Today I received the Spring/Summer 2008 Persephone Biannually. It came with the bookmark for this book, which I plan on ordering. However, I am trying hard to talk myself into waiting to order anything new. I should really try and read at least a couple from the stack I already own. This, of course, gives me an excuse to start a new book. Not that I am going to mind you, but the excuse is there.
I've started reading Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret. Too good, right from the very beginning. Can I just state for the record (one more time) how very much I love Victorian melodrama. I don't think I would have wanted to live during this era, but darn the books must have been good for 
those that did. I wonder if all her books are this good? When I finish, it's definitely time again for another Wilkie Collins novel.
I nearly always have a mystery on my nightstand, but after finishing Tasha Alexander's A Fatal Waltz, I wanted to try and finish a few other books before picking up something new. Well, I've finished a few other books, and now I am itching to find a good mystery. I'm contemplating giving Ngaio Marsh a try finally. A cozy, country house mystery from the 1930s sounds tempting. A Man Lay Dying is her first, and it looks like it would be a nice, quick read. Of course I am also really in the mood for anything by Barbara Vine, and I have a few of her older novels still sitting here unread. I feel confident picking up any of her books and liking them. I also just picked up Karin Alvtegen's Missing from the library. She's a Swedish author and her work is compared to Ruth Rendell (AKA Barbara Vine) at her best. Or, I could just wait until Elizabeth George's Careless in Red is released May 6. Too many good choices.
Yesterday as I was reading through blog posts via Bloglines, Cornflower's post caught my eye. I tried this last year with no luck. By the time I heard about it all the books were gone. I wasn't even going to try as I thought my luck would be the same this year, but as a fluke I went over and registered. Alas, I am 
getting Georges Simenon's The Bar on the Seine. Initially I was the tiniest bit disappointed not to get a more traditional classic, but I am now quite thrilled to be getting a Simenon novel. I've long wanted to try him, and he has come highly recommended as a good mystery writer. I was even going to buy some of his books after the holidays in January, but I put the books back as my stack was too tall. Now I get my wish after all!
I had a couple of other books waiting for me at the library along with the Alvtegen mystery. The German Bride by Joanna Hershon, which one reviewer described as a "an immigrant tale and a Western, without the Lower East Side or cowboys." Not something I would normally read, but it intrigued me nonetheless. I also read a review on someone's blog (I wish I had saved it) of Julie Myerson's Something Might Happen. Strangely when I read the inside flap of the book, it doesn't appeal to me as much, which just goes to show you the effect of a good reader's review on a blog. They sold me the story easily. I'll have to give it a try and ignore the book flap!
By the way is anyone else going to be watching Cranford on PBS tomorrow night?