I'm hoping for another book by Julia R. Fleming about the helicopter pilot turned Episcopal minister, with 'feelings' for her small town's chief of police. Dramatic, very human characters, *funny*, unpredictable. I liked Anne Perry's books set in England between the wars, but she began to repeat herself -- writing too much, too fast? DH and I ejoyed Silva's books featuring Gabriel Allon, but...eventually the character is running out of steam. Great plots! Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko is another great character. ("Gorky Park", etc.) Love Sandford, Robert Crais, the late Donald Westlake. (So sad there will be no more from him.) S. J. Rozan! Her Chinese-American detective Lydia Chin and her 'friend'. ("The Coldest Place") Who is the author who writes about books and book sellers? Lives Minneapolis, I think. May I mention my modern favorite book, "City of Thieves"? A 'fairy tale', a mystery, reads like Dostoevski might have written it if he'd lived through WWII. Alan Furst -- "The Polish Officer", etc. Philip Kerr's character Bernie Gunther in the "Berlin Noir Trilogy" and more. (Another character who must eventually wind down...so sad.) Oh-oh, I've really stayed from the OP's request. Sorry, Susan.

Vee, I think what you're suggesting is true. Just as in Wales, there is now nothing whatsoever remaining of the old coalmines and coalfields - it's as if the whole industrial revolution had never taken place: 'Nothing beside remains: boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away' as Shelley said. Halifax for instance, a bowl set amongst hills, was once almost invisible from above for the smoke and fumes of the factories etc. which functioned there. Now the old buildings, cleaned up and turned into things like Art Galeries and Craft Centres and Boutiques, it is really rather a chic place. Dear old Bradford - Priestley's Bradford - he would hardly recognise were he to come back for the immigrant population, as you say, and the curry houses at every corner - you get some of the best curries in UK there. And then there's the tourist industry...... 'Last of the Summer Wine country (Holmfirth) and 'Emmerdale country (around Leeds). and in the early '60s, when I first visited Haworth to pay my respects to the Brontes, the Black Bull (where Branwell bought the gin for Anne......) was just like any other pub and buses ran up and down Main Street. Later, I lived there for 17 years and when I left it was almost totally overrun with tourists to such an extent that it was better known as 'Bronte Village' than as Haworth. Purists and locals threatened to deface the 'Bronte Village' signs, in fact - especially since most of the tourists were bus trippers who'd been taken for a day's outing and had never even heard of the Brontes. But they loved the cobbled streets and the quaint little pubs and probably thought us residents were pretty cute too! Stan Barstow gives us this picture of a changing Yorkshire, too, in his later books - touristy Haworth appears in A BROTHER'S TALE(1978). But in his Ella trilogy (1990s), he turns right back to WW2 to tell his story Dido

My FoL book sale was last weekend, and like many of you, I was overcome with weakness when I went in there and ended up with these: * Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages - Phyllis Rose (NF) * Bliss and Other Stories - Katherine Mansfield * Something Happened Yesterday (columns from newspaper writer in UK) - Beryl Bainbridge * The Sex Lives of Cannibals - J. Marten Troost (NF travel) * The Blackwater Lightship - Colm Toibin * The End of the Affair - Graham Greene * The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind - William Kambwanba (NF about wind energy in an African village) * Jewel in Crown - 1st in Raj Quartet - Paul Scott * War Brides of WWII - Elfreda Shukter and Barbara Scibetta (NF) * No Fond Return of Love - Barbara Pym * Beach: Short Stories about the coast - Ed. Lina Lencek and Gideon Bosken * The Return of the Soldier - Rebecca West * Queen Camilla - Sue Townsend (What if Camilla became Queen of England?...) * Independence Day - Richard Ford * The Sportswriter - Richard Ford * Felicia's Journey - William Trevor * The Long Weekend: Social History of Great Britain Between 1918 and 1939 - Robt Graves and Alan Hodge (NF) So - quite a haul and lucky that DH wasn't around so I could get them in the house and and spread out to blend them all in... Tee hee.

I tend to have runs on authors. I'll enjoy one of their books, and then try to get hold of lots more hoping that they'll be as good. Unfortunatly they seldom are. A good example is Iain Banks. I read "The Crow road", and enjoyed it - I then got "Whit", which is wonderful. After that, "Complicity" - which is pretty gory, but compulsive reading. I then worked through the rest of his canon in search of anything as good - but the only other one that came close for me was "Espedair Street". The rest fail, for me, for various reasons - "Song of Stone" is vile. (McCarthy's "The Road" reminded me of this), "The Business" seemed rather pointless, "Canal Dreams" belongs in a airport deparure lounge and nowhere else. His celebrated first book "The Wasp Factory" I found OK, but none of his other books have the same charm I found in the first three that I read. But I still buy them when they come out, in the hope.... I've not read any of his science fiction (Iain M Banks), perhaps that's one for the "irrational avoid despite" thread. Wodehouse never fails to disappont. I've read just about all of them (that I can find - I'm still missing a handful of rarities), and most at least twice. As Wodehouse only really wrote about three basic plots, and tirelessly repackaged them with his wonderful use of language, it doesn't really matter if you've read them before. I use them to punctuate more serious reading - or get me back into the habit of reading when I have a "dry spell".