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. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then his stories start coming disturbingly true. We read this for our book group several years ago and also watched the movie but somehow were disappointed by both.China Trade by S.J. Rozan (1994). Asian-American private investigator Lydia Chin knows Chinatown because she lives there and she respects the traditions of her community. In this series launch, she is asked to investigate thefts from a local art museum and she gets help from her friend Bill Smith. This series was recommended by Tracy at Bitter Tea and Mystery and it is nice to know there are 13 more books waiting for me. My review.
Time at the Top by Edward Ormondroyd (1963). One Wednesday in March, late in the afternoon, Susan Shaw vanished from the Ward Street apartment house in which she lived with her father and reappeared in 1881. My review.Octagon Magic by Andre Norton (1967). Lorrie is lonely while staying with relatives but then she visits elderly Miss Ashemeade at Octagon House where she finds an old rocking horse and a dollhouse in a mysterious eight-sided room . . . I hadn't thought about this book for a very long time but the cover brought it back instantly! Norton's name was really Alice but she adopted Andre because boys were the primary audience of her books that were science-fiction rather than fantasy like this one.
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945). Can you love and dislike a book at the same time? Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and their privileged world is fascinating in book and miniseries form but I was never convinced by Charles’ conversion.Echo Park by Michael Connelly (2006). In this 12th book about Harry Bosch, the detective is asked to reopen a missing person case when a serial killer confesses after 22 years. But Harry and his partner Kiz Rider have to determine if the man is telling the truth – and why he might lie.River of Darkness by Rennie Airth (1999). When a small village is shaken by murder, Scotland Yard sends Inspector John Madden to investigate. Madden has not recovered from the trauma he experienced on the front during WWI but to solve this crime he may need to confront his own demons. This was nominated for an Edgar but lost to Jan Burke's Bones. There are now six books in this series.
Have you read any of these? You should spell the month in books too!
Only the last one read out of this October collection. Enjoyed all 6 of this series
ReplyDeleteI have read only two of these:
ReplyDeleteChina Trade, of course. Love that series.
And River of Darkness by Rennie Airth.
I want to read Our Man in Havana and it is on my classics list.
I want to get back to the Rennie Airth series but it has been so long since I read the first two I may need to start at the beginning. I want to buy the fifth and sixth titles.
ReplyDeleteJerri, I have very little memory of reading Andre Norton's books but they were certainly in my library. I guess I was turned off by the science fiction titles. In contrast, I read the Eager titles so often I know bits by heart! Did you see Knight's Castle post about him? Even NPR mentioned him once: https://www.npr.org/2005/05/30/4662726/excerpt-half-magic
Tracy, I think the first Rennie Airth got a fair amount of attention and then the somewhat similar Charles Todd books maybe got that audience instead. It is a pity.
Andre Norton was so very prolific, and wrote a number of very different styles of books. Her children's fantasy, often with Magic in the title have very much the flavor of Eager's works. Some of her Science Fiction (with overlaps into fantasy, as including space travel and telepathy or other psi powers) would be considered YA today, and a few of these were formative to me. Starman's Son was one of these, a post apocalyptic novel where the young hero had a telepathic link with a giant Siamese cat partner. It has an alternate title which I can't remember. The Witch World books might have been the best known, and those I find much more difficult to relate to, on the whole.
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