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.

Six Degrees of Separation – from The Anniversary to A Killing of Innocents

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 you end up. This month’s starting point is The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop (2023), a mystery in which the protagonist’s husband falls overboard while they are on a cruise celebrating their wedding anniversary (hello, I can sense an unreliable narrator from a distance).

My September 2023 Reads

I covered a lot of genres in September and my favorite books this month were Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear, memoirs by Drew Faust and Mabel Esther Allan, and a contemporary romance with a mature heroine and a theater background called Flirting with Fire by Jane Porter. Have you read any of these? What’s on your October horizon?

My March 2023 Reads

I returned to several old but trusted authors in March: Maeve Binchy, Elizabeth Cadell, Agatha Christie, John Grisham, and two Emilie Lorings, after reading her biography, Happy Landings. I was a little disappointed in Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, which was vivid and atmospheric but depressing. However, I enjoyed Jane Austen Cannot Marry, a time travel novel by May McGoldrick, a husband and wife team I have followed since their charming first historical novel, The Thistle and the Rose. That was the first book I bought as an editor at Penguin years ago.

Out of the Rain by Elizabeth Cadell

Title: Out of the Rain
Author: Elizabeth Cadell
Publication: William Morrow, hardcover, 1987
Genre: Fiction
Setting: Late 20th-century Britain

Description: Edward Netherford is a quiet London lawyer who inherited some difficult clients from his father and is forced to go to Yorkshire in an attempt to retrieve some paintings they inherited.

Spell the Month in Books – March

Spell the Month in Books is the brainchild of Reviews From the Stacks and occurs on the second Saturday of each month. This month I chose from books I read in 2022:

Spell the Month in Books – November

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!

N    The Nowhere Man by Gregg Hurwitz (2017). Evan Smoak is a reluctant assassin. Once, he was Orphan X, a child plucked from an orphanage and turned into a killer.

Spell the Month in Books – September

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

Here is my installment for September:

The Cuckoo in Spring by Elizabeth Cadell #1954Club

Title: The Cuckoo in Spring
Author: Elizabeth Cadell
Publication: Thorndike Press, hardcover, 1954
Genre: Fiction
Setting: 20th century England

This review is for the #1954Club, hosted by StuckinaBook and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, in which bloggers are invited to read and review books that were published in a specific year.

Description: Edwin Hurst and his son, Oliver, solicitors, have an eccentric client in Yorkshire who wants his paintings valued. They persuade Oliver’s brother Julian, an art dealer, to undertake the project, which Julian does only because there might be something worthwhile and because he plans to visit his godmother in Scotland afterward for a lively house party.

My March 2022 Reads

Children’s Books

Which Way is Home by Maria Kiely (2020) - A debut novel about a family escaping Czechoslovakia after the 1948 Communist takeover, based on the experience of the author's mother who was the co-master of Adams House at Harvard when I was in college.

My February 2022 Reads

Seven of my nineteen February books were rereads, a much higher percentage than usual; indicating some comfort reading, I suppose. Sometimes with Elizabeth Cadell and D.E. Stevenson, one can’t tell if it was read before until halfway through as both were prolific and the titles sometimes sound interchangeable even when the stories are distinctive.  But my favorite new-to-me read was Dead Wake by Erik Larson, the story of the Lusitania’s last voyage, which I highly recommend.

King Cake

September 2021 Reads

I got a lot of reading done in September considering I was away for more than two weeks. This may be why my suitcase hasn’t made it back up the attic and the lawn needs to be mowed!

Fiction

Royal Summons by Elizabeth Cadell – American Ellen Berg travels to her mother’s childhood home in England where she has to come to terms with the imperious aunt who drove her mother away.

August 2021 Reads

Some thoughts on my August reading:

Mystery and Suspense

City of the Lost (Rockton #1) by Kelley Armstrong

A Darkness Absolute (Rockton #2) by Kelley Armstrong

This Fallen Prey (Rockton #3) by Kelley Armstrong – These Rockton books are a seven-book series about Casey Butler, a homicide detective living in an isolated town in the Yukon where people go who don’t want to be found.   I am enjoying them, so long as I don’t have to go live there!  I recommended the first book to my sister around August 5th and she is already on book 5!

Sun in the Morning by Elizabeth Cadell - a novel based on her youth in India

Title: Sun in the Morning
Author: Elizabeth Cadell
Publication: Thorndike Press, large print paperback, 1978 (originally published in 1950)
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: India, early 20th century

Description: The narrator and her two older sisters live with their father in one of five houses on Minto Lane in Calcutta, 1913.

June 2021 Reads

What did you read in June?  My reading was quite varied:

Mystery/Suspense

* While Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams – a legal thriller set at the Supreme Court by the brilliant voting rights activist – my review

The Killing Kind by Jane Casey – psychological suspense about a barrister in this new standalone from one of my favorite mystery writers.  This present for my sister arrived from the UK after her birthday so I decided to read it first.

A Lion in the Way by Elizabeth Cadell - a glimpse of the last days of the Raj

Title: A Lion in the Way
Author: Elizabeth Cadell
Publication: William Morrow, hardcover, 1982
Genre: Fiction
Setting: 1913-1929, India and England

Description: Annerley Brooke (whose name is really Rosalind Anna Lee, after her deceased mother) has been brought up frugally in India with her maternal grandmother, and father, who coaches the sons of affluent Indian families before they are sent to away boarding school.

Any Two Can Play by Elizabeth Cadell

Title: Any Two Can Play

Author: Elizabeth Cadell
Publication: William Morrow, hardcover, 1981
Genre: Fiction
Setting: 20th century England

Description: When Natalie hears her sister-in-law has abandoned both husband and toddler twins, she drops everything to head to Downing, the small town where her brother teaches music at a boarding school.

The Marrying Kind by Elizabeth Cadell

Title: The Marrying Kind
Author: Elizabeth Cadell
Publication: William Morrow, hardcover, 1980
Genre: Fiction

US edition

Description: Laura and Jess Seton are sisters in their 20s who had an unconventional upbringing but remain very close.  Laura has chosen to stay in Crossford, the small and sometimes inaccessible town they mostly grew up in, while Jess prefers, London, 60 miles to the north, where she has dabbled in many careers – and apparently quite a few men as well.  When the story begins, Jess is concerned their charming artist father Claude may have embroiled himself in some kind of shady predicament with a painting, and visits Laura to warn her that  Finch Falconer who bought the Setons’ original home nearby is also involved.

Favorite Reads of 2015

Here is my Best of 2015 list. Better late than never!

Children’s Books

The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (2015)
As some of you know, I love evacuation stories! This is the best one I have read since Back Home by Michelle Magorian in 1984. Here, when Ada and her brother are evacuated to the country during WWII, a whole new world is revealed to Ada, who has never left her family’s apartment due to a twisted foot – and a twisted mother.

Historical Fiction

The King’s Falcon by Stella Riley (2014)
Third in her Civil War series (which has attracted diehard fans), this book follows Ashley Peverell and Francis Langley, minor characters in previous books, who have accompanied Charles II into exile in Paris. Ashley becomes involved with a beautiful actress, Athenais de Galzain, who has a powerful enemy, as if Ashley didn’t already have more trouble than he can handle . . .

Amberwell, Summerhills, Still Glides the Stream (Book Review)

Title: Amberwell (1955), Summerhills (1956), Still Glides the Stream (1959) (Ayrton Family)
Author: D.E. Stevenson
Publication: Fans of Stevenson are bringing these charming books back into print so you may be able to find them inexpensively
Genre: Fiction

Plot: Amberwell and Summerhills are about the Ayrton family, five children growing up on an affluent estate in Scotland before WWII, doted on by the devoted servants but ignored by their parents. Initially, this doesn’t matter as the siblings are close and love their home, but the sisters suffer from their parents’ expectation that an inadequate governess can provide all the education and social interaction they need. The two brothers are fortunate because they are sent to boarding school and groomed for careers, although the younger son is bullied into taking up medicine when he wants to join the Navy. The sisters have a harder time escaping their parents’ cold, controlling authority, and do so with varying success.  Connie, the eldest sister, is a bit like Susan in the Narnia books.