The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

Title: The Dark is Rising
Author: Susan Cooper
Publication: Atheneum/Margaret K. McElderry, hardcover, 1973
Genre: Juvenile Fantasy
Setting: England

Description: Everything changes for Will Stanton, used to being the overlooked youngest in a bustling family, on Midwinter Day in December when he turns 11 and learns he is the last of the Old Ones, those responsible over the years for standing up to forces of Evil and Darkness.

The Children of Green Knowe by L.M. Boston #1954Club

Title: The Children of Green Knowe
Author: L.M. Boston
Illustrator: Peter Boston
Publication: Harcourt, paperback, originally published in 1954
Genre: Children’s fantasy
Setting: 20th century Cambridgeshire

Description: As the story begins, Toseland is on a train (alone at 7 years old; times have certainly changed) going to visit his great-grandmother after the autumn term at school. It is December and there is flooding at the station: he is picked up by taxi but then taken by boat by the family retainer, Boggis, to a manor house that is lit up against the darkness.

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley, a whodunnit set on an isolated Highland estate, cut off by snow

Title: The Hunting Party
Author:  Lucy Foley

Publication: William Morrow, Trade Paperback, 2020 (originally published 2019)

Genre: Suspense

Plot: A group of friends in their early 30s book four days at a winter Highland wilderness, Loch Corrin.   It’s a chance to relax together and celebrate New Year’s Eve.   Miranda and her husband Julien, Samira and her husband Giles, Mark, Katie, and Nick have been friends since they were up at Oxford.  Samira and Giles now have baby Priya, Nick has an American boyfriend Bo, and Mark’s competent girlfriend Emma has organized this trip, in part to be accepted by his friends.  Heather, the manager, and Doug, the brooding gamekeeper, have secrets of their own that brought them to the back of beyond.  The estate, while beautiful, is very isolated and cut off from the world once it begins to snow and the guests begin to quarrel – and then a guest is murdered . . .

Winter Woes

Why one should not make a TBR pile on the floor with one's new Robert Goddard books, ordered specially from England:

because when the pipe breaks due to frigid temperatures, those are the first casualties!   I am hoping they will still be readable once they dry out...   Happily, this one is bouncing back after a day on the radiator.  The old laptop from law school that was stored in that bench was not so lucky but can still be recycled.

The room is recovering but I am still traumatized.   I had that "what do you save first when the house is on fire" moment and grabbed the lower shelf of Elswyth Thanes, figuring that long before the time the water rose to the Lovelace or Weber shelves the plumber would arrive (which turned out to be the case).

Winter Shadows (Book Review)

Title: Winter Shadows

Author: Margaret Buffie

Publication Information: Tundra Press Hardcover, 2010

Genre: Children’s Fiction / Timeslip

Plot: Two young women in Western Canada, one in 1856 and one in the present, separated by five generations, communicate through an old diary and a cherished brooch.  Beatrice, a lovely and, unusually, educated young woman in a rural Canadian town, has returned from school to find that her father has married a dreadful woman, Ivy, who not only resents her stepdaughter but is prejudiced against her husband’s Cree ancestry (this would make more sense if it were the ancestry of the first wife – Ivy shows her distaste of her mother-in-law’s and stepdaughter’s heritage but apparently overcame her feelings with regard to her husband; I suppose because she was desperate to remarry).  Ivy’s seemingly uncouth adult son has settled nearby but Beatrice prefers the company of the new and more refined minister, Reverend Dalhousie.

Chimney House in the Snow

From the front steps of Chimney House looking out at the street on a recent snowy day.

Thank goodness for the investment in a team of snow plowers and shovelers, or I would probably not have emerged much this month.

View from the back porch - a mound of snow between me and the swing set!

I was not pleased by all the icicles around my house, most of which were out of reach and apparently indicate dangerous ice dams. Today, some are melting due to the balmy 38° weather.