Codename Villanelle by Luke Jennings. John Murray, 2018 (2017). Compiled from four serial ebook novellas appearing between 2014 and 2016, Codename Villanelle was the first of a trilogy (which was to include the sequels No Tomorrow and Die for Me) before being adapted and expanded to four seasons for BBC television under the blanket heading … Continue reading Tosca’s kisses: #RIPxx| Calmgrove Books
Lesley Castle: An Unfinished Novel in Letters by Jane Austen. Introduction by G K Chesterton (1922). Renard Press, 2024 (1792). That it is unfinished, I grieve; yet fear that from me, it will always remain so . . . Composed in 1792 when Jane Austen was still only sixteen years old, Lesley Castle is an … Continue reading A neverending story: #ReadingAusten2025| Calmgrove Books
Emil and the Three Twins by Erich Kästner. Emil und die Drei Zwillinge (1933), illustrated by Walter Trier, translated by Cyrus Brooks. Red Fox Classics, 2002 (1935). From the paradoxical title to the twin prefaces (one for ‘beginners’, the other for ‘experts’) Kästner’s sequel to Emil and the Detectives is both more of the same and … Continue reading Password Emil! #WorldKidLitMonth| Calmgrove Books
Transformation by Mary Shelley. ‘Transformation’, ‘The Invisible Girl’ and ‘The Mortal Immortal’. Penguin Archive, 2025 (1831-4). These three Gothic romances by the author of Frankenstein – ‘Gothick’ I should rather call them – simultaneously attract and repulse me; they are ‘horrid’ in the antique sense of a heightened awareness of the supernatural and the workings of … Continue reading Matter most horrid: #RIPxx #ShortStorySeptember| Calmgrove Books
The Courage to be Disliked (Kirawa reru yūki, 2013) by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Allen & Unwin, 2018. On the outskirts of the thousand-year-old city lived a philosopher who taught that the world was simple and happiness was within the reach of every man, instantly. A young man who was dissatisfied with life went … Continue reading How to become happy| Calmgrove Books
© C A Lovegrove. Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler. Introduction by James Fenton. Penguin Modern Classics, 2009 (1938). The village of St Gatien sprawls decoratively in the lee of the small headland…| Calmgrove Books
Stencil cover art by Bernie Reid for the 2007 Everyman / Telegraph edition. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Edited by Pamela Norris (1993), introduction by Peter Conrad (1978). Everyman’s…| Calmgrove Books
Jane Austen, 1775–1817. Before completing my re-read of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) and preparing a new review for #ReadingAusten2025 I want to draw the attention of anyone else …| Calmgrove Books
‘The Spectre Bridegroom’ and ‘The Pride of the Village’ by Washington Irving, from The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819–20), in ‘Rip van Winkle’, ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ & Other Stories. Wordsworth Classics, 2009. Two tales about true love, yet one’s a tragedy and the other a comedy; one is set in rural England, another … Continue reading Death and the maiden: #ShortStorySeptember| Calmgrove Books
I’ve previously enjoyed Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen before reviewing it in my Calmgrove blog: in fact, my post (entitled ‘Irony and Ingenuousness‘) has had a good innings after first appearing 5th June 2013: it was reposted to coincide with the bicentenary of its posthumous publication in 2017 and then again for Austen in August … Continue reading Jane’s Bristol: #ReadingAusten2025| Calmgrove Books
Back in June I decided I was going to read more chunky doorstoppers over the summer, including Middlemarch by Marian ‘George Eliot’ Evans, and the summer reading challenge (originally hosted by Cathy of 746books, now by Emma and Annabel) was set at a modest goal of 10 spread over three months. Then I lapsed into my … Continue reading Summer-tome quiz| Calmgrove Books
The Lyre of Orpheus by Robertson Davies (1988). No 3 in The Cornish Trilogy, Penguin, 2011 (1991). “The lyre of Orpheus opens the door of the underworld of feeling.” — E T A Hoffman. The third volume of Robertson Davies’s Cornish Trilogy follows The Rebel Angels and What’s Bred in the Bone in being mostly … Continue reading Snark or Boojum? #ReadingRobertsonDavies| Calmgrove Books
View of the south side of Piccadilly beside Arlington and St James’s Streets, March 1923. ‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’ by Virginia Woolf, first published in The Dial, Volume LXXV…| Calmgrove Books
The Ahlbergs, by Janet Ahlberg, from ‘Peepo!’ The Bucket: Memories of an Inattentive Childhood by Allan Ahlberg. Illustrated by Janet Ahlberg, Fritz Wegner, Charlotte Voake, and Jessica…| Calmgrove Books
© C A Lovegrove. Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim. Introduction by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Virago Press, 1985 (1898). May 16th.—’The garden is the place I go to for refug…| Calmgrove Books
Godmersham Park, Kent. In case you thought – after the second of two reviews and at least two discussion posts – that I had said all I needed to say about Jane Austen’s 1814 novel Mansfield P…| Calmgrove Books
Stowe House, Buckinghamshire. In preparation for revisiting Fanny Price, the Bertrams and the Crawfords over the next few weeks, I want to take a little walk in the grounds and enjoy the prospects …| Calmgrove Books
James Andrews’ insipid watercolour portrait of Jane Austen (1869) based on Cassandra’s. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Penguin Popular Classics, 1994 (1814). “‘I do no…| Calmgrove Books
Without the aid of [insert search engine of your choice here] can you identify, from the following list, which of the entries with a month embedded in their title aren’t genuine novels, novel…| Calmgrove Books
CalmgroveBooks.wordpress.com For fans of Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett, each of whom left us during the third month of the year, the return of March Magics – first inaugurated by Kristen Me…| Calmgrove Books
Cartoon (2017) by Dan Piraro ( The stack of books on my bedside table waiting to be read has at times become alarmingly high (as my partner often reminds me) but luckily has not yet proved fatal, s…| Calmgrove Books
Jane Austen: watercolour by her sister Cassandra. “I can’t bear Jane Austen’s tedious books,” thundered one recent pundit in a UK national daily newspaper (I won’t men…| Calmgrove Books
Raymond Briggs, ‘Notes from the Sofa’. Notes from the Sofa by Raymond Briggs. Unbound, 2017 (2015). My cup runneth over. It went all down my trousers. “Award-winning author of The…| Calmgrove Books
Cover illustration by Tove Jansson, showing Moomins spotting Sniff for the first time. The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson. Småtrollen och den stora övervämningen (1945) translated by D…| Calmgrove Books
