Carolyn, I had not heard of State of Terror. It's interesting that both Clintons are teaming up with super-best-selling authors to write novels. And I agree, money can't be the motivator for any of them.

Donna

H. Clinton and L. Penny -- what an unlikely pair as a writing team. Or not! After all the theme of Penny's latest (which I am now reading) can be construed as rather political in nature. ("The Madness of Crowds".

SPOILER ALERT -The Madness of Crowds

Regarding The Madness of Crowds- how in the world would Myrna know the lady known as the Hero of Sudan, and why would she have been in Theee Pines? I thought that character was totally incongruous. Did I miss something?

Donna

I am dragging my way through "Madness of Crowds" and will try to finish it, but I am struggling with the plot and incongruity. Also, as in her last book, Penny has far too many characters for the reader to keep track of the various names, etc. I can't wait to get on to the next book on my tbr table.

I am reading A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee. It is set in India after WWI, with the detective just assigned there a veteran who lost his wife to the influenza epidemic, his friends to the war, and has an opium addition due to pain following a serious war injury. It is the first of a short series and I have no idea where I got the recommendation to read it, but it is quite good so far. It jumps right into the story from the beginning, which I like, and has good but not excessive descriptions of Calcutta and the surroundings.

I do wish that authors didn't give addictions to their characters.

They have everything to worry them, from alcohol, drugs, food cravings and self-harm as well as grief from a loss.

I prefer to read about a well-adjusted person without emotional baggage!

annpan, I remember reading a book set in Victorian London in which the heroine crawls under the family 'privy' into the sewer beneath and self-harms ie she cuts her arms with a sharp knife to help her 'deal' with her home life. Amazingly she never picks up an infection, her wounds heal cleanly and . . . I don't know what happened next . . . I found the whole subject both distasteful and far too modern/psychological for the 1850's.

I wouldn't have continued with that one! It seems like you didn't!

Just finished an easy read Chestnut Street by the late Maeve Binchy. A collection of short stories put together after her death by her husband. Nothing too demanding, just a look at her typical group of characters . . . although she seems to have little time for many Irish men, often depicted here as cads and bounders; either drinking and or gambling and leaving their wives for younger women. And some of the women are mean of spirit and careful with their money. Rather like human life I suppose,

I've always been fond of Maeve Binchy. Oh, and her books also.

I am giving Louise Penny's latest mystery an "F" minus. I had to force myself to read to the end and felt the author was jerking around the reader. Where was her editor? There were too many characters, it was much too long, and I did not appreciate the "sermonizing" that has become more prevalent in her recent works. Good luck with her teaming up with Hillary Clinton for the next mystery!

I did a quick re-read of Kate Quinn's The Rose Code for my book group meeting and it was even better the second time around. It's still the best thing I've read this year.

I also finished The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood. Billed as a "women in STEM romance" I was hoping for something a little different. IMO it was just OK, mainly because at 50-something, I'm way past the point of enjoying self-inflicted angst and massive insecurity on the part of the 20-something heroine. This was one of those romances that just left me shrieking "WOULD YOU PLEASE JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER!!" inside my head, so, not a favorite.

I'm now reading Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers, a story set in 1957 England featuring a put-upon spinster (not a term I like, but she's single, 40, and it's 1957) news reporter investigating a claim of virgin birth. So far, so good.

I'm intrigued by the mentions of The Moon, The Stars, and Madame Burova. I'll have to add that to my library list.

I finished A Rising Man and enjoyed it in spite of the 1919 British Raj prejudice and corruption. The two main characters are good guys, so I plan to read the next one to see how it goes.

I'm ready to start Twisted Tea Christmas, the next in the Charleston tea shop series where the shop owner solves murders in spite of the gruff police captain. The books are a bit mundane, but I love the setting!

Sheri, I couldn't get into Madame Burova so I returned it to the library, almost unread.

My bad, probably but I didn't want to engage in time leaps!

I am enjoying The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, set in a retirement village.

I am about halfway through Under the Whispering Door by T J Klune. So far I am liking it.

I have finished the Thursday Murder Club which is one of those books where you want to find out what happens in the end but don't want to finish and leave the characters!

There is another one in the series so I hope that there isn't too long a waiting list!

Ann, I have the second one waiting in the wings, but I need to read Heaven's Keep by William Kent Krueger first. I will start it later tonight.

The tea books are getting more mundane as they go. I think Ms. Childs has run out of steam, but the cover of Twisted Tea Christmas is luscious.

Carolyn, what did you think about Elizabeth, the former Secret Service agent who "knows everything" but seems to be behind with technology and terms like LOL? I found it strange.

I could visualise everyone excepting Donna as there was no description of her until Chapter 50! Did you do any better earlier?

Sheri - I'm still reading The Moon, the Stars, and Madame Burova. 3/4 of the way through, I'll say it's not as entertaining as I'd hoped, but a pleasant-enough distraction. There is an ongoing suspenseful plot element, but the author has not made me care enough about the outcome. However, the author might argue that I'm a tough nut to crack as readers go. I'll report back when I finish the book.

Annpan - I can understand your not wanting to engage in the time leaps. I don't mind it so much, though that is often a bothersome distraction to me in other books. In this one, each chapter is labeled either "1973" or "Now" so it's not too much a time leap for me deal with. Still, I do find myself occasionally flipping back a page or two to remind myself which time period I'm reading about.

Yoyobon - I believe it was you who started this Madame Burova thing rolling. Where do you stand at this point?

Noonday Pat Barker's third book in a series about a group of art students during and after WWI (and of course I hadn't read the first two) is a detailed account of the London Blitz of 1940 to '41.

Barker paints a strong picture of the work of the front-line workers . .. the Air Raid wardens, the firemen, the ambulance drivers. Interesting for me as the action takes place in the area of Bloomsbury where my late Mother was stationed with the Ambulance Service during the 'phoney war'. As nothing happened during this time Mother got 'bored' and left to join the Women's Army. Luckily, as it turned out for her (and me) because within a month the Blitz began and her ambulance received a direct hit. All that was ever found of it was half the number plate.

Ms Barker must have done her homework on the bombings, the terrible conditions in the shelters, the sheer exhaustion of the population, so not a light happy read if you require cheering up.

And my usual gripe of getting the period correct . . .why does PB often mention plastic . . . plastic nailbrushes, plastic flowers, even plastic bags a good 15 or so years before such things would have been available?

Ann, I'm not able to answer your questions. I read so much and so quickly that I don't delve into the books or retain much unless they are really special to me. I'm sure I miss a lot of things that other people enjoy, but I can't seem to change. I sometimes wonder how many words are stored in my memory never to be revealed again. I do remember if I like a particular author/book or not.

Vee, how sloppy of Pat Barker and her editor! Bakelite was the material available then, I think, used where plastic is now. Grocery bags were made of brown paper and wet goods wrapped in white paper sheets at the butcher and fishmonger shops.

She should run her first book drafts through a senior plus-eighty reading group!

Annpan, so true! Do you remember celluloid? We had a yellow celluloid duck that used to float in the bath in those pre-plastic days.

Re paper bags. Barker mentions potatoes being sold in them, but several pounds of spuds would have dropped through the bottom. I remember the greengrocer poured them straight into shopping bags.

My Mother told me when, in 1942, she went to buy her very modest wedding trousseau her one nightdress was wrapped in nothing but the bill.

Vee, potatoes, dirt and all were put into a basket made of woven sticks carried by my mother. Someone we knew made them.

My first dressing table set, a child size brush, comb and hand mirror was made from celluloid which backed a picture but it got spoiled when my grandmother washed the brush and water seeped in.

We had all our gifts wrapped in brown paper, as children. I think Xmas and birthday wrapping paper came into being later.

I just finished Rosie Walsh's "Ghosted.". I liked it very much: superb pacing of plot with many twists and turns and surprises. I also liked the authentic settings: Gloucestershire, near the quaint village of Stroud, as well as Los Angeles and Venice Beach, California. This is a book for the tech-savy, I should add, but that did not put me off. I would read other books by this author. In the UK, it was published as "The Man Who Did Not Call."

Now I am reading something in a completely different vein: "Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden" by Emily Whaley. This was written in 1997 and is certainly dated and quite unpolitically correct. Nevertheless, it is filled with local history and her style is charming and chatty. For anyone with an interest in Southern detail and life style, I would recommend it highly.

Carolyn, don't tell me Laura Child is still writing of bookshops and tea houses in Charleston? Or not? By the way, Carolyn, have you read Susan Hill's latest mystery, and if so, what did you think?

Yes, Laura Childs is still going strong. And, yes, I've read the latest Susan Hill, A Change of Circumstance. As always, I liked it; and as always, there is no happy ending--this one deals with drugs. The blurb calls it her best book yet. I ordered it from Book Depository, a UK-based online bookseller, because I couldn't wait for U.S. availability. They don't charge for shipping.

I finished Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers, a story set in 1957 England featuring a news reporter investigating a claim of virgin birth. It started out well, with the central mystery slowly resolved, but the main story concerned the reporter becoming completely enmeshed in her subjects' lives. As their relationships played out, I was never sure where the story was going, and in the end it just fizzled IMO. A disappointment, overall.

I'm now reading the newest Ilona Andrews (urban fantasy/romance), Fated Blades, and thoroughly enjoying it. I've also started the second Scotland Street book by Alexander McCall Smith, Espresso Tales, and it is just as charming as its predecessor.

I have finished The Man Who Died Twice, the second Thursday Murder Club offering. The gang is back solving crime in their own daft ways. Elizabeth is a jewel of a heroine.

Carolyn, I am eagerly awaiting that book and have signed on for the news letter.

I have just started White Nights by Ann Cleeves. Sadly I am reading this Shetland series out of order as the requested books come and spoiling the sequence of events.

I forgot to mention that I finished The Moon, the Stars and Madame Burova by Ruth Hogan a couple of days ago. I warmed up to the story in the later pages, and liked the way it ended. Not a great book, but a pleasant and rather fun read.

Kathy, thanks for the review. I just got The Moon, the Stars and Madame Burova from the library and that's next in the reading queue.

I'm making an effort to finally read the final two books in Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series, I Shall Wear Midnight and The Shepherd's Crown. At the time of his death, didn't feel like finishing them, as I wanted to have more Pratchett books to look forward to. I was saving I Shall Wear Midnight for a special occasion and I was so disappointed in Snuff that I wasn't sure I would ever read The Shepherd's Crown. However, I think I have gotten over this block (I hope) and am aiming to finish the first before Christmas and the second during the holidays.

I am also reading Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris. It's my slow read project.

Netla, this disappointment can happen to me too when I save a book to be a special treat for a later occasion and this seems to happen when I've actually ordered and bought one!

Perhaps my expectations from a purchased book are too high?

I completely agree with Kathy on Moon The Stars And Madame Burova.....an nice read but not a great book.

Wish I had a really good read to go to next.........a book that I just cannot put down.

Hmmmm..........

I am reading Hemlock, the new China Bayles mystery by Susan Wittig Albert, China has traveled to the Blue Ridge Mountain area, commenting on the Vanderbilt gardens in Ashville, NC, as she drove by. I have visited those gardens and the mansion a couple of times. The last time my sister and brother and I went to see it decorated for Christmas. It's not my favorite place to go (It just seems ostentatious to me for someone to build a mock castle in that area) but the Christmas trees in several of the rooms were beautiful.

The House in South Road is a rather too long autobiography by Joyce Storey from her earliest memories growing up in Bristol from the 1920's. Part of a working class family with an uncaring Mother and little money, we follow her life from a TB sanatorium as a child, to school, factory work and a shot-gun war-time marriage to a husband in the Forces who expected total domestic obedience! No doubt the lot of many women back in the day.

The interesting and unusual thing for me was the 'Afterwards' to the book written by her daughter pointing out some of the errors in her Mother's memory and the fact that she and her siblings didn't have a happy childhood. So many similar books give the impression of 'poor but happy' when nothing could be further from the truth.

nb If I had a pound for every time she made cup of tea and opened the biscuit tin I would be rich!

Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict

I read Carnegie's Maid by Benedict and have just ordered another of hers ...The Only Woman In The Room.

Carolyn, do you mean "Biltmore"? I visited it several times, starting as a girl of 12, and found it almost magical in its beauty. Later, when I traveled in Europe, some of those landscapes reminded me of the French architecture and surroundings of Biltmore.

I finished "Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden". I found it delightful and in some parts, laugh-outloud funny. It contains a lot of history , not only of the Charleston downtown area and the old families, but also of the charming village Emily grew up in, north of Charleston. That area was flooded to build a reservoir and many plantations with their gardens were destroyed thus.

The Biltmore in Ashville

T

Yes, Mary, the Biltmore. The book was quite interesting because it had an alternate story being written by a character in the book about Elizabeth Blackwell's work for the Chelsea Physic Garden in the early 1700s.

Annpan, I think sometimes book disappointment is inevitable, especially with books that have been praised to the skies. It builds up our expectations, sometimes impossibly high. I have experienced it a number of times with bestsellers, for example with The Historian and The Thirteenth Tale. (Although the latter grows on one on the second read).

When I read the excited blurb about a new 'must read' book I tend to check the reviews and instead of reading the thousands of 5 star comments I look at the 3-2 stars which often give me a fairer idea of the subject/style whether it was chick lit, magical realism, full of inaccuracies (my pet peeve) and so on. I almost never buy a book these days but do try and order from the library.

Vee......and personally, any book touted by Oprah or Reese Witherspoon gets a big pass from me !

Yesterday I finished reading The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth. I enjoyed this book. It really made me want to know who the heck might have killed the mother-in-law, if indeed it was not a suicide, as the police suspected. This is not in my personal "great books" category (not A Gentleman in Moscow or Virgil Wander or Ordinary Grace); nor is it in my "book club possibilities" category (not a lot to discuss); but it's definitely in my "good reading" category.

Has anyone read The Tour series by Jean Grainger ? Or anything else by her ?

Reading Lady Clementine, I was surprised to read that she , 24, and Winston, 34, were both virgins on their honeymoon in Italy and at that only became a "couple" the third week of it ! They created pet names (literally) for each other.....she called him "Pug" and he called her "Cat".

Yoyo, wonder how that became common knowledge?

I'm reading a quartet of novellas featuring Lady Julia Grey by Deanna Raybourn called A Mysterious Season. I quite like all of the Raybourn books, although Lady Julia, Veronica Speedwell, and Evangeline Merriweather do share some characteristics.

Carolyn.....someone must have let the Cat out of the bag ! lol

I finished The Moon, the Stars and Madame Burova and it was, as others have said, a perfectly nice book, but not anything that might land on my "Best Of" list. I'm nearly through Espresso Tales which has very short chapters perfect for bedtime reading.