

Happy new thread!

Thanks, Rachel!

Finished The Girl From Nowhere for TIOLI #12.

Now reading, yes, The Avenging Parrot by Anne Austin.

>26 lyzard: That stinks! As a librarian, I'm supposed to help people get the books they need, but I'm also not supposed to help people break copyright laws. So I guess I could split the difference and download and email you half of every novel. :)

You may have tried the following already, but helping people track down books is kind of an occupational hazard obsession:

If you're really desperate, you might try a Family History Center/Centre. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has them everywhere all over the world. They might look at you funny if you tell them you aren't there to do genealogy, but they usually have some sort of newspaper database, even in countries outside the US. Not every center offers every database, though.

For novels that ran in American papers, have you tried Chronicling America? http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ I believe it's available worldwide, but being in the US, I haven't had to test that theory. I know some of the smaller papers would run the same novels as the bigger papers, because I've seen them when I've been doing research for my patrons.

Internet Archive is also helpful, but once again I don't know about access outside the US. Their interface drives me up a wall, though.

Aside: I hate it when a database advertises that it has "historic newspapers" and then you realize the earliest date covered is from the mid-1990s.

Happy new thread, Liz! Those barking owls are handsome fellows indeed. Very mysterious looking in their (perhaps not quite) 50 shades of gray.

>30 casvelyn:

You shouldn't tempt me like that! :D

Thank you for the tip about Chronicling America, I wasn't familiar with that. I do sometimes read books online through Internet Archive.

>31 rosalita:

Thanks, Julia! Yes, they're wonderfully patterned, aren't they?

Well! That was...interesting.

Of course it turned out that there was no one complete set of newspapers serialising The Avenging Parrot available online, so I've spent the day toggling.

However---between (predominantly) The Pittsburgh Press, The Bend Bulletin and The Daily Plainsman, we've got the job done!

So, finished The Avenging Parrot for TIOLI #9.

Now reading Seventeen by Booth Tarkington.

Happy new thread Liz!

>33 lyzard: That was a lot of searching to finish a book ;-)

Thanks, Anita, and thanks for visiting! :)

Yes, it's strange, really: I often have to "let books go" because of expense or unavailability; but I just got a bee in my bonnet about this one!

Finished Seventeen for TIOLI #1.

Now reading False Colours by Georgette Heyer.

Ooh, is False Colours our next after The Nonesuch? I'll have to dig it out.

It is; and in fact---

ATTENTION!! ATTENTION!!

Some of you might remember that, months ago, I declared that I had found THE WORST GEORGETTE HEYER COVER EVER...but meant to save it until we were up to that book.

Well---we're there.

Presenting---

THE WORST GEORGETTE HEYER COVER EVER!!!!





Congratulations, Penguin: you must be very proud...

Oh.

Oh, dear.

That is ... that is ... I don't even have the words for what that is.

It seems to revel — no, wallow! — in its horribleness.

Also, that appears to be an actual photo. Which means actual people had to dress up in those costumes and re-enact it. No wonder he's smirking and she is hiding her face.

It's really something, isn't it?? I'm not sure what, but something...

I can't help but admire the way it manages to combine all of our usual objections---did not read the book and who are these people? and wrong time period---with a whole new level of cringing repulsiveness.

The live-action component, though--- That makes it truly special.

It's like the art director said, "How many different ways can we screw this up?" and then the staff kept challenging themselves to come up with more and more.

And finally there's the fact that the art director, the staff and the models...GOT PAID.

ACTUAL money! Can you tell if it's specific to Penguin in a specific country? Then we'd know what currency they were overpaid in.

It's a British edition from 1966. (Possibly we can blame this on the fallout from Tom Jones winning Best Picture a couple of years earlier...?)

>38 lyzard: LOL!

Usually Penguin is pretty good with covers. Who snuck in and did that one?

Belated happy new thread Liz! Very excited about The Prime Minister read and also that I think I have managed to join in with a shared read with you for the first time in ages because I'm reading Murder is Easy!

>38 lyzard: That is a truly awful cover!

>19 lyzard:, >46 souloftherose: I lost track of your thread, Liz, but Heather just sent me details about reading The Prime Minister. I am so excited! During your Trollope hiatus, I started the Palliser novels and enjoyed following the group read threads alongside the book. I'm now caught up, having just finished Phineas Redux the other day, and I hope to review it soon. Count me in for The Prime Minister!!

>45 jnwelch:

I know! I was shocked at that too.

>46 souloftherose:

Thanks, Heather!

Whoo!! I've been missing our shared reads very much. :)

It's truly terrible, isn't it? :D

>47 lauralkeet:

That's great, Laura!

Hi Liz! All caught up here. Trollope in November! And awful book covers! I love this thread!

Hi, Carrie! I like to cater to a variety of tastes. :D

So good to hear you'll be joining us in November!

You know, if someone doesn't get stabbed in the back in this book, I'm going to be REALLY disappointed:


    

Not to worry; pg 18:

    "Mr McGuffie," I began, but then stopped.
    What was that thing in the collar of his coat? I bent forward and felt as though I had swallowed a lump of ice.
    The thing that stuck out was the handle of a knife, and the blade was buried in the man's neck, high up on the right side...

I would hardly call the blade on the left "buried."

That one looks like someone was trying to annoy him, not kill him! :D

"I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you! I'm not... oh crap!"

ETA: I'm not good with spatial reasoning, but if I arrange myself like the decedent on the right, I'm fairly certain the knife is on the left, narrative from page 18 notwithstanding.

:D

But hey, I got the stabbing I was demanding, so I guess I can't sweat the spatial and biological inaccuracies.

Finished False Colours for TIOLI #3.

Now reading The Five Flamboys by Francis Beeding.

Amberwell - D. E. Stevenson's 1955 novel is a story of family, but one focusing upon sibling relationships rather than those between parent and child. As with sections of Stevenson's "Mrs Tim" series, Amberwell is set in the Scottish lowlands, an area she obviously knew and loved, at the estate founded in in mid-18th century by William Ayrton, who made his fortune in India. When the novel opens Amberwell in the possession of another William Ayrton, his second wife, and his five children: two boys from his first marriage, Roger and Thomas, and three younger girls from his second, Connie, Nell and Anne. Mr and Mrs Ayrton are the kind of parents who believe that children should be seen and not heard, and preferably not seen either: a situation which teaches the siblings to depend upon each other. The bonds that form between them in childhood will hold them together as adults and carry them through the tragedies and hardships of war... Though its focus remains characterisation, Amberwell is a novel of change, treating its Ayrton family as a microcosm via which to examine the prevailing social mores of the 20s and 30s and the upheaval wrought upon them both by time itself and by the realities of war---though the war itself is seen only obliquely, not directly but through its impact on the hitherto comfortable and privileged Ayrtons. Stevenson also has some tart things to say about the position of women in the pre-war society, not least in the subplot of the embittered Beatrice Ayrton, who was banished from her home when her brother William inherited Amberwell, and whose brooding unhappiness has a drastic impact upon the life of the youngest Ayrton, Anne. The fate of Anne, thrown off by her resentful parents after her impulsive marriage, is starkly contrasted with that of the smug and conventional Connie. Ultimately, however, it is the overlooked Nell who emerges as the book's focus. Shy and self-doubting, accustomed to a life of both isolation and constant surveillance by her querulous and selfish mother, Nell must find new reserves of strength and endurance in order to deal with the responsibilities that fall upon her shoulders when she is left to hold Amberwell and the family together following the enlistment of Roger and Thomas, and then the death of William...

    "We've all grown up at Amberwell and as long as I'm alive Amberwell will continue to be home for all of us... Nell will go on being the boss; she's doing a splendid job, you'll agree. Goodness knows what would have happened to Amberwell without Nell." Roger paused and looked round. "Then there's Anne. I intend to find Anne if I possibly can."
    "Anne!" exclaimed Connie. "Father said we weren't to have anything more to do with her. She's chosen her own way. She's cut herself off from everybody."
    "She was cut off," said Nell in a low voice...
    "But you'll have to ask Mother," objected Connie. "And I know what she'll say."
    Gerald leaned forward and put his hand on her knee. "You don't understand," he said. "Amberwell doesn't belong to your mother..."
    Connie looked bewildered, and somewhat annoyed. She said, "Well, I think it's rather---rather horrid to talk like this when Father has just died."
    "I don't," declared Tom. "Roger is right to talk straight out and say what he means. Then we know where we stand. This family would have been a lot better if there had been more straight talk,"
    "Oh, yes!" said Nell with feeling.

Daaaaaag-NABBIT!!!!

I have yet again fallen for the alphabetical order vs publication order trick.

Sigh.

Anyway---finished The Five Flamboys for TIOLI #6.

Now reading From Beowulf To Virginia Woolf by Robert Manson Myers.

Sorry for the midadventure in series order.

Inquiring minds want to know: What's a flamboy?

A medieval word for a torch (the burning kind), from the French flambeau; it was a symbol of progress.

That said, our "Flamboys" are taking over Romania in order to line their own pockets via oil exploitation before selling the country out to the Soviets, so progress is a bit questionable...

Francis Beeding has a thing for floridly named secret societies where the name really doesn't have anything to do with the plot.

Floridly named secret societies, eh? Beeding sounds like the Dan Brown of his day.

He* is a much better writer! That is to say, I don't know that his plots are any more believable, but you believe them while you're reading, which is what you want from a thriller, right??

(*"He" = John Leslie Palmer and Hilary St George Saunders)

Indeed!

Emma - Jane Austen challenges her readers from the outset with the character of Emma Woodhouse - "handsome, clever and rich" - who dominates this complex and subtly humorous novel, a Bildungsroman in which painful life-lessons will lead its heroine to new self-knowledge. It is not difficult to imagine the surprise that Emma caused contemporary readers, accustomed to fictional heroines who were lifelessly perfect; while modern readers struggle with Emma's almost shockingly foregrounded faults---her vanity, officiousness and snobbery. Such is Austen's art, however, that she manages to hold our attention and sympathy while unfolding around her deeply flawed heroine a nuanced portrait of the society that produced her, and of the stifling restrictions that existed for a young woman of Emma's age and social standing. Intelligent, energetic and outgoing, Emma yet stands before as as a girl with nowhere to go, few friends her own age, and very little to do with her time. Driven back upon herself, Emma indulges an active, even overactive imagination: a habit that ceases to be a harmless pastime when her egotism leads her confuse her wish-fulfillment fantasies with actual judgement, and to try and force real life to coincide with her imaginings. In this, Austen returns to a theme that she first addressed in Northanger Abbey (published later, but written many years earlier), warning of the dangers, not of imagination, as such, but of allowing it to intrude upon the realities and duties of life. In Emma, however, this theme is handled much more seriously, with Emma's actions having consequences far beyond a few moments of personal humiliation, and for others beside herself. The most disturbing aspect of this novel is the dangerously unbalanced relationship that develops between Emma and the pretty but unintelligent Harriet Smith, who is dignified with the title of "friend", but is treated like a life-sized doll, played with, posed and forced into whatever position Emma chooses. Having ruthlessly prevented Harriet's marriage to a young farmer---for Harriet's own good, Emma tells herself, but in fact because she doesn't want to give up her new toy---Emma sets about making her the focus of a series of matchmaking schemes, each more ill-judged than the last; until finally she is confronted with the appalling realisation that in encouraging Harriet in vanity and ambition, she may inadvertently have lost her own chance at happiness... Emma's meddling forms a thread that runs through Austen's narrative of daily life in and around the village of Highbury, an area populated by some of the author's most wonderful characters, from the self-obsessed Mr Woodhouse, to the hilariously logorrheic Miss Bates, to the ghastly Mrs Elton (who is, in effect, Emma's evil twin), to the steadfast and insightful Mr Knightley. (Another point of connection with Northanger Abbey is the tacit presentation of a man with a sense of humour as not merely attractive, but sexy.) Life in Highbury, ordinarily numbingly dull, is disrupted - pleasantly and otherwise - by a series of rare events. Jane Fairfax, the granddaughter and niece of, respectively, Mrs and Miss Bates, the widow and daughter of the previous vicar, returns for a visit after a two-year absence. Knowing that she is destined for a dreary life as a governess, and prompted both by Mr Knightley's urgings and her own conscience, Emma tries to get over her instinctive resentment of the "perfect" Jane, but soon finds herself provoked by her wary reticence into weaving about her a series of lurid fantasies. The arrival of Mrs Elton, the new bride of the Reverend Mr Elton, is painful for Emma, a constant reminder of the embarrassing failure of her first matchmaking scheme; and it is with relief that she turns her attention to another new arrival, Frank Weston Churchill. The grown son of the popular Mr Weston, Frank was surrendered as a child to the wealthy relatives of his mother following her early death, but has made his father's remarriage the occasion of a long-expected but frequently put-off visit. Frank has always been viewed as "belonging" to Highbury; even, perhaps, as "belonging" to Miss Woodhouse; and when she discovers that the young man is not only handsome and lively, but perfectly ready to admire and flirt with her, Emma finds herself mentally toying with the idea of marriage But many things are going on in Highbury that are beyond Emma's ken; and several severe shocks lie in wait for her: shocks that will teach her to know her own mind and heart...

    Emma continued to entertain no doubt of her being in love with Frank Churchill. Her ideas only varied as to how much... Though thinking of him so much, and, as she sat drawing or working, forming a thousand amusing schemes for the progress and close of their attachment, fancying interesting dialogues, and inventing elegant letters, the conclusion of every imaginary declaration on his side was that she refused him. Their affection was always to subside into friendship. Every thing tender and charming was to mark their parting; but still they were to part. When she became sensible of this, it struck her that she could not be very much in love; for in spite of her previous and fixed determination never to quit her father, never to marry, a strong attachment certainly must produce more of a struggle than she could foresee in her own feelings.
    “I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice,” said she.---“In not one of all my clever replies, my delicate negatives, is there any allusion to making a sacrifice. I do suspect that he is not really necessary to my happiness. So much the better. I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be more.”
    Upon the whole, she was equally contented with her view of his feelings.
    “He is undoubtedly very much in love---every thing denotes it---very much in love indeed!---and when he comes again, if his affection continue, I must be on my guard not to encourage it..."

Harriet Smith, who is dignified with the title of "friend", but is treated like a life-sized doll, played with, posed and forced into whatever position Emma chooses.

Oh, spot on with that description, Liz! That exactly captures the unhealthy dynamic between them.

What a review of Emma! Thanks, Liz. Please post it so I can thumb it. Like Julia, I'm smitten with that line. Harriet is treated like a life-sized doll, played with, posed and forced into whatever position Emma chooses. Love it!

>66 rosalita:, >67 jnwelch:

Aw, thanks, guys! :)

Finished From Beowulf To Virginia Woolf for TIOLI #12.

Now reading Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison.

BUT---because my copy of Deathbird Stories has such teeny, teeny font that I can only read it during the daytime---also now reading Death Of An Editor by Vernon Loder.

TFW...

...you press "ORDER" when really, you were still thinking about it...

Dead Man Twice - I enjoyed The Perfect Murder Case, a complicated mystery of alibi-cracking, which was the first Ludovic Travers book I read (not the first in the series, though, which is effectively unobtainable), but this 1930 mystery was rather irritating. Part of the problem is a lack of focus, with three different police inspectors, two private detectives and the amateur Travers all interesting themselves in the death of Michael France, expected to become the next heavyweight champion of the world; the narrative is, not surprisingly, all over the place. Another problem the novel's fascination with France himself, and the class implications of the character (he is a prize-fighter and yet a gentleman---HOW CAN SUCH THINGS BE!?), which are given more prominence than the working out of the mystery really requires. We also have the charming touch of a second murder being committed, when France's butler falls into a fatal trap meant for his employer, and presumably because the victim is a servant, everyone just shrugs and moves on. The apparent suicide of Michael France, at the height of his fame and on the eve of his departure for America, to fight for the world title, seems inexplicable---yet there is an unforged note - granted, by the butler's body, not France's own - and the trouble taken by France to be alone in his house on the fatal Sunday, including faked indications that he was going away for the weekend. On the other hand, threatening letters and an attempted break-in in the weeks prior to France's death suggest an enemy with a grudge---or perhaps, given the contradictory trails of evidence identified by investigators, two enemies with grudges. With the question of whether France's part or present was responsible for his death, attention begins to focus on the dynamic between the dead man, his best friend and financial backer, Peter Claire (who is a racing-car driver and a gentleman, which is apparently permissible), and Claire's wife, Dorothy. Claire himself has a solid alibi, however, which brings into prominence the final member of the ménage: France's secretary, Kenneth Hayles. Shy, nervous, and worshipfully in love with Dorothy - much to the others' amusement - the retiring Hayles seems an unlikely murderer---but there is still a need to explain the odd, secretive behaviour and seemingly unnecessary lies that attract Travers' notice to him in the first place...

    Hayles looked as if he'd blundered by accident into the Zoo. "I'm afraid I don't quite---er---"
    "That's all right!" Wharton said reassuringly. "We just want you to help us. You see, since you were here last, things have been happening...here...in this house. Mr France is dead!"
    "Dead... How?"
    "Shot himself---in his bedroom."
    Hayles drew in his breath and his eyes opened wide.
    "And that's not all. Somers is dead, too. He poisoned himself---in the lounge." Wharton paused for several seconds with his eyes full on Hayles' face, then he went on deliberately, "That's why we want to see you."
    Franklin leaped forward, but he was too late. Hayles gave a sort of moan and lurched sideways in the chair, then slithered to the ground in a dead faint.

The Mystery Girl - Life is being good to John Waring, who wins a hotly contested election for President of certain New England college, and who is shortly to be married to the attractive and warm-hearted young widow, Emily Bates. But things change when a young woman arrives at the boarding-house run by Mr and Mrs Adams. Although her name is Anita Austin, her cold exterior and her refusal to explain her presence in the town of Corinth sees her dubbed "the Mystery Girl" by her annoyed yet intrigued fellow lodgers. Most people find her attitude offensive, but old Mr Adams takes a shine to her, siding with her when his wife threatens to turn her out; the feckless Pinckney 'Pinky' Payne, Emily Bates' cousin, is immediately infatuated; while Gordon Lockwood, John Waring's secretary, finds himself strongly drawn to her. At a lecture given by Waring, the girl's interest in him is evident; and when Pinky invites her to tea with Waring and Emily, it is evident that the President-elect is strongly effected by her presence. Matters reach a crisis when, one night, a cold snap one night preserves Anita's footprints in the snow, leading to and from John Waring's study---the room in which he is found stabbed to death. No weapon is found by the body, yet the study is locked from the inside... The 'locked room' aspect of the mystery and the eventual explanation of the circumstances of John Waring's death (and Wells plays fair for once: no secret passage!) are the best parts of The Mystery Girl, which otherwise is one of the weakest of Carolyn Wells' Fleming Stone stories. Possibly this is an outsider's view, but a college presidency seems inadequate motive for what happens in this story; while the "secret" connection between Anita and John Waring is so screamingly obvious, you feel like tearing your hair out at the other characters' obtuseness. The other issue here, not at all an uncommon one in fiction of this period but none the less exasperating for that, is the use of a foreign servant as red herring---in this case, Waring's trainee Japanese butler, who is automatically suspect because, you know, FOREIGNER!! (Granted, he disappears in the wake of Waring's death, though amusingly it turns out he ran away for fear of being suspected---because, you know, FOREIGNER!!) This is one of the "Fleming Stone" stories in which Stone's teenage sidekick, 'Fibsy' McGuire, actually does all the work, including solving the mystery of the missing weapon, and so answering the fundamental question of whether John Waring's death is murder or suicide...

    "No," agreed Stone. "If that were all, why the mystery about her home and family? I understand she has given several contradictory statements as to where she really lives."
    "She has," assented Lockwood. "But may not it be just a twist of her humorous nature? I assure you she is roguishly inclined---"
    "No; it isn't a joke," Fibsy said, frowning at the thought. "She's got a real secret, a mystery that means a whole lot to her,---and prob'ly to other people. Well, F. Stone, I guess it's up to me to go out and seek her people." He sighed deeply. "I hate to leave the seat of war, but I gotta do it. Nobody else could ever ferret out the antecedents and general family doings of Miss Mystery but Yours Truly. And this is no idle boast. I'm going out for the goods and I'll fetch home the bacon."

Whitehall (reissue title: The Falcon) - As Charles II tries to negotiate a secret pact with Louis XIV, requiring his own public conversion to Catholicism and a declaration of war against the Dutch in exchange for unlimited wealth and the unlimited power that comes with it, his actions are repeatedly thwarted by a band of loyalists led by a mysterious figure known only as the Falcon. The carrying of messages between Charles and Louis is entrusted to the brave but profligate Chevalier de Toqueville and Father Papin, a Jesuit. Various details make the priest suspect that the Falcon may be Sir Richard Somerset, a hanger-on at Charles' court at Whitehall; although he has trouble convincing his co-conspirators that the apparently amiable but unintelligent Sir Richard could be the dangerous pirate of the Channel. However, with the Falcon continuing to impede the French agents' mission, Papin devises a plot to strike back at what he believes to be their enemy's most vulnerable point: his new bride, Lady Anne... This 1931 novel by the Australian author, Edward Vivian Timms, is a fair historical romance with lots of derring-do and hair's-breadth escapes, although - as even this brief synopsis makes evident - it owes FAR too much to The Scarlet Pimpernel, right down to the central estrangement between its hero and his wife. (Why do these men marry women they can't trust with their secret? Why do they marry at all??) Sadly enough, irritating women who drive the plot through their stupid decisions seem to be a Timms specialty - I had the same problem with his Alicia Deane - and, true to form, Anne Somerset goes mighty close to getting her husband killed and handing England over to France before she's done. Otherwise, although it succeeds in creating a powerful vision of the corruption, manoeuvring and false glamour of Charles' court, the outstanding feature of Whitehall is Timms' absolute hostility towards the Stuart regime, which expresses itself in outbursts that (unintentionally, I'm sure) become rather humorous, and which even embraces Charles' sister Henrietta, Duchesse d'Orléans, usually considered by history a fairly helpless pawn, but here presented as a full player in the French plot and as promiscuous as her brother. The most interesting character in this novel is Father Papin, who unexpectedly enough breaks the mold of the "wicked Jesuit" and is presented as a man who successfully compartmentalises his religion and his politics, but for whom religion will always come first---which, as it turns out, is just as well for Sir Richard Somerset...

    "Richard---oh, Heaven---the Falcon---" She shrank from him, her hands outstretched as though to thrust him away, her eyes staring, her lips trembling.
    "Ah, Anne, my life, my love, 'tis now too late to explain. Ye will never come to me now. But I plead with ye to believe me when I say that what was done was done for England. And, my dear love, if ye cannot forgive me, I beseech ye to forget me. Anne, Anne---"
    Horrified, she continued to stare wildly at him. Then, with a choked, panting cry, she turned and fled from the vault. He watched her go, and the misery in his eyes brought to even the dead hearts of Buckingham and the Jesuit the strange, long-forgotten emotion of pity. The Duke's hands trembled a little as he read the King's decree, and when the captain of the guard made his preparations he could not bring himself to look at the axe or the red-hot brazier into which the handless wrist would be plunged to cauterise the flesh...

Vanessa - Published in 1933, this is the final volume in Hugh Walpole's "Herries Chronicles", a family saga that in totality stretches from the mid-18th century to the early decades of the 20th century. Vanessa picks up precisely where its predecessor, The Fortress, left off, in the midst of the celebrations for the 100th birthday of the indomitable Judith Paris. At this gathering of the Herries, Vanessa Paris and Benjie Herries, though only children, begin a friendship that will become an enduring love. At first glance the two young people could not be more different---Vanessa quiet, steady and religious, Benjie rackety, restless and with little belief in anything but Vanessa---but the connection between them will remain unbroken throughout their lives... As is often the case with long-running series, Hugh Walpole clearly had trouble letting go of his characters: all the Herries books are lengthy, but Vanessa is both overlong and overwritten, going back and forth over the same ground - particularly with respect to Vanessa's fear that at any moment the footloose Benjie will leave her permanently - in a manner that becomes extremely tiresome. However, as with all of these books, Walpole's understanding of the functioning of society, as the late Victorian era gives way to the Edwardian period, and then to the horrors of WWI, and his tendency to highlight the less obvious moments in history, make Vanessa worthwhile. On the level of character, Walpole gets much mileage out of the contrast between the ever-increasing respectability of the Herries clan and its historical tendency to erupt suddenly in scandal and an illegitimate birth. After a moment of madness forces Benjie into an unwanted marriage, Vanessa tries to rebuild her own life through marriage to Sir Ellis Herries, who is obsessively in love with her. But though on the surface the marriage is a success, and Vanessa herself lauded for her beauty, her poise, her success as a hostess, secretly she must deal with Ellis's crumbling sanity, which is fed by his overpowering jealousy of Benjie. Though Benjie has since been widowed, Vanessa has continued to avoid him, trying to stay true to her vows; but when Ellis's mental state puts Vanessa in physical danger, she and Benjie cause the last great Herries scandal by running away together...

    And Benjie? She smiled as she lay back in her chair looking at the long dune like the back of a whale over whose brown surface little waves broke in edges of white and silver. Benjie was not perfect. She never supposed he would be. There had been the night at Eastbourne to discover him kissing the chambermaid. Twice, once in Paris, he had left her for two days without warning. Sometimes he was out of temper, sometimes (but very seldom) drunk. He knew some queer people...
    Vanessa, on her side, was not perfect either. Far from it. She was impatient, suffered fools badly (and some of Benjie's friends were very foolish), sometimes nagged Benjie, sometimes (as she well knew) bored him with her naivete, her religion, her obstinacy.
    But they had been saved, both of them, by their splendid comradeship. Because they had been friends all their lives long that business of compromise, so difficult in the first year of marriage, had been quite natural for both of them. They loved for every kind of reason, but chiefly because they knew one another so well and admired and laughed at, for the most part, the same things. The wildness in Benjie Vanessa understood because, in her own way, she had the same wildness. They must both be free...

I just had a close encounter with a GINORMOUS spider...which has now been safely captured and transferred to the garden.

Fun fact: empty spaghetti canisters make useful impromptu bug-catchers.

Can I post photos or would that be too freaky?? :D

>75 lyzard: Yes, Liz, picture please :-)

Well, you asked for it! :D

OMG. You weren't kidding when you said it was ginormous!

>77 lyzard: That IS big, glad to know you didn't kill it, but transferred it to the garden :-)

>77 lyzard: *crosses "visit Australia" off the bucket list*

I apologize for bringing this to you so late in your day (actually, I think it's tomorrow over there, so I'm a day late) but I just saw this on Twitter:

Best sloth ever is "Rusty' @ the University of Iowa Natural History Museum in Iowa City, Iowa #InternationalSlothDay @rustygiantsloth pic.twitter.com/OpDDwX0P8Q

— Robert Osborn (@rwosbo) October 20, 2016

It's International Sloth Day! I hope you did something suitably slothy to celebrate.

>78 lauralkeet:, >79 FAMeulstee:, >80 rosalita:

I'm used to huntsman spiders being pretty big, but this was one of the largest I've seen. Ordinarily they tend to lurk high up on your walls, so you can keep a respectful distance from one another. This one was suddenly THERE when I picked up something in storage to clean it. Luckily I was able to manoeuvre it into the bathroom, and it sat still until the thought of the spaghetti canister occurred to me. :)

Never kill spiders! Try not to kill anything, although cockroaches and ants sometimes won't take a hint.

Oh, Julia, trust me---in Australia huntsman spiders are by far the least of your problems! :D

>81 rosalita:

IT'S INTERNATIONAL SLOTH DAY!!??

That sloth looks just as surprised as I was to find out it was International Sloth Day!

Best-selling books in the United States for 1915:

1. The Turmoil by Booth Tarkington
2. A Far Country by Winston Churchill
3. Michael O'Halloran by Gene Stratton Porter
4. Pollyanna Grows Up by Eleanor H. Porter
5. K by Mary Roberts Rinehart
6. Jaffery by William J. Locke
7. Felix O'Day by F. Hopkinson Smith
8. The Harbor by Ernest Poole
9. The Lone Star Ranger by Zane Grey
10. Angela's Business by Henry Sydnor Harrison

The only newcomer of 1915's best-seller list is Zane Grey, who makes his first appearance in the Top Ten with a story about the Texas Rangers. Pollyanna Grows Up is the self-explanatory sequel to Eleanor Porter's previous smash hit; while K is not one of Mary Roberts Rinehart's outright mysteries, rather a romantic melodrama with elements of crime set amongst a struggling boarding-house community. William Locke's Jaffery is the story of a quartet of friends, one of whom becomes a war correspondent and has many improbable adventures.

On the whole, however, in 1915 we find the "social criticism" novel still going strong. Former chart-topper Francis Hopkinson Smith reappears with Felix O'Day, the story of a British aristocrat fallen on hard times, who finds friends and support in America amongst the so-called "common" people. Henry Sydnor Harrison's Angela's Business is an odd, sometimes comic novel about changing opportunities for women. Gene Stratton-Porter's Michael O'Halloran is about an orphaned boy struggling to survive on the streets of a midwestern city. The Harbor was Ernest Poole's first novel, about life on the waterfront of New York and trade unionism; when Poole won the Pulitzer Prize in 1918 with His Family, it was considered by some a case of belated recognition of the earlier work. Winston Churchill's A Far Country is a semi-autobiographical story about a young lawyer's progressive loss of moral sense (for more on this one, see Steve's thread).

And at #1 in 1915 we find Booth Tarkington with The Turmoil, the first volume of his self-proclaimed "Growth" trilogy, a set of novels about the effects of capitalism and increasing industrialisation upon middle America.

Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis in 1869, part of a socially prominent, "old money" family that suffered financial losses during the depression of the 1870s: an experience that would become a recurrent theme in Tarkington's novels. As a young man he attended both Purdue and Princeton, although he graduated from neither; at the latter he was heavily involved with the dramatic society and began writing plays; he also edited the Nassau Literary Magazine.

After returning home to Indiana, Tarkington flirted with a political life and served one term in the House of Representatives. Writing remained his passion, however, and he became one of the most successful and popular novelists of the early 20th century, one of only three writers to win the Pulitzer Prize twice for his fiction. Tarkington was a devoted regionalist, and his novels are set predominantly in Indiana; although several are set in New England, where he often summered (and later relocated).

While he first gained prominence due to his humorous stories about midwestern life, Tarkington gained his greatest success via his serious works examining, in particular, the effects of increasing industrialisation and the "new money" society being created as a consequence. Along with a number of other leading American writers of the time, Tarkington wrote of the dangers of a "money for money's sake" attitude and the attendant decline of traditional mores and standards. He examined this situation in a trio of thematically-related novels which he called his "Growth Trilogy": The Turmoil (1915), The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and The Midlander (aka "National Avenue") (1924).

The Turmoil - James Sheridan Sr, head of the Sheridan Trust Company, has many reasons to be satisfied with his life. His wealth is great and still growing; his two eldest sons, James Jr and Roscoe, are being groomed to succeed him in his business; and his wife and daughter are scheming their way into acceptance by the city's traditional upper classes. Only the youngest son, Bibbs, is a disappointment. Bibbs' first exposure to the family business ended disastrously when his forced tenure as a manual labourer drove him into a breakdown which required a period of hospitalisation. Lately returned home, but still under his doctor's care, Bibbs spends his time on dreams and poetry: a situation which his father cannot and will not tolerate. As the fortunes of the Sheridans continue to rise, their new neighbours, the Vertrees family, stare poverty in the face. Although they are part of the local elite, poor financial decisions have left them ruined, forced to secretly sell their possessions in order to survive. Daughter Mary, knowing that she has no skills which will help her get a job, makes up her mind that a wealthy marriage is her only option---and coolly sets her sights on James Sheridan Jr... Booth Tarkington's 1915 study of the clash between "old" and "new" money and the moral effects of contemporary business practices is an interesting but ultimately unsatisfactory work: one in which the action fails to support the thesis; which in fact, given the novel's peculiar conclusion, contradicts it. It is hard not to suspect editorial interference here, with what seems to be building towards a tragedy suddenly undercut by an absurd "romantic" conclusion that leaves every one of the novel's hard questions unanswered. However, up to this point the narrative remains engaging, if not wholly persuasive. Ironically, the novel's portrait of James Sheridan Sr, a man who knows what he wants - even if he doesn't know why he wants it - may be The Turmoil's most successful aspect. Sheridan is the personification of the "big for big's sake, money for money's sake" attitude that Tarkington saw as the root of America's moral decline; yet Sheridan is convincing and complete in a way that most of the other characters are not---including the novel's emerging hero, Bibbs. The other interesting thing here is the decline and fall of the Vertrees family. Though they are tacitly presented as victims of the ugly new world of the Sheridans and their ilk, Mary's decision to sell herself for money - and her parents' complicity - hardly makes them a desirable moral alternative. As The Turmoil progresses, Bibbs and Mary become its focus, each finding in the other an inspiration and a reason to do better; even though their relative situations prevent them being totally frank with one another. A series of tragedies, both personal and professional, strikes the Sheridan family, driving a wedge between Bibbs and Mary and, in the face of his father's unexpected need of him, forcing Bibbs to consider whether he can do the one thing he has always most dreaded---the thing that once before almost killed him---namely, accept the yoke of the Sheridan Trust Company...

    Bibbs went to the window, raised it, and let in the uproar of the streets below. He looked down at the blurred, hurrying swarms and he looked across, over the roofs with their panting jets of vapour, into the vast, foggy heart of the smoke. Dizzy traceries of steel were rising dimly against it, chattering with steel on steel, and screeching in steam, while tiny figures of men walked on threads in the dull sky. Buildings would overtop the Sheridan. Bigness was being served.
    But what for? The old question came to Bibbs with a new despair. Here, where his eyes fell, had once been green fields and running brooks, and how had the kind earth been despoiled and disfigured! The pioneers had begun the work, but in their old age their orators had said for them that they had toiled and risked and sacrificed that their posterity might live in peace and wisdom, enjoying the fruits of the earth. Well, their posterity was here---and there was only turmoil. Where was the promised land? It had been promised by the soldiers of all the wars; it had been promised to this generation by the pioneers; but here was the very posterity to whom it had been promised, toiling and risking and sacrificing in turn---for what?

Daaaaaaaaaag--- Well, you know how that goes...

So it turned out the internet lied to me. (Yes, I know; I was astonished too!) Death Of An Editor *is* a series book though I was told it wasn't, so I'm putting it temporarily on hold and switching to The Essex Murders, the first in Vernon Loder's Inspector Brews series.

Fortunately most of these books are available as very inexpensive Kindle editions.

>85 lyzard: Michael O'Halloran is one of the most sickeningly sweet books I have ever read in my life, which is saying a lot because I have a soft spot for "orphans who overcome hardship" as a plot point. I read it in grad school just because I like Stratton-Porter in general, and ended up citing the book in my research on twentieth-century Midwestern farm women. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so you know the argument that the farmer and his wife have over the fact that he has all this new machinery and technology to make the farm chores easier but she has to make do with all the old-fashioned ways of doing the household chores because he insists there isn't enough money to buy the new labor-saving equipment she wants? Yeah, that really happened. A lot.

Sorry, duplicate post.

>89 casvelyn:

I don't doubt it at all. :(

Mr Dooley In Peace And In War - Finley Peter Dunne was chief editorial writer for the Chicago Post when he began contributing, anonymously, short humorous commentaries on life that were supposedly the observations of an Irish publican named Dooley, usually given in conversation with his elderly crony, Mr Hennessy. In 1898, however, "Dooley" had things to say about the Battle of Manila Bay; this particular column attracted wide attention, and before long the increasingly politically focused commentaries were being syndicated across America, and then in England. Eventually, Dunne was persuaded to collect his Dooley columns in book form, and Mr Dooley In Peace And In War was published in 1899. For the modern reader, these short pieces are anything but easy: they are written in an idiosyncratic rendering of the Irish accent that requires concentration to decipher, and while some of the pieces are about significant moments in history or, conversely, everyday life, some of them are so specific to their time and place as to be all but impenetrable. At various points in this collection, the mist does clear, as it were, and we can see why these pieces were so popular, and so controversial; but overall, Mr Dooley In Peace And In War is a lot of hard work for what might not be considered sufficient yield.

    "Th' idee iv givin' books f'r Christmas prisints whin th' stores are full iv tin hor-rns an' dhrums an' boxin' gloves an choo-choo ca-ars! People must be crazy."
    "They ar-re," said Mr Hennessy. "My house is so full iv books ye cudden't tur-rn around without stumblin' over thim. I found th' life iv an ex-convict, the 'Prisoner iv Zinders,' in me high hat th' other day, where Mary Ann was hidin' it fr'm her sister. Instead iv th' chidher fightin' an' skylarkin' in th' evenin', they're settin' around th' table with their noses glued into books. Th' ol' woman doesn't read, but she picks up what's goin' on. 'Tis 'Honoria, did Lor-rd What's-his-name marry th' fair Aminta?' or 'But that Lady Jane was a case.' An' so it goes. There's no injymint in th' house, an' they're usin' me cravats f'r bookmarks."
    "'Tis all wrong," said Mr Dooley. "They're on'y three books in th' wurruld worth readin',---Shakespeare, th' Bible, an' Mike Ahearn's histhry iv Chicago. I have Shakespeare on thrust, Father Kelly r-reads th' Bible f'r me, an' I didn't buy Mike Ahearn's histhry because I seen more thin he cud put into it. Books is th' roon iv people, specially novels."

>92 lyzard: Well, that's short and to the point! :-D

It's a review and it won't post. :(

ETA: Phew!

And a very nice review at that. I've heard of Finley Peter Dunne's Dooley writings, and I think I've read quotes and maybe even the occasional full piece, but I kind of hate trying to read overly literal transcriptions of dialect so I've never been tempted to read the whole thing. The quote you chose, though, is quite apt for LT, if you have a mental machete handy to hack a path through the dialect.

The Amateur Cracksman (reissue title: Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman) - When his brother-in-law, E. W. Hornung, dedicated his first volume of stories to him, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was flattered but uncomfortable: "You must not make a criminal the hero, you know," he said, a gentle admonition which suggests he had missed the point of Hornung's characters, who were certainly intended as a morally-inverted pastiche of his own Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. In a manner that invites comparison with the hero-vigilantes of Edgar Wallace's "Just Men" stories, Hornung's A. J. Raffles and Harry "Bunny" Manders are a deliberate challenge to conventional morality: both gentlemen, both public-school-and-university---Raffles is a cricketer, for heaven's sake!---yet they take to a life of crime like ducks to water, stealing to fund their chosen lifestyle partly for the excitement, and partly because, well, God forbid they should soil their hands with anything as sordid as work. And if this wasn't quite enough taboo-breaking, it is impossible to believe that the homoerotic overtones to the relationship between Raffles and Bunny weren't deliberate on Hornung's part. (Was there such a thing as slash fiction in 1899? Because these two beg for it---even aside from the detail that they met at public school, when Bunny was Raffles' fag...) Told in the first person by Bunny, after he finds himself more-or-less accidentally assisting his old friend Raffles in the burglary of a jeweller's shop, the stories trace their various exercises in crime, some successful, some a failure; while always there is the spectre of the suspicious Inspector Mackenzie... In his youth, Hornung spent time in Australia for his health, and afterwards drew upon his experiences in his writing. Such is the case in The Amateur Cracksman, though I can't say I thank him for the implications: first, we learn that Raffles' criminal career started in Victoria after he got himself into a financial mess during a cricket tour, when circumstances allowed him to impersonate, first a banker, and then a bushranger; later, while plotting an audacious shipboard theft, Raffles finds it expedient to court a young Australian woman, much to the disgust of Bunny, who vents his jealousy via petty criticisms of the lady's accent. This scheme is the thieves' last, however; another passenger on the ship is Inspector Mackenzie, who finally has them where he wants them---he thinks. When we have our final glimpse of Raffles, he is literally swimming off into the sunset---and, incidentally, leaving Bunny to carry the can---but of course the world had not seen the last of "the amateur cracksman"...

    "A burglar!" I gasped. "You---you!"
    "I told you I lived by my wits."
    "Why couldn't you tell me what you were going to do? Why couldn't you trust me? Why must you lie?" I demanded, piqued to the quick for all my horror.
    "I wanted to tell you," said he. "I was on the point of telling you more than once. You may remember how I sounded you about crime, though you have probably forgotten what you said yourself. I didn't think you meant it at the time, but I thought I'd put you to the test. Now I see you didn't, and I don't blame you. I only am to blame. Get out of it, my dear boy, as quick as you can; leave it to me. You won't give me away, whatever else you do!"
    Oh, his cleverness! His fiendish cleverness! Had he fallen back on threats, coercion, sneers, all might have been different even yet. But he set me free to leave him in the lurch. He would not blame me. He did not even bind me to secrecy; he trusted me. He knew my weakness and my strength, and was playing on both with his master's touch...

>95 rosalita:

Thank you!

Yes, that was one of the times when the mist cleared! But really, you have to put so much effort into deciphering the dialect with these pieces, you tend to miss what Dunne is actually saying.

>96 lyzard: You've probably not ever read any of Lawrence Block's mysteries series featuring burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr. Somewhere along the line he acquires a used bookstore, which he uses as a front for his real job of stealing valuable stuff from rich people. The books are lighthearted and good fun, but the reason I'm telling you all this is that Bernie also acquires a cat, which comes to live in his bookstore and whom he named Raffles, after the amateur cracksman himself. It's a nice melding of his burglar/bookseller personas.

>98 rosalita: Yes, that's exactly it. It's far too exhausting to wade through to appreciate the pith.

The Nonesuch - When the wealthy Sir Waldo Hawkridge, a noted sportsman, inherits the estate of a distant cousin, he makes plans to convert the country house into an orphanage; creating asylums for homeless children is Sir Waldo's particular charitable work, despite the disapproval of his relatives. When Sir Waldo travels to Yorkshire to set in motion the necessary renovations, he is accompanied by his young cousin, Lord Lindeth, who prefers country life to town amusements. The arrival of two such fashionable gentleman creates a stir in the previously quiet district, but nowhere more so than in the Underhill household: Tiffany Wield, beautiful, wealthy and only seventeen years old, is determined to marry into the aristocracy, and immediately sets her sights on the susceptible Lindeth. Sir Waldo, seeing only shallow selfishness behind Tiffany's lovely face, makes up his mind to interfere in the budding romance, even if this complicates his own growing interest in the girl's governess-companion, Miss Ancilla Trent... In this 1962 novel Georgette Heyer provides a fascinating sketch of "polite" life in the country, with families interacting via competing entertainments and boys and girls who have grown up together finding a different footing as they become young men and women. All this is only background, however, to Heyer's main plot, which finds Sir Waldo Hawkridge luring Tiffany into a flirtation meant to open Lindeth's eyes to her myriad faults while simultaneously pursuing a serious courtship of the wary Ancilla, who has personal reasons for distrusting men of his stamp: a situation to challenge even a man of Sir Waldo's experience. Tiffany herself is one of a subset of Heyer characters who are hilarious at a safe distance (i.e. when reading this book) but monstrous up close: spoiled since birth, used to being courted for her face and her fortune, and with an unparalleled ability to embarrass her relatives---and her governess---by throwing shattering tantrums whenever her will is thwarted, Tiffany is a walking maelstrom that progressively draws in anyone unfortunate enough to cross her path. Ancilla's own situation, meanwhile, could fairly be described as a mixed blessing: she is valued and cared for by the uncultured but good-natured Mrs Underhill, Tiffany's aunt, but has the wholly unenviable task of trying to teach---or at least, control---Tiffany herself. It is with uncertain emotions that Ancilla observes Sir Waldo's flirtation with the girl, understanding his motives but feeling that she is betraying Tiffany by looking the other way. But this is nothing compared to Ancilla's confusion when she realises that Sir Waldo seems to have more than flirtation in mind when it comes to herself. The idea of the Nonesuch having a serious interest in a mere governess is absurd, of course; and for this and a dozen different other reasons, Ancilla knows that she must guard her own heart: a task that would be a lot easier if Sir Waldo didn't always make her laugh...

    "I feel it would be quite wicked of me not to put you on your guard."
    "You believe it to be necessary?"
    "I don't know. I've seen how Tiffany can bring people round her thumb, and how charming she can be when she chooses. But she hasn't a particle of that sweetness of disposition which is in your cousin..."
    "Let me assure you, ma'am, since you seem to think I might succumb to her wiles, that my taste runs to females of quite another complexion!"
    "I'm glad of it," Ancilla said, thinking, however, that he might well be courting more danger than he was yet aware of.
    "That's the kindest thing you have yet said to me," Sir Waldo murmured.
    She glanced at him, a puzzled expression in her eyes. They met his, and saw that they were quizzically smiling; and the suspicion flashed into her mind that he was trying to beguile her into a flirtation. It was swiftly succeeded by the startling realisation that she could easily be so beguiled. That would never do...

>98 rosalita:

No, I don't, but I'm not surprised: it's an enduring character concept.

The psychology surrounding the way jewel thieves are presented in popular culture is very interesting...

September stats:

Works read: 11
TIOLI: 11, in 8 different challenges, with 2 shared reads

Mysteries / thrillers: 3
Historical romance: 3
Contemporary drama: 2
Classic: 2
Humour: 1

Series works: 5
Blog reads: 1
1932: 0
1931: 1
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 0

Owned: 3
Library: 4
Ebook: 4

Male authors : Female authors: 6 : 5

Oldest work: Emma by Jane Austen (1815)
Newest work: The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer (1962)

...and I've just realised that I somehow mucked up my half-yearly stats when I caught up to the end of June, so I shall have to do a recount before getting to the third-quarter stats.

Sigh.

...but there's no reason the rest of you should suffer for my incompetence, so here's---

---A SLOTH!!---

---which for some reason I like to call "Heather". :)

Your reviews are always so entertaining and enlightening, Liz. The Raffles series was one I enjoyed as a young chap and the anecdote about Doyle made me smile.

Thanks for putting up that 1915 list. As you could guess such stats are guaranteed to grab my notice.

Have a lovely weekend.

BTW I didn't manage to keep up with Ilana, et al and your goodself for Emma, but I will take it on in my own time with liberal reference to your splendid tutoring.

Heather!! Lookin' good, girl. :-)

>104 PaulCranswick:

Hi, Paul - thank you! Yes, I think poor Arthur was a bit befuddled by the whole thing. :)

I like those Top Ten lists (not so much writing the associated review, but oh well...). It's fascinating to see what people were reading at particular points in history.

Actually the tutored read is still going: Ilana has been struggling very much with her migraines so we're only slowly ticking over as she feels up to it. So feel free to drop in any time!

>105 rosalita:

:D

Right! I think I've sorted out my statistics---

Third quarter stats:

Works read: 105
TIOLI: 105, in 80 different challenges, with 15 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 56 (53.3%)
Contemporary drama: 10 (9.5%)
Historical romance: 10 (9.5%)
Classics: 7 (6.7%)
Humour: 7 (6.7%)
Historical drama: 6 (5.7%)
Contemporary romance: 4 (3.8%)
Young adult: 3 (2.9%)
Non-fiction: 1 (0.95%)
Fantasy: 1 (0.95%)

Series works: 63
Blog reads: 3
1932: 12
1931: 9
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 1

Owned: 31
Library: 25
Ebook: 49

Male : female authors: 57 (including one with a female pseudonym) : 53 (including one with a male pseudonym)

Oldest work: Lisarda; or, The Travels Of Love And Jealousy by H. Cox (1690)
Newest work: The New Woman And The Victorian Novel by Gail Cunningham (1978) / Strange Wine by Harlan Ellison (1978)

And as of this moment, I am caught up* to the reviews of the current month's reading for the first time since---ulp!---February.

So have a couple more sloths!





(*Still two unwritten blog posts, however; I'm working on it...)

>77 lyzard: Yowzer!

>96 lyzard: Intriguing review of The Amateur Cracksman - I had never realised that E. W. Hornung was Doyle's brother-in-law.

>103 lyzard: & >105 rosalita: :-)

>108 lyzard: Woo hoo!

Hi, Heather!

They're not as scary as they look, though I'll agree they look pretty scary. :)

Yes, Hornung married Doyle's sister.

I thought that might make up for all the red-head covers and quotes! (Speaking of which, I've got a beauty for you from Ms Braddon, when I can find it again...)

And now I need to get back to the blog...

Finished The Essex Murders for TIOLI #2.

Still reading Deathbird Stories; my "night time book" is now Murder Is Easy by Agatha Christie.

I have finally made a start on blogging about Frances Trollope's Hargrave; or, The Adventures Of A Man Of Fashion, an odd but interesting blending of crime and romance from 1843.

That's the good news; the bad news is, this is probably going to run to a three-parter. So you can wait...not too much longer {*fingers crossed*}...until it's all done, or take a look at Part 1.

Murder In The House Of Commons - On a stiflingly hot night, with the House of Commons enveloped in an impenetrable London fog, government ministers try to decide how to handle a burgeoning scandal, with rumours of an affair between Charles Claverhouse Considine, the President of the Board of Trade, and a certain notorious lady. "C. C.", as he is known, is a divisive figure, both loved and hated for his bull-in-a-china-shop personality; even many of those who agree with his policies dislike him personally. When C. C. is not merely seen in public with the woman in question, but having tea with her in the dining-room of the House, and at a crisis point in party affairs, it is an act of madness that alienates all but his most loyal adherents; while his enemies, in government and in opposition, work to turn the scandal to their advantage. Timothy Lester, one of those who dislikes the man but supports his policy, is dismayed to discover how badly affected by the situation is his closest friend in the House, George Bourne, who is devoted to C. C. and his interests. The House's sitting turns into an all-night session, one in which heat and exhaustion take their toll on the gathered politicians. Lester seeks relief on the fog-drenched terrace, where he falls asleep briefly on a stone bench. Waking suddenly, and moving carefully through the fog, Lester is suddenly confronted by the sight of Bourne standing over the dead body of C. C.'s mistress---and almost before he knows what he is doing, he is helping to lower the body into the Thames... Mary Agnes Hamilton served as Labour MP for Blackburn from 1929 to 1931, and she puts her knowledge of the workings of the House of Commons and party politics into this disturbing 1931 mystery. What is most startling here is the lack of editorialisation: no-one within the novel seems to see anything particularly untoward in an MP committing murder, and two more covering it up, in order to prevent a scandal that will damage the government. Furthermore, there's no suggestion that, for instance, the opposition getting in will plunge England into war, or anything of that magnitude. Rather, the whole thing is couched in terms of party politics and MPs holding onto their seats, which the main characters seem to feel is good and sufficient reason for what they do; the reader may feel differently. By the end of the novel, however, an unmistakeable air of irony does creep in, with the conspirators getting a comeuppance of sorts, albeit not from the police. Timothy Lester's impulsive involvement in the disposal of the dead woman's body is prompted by his assumption that George Bourne murdered her. However, he soon realises that Bourne thinks C. C. did it---except that it turns out that C. C. has an alibi for the time of the murder. Attempting to identify the killer in order to head off an appalling scandal---and, incidentally, to save Bourne's neck and his own---Lester learns that the dead woman was a professional blackmailer, dealing in indiscreet letters, and that C. C. was not her only parliamentary victim. The murder may therefore have been committed by someone seeking either to save their own reputation, or to frame C.C.---or both: a scenario that creates suspects on both sides of the political divide...

    Underneath its appalling seriousness, this really was an absurd affair. Lester almost laughed as he realised it. So freakishly and so closely interwoven in it were the strands of grim tragedy and screaming farce, so freakishly and in fashion so incalculable did they run in and out of one another, that logic and reason were useless to separate or order them into any coherent design. Then, at the crisis of accepted hopelessness, chance suddenly flashed before his eyes---or rather before his nose---the key to the entire confused and confusing pattern...
    The thrill of relief that passed through Lester's entire being was like being in contact with a fresh wind, with the ice of the high mountains behind it, as the climber comes out of the thick, heat-steeped woods into the open. Doubts---sickening doubts---had visited him more than once during the course of the night, as to whether he and George had not played the part of fools, and worse than fools, in removing the body: whether, by so doing, they had not created rather than avoided peril for themselves and for the party and even for the nation. Now, however, they were justified; thanks to them, an abominable plot was going to be thwarted...

Finished Deathbird Stories for TIOLI #13.

Still reading Murder Is Easy.

The Murder Of Harvey Blake - Struggling lawyer James Price is consulted about her divorce by the embittered Mrs Blake, who insists that she has no choice but to accept a small settlement from her husband; that if she fights him in any way, he will leave her destitute. Price tries to explain community property to her, but his efforts are met with a scornful denunciation of his profession. Angered but needing clients, Price agrees to represent her---but never gets the chance: three days later, Harvey Blake is dead; murdered... Price learns what has happened when he phones the Blake house and his call is answered by Captain Waller, who knows him from a period spent as a police reporter. Called to the scene, Price finds Waller in company with a friend of his, Asaph Clume, an amateur criminologist. He learns that Blake was found beaten to death near his garage, presumably as he was putting his car away, with the first blow fatal but many others struck. What Price has to say makes Mrs Price the prime suspect; but, as the police learn, Harvey Blake was a man not lacking in enemies... This 1931 novel by Raymond Goldman, which introduced amateur detective Asaph Clume, is a fair mystery but thoroughly annoying on the level of character---from Price's patronising, dime-store psychology diagnosis of the distressed Mrs Price, which occupies the first chapter and makes an abused wife the bad guy, to the tiresome Captain Waller, a typical policeman for an American novel of this era in that he just wants to arrest someone, anyone, but whose opinions are so easily influenced that at one point he believes three different people guilty within the space of one ten-minute argument by Clume. (Mrs Price is as rude about the police as she was about lawyers earlier, so Waller really wants to arrest her...) As the investigation proceeds, the question becomes whether Blake's murder was the result of his cruel treatment of his wife, which included physical violence; his dishonest business practices---he had a long history of bankruptcies, in which other people's money mysteriously vanished; or his habitual lechery, which encompassed both the young maid, Bernice, who lived in his house, and the pretty young Mrs Stevens next door, which provoked a physical confrontation between Blake and the much-older Mr Stevens on the afternoon before Blake's death. And who was the woman with whom Blake met secretly in the empty rooms over the garage? As Waller flits from suspect to suspect, absolutely convinced of one person's guilt one moment and another's the next, the shrewd Asaph Clume begins to evolve a new and startling theory of Harvey Blake's death---but two more people will die before the murderer is exposed...

    Clume spoke up. "It's looks mighty bad for him, doesn't it?"
    "It certainly does!"
    "But what about Mrs Blake? Didn't you say the same thing about her only a few minutes ago? Do you know, Hank, you put me in mind of a young man in love with two pretty girls. Whichever one he saw last, that's the one he loves best. Now what have we done this evening? We have looked at the external aspects of the affair and have succeeded in building up a strong case against three persons---Mrs Blake, Bernice, and Stevens. We have relied on that triumvirate---Motive, Means and Opportunity---and they have failed us because we have been seduced by the obvious."

My Particular Murder - When No Man Pursueth, the first book in David Sharp's series feature Arthur Henry Fielding, Professor of Philology, is effectively unobtainable, which is a great shame---not just because reading this really made me want to read that, but because events in that first novel are the reason for much of what happens in My Particular Murder. When, running late for a lecture, the Professor takes a wrong turn into a dark alley and literally stumbles over a well-dressed man who has been stabbed to death, his first reaction is exasperation; his second, not to alert the police, but to make a quick phone-call to a reporter friend before he starts his lecture. Heading home afterwards, the Professor steps into a car that he has told his sister has sent for him, but soon finds himself in the hands of Mabberley, a criminal recently recently escaped from the jail term for which (we gather) the Professor's efforts were responsible. Mabberley's first idea is to give the Professor a taste of imprisonment before killing him, but when the morning papers scream that he is wanted for the murder of Dawes, a stockbroker, Mabberley sees the opportunity for an even better revenge... Despite his placid demeanour, the Professor is not about to take his situation lying down. Fortunately for him, his efforts to attract attention to his place of confinement catch the eye of the eccentric Sheridan Orford, who not only frees him from Mabberley, but helps him to evade the police while they try to find the real murderer... My Particular Murder is an entertaining mystery-thriller, and one with a wicked sense of humour that helps to carry it over its plot's more improbable moments---which are not few in number. But certainly we're not meant to take this too seriously. Even the name of the Professor's rescuer and soon-to-be sidekick is a joke, "Sheridan Orford" being one of the names toyed with by Arthur Conan Doyle before he settled on "Sherlock Holmes". Orford is a gatherer of information, purely for his own satisfaction; nothing annoys him more than being asked to explain himself, or take action on the basis of what he knows, which often makes him a difficult collaborator. What he does do, however, he does thoroughly, including disguising the Professor in a way that makes it possible for him to carry out his investigation of Dawes' murder. Luckily for the Professor, he has a knack of winning and keeping friends, and soon he has a small band of loyal adherents---his devoted manservant, William Francis; his brother-in-law, Edward McIntosh; young Jennifer Hassel, who Fielding helps out of a difficulty of her own; her American uncle, Mr Hassel; and Mark Penrigg, the reporter who Fielding first alerts to the murder---who join Orford in the tricky job of keeping the Professor out of the hands of both Mabberley (who wants the reward on his head as well as revenge) and the police, while trying to determine what got Dawes killed: a matter which seems to involve the proposed exploitation of the natural resources of an island in the Persian gulf...

    Orford had been regarding me curiously from the moment he discovered my identity. "Did you murder him?" he asked in tones of unprejudiced inquiry.
    "I did not."
    "Then if I were you I should stay where I was. You'll want a pretty good alibi to escape hanging. It looks to me like risk against certainty."
    "He won't have the chance to stay here," said Mabberley. "I shall hand him over to the police. We shall never get that money now, but it's almost worth it. A real prison cell and the drop at the end of it! I could never have planned something half so magnificent. How I wish I had known it was coming; I could have lived on that all these years. Hanged as a murderer. It's beautiful."

I see there are sloths aplenty here, but I'm sad to have missed International Sloth Day. I'll have to keep an eye out for Heather next time I get my hair done. She looks like a salon kind of gal. ;-)

Hi, Carrie! Always like to use a sloth as a dangling carrot to get my reviews written. If my sloths bring in visitors too, well, all the better! :)

Only for a treatment and a trim, though---those flowing red locks are clearly natural!

Finished Murder Is Easy for TIOLI #2.

Now reading Frederica by Georgette Heyer.

Finished Frederica for TIOLI #10.

And I will now draw a line under October, and begin my re-read of The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope, in preparation for the group read starting next week---whoo!!

I have also posted Part 2 of my examination of Frances Trollope's Hargrave; or, The Adventures Of A Man Of Fashion.

Keeping it in the family, as it were. :)

>120 lyzard: Wait, what?! We're reading two Heyers this month? But I haven't finished False Colours yet!

No, no, that's just me---my interlibrary loans that I'd planned on didn't turn up on time, and I didn't want to start The Prime Minister too early and risk finishing too early. Georgette was to hand, so...

But please do finish False Colours!!

>38 lyzard: Wow. Just wow.

Just for you, apropos of absolutely nothing, a slothonaut ...

>124 The_Hibernator:

Hi, Rachel! Shocking, isn't it? :D

>125 rosalita:

Aw, sloths don't have to be apropos of anything!

Yay! I have finished blogging about Frances Trollope's Hargrave; or, The Adventures Of A Man Of Fashion!

Hmm... That one got a little out of hand:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

...and having finally wrapped up Hargrave, I am now working on a blog post (hopefully a one-parter!) about Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Lisle.

Apropos, I posted this almost exactly a year ago (ulp!) and am copying it here as a reference:

Here's how Braddon occupied herself across 1861 - 1862:

Lady Lisle (serialised May 1861 - September 1861 / book 1862)
The Black Band; or, The Mysteries Of Midnight (serialised July 1861 - June 1862 / book 1998)
The Captain Of The Vulture aka "Darrell Markham; or, The Captain Of The Vulture" (serialised September 1861 - March 1862 / book 1862)
The Octoroon; or, The Lily Of Louisiana (serialised November 1861 - March 1862 / book 1895)
The White Phantom (serialised May 1862 - January 1863 / book 1868)

There were also quite a number of short stories, collected (and then later added to) as Ralph The Bailiff, And Other Tales aka "Dudley Carleon; or The Brother's Secret, and Other Tales"; and an historical novel attributed to Braddon by an early biographer, although no-one seems to know why: Woman's Revenge; or, The Captain Of The Guard (serialised March 1862 - August 1862).

The wild card in all this is Lady Audley's Secret: Braddon's first best-seller and still her best-known and most popular work. She began serialising it in July 1861, but the magazine it was appearing in went bust and she put it aside until pleas from the public made her pick it up again, and the serialisation was begun over and ran from January 1862 - December 1862 in a different magazine. Its immense popularity led to the rights being bought by the publisher William Tinsley, and Lady Audley's Secret appeared in three-volume form in September 1862 (before the serial finished, in other words; presumably Tinsley anticipated profits from those who couldn't wait).

The thread is up for the group read of Anthony Trollope's The Prime Minister---all welcome!

Here

(NB: Spoilers for The Man Of Property)

Indian Summer Of A Forsyte - After publishing The Man Of Property in 1906, John Galsworthy did not resume the writing of what is now known as "The Forsyte Saga" until after WWI, publishing this short story (or "interlude", as he preferred to call it) in 1918. Here, events are told largely from the perspective of the elderly Jolyon Forsyte, who has purchased the house at Robin Hill which was abandoned after the events of the first book, and lives there with his widowed son, Young Jolyon, and his grandchildren. Alone there for a time while the others are travelling, Jolyon discovers that his estranged niece-by-marriage, Irene, sometimes secretly visits the woods around the house, which for her are haunted by the spirit of her lover. Joylon encourages her to visit, and in Irene's companionship, her beauty and graciousness, the lonely, tired old man finds a new lease of life. But the past is not dead for more people than Irene...

And so a month went by---a month of summer in the fields, and in his heart, with summer’s heat and the fatigue thereof. Who could have believed a few weeks back that he would have looked forward to his son’s and his grand-daughter’s return with something like dread! There was such a delicious freedom, such recovery of that independence a man enjoys before he founds a family, about these weeks of lovely weather, and this new companionship with one who demanded nothing, and remained always a little unknown, retaining the fascination of mystery. It was like a draught of wine to him who has been drinking water for so long that he has almost forgotten the stir wine brings to his blood, the narcotic to his brain. The flowers were coloured brighter, scents and music and the sunlight had a living value—were no longer mere reminders of past enjoyment. There was something now to live for which stirred him continually to anticipation...

(NB: Spoilers for The Man Of Property and Indian Summer Of A Forsyte)

In Chancery - Several elderly members have passed away, and the younger generation is rising (often with behaviours and opinions scandalous to their seniors), but many things remain unchanged amongst the Forsytes. In particular, much of the responsibility for general guidance of the family rests upon Soames Forsyte---whose own life remains a shambles after his desertion by Irene. Having failed to divorce her when he had evidence, Soames is now trapped by law, longing for the home and children his position requires, and with his eye upon the attractive young French girl, Annette Lamotte, but unable to move forward while Irene is still his wife. Having resumed her maiden name, Irene is living alone on the income of the money willed her by old Jolyon Forsyte. Unable to believe that there is not a man in in life, Soames monitors her movements, hoping to catch her out in something that will allow him to divorce her; but as once more she comes to dominate his thoughts, Soames begins to wonder why the two of them cannot simply resume their married life---since Irene is, of course, still his own property... Irony is the key-note of In Chancery, found both in the gulf that yawns between Soames Forsyte's public and private lives, and in the echoing of his situation in that of his sister, Winifred Dartie, who is deserted by her husband and finds herself being hustled towards divorce by Soames almost against her will, as she becomes a surrogate for her brother's frustrations. But there is tragedy here, too, and even horror, in the depiction of the position of women in society and under the law. Galsworthy's handling of Soames is masterful, pulling the rug out from under his readers again and again by showing him first as an affection brother and an excellent son, gentle and considerate towards his ageing parents---and then reminding everyone that this is the same man who once violently raped his wife, an act he regarded as a legitimate reclamation of his own property, and which he is now surprised and exasperated to discover that Irene has not simply "forgotten". Irene here suffers less for her past sins than from society's narrow and ugly assumptions about women---including that no woman can be content to live alone: there must be a man somewhere. Mortified by her undisguised disgust and horror at his suggestion of reconciliation, of her bearing his child, Soames vacillates between forcing Irene by law to return to him, and the satisfaction of ruining her with a divorce. Irony reassumes its dominance when Young Jolyon, his father's executor and Irene's trustee, comes to feel that he must do all he can to protect her from Soames, first on his father's account and then on his own---and so finds himself cast as the prime suspect when Soames hires a private investigator to identify Irene's (to him) inevitable lover. Meanwhile, the younger generation of Forsytes are unwittingly carrying on the complicated feuds of their elders, with Val Dartie falling in love with Holly Forsyte across the family divide. But greater forces are in action, and soon England and the Forsytes alike are swept up in the conflict and tragedy of the Boer War...

Outside in the streets of Soho, which always gave him such a feeling of property improperly owned, he mused. If only Irene had given him a son, he wouldn’t now be squirming after women! The thought had jumped out of its little dark sentry-box in his inner consciousness. A son---something to look forward to, something to make the rest of life worth while, something to leave himself to, some perpetuity of self. "If I had a son," he thought bitterly, "a proper legal son, I could make shift to go on as I used. One woman’s much the same as another, after all." But as he walked he shook his head. No! One woman was not the same as another. Many a time had he tried to think that in the old days of his thwarted married life; and he had always failed. He was failing now. He was trying to think Annette the same as that other. But she was not, she had not the lure of that old passion. "And Irene’s my wife," he thought, "my legal wife. I have done nothing to put her away from me. Why shouldn’t she come back to me? It’s the right thing, the lawful thing. It makes no scandal, no disturbance. If it’s disagreeable to her---but why should it be? I’m not a leper, and she---she’s no longer in love!" Why should he be put to the shifts and the sordid disgraces and the lurking defeats of the Divorce Court, when there she was like an empty house only waiting to be retaken into use and possession by him who legally owned her? To one so secretive as Soames the thought of reentry into quiet possession of his own property with nothing given away to the world was intensely alluring...

I do love the Forsyte Saga, Liz. Gave the original 6 main books to my mum a few years ago and she has read them all three times already.

Hi, Paul!

This is something I feel I ought to have read years ago, but never did for some reason (too obvious??). I'm very glad to have finally taken the plunge. :)

Thought you'd like this to get your sloth fix!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctutKTrf_NY

Aw, thank you, Rhian! :D

Red Altars (US title: The Secret Brotherhood) - Agatha Christie may have kept her tongue in her cheek while writing her early novels featuring secret societies and their mysterious leaders, but too many of her contemporaries told such stories with a degree of solemness which had the the contradictory effect of making them silly. At the outset of this 1928 novel by Australian-born John Gordon Brandon, it appears that Red Altars falls squarely into the latter class, what with its opening depiction of a secret society of assassins for hire, no member of which knows the identity of any other and least of all that of their leader. However, once the society accepts a commission to murder a certain government minister, the narrative shifts to the perspective of the police officers with the responsibility for thwarting the crime; and Red Altars suddenly becomes a different and much better book: its plot still highly improbable, but the narrative energetic and suspenseful, as the squad led by Detective-Superintendent Carbrooke wages a desperate battle not merely to prevent the planned assassination, but to expose and destroy the society of killers. A desperate anonymous phone-call from a woman alerts the authorities to the planned attempt upon the life of Sir Everard Denholme, who is to attend an evening party at the house of the Duchess of Casaldon: a situation which creates both opportunities and difficulties for Carbrooke. He has entry to the house via his friendship with Tommy Wrayne, the Duchess's nephew, a brave and resilient young man; but Tommy is in love with the beautiful young widow, Princess Natalie Vasiloff, whom Carbrooke's trusted subordinate, Detective McCarthy, declares he has seen before; at least, he has seen her criminal record... While it is an engaging thriller, the real strength of Red Altars is the way it repeatedly plays with the reader's expectations---and in a good way. Though positive portraits of the police were not as uncommon as the historical preference for the era's amateur detectives and private investigators tends to suggest, this novel not only depicts Carbrooke and his men as intelligent, resourceful and courageous, but more unusually shows an interest in real police procedure (however unreal the gang being pursued), from the danger of undercover work to the tedium of surveillance. Then, too, though suspicion falls generally upon "foreigners", it is made clear that the leader of the society is an Englishman; while the depiction of the corner of London in which the police believe the headquarters of the society to be located, one heavily populated by European ex-pats of various nationalities, is refreshingly unexaggerated. Moreover, though he only plays a supporting role in Red Altars, Brandon's ongoing series character would be Patrick Aloysius McCarthy, who is half-Irish, half-Italian, whose mixed background and language fluency makes him an ideal undercover agent, and who in the course of the story falls in love with and marries a Russian girl. The police are led to Sophie Jernowska in the first place through her connection with Natalie Vasiloff, to whom Sophie is devoted, but who McCarthy still believes to be a wanted criminal, and whose ambiguous behaviour, in addition to information obtained from the French and Italian police, places her high on Carbrooke's list of suspects...

    "Your Grace," Carbrooke said earnestly, "I don't know that, strictly speaking, I should answer your question, but I am relying upon your well-known discretion when I tell you that, if what we have been warned of were to be successfully carried out, the whole world would stand aghast tomorrow. No man could estimate what the effect might be in Europe---very probably to embroil England in war. If our information is correct, what is to be attempted here tonight is nothing less than the cold-blooded assassination of one of His Majesty's Ministers of State---the Right Honourable Sir Everard Denholme."
    "It seems impossible---incredible!" gasped Her Grace, gone very pale. "And who... Have you no idea at all as to who the assassins are?"
    The Superintendent shook his head. "That, madam," he said sombrely, is at present known only to an unknown woman who rang Scotland Yard at about a quarter past ten tonight from a public call-box. By her voice, a young woman, the officer who took the message declares, and obviously a lady. She sounded, he said, upon the verge of hysteria with either horror or terror. And that, Your Grace, is all we have to work upon."

One thing that Red Altars does by accident is throw an interesting light upon the relationship between Charles Parker and Lady Mary Wimsey in Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels---about which modern readers are, I think, inclined to say, "Big deal."

But here, the attitude of the Duchess of Casaldon towards Superintendent Carbrooke and her horror of police in the house show that, yes, socially it was a big deal.

Finished The Prime Minister for TIOLI #2.

And, uh...

Yes. Well. I suppose this is what you get for setting yourself a challenge of reading by closing your eyes and plunging your hand into a randomly gathered collection of books!

Now reading Love In Hiding by Barbara Cartland.

Finished Love In Hiding for TIOLI #7.

Now reading Shaken Down by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry.

The Girl From Nowhere - Gertrude Baillie Reynolds' 1910 novel is a peculiar work indeed, ultimately unclassifiable, with both its tone and its action all over the place; though that said, it is certainly never less than interesting. It begins grimly enough, with both of its central characters attempting suicide: indeed, Felix Vanston is prevented from swallowing the laudanum overdoes he has spent his last shillings on only by the crash-landing on the railing outside his flat of Veronica Leigh, who has jumped out of the window of the room in which her uncle has imprisoned her as part of his attempt to starve her into compliance with his plans to sell her into prostitution. Though well-born, Felix has been at odds with his family, in particular his older half-brother, Denzil, all his life; his rebellion has led to radicalism and finally (though he has committed to criminal act) to jail. Shunned on all sides, Felix has decided that he has nothing to live for---but upon finding himself responsible for the terrified Rona, he changes his mind... Felix and Rona go on the run together, her uncle in pursuit, and with the assistance of one of Felix's criminal associates, obtain passage on a barge leaving London. It soon becomes clear, however, that Rona has been injured in her fall and needs medical attention. When the barge makes a stop, Felix goes looking for a doctor---and to his dismay attracts the attention of the sympathetic Miss Beatrice Rawson who, though she does not know him, he recognises as his half-brother's aunt. Discovering that Rona's uncle has put an investigator on their tail, Felix decides that she would be safer if they separated: he leaves her at a cottage hospital, under the eye of Miss Rawson, while he travels on seeking work by which he can earn money to support her, but promising to write and swearing to return. In time Felix gains the friendship of Russian engineer named Vronsky, who offers him a position as his assistant and translator, though this will mean leaving England. Meanwhile, taken by Miss Rawson to Normansgrave, the estate where Felix was born, Rona slowly becomes an obsession with Denzil Vanston... And that's only the start of it! As The Girl From Nowhere veers from social commentary to romance to thriller to satire and back again, in the process carrying its cast from the English countryside to Siberia (!), it is frankly impossible to know what to make of it or even whose side we're supposed to be on. There is, at the outset, an element of self-pitying play-acting in Felix's suicide attempt; and though the side of himself he shows in his protection of Rona is attractive, the very desperation of his love for her is rather creepy. Denzil is stuffy and self-satisfied and clearly riding for a fall (which he gets in spades); while Rona repents her rash promise to Felix almost as soon as she gives it, even before she starts to contemplate how very pleasant it would be to be mistress of Normansgrave... Though the romantic complications associated with its central love-triangle, and the continued pursuit of Rona by her uncle (and if he is her uncle, he is her legal guardian), form the overt plot of The Girl From Nowhere, more interesting is the novel's tacit criticism of England and English snobbery. We note, in particular the contrast between the attitude of the "nice" English characters, for whom Felix's misstep is the end of everything, and the various non-English characters, who take the view that he has paid for his mistake and deserves a second chance. He gets it when Vronsky all but adopts him, and takes him into partnership in his own engineering concern. In fact, for all its conventional romantic turmoil, it could be fairly said that the relationship between Felix and Vronksy is the key one in the novel. As a result of the Russian's trust and generosity, Felix has the opportunity to build a new life for himself in Russia---and discovers, when his criminal past catches up with him, that he has made real friends there. At the same time, Felix has neither forgotten nor gotten over Rona, though her correspondence makes it clear to him that she doesn't want to marry him; while her knowledge of her promise to Felix torments Rona when Denzil proposes. Circumstances then carry the English characters to Siberia where---after looking, for a couple of horrible chapters, as if it were going to go the "women really want to be mastered" route---the novel resolves its romantic subplots with a facetiousness amounting to cynicism.

The time which had elapsed since Felix Vanston and Vronsky first met at Basingstoke railway station had made a vast difference to the younger man. Felix had, even at that time, looked older than his age. Now this trait was more marked. But the lines upon his face were those traced by experience and discipline... Those eyes had humour in them of a quiet sort. They were the eyes of one who knew the harder side of life, and did not fear it; unlike those of the elder man. Vronksy's eyes were those of a dreamer, and beamed the idealistic love which is the virtue of the Slav race. To him the young man was as a son. He had found him, taken him up out of despair, restored to him his self-respect, and given him, into the bargain, the love for lack of which the young man's soul had starved until that hour. Felix had satisfied the warmest hopes of his adopted father. He had proved clever, persevering, trustworthy. Together, they had accomplished much, and meant to accomplish more...

The Avenging Parrot - James Dundee gets a start with the Hamilton police department courtesy of his uncle, Commissioner O'Brien. As a first step, he agrees to look into the circumstances of a Mrs Emma Hogarth, who has written to the police insisting that someone in her boarding-house is trying to kill her. Lieutenant Strawn dismisses the letter as the work of a crackpot, but Dundee isn't so sure. Besides, he needs a place to stay---and so, without giving away his profession, acquires a room at the same address. Dundee soon learns that the room-bound Mrs Hogarth likes to play a dangerous game, making first one lodger and then another the main beneficiary of her will. He tries to make an opportunity for a private conversation, but is thwarted by the movements of the other lodgers---and before his chance arrives, Mrs Hogarth is dead... Anne Austin's 1930 novel introducing her young detective, James "Bonnie" Dundee, suffers at the outset from a number of the faults of its era, but picks up over its second half and takes a few interesting turns. Following the first murder, a fair chunk of the book consists of police interviews with the boarder-suspects, all of which play out in tiresomely identical fashion (indignation, denial, panic, retraction; wash rinse, repeat). But when Dundee differs from his superiors in his interpretation of the evidence gathered, and strikes out on his own despite the discouragement and resentment of his colleagues, the novel takes on a new interest. The circumstances of Mrs Hogarth's death seem to indicate knowledge of the house, and police focus is upon Emil Sevier, a boarder evicted after complaints from Mrs Hogarth, who was seen in the vicinity around the time of the murder, and who may have had an accomplice in Cora Barker, another boarder: a lonely woman desperate for male attention. Dundee, however, comes to believe that the true reason for Mrs Hogarth's death lies in her past, much of which, he discovers, she has kept carefully concealed; and he pursues this line of inquiry in spite of the discouragement he receives---and the ridicule, too, since he is first turned in this direction by Mrs Hogarth's parrot, Cap'n, who on the day of his owner's death evidently learned a new expression: "Bad penny...

    In the very centre of the picture layout was a pen drawing of "Cap'n, the murdered woman's parrot, the only eyewitness to the atrocious crime". But to Dundee's vast relief there was not a word concerning Cap'n's startling revelation---the cryptic "Bad penny"...
    As he folded the paper and thrust it into his pocket, Bonnie Dundee again quoted softly:
            "I've lived a life of strut and strife;
            I die by treacherie;
            It burns my heart, I must depart,
            And not aveng-ed be."
    He drew a deep breath, realising his new responsibility for the first time. "We shan't let her go unavenged, shall we, Cap'n?"

Best-selling books in the United States for 1916:

1. Seventeen by Booth Tarkington
2. When a Man's a Man by Harold Bell Wright
3. Just David by Eleanor H. Porter
4. Mr Britling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells
5. Life and Gabriella by Ellen Glasgow
6. The Real Adventure by Henry Kitchell Webster
7. Bars of Iron by Ethel M. Dell
8. Nan of Music Mountain by Frank H. Spearman
9. Dear Enemy by Jean Webster
10. The Heart of Rachael by Kathleen Norris

1916 saw a mixture of books in its Top Ten. A romance theme, not without a touch of melodrama, predominates; but we also see an increasing interest in "women's issues".

Ellen Glasgow's Life and Gabriella follows a young society woman of Virginia who must find work after her family loses their money. The Heart of Rachael is an examination of the social and emotional consequences of divorce; while Henry Kitchell Webster's The Real Adventure has a newly married young woman realising that she will lose her husband if she cannot be more than a "trophy wife" to him, and setting out to gain knowledge and experience denied her by her upbringing.

When a Man's a Man is another of Harold Bell Wright's paeans to the character-building powers of nature, and finds a city-bred "weakling" who is rejected by the woman he loves heading west to become a cowboy. Nan of Music Mountain is a more conventional western, with love across the barrier of feuding clans. Bars of Iron concerns a man who falls in love with the widow of a man he has killed in a duel.

The remaining novels are a bit of a mixed bunch. Eleanor Porter's Just David concerns the son of a recluse, who must learn to interact with the world after he is orphaned. Dear Enemy, an epistolary novel, is the sequel to Jean Webster's Daddy Long-Legs. H. G. Wells' Mr Britling Sees It Through is about the wartime experience in England.

The #1 position is, however, held by Booth Tarkington's Seventeen, a novel about life in the Mid-West and adolescent growing-pains.

Booth Tarkington had his second #1 best-seller in a row in 1916, but with a very different book. Whereas The Turmoil was one of a growing subgenre of American novels dealing with the social and moral consequences of increasing industrialisation and accumulation of property as a measure of success, Seventeen was a humorous story of ordinary family life in the mid-west.

Seventeen - Booth Tarkington's 1916 novel deals with the Baxter family, and in particular seventeen-year-old William Sylvanus Baxter, whose pose of grand indifference to the female sex evaporates upon his first laying eyes on Miss Lola Pratt, when he is instead overcome with what he is sure is a great and enduring passion. Staying for the summer with her friend, May Parcher, Miss Pratt becomes a magnet for the young men of the neighbourhood, much to the exasperation of her increasingly reluctant host, Mr Parcher, who suffers the grave misfortune of having the windows of his reading-room and bedroom overlook the porch on which Miss Pratt's entourage gathers of an evening, and the detached puzzlement of ten-year-old Jane Baxter---who hears everything and forgets nothing... One of the recurrent themes of this short novel is how quickly adults, particularly parents, forget what they were like when they were young, and perhaps that explains this book's contemporary reception as an accurate portrait of the agonies of first love: heaven forfend that anyone ever really behaved like this! It is difficult to judge whether Booth Tarkington intended his young protagonist to be insufferable---or, for that matter, the object of his young protagonist's passion---but it is impossible these days not to empathise entirely with the long-suffering Mr Parcher, who is forced, night after night, to listen not only to the raptures of the neighbourhood swains, but to the conversation of Miss Lola Pratt, who is apparently incapable of communicating other than in baby-talk. (She also comes accessorised with a lap-dog called Flopit, which inspires many of her most cringeworthy rhapsodies.) The novel's other sympathetic character is the admittedly precocious Jane, who seems to have been put on earth to deflate her brother's pretensions, and whose low opinion of Miss Pratt forms the basis of an odd friendship that develops between herself and Mr Parcher. In the end, Seventeen may be too much a product of its time to be thoroughly enjoyed by the modern reader. It certainly has its humorous side, but this is offset by material at which we can only wince, including the novel's attitude (and in particular that of William Sylvanus Baxter) towards its black characters; although that said, one of the most interesting touches in the book is the very equitable friendship that exists between Jane and Genesis, the handyman, who enjoy long conversations together.

    Mr Parcher, that unhappy gentleman, having been driven indoors from his own porch, had attempted to read Plutarch’s Lives in the library, but, owing to the adjacency of the porch and the summer necessity for open windows, his escape spared only his eyes and not his suffering ears... Listening perforce to the conversation of the former couple---though “conversation” is far from the expression later used by Mr Parcher to describe what he heard---he found it impossible to sit still in his chair. He jerked and twitched with continually increasing restlessness; sometimes he gasped, and other times he moaned a little, and there were times when he muttered huskily.
    "Oh, cute-ums!" came the silvery voice of Miss Pratt from the likewise silvery porch outside, underneath the summer moon. "Darlin' Flopit, look! Ickle boy Baxter goin' make imitations of darlin' Flopit again. See! Ickle boy Baxter puts head one side, then other side, just like darlin' Flopit. Then barks just like darlin' Flopit! Ladies and 'entlemen, imitations of darlin' Flopit by ickle boy Baxter."
    "Berp-werp! Berp-werp!" came the voice of William Sylvanus Baxter.
    And in the library Plutarch’s Lives moved convulsively, while with writhing lips Mr. Parcher muttered to himself...

False Colours - Christopher Fancot arrives unexpectedly very late one night at the London home of his mother and his twin brother, the Earl of Denville, to discover Lady Denville in a state of unusual apprehension. She tells him that it is several days past the time Evelyn was expected home, and that the following evening he is due at a dinner-party given in his honour by the Stavely family: his failure to attend will ruin his intended engagement with Miss Cressida Stavely. Kit is stunned to learned that Evelyn is on the brink of a marriage of convenience, although he confesses to his mother that it was his feeling that things were going badly with his twin that brought him home from his diplomatic assignment in Vienna. Lady Denville explains that by this marriage, the harsh trust established at the death of the twins' father may be broken, so that Evelyn can belatedly take charge of his inheritance. When Evelyn does not return the next day, an acutely reluctant Kit is persuaded to take his place at the dinner-party, but only after being assured that no-one attending knows him well, including the girl he intends to marry. For himself, Kit likes Cressida immediately, but considers her the last girl that Evelyn, whose taste runs to beautiful "dashers", would be drawn to. Intending only to impersonate Evelyn upon this one occasion, his twin's failure to return home traps Kit into going on with the masquerade---even though this means a dangerous degree of intimacy developing between himself and Cressida... Georgette Heyer's 1965 novel becomes, in the end, something of a rumination upon the dictum that "there's no accounting for taste". Though all but indistinguishable physically, and so mentally and emotionally close that each can tell when the other is in trouble, the Fancot twins prove to have very different ideas about women. To Evelyn, Cressida is simply a well-bred girl who will make a good Countess, without demanding much else of him; to Kit, she becomes an increasingly impossible dream, as he grasps that the real reason Evelyn is so desperate to break the trust is so he can pay the spiralling debts of the beautiful and charming but recklessly extravagant Lady Denville; and, after all, Evelyn can give Cressida a title and an estate, while he has only a younger brother's portion. But Cressida is an intelligent and sensitive girl---and one with a mind of her own---and from initially concluding that Lord Denville is a young man of moods, it does not take long in Kit's company before another explanation occurs to her... With the world---including Evelyn's unsympathetic trustee, his Uncle Henry---expecting a marriage between Evelyn and Cressida, in private not only have Kit and Cressida come to an understanding, but when Evelyn does reappear, it is to announce that he has fallen in love with a girl of no family and no fortune. But while it takes all of Kit's diplomatic skills to unravel the resulting romantic tangle, it is Lady Denville who unexpectedly finds a solution to her own critical financial situation; and while we may gasp as well as laugh at the ruthlessness with which the somewhat comical yet shrewd and good-natured Sir Bonamy Ripple is sacrificed to Lady Denville's irresponsibility, it is hard not to agree with the novel's closing implication that everything will work out well for both parties---once, that is, Sir Bonamy has been properly reassured about his corsets...

    "I know why you did it...but O God, I wish you hadn't! I could have gone to Cressy then... And there is still Mama to be considered! Kester, what am I to do?"
    "I don't know," said Kit frankly. "But I can relieve your mind of one thing. I've played you false, Eve! I am going to marry Cressy!"
    Evelyn had sunk his brow on to his clenched fist, but at these words he raised his head, staring at Kit, as if he could scarcely believe his ears. "You are going--- Does she know, then? That you're not me?"
    "Yes, of course she does. She has known for longer than I guessed. And let me tell you, my lord, that when I took your place at the dinner-party you skirted she had very nearly made up her mind to refuse your very obliging offer! For all your lordship's charm and address! You can't think how set up I am in my own esteem to know that one person prefers me to my engaging brother!"
    "I said she had a great deal of sense!" retorted Evelyn, laughing at him.

The Five Flamboys - This 1929 novel is the second in the series by "Francis Beeding" (joint pseudonym of John Palmer and Hilary St George Saunders) featuring intelligence agent, Colonel Alastair Granby, and, like its predecessor, The Six Proud Walkers, involves a young Englishman being drawn into, and trying to combat, a dangerous international conspiracy. In this case, John Baxter is trying to negotiate with the money-lender Angus McGuffie on behalf of his younger brother, when he discovers him stabbed to death---and barely escapes with his own life when the concealed murderer attacks him. Baxter both captures the killer and sees a letter started by McGuffie addressed to the Foreign Office, in which he began to reveal the identities of "the Five Flamboys"---but never got the chance to finish. After an ambiguous meeting with the Commissioner of Scotland Yard, in which he is advised to "take things as they come", Baxter sets out for Geneva, to return to his post at the League of Nations---only to find himself travelling, apparently, with Angus McGuffie... Having barely recovered from the shock of Colonel Granby's dangerous impersonation, Baxter discovers that also on the train are Ann Winspeare and the small boy to whom she has been appointed governess: the boy, Peter, is glad to see him again after their one meeting on the Isle of Wight, but the cool, detached Ann does not seem to be. A daring kidnapping reveals that the boy is in fact King Peter of Romania, and that he is a pawn in the attempts of five dangerous men to obtain and exploit the rights to oil deposits of untold value: a plan which may well end in Romania being sold out to the Soviets... The Five Flamboys is a gripping thriller, mixing standard (though well-executed) elements such as races against time and hair's-breadth escapes from death with the complicated politics of between-the-wars Europe. Sometimes the latter is a bit jolting (with this novel, like The Six Proud Walkers, expressing tacit approval of the Italian Fascist government), but Beeding's understanding of the functioning of the League of Nations, and the manoeuvring involved in its operations, is fascinating; while the novel's complex portrait of Prime Minister Radulara of Romania, a difficult, dangerous yet ultimately trustworthy man, is one of its strengths. Colonel Granby's impersonation of McGuffie allows him to discover the identity of the Five Flamboys, but the escape in London of the murderer of the real McGuffie undoes an already dangerous plan. Baxter, meanwhile, is dismayed to discover the lengths that Ann is willing to go to in order to secure the safety of the boy-king: nothing less than offering herself in exchange to one of the Flamboys, an Englishman called Wyndham, who is obsessed with her. However, the Flamboys' plan involves the overthrow of the current Romanian government, and possibly also the murder of the king; while only the knowledge that the Soviets are secretly behind the country's fermenting revolution can possibly prevent it---if only those few people who hold that knowledge can live long enough to make it public...

    "Gentlemen, I have absolute proof---it came into my hands only a few moments ago---that the real origin and source of this conspiracy is not to be sought amongst my political rivals in Bucharest. This revolution is being encouraged and supported---"
    Good God, what was that? There was a flash of light from the gallery just above the platform. The thin voice became a choking sigh. The speaker collapsed where he stood, as I had made to spring forward, and pandemonium broke loose in the hall.
    Radulara had fallen across the ballot-box, and from above his collar protruded the black handle of a knife which gleamed in the light from the upper windows.
    I stood, as they say, rooted to the spot---a good phrase and a credit to the man who invented it. For the moment I was scarcely aware of the cries and footsteps and the screams of the women in the diplomatic gallery. I was again in the quiet study in Freshwater where I had seen that dreadful sight before. Was it less than a week ago? Angus McGuffie had sat facing me at his desk with just such another knife thrust home in just such a place...

From Beowulf To Virginia Woolf - Subtitled "An Astounding And Wholly Unauthorised History Of English Literature", Robert Manson Myers' 1952 publication in fact offers quite as much history as literature, and requires a good understanding of both from the reader if he or she is to get the joke. And a joke this is, one very long and highly erudite joke---if ultimately something of a shaggy-dog story, too. In less than 100 pages, Meyers skitters from event to event in something like a thousand years of English history, noting too the concurrent literary achievements---but delivering his narrative via a non-stop barrage of puns and word-play; while the text is supported by reproductions of real paintings, which very unreal descriptions of their subjects. While there's no question about the sheer cleverness of it, or the extent of the author's knowledge, overall I found myself as annoyed as amused by this. Despite her prominence in the title, Virginia Woolf is barely mentioned in the text; and in fact, despite its claim to be "a history of English literature" (albeit a less-than-serious one), typically of the time of this work's publication, female authors are conspicuous by their absence from it.

In 1837 George III died of a cerebral haemorrhoid, and Queen Victoria, though asleep at the time, rose to the occasion and promptly ascended the British throne. Thereafter for more than fifty years England flourished in splendid oscillation. With the coming of the Industrial Revolution people stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machinery. Under Lord George the Corn Laws were declared dull and void; a new Poor Law put an end to the long-suffering poor; agricultural progress introduced rogation of crops and irritation of the land; rapid scientific strides substantially relieved woman suffrage, especially in childbirth; and England, now died in the wolf, began to manufacture iron and steal. Cecil Rhodes discovered scholarships in the Transvaal, and Rudyard Kipling crystallised British imperialism in his classic Wee Winnie Winkle; or, The Last Days Of Bombay. Finally, at Queen Victoria's Diamond Jamboree of 1897, an invested choir of two thousand vices rendered "Pomp and Circumstance" before Lord Tweedsuit under the vast unsupported roof of the Crystal Palace. Victoria was the longest queen in British history; at her funeral in 1901 it took eight men to carry the beer.

The Essex Murders (US title: The Death Pool) - John George Hazlette Vahey wrote prolifically under a variety of pseudonyms, before sadly dying young. This 1930 novel, written under the name "Vernon Loder", is the first in his series featuring Inspector Brews; though the story is told from the perspective of mystery author and amateur detective, Ned Hope. Ned has achieved some professional success, and on the proceeds bought a small, abandoned estate on the edge of the fens, meaning to renovate it himself---and hoping that it will be the future home of himself and Nancy Johnson, though he has not yet dared propose to her. He does invite her to inspect his new purchase, but a very pleasant afternoon takes a horrible turn when the two of them discover the body of a man floating in one of the many ponds in the grounds of Fen Court. Constable Hoggett, the local patrolman, is soon reinforced by Superintendent Langley and Inspector Brews, who bring the drags with them. But their grim task takes an even more horrible turn when the first effort to recovery the body instead brings to the surface two more, those of a young man and woman bound together in what looks like a suicide pact... While its grim set-up is the basis of an effective mystery, The Essex Murders also spends time developing the characters and relationships at its heart. At the outset, Ned and Nancy are less than favourably impressed by Inspector Brews, whose cheerful demeanour and amicably rambling conversation give no hint of the shrewd professional intelligence behind, and which, over time, the others recognise and learn to respect; noting, with chagrin, that despite his apparent inanity Brews always seems to learn a great deal more from them than they ever do from him. The three deaths put Ned in a difficult financial situation, since he has spent all his savings on a property where he (or more to the point, Nancy) will not want to live in the future, but which he cannot imagine anyone buying from him. Consequently, Ned is more than grateful to be hired by a newspaper to write articles on the case, and becomes fired with the thought of solving the mystery himself. He and Nancy turn amateur detective; but while they do, in fact, turn up information relevant to the case, all of their early efforts are met with exasperating references to "routine police work" from an apologetic - and already knowledgeable - Brews. In the long run, however, the two amateurs succeed in unearthing some facts not known to the police; and their relationship with Brews becomes one of mutual exchange and respect. The investigations determine that the dead man was Henry Haberson, and the young couple his wards, the cousins Ivor Rainey and Maysie Rowe; further, that the cousins wished to marry, but were unable to gain the consent of their guardian because of their relationship. But while the young peoples' suicides might be explained in this way, how did their guardian come to die too? Did he accidentally drown while trying to save his wards---or while doing something else? Or was Mr Habershon also the victim of a cruel and complex plot?

    "How could the theft of the bonds have anything to do with the crime?" asked Nancy.
    "To lead us to believe that Mr Habershon killed his nephew and niece, but got drowned doing it. To let us think that he staged a fake suicide which, from its very nature (that silly scrap of paper and so on), we would see to be a fake, Miss. You can do a clumsy crime because you are clumsy, or because you are subtle enough to make it so. If we can be got to believe that the suicides were faked, then we must conclude that it was the wicked uncle who faked them, and was the man who intended to pinch the bonds. If we believe that, then we find him dead, and label him the murderer. If he is the murderer, then that's an end to it. We can't hang his corpse."
    "You reason like a book," said Ned. "Really I think you're a dangerous man, Brews. You'll make something next of my having gone to Fen Court to recover my cigarette-case."
    "It's just because I can't make anything of it that I am growing so fond of you, sir," Brews replied amiably.

>146 lyzard: So The Five Flamboys is the sequel to The Six Proud Walkers? Is the next book in the series The Four Calling Birds?

Many a true word is spoken in jest. :)

In fact Francis Beeding wrote an entire collection of novels with a number of something in the title---not in order and not of the same series, but I believe he went at least from 1 to 12.

ETA: To 13!

Deathbird Stories - This 1975 collection of short stories by Harlan Ellison has a common theme running through it, the tradition that gods die when their followers cease to believe in them---and that, conversely, as new beliefs arise, so do new gods. While these stories, per the Ellison style, are not exactly subtle, they are frequently powerful and confronting---and potentially offensive, full of sex and violence and nose-thumbing at conventional religion, which is not privileged here over any other form of worship, be it of the Greek gods or the more modern kind, like the car. The majority of the stories were written during the late sixties and early seventies, and reflect these turbulent times, with allusions to Vietnam, the sexual revolution and urban sprawl and decay and violence. Despite this, a thread of black humour runs through the collection, a suggestion that you'd better be very careful in choosing who and what to worship; even though the odds are that amongst such an endless pantheon, you're almost certain to choose wrong. Certainly few of Ellison's characters get much in exchange for their belief but suffering and humiliation. While most of these stories are set in a recognisable reality, others are overt science fiction or fantasy, including Ellison's famous Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W, which finds a certain Mr Lawrence Talbot seeking the location of his own soul, so that he can finally die: a task he achieves with the help of his friend, Dr Victor Frankenstein. Meanwhile, the title story, The Deathbird, rewrites the Book of Genesis from the point of view of the snake, with God emerging from this tale as an unjust, destructive and terrifying figure. Between these two extremes, most readers will, I think, probably find a god that they recognise...

    This group of stories deals with the new gods, with the new devils, with the modern incarnations of the little people and the wood sprites and the demons. The grimoires and the Necronomicons of the gods of the freeway, of the ghetto blacks, of the coaxial cable, the paingod and the rock god and the god of neon; the god of legal tender, the god of business-as-usual and the gods that live in city streets and slot machines. The God of Smog and the God of Freudian Guilt. The Machine God.
    They are a strange, unpredictable lot, these new, vital, muscular gods. How we will come to worship them, what boons they may bestow, their moods and their limitations---these are the subjects of these stories...

Murder Is Easy (US title: Easy To Kill) - This 1939 novel, one of Agatha Christie's standalones (although Superintendent Battle does put in a very brief appearance towards the end), finds former policeman Luke Fitzwilliam returned to England after retiring from his post in the East. A mix-up with his trains end with Luke sharing a compartment with the inquisitive and garrulous Lavinia Pinkerton, who startles him by revealing that she is on her way to Scotland Yard to report "some murders", and in the hope of preventing another. Concluding that Miss Pinkerton is "batty", Luke thinks little of it---until he sees in the paper that she was struck and killed by a car in London, and a little later sees that the person she named as the next victim, a Dr Humbleby, is also dead. Luke's friend, Jimmy Lorrimer, has a cousin in Wychwood-under-Ashe, and arranges for Luke, undercover as a writer, to stay in the village where it seems that, as Miss Pinkerton claimed, a killer is on the loose... While Murder Is Easy is not one of Christie's more popular novels, I would argue that it is a more complex work than is generally recognised, with its perspective preventing the reader from recognising the degree to which Luke's investigation is shaped---indeed, warped---by his own prejudices and preconceptions. Here too, as in The ABC Murders in particular, we see Christie's understanding of the psychology of aberrant crime, with an act of animal cruelty, now recognised as one of the early signifiers of psychosis, playing a key role in the mystery. Having held a policeman's post, Luke considers himself well-qualified to investigate the series of "accidents" that has occurred in Wychwood-under-Ashe during the previous year, but the ways and structures of English village life - which have their part to play in this mystery - are a closed book to him, and he must rely upon the greater knowledge of Bridget Conway, Jimmy's cousin, who alone knows why he is really in Wychwood---and with whom Luke promptly falls in love, despite her engagement to the much older, pompous, but very rich Lord Whitfield. Luke learns that Bridget herself has doubts about some of the deaths, and she introduces him to the spinster Miss Waynfleete, who is also suspicious. Reflecting on what Miss Pinkerton said to him, Luke concludes that the murderer is a man of social standing, about whom an accusation would not easily be believed; and he constructs a list of suspects on that basis. Gathering information about the deaths---of servant Amy Gibbs, through drinking hat paint; Carter, the publican, by drowning; young Tommy Pierce, after falling from a window; and Dr Humbleby, from septicaemia; perhaps that of Mrs Horton, attributed to gastritis; not to mention that of Miss Pinkerton herself---Luke sees that they could all be accidents; but then again... But while he is still struggling to find a link between all of these victims and a single killer, one presents itself from an unexpected and shocking source, when Lord Whitfield's chauffeur is found dead in another "accident", after abusing his employer verbally and being dismissed for it. Lord Whitfield, Luke discovers to his horror, is not upset by the death, but if anything rather pleased---because, after all, as he tells Luke contentedly, his enemies always do die...

    Luke stared ahead of him. His brow puckered with thought. "It's one of them... I don't think it's Ellsworthy---but it might be! He's the most obvious one! Thomas is wildly unlikely---if it weren't for the manner of Humbleby's death. That blood poisoning definitely points to a medical murderer! It could be Abbot---there's not as much evidence against him as against the others---but I can see him in the part, somehow... Yes---he fits as the others don't. And it could be Horton! Bullied by his wife for years, feeling his insignificance---yes, it could be! But Miss Waynfleete doesn't think it is, and she's no fool---and she knows the place and the people in it...
    "More evidence---that's what I want. If there were to be one more case---just one more---then I'd know---"
    He stopped himself with a start. "My God," he said under his breath. "What I'm asking for is another murder..."

Well, hel-lo, interlibrary loan that I placed about two months ago and that was supposed to provide a book for last month's four-word-title TIOLI challenge.

Nice of you to finally show up...

>151 lyzard: I read a lot of Harlan Ellison when I was young - I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, The Beast That Shouted Love at the World, A Boy and His Dog, and the short story collection he edited, Dangerous Visions, were standouts. But I never read Deathbird Stories. Thanks for your review; I'm adding it to my Sci-fi WL.

Hi, Joe! I have re-read both Deathbird Stories and Strange Wine this year (but after long lapses of years, so they were both fresh), and I feel this is the stronger of the two collections---though as always, not for all tastes! :)

I have an idea that I have a copy of Dangerous Visions around, but no idea at all where it might be...

Frederica - The hedonistic existence of the Marquis of Alverstoke receives a thorough shaking-up when he agrees to arrange for the entry into society of the beautiful Miss Charis Merriville, one of the five children of a distant connection, the late Fred Merriville. Typically, Alverstoke's motive is not kindness, but a desire to annoy his grasping relatives, his sister, Lady Buxted, and his cousin, Mrs Dauntry, both of whom have a daughter whose debut they wish him to pay for---and who get their wish in the most unsatisfactory way, when the ball intended to launch them becomes a triumph for Charis instead. Alverstoke has no intention of burdening himself any further with the Merrivilles, but the decision is taken out of his hands when his nebulous role as "guardian" leads to him having to pull sixteen-year-old Jessamy and twelve-year-old-Felix out of a variety of scrapes and to keep a close guard over the innocent Charis---and when he finds himself taking more interest in the eldest of the family, the self-possessed Frederica, than is compatible with either his habitual selfishness or his peace of mind... This 1965 novel by Georgette Heyer is charming both as a romance and a comedy, but it is not without some substance, too. Although its heroine gives the book its title, the narrative's perspective stays almost entirely with Alverstoke as he finds what he thought was a settled if rather selfish existence being turned upside-down. Possessed since childhood of great material wealth, courted and spoiled by society, treated as a bottomless source of funds by his family, Alverstoke has grown both cynical and bored. The intrusion into his life of the Merrivilles, in spite of his original intention of holding them at arm's-length, offers the Marquis both amusement and a new purpose, until he begins to show a side of himself that surprises even those closest to him. Society at large supposes that the lovely Charis is behind Alverstoke's altered behaviour, but it is Frederica who draws him with her intelligence, humour and generosity---and who shows no sign whatsoever of wanting more from him than friendship. Frederica finds Georgette Heyer offering a fascinating if tacit commentary upon "love", as it is generally presented in romances, with a interestingly different spin put upon the trope of a man "reformed" by love, and the cautious courtship of Frederica by Alverstoke thrown into relief by both the lightly sketched yet convincing attraction between Charles Trevor, his lordship's secretary, and Chloe Dauntry, his young cousin, and conversely by the thoroughly exasperating grande passione that develops between the beautiful but unintelligent Charis and the equally beautiful and block-headed Endymion Dauntry. This novel also contains a number of Heyer's funniest set-pieces, as the Merrivilles get in and out of trouble (the necessary rescue of Lufra the Baluchistan Hound being a stand-out); but it is a near-tragedy that finally resolves her plot. The mechanically-minded Felix has a talent for trouble which finally lands him in real danger when a balloon ascension proves irresistible to him, and ends with him lying critically ill at a country farmhouse, where his eldest sister and his no longer reluctant guardian face a desperate fight to save his life...

    The Marquis, well aware that she had no thought for anyone but her abominable little brother, was wryly amused. He liked Felix, but it would be idle to suppose that he liked the task of nursing him; and, if he had not fallen deeply and reluctantly in love with Felix's sister, it would never have entered his head to have undertaken so arduous a duty. But it was not from a wish to advance himself in Frederica's esteem that he remained in Hertfordshire, exerting himself so unusually: the only conscious thought in his mind was that she was in dire trouble, from which it was his privilege to extricate her...
    So the Marquis, who rarely put himself out for anyone, and whose whole life had been spent in opulent and leisured ease, entered upon the most strenuous and uncomfortable period of his career. He was obliged to put up at a modest and old-fashioned inn; he spent nearly all his waking hours attending to a sick schoolboy; and since his arrival at the farm was the signal for Frederica to retire to bed, the only conversations he held with her were brief, and were concerned only with their patient. In after years he was wont to say that he could not recall his sufferings without a shudder, but not one word of complaint did he utter at the time, and not for an instant did he lose his air of calm self-possession.

The covers for the various editions of Frederica are not, on the whole, terrible---and at least most of the artists read enough of the book to know that a balloon plays an important role---with the most pervasive sin being, as usual, the sense of , "Who ARE these people!?"

But a few do stand out from the pack.

This one, for its idiotically inaccurate tagline:





This one---because THAT IS NOT A BALUCHISTAN HOUND!!





And of course, this one---

Would anyone care to hazard a guess as to the year this edition was issued??

October stats:

Works read: 16
TIOLI: 16, in 10 different challenges, with 3 shared reads

Mysteries / thrillers: 8
Historical romance: 2
Historical drama: 2
Contemporary drama: 1
Non-fiction: 1
Fantasy: 1
Humour: 1

Series works: 9
Blog reads: 0
1932: 0
1931: 3
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 1

Owned: 9
Library: 2
Ebook: 5

Male authors : Female authors: 11 (including two men under a single pseudonym) : 6

Oldest work: The Girl From Nowhere by Mrs Baillie Reynolds (1910)
Newest work: Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison (1975)

---and to celebrate the fact that I am now only three reviews behind (I've even written my outstanding blog posts, though I haven't published them yet!), here is a picture of a sloth eating hibiscus flowers!

...and because I get the feeling that a lot of us could do with a little extra comfort just now, here are a couple more sloths:

By the way, I'm reading Zoo City, a fantasy from a South African writer that features a noir-PI style main character with (literally) a sloth on her back!

Lucky lady! :D

I have begun blogging about Lady Lisle by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, a sensation novel turning upon kidnapping and false identity; this also looks like running into a three-parter.

Part 1 is here

>156 lyzard: Lovely review of Frederica, Liz! Ah, that Baluchistan hound. I meant to stop by a couple of weeks ago and mention that shortly after I completed my own recent re-read of Frederica (how strange that we both read this one again now even though it wasn't planned), I was listening to the morning news show on National Public Radio and heard a report from Baluchistan! Which I now know is in Pakistan, thankyouverymuch. No word on the local hounds, though.

>157 lyzard: Ugh, someone was so pleased with that nonsensical tagline that they put it on the bottom book, too! And what sort of dog is that on the cover? It looks vaguely like an Afghan hound which is at least in the neighborhood of Baluchistan, but perhaps crossed with something — a Clydesdale horse, perhaps, given those enormous furry feet.

And thank you from the bottom of my broken heart for those sloths. They surely do help take my mind off things. And please accept my apologies on behalf of the rest of idiot America for what we have unleashed on the world. Not my doing, but nonetheless.

Thank you, Julia!

My reading got a little out of whack due to non-appearing ILLs and series order confusion, so I moved ahead to Frederica (somewhat to Heather's dismay, I think!). Yes, Baluchistan* was part of the territory that was controlled by the British Raj at the time of the novel's setting.

(*It seems that it is now more commonly spelled "Balochistan".)

Ah, but no-one sees the tagline on the lower cover: they're all too distracted by THAT HAT!!

It's definitely based on an Afghan, whatever else might be mixed in there (I'm guessing the Snuffleupagus).

:(

We're rather scared at this distance; can't imagine what it must feel like up close.

Never let it be said that I don't make things as difficult for myself as possible...

A few times over the years at LT, I've had a short but inconclusive conversation that usually wound up like this:

Other person: "You can't call it that!"
Me: "But that's the book I own."
Other person: "So call it And Then There Were None."
Me: "Ah, but that isn't the book I own."

And it isn't: I own a copy of Agatha Christie's 1939 novel under its original title, Ten Little Niggers. This novel has, not surprisingly undergone progressive editing since the time of its first release, in accordance with the prevailing mores of different times and different countries. It even---in one of the all time great instances of "missing the point"---spent time as Ten Little Indians.

However, all English-language editions have now settled upon the third alternative title of And Then There Were None.

What I was never certain about was whether, in those re-titled editions, the text was changed as well; and since these days almost everyone considers And Then There Was None the "definitive" version, no-one I asked was able to answer my question on that point.

Well. I already owned a copy of Ten Little Niggers; copies of And Then There Were None were available from the library; and it was possible to pick up a copy of the intermediate version, Ten Little Indians, for not too much; so now I can see for myself.

Reading both American and British novels of the early 20th century, it is noticeable that there is often a striking difference in the way that the word "nigger" is used, with the latter carrying a tone I am tempted to call "non-malicious".

Of course that isn't an correct designation, but hopefully it suggests what I'm trying to convey: an absence of overt anger and hostility.

This is not to say that there are not instances of vicious racism in British novels of this time---there certainly are---but more common is this casual, almost unthinking racism, which I can only take to be an expression of a belief in the superiority of, if not white people exactly, then certainly British people, that was so ingrained, so taken for granted, that it negated the need for strong emotion. Black people were niggers, and brown people were dagoes, and they couldn't help it, they were just naturally inferior, poor things. That's the tone.

One of the most extraordinary examples of this sort of thing that I can think of, and one that more people may be familiar with, comes not in a novel, but in a film: The Dam Busters, from 1955, the true wartime story of the bombing of the dams of the Ruhr Valley in 1943. The mission was led by Flight Commander Guy Gibson, whose beloved black Labrador was run over and killed shortly before the mission. A grieving Gibson requested that his dog's name be used as the code-word for the mission.

And what was the dog's name?

The Dam Busters is an excellent film, but the presence of this elephant in the living-room makes it, these days, almost impossible to deal with on its own terms. In Britain, the repeated use of the name "Nigger" is usually cut out, making the film almost incomprehensible at different points; in America, they dubbed over the dog's name as "Trigger".

And in Australia? Well...

One of the curious things about Australia is that the word "nigger" never took hold here. I'm not making any great claims for us by saying this---we have plenty of racial epithets of our own, unfortunately---we just don't have that one. We are certainly aware of it, and we understand the baggage it carries in America, and its somewhat different application in England; but it isn't "our" word. It's a word that belongs "over there".

This distancing probably accounts for the fact that The Dam Busters runs uncut on TV and cable in Australia; and (to get back on topic) for the fact that as late as 1983, Agatha Christie's 1939 novel, already altered in many other countries, was published here under its original title. I know, because that's the edition I own.

It isn't the edition I first read, however, which I would have done in my first year of high school, where the library held all of Christie's mysteries, which I assiduously worked my way through that year. Believe it or not, this was the copy I first read---try finding it anywhere today, let alone a school library:

(Do spoiler tags work for images? If not I won't post it.)

(They don't. So I won't. Suffice it to say that the cover features a golliwog in duress.)

These days, however, the local publishing house have caught up with their British and American counterparts, and it is copies of And Then There Were None can be found in bookstores and libraries.

It is interesting to note, however, that in many non-English-speaking countries the book never had its title changed; I can't speak to the text. It seems that from the first in these countries they used the local word for "black people"---in most cases their word for "negroes"---without any racist implication. That being the case, they have found no reason to change. For example, the French version carries the title, Dix Petits Nègres. The Italian version, however, follows the first change of title and uses Dieci Piccoli Indiani.

Few things better illustrate the state of what I have called "casual racism" in Britain in the 30s than the fact that one of the country's best-selling authors chose to call her novel "Ten Little Niggers", and that no-one, evidently, had a problem with that. Certainly not her publisher.

Ten Little Niggers was serialised in Britain in the Daily Express between 6 June - 1 July 1939, before being released in book form. No objection was raised at the time, as far as I have been able to determine, even though the newspaper chapters were accompanied by illustrations based upon the poem (or rather, music-hall song) from which the novel takes its title:

Ten little nigger boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine...

When the novel was published in America in 1940, the title was immediately changed to And Then There Were None, while within the text, uses of the word "nigger" were changed to "Indian". Thus the guests are invited to Indian Island, and find hanging in their rooms copies of the poem, Ten Little Indians:

Ten little Indians went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine...

Christie's novel was later adapted for radio, the stage and television; interestingly, Christie's own stage version, written in 1943, used the title And Then There Were None. The first American stage version of the story, which appeared on Broadway in 1944, chose to use the title Ten Little Indians, and subsequent American editions of the novel used that title too.

However, the first American film version, released in 1945 and directed by Rene Clair, reverted to And Then There Were None. A later version was called Ten Little Indians.

In Britain, as late as 1959 a TV adaptation used the title Ten Little Niggers, and editions of the novel appeared under its original title until 1985, when it was reissued as And Then There Were None. It was also at this time that the word "soldier" was substituted for the two earlier, contentious terms; this is now the standard text:

Ten little soldier boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine...

(I must say, I am not altogether certain of why it is okay for soldiers to meet various gruesome fates...)

And now it is time for another warning (assuming anyone has read this far!):

This post contains explicit spoilers for this novel---if you have not read the novel (under any title), DO NOT READ THIS POST!

***
***
***

Two different arguments tend to circle around the altering of the text of Christie's novel:

1. Should we be censoring racist material of the past?
2. Do the changes made alter the novel?

The first argument is familiar enough, and I have some sympathy with both sides of it. My strong preference is always to reproduce the original text of any work, with an explanatory introduction, if necessary, to put things in their proper context; however, I can certainly appreciate what is objectionable about putting out a novel (or adapting it) under a title like "Ten Little Niggers".

The second argument is, in this case, perhaps the more interesting---and I would argue that the novel is, in fact, slightly weakened by changing its language.

Of course, it is perfectly understandable why it was done:

Nigger Island... It got its name from its resemblance to a man's head---a man with negroid lips.

Indian Island... It had got its name from its resemblance to a man's head---an American Indian's profile.

Soldier Island...is left without an explanation!

In addition to removing all references to "niggers" (or "Indians", as the case may be), a more subtle alteration was made, at least from the 1965 American edition: early in the book, Philip Lombard has some ugly thoughts about the man offering him a somewhat mysterious job. He is desperate for money, and resents the fact that the other man (as he supposes) is aware of it:

He had fancied, though, that the little Jew had not been deceived---that was the damnable part about Jews, you couldn't deceive them about money---they knew!

It is clear enough in context that these are Lombard's own thoughts only; the narrative does nothing to support his view---and, besides, Mr Morris is only an agent for someone else: it is someone else, definitely not Jewish, who has not been deceived about Lombard's desperate need for money.

The modern bowdlerisation of this passage, wherein "the little Jew" and "Jews" are changed to "Morris", then, serves to soften Lombard's character, when Christie put it there precisely to let the reader know exactly how awful he is.

And let us not forget what Philip Lombard's crime is:

    Lombard spoke. His eyes were amused. He said: "About those {twenty-one} natives---"
    Marston said: "What about them?"
    Philip Lombard grinned. "Story's quite true! I left 'em! Matter of self-preservation. We were lost in the bush. I and a couple of other fellows took what food there was and cleared out."
    General Macarthur said sternly: "You abandoned your men---you left them to starve?"
    Lombard said: "Not quite the act of a pukka sahib, I'm afraid. But self-preservation's a man's first duty. And natives don't mind dying, you know. They don't feel it as Europeans do."

Philip Lombard's crime, the one which lands him at #2 on the hit-list of U. N. Owen, when (s)he starts killing people of in reverse order of their degree of guilt, is not only his responsibility for the deaths of these twenty-one men, but the fact that he is a full-blown, dyed-in-the-wool bigot---and the progressive censoring of Christie's novel has served, unfortunately, to obscure the fact.

So, yeah...

This month's Christie read is And Then There Were None... :)

>169 lyzard: the poem (or rather, music-hall song) from which the novel takes its title

I know it not as a poem or song (it might have been), but as a Dutch picture book for children, first publications ca 1870, last editions in th 1970s.

It was something that was reworked again and again in different contexts, but the version Christie used in her original text was a "blackface" song from the music-halls.

Yes, I can also remember things like that from my childhood reading too, unthinkable as it seems now!

>170 lyzard: Fascinating on the evolution of that Christie book and its three titles.

Have a lovely weekend, Liz.

Hi, Paul - thank you!

Finished A Dark Matter for TIOLI #1.

Now reading Death Of An Editor by Vernon Loder.

Great review of Frederica, Liz. That excerpt brought back a lot of happy memories of reading it. That's one of my favorite Heyers so far.

P.S. Thank goodness the cover of the one I read is nothing like the covers you posted. :-)

Thanks, Joe! It's a favourite with a lot of us.

Aren't they shocking!? :D

I have posted Part 2 of my examination of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Lisle; yup, definitely a three-parter...

Finished Death Of An Editor for TIOLI #3.

Now reading The Eyes Of Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah.

...and as far as I can tell, there are only two Inspector Brews novels. I'm rather disappointed at that, as I was enjoying the character.

On the other hand this means that I have finished a series!!

(And yes I call two books "a series". What's it to ya!?)

My Frederica cover is also orange, but a little more on point to the plot.


Fascinating discussion of the Christie book, Liz. I really enjoyed it!

Hi, Roni - thank you!

I'm starting to get suspicious of all these balloons. I wonder how many of the cover artists actually read the book, and how many simply took a cue from someone else's design?? :)

Finished The Eyes Of Max Carrados for TIOLI #8.

Now reading Affectionately, Eve by Upton Sinclair.

Hmm:

"I should warn you, however, that it isn't anything great in the way of a dispersal---no Caxtons or first-folio Shakespeares. Consequently there will be an absence of ducal bibliophiles..."

Upon first reading I took that as a pot-shot at Lord Peter Wimsey, who made his first appearance in Whose Body? in 1923, the same year that The Eyes Of Max Carrados was published; but it seems that The Virginiola Fraud, the story in which that remark is made, was first published in 1913, so I guess it's just an odd coincidence.

Aristocratic bibliophiles must have been a "thing", though.

I have wrapped up my examination of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's 1862 sensation novel, Lady Lisle:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Which also means that my blogging is up-to-date---yay!

Finished Affectionately, Eve for TIOLI #5.

Now reading Mr Britling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells.

Liz, I know you would generally not be up for the British Author Challenge but next year there will be a couple of months that you might be able to coincide things with. For instance one month features 10 books written before the ascension of Queen Victoria and there will possibly be something there you might like or be able to advise us all on. Additionally June 2017 will feature Georgette Heyer for the ladies.

Have a great weekend.

>189 PaulCranswick: Additionally June 2017 will feature Georgette Heyer for the ladies. And discerning gents, Paul. :-)

>130 lyzard:, >131 lyzard: Skipping your comments on the Forsyte saga for now as I am planning to read it one day.

>134 SandDune: Aw! I saw the swimming sloth on the TV programme and was coming over here to share but I see Rhian beat me to it!

>152 lyzard: Interesting comments on Murder is Easy Liz. I enjoyed the creepy village atmosphere which reminded me a bit of Ethel Lina White's Fear Stalks the Village which we read earlier this year.

>163 lyzard: I did catch up on your blog posts on Lady Lisle and Hargarve yesterday morning - interesting comments re the treatment of Jewishness (or Jewish-looking) in Lady Lisle and the similarities with The Prime Minister. It struck me particularly because as you comment, Braddon and Trollope are both authors from that period of whom we're used to a more broadminded approach.

>166 lyzard: - >170 lyzard: A really fascinating series of posts, Liz. My copy (printed 1993) is called And Then There Were None but from a quick glance inside refers to Nigger Island and the rhyme uses the n word too. So it seems in the modern British version they've just changed the title and left the text otherwise unchanged? I'll confirm when I reread it.

>189 PaulCranswick:

Hi, Paul! Thank you for the information. Though I don't usually participate in those challenges myself I always like to see what other people are up to.

As for that last remark---

>190 jnwelch:

Yes, indeed! Thank you, Joe! :D

>191 souloftherose:

It always makes me laugh to think how often Christie is criticised for writing "nostalgic" novels of village life---methinks a lot of critics haven't actually read her books! Yes, good call on White.

Thanks for visiting, much appreciated! I got a little carried away with both Hargrave and Lady Lisle, and need to remember how to write single post blogs! (Though I don't mind so much re: Lady Lisle, since it is one of her less accessible novels.)

It was an odd coincidence coming across that at the same time it was being made such a prominent aspect of The Prime Minister, which does I think speak to a fairly common practice, unfortunately.

That's really interesting---I might add that it turns out that the copy of And Then There Were None which I borrowed from the library has "soldiers" all the way through, but retains Philip Lombard's anti-Semitic remarks. This is an American-sourced edition from 2011; whereas the 1966 American edition, published as Ten Little Indians, altered that text.

So I guess the bottom line is, there's no such thing as a definite edition and you can read whatever the hell you like! :D

(Psst... I have added And Then There There Were None to #14, if you care to join me...?)

Finished Mr Britling Sees It Through for TIOLI #15.

Now reading The Shapes Of Midnight by Joseph Payne Brennan.

I won't pile on with pointing out that Georgette Heyer appeals to more than just "ladies", since Joe and Liz have covered that thoroughly. Bravo, Joe!

And Liz, I'm even later to the party in telling you that I found your discussion of And Then There Were None to be utterly fascinating, especially as it appears the level of bowdlerization (is that what we would call this?) seems to vary so widely from country to country and edition to edition. It seems like a topic ripe for a research paper if you could ever track down all the various editions that were ever issued (seems an impossible task).

And FINALLY, I just watched my first-ever episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot starring David Sachet. It's on Netflix, and instead of starting at the beginning I decided to pick an episode based on a book I had already read, and thus ended up watching Peril at End House. I loved it, and I can only agree with all the people who thought Sachet was perfectly cast. Hastings was a bit of a surprise to me, as I hadn't pictured him as being quite as handsome in the books but the actor who played him captured his genial dimness perfectly, I thought.

OK, back to lurking...

:D

Thanks, Julia! I think "bowdlerisation" is probably the more correct word for this situation. It is very odd to me that so many different versions exist---that I'm still finding variants! I suppose different publishers have different attitudes to the material, but I'm very surprised that after 77 years of this we still don't have a definitive text.

Tread warily with the adaptations! Pretty much all of them feel compelled to change something, and in some cases nearly everything! The Poirot adaptations are better than the Miss Marple ones, though, since there they compensated for a lack of material by shoving Jane into all the standalones; some of them are mind-bogglingly bad.

Hugh Fraser, who plays Hastings, is the voice of the Poirot audiobooks, and I believe does a very good job.

Finished The Shapes Of Midnight for TIOLI #13.

As of yesterday I've reverted to the process of reading a book only accessible within our State Library; so I have that and an "outside" book as well:

Now reading The Voice Of The Seven Sparrows by Harry Stephen Keeler, and La Nuit Du Carrefour by Georges Simenon.

I've been meaning for ages to have a day where I followed a good walk in the Botanical Gardens with a good read in the State Library, but the weather has been aggravatingly uncooperative, either just too hot or overcast / rainy. But yesterday, for TIOLI purposes, I couldn't put it off any longer: I walked from Macquarie Street through the gardens to Mrs Macquarie's Point and back again, about 45 min, before a session with Harry Stephen Keeler's The Voice Of The Seven Sparrows.

Though it was still too hot to be pleasant (and it was quite hazy, as you can tell from the photo), the gardens were beautiful and I felt better for the walk. If I get a better day I'd like to do the full circuit from Circular Quay around the point and then back up to the library, which should be about 90 mins, I think.

I had an exciting experience over the weekend! (Well...exciting by my standards, anyway.) I went out onto my front balcony to throw some vegetable peelings onto the garden for compost, and realised I had a visitor: a large blue-tongued lizard.

I haven't seen one around in ages. The Council has been doing some rather destructive "gardening" in the small bushy lot next door, and perhaps this one was disturbed. He took a moment to see whether my swede peelings were anything he might be interested in, so I had time to grab my phone.

Unfortunately the camera was still focusing when he put his tongue out, but you can see what colour it is in the first shot. Then came a moment when he seemed to notice me hanging off the balcony and kindly froze so I could get a decent shot. (They have such little legs for their fat bodies!) Then he moved off, out of the garden, up my side passage and across the courtyard, before disappearing into the undergrowth.

  

Wow! Cool looking lizard, lyzard. :-P

:D

He's much prettier than I am. (Although come to think of it, our figures are similar.)

>197 lyzard: Beautiful picture, Liz!

>198 lyzard: I love blue tongues, as we had until recently always blue tongued dogs (Chow Chows) around, I did not know there were blue tongued lizzards :-)

>200 lyzard: Do you also have a blue tongue? ;-)

>201 FAMeulstee:

Hi, Anita - thanks!

They are quite common here and popular too, as they do useful things like eating snails and slugs in the garden. :)

>202 rosalita:

Depends what I've been eating!

Finished La Nuit Du Carrefour for TIOLI #12.

Now reading Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham.

>198 lyzard: Great-looking lizard. Thanks for sharing!

Hi, Harry - yes, they are! :)

Finished Sweet Danger for TIOLI #10.

Now reading Miscellaneous Pieces, In Prose by John and Anna Laetitia Aikin; still reading The Voice Of The Seven Sparrows.

Aw, nurks.

Some of you may remember (then again, probably not!) that a while back I thought I had discovered a "lost" work from Charles J. Dutton's series featuring private investigator, John Bartley---chiefly because information on The Westwood Mystery was so scant, and by scant I mean "non-existent".

However, while researching Dutton, I have just come across a short advertising paragraph with a synopsis that makes it clear that The Westwood Mystery is the retitled UK edition of The Second Bullet, the fifth book in the series.

Since I'm always bitching about American retitlings of British mysteries, I feel like I've been hoist with my own petard!

On the other hand, I'm pleased that (i) I've correctly sorted out a series, and (ii) I don't have to track down a copy of The Second Bullet, which are rare and expensive.

At least there's a silver lining to the confusion cloud!

Order and method, my dear Hastings Julia! :D

I wish I could get past my fixation on this series, which to be frank is not very good (although occasionally amusingly bad); there are many much better series deserving my attention, but for some reason this one's a burr in my saddle-blanket.

I can relate, although I don't have the whole "it's historical!" thing to hang my hat on. I have slogged through the increasingly bad Temperance Brennan series by Kathy Reichs, even though it's gotten extremely lackluster as she approaches #20. And yet, I can't just quit a series. The author pretty much has to die first. Or in the case of Patricia Cornwell, get so abominably bad that even I can dump it without any qualms. These aren't there, quite.

I hear ya! :)

I'm in the process of hunting down the last Bartley book - hurrah! Dutton does have a second series; I'm ambivalent about that, but it is supposed to be better than the Bartley series. It would pretty much have to be! - it's fairly obvious that Dutton lost interest in Bartley quite early, but was being paid to write serials and so kept slogging away.

Finished The Voice Of The Seven Sparrows for TIOLI #14.

Still reading Miscellaneous Pieces, In Prose.

>198 lyzard: Great lizard! I love lizards.

{*blush*} :)

Finished Miscellaneous Pieces, In Prose for TIOLI #9.

Now reading The Fall Of Faction; or, Edmund's Vision, Which Soars To The Beautiful And Sublime; And In Which The Mystery Of A Certain Marriage Is Clearly Explained, an anonymous political satire from 1789.

Hi Liz! Hope you're having a great day!

Hi, Rachel - thanks!

Finished The Fall Of Faction; or, Edmund's Vision for TIOLI #11.

Now reading Calavar; or, The Knight Of The Conquest: A Romance Of Mexico by Robert Montgomery Bird.

>192 lyzard: Added my name to challenge #14 for And Then There Were None - should be able to squeeze it in before the end of the month.

>194 rosalita:, >195 lyzard: Agreed re the portrayals of Poirot and Hastings in the Suchet Christie adaptations and also about them changing the stories (although it seems inevitable for TV adaptations) but I do enjoy those adaptations when I catch them.

>196 lyzard: Oh I need to pick my next kindle read and it might just be Le Nuit de Carrefour!

>198 lyzard: Wow!

>194 rosalita: and >195 lyzard:
If you can watch the Miss Marple adaptations with Joan Hickson as Miss Marple, I think you might like them better, as the remain true to the original plots and are quite delightful.

>220 souloftherose:

That would be excellent! :)

Most of the changes are so senseless, though! - change just for its own sake, not because something doesn't work in a TV adaptation.

Le Nuit Du Carrefour is one of the shorter Maigret stories, though very complicated.

>221 Matke:

I agree, Gail - the Joan Hickson adaptations are much more faithful and, on the whole, better worth watching IMHO (though Hickson still isn't "fluffy" enough to suit my idea of our Jane).

Finished Calavar; or, The Knight Of The Conquest for TIOLI #4.

And with that, dear friends---

I HAVE COMPLETED A TIOLI SWEEP!!!!

I'm more than a little astonished! Given my reading habits, I really never thought a sweep would be possible. This one has required some serious burning of the midnight oil, too, since it was well into the month before it even occurred to me there was a chance:

#1: A Dark Matter by Peter Straub (2010)
#2: The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope (1876)
#3: Death Of An Editor by Vernon Loder (1931)
#4: Calavar; or, The Knight Of The Conquest: A Romance Of Mexico by Robert Montgomery Bird (1834)
#5: Affectionately, Eve by Upton Sinclair (1961)
#6: Shaken Down by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry (1925)
#7: Love In Hiding by Barbara Cartland (1959)
#8: The Eyes Of Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah (1923)
#9: Miscellaneous Pieces, In Prose by John Aikin and Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbauld (1773)
#10: Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham (1933)
#11: The Fall Of Faction; or, Edmund's Vision by Anonymous (1789)
#12: La Nuit Du Carrefour by Georges Simenon (1931)
#13: The Shapes Of Midnight by Joseph Payne Brennan (1980)
#14: The Voice Of The Seven Sparrows by Harry Stephen Keeler (1924)
#15: Mr Britling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells (1916)

...now all I have to do is get them written up... :D

And, oh yeah!---

Now reading And Then There were None by Agatha Christie.

Fun fact: it is currently estimated that And Then There Were None is the seventh best-selling book of all time.

>223 lyzard: Congratulations, Liz!!!

Thanks, Anita! I'm in awe of you. :)

I am in awe of those of you who tackle TIOLI every month. You seem to have great fun finding books to fit the categories each month, and to make a clean sweep seems insanely difficult. Well done, you!

Thanks! I think this month the challenges were, not easy, but a bit more general. Usually with TIOLI I look at the challenge list and see two or three where I immediately think, "Well, I won't be doing that." (Which has already happened this month, so no more sweeps! :D )

Finished And Then There Were None for TIOLI #14, which is November wrapped.

Now reading The Holy Lover by Marie Conway Oemler.

Congratulations on making a sweep! I never could accomplish such a thing. Very well done!

Thank you, Gail! :)

Good job with the sweep! I've never tried the TIOLI challenge, but I enjoy watching other people try it out.

Thanks, Rachel! You should try, it's fun! :)

Finished The Holy Lover for TIOLI #3.

Now reading Every Eye by Isobel English.

>223 lyzard: Wow! Congratulations!

Thank you! It was quite a surprise. :)

The Prime Minister - This fifth book in Anthony Trollope's "Palliser" series finds the Duke of Omnium the reluctant head of a coalition government. While in one respect he is the perfect man for the job, in that he is the one politician that both sides trust, in another he is the worst possible choice for prime minister, since the uneasy alliance requires someone who can work with all sorts of men (including those he dislikes and distrusts), and meld the coalition's disparate elements into a working government---and this is a task beyond the powers of the thin-skinned, high-principled Plantagenet. Lady Glencora, though glorying in the Duke's appointment, sees only too clearly where he is likely to fail, and sets out to do what he cannot via a series of lavish entertainments intended to win the gratitude and loyalty of both parties, but which ultimately do as much harm as good. Despite her husband's declaration that he will not interfere in the upcoming Silverbridge election, Glencora continues to meddle, including encouraging social-climbing aspirant Ferdinand Lopez to consider himself "the Duke's candidate"; but when Plantagenet puts his foot down, and publicly, it sets in motion a series of events that will damage both the government and Lopez's already shaky marriage to the lovely young Emily Wharton, who has become his wife in the teeth of her family's rigid opposition and is beginning to regret it... Following on from Trollope's great but depressing "state of the nation" novel, The Way We Live Now, The Prime Minister is one of the author's darkest works, offering little relief to the reader in either of its main plots. Trollope's understanding of both men and politics shows itself again in his depiction of the uncomfortable coalition, which finally collapses from the inside due to its members' self-interest and Plantagenet's inability to be the flexible leader that the government needs. However, his parallel depiction of the Lopez marriage is severely flawed. Lopez represents the class of men that Trollope most distrusted, those making a precarious living through speculation and other financial manipulations, which he viewed as fundamentally dishonest; but while the gradual revelation of Lopez as an amoral scoundrel is painful and effective, particularly as it is seen through the eyes of his swiftly disillusioned bride, the characterisation is lacking the psychological depth and motivation that we expect from Trollope, with no more reason given within the narrative for Lopez's unprincipled and wholly selfish behaviour than that his father wasn't English: a suggestion unworthy of the author, as is the antisemitism that taints this section of the novel. That said, the climax to this secondary plot is extraordinary, one of Trollope's most powerful passages of writing. Nevertheless, the novel is on firmer ground when exploring the Plantagenet-Glencora marriage, each of them wanting to do their best for the other, yet with the two of them constantly at odds and causing one another pain through sheer incompatibility of temperament and personality.

    "What is it that you fear? What can the man do to you? What matter is it to you if such a one as that pours out his malice on you? Let it run off like the rain from the housetops. You are too big even to be stung by such a reptile as that." The Duke looked into her face, admiring the energy with which she spoke to him. "As for answering him," she continued to say, "that may or may not be proper. If it should be done, there are people to do it. But I am speaking of your own inner self. You have a shield against your equals, and a sword to attack them with if necessary. Have you no armour of proof against such a creature as that? Have you nothing inside you to make you feel that he is too contemptible to be regarded?"
    "Nothing," he said.
    "Oh, Plantagenet!"
    "Cora, there are different natures which have each their own excellencies and their own defects. I will not admit that I am a coward, believing as I do that I could dare to face necessary danger. But I cannot endure to have my character impugned,---even by Mr. Slide and Mr. Lopez."
    "What matter,---if you are in the right? Why blench if your conscience accuses you of no fault? I would not blench even if it did. What;---is a man to be put in the front of everything, and then to be judged as though he could give all his time to the picking of his steps?"
    "Just so! And he must pick them more warily than another."
    "I do not believe it. You see all this with jaundiced eyes. I read somewhere the other day that the great ships have always little worms attached to them, but that the great ships swim on and know nothing of the worms."
    "The worms conquer at last."

Love In Hiding - After being orphaned, and knowing none of her relatives, Gretna Hayden has no choice but to take refuge with the woman she has always thought of as "Aunt Maria"---the widowed Maria Fitzherbert, who Society believes to be the latest mistress of the Prince of Wales, but about whom still more disturbing rumours have begun to swirl: namely, that she and the Prince are married. Gretna soon discovers that Mrs Fitzherbert has many powerful enemies, who deplore her influence over the impetuous prince and the potential scandal of their association; while those who believe Mrs Fitzherbert to be the royal mistress begin to look upon Gretna as belonging to the same class of woman. Among these men are the dissolute Lord Wroxhall, of whom Gretna is instinctively terrified, and the Marquis of Stade, to whom she is drawn despite his open enmity towards her "Aunt Maria"... This Georgian romance by Barbara Cartland is predictable stuff, its only real point of interest its absurdly idealised portrait of the young Prince of Wales, the future Prince Regent and George IV; with the plot turning upon the fact that he and Maria Fitzherbert did indeed go through a form of marriage. (The marriage was illegal under English law, both because Mrs Fitzherbert was a commoner and because she was a Catholic, but it was recognised by the Pope.) Various public figures, including Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and the beautiful young Duchess of Devonshire, also flit through the narrative. Stade is the usual unlikeable alpha male, but Gretna has a little more backbone than most of Cartland's heroines---if only she could get through a single sentence without stumbling over it! Matters come to a crisis when Lord Wroxhall, who has succeeded in concealing his rancour against Mrs Fitzherbert, concocts a plan to abduct her and transport her to the West Indies. A misunderstanding sees Gretna abducted in her place and confined on Wroxhall's yacht, spurring the Marquis into a desperate race against time...

    Something boiled up inside her, something which made her lose control of herself. Her chin went up and she faced the Marquis defiantly. Before she could prevent the words, they burst forth from her lips:
    "G...Go away!" she stormed. "You s...spoil everything, besmirch e...everything. I was h...happy and now it is all s...spoiled. I h...hate you---yes, h...hate you!"
    The Marquis bowed. It was an ironical bow that somehow managed to turn what was a courtesy into an insult.
    "I think," he said slowly, "that you will be well suited to the life you have chosen."

La Nuit Du Carrefour (translation / reissue titles: Night At The Crossroads / Maigret At The Crossroads / The Crossroad Murders) - In an isolated district on the outskirts of Paris, a Dutch diamond dealer is found dead in the car of insurance salesman, M. Michonnet, which is found parked in the garage of the house occupied by Carl Andersen and his sister, Else, who arrived from Denmark three years earlier. Anderson is arrested and grilled, but finally released for lack of evidence. Maigret travels to the so-called "Three Widows Crossroads", a lonely spot occupied only by the reclusive Andersons, the fussy M. Michonnet and his wife, and the busy garage of the overbearingly genial M. Oscar, which operates night and day: how can any of these people have been involved with the late Isaac Goldberg? La Nuit Du Carrefour is one of the shorter Maigret novels, but it is also one of the most complicated---at least psychologically. Maigret's efforts to understand the usual behaviour and movements of the three households at the crossroads are counterbalanced by the need to understand what Isaac Goldberg was doing in such an isolated location - assuming he came there voluntarily - and who he might have known there. A telegram from Belgium revealing that Goldberg was a suspect in the trafficking of contraband opens up a new line of inquiry; yet still Maigret feels that the case somehow turns on the relationship between the obviously disturbed Carl Andersen and his enigmatic sister, to whom Maigret finds himself strangely drawn. At first it seems that the Andersens and the Michonnets may be bystander victims in the murder of Isaac Goldberg, until Mrs Goldberg arrives at the crossroads to assist with the investigation---and falls victim to a shot fired from the darkness nearby...

    It was early on a fine April day. In the very field where Maigret, blinded by the headlamps, had chased the murderer in vain and now advanced step by step, following the traces left in the darkness, two farm workers loaded a cart with beets they were harvesting from a hillock while their horses waited quietly.
    The double row of trees along the main road sliced through the countryside. The red petrol pumps at the garage sparkled in the sunlight.
    Slow, stubborn, quite possibly in a bad mood, Maigret was smoking. The footprints found in the field seemed to prove that Madame Goldberg had been shot with a rifle, for the murderer had not come within thirty metres of the inn.
    The footprints were unremarkable: smooth soles, average size. The trail curved around to wind up at the Three Widows Crossroads, keeping a more or less equal distance from the Andersens' house, the Michonnet villa and the garage...

Shaken Down - Having carried their series detective, San Francisco-based private investigator Jerry Boyne, to a critical point in his life, Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry then stepped back to write this prequel, which tells of Boyne's life as a young beat cop on Nob Hill, and his involvement in the kidnapping of the son of wealthy businessman James Claiborne. Boyne is witness to a horse-drawn cab being driven away at a tremendous pace from near the Claiborne house, where the child's nurse lies dead, violently struck down. However, when the power-brokers of San Francisco arrive---political "boss" Lamartine, Captain Frayne, the chief of detectives, and Police Commissioner John Knox Gahagan---Boyne cannot get anyone to listen to his story. So he thinks; but when Gahagan calls him to his office to offer him an excellent job that means leaving town immediately, Boyne wonders... To everyone's astonishment, Claiborne is certain that his own daughter, Leonora, is behind the kidnapping of her young half-brother; but while her disappearance adds some credence to the startling claim, Boyne begins to make discoveries that throw a new light upon the case---and put the young policeman in deadly danger... This 1925 novel is the strongest so far in an improving series, melding a taut thriller with a tale of rampant political corruption. We are used to American crime novels of this era being cynical about the police and politics, but this one takes the cake, painting an extraordinary picture of a city wholly in the grasp of criminal organisations directed from within the local government. The novel's characterisation of John Knox Gahagan is particularly complex. He is a young man of high intelligence, strong will and forceful personality, capable of doing great good; yet his climb to the top has been along a very dirty road, via practices that leave him vulnerable to blackmail. Boyne, meanwhile, despite attempts to buy and/or frighten him off, continues stubbornly to pursue his own investigation, and gets a lead on the whereabouts of young Jamie Claiborne---but his efforts are thwarted, not by the city's criminal elements, but from within the police force itself, with Boyne having two narrow escapes before the gloves come off, and he finds himself the target of a city-wide "shoot to kill" order. The title of this novel has a wry double-meaning, however, and refers not only to the attempt to "shake down" James Claiborne with a ransom demand: these events take place during April of 1906, and the final third of the story unfolds against the backdrop of the devastating San Francisco earthquake and fire.

    I saw the lodging-house, through which I'd made my escape, helped by the little, whiskered man---or rather, I saw a heap of burning ruins where it had stood; and the three-storey building that had housed Travers' gambling joint on whose roof I'd hidden, fighting for my life; that roof was aflame now in a dozen places. I couldn't see the Jessie Street house back of it, but hopeless as the situation would have looked at any sane time, I battled to get there. At the corner a policeman stopped me with a sharp: "You can't go in there. Everything down and burning. Move on."
    "I'm Patrolman Boyne," I said. An hour ago, perhaps, he'd have shot me down as I announced my name. "I'm a member of the police---let me through the lines." He did, only staring after me as I ran over heaps of rock and brick and twisted iron, stared till I was lost to him in the smoke.
    And there wasn't any Jessie Street house. I mean just that. Not on that short street, which had been lined with those old-time dwellings, was there one now standing. Down to the foundation they'd gone, and the wreckage of them was catching fire in new places each moment as I looked. My own, especial Jessie Street house, where I'd hoped to get the boy on Gahagan's order, was even more completely wiped out. The Mission Street warehouse that backed up against its rear yard had toppled over and buried the whole place so deep that not a plank showed...

A Dark Matter - In the late sixties, four high-school friends fall under the influence of a self-proclaimed "guru", Spencer Mallon, who has established himself at the local university and drawn around him a circle of acolytes. The fifth member of the group, Lee Harwell, stubbornly refuses to become involved, and so is not present on the fatal afternoon when a ceremony in an isolated meadow leaves one person dead, literally torn to pieces; one missing, never to be seen again; and the others irrevocably changed... Many years later, researching a possible non-fiction crime story about serial killer Till Hayward whose nephew and apprentice, Keith, died in the meadow, Harwell finds those mysterious events impacting his life more urgently than they have ever done before---even though he married his then-girlfriend, Lee Truax - known as "the Eel", while he was known as "Twin", for the concurrence of their names - who was one of the participants. But the Eel has never spoken of what happened that day... When Twin and the Eel are reunited with their high-school friends - Donald "Dill" Olson, who became a follower of Mallon before winding up in jail; Jason "Boats" Boatman, who became a professional thief; and Howard "Hootie" Bly, who was institutionalised - the five of them finally confront the long-suppressed but defining memories of their early years... This 2010 novel by Peter Straub bears a significant resemblance to several by fellow horror-writer and good friend Stephen King, offering a split narrative of young people undergoing a traumatic but unresolved event, and later in their lives being compelled to deal with the consequences. The surprise here is that Spencer Mallon is set up as a fraud, courting vulnerable young people as his "acolytes" and demanding sexual favours from his female followers, including seventeen-year-old Lee Truax, only for it to be revealed that he has indeed discovered a way of opening a passage between reality and the spirit world---or "a" spirit world: a world of terrifying and violent beings, some of which cross over during the ceremony, and others which make contact with the young participants in Mallon's ritual, each of whom comes away changed forever, for better or for worse. In the case of Lee Truax, she progressively becomes blind: a reaction to the role she played on the fatal afternoon, when she was permitted to see far, far too much... While sections of A Dark Matter are effective, ultimately the characters just aren't interesting enough to sustain a narrative of this length; particularly when the contemporary parts of the novel involve the participants recalling their experiences: each different, but involving the same series of events. The one exception, and the novel's real triumph, is sweet, gentle Hootie Bly, who emerges from his trauma emotionally and mentally unstable, and spends the next thirty years hospitalised---able to communicate only by using sentences he has read and remembered; and since his two best-remembered works are The Scarlet Letter and an anthology of obscure and arcane words, his conversation tends to be---interesting...

    And just like before, the minute Spencer told them to take out their matches and light their candles and hold them aloft, those other things came crowding in. Like a host of moths, all glimmer-grey and shimmer-brown, but they weren't moths. In brief, vivid images, the flares and spurts of light illuminated paws and muzzles and pointed teeth and buttons glinting on vests and suit jackets. A satin hatband captured a flare of match light, then slipped back into the teeming obscurity. And others came, too, hidden amongst those upright not-dogs. Bad things. Eel knew about them, but no one else did.
    I don't like this, he said. They're here again.
    Mallon hushed him, and for some reason a sad, bitter line from The Scarlet Letter unfurled in his mind and rolled from his mouth: Must I sink down here, and die at once?
    Keith Hayward aimed a smirk and a dip of the head at Meredith, but her face settled into a mask of distaste, and she flicked him away. Meredith didn't know of the Others, and neither did Keith. Did Eel? He thought the Eel knew everything, for she was already in another realm, yes, he could tell, the Eel had taken a step away, a step out. His poor heart folded and creased with pain, for he knew he could never follow her. Yet at the same time, his creased and folded heart expanded with love for the wondrous Eel, who could know such freedom... For Hootie, right then the Eel became the Sylark, just as Mallon had said. She was taking flight, and she was singing, though he could not hear a note, so earthbound and coarse were his ears...

Finished Every Eye for TIOLI #11.

Now reading Death In The Tunnel by Miles Burton.

>243 lyzard: What on earth are you doing reading a book published in 2010, young lady?? I've read some Straub but find him to be the John Mellencamp to King's Springsteen, if you understand such a bizarre metaphor/simile/comparison.

Second question: What's our next Heyer, please?

Finding a book for Madeline's "bird pointing left on the cover" challenge. :)

I hadn't read Peter Straub for years before this, and I'm certainly not up-to-date with his work, but I remember liking some of his early works---Ghost Story in particular.

We are up to Black Sheep this month.

Ah, good old TIOLI! Well, there are enough birds on that cover that at least oe of them must be facing left. :-)

I liked Ghost Story probably the best of what I've read of Straub. He also collaborated with King on one of my favorite King books, The Talisman, so I give him props for that. Hey, I have some Mellencamp albums, too! :-D

So do I. And The Boss, of course.

Ah, yes, The Talisman! I think I have a copy of that around somewhere; no doubt it will emerge from one of the Anonymous Boxes sooner or later. (Hey, the Boxes gave me Barbara Cartland this month, so they owe me a favour!)

Finished Death In The Tunnel for TIOLI #4.

Now reading Red Stain by Vernon Loder.

Death Of An Editor - Inspector Brews is called to the country house of newspaper magnate, Sir James Sitheby---but by the time he gets there the man who summoned him, the Evening Record's chief editor Hay Smith, has been shot dead. Sir James himself is rarely at his country house: he keeps it, rather, as a "holding place" for people whose services he may require; many miscellaneous guests therefore pass through its doors, with one of the current crop, former newspaper employee Edward Sape, discovered to be there under false pretenses. No motive for Smith's murder is evident, but Brews ponders the victim's summoning of the police: what could have happened at this country house to require a police investigation? The initial investigation suggests that Smith was shot with a rifle, sniper-wise, from Sir James' yacht, which is moored on the river that runs past the grounds; but while this possibility is still being assessed, a second murder occurs, with M. Achille Damont, the Evening Record's European correspondent, found shot dead in the middle of the night, directly under the dressing-room windows of Edward Sape... This second and, sadly, final book by "Vernon Loder" (John George Hazlette Vahey) featuring Inspector Brews finds the Essex-based police officer starting out with murder, only to be drawn into a tangled web involving the Foreign Office, espionage, and stolen diplomatic papers. As with the same year's Strange Murders At Greystones, although far better executed here, Death Of An Editor may appeal to contemporary readers for its portrait of an unscrupulous media baron, quite prepared to get his own hands dirty and cause widespread damage in the name of newspaper circulation and personal power. At the very least Sir James Sitheby is involved in negotiating for stolen documents; but when his alibi for the time of Hay Smith's murder is broken down, a still more ominous possibility emerges. And what of Edward Sape, who recently resigned from the Evening Record because of "a disagreement over policy", and who moves swiftly from being castigated by Sir James for his unwarranted presence in his house, to being quietly rehired by him? A conspiracy is certainly afoot, and Inspector Brews must not only identify the murderer - or murderers - of Hay Smith and Achille Damont, but race against time to prevent the stolen papers being carried out of the country: a secondary mission that pits the stolid-seeming but shrewd inspector against an elusive and very clever woman...

    Brews smiled. "Our task here is complicated by the fact that we have not only to make an arrest but also to recover, if we can, this document asked for by the F. O. But the F. O. will want a full bag of those concerned; not one meagre specimen, leaving the others to carry on the good work."
    "I don't quite follow."
    "During the war," said Brews, "single spies were often let alone till they led our men to others of their organisation. I have to do the same here. I have the advantage and the disadvantage of being a provincial, even a country detective---that is to say, I am expected to do the work of a wise man while being regarded as an inevitable fool."
    "Which is the most advantageous, Mr Brews?" Miss Hainey asked, laughing.
    "Being regarded as an ass," he replied promptly.

The Eyes Of Max Carrados - We can only infer that reaction to Ernest Bramah's first collection of short stories featuring blind amateur detective, Max Carrados, was sceptical, to say the least: it was nearly ten years before Bramah published a second volume in the series, and he prefaced it with a lengthy introduction in which he painstakingly spelled out numerous historical instances of blind people demonstrating almost miraculous abilities that amounted to them "seeing". Truth may well be stranger than fiction; in the context of these stories, it needs to be stranger: the fundamental weakness of the Max Carrados stories is that the detective's other senses are heightened to a point that almost makes them super-powers and which leave him, as it were, only technically blind: for example, he can read with his finger-tips---print, not Braille---all of which rather negates the point of him being blind in the first place. Still, the Max Carrados stories are worth reading as stories, this time finding the detective investigating mysterious deaths, cases of fraud, espionage, abductions, disappearances and mysterious deaths, and three times tangling with apparently supernatural events. A recurrent theme of this collection is events that start out looking like crimes, but which prove to have an alternative explanation (although there's a good mix of real crime, too). The most interesting stories are The Disappearance Of Marie Severe, in which a young girl vanishes between her home and the school at the other end of the street; The Ingenious Mr Spinola, which involves a miraculous card-playing robot that rarely loses; and The Secret Of Dunstan's Tower, which revolves around madness and a family curse. However, the most unexpected story is the final one, The Eastern Mystery which, after two episodes of "ghost-busting" by Carrados, finds the detective involved with the genuinely supernatural...

    "Excuse my asking, Mr Carrados," Hosier said at length, "but are you quite blind?"
    "Quite," was the unconcerned reply. "Why?"
    "Because I noticed that you held some of the labels close to your eyes and I fancied that perhaps---"
    "It is my way."
    "Forgive my curiosity."
    "I can assure you, Mr Hosier, that other people are much more touchy about my blindness than I am. Now will you do me a kindness? I should like a copy of the inscriptions on half-a-dozen of these gems."
    "With pleasure." The curate discovered pen and ink and paper and waited.
    "This didrachm of the nymph Larissa wearing earrings; this of Artemis and the stag; this, and this, and this." The trays had been left displayed upon the table and Carrados's hand selected from them with unerring precision.
    Hosier took the chosen coins and noted down the legends in their bold Greek capitals. "Shall I describe the type of each as well?" he asked.
    "Thank you," assented his visitor. "If you don't mind writing that also in capitals and not blotting I shall read it so much the easier."

Affectionately, Eve - Though the idea of a fully epistolary novel being published in 1961 is a little disconcerting, Upton Sinclair's final work (The Coal War, published posthumously in 1976, was written almost sixty years earlier) purports to be a series of letters written in the late 1920s from a sheltered Southern girl, visiting New York for the first home, to her best friend at home in Georgia. Eve Forrester has ventured upon this daring expedition alone after her chaperone falls ill; her mission is to finalise arrangements with the brilliant but idiosyncratic sculptor, Paul Januschek, who has accepted a preliminary commission from the Daughters of the Confederacy. The Daughters' idea is a statue of a noble young man in uniform, flag waving behind him, but Januschek immediately conceives the idea of a real daughter of the Confederacy, crushed and grieving in the aftermath of war, and insists that Eve must pose for it: that or nothing. Flustered and embarrassed, terrified of what the Daughters will say, Eve finally agrees... Necessarily extending her stay in New york, in between posing Eve has time to look around her, and to make friends---falling in with a group of Bohemian young women whose modern morals and frank talk about society, relationships and sex both shocks and fascinates her. Through one of these friends, Polly Mayne, Eve becomes a welcome visitor to the country house of wealthy banker and businessman Elgin J. Hardwick, where she is progressively drawn into the tumult surrounding the marriage of the idealistic Dennis Hardwick and his self-absorbed wife, Lorine... Affectionately, Eve is a peculiar but not uninteresting work, mixing Sinclair's usual dissection of social mores, politics and religion with some unexpected humour---the latter in the form of alternative versions of her letters, also sent to her friend, Jane, and intended to be read to Eve's mother, which are presented side-by-side with the unbowdlerised descriptions of her thoughts and experiences. Here we find the evolution of Eve's own knowledge and opinions, under the influence of her new friends---who wryly call themselves "the Reds", knowing full well the criticism that their opinions, particularly their feminism, attracts. Much of the focus of the novel is upon women's role in society, and what constitutes a healthy approach to sex and sexuality; while we are given a graphic illustration of the damaging results of conventional narrow mores in the marriage of Dennis and Lorine: the former's inexperience with women leading him to a profound misunderstanding of his manipulative and selfish wife, the latter finally revealed as a serial adulterer, always craving the excitement of a new affair, always on the verge of running away with this man or that, but always too insisting on her own fundamental "innocence" and ultimately determined not to give up the social advantages that come with being Mrs Dennis Hardwick. Eve and her friends, though exasperated with Dennis, are also sympathetic, seeing him as the victim of false ideas about women which prevent him from seeing Lorine's true nature. Their diagnosis for Denny's woes is a healthy dose of reality---which might just require Eve seducing him herself...

    Elise is accustomed to "lead off" without anyone's permission, and she did so now. "Item: one indisputably ripe virgin, not to say overripe; suffering from sex-repression and phobias; unattached, heart cloudy with infantile memories and romantic delusions; struggling in a net of prudish superstitions sanctified by religion which she no longer accepts intellectually, but which binds her subconscious life... There's a diagnosis which any psychoanalyst in New York would take six months to make, and charge you not less than a thousand dollars. You get it in one minute, and absolutely free of charge."
    "Thanks, dear," said I, humbly.
    "And now for the man, also free of charge: serious and fundamentally decent; presumably moral, at any rate used to be; has never known real love, or the happiness which a normal woman can give him... It is now proposed that some normal and reasonably sensible woman shall approach and detach the blood-sucking creature from his throat, and lead him off to a retired spot and explain to him the nature of pretty pink leeches or vampire-bats, and show him by practical demonstration that the process of giving and receiving love is different from that of sucking blood."

Best-selling books in the United States for 1917:

1. Mr Britling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells
2. The Light in the Clearing by Irving Bacheller
3. The Red Planet by William J. Locke
4. The Road to Understanding by Eleanor H. Porter
5. Wildfire by Zane Grey
6. Christine by Alice Cholmondeley
7. In the Wilderness by Robert S. Hichens
8. His Family by Ernest Poole
9. The Definite Object by Jeffrey Farnol
10. The Hundredth Chance by Ethel M. Dell

1917 seems to have found American readers torn between a desire for escapism, as the turmoil in Europe escalated, and a desire for a better understanding of the situation, as the turmoil crept closer to home.

The books that don't quite fit this summation are Eleanor Porter's The Road to Understanding, which examines the effects of childhood spoiling on adult relationships; Irving Bacheller's The Light in the Clearing, a biographical novel about the youth of New York Governor Silas Wright; and Ernest Poole's His Family, about a middle-class widower struggling to raise three daughters in a changing world. Poole won the first Pulitzer Prize for this novel (although there is some feeling he was actually being rewarded for his earlier work, The Harbor).

The Hundredth Chance is one of Ethel Dell's turgid romances, full of creepy sexualised violence (and violent sex), about a woman who makes what she thinks is a marriage of convenience, only to find herself tied to an alpha male who won't take 'no' for an answer. Equally turgid, although in a completely opposite way, is Robert Hichens' In the Wilderness, an exotically-set romance about a couple whose marriage is threatened by the wife's high principles and ideas about purity. The Definite Object is different from most of Jeffrey Farnol's historical romances, this one about a millionaire who tries to find out about "real life" by taking up residence in a poor New York boarding-house; while Zane Grey's Wildfire is a western (of course!) about a loner cowboy and a ranch owner's daughter who come together because of their mutual love of horses, particularly the titular stallion.

At the other end of the spectrum, Christine, published as by "Alice Cholmondeley" but actually by Elizabeth von Arnim, is a collection of (fictional) letters from a young woman in Germany to her mother in England, which offer a detailed description of German life and the mindset of the German people in the lead-up to the outbreak of war. William Locke's The Red Planet is the story of a disabled veteran of the Boer War, who acts as a sort of guardian to an English village and its people during the early days of WWI---and so bears a superficial resemblance to the year's #1 best-seller, H. G. Wells' Mr Britling Sees It Through, a far more complex and psychologically detailed account of an English country gentleman attempting to come to terms with the war.

There's a lot I could say about Herbert George Wells, of course, but I'll keep it brief.

Although today he is probably best remembered for his seminal works of science fiction, to his contemporaries Wells was better known for his sociological and political examinations of England.

Published in 1916, Mr Britling Sees It Through was an enormous best-seller in Britain and Australia as well as the US. It is a semi-autobiographical novel that finds an English country gentleman trying to hold hard to his optimism and his belief in England during the darkest days of WWI, and offers an affecting portrait of English country life both in the pre-war era, and as the war makes ever greater demands upon the home front.

Mr Britling Sees It Through - Though it is presented in the form of a novel, H. G. Wells 1916 publication is more correctly an extended internal monologue, a detailed relation and examination of the thoughts and feelings of an English country gentlemen as Europe moves inexorably towards and into war, and as England becomes caught up in the madness. Mr Britling lives an extremely pleasant life, writing erudite commentaries on a variety of topics for a living, and with his house constantly besieged by guests and visitors. The opening section of the novel is full of humour, divided between poking fun at the Britlings' American guest, Mr Direck, and his naive delight at finding England so different from home, and poking even more fun at the English themselves and their peculiar ways. But the lightness of tone here is deceptive---in effect, this section offers a heartfelt description of exactly how much England has to lose. It is Mr Direck who sounds the first discordant note, travelling to Europe to "see how things are", and getting rather more than he bargained for. Despite this, despite the summons home of Herr Heinrich, the Britling boys' amiable young German tutor, Mr Britling himself is simply unable to believe that war could happen---that an act of such insanity is truly within the realms of possibility---and he holds hard to his optimism even as events in Europe become ever more ominous... The bulk of Mr Britling Sees It Through consists of its central character's examination and readjustment of his ideas as war does come---and as he moves from an initial, angrily contemptuous fear that the conflict will be over too quickly to give Germany a "proper lesson", to the crushing realisation that Europe has plunged, heedless, into a state of unprecedented chaos, with no end in sight. As the demands upon the home front grow ever greater, as sacrifice becomes a way of life, and as the anticipation of casualties becomes a constant reality, Mr Britling faces a constant struggle, on one hand to find a useful place in the unfolding events, in the face of a military bureaucracy whose hidebound thinking will cost England very dear, on the other to find some meaning in the appalling conflict. In particular, and in spite of personal tragedies and bereavements, Mr Britling searches for a way to hold onto his belief in the future, and to reconcile the war with an ongoing belief in God---and finds it, finally, in a very personal vision of the individual's relationship with God. Mr Britling Sees It Through ends on as much of an optimistic note as could be expected, for a work published in the darkest days of the Battle of the Somme; but in penning his final words, H. G. Wells could not have known what the reader now knows: that the slaughter would continue for another two years...

    It is true that righteousness should triumph over the tyrant and the robber, but have carelessness and incapacity any right to triumph over capacity and foresight? Men were coming now to dark questionings between this intricate choice. And, indeed, was our cause all righteousness?
    There surely is the worst doubt of all for a man whose son is facing death.
    Were we indeed standing against tyranny for freedom?
    There came drifting to Mr Britling's ears a confusion of voices, voices that told of reaction, of the schemes of employers to best the trade unions, of greedy shippers and greedy house landlords reaping their harvest, of waste and treason in the very households of the Ministry, of religious cant and intolerance at large, of self-advertisement written in letters of blood, of forestalling and jobbery, of irrational and exasperating oppressions in India and Egypt... It came with a shock to him, too, that Hugh should see so little else than madness in the war, and have so pitiless a realisation of its essential futility. The boy forced his father to see---what indeed all along he had been seeing more and more clearly. The war, even by the standards of adventure and conquest, had long since become a monstrous absurdity. Some way there must be out of this bloody entanglement that was yielding victory to neither side, that was yielding nothing but waste and death beyond all precedent...

The Shapes Of Midnight - Anthologised in 1978 but originally published between 1953 - 1973, this collection of short stories by Joseph Payne Brennan offers some fantasy but deals predominantly with horror---both supernatural and closer to home. In his enthusiastic introduction, Stephen King lauds Payne as a writer of regional horror; like King himself, he has a fictional town---in this case, Juniper Hill, situated somewhere in New England---where strange things tend to happen; although there are a couple of city-based stories, too, while The Horror At Chilton Castle, about a grim family curse, finds us in England (with the story possibly narrated by Brennan himself, or at least a relative). Brennan is an effective story-teller, though his style is sparse; he also has a tendency to overuse certain words, which make these tales best not read too close together. While monsters including demons, a werewolf and what we might call a zombie appear in these pages, this time around I was particularly struck by the real-world horrors of The Pavillion and Disappearance, both dealing with murder and its consequences, the former with a vicious twist at the end; Impulse To Kill, which presents a disturbingly credible serial-killer scenario; and Who Was He? which exploits the natural fear of hospitals and offers a most unlikely Angel of Death. Ultimately, however, I hardly knew whether to be amused or dismayed by the discovery that my judgement of these stories hadn't budged an inch since I first read this book some thirty years ago, with the two standouts for me remaining Canavan's Back Yard, about a book-dealer whose overgrown yard contains an alternative and terrifying dimension; and the (in)famous Slime, about an amorphous horror from the depths of the ocean which is tossed up onto land by a storm, and sets about satisfying its voracious appetite...

    Terror took possession of him. He knew that he was in no condition to flee---and now he came to the horrifying conclusion that, whatever unspeakable menace waited in the surrounding darkness, it was temporarily held at bay only by the failing gleam of his little fire.
    Frantically he looked around for more wood. But there was none. None, that is, within the faint glow of firelight. And he dared not venture beyond.
    He began to tremble uncontrollably. He tried to scream, but no sound came out of his tightened throat.
    The ghastly stench became stronger, and now he was sure that he could hear a strange sliding, slithering sound in the black shadows beyond the remaining spark of firelight.
    He stood frozen in absolute helpless panic as the tiny fire smouldered down into darkness...

>255 lyzard: For an extended internal monologue, I was surprised by how well it caught and held my attention, and continue to be impressed with how well Britling' arguments with himself linger with me. It's among the better bestsellers we've read.

> 256 ... and for something completely different, that also looks delicious.

It's really one of Mr Britling's essays disguised as a novel! - obviously H. G. trying to work out his own feelings about the war and to trace the evolution of his ideas. The immediacy makes it effective: it isn't someone retconning their thoughts after the war, with the benefit of hindsight, but someone speaking in the middle of a catastrophe.

The presence of that sub-set of "what is really going on in Europe" books on the best-seller list is very suggestive, given the date.

Heh! Yes, the Brennan book is worth a read, if you can find a copy.

Finished Red Stain for TIOLI #2.

Now reading The Merriweather Girls In Quest Of Treasure by Lizette M. Edholm.

Happy Friday!

Thanks, Rachel!

Finished The Merriweather Girls In Quest Of Treasure for TIOLI #16.

Now reading The Frozen Flames by Hazel Phillips Hanshew.

The other day I had a chance to do some used books browsing, which hasn't happened for a while, and came away with the following haul:


    



This may be an appropriate opportunity to mention that in the New Year, Heather and I will be picking up our Virago Chronological Read project, which fell off the table like so many other things in this dreadful 2016.

We will be reading Harriet Martineau's Deerbrook together in January, and anyone who cares to join us is very welcome!

Finished The Frozen Flames for TIOLI #17.

Now reading The U. P. Trail by Zane Grey.

>264 lyzard: I haven't read The U. P. Trail; maybe I should pull it off the shelf.

It's this month's "best-seller challenge" book, so Steve and I will both be reading it---see you at TIOLI?? :)

>266 lyzard: Does it fit any particular TIOLI challenge? I have another western and a couple interlibrary loans (one just started) to get through before I can turn to the Grey, I think.

Definitely no sweep for me this month — some challenges that don't really mesh with what I want to read, and likely too many Christmas-related alternatives (we spent part of today making candy, with probably more to come, plus assorted baking planned as well).

No, no sweep here either! - I don't have a qualified chunkster to hand, so as soon as I saw that I knew I was no hope. But since I never expected to achieve one at all, perhaps I should just quit while I'm ahead anyway! :)

I was thinking of the "two-vowels" challenge; I'm not sure it fits any other (except the generic "not a holiday" one, which is the default challenge for me). But don't worry if you can't fit it in!

I'm very interested in joining in your reading of Deerbrook. I had never heard of it until someone (maybe Laura?) reviewed it recently and it sounds right up my alley.

>268 lyzard: I'll be sure to add the shared read if I get to it in time. I had forgotten about the "not a holiday" challenge.

>269 japaul22:

That would be excellent, Jennifer! I will post details on the Virago thread a little later in the month, when (hopefully) Heather and I get ourselves organised.

>270 harrygbutler:

I always like it when there's a good catch-all challenge. :)

Finished The U. P. Trail for TIOLI #9.

Now reading Red Danger by Patricia Wentworth.

I have been eyeing the Kindle Unlimited arrangement and trying to work out whether it would represent value or a trap. I can see quite a number of things I'm interested in that fall under its umbrella---but I can see even more that don't.

Do others use this system? - or have used it and cancelled? Do you find it to be worthwhile, or do you end up buying things you may not really want just to get your month's value?

Finished Red Danger for TIOLI #12.

Now reading Ashton-Kirk: Secret Agent by John McIntyre.

>263 lyzard: Virago Chronological Read Project sounds interesting, Liz. I have a few on the shelves and may see what I can do to join in.

Have a great weekend.

It would be great to have you join us, Paul!

Sorry, haven't tried Kindle Unlimited as I have many of the same questions as you, Liz.

Hi, Roni! Yes, it's hard to know, isn't it? It's even more difficult here as we have different things available and not available, due I guess to copyright. I don't accumulate with Kindle, but purchase item by item, and I also tend to buy a few items at once then nothing for a couple of months, which makes it hard to predict future spending. Possibly I need to sit down and make a theoretical shopping list as see how the figures fall out.

I have completed a blog post on Marie Conway Oemler's The Holy Lover, a biographical novel about John Wesley's time in Georgia during the 1730s, prior to his founding of the Methodist Church. (Note to any admirers of Wesley: it's not very flattering!)

The Holy Lover

The post is overlong, but not as long as the last couple, so there's that...

Finished Ashton-Kirk: Secret Agent for TIOLI #7.

Now reading Follow The Blue Car by R. A. J. Walling.

Finished Follow The Blue Car for TIOLI #6.

Now reading Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie.

>239 lyzard: Excellent review of The Prime Minister Liz. A gentle request that you add it to the book page so I can add my thumb.

>255 lyzard: I read Mr Britling Sees It Through as part of the WWI Virago read a couple of years ago - it was interesting to read something by Wells that wasn't science fiction.

>273 lyzard: I use Amazon Prime (mainly for the free delivery) which gets me one Kindle book a month to borrow from a fairly limited selection. But a lot of the British Library Crime Classics are included here. Kindle Unlimited seems to have a bit more selection but I don't know if there would be enough per month to make it worthwhile. One thing I found helpful with kindle prime was to create a private wishlist on amazon where I add books I'm interested in which are available for lending under Prime. That way I have a list I can browse when I want to select the book each month.

>281 lyzard: I will be joining in with Sad Cypress this month. Also hoping to read Hercule Poirot's Christmas which I know you read earlier this year during your winter.

Thank you! - done. :)

Wells wrote a lot of socially conscious fiction but it hasn't lasted like his science fiction, probably because it was so immediate to his time---but it offers for that reason a fascinating contemporary portrait.

We're not offered Prime here because we're not offered "real" items for sale, only ebooks. I have decided to hold off on Unlimited---I did a test by running through my series lists and seeing what books I have listed there as being available via Kindle were also listed for Unlimited, and none of them were. So I think for the moment I'll stick to my "a couple every couple of months" procedure!

Woot for shared reads! :D

Finished Sad Cypress for TIOLI #5.

Now reading Black Sheep by Georgette Heyer.

The Voice Of The Seven Sparrows - Chicago newspaperman Absalom Smith, who has lost his job and been blackballed for no reason he can grasp, is given a break by a former colleague, and put on the trail of missing heiress, Beatrice Mannerby---the daughter of the owner of the paper from which Smith was fired. Scraping together enough money to get him to New Orleans, Smith goes looking for Sarah Fu, a half-French, half-Chinese girl supporting herself through her brilliant silk-work, who was known to be close to Beatrice when she was studying art in Paris. But the bad luck that plagued Smith in Chicago follows him south, escalating into something that looks like a vendetta. As danger closes in from all sides, Smith realises that he has somehow become a target for the dangerous Tong of the Seven Sparrows... Published in 1924, this first novel by Harry Stephen Keeler is not as complicated as his later ones notoriously are, but it is complicated enough, with the disappearance of Beatrice Mannerby, an attempt to take over her father's newspaper, the collapse of a bank, the activities of a famous Chinese gambler, a Tong vendetta, Absalom Smith's reluctant attraction to Sarah Fu and a series of attempts upon the reporter's life all winding around each other against the backdrop of 1920s New Orleans. As a thriller, The Voice Of The Seven Sparrows is effective, with the reader sharing Absalom Smith's bewilderment as he strives to evade the various threats that descend upon him long enough to unravel the twin mysteries of a vanishing heiress and embezzled bank funds and prove that he isn't the man that his pursuers are looking for---and to discover why they think he is. The New Orleans setting is also engaging, with Keeler offering a series of vivid sketches of its various locales. However, this aspect of the novel bleeds into its most contentious material, Smith's attitude to the story's many non-white characters, and in particular to Sarah Fu. It is evident that none of this was intended to be nasty, which in a perverse sort of way makes it worse, with Smith envisioning himself as broad-minded and generous, but coming across to the reader as patronising and smug. Try not clenching your teeth when Smith tells Sarah to her face what an enormous personal sacrifice he is making in involving himself with her---when, after all, what can she offer him in return, against the stigma of her mixed blood? Just her beauty, her intelligence, her talent, her courage, her integrity...

    "March eleventh, New Orleans Police Department Bulletin, ten-twenty-nine p.m. Absalom M. Smith, a Chicago newspaperman, was killed tonight at twenty minutes after nine on South Rampart Street near Tulane. He was attacked near the mouth of an unlighted alley by three thugs, whose descriptions were not secured and who escaped after the crime..."
    Smith fell back in his chair, his mouth agape. A riot of thoughts ran through his brain. But one of the whole host which surged and flowed madly back and forth in his mental self stood forth with startling significance. The body of this man killed on South Rampart Street had been identified by his, Smith's, papers. And Smith's papers, every one of them, had been sent to Sam Barker, waiting on the corner of Canal and Bourban Streets. Lucky, lucky, lucky for him, he reflected as he passed one hand weakly over his brow, that he had been shanghaied this night aboard the City of Rio... For the three thugs who had struck and fled were not chance prowlers of the night, not footpads. His instinct told him this only too plainly as he looked back on many peculiar incidents of his stay in New Orleans. And Sam Barker of the Argus had met a horrible fate intended for him alone!

Finished Black Sheep for TIOLI #2.

Now reading Ermina Montrose; or, The Cottage Of The Vale by Emily Clark.

Sweet Danger (US / US reissue titles: Kingdom Of Death, The Fear Sign) - This fifth book in Margery Allingham's series finds the mysterious Mr Albert Campion involved in the struggle for possession of Averna, a tiny Eastern European principality, valuable both as a seaport and as a newly-discovered source of oil. Though the land was claimed centuries before by an aristocratic English family, a claim formally ratified early in the 19th century, the family itself has since been dispossessed due to its members' inability to prove that a certain marriage occurred and that therefore they are the legal heirs. To establish both their own descent and their ownership of Averna, the Fitton family must find several vital pieces of evidence, most importantly the deed of 1814. Albert Campion and his friends, mountaineer Jonathan Eager-Wright, mining expert Richard Farquharson and gentleman of leisure Augustus "Guffy" Randall, throw themselves eagerly into the hunt, despite the real and imminent danger posed by the ruthless financier Brett Savanake, who will stop at nothing to gain possession of the deed... As with most of the Campion stories, Sweet Danger is a thriller rather than a mystery, in this case a treasure-hunt of sorts, with a mysterious inscription offering clues to the whereabouts of the various proofs to both the legality of the marriage of the Earl of Pontisbright to Mary Fitton, just prior to the Earl's death during the Crimean War, and the deed which will secure possession of Averna for whoever holds it. Likewise, the geographical setting is a vital aspect of the tale, which unfolds in the Suffolk countryside, mostly at the converted mill which the Fittons call home, which is near to a small village surrounded by woods where witchcraft is a great deal more than just a superstition. While Guffy Randall quickly falls for the lovely, self-contained Mary Fitton, Albert Campion himself finds a collaborator after his own heart in the vibrant and intelligent young Amanda, whose determination to re-establish her family and prove the claims of her brother, Hal, is matched only by her courage: a courage which will be sorely tried as she finds herself the target of both a local practitioner of black magic, and of the dangerous schemes of Savanake, who in his struggle to gain possession of the deed to Averna shows himself more than willing to resort to murder...

    "Look here," Amanda said at last," it's getting late. You ought to go down to Lugg and Scatty. I'll keep the others in there until the signal. You must let me. I can manage it. I see now: he's as batty as a coot." Mr Campion regarded her thoughtfully, and she went on: "Don't be obstinate. If anything goes wrong with the plan we shall all be in the soup."
    Mr Campion took his revolver from his coat pocket and handed it to her. "If you take this," he said, "at least you can't come to any serious harm. Although, be careful."
    Amanda did not waste any time in argument. She took the gun from his outstretched hand. "You get back into the wood," she said. "When I hear the signal I'll get 'em out."
    She rose cautiously to her feet, slipped the gun in her jacket pocket, and turned towards the house. Then looking back suddenly, she stopped and kissed him unromantically on the nose.
    "That's by way of a pourboire, in case we don't meet again," she said lightly...

>287 lyzard: Sweet Danger sounds good, Liz. It's the next one for me in the Campion series, so I'll probably get to it next month.

That reminds me. I need to download Black Sheep onto my Kobo so I continue reading along!

>288 harrygbutler:

Hi, Harry! This has been a long-neglected series for me and I was glad to get back to it.

>289 rosalita:

Please do! :)

The Fall Of Faction; or, Edmund's Vision, Which Soars To The Beautiful And Sublime; And In Which The Mystery Of A Certain Marriage Is Clearly Explained - This short anonymous fiction from 1789 is a political satire written in support of the beleaguered George III, and against those perceived as his enemies---a list which includes the Prince of Wales. The occasion for its publication was the failure of an attempt to have the prince declared Regent due to his father's mental illness, an event which would of course finally occur in 1810, but which was forestalled in the first instance when doctors declared the king still fit to rule. The "Edmund" of the title is clearly Edmund Burke, a constant critic of the incumbent regime, and the narrative involves him telling a self-interested audience about a marvellous dream, in which the king was removed, the prince elevated to the throne, and all of the latter's adherents wonderfully rewarded---only for these visions to shrivel up and die when the king is triumphantly restored. The Fall Of Faction is an entertaining trifle, but foreknowledge of the eventual fate of the king gives it a sour edge. Perhaps its most interesting aspect is its vicious depictions of the Prince of Wales and Maria Fitzherbert, who had gone through a marriage ceremony four years earlier (illegal under English law), hence the subtitle. These sketches made for an amusing contrast with the ridiculously idealised portraits of the couple found in Barbara Cartland's Love In Hiding, which I read earlier this month.

    This vain mistaken P----e attempted to emulate the character of our renowned fifth Harry---Like him, he has his Bardoplh, Pistol, Falstaff---but without their humour---and, may I add, without meaning offence to the aspiring lady whose smiles now graced the board, like him, he had his dame Quickly. But here alas! the parallel was at an end.---Where was that manly sorrow for the dreadful affliction of a father?---Where was that noble contrition for former indiscretions? The smooth forehead of the modern Hal had never been contracted by a transient pang of sorrow---the laughter-swoln cheeks had never been moistened by the sympathetic tear...
    The situation of a P----e, it would appear, is hostile to feeling and virtue.---The heavy misfortune of a benignant Sovereign and exemplary father---the piercing lamentations of an affectionate mother---and the flowing tears of levely sisters, the elevated situation of all of whom is their most unengaging ornament, were inefficient to move---they were not of weight enough for one moment to wean from folly---to give a transient impression of the duties of a son, and the true interests of a P----e.

>290 lyzard: With more than 200 series, it's no surprise that some might end up a bit neglected! :-)

Well, yes! :D

I've been better lately about not adding more series (or not adding many more) and one of my hopes for next year is to see a lot more strike-throughs on those existing lists!

Calavar; or, The Knight Of The Conquest: A Romance Of Mexico - Though he gives his name to the title of this 1834 historical drama by Robert Montgomery Bird, Don Gines Gabriel de Calavar is only a supporting character in this lengthy novel about the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The main character is Don Amador de Leste, a young nobleman of Valencia, arrogant and proud, but courageous and honourable to a fault, who journeys to Mexico in quest of his relative. A former Knight Hospitaller, Calavar fled the Old World for the New after committing, in a fit of rage and jealousy, an act of violence that violated his sacred vows, for which he now does perpetual penance, even as his physical weakness and mental instability grows upon him. Separated from his kinsman at the time of his great crisis, drawn away from duty by his love for a beautiful young Moor, the guilt-stricken Don Amador has vowed to find the suffering Calavar and serve him faithfully for life. The young knight arrives in Mexico to find the Spanish forces there in turmoil, with Hernan Cortes defying his superiors in his quest to conquer Tenochtitlan... Although overlong, Calavar is an effective piece of historical writing, though given its subject matter, unavoidably depressing. The novel offers an odd split vision: for its first half, due to the incompetence and dishonesty of the Spanish commanders, it manages to present Hernan Cortes as heroic; but when the narrative shifts to follow Cortes, and stays with him during the violent clashes between his forces and the population of Tenochtitlan (the future Mexico City), the Spaniard's greed, brutality and hypocrisy come to the foreground. There is much talk of "the honour of Spain" and "the glory of God", but rapacious eyes are fixed squarely on conquest and gold; likewise, much talk of "converting the heathens", but evidently it is easier just to kill them; more profitable, too. The novel's shifting vision of Cortes is also that of Don Amador, who at first has reason to admire the courage and military skill of the rogue general, but later, particularly in the face of the betrayal and slaughter of the local population, is repelled and angered by him---although his situation leaves him with little option but to fight on Cortes' side. Meanwhile, Calavar himself is an odd presence in the novel, dismissed as "crack-brained" by most of his fellow soldiers, yet representing a code of honour that puts Cortes and his followers to shame. As the larger part of the narrative builds up to the bloody conflict and expulsion (sadly temporary) of the Spanish forces from Tenochtitlan, a crisis known to history as Noche Triste ("The Night Of Sorrows"), Calavar's sins catch up with him in the form of the mysterious and apparently treacherous Moor, Adboul al Sidi, who proclaims himself a Christian but sells his services as a military tactician and a cannonier to the Mexicans, in vengeance for a grave wrong done him and the people of Granada by the Knights Hospitallers. Nevertheless, Calavar and Don Amador make themselves responsible for Abdalla's son, Jacinto, a delicate boy who becomes Don Amador's servant---and who hides a dangerous secret that will turn the young Spaniard's world on its head...

    The sound of drums and conches, the fierce yells, the whistling, the dying screams, the loud and hurried prayers, the neighing of horses---and now and then the shriek of some beast mangled by a rough spear,---the rattling of arrow-heads, the clang of clubs upon iron bucklers, the heavy fall of a huge stone crushing a footman to the earth, the plunging of some wounded wretch strangling in a ditch, and the roar of cannon at the palace, showing that the battle was universal,—these together, now made up such a chorus of hellish sounds as Don Amador confessed to himself he had never heard before, not even among the horrors of Rhodes, when sacked by other infidels, then esteemed the most valiant in the world. But to these dismal tumults others were speedily added, when Cortes, raging with a fury that increased with his despair, commanded the footmen to fire every house, whose top afforded footing to the ferocious foe,---a command that was obeyed with good will, and with dreadful effect...
    But the same agent which so dreadfully paralysed the efforts of the Mexican, brought suffering scarcely less disastrous to the Christian ranks. They were stifled with the smoke, they were scorched by the flames of the burning houses; and, ever and anon, some frantic barbarian, perishing among the fires of his dwelling, and seeking to inflict a horrid vengeance, grasped, even in his death-gasp, a flaming rafter in his arms, and sprang down with it upon his foes, maiming and scorching where he did not kill.
    Thus fighting, and thus resisted, weary and despairing, their bodies covered with blood, their garments sometimes burning, the Spaniards at last gained the square that surrounded the palace... It was a respite from death, for behind the stone wall they were comparatively secure; but not a respite from labour. The Mexicans abated not a jot of their ardour. The same herds that covered the square at dawn, were again yelling at the gates, and with the same unconquerable fury...

>293 lyzard: I'll never learn my lesson about not adding more series! I do try, though.

The best compromise I can come up with is not to go actively looking for more series. But if I happen to stumble across one, well, that's different... :)

Finished Ermina Montrose; or, The Cottage Of The Vale for TIOLI #14...

...which is #150 for the year!

While I'm not fussed about numbers, considering how very poorly my reading was going early in the year, I am pleased to have reached this milestone.

Now reading Lords Of The Housetops: Thirteen Cat Tales, an anthology collected by Carl Van Vechten.

>297 lyzard: Congratulations on hitting 150, Liz!

Way to go, Liz!

Congratulations on 150, Liz!

>298 harrygbutler:, >299 rosalita:, >300 FAMeulstee:

Thanks, guys! :)

Wouldn't it be nice if 2017 was a year of peace and goodwill.
A year where people set aside their religious and racial differences.
A year where intolerance is given short shrift.
A year where hatred is replaced by, at the very least, respect.
A year where those in need are not looked upon as a burden but as a blessing.
A year where the commonality of man and woman rises up against those who would seek to subvert and divide.
A year without bombs, or shootings, or beheadings, or rape, or abuse, or spite.

2017.

Festive Greetings and a few wishes from Malaysia!

Liz, wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

>302 PaulCranswick:

Wouldn't it? Sigh...

Thanks, Paul!

>303 SandDune:

Thanks, Rhian!

Merry Christmas, Liz! I see it is going to be rather toasty there today.

Thanks, Harry! Christmas is one of those days that tends to go to extremes, either cool and rainy or too hot for comfort: today looks like being the latter. (Although hopefully no bushfires, we we did have one year!)

This is the Christmas tree at the end of the Pacific Beach Pier here in San Diego, a Christmas tradition.

To all my friends here at Library Thing, I want you to know how much I value you and how much I wish you a very happy holiday, whatever one you celebrate, and the very best of New Years!

Thanks, Roni!

And Then There Were None - Eight people gather at the tiny railway station that is the nearest terminus for Soldier Island, situated off the Devon coast, and are ferried to their destination by a local boatman. Greeted by Mr and Mrs Rogers, the caretakers, the visitors are shown to their rooms. Over dinner, casual conversation begins to reveal that something is wrong; that each of the guests has been brought to the island on a different pretext. Unease turns to fear when a voice speaks out of nowhere---a voice later found to be issuing from a pre-arranged gramophone record---and accuses all ten of those present of having gotten away with murder. There is a flurry of indignant denials; only the cold-blooded Philip Lombard admits that he did indeed abandon the natives under his command to their deaths in order to save himself. Moments later, Anthony Marston - who killed two children with his reckless driving - dies from the effects of a cyanide-laced drink. The others try to convince themselves it was suicide, but when Mrs Rogers, whose previous employer died under suspicious circumstances, dies herself from a doctored sleeping draught, they must face the truth: that someone has tried and convicted them, and is carrying out a series of executions... Oh, Agatha, Agatha, Agatha... The triumvirate formed by this novel, The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd and Murder On The Orient Express surely establishes beyond argument Ms Christie's position as the premier mystery writer of the Golden Age and beyond, one with an unparalleled capacity to turn "the rules" inside out and the genre on its head---and never more so, surely, than with this most famous of thrillers, as ten people trapped on a small island find themselves being picked off one by one by a killer hiding in plain sight. As a whondunit, And Then The Was None plays fair - or fair enough - with the reader, but it is the psychological component of the novel that is its most successful and disturbing aspect, as it slowly emerges that the chosen ten are being executed in reverse order of the heinousness of their crimes, ensuring that those whose guilt is greatest suffer the longest. After the first flurry of deaths, the survivors must form a defensive alliance, even as they are forced to accept that there is nowhere on the island for an outsider to hide, and that the mysterious "U. N. Owen" must be one of themselves---but which? Death itself is the only means of exoneration, with uneasy partnerships forming and dissolving as the body count escalates, and as initial panic turns into a grim determination to survive...

    The judge went on: "You had come, doubtless, to the same conclusion that had---namely that the deaths of Anthony Marston and Mrs Rogers were neither accidental nor were they suicides. No doubt you also reached a certain conclusion as to the purpose of Mr Owen in enticing us to this island."
    Blore said hoarsely: "He's a madman..."
    The judge coughed. "That almost certainly. But it hardly affects the issue. Our main preoccupation is this---to save our lives."
    Armstrong said in a trembling voice: "There's no one on the island, I tell you. No one!"
    The judge stroked his jaw. He said gently: "In the sense you mean, no. I came to that conclusion early this morning. I could have told you that your search would be fruitless. Nevertheless I am strongly of the opinion that 'Mr Owen' (to give him the name he himself has adopted) is on the island. Very much so. Given the scheme in question which is neither more or less than the execution of justice upon certain individuals for offenses which the law cannot touch, there is only one way in which that scheme could be accomplished. Mr Owen could only come to the island in one way.
    "It is perfectly clear. Mr Owen is one of us..."

I still do have a blog post to write, but otherwise that is it for November:

November stats:

Works read: 16
TIOLI: 16, in 15 different challenges, with 3 shared reads and a TIOLI sweep!

Mysteries / thrillers: 7
Classics: 3
Contemporary drama: 2
Horror: 2
Historical romance: 1
Historical drama: 1

Series works: 5
Blog reads: 1
1932: 0
1931: 2
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 1

Owned: 5
Library: 4
Ebook: 6

Male authors : Female authors : Anonymous: 12 : 5 : 1

Oldest work: Miscellaneous Pieces, In Prose by John Aikin and Anna Laetitia Aikin Barbauld (1773)
Newest work: A Dark Matter by Peter Straub (2010)

Phew! At least I've gotten something done; 'cos I've been feeling rather sleepy...

SLOTH!!!!!!!!

JULIA!!!!!!!!

There are a couple of sub-projects that I want to wrap up as quickly as possible; I've made notes on them before, and I'm copying those notes here for reference, and to keep them all together:

Firstly, the confusingly authored "Cleek" series, by Thomas, Mary and Hazel Hanshew, which I made some progress with this year:

#1: The Man Of The Forty Faces aka Cleek, The Master Detective aka Cleek: The Man Of The Forty Faces (1910) (Thomas Hanshew, novelised short stories)
#2: Cleek Of Scotland Yard (1914) (Thomas Hanshew, novelised short stories)
#3: The Riddle Of The Night (1915) (Mary and Hazel Hanshew, from notes left by Thomas Hanshew, published as by Thomas alone) {NB: set between The Man Of The Forty Faces and Cleek Of Scotland Yard}
#4: Cleek's Greatest Riddles aka Cleek's Government Cases (1916) (short stories written by Thomas Hanshew, novelised by Mary Hanshew, published as by Thomas alone)
#5: The Riddle Of The Purple Emperor (1916) (Mary and Hazel Hanshew, from notes left by Thomas Hanshew, published as by Thomas alone)
#6: The Frozen Flames aka The Riddle Of The Frozen Flames {sometimes misprinted 'flame'} (1920) (Hazel Hanshew, published as by Thomas and Mary Hanshew)
#7: The Riddle Of The Mysterious Light (1921) (Hazel Hanshew, published as by Thomas and Mary Hanshew)
#8: House Of Discord aka The Riddle Of The Spinning Wheel (1922) (Hazel Hanshew, published as by Thomas and Mary Hanshew)
#9: Amber Junk aka The Riddle Of The Amber Ship (1924) (Hazel Hanshew, published as by Thomas and Mary Hanshew)
#10: The House Of The Seven Keys (1925) (Hazel Hanshew, published as by Thomas and Mary Hanshew)
#11: The Riddle Of The Winged Death (1931) (Hazel Hanshew)
#12: Murder In The Hotel (1932) (Hazel Hanshew)

Secondly, the "Craig Kennedy" stories of Arthur B. Reeve, which have a complicated back-story which baulked me in my reading of them:

#1: The Silent Bullet (1910)
#2: The Poisoned Pen (1911)
#3: The Dream Doctor (1914)
#4: The War Terror (1915)
#5: Gold Of The Gods (1915) (expansion of a short story that later appeared in The Treasure Train)
#6: The Exploits Of Elaine (1915) (novelisation of the screenplay for the 1914 serial, The Exploits Of Elaine)
#7: The Social Gangster (1916)
#8: The Ear In The Wall (1916)
#9: The Romance Of Elaine (novelisation adapted from the screenplays of The New Exploits Of Elaine (1915) and The Romance Of Elaine (1916); UK variant: The Triumph Of Elaine, which is The Romance Of Elaine plus five further chapters)
#10: The Treasure Train (1917)
#11: The Adventuress (1917)
#12: The Panama Plot (1918)
#13: The Soul Scar (1919)
#14: The Film Mystery (1921)
#15: Craig Kennedy Listens In (1923)
#16: Atavar, The Dream Dancer (1924)
#17: The Fourteen Points (1925)
#18: Craig Kennedy On The Farm (1925)
#19: The Radio Detective (1926) (novelisation of the screenplay for the 1926 serial, The Radio Detective)
#20: Pandora (1926)
#21: The Kidnap Club (1932)
#22: The Clutching Hand (1934) (which reworks part of the story of The Exploits Of Elaine, in which the master-criminal with a secret identity is also known as "The Clutching Hand"; later filmed as the 1936 sound serial, The Clutching Hand)
#23: Enter Craig Kennedy (1935)
#24: The Stars Scream Murder (1936)

And lastly, series works which I originally skipped over as "unavailable", but which can be accessed and read onsite at either the State Library or the Rare Books Collection of the University of Sydney:

The Ellerby Case (Dr Priestley #3) - Rare Books
Peril At Cranbury Hall (Dr Priestley #8) - Rare Books
Tragedy On The Line (Dr Priestley #10) - Rare Books
Mystery At Greycombe Farm (Dr Priestley #12) - Rare Books
Dead Men At The Folly (Dr Priestley # 13) - Rare Books
The Robthorne Mystery (Dr Priestley #17) - State Library
Poison For One (Dr Priestley #18) - State Library
Shot At Dawn (Dr Priestley #19) - Rare Books
Hendon's First Case (Dr Priestley #21) - Rare Books
Mystery At Olympia (Dr Priestley #22) - State Library
In The Face Of The Verdict (Dr Priestley #23) - State Library

Six Minutes Past Twelve (Luther Bastion #1) - State Library
The White-Faced Man (aka "The Praying Monkey") (Luther Bastion #2) - State Library

Finished Lords Of The Housetops for TIOLI #13.

And while I had hoped to sneak just one more book in under the wire, from the way this week is shaping I can tell that's not going to be possible. So with this I am drawing a line under 2016---and there have been few years I've been so glad to see the back of!

I will be setting up my 2017 thread over the weekend (and completing my December reviewing there; because, no, I can't just let it go!), and also the thread for the Virago Chronological Read Project group read of Harriet Martineau's Deerbrook. Hope to see you there!

>315 lyzard: Bless your heart for holding out on creating a 2017 thread until ... 2017. I was starting to think I was the only one.

I finished Black Sheep over the past week and posted my not-a-review on my thread. I've decided it's one of my favorites.

I love that your "sub-projects" are more involved than my "projects". You are a never-ending source of awe and inspiration!

:D

I must say, I got a not-pleasant shock when all those new threads started popping up so early!

I'm both sad and glad to think that the end is in sight for our Georgette challenge. (Finishing a challenge? Getouttahere!) I will probably be moving on to her straight historical fiction, though I will understand if others don't want to join me!

Be honest: what I really am is a walking cautionary tale!

>317 lyzard: Perhaps ... but to be a cautionary tale, and still walking, is practically like being a role model.

(Not that I'll join you for the Georgette historicals, mind. But I plan to continue the bestsellers.)

Aw, you're sweet! :D

Thrilled to hear you'll be sticking with the best-seller challenge; it's been great having you along for the ride!

My 2017 thread is up!

Hope to see you there. :)

Looking forward to your continued company in 2017.
Happy New Year, Liz.