Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Feature [Time] Travel

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is “Books that feature travel”. I misread it as “time travel” and got interested, although I have not previously participated in this meme. When I realized my mistake, I had already come up with a list of ten time travel novels I read recently, so here you are:

Hoorn and Enkhuizen

On Sunday, we woke up in Enkhuizen, an old Dutch harbor town in the province of North Holland with a rich maritime history. We were scheduled to do a walking tour in historic Hoorn, named for its horn-shaped harbor, about 12 miles away, a very short bus ride. The town was founded about 1300 and became an important harbor town, trading with the Baltic and Flanders.

Delft

Our first difficult choice was on Saturday when we had been given the option of going to The Hague and the Mauritshuis Museum, historic Delft and a porcelain museum, or Gouda, the City of Cheese. All three seemed appealing and when I send in my feedback, I’m going to say I would recommend their removing Veere and figuring out a way to let the passengers do more than one of these tours.

Delft is sometimes called "Little Amsterdam"
because of its canals and historic houses

Spell the Month in Books - May

Spell the Month in Books is hosted by Reviews From the Stacks and occurs on or near the second Saturday of each month:

Veere

Friday’s destination was Veere.  After we left by bus for Bruges on Thursday morning, the Amadeus left Belgium and cruised to the Netherlands - specifically, Middelburg, where we rejoined the ship in the afternoon.  There was what is called a “Port Talk” before dinner where the cruise directors (we had four: Nani, Fiona, Carine, and Alan, who reminded me of Mr. O’Farrell in Betsy and the Great World) take turns telling us what is in store for the next day, what time we will leave, not to forget our red voice boxes (one day I accidentally unplugged them to use the hair dryer – I barely got them charged in time for our departure), etc.  Carine described Veere as a little paradise so many times I had to hide my smirk.  I am guessing it was simply the most convenient touristy place to dock between Middelburg and Delft but it was not without appeal.

15th century Town Hall

Bruges

In Dorothy Dunnett’s Niccolò series, the author of the Lymond Chronicles introduced a new hero, Nicholas vander Poele of Bruges, a dyer's apprentice who seems clueless at first but, over several books, connives his way to lead a mercantile empire. Dunnett is my mother’s favorite author so this was part of the impetus for our cruise, which included an excursion to Bruges (about the size of Maryland), in northwest Belgium.

On to Antwerp!

We got up at the ungodly hour of 5 am and walked two blocks over to the St. Pancras Eurostar International Station (the hardest part was getting our suitcases up the stairs at the hotel) and, within a surprisingly reasonable amount of time, we were comfortably seated on the train and on our way to Brussels! It took about two hours and we gained an hour in the process. There wasn’t much to see out the window and we had gone under the Channel so quickly, we barely had time to contemplate it. When we reached Brussels, we wheeled our suitcases up many escalators, admiring the design, and found our way to the local ticket office – so efficiently run – with several people helping travelers of many nationalities buy tickets from a machine. My helper even told me when the next train to Antwerp was and the platform. We found our way without difficulty and had about 20 minutes before our train appeared. It was about 45 minutes and as we couldn’t understand any of the announcements, we just hoped for the best and soon arrived (the gap was so extreme between train and platform, I was grateful to a fellow traveler who came back from his own luggage to help us get ours off the train).

Alas, we barely noticed the elegant station!

More London – April 2025

On Monday, it was time for us to remove to a new neighborhood so we took an Uber to the Princess Hotel near St. Pancras. This was not as nice as our previous venue but extremely well located, which is why I had chosen it. We took the Tube to Marylebone so I could show my mother the University of Westminster dorm that Southern Miss took over for my study abroad three years ago and we visited always-gorgeous Daunt Books, then had tea at a cafe on Paddington Street.

Six Degrees of Separation - from Rapture to My Life in France

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month’s starting point is Rapture by Emily Maguire.

London - April 2025

On the way to our riverboat cruise, my mother and I spent five April days in London and we managed to squeeze in quite a bit of sightseeing. After dropping our luggage at the Charlotte Guest House in West Hampstead (which kindly allowed us into our room at 11 am – it is amazing how much of a difference this makes when you have been on a plane since 8 pm the previous night, then on the Tube for what seems like several hours), we headed to the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, in northeast London.

Period Piece: A Cambridge Girlhood by Gwen Raverat, for the #1952Club

This is a gently affectionate and often amusing memoir of a Victorian childhood from an unusual perspective – Gwen Raverat was a granddaughter of Charles Darwin and had an outspoken American mother. In 1883, Maud Du Puy came from Philadelphia to visit an aunt in Cambridge, England. She was pretty and sociable but not well educated or academically inclined so it seems a little surprising that she enjoyed the university life of Cambridge and attracted several suitors.

Nancy and Plum by Betty McDonald, for the #1952Club

It is Christmas Eve, and Nancy and Plum are alone at Mrs. Monday’s Boarding Home in so-called Heavenly Valley, while Mrs. M, her spoiled niece, Marybelle, and the other orphans are enjoying the holiday in the city.  When the sisters dash outside to watch some merry sleighs go by, they are accidentally locked out of the house on a very cold night. But Nancy and Plum are intrepid: they take refuge in the barn, find a lantern, play with some kittens, crank the stove in the harness room so they can roast some potatoes they extract from the root cellar, and play imaginary games about having a family. They are stunned to find an empty box from their Uncle John, showing that although he left the girls at this boarding house years ago, he has sent gifts they never received.

The Far Country by Nevil Shute, for the 1952 Club

The Far Country was published in 1952 and provides a snapshot, albeit a depressing one, of post-war Britain, which made it a good choice for the 1952 Club, hosted this week by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings.

Jack and Angela Dorman have finally paid off the mortgage on their small sheep station in Australia after years of drudgery, reared four children, have money in the bank, and even added electricity two years ago.

Ladies' Bane by Patricia Wentworth, for the #1952Club

It’s time for the 1952 Club, featuring books published that year and hosted this week by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings. The inimitable Miss Maud Silver, along with a young woman fighting for her sister’s happiness, are featured in my first selection, Ladies’ Bane.

Spell the Month in Books – April

Spell the Month in Books is hosted by Jana at Reviews From the Stacks. Her theme for April is animals on the cover or in the title.

WWW Wednesday - 1952 Edition

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

Love for Lydia by H.E. Bates caught my eye when I was looking for a book for the forthcoming 1952 Club, hosted by Stuck-in-a-Book and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Dominic Salt is the caretaker of Shearwater, a remote island near Antarctica where he lives with his three children, Raff, Fen, and Orly. The island is mostly inhabited by seals but visiting researchers have created a vast seed bank – which would help the world replant if there were a natural disaster. Because the sea is rising, the island will soon be uninhabitable so the Salts, after many isolated years, will be forced to begin again somewhere on the mainland. If they really leave.

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

It’s not every book that starts with a heroine planning to commit suicide and manages to make the situation quite humorous - albeit dark humor! When Phoebe arrives at a fancy Newport, RI inn, wearing a green silk dress and empty handed except for her cell phone, she finds herself surrounded by wedding guests, coming for six days of over-the-top events. 

Six Degrees of Separation - from Knife to The Witch of Blackbird Pond

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month’s starting point is Salman Rushdie’s memoir, Knife.

March 2025 Reading

My favorite books this month were The Lost Passenger, which is much more than a Titanic story, a reread of The Heart Speaks Many Ways, and Just for the Summer, a contemporary romance set in Minnesota. I appreciated Prophet Song, the 2023 Booker winner, and its depiction of an authoritarian state but it was hard to enjoy something so much like our daily life and worries.

The Dark Hours by Amy Jordan - a debut thriller set in Cork

In this debut, a retired detective is forced to revisit her most traumatic case when two young women are killed in eerily similar circumstances. Retired Garda Julia Harte lives modestly in a secluded Irish village with her dog, trying not to think about the murderer who destroyed her life back in 1994.  Even when she learns he died in prison, Julia cannot relax and she is startled to get a call from her one-time chief superintendent, Des Riordan. He asks her to return to Cork to help with the new investigation, in case it is a copycat crime.

Lonesome Road by Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver's third appearance

The third book about governess-turned-sleuth Miss Silver begins, as several do, with an individual who is nervous about seeking help; she hesitates at the very ordinary Montague Mansions building and regrets having come, yet musters her wits to continue and is encouraged by Miss Silver’s quiet confidence to share hitherto secret worries.

The Heart Speaks Many Ways by Madeleine A. Polland – Reading Ireland Month 2025

In this coming of age story, with an admittedly sappy title, a lovely young woman learns to have confidence in herself and her decision-making rather than reacting to stronger personalities or tragedy.

Emily McRoss has been living in Spain for two years, being “finished” with family friends, Don Rafael and Dona Serafina, and their daughter Remedios, her own age. In the background of the relaxed life of the upper classes in Andalusia there is increasing unrest that will result in civil war.

A Game of Lies by Clare Mackintosh – Reading Wales 2025

A Game of Lies, a sequel to The Last Party, also takes place on the Wales/England border, reuniting the detectives from the previous book, Ffion (pronounced Fee-on) Morgan and Leo Brady. A reality show is being filmed in North Wales, which recruited contestants for a survival experience, promising £10,00 for participating and £100,000 for the winner. 

But Miles Young, the producer, had something else in mind when he called the show, Exposure: he has researched the applicants, chose those who harbor a dark secret, and plans to expose them on the air, one by one, to create huge ratings.

Two Cozy Mysteries

A Brush With Death by Elizabeth J. Duncan
Minotaur Books, 2010

Penny Brannigan is a Canadian in her 50s who settled in the Welsh town of Llanelen years ago where she has made friends and started her own manicure business (there's a first!). In the previous book, The Cold Light of Morning, Penny helped solve a mystery with Detective Inspector Gareth Davies, now her beau. Now, Penny has achieved every reader’s dream – inheriting a rustic cottage with its own mystery!

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch – Reading Ireland Month 2025

After Eilish Stack answers the door one night to find two policemen asking for her husband, she slowly begins to realize nothing will be the same for her family. Her husband’s job seems innocuous – he is an administrator for the Teachers’ Union of Ireland but these men are investigating an allegation against him:

The Lost Passenger by Frances Quinn - featuring a dramatic rescue from the Titanic!

Cinderella meets All-of-a-Kind Family in a new book I really liked and recommend. Elinor Hayward, the lovely and intelligent daughter of a prosperous factory owner, is thrilled when she and her father are invited to a New Year’s Ball in early 1910. Even better, she meets an attractive young man, Frederick Coombes, son of an earl, who is not just friendly but clearly interested in her:

It was stupidly easy to fall in love with Frederick; I got halfway there that very evening. But I’d like to point out, before you decide I must have been soft in the head, that I was nineteen, he was the first man ever to pay attention to me, and he was very, very charming.

February 2025 Reading

Although February is a short month, there were some outstanding reads, especially The King’s Messenger, Slow Bomb at Dimperley, and The Spy Coast - links to those reviews are below.

Historical Fiction

Slow Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans (2024). A soldier returning to his ancestral home after WWII finds new responsibilities and little in the way of practical help from his family as he copes with death duties and ennui in this amusing story. My review.

The Note by Alafair Burke - when a joke goes deadly wrong

An anticipated reunion in the Hamptons turns deadly after a practical joke in this novel by bestseller Burke. May Hanover, a lawyer living in NYC with her fiancé, has been looking forward to and yet dreading a weekend get-together with her two closest friends from summer camp. They were very close once but she hasn’t spent time with them in person for years. 

Catrin in Wales by Mabel Esther Allan – Reading Wales 2025

The sun was shining brilliantly and the hedgerows in the lane I had just left had been covered with half-open hawthorn. It was the third of May and I was in Wales, my mother’s country. Wales! I, Catrin Drury, aged just eighteen, was alone and entirely free for the first time ever, with a map in my hand, a few necessities on my back, and the future somehow fluid and unseeable.

Six Degrees of Separation – from Prophet Song to Whitethorn Woods

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month’s starting point is the 2023 Booker winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.

I got Prophet Song from the library this week for Reading Ireland 2025 as it is about an Irish family and takes place in Dublin (as I plan to read it I avoided spoilers).

The Denehurst Secret Service by Gwendoline Courtney

A school story that contains a mystery and is also an evacuation story – who could ask for anything more, as my friend Fred Astaire would say . . .

Mrs. Sherbourne has news for her two teenage daughters, Elaine and Moira. She is sending them to Denehurst, a boarding school in Cornwall, because London in war time is dangerous and their father needs to concentrate on his Foreign Office work. The girls are mildly indignant because they want to do their bit but cheer up when their cousin, Captain Deryk Holroyd, says he might need their help from school. He asks them to conceal their fluency in German, where the family spent three years.

The King’s Messenger by Susanna Kearsley

I have been reading Susanna Kearsley’s books since 1994, when Mariana was published, and even drove to Rhode Island to meet her in 2015 when she was touring for A Desperate Fortune, so I was excited to read her new book, The King’s Messenger, and was not disappointed. Surprisingly, it is not a dual timeline book, for which she is best known; rather, it is set in the early 17th century during the reign of James I of England.

The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen

Maggie Bird is retired and living a quiet life in Purity, Maine with a few chickens and a small group of friends nearby when she gets an unexpected and unwelcome visitor. A woman who calls herself Bianca wants Maggie’s help finding a colleague from her CIA past, last seen in Bangkok. 

Spell the Month in Books – February

Spell the Month in Books is hosted by Reviews From the Stacks and occurs on the first Saturday of each month or maybe the third! This month I chose from books I read ten years ago. I read a lot that year because I was between jobs for the first two months of the year and it was an extremely snowy winter. The weekend of Valentine's Day, ten years ago, my brother was visiting with his family and I suggested my parents drive over and spend the night in case it snowed so much they were stranded at home. It was quite a slumber party with five adults and three children.  Somehow a coworker made it over with his toddler to decorate heart-shaped cupcakes!

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

For those of us who read a lot of WWII historical fiction, it is a natural progression to contemplate what happened after the war ended. Perhaps this is why I loved the television show Homefront, set in a Midwest town where everyone is excited to welcome back their menfolk but do not realize how their lives will be affected, especially women who worked outside the home doing war work but are now displaced in favor of the men. 

January 2025 Reading

I read 14 books in January: all fiction but one, including three audiobooks and two rereads. The God of the Woods and Frozen River are historical novels which were much hyped, with long waiting lists at the library. I was disappointed in the first and found its ending completely unbelievable. I liked Frozen River and its themes of justice and male dominance provided lots of material for my book group discussion. I also enjoyed the newest Michael Connelly and my reread of False Colours.

Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson

When our fellow humans annoy us with their squabbles and predictability, don’t we all fantasize about memorializing them in fiction – to their detriment?* 

Six Degrees of Separation – from Dangerous Liaisons to Mrs. Plansky's Revenge

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month, Kate started with a classic, Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, which is about seduction and revenge.

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

As she spoke, she reached for the phone that had just begun to ring. There were other, more junior officers in the big squad room that housed the Cold Case Review Team, but promotion hadn’t altered Karen’s ways. She’d never got out of the habit of answering any phone that rang in her vicinity. “CCRT, DI Pirie speaking,” she said absently . . . .

In the Blink of an Eye by Jo Callaghan

In this series launch, a police detective is asked to lead a pilot program examining cold cases with the help of an Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity (AIDE) – basically, a robot – as part of her team, with results that surprise her. Detective Chief Superintendent Kat Frank has been on leave while recovering from the death of her husband and resulting depression of her teenage son but now she wants to return to work. 

False Colours by Georgette Heyer

Kit Fancot is a rising young diplomat, stationed in Vienna, when he senses something is wrong with his identical twin brother back in London. It’s 1817 so he can’t call or text – he uses the recent death of his godfather as an excuse to make the long journey home. 

Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie #ReadChristie2025

Hercule Poirot excels at cold cases so he is intrigued when Carla Lemarchant turns up for an appointment with a murder from the past. When she was 21, she learned that her mother had murdered her father, Amyas Crale, a well-known painter. Caroline Crale was convicted and died in prison, a year later.

WWW Wednesday – January 15

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

Someone recently recommended In the Blink of an Eye by Jo Callaghan (2023), which I am enjoying. The main character, Detective Kat Frank, is a single mother asked to lead a pilot program using a sort of robot with artificial intelligence. 

Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum #Ozathon24

In L. Frank Baum’s final Oz book, published a year after his death, Ozma learns from Glinda’s Great Book of Records that two tribes in the distant Gillikin country are about to go to war. 

The Skeezers have declared war on the Flatheads, and although Ozma has never heard of either faction previously, she now feels a sense of responsibility:

My December 2024 Reading

Somehow in a busy December, I read 12 adult books and four children’s or YA books (two of which were rereads), plus listened to three audio books (all crime fiction) driving back and forth to various places.  A few of these were intended as Christmas presents so I was trying to vet them first!  Overall, it was an outstanding reading year (see my Best of 2024 list).

The Colony Club by Shelley Noble

It’s 1902 and Florence “Daisy” Harriman, married to a rich banker, could have chosen to live solely as a Gilded Age socialite. However, while she is an accepted member of the New York and Newport ruling class, enjoying her privileges, she is also a social reformer and suffragist, and later a diplomatic envoy. At the time of this book, loosely based on history, she realizes that the ladies of her acquaintance need an elite club in Manhattan, just as their menfolk enjoy spending time at male bastions such as the Union Club or the Princeton Club.* 

The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave

Nora Noone is a busy architect who recently started her own firm, specializing in building spaces that promote healing, while her equally ambitious fiancé is a chef with a small but highly regarded restaurant in Brooklyn. She is meeting with a new client when her half-brother Sam appears to say he needs her help because he thinks their father’s recent death was not an accident. 

Six Degrees of Separation – from Orbital to Ender's Game

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month’s starting point is the 2024 Booker winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, which follows six fictional astronauts over 24 hours on an orbiting space station.

Love in a Mist by Susan Scarlett #DeanStreetDecember

This is one of 12 light-hearted novels that Noel Streatfeild wrote for adults under a pseudonym, and the only one I’ve read that wasn’t a romance. Instead, this is more of a Tring family story, a grocery business in its fourth generation as backdrop, and the gentle dictatorship of Dad-Tring and Mum-Tring over their adult sons, especially the two who work for their father. George, the eldest, is a solicitor, married to Anna, who believes she married beneath her and feels she is not sufficiently valued in the community. Andrew, the youngest, is married to Doris, who attended the London School of Economics and could have had a promising career.