Inspector Dew of Barshire is told by the Chief Constable that Scotland Yard had contacted him regarding an Irish national, Desmond O’Neill whom they suspect of spying and passing information to the Germans. The Yard had been following O’Neill, but then they lost trace of him. His last known whereabouts were Canford Grange, the estate … Continue reading Friday’s Forgotten Book: Who Died at the Grange? by Michael Halliday (1942)→| a hot cup of pleasure
Artist John Lumsden is found dead in his studio. The disarray in the studio shows that Lumsden had put up quite a fight before being strangled to death. Enter Scotland Yard detective Charles Blair with Sergeant Harry Dawson. Detectives, according to the author, are of various types: There were jocular detectives, and grim detectives, and … Continue reading Friday’s Forgotten Book: Frame-Up by Andrew Garve (1964)→| a hot cup of pleasure
Time to wind up the book. The last grouping begins with Ernest Bramah’s The Malignity of the Depraved Ming-Shu Rears its Offensive Head which is an extract from his book Kai Lung Unrolls His …| a hot cup of pleasure
I picked up Natural Enemies of Books from the excellent independent book and magazine shop Rare Mags. I’m interested in the history of printing and typography and wanted to know more about women’s roles in a male-dominated industry. Natural Enemies of Books is a response to the 1937 publication Bookmaking on the Distaff Side, which […]| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
Looking for Luddites grew out of author and illustrator John Hewitt’s student interest in the Pennine landscape in the 1970s. It gathers together fourteen sites associated with the Luddite uprisings in 1812, drawn by John in their 21st century contexts and presented with a brief history of their significance. Out of his daily stuff, posted […]| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
Hi friends and happy Wednesday! I hope you’re all doing well. I’m still making my way through Shakespeare! In today’s post I’m giving all my thoughts on his plays King Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing & The Merry Wives of Windsor. After an insult from the French Dauphin, King Henry V of England invades… Continue reading The Classics: Shakespeare’s King Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing & The Merry Wives of Windsor| Meghan's Whimsical Explorations & Reviews
….and the firelight flickering in the hearth brought back dreams that could have hurt because they were all of a happiness that was finished irrevocably, once and for all. Susan Laird, who lost her husband, Phil, an RAF pilot, during an air-raid, now lives for her son Buster, born after his father’s death, and her … Continue reading Friday’s Forgotten Book: With Willing Hands by Diana Ridley (1945)→| a hot cup of pleasure
On to the last part of the book: the authors who saw both the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. There are 39 authors in this section, so I have divided it into two parts. We begin with Ouida,…| a hot cup of pleasure
Frankie Miren’s novel The Service follows three women involved in the sex industry in different ways. Lori is an illegal sex worker trying to forge a better life for herself and her daughter.…| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
Emma Cummings, co-founder of Arise Home Education and Maths and English Literature tutor, was so dissatisfied with the options for ... Read more The post High School English iGCSE in Christian Home Education appeared first on Arise Home Education.| Arise Home Education
Last Year, I started this mammoth book and even posted about it. Everything was proceeding to plan when I ran across a novelette by Benjamin Disraeli. Seriously, what is a 70+ pages work doing in an anthology of short stories? On top of that, the satire failed to work for me. The long and short … Continue reading SSW: Great English Short Stories (ed) Reginald Hargreaves and Lewis Melville (1930) – Part III→| a hot cup of pleasure
John Horton is a mild-mannered small-time businessman stuck in a bad marriage. His wife, Ethel, spends more time with artistic ‘modern’ young men who John finds utterly vapid. There are…| a hot cup of pleasure
Keeping the House is the 2021 debut novel of North Londoner Tice Cin (pronounced Teejah Djin, for anyone like me whose English tongue wanders towards what it looks like to us). Set amongst the Turk…| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
“Thinke upon me as long as it is pleasant and convenient to you to doe so, and afterwards forget me…” Lawyer William Hunt is enjoying his evening when he gets a call from Celia St…| a hot cup of pleasure
Hi friends and happy Friday! I hope you’re all doing well. I’m still making my way through Shakespeare! In today’s post I’m giving all my thoughts on his plays King Richard …| Meghan's Whimsical Explorations & Reviews
Mary and William have never known their father. However, it has never bothered them. The two are extremely self-contained and close to each other. When William is three and Mary a year older, their…| a hot cup of pleasure
I seem to be in the mood for some Persephone books at the moment having recently read and loved Harriet by Elizabeth Jenkins, followed by Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton which turned out to be…| Radhika's Reading Retreat
We’ve had a hot couple of weeks in Manchester. It has felt like summer and the cover of Adam S Leslie’s Lost in the Garden called to me from Book Mountain. I wanted an adventure that wo…| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
Elizabeth Jenkins’ superb The Tortoise and the Hare was one of my favourite books in 2022. I was therefore keen at some point to read Harriet, published by the wonderful Persephone Books, a copy of…| Radhika's Reading Retreat
Revolution in the Head is touted as an indispensable Beatles book, a masterpiece and an astonishing achievement of pop criticism and scholarship. The edition that I read is the 1998 update that inc…| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
Hi friends and happy Friday! I hope you’re all doing well. I’m back with another classic Shakespeare read post! In today’s post I’m giving all my thoughts on his plays A Mid…| Meghan's Whimsical Explorations & Reviews
The story of the events that led Mary Shelley to write her Frankenstein story is now almost as well known as the plot itself. The tale began to take shape in 1816 as a result of ghost-story-telling…| Literary Theory and Criticism
First published in The Cornhill Magazine from January 1860 through April 1861, Anthony Trollope’s Framley Parsonage was the fourth in his Barsetshire novels sequence. That sequence had opened in 18…| Literary Theory and Criticism
Marmion Savage’s first novel, The Falcon Family; or, Young Ireland, satirized parasitic socialites, traditionalists within the Church of England, and the Young Ireland Party, a group of extremists …| Literary Theory and Criticism
George Moore’s melodramatic romance novel Evelyn Innes is replete with characters based on real people. The author fashioned Evelyn’s father after the French-born musician Arnold Dolmetsch (1858–19…| Literary Theory and Criticism
Fanny Burney published her first work, Evelina, anonymously, basing it on a piece of juvenilia titled The History of Caroline Evelyn, which she had destroyed on the advice of her stepmother. As an …| Literary Theory and Criticism
The third in his sequence of Palliser novels, The Eustace Diamonds represents one of Anthony Trollope’s darkest tales. He departs from his gently ironic presentations of everyday human relationship…| Literary Theory and Criticism
George Meredith indulged himself with a comedic presentation in his 1879 novel, The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative. It allowed him to engage in his favored approach of satirizing bourgeois stupidity…| Literary Theory and Criticism
East Lynne represents prototypical 19th-century sensation fiction, extremely popular with English readers. The novel was the second for Mrs. Henry (Ellen Price) Wood, who had begun publishing highl…| Literary Theory and Criticism
A fiction subgenre of a realistic nature that focuses on the home scene, domestic realism evolved from the reaction against Romanticism that occurred in the mid-19th century. Following the preoccup…| Literary Theory and Criticism
Sybille Bedford was a German-born English writer of non-fiction and semi-autobiographical fiction, particularly well-known for her books A Legacy and Jigsaw. When a recent Backlisted episode focuse…| Radhika's Reading Retreat
Adam Scovell’s third novel is loosely based on his own memories of growing up on the Wirral, Merseyside, and, through his usual mix of prose and photographic fragments, examines how a place a…| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
Four years ago I bought a book from Manchester’s Modernist Society shop about Wales’s modernist architecture (sort-of review here – I still haven’t completed my attempt at t…| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
Lucie McKnight Hardy’s debut novel weaves together a smattering of personal experience with folk horror tropes to create a quiet novel about revenge, belonging and control. It’s an unse…| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
Henry and Astrid: a psychiatrist and a singer, drawn together at one of her gigs into an unequal relationship. Told in alternating chapters, Henry’s relayed in the first person, Astrid’…| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
Hi friends and happy Friday! I hope you’re all doing well. I’m back with another classic Shakespeare read post! In today’s post I’m giving all my thoughts on his plays The T…| Meghan's Whimsical Explorations & Reviews
I read my first Anita Brookner in 2020, the superb Look at Me, a book that found a place on My Best Books of 2020 list, but for some inexplicable reason I haven’t read more of her work since. To co…| Radhika's Reading Retreat
As I write this, Daunt Books Publishing announced on Bluesky that it will reissue another Celia Dale novel this year – Other People – with another terrific cover. I am excited, I love her novels, a…| Radhika's Reading Retreat
The Queen of Fives By Alex Hay ISBN: 9781525809859Publication Date: January 21st 2025 Publisher: Park Row BooksGenre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Fiction, Historical, Suspense, Victorian, British …| Bookish In Bed
Book 4 in Iain Martin’s Winterhill series opens with a statement from the President of the Twelve Galaxies, announcing that his term of office is due to end in one solar year’s time and…| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
Nick Bradley’s novel Four Seasons in Japan is his second book set in Japan, and follows part time translator Flo through a moment of crisis. Flo is from Portland, Oregon, but is living in Tok…| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
I read Jessica Mitford’s wonderful memoir Hons and Rebels in August as part of Kim’s ‘NYRBWomen24’ reading project but have only gotten to write about it now. I’ve always been fascinated by the Mit…| Radhika's Reading Retreat
1983. The year of breakfast telly, the afternoon kids’ tv slot being rebranded Children’s ITV, Thatcher’s Tories winning a second general election by a landslide, the Little Miss …| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
Learn more about the epic poem Beowulf and the story behind its manuscript, from actors, historians, poets, and librarians.| Excellence in Literature by Janice Campbell
Leave the Capital is wonderful. Informative, chatty and funny, it traces a path from the 1960s to the 1990s and argues that a handful of Mancunian bands who were also-rans in the Beatles era paved …| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
I started my 10 Books of Summer badly with a book I’m finding quite dry. I was delighted, therefore, when my library reservation for Caliban Shrieks came available and I could put my chosen r…| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
RC Sherriff’s The Fortnight in September was one of my favourite novels in 2022 having found a place on My Best Books of 2022 list, and keen to read another and also another Persephone title, I pic…| Radhika's Reading Retreat
“What on earth shall I do when I get home? Read? All books are the same – about beautiful girls who get married or married women who fall in love with their husbands. In books things al…| What I Think About When I Think About Reading
The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Winter’s Tale, originally grouped with the comedies and then with the late romances, is two Shakespeare plays in one…| John Pistelli