I am happily reading from a stack of in progress books. I have a whole list/pile of summer reads (see previous post), but when you have tasks at work where your mind can wander as you work on something repetitive and maybe a little tedious, you can think of other things.
Is it any surprise that my mind tends towards books and stories? I might see a movie or come across a list of forthcoming books ... really anything might prompt the desire to read a particular kind of story. So, today my mind gravitated towards two kinds of stories that I feel like investigating and maybe making a list of potential reads, for ... well to have in reserve for the moment I simply must pick up that book.
So, help me make lists.
First scenario. I came across a recently published book called One Girl Began by Kate Murray-Browne. The teaser goes: Three women, one building, 111 years. I know I have read books like this. One building but many lives lived in that place. Maybe interlinked stories. Or a painting that is handed down through time and the reader follows its provenance and where it journeyed from start to present. I am intrigued by a single object or a single place but it is rather the lives lived or touched upon that makes the story.
Second scenario. Actually this is really more of a mystery/crime novel trope and I am sure (and I probably have many books on hand already) where there is a murder that happens sometime in the past but the friends or family return to it many years later. Something happens in the present, the victim is found perhaps, that brings that moment of history back into the present. I came across Vanessa Lillie's Blood Sisters and have requested this from the library.
Okay, maybe one more. I have picked up Ramona Emerson's Shutter from my Baker's Dozen summer reads (see again, previous post), which I am very much liking so far. The protagonist is a photographer for the Albuquerque police department. She is a member of the Navajo Nation and has the gift (? or maybe a curse) of seeing dead people. I am intrigued when an author can pull off a story like this. (Who knows, maybe some people really can see ghosts). Another author who has played with this trope is Charles Todd with his Inspector Rutledge mystery series as well as Maurizio de Giovanni with his Inspector Ricciardi novels. I am happy to see a woman in this role, but surely there must be other books with characters who can see/speak to the dead?
If any books come to mind, I am happy to take suggestions and share my lists. I am sure I can think of a few titles myself, but this is what I have been keeping my mind busy with today. (And I feel like I want to read maybe a seafaring novel ... Patrick O'Brian comes to mind or C.S. Forester).
I know. All over the place here today.