So, if I can't buy I can at least borrow and in a way it helps fill that need for "new books". This is a couple of library visits worth by the way. I had wanted to cut down on borrowing, but now that I'm not going to get anything good in the mail, my borrowing is likely to go up. But it costs nothing and I don't have to find shelf space for them, so it can only be a good thing, right?
Even before I had finished Johan Theorin's The Darkest Room I had requested his first book, Echoes from the Dead. Once again it is set on the Swedish island of Öland and the connection between the two books is Gerlof Davidsson, who is policewoman Tilda Davidsson's grandfather's brother. The novel concerns the disappearance of a young boy. I wonder if it will be as good as his second book was?
The House on Salt Hay Road by Carin Clevidence is set in a Long Island town in the late 1930s. The big draw for me is the setting--"suffused with a haunting sense of place: salt marshes in the summer, iceboats on the frozen Great South Bay." I'm still thinking of my beach/seaside reads and this might fit in nicely.
Rumer Godden is very, very high up on my list of authors I want to read more of this summer. I keep looking longingly at the titles I have on hand and if I didn't already have a pile of books started at the moment I would nab one right away and start reading. A good way to sneak a book in is to borrow it from the library. Those due dates tend to take (right or wrong) precedence over my other reads. A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep is the first volume of her autobiography covering the years 1907-1946. It covers her childhood in India, her marriage and subsequent abandonment by him and her early novels.
I've got two novels by S.J. Bolton at the moment. I really liked her first novel, Sacrifice when I read it a couple of years back. I never got around to reading her second book, Awakening and now her newest has just been released, Blood Harvest. What a title, eh? I've already started it as the story really appeals to me. It sounds very creepy--set in a small village on the moors called Heptonclough where several small children have died in mysterious accidents. A new family has moved there and built a house close to two very old churches and overlooking a graveyard. The family's ten year old son is certain someone is watching him. Awakening, which I hope to read after is also set in a small English village on the Devon coast and features a veterinarian and from what I understand--a lot of snakes.
I requested Nancy Woodruff's My Wife's Affair earlier but then I decided I wasn't in the mood for a story about infidelity so it went back. I then read reviews of it--all glowing and decided maybe it was worth the time and effort after all.
And then do you have times where you bring a book home you've requested and then wonder just why it was you requested it? I'm waiting for John Harvey's new book to come out but thought I'd try one of his others while I was waiting. Gone to Ground is your basic police procedural, but not what I'd call a cozy. This seems to follow the grittier side of London's streets. And any comparison to both P.D. James and Ruth Rendell will make me look again. Has anyone read Harvey?
I forgot to add this to my stack in the photo, but I also have Sally Gunning's new book, The Rebellion of Jane Clarke, which I've been looking forward to. I really enjoyed her earlier novel, Bound. She returns once again to Colonial America and tells the story of a young woman who refuses her father's choice of suitor and must pave a way for her own. It's set just before the Revolutionary War and I already have a feeling it is going to spark an interest in this period once again (I go in phases with my reading).
Who needs to buy new books when I have all these to choose from, right?