The Dead Sea Cipher by Elizabeth Peters, for the #1970Club

In this romantic suspense novel, a young woman on a trip to the Holy Land finds herself in danger and does not know who she can trust or even who her pursuers really are. Dinah Van der Lyn is an aspiring opera singer who is about to get her big break – filling in for a pregnant soprano at a small opera company in Germany. Well, she knows it is more of a little break, so maybe that’s why she is in no hurry to get there. 

The Moon-Spinners by Mary Stewart

Title: The Moon-Spinners
Author: Mary Stewart
Publication: William Morrow, hardcover, 1962
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Setting: 20th century Crete

Description: Nicola Ferris has been working as a secretary at the British Embassy in Athens, working on her Greek and trying to explore the country whenever possible. She has planned a trip to Crete to meet up with her cousin Frances and gets a ride part of the way and arrives a day early, needing to walk across country to the town of Agios Georgios.

My October 2023 Reads

October was a busy month with a business trip to Tulsa (no direct flights, so lots of reading time), some reading for the 1962 Club, and hosting my book group’s discussion of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (not everyone finished it). My favorites this month were Just Another Missing Person, The Serpent Pool, Witch of the Glens, and two from D.E. Stevenson, along with several rereads.  Three reads this month were audiobooks.

WWW Wednesday – November 1

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

During my commute, I am listening to Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson (2023). Jackson is an editor at Knopf who wrote a contemporary novel set in Brooklyn about affluent New Yorkers and the middle-class woman from Providence who marries into a rich and very snooty family.

Literary Trails, British Writers in Their Landscapes by Christina Hardyment

Title: Literary Trails
Author: Christina Hardyment
Publication: The National Trust/Harry N. Abrams, hardcover, 2000
Genre: Nonfiction

Hardyment is a British writer who more than shares my love of literary pilgrimages. This oversized, illustrated book contains eight chapters of essays, pictures, vignettes about particular authors, timelines, maps, and more.

Favorite Reads of 2021 - A Baker's Dozen

Fiction

The Proper Place by O. Douglas (1926): After Sir Walter dies, his family is forced to sell the family estate and move to a modest home in Fife.  Nicole adapts to her new life with maturity and grace while her cousin Barbara is unwilling to accept their change in circumstances.  This was my first five-star book of the year!   My review.

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.

France 2021, Day 9, Avignon

The whole affair began so very quietly.  When I wrote, that summer, and asked my friend Louise if she would come with me on a car trip to Provence, I had no idea that I might be issuing an invitation to danger.  And when we arrived one afternoon, after a hot but leisurely journey, at the enchanting little walled city of Avignon, we felt in that mood of pleasant weariness mingled with anticipation which marks, I believe, the beginning of every normal holiday. . . . 

Sur le Pont d'Avignon

France 2021, Day 8, Arles

An early start with chocolate croissants (and chatting with a nice couple from Nashville) before we boarded a bus for Arles. Our tour guide was a cheerful British woman named Shawn who has lived in Nimes for many years and was pleased to hear we had enjoyed our visit. She told us there were three important aspects to Arles: its Roman history, its connection with Vincent Van Gogh, and its recent development as a major modern art hub.

Inside the Arena at Arles

France 2021, Day 7, to Avignon and the Buri

On Sunday morning we got up early to visit the Nimes cathedral in which David hides in chapter 5 of Madam, Will You Talk? The Nimes nightlife had gone on late but the narrow streets near the Arena were quiet now and just as we reached the Cathedrale Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Castor de Nimes a verger (if they still exist) unlocked it so we were able to go inside. The cathedral is believed to stand on the site of the former temple of Augustus. It is partly Romanesque and partly Gothic in style. St. Castor was a local bishop from Marseilles and Apt (a Provencal town in the Luberon mountains) who started out as a lawyer, proving there's redemption for anyone!

Not the most impressive cathedral from the outside

France 2021, Day 6, Nimes (part two)

The afternoon’s trip to Pont du Gard ended well but was nearly a disaster. We found the bus stop described by the tourism official quite easily and bought our train tickets to Avignon for the following day while we were waiting. The bus itself was very hot and full of noisy children but it was only half an hour’s ride. However, when the bus driver said, “Pont du Gard!” and dropped us off, we found ourselves in a town called Remoulins and a trickle of a river that wouldn’t have impressed many Romans (ancient or modern), although there were some families picnicking and wading on this hot Saturday.

My mother is curious about this tree
we keep seeing

France 2021, Day 6, Nimes (part one)

We were at the Nimes Tourism Office before it opened at 9 am to seek advice about visiting the Pont du Gard, which is between Nimes and Avignon. It is a majestic feat of ancient Roman engineering – an aqueduct bridge built in the first century AD to carry water from the Alps to the Roman colony of Nemausus, which became known as Nimes. Nimes is also the birthplace of denim: fabric de Nimes; get it? The tourism expert looked up the bus schedule for us and said told us to go at 1:40 pm and return at 4 pm, marking the bus schedule for us carefully. This sounded like it would work well with our plan to attend Mass at St. Baudile’s at 5:30 (note: if this saint is venerated - or even known - by a large number of Catholics, it is a surprise to me but his animal rights story would appeal to my former professor, Gary Francione).

The Maison Carrée

France 2021, Day 5, on the way to Nimes

I knew Friday would be the most stressful day and I am happy to report that we survived and I only became enraged once or twice. Fortunately, the taxi arrived promptly at the hotel door and we didn’t have to walk a kilometer down the steep hill with our luggage in the rain (my mother was sure our wheeled suitcases would take off with us clinging for dear life – I pointed out this would be one way to arrive quickly). He brought us to Avallon, a town 20 kilometers away on the River Cousin, which some feel could have been the Avalon of King Arthur. There were no knights of the Round Table or anything else at the Gare, which, most unfortunately for us, was closed for renovation.

The Arena in Nimes, which still
hosts bullfights!

France 2021, Day 1

After our trip to Paris and Provence was canceled in 2019 and 2020, it was hard to believe it would actually ever happen, but here we are! Despite an inconvenient and lengthy Boston-LaGuardia-JFK connection, we arrived safely in Paris at dawn on Monday and began a long but straightforward trek to Hôtel La Nouvelle République in the 11th arrondissement. It was too early for our room to be ready so we had tea and pain au chocolat in its small restaurant, left our belongings, and returned to the Metro.

Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart #1965Club

The 1965 Club is a meme in which two prolific bloggers, Simon from Stuck in a Book and Karen from Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings, promote a specific year of published books. Anyone can join in by reading and reviewing a book published in 1965 and adding a link to that book's review in the comments on Simon's blog.  1944,1968, 1951,1977 have also been promoted. 

This was the original US cover

Title: Airs Above the Ground 

Author: Mary Stewart

Publication: M.S. Mill Co., hardcover, 1965

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Plot: When Vanessa March sees a news report showing her husband in Austria when he told her he was going to Stockholm on business, she is puzzled and his beautiful blonde companion makes her decide to go investigate. 

Same Beach, Next Year (Book Review)

Title: Same Beach, Next Year
Author: Dorothea Benton Frank
Publication: William Morrow, Trade Paperback, April 2018 (originally published 2017)
Genre: Fiction

Plot: New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank returns to the Lowcountry of South Carolina in a warm story of marriage, love, family, and friendship that is infused with humor.

A Relative Stranger (Book Review)

Title: A Relative Stranger
Author: Anne Stevenson
Publication: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Hardcover, 1969
Genre: Romantic Suspense

Plot: Julie, a freelance artist, living in London, has had a hard time concentrating on her career since her much older brother Richard disappeared nearly three years ago. Involved in some kind of espionage, Richard is being held in a prison by unspecified bad guys. But when Richard is released, Julie is asked to help identify the aloof stranger and she isn’t quite sure it’s her brother. Then the mysterious but attractive Stephen Archer appears at her front door with a postcard from Richard just as Julie receives on herself, and she really doesn’t know who to trust . . .

Audience: Fans of Mary Stewart. While there will never be another Mary Stewart, there are a few good wannabes and Stevenson, who wrote seven novels in the 70s and early 80s, was one of them. My mother introduced me to both authors.  In return, I have introduced her to Susanna Kearsley who is definitely the best substitute Stewart currently writing (her books are quite different in some ways but certainly appeal to Stewart fans).

These books have quite the gothic look

My Impressions: I never mind rereading books that are dated but there was one scene in particular that really came across as inappropriate, given the current climate! Julie is visiting the publishing company she freelances for and the art editor who is her boss flirts with her very casually in front of his secretary Anne:

He had known Julie for more than a year and professed himself enraptured by her legs. . . 

“Hey, Anne ---“ He pulled his secretary around by the skirt as she passed his desk.

“When are you going to marry me, Julie?”
She shook her head, smiling.
“Well, if you won’t marry me, when are you going to sleep with me? This afternoon – I’ve no appointments this afternoon, have I, Anne?”

It turns out he roomed with Julie’s brother at university which surely makes his flirting even less acceptable (and remember, a freelancer is often totally dependent on his/her one contact to secure additional work) although I know it was a different world then.

Source: I remember enjoying A Relative Stranger back in the day and picked it up at the Brookline Library recently for a reread. Now, of course, I am trying to recall which of her books I read and which were never at my library in those pre-Internet, pre-Inter Library Loan days, and how to obtain some of the more obscure titles.   Note: there is another Anne Stevenson who is a British poet.

Someone is Watching

My younger sister gets an email from the school library every time her six year old checks out a book.  This would have infuriated me as a child because I liked reading books adults often thought were too old for me.   I remember three specific incidents:  in third grade I was reading The Fellowship of the Ring, and although my mother had read The Hobbit to my middle sister and me I suspected she might think this book was too scary or over my head[1] so I kept it tucked in my desk drawer with a red felt pen I used to write down an occasional vocabulary word.  On Teacher’s Night, Mrs. Freilich[2] exposed my secret to my parents!  I think my mother was amused and my father reclaimed his pen (which were apparently banned at school, although no one had told me) but I certainly never trusted her again.

The next year my parents were duly waiting their turn behind a husband and wife they knew very slightly.  These people were complaining that someone in the class had given their daughter an extremely unsuitable book.   Somehow my mother guessed it was me and waited apprehensively to see what it had been. Then Miss Barnes said audibly, “Maybe Suzanne wasn’t quite ready for The Secret Garden but it is a lovely book she will enjoy some day.”   See, I was just helping her improve her mind!   Miss Barnes and I did not always see eye to eye but she read aloud often and introduced me to some wonderful books:  On to Oregon, The Black Stallion, and The Phantom Tollbooth (this latter became such a favorite I chose it to giveaway in World Book Night last year.

Later, in seventh grade, at a new school where the library contained little new fiction but was full of Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, and religious-themed books like Miracle at Carville, I discovered Anya Seton and became entranced by her masterpiece, Katherine.   I must not have been very good at concealment because, thinking the book was very racy based on the cover, I hid it under my pillow where my mother, innocently changing the sheets, found it.  I came into my room to find her curled up with John of Gaunt, and she happily told me she had read that book the year she finished high school when it was serialized by the Ladies Home Journal.   The only remonstrations I ever got from her regarding my choice of books was her desire that I would not race through an author too quickly, denying myself the pleasure of anticipating a delightful read. 

---

[1] My mother would not have been totally wrong.  I had read Carolyn Haywood’s book, Primrose Day, the previous year, which features an English girl named Merry (and inspired my interest in evacuation stories).  As a result, I thought Tolkien’s hobbit Merry was a female hobbit.  There were plenty of male possessive pronouns but I airily dismissed those as typos and wondered about a possible romance between Merry and Pippin for some time.   I paused in my reading when Gandalf fell in the Mines of Moira and did not return to the Lord of the Rings until I turned 11 or 12.

[2] She already had a conflict of interest issue that had been unaddressed.  She had previously taught the other first grade section and one of her students, Laura Rabinowitz, who later attended Brown, was a flower girl at her wedding.  Fourteen months later, Mrs. Freilich began to teach third grade and Laura was in our class!  Favoritism resulted.

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley (book review)

Susanna Kearsley is such a gifted writer I cannot figure out why her books are not better known. I sometimes wonder if it is because she is Canadian and there has been no major publicity machine behind her (as Alex Beam noted in the Globe today, although there are talented Canadian authors their bookstore bestsellers are all US imports). Like Mary Stewart (although perhaps without her warm humor), Kearsley creates a vivid sense of place and as Stewart did in Touch Not the Cat, she moves effortlessly from present to past, telling each story so compellingly that the reader forgets there is any other. The Winter Sea is Kearsley’s best book since Mariana. The contemporary story is told in the first person by Carrie McClelland, a writer of historical fiction, trying to figure out how to approach her current topic, early 18th century Jacobite uprisings in Scotland and those behind the plots to restore the Old Pretender to his rightful throne. When Carrie visits her agent in Scotland, she accidentally (but we know there are no accidents in fiction!) finds her way to a ruined castle, Slains, and begins to experience vivid dreams that inspire her novel. Carrie’s visions or memories are of a distant ancestor, a quiet young woman, Sophia Paterson, an orphan who is taken into the household of the Mistress of Slains Castle, the Countess of Erroll, and becomes involved in the Scots’ plotting through the kind relatives who have given her a home. Sophia is recovering from family tragedy and remains somewhat emotionally detached from the intrigue until she falls in love with a man who has dedicated his life to the Jacobite cause. She is a fascinating character (more interesting, in fact, than her creator, Carrie).