Evelyn Finds Herself by Josephine Elder, for the #1929Club

Title: Evelyn Finds Herself
Author: Josephine Elder
Publication: Oxford University Press, hardcover, 1929
Genre: Juvenile fiction/school story
Setting: Britain

Description: Elizabeth and Evelyn, now in the Upper Fifth at Addington High School, have been best friends since they were seven. They are fierce competitors at hockey and tennis, and are also strong students, working towards scholarships at Cambridge. 

The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley for the #1929Club

Title: The Poisoned Chocolates Case
Author: Anthony Berkeley
Publication: Chivers Press, hardcover, originally published in 1929
Genre: Mystery
Setting: London

Description: Roger Sheringham is the president of the Crimes Circle, an exclusive group of six, each passionately devoted to crime and detection.

Hitty: Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field for the #1929Club

Title: Hitty: Her First Hundred Years
Author: Rachel Field (1894-1942)
Illustrator: Dorothy P. Lathrop
Publication: Macmillan, paperback, originally published in 1929
Genre: Children’s fiction/fantasy/historical fiction

Description: Hitty is a doll hand-carved from a small piece of mountain-ash wood by a peddler in early 19th century Maine, then given to Phoebe Preble, whose father is away at sea. Seven-year-old Phoebe is tasked with making clothes for her doll, which include a chemise embroidered with HITTY “so she can always be sure of her name.”

Cloth of Gold by Elswyth Thane for the #1929Club

Title: Riders of the Wind (1926) and Cloth of Gold (1929)
Author: Elswyth Thane
Genre: Fiction
Setting: 20th century

Description: Alexandra, the heroine of Riders of the Wind, married an older, distant cousin, Clement Marley, an authority on Asian art, when she was mourning the loss of her father and too young to know better. Her father was a world-famous explorer who died tragically in Africa when she was a teenager, and she has inherited his restless spirit and feels confined in London with her condescending husband who insists his meals be on time and disapproves of her walks in the fog.

Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner for the #1929Club

Title: Emil and the Detectives
Author: Erich Kästner
Translator: W. Martin
Publication: Overlook Press, hardcover, originally published in 1929
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Setting: Germany between the wars

Description: Emil is devoted to his mother and knows that she works hard to support him. His father is dead and the grandmother who used to share their home now lives with Emil’s aunt and her family in Berlin. When his mother puts ten-year-old Emil on a train to Berlin to visit his relatives she warns him to be careful of the money she is sending with him.

Speedy Death by Gladys Mitchell for the #1929Club

Title: Speedy Death
Author: Gladys Mitchell
Publication: Vintage paperback, originally published in 1929
Genre: Mystery
Setting: 20th-century English countryside

Simon from Stuck in a Book and Karen from Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings are hosting the 1929 Club, where bloggers read and write about books published in a chosen year.

Description: A house party has been planned at the country home of amateur archeologist Alistair Bing to celebrate his birthday.

Beauvallet by Georgette Heyer for the #1929Club

Title: Beauvallet
Author: Georgette Heyer
Publication: Dutton hardcover, originally published in 1929
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: 16th-century

This week, Simon from Stuck in a Book and Karen from Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings are hosting the 1929 Club, where bloggers read and write about books published in a chosen year.

Description: Sir Nicholas Beauvallet is the most dashing of Queen Elizabeth’s sea captains. Known as the Sea Dogs, a group of English privateers was authorized to carry out raids on England's enemies, whether they were formally at with war with them or not.

Clothes-Pegs by Susan Scarlett

Title: Clothes-Pegs
Author: Susan Scarlett (aka Noel Streatfeild)
Publication: Furrowed Middlebrow/Dean Street Press, paperback, originally published in 1939
Genre: Fiction/Romance
Setting: London

Description: Annabel Brown is the eldest of the four Brown children and works as a seamstress at Bertna’s, an upscale dress shop in London’s Hanover Square.

The Lucky Ones by Linda Williams Jackson

Title: The Lucky Ones
Author: Linda Williams Jackson
Publication: Candlewick Press, hardcover, 2022
Genre: Juvenile Historical Fiction
Setting: 1960s Mississippi

Description: Ellis Earl Brown is an ambitious boy who lives with his large family in rural Mississippi. Thanks to Julius Foster, a black teacher in their segregated school, Ellis Earl and his sister Carrie not only get a ride to school but also eat lunch brought by Mr. Foster.

Heroes Are Human by Bob Delaney

Title: Heroes Are Human
Author: Bob Delaney with Dave Scheiber
Foreword: Dr. Richard Mollica
Publication: City Point Press, hardcover, 2022
Genre: Inspiration/Self Help

Description: In Heroes are Human: Lessons in Resilience, Courage, and Wisdom from the COVID Front Lines, author Delaney, who has survived trauma himself, looks at how our country’s medical professionals managed to cope with stress and hardship in order to provide care to patients.

The House of the Deer by D.E. Stevenson

Title: The House of the Deer
Author: D.E. Stevenson
Publication: Collins, hardcover, 1970
Genre: Fiction
Setting: 20th-century Scotland

Description: In this companion novel to Gerald and Elizabeth, Gerald Burleigh Brown, now working for his brother-in-law, is invited to substitute for Sir Walter on a deer-shooting holiday. Sir Walter MacCallum manages a successful ship building business is Glasgow, and concerns about security and the fact that his wife – Gerald’s sister Elizabeth – is pregnant influenced him to send Gerald in his place.

WWW Wednesday – October 12, 2022

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading:

I am listening to Another View by Rosamunde Pilcher (1968) which I do not remember having read previously but, unfortunately, I saw a spoiler sentence right after I began.

Spell the Month in Books – October

Spell the Month in Books is hosted by Reviews From the Stacks and occurs on the second Saturday of each month or maybe a few days later!

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene (1958). British Intelligence’s man in Havana is Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Title: Lessons in Chemistry
Author: Bonnie Garmus
Publication: Doubleday, hardcover, 2022
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: 20th-century California

Description: Elizabeth Zott is a gifted but eccentric chemist and, unfortunately, a woman in a man’s world in the 1960s. She is belittled, exploited, and sexually assaulted when all she wants is to have the resources to do her job at Hastings Research Institute.

My September 2022 Reads

September was a busy month but it is nice being done with my master’s degree so I don’t spend every weekend doing homework. I enjoyed getting back into John Lescroart’s books with their memorable San Francisco settings. Although I rarely read memoirs, I found Funny in Farsi both amusing and poignant. I joined a group read of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence; curled up with a contemporary romance that I thought was well done, The Reunion; and found a juvenile fantasy I thought was long out of print, The Ghost of Opalina. How was your September?

Suspense

Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins (2021). When a child disappears in Oxford, her nanny is immediately suspected and questioned.

Dear Hugo by Molly Clavering

Title: Dear Hugo
Author: Molly Clavering (1900-1995)
Publication: Dean Street Press/Furrowed Middlebrow, paperback, 2021 (originally published in 1955)
Genre: Fiction
Setting: 1950s Britain

Description: Having lost her fiancé during the war, Sara Monteith decides to make a new home for herself in a small town in the Scottish Borders called Ravenskirk.

Six Degrees of Separation – from Notes on a Scandal to Lady's Maid

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place, add six books, and see where we end up. This month’s starting point is Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller (2003) which my book group read back when I lived in NYC. It’s about two teachers who are friendly until one of them begins a relationship with a student. It was compelling but depressing as the friendship was flawed, the seduction repellent, and the scandal inevitable.