Carolyn, I was wondering what you thought of the Baldacci book, Nash Falls. 😁

I’m currently reading The Monkey’s Raincoat by Robert Crais, and Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand. Next up is Circle of Days by Follett.

Well, msmeow, it was so terrific rhat even after looking at a summary on Google I still can't remember anything about it except that the ending clearly indicated that there will be more of him in the future. It's my daughter who likes him so much and passes the books along to me. I will read most anything, and I don''t want to hurt her feelings but the books I really liked of his is the series about a bunch of old men who set out to find some bad guys.

Thanks, Carolyn! I doubt I will read the next Nash book. I liked the series you mentioned, too.

FInished The Correspondent and am underwhelmed but we all know I am persnickety. Did not particularly like the main character and thought the ending was rather, well, dull. Perhaps a separate thread if several people read it so I don't spoil it for anyone still looking forward to reading it.

PAM

Currently in the middle of Destiny of the Republic by Candace Millard about Pres. Garfield, and it's excellent so far.

Also enjoying The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne.

I have embarked on a reread of The Morland Dynasty by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. I aimed to read one and then read something different in between, but here I am on number 5 LOL.

Pam, I have a theory that any book that becomes so wildly popular frequently is not as we expected. The anticipation far exceeds the realization.

Yoyobon, That could explain why, after I have bought a book with a long library waiting list, I have regretted the expense as the book was not that good!

Annpan I have almost stopped buying new books. If it is something not available at the library I might pick up a second hand copy 'on line'. The last 'new' book I bought was Greengates by R C Sherriff which I had wanted to read for years but could find NO copies anywhere so waited until a new edition was published by Persephone Books and 'splashed out' (it's only a paperback but nicely printed). I think you would enjoy it!

vee - did you enjoy Greengates? My only experience with RC Sheriff was A Fortnight in September which I absolutely loved.

PAM

Ann....I had the same experience when I bought The View From Lake Como.

UGH. I hated that book .

PAM, yes I did enjoy Greengates a book that could be read slowly as there is very little 'plot' so no need to follow many different characters chasing clues or indulging in over-excitable lust. Briefly, the 'hero' Mr Baldwin, retires from his safe City job and his plans to write a history of Britain come to nothing (it's been done before) and there is only so much garden-digging one can undertake, plus he is annoying his wife and ancient servant . . . Help comes in the form of a country walk where he sees a new development of 'modern' (1920's) houses being built. Could this be the answer to his remaining days?

I also very much enjoyed A Fortnight in September.

I finally finished The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. It's quite a story, heavily loaded with human difficulties and suffering. I liked the way the river played such an important part in the lives of the characters and the theme of the book. I unfortunately was not enchanted by the fox; I found it a distraction in the grittiness of this novel.

This is just a heads-up for any readers of Tess Gerritsen's new series about retired CIA officers in small-town Maine. Trouble and their Cold War past keeps finding them. The books are real page-turners. The third book, The Shadow Friends, will be published this summer. My library's website showed that there were already eight people ahead of me in the reserve line.

I’m working my way through Circle of Days by Ken Follett. I’m about halfway, so I guess I’ll finish it.

Donna

I've started The Hadacol Boogie by James Lee Burke. He is one of my favorite writers, although there is a certain amount of violence and bad language in the books. I like his Louisiana Bayou books best, and this is one of them.

For the last week I have been listening to No Body's Perfect specially written for BBC Radio 4 by Lionel Shriver. I'm afraid I missed the ending of ALL the five episodes as I fell asleep. From what I remember the story concerned a 30's something woman (very much of the time ie now) who sets herself up with suitable 'dates' but none of these men come up to her very high standards. I expect by the final reading she had found her Mr Right . . . but I missed it.

That's terrible, Vee. Can you Google the ending?

I went on a short winter break last weekend and forgot to take a book with me and didn't feel like reading on my phone, so I went to a thrift shop and bought a couple of books, one of which was Nemesis, the final Miss Marple book by Agatha Christie, and read it over the weekend. I had read it before, but forgotten the plot, so it was like reading it all over again. I have been culling books from my library lately but decided I want to own some of my favourite Christie books, even if they are readily available from libraries. I'm sure I am going to have fun searching for them in thrift shops.

Carolyn, I took your advice and managed to find the 'reading' of No Body's Perfect in BBC 'Sounds' so I will be able to re-listen to each episode . . . or maybe just the five endings!

Good, Vee. Enjoy! I'm still reading the Burke book and improving my vocabulary.

Netla, I have no room for a complete AC set but have a battered paperback of The Hollow, one of my favourites. The Poirot movie of this was excellent. I like The Moving Finger too which was filmed twice. I did not like the second version so much though.

Annpan, the battered old paperbacks often have the wildest covers! I found two Miss Marple books in a thrift shop yesterday and one of them had one of those gruesome pulp covers that you would never see on a modern book. I decided to try to get all the Miss Marple books, she being my favourite Christie detective, along with my 3 favourite Poirot books and a couple of non-series books.

For those of you who enjoy 'costume drama', the BBC has a new series out The Other Bennet Sister about Mary the third girl in the family, considered to be the intellectual one and therefore unlikely to find a husband. Her chances not helped by having to wear spectacles!

I saw the first two episodes, each of half an hour, on Saturday evening. The early part of the story (as in the original book) is galloped through so what comes next will be from the imagination of the writer and not what Miss Austen might have wanted.

Of course I am biased as I so much enjoyed the TV version from the late 90's and just writing this brings back the original musical score.

I think it is due to 'air' in the US later in the year.

Finished My Husband's Wife......and I would like to hear what others think of it.

Perhaps I was not in the mood for her "clever plot twists". When it was all over it seemed like Alice Feeney took all the possible twists this story might have and tossed them together into one whirlwind of a story. Not sure whether I liked it or not. It felt almost too contrived.

Bon, I’m on the waiting list for My Husband’s Wife. The library says approximately seven weeks (!) but I will let you know what I think of it.

I am nearly finished (finally) with Follett’s Circle of Days. I’d have to say it’s okay. If there is a sequel I probably wouldn’t read it. It’s about life around 2500 BC in the area around Stonehenge.

I’m still slogging through Seabiscuit, too. One chapter will be really interesting and the next dull.

Donna

Donna, I remember Seabiscuit being like that as well. I think it's because it covers so much ground.

Undoctored by Adam Kay, the ex Dr and now stand-up comic I found to be less humorous than the writes-up claimed. Kay spends much time on Jewish parents, bodily functions, unfortunate ex-wife, coming out as gay, mental health problems, eating disorders . . . none of it a laugh a minute . . . but maybe he wrote it to help cleanse his soul . . . as the nuns at my old school would have said.

Netla, I have a complete Agatha Christie collection, and I try to get covers by Tom Adams, which I find very clever and usually not too gruesome (although the one for Lord Edgware Dies is pretty confronting).

Kath, I am jealous! What a wonderful collection. Miss Marple is my favorite too. And to specialize in a particular cover artist--I never would have thought of that. Have you read Agatha Christie's Marple: Expert on Wickedness by Mark Aldridge? I read it last year. It is really mostly of interest only to AC addicts but he does discuss all the various cover artists and editions. He did one on Poirot too which I also read.

The cover you show in your post is very good. I'm sure you know but that book was supposedly--no proof--inspired by a real tragedy that happened to actress Gene Tierney.

Tom Adams covers of Agatha Christie mysteries:

https://www.collater.al/en/tom-adams-agatha-christie-illustrated-covers-book/

I don't think I have ever selected a book from the cover art. In fact I avoid looking as sometimes the artist gives too much away. I see the author or an interesting title.

I might notice the picture later. What a shame all the effort is wasted on me!

Yoyobon, Thanks for that link. Very interesting and great illustrations!

I bought a paperback in London once when I ran out of reading material because of the evocative cover, but the story wasn't as good as the cover. Now I can't remember the book, but it is here on a shelf somewhere.

I'm reading another Robert Crais mystery, The Last Detective. It's pretty tense, involving a kidnapped little boy.

Thanks for the link, yoyobon. The covers I have are all of the British editions. I have a book about his Christie covers which includes some of the US ones, but I have never found any here to buy.

I have finished listening to Mad Mabel by Australian author Sally Hepworth, which I enjoyed very much. It is told in a 'then and now' format, but there are two different narrators so it is easy to keep track. As well as having a bit of a mystery, it is a good character study, but it does come with a bit of a language warning. There's not a lot of swearing, but there is some.

"Here on the shelf somewhere" - Carolyn, this describes my existence.

I just took some time away and headed to see my sister and a few days of R&R. I came home with 17 books because my idea of R&R is to visit used book shops and the book sections of thrift shops.

I just found a book in my own house by Agatha Christie called Sleeping Murder and it is also described on the front cover as "Miss Marple's Last Case". So it seems we here at RP have a bit of a mystery of our own. My edition is just a basic hardcover, copyright 1976, the year AC died. It is listed on the title page as the "third printing".

Ordering Greengates today. Because life is too short NOT to buy the books I want. Thank you, Vee, for the recommendation.

PAM

Yesterday I finished The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck. I keep telling myself I don't need to read any more books about the atrocities of WWII, but then this book fell into my hands and the story was told from a different perspective than I'd read before. It is the story of several women who are widows of German resisters who had been executed after their failed attempt to assassinate Hitler. These widows banded together with their children and lived for a time in an abandoned castle in a rural area of Germany, waiting out the end of the war and trying to build new lives after the war. The after-war relationships between those who resisted the Nazis and those who looked the other way were, of course, strained. So this was a look at the war through "new eyes" for me. NOW, perhaps I'm done reading about it.

Kath, that‘s a great collection, and this style is pretty distinctive. I think I may have a cople of covers in this style, but I‘m not sure who the artist was.

I have a collection of old pulp paperbacks that I collected for the covers, all of which are very lurid and colourful. I also collect romance novel covers by illustrator Francis Marshall, who did the illustrations for most of Barbara Cartland‘s books, but also worked for magazines as a fashion illustrator, which shows in his wonderful book cover art.

Annpan, I don‘t buy books based on their covers either, but if there is more than one cover available, I choose the one that has the most appealing cover art.

I finally finished Seabiscuit. What an amazing little horse! And what a life Red Pollard led. It’s amazing he lived as long as he did.

.

I started Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, but have put it aside. It will probably end up in the DNF pile.

I’m enjoying Coyote Waits by Tony Hillerman. I like his characters and his vivid descriptions of the Navajo reservation.

Donna

Speaking of lurid covers, I once saw one in the process of being made. When I was a teenager, a group of us went to a friend's beach, private to people in that neighborhood only. The beach was deserted--except for a woman in a slinky, revealing dress lying in the sand and a few men gathered around her. The men had professional cameras and were taking photos of the woman who was clearly not dead as she looked at us. The men told us they were taking photos for a book cover and for us to get out of there which they had no right to do but we did anyway.

I have rediscovered Charles Finch and his character, a well-to-do Englishman in the later 1800s who loves working as a detective. I'm reading The Hidden City, which is new but have a lot of his books to catch up with. I blame Stop You're Killing Me which has let me down!

Annpan, I have seen neither film version of The Moving Finger, but I did find the book in a thrift shop and started reading it on the same day. I commute once a week between my home in the south of Iceland and the capital, Reykjavík, where I have to be present in the office 3 days a week. I stay at my parent's house in the capital area while I'm there. Guess who left the book behind when she went home last Friday?

Iceland is beset by snow-filled winter storms right now and I am weather-bound at home. It's perfect weather for curling up with a cosy mystery and a cup of tea.

Netla I am home bound too, mainly because I have no reason to go out. The last time I did in early December I lost my house keys when a split opened in my shopping trolley. I have not recovered them. Thankfully I had a spare key in a Keysafe box attached to the entry wall.

We are awaiting a nasty cyclone to dump a load of water here in Perth and probably ruin the banana crop up North. We are braced for wind and water property damage.

The library came good with a requested book "I am not the only murderer in my retirement home" and the DVD of The Chelsea Detective series 4 which should keep me occupied.

Ann, I hope you come through the storm okay. Please send some rain to my side of the world! We are in a drought. So far they are only asking for voluntary water restrictions, but that could change any time.

Donna, where are you located?

Live Oak, Fl in Suwanee county - about halfway between Tallahassee and Jacksonville.

I finally finished Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. It was an interesting story about the relationship between kidnappers and hostages over several months.

Just ready to start Terror on the Train by Jeane M. Dams. I liked her Dorothy Martin books better at the beginning of the series, but they are good enough to keep reading them.

Last night I finished reading The Bookstore Diaries by Susan Mallery - a complete waste of my time. I chose it from a New Books shelf at the library based solely on its physical beauty, an attractive bookstore cover and, get this - sprayed page edges that continued the bookstore image. Thankfully, it was a quick-read type of book because I made myself finish it to punish myself for choosing a book based solely visual appeal. Don't do that with books; and don't do it with people either.

Good advice, Kathy.