I finished reading Jacqueline Winspear's Among the Mad, which I will write about soon (at the moment my brain is on the mushy side--that's what happens after a full week of work after nice lazy vacation!). I will say it was a satisfying and enjoyable read, and I think it's my favorite so far. I had plans to move on to something by Barbara Vine, but thought this might be a good time to add a little variety to my reading (as I keep saying I will). The last handful of mysteries I've read have all been British, so I grabbed a few possibilities by non-British authors (and non-British settings)--mostly books in translation though a couple by Americans as well.
Death Rites by Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett - Spanish crime novel featuring Petra Delicado and set in Barcelona (somewhere warm!).
Detective Inspector Huss by Helene Tursten - This is called Sweden's Prime Suspect.
Lock 14 by Georges Simenon - This is an early Inspector Maigret mystery, and I've wanted to go back and start from the beginning.
Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason - I wouldn't mind returning to Iceland (literar-ily speaking that is) this year.
The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri - The NYTBR calls Camilleri's police procedurals "savagely funny". Sicily sounds like a nice destination as well, though perhaps dangerous.
Faceless Killers by Henning Makell - Thw BBC has started filming these mysteries. More Swedish crime.
Murder Me Now by Annette Meyers - An American mystery set in Prohibition era Greenwich Village. I think only two titles exist in the Olivia Brown series (I read the first ages ago). I wish Meyers would write more--the heroine is a poet.
Death in the Fog by Mignon Eberhart - (Not shown in photo) Eberhart wrote in the 1930s onwards. I really should read her as she was a native Nebraska author. Doesn't this sound great: "Fog and sleet make driving hazardous in the Chicago traffic. When Katie Warren momentarily stops her car on Michigan Boulevard, she hears a shrouded voice say, 'I won't eat grape hair, nor yet glocks.' The image of grape hair is sinister enough to stick in Katie's mind. Steering through bad weather, she eventually reaches Aunt Mina's gloomy mansion--and then something terrible happens." I have to find out what grape hair and glocks are!
I'll have to give the books the "two page test" and see which one grabs me, as they all sound good.
As for the library books I checked out for the Winter Reading Program, I've not had much luck in choosing a really good book to start out with. Linn Ullmann's A Blessed Child was dipped into this week, but it just never really grabbed me. That's not to say the book isn't potentially very good, it's just not what I'm in the mood for at the moment. I may give Linda Olsson's Astrid & Veronika a try. Or I might start (again) with one of the books I brought home from the library today.
Songs for the Missing by Stewart O'Nan - "A moving portrait of a family and a town in the wake of a daughter's disappearance."
The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue - This story is "based on a scandalous divorce case that gripped England in 1864." Interestingly this is set at about the same time as the events occurred in the Summerscale book.
Engleby by Sebastian Faulks - I've read several of Faulks books, and I like the sound of this one with its "disturbing narrator."
Away by Amy Bloom - This sounds like another adventure story set in the 1920s as one woman travels West in search of her daughter.
Surely between the last batch of library books and these I can find something to suit my tastes at the moment. While I've told myself it has to be something non-British for a mystery, I'm leaning a little towards the Donoghue (does it at least count that the author is Canadian?). What can I say, I know what I like and am more often than not drawn in one direction. Tonight I'll be tucked under a warm cozy blanket choosing two new books to read (as it snows furiously away outside). Yay for the weekend.