A Work in Progress

Goodbye July. Happy to See You Go.

July has been a rough month for someone who is as weather wimpy as I am, so I am not sorry to see it end.  As the saying goes don't let the door hit you on the way out.  Bring on August and hopefully more bearable temperatures.  In happy anticipation I thought I'd contemplate the books I have lined up to read and write about (that writing about them part sort of went down the tubes this month so will try and do a little catching up and will try to stay on top of things a little better next month).

I have all sorts of exciting things to read.  In order (sort of anyway) of my own self-imposed due dates:

Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer.  Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle helped take my mind off being so hot and generally cranky (I'll be writing about it this week).  Heyer is always good for a little escapism, and I enjoyed Sylvester a lot--it was my gym book last week, so now I must decide on which book will take its place.  Hopefully Bath Tangle will be an equally enjoyable read.  Both came courtesy of Sourcebooks.

Library books always nose their way into my piles.  The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles is due back in less than three weeks and as there is a nice long line of readers waiting for it, I will try and finish on time (I've become very good at racking up fines).  The story is set in New York in the late 1930s--perfect setting and so far both the characters and writing are very engaging.  And not that I ever judge a book by its cover--I love its cover.

History: A Novel by Elsa Morante is for Caroline's Literature and War Readalong.  This is quite a chunky book that I had hoped to get a good start on in July, but am still only at the beginning.  I believe this was Morante's best known work about an average woman living in Rome during the war.  I get the feeling it caused a little controversy in Italy when it came out.  I'm not sure yet what I think of the writing style, but it seems to have received good reviews otherwise.

Linda Gillard will be dropping by later this month with a guest post--more details about that soon.  I'm looking forward to finally reading her most recent novel, House of Silence, which has been published in eBook format at a very economical price.  I enjoyed both Emotional Geology and Stargazing, the latter was shortlisted for one award and won another.  House of Silence sounds like a perfect sort of read to get into the mood for fall--a ramshackle Tudor manor, mysterious letters sewn into an old quilt and a young woman who's taken not only with the man whose family lives in the house, but the house itself.  (Yes, I'm ready for fall).

Along with a crime novel I'm reading at the moment and the Morante novel, I seem to be drawn to Italian authors these days.  The Break by Pietro Grossi recently came my way from Pushkin Press.  The story is about an average man whose only passion is billiards.  His life is about to be shaken up when his wife falls pregnant--the first of a series of events in his otherwise orderly life.  Isn't this a great cover, too?

Let's see.  I've still got a few hang overs to finish, too, like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, and Stella Gibbons's Westwood.  (By the way Westwood just got a write up in the Guardian).  I'm still enjoying Nicolas Le Floch's company and will be meeting up again with Annika Bengtzon soon, too.  Okay there might be a few other books, too, but I'll save those to talk about another day.

And if this isn't enough to keep busy with, there is a new list of books to vote on at the Slaves of Golconda blog.  As always everyone is welcome to join in.

Lost in the Stacks: The Walsh Girls

If you're interested in middle class suburban American life ca. 1943 Elizabeth Janeway's The Walsh Girls may just be the book for you.  Lately I've been coming across books that have the description printed on an inside page just before the title page, which comes in very handy as our books don't have their dust jackets (this makes choosing books something of an adventure).  On the same page as the blurb is a little box that assures readers that this book is complete, unabridged and was manufactured under wartime conditions in terms of paper.  There must have been government restrictions concerning paper use, and The Walsh Girls adheres to those restrictions.  It's good to know Doubleday, Doran and Company was doing their patriotic duty during the war!

The Walsh Girls, Janeway's first novel, tells the story of two sisters, Helen and Lydia and Helen's second marriage to George Peterson in a typical American town (in this case a New England mill town).  There's a hint of something in Helen's past life and Lydia's "repression and rejection of the normal intimacies of married life", all of which leaves George "bewildered".  Sounds like it makes for a good family drama. 

The novel received a favorable review in the New York Times.  "Here is a novel about people and nothing else, fashioned by a novelist who can be as penetrating (and as delightful) as Jane Austen--and modern enough to treat Freud as a next-door neighbor."  It's a penetrating character study with a "quiet virtuoso touch".  And there must be something more to it than just plain storytelling as the NYT reviewer notes "The Walsh Girls requires cooperation from the reader.  Emphatically, it is not the sort of book you can take or leave alone."  Here's a little taste:

"The train leaped out of the darkness and New York ran swiftly by on either side, cold in the harsh January light; dusty streets that the wind had blown clean and deserted, dingy red brick tenements frozen under a lumpy sky."

"The rails took up their inevitable reminiscent click.  So many journeys began to this sound.  It had been the background for so many landscapes, so many countries, sliding by behind the dirty glass of the windows.  The Pullman shook a little, swinging across a wide railroad yard.  The man with the portfolio and papers spread out on a little table, the mother and small son, the old lady who insisted on keeping her hat on, they were all there, fixtures in every Pullman car.  They were, perhaps, Helen decided, provided by the railroad like a claque at the opera."

"She smiled a little at the thought.  But she didn't want to look at them.  Like New York--or at least the ugly streets outside the windows--they were more depressing than interesting.  She closed her eyes and thought of sleeping, but the quiet wouldn't come.  She could not relax.  The click of the rails came louder, and she would catch herself listening for it and counting."

Janeway wrote seven novels, but she also wrote feminist works and worked as a reviewer for The New York Times and Ms. magazine.  She also served as a judge for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.  She had quite the literary life.  You can read her obituary from the Guardian here. 

Tired of the Heat. Gone Readin'. Send Rain.

I promise I am not going to complain about the heat (okay, maybe just a little tiny bit).  While the heat wave of last week is only a bad memory, our 90+ degree days, and 70+ degree nights persist and along with the sunshine and heat is a layer of humidity.  I'm sorry, the heat (which is trapped in my upstairs) and especially the humidity is wearing me down.  No proper post tonight.  I feel like sitting with a book in front of the fan.  These are two books I am reading at the moment (of the large-ish pile sitting on my night stand).

And these are two books I'm contemplating starting.  My library pile has grown considerably (you could call it large-ish, too).  I might share them, but I always feel bad mentioning books that might go back unread.  I'm trying to be better, but you know how it goes. 

So, if you'll excuse me I'm off to get a nice tall, glass of icy lemonade and read a few of my books.  I hope you're enjoying pleasant weather and an even more pleasant book!

A Last Hurrah for Borders

And so the bookselling world has just gotten a little bit smaller.  Close to 400 Borders stores are closing and all three of my local stores which had somehow managed to avoid that initial cut will be gone by mid-September.  I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about this.  For obvious reasons this is indeed a sad day and yet again it is a reminder of how rapidly and irrevocably the book world is changing, and not exactly for the better it seems to me.  Fewer stores mean fewer choices and less access to books for purchase--at least locally.

For more than ten years I worked in a really wonderful independent bookstore in my city's downtown Old Market area, a job I loved.  If it had remained open I would probably still be working there part time, but in the early 2000s it succumbed to fierce local competition and closed.  This was in part due to Borders opening several large stores (and no doubt as well in part to online retailers like Amazon).  Stores that had better buying power with the publishers and could offer deeper discounts to customers (well, that's what everyone thought anyway) than a small independent could. 

I loved working in a bookstore.  Loved the historical part of town I worked in and the customers who would drop in for their daily New York Times or just to browse.  My bookstore didn't have a coffee shop.  It didn't have that slick upscale interior design that seems to be in every chain bookstore, but it had charm and personality.  The books were selected with local customers in mind, with varied stock which you might not find in any other bookstore.  Everyone who worked there loved to read and loved to talk about books.

When the bookstore where I worked closed it left a bitter taste in my mouth and I admit I could never quite warm up to Borders.  I chose to frequent B&N more often instead (everyone has their own favorite and that happened to be mine from the few choices available).  If it wasn't such a miserable situation for so many people (particularly the many people who are losing their jobs), and please don't hate me for admitting this, I think I'd feel a sense of divine retribution at work here.  But that seems a bit unfair since this is simply the way of the modern world.  So I guess there is simply a certain irony that now Borders is going too, but it does make me sad for the book world and for readers.

This is all a run up to share with you the last few books I bought there over the weekend using my last two gift cards.  I thought I had about $5.00 worth of credits left and as it turned out I had more than $55.00!  How did that happen?  I was almost going to forgo one last trip there to avoid the crush of people.  (If only they had all turned out once a month like that to shop Borders wouldn't be closing).  I understood incorrectly that their stock was all 40% off, but most books were a mere 10%.  Sorry, my greed is showing here, but that's the thing about Borders--and chains in particular.  I was always under the impression that people wanted cheap books so they shopped at chains, but when I would shop there very few books ever seemed to be really discounted (with the exception of NYT bestsellers).  Go figure.

What I ended up buying:

A new (lined) blank book.  Last year I used up the blank book I had been using to write down the books I had finished reading (date, title and author).  This year I had a flimsy notebook with no aesthetic qualities to it.  Now I just need to note down this year's reads.

Cecilia by Linda Ferri which is a novel about Imperial Rome and a lovely Europa Editions book.  It was my splurge since it was only slightly discounted.  (More books by Italians or set in Italy, please). 

But romance books were discounted 30%, and while I don't normally read romance books I do love Georgette Heyer, and she is shelved in that genre.  I've added The Quiet Gentleman and The Convenient Marriage to my Heyer stockpile--always a good idea to have a few of her books at the ready! 

Mostly I browsed the magazine section.  I love looking at magazines but rarely buy them, particularly artsy magazines.  They were the deepest discounted items so I felt I could splurge without feeling guilty.  I have The New Yorker, Piecework, Stampington's Where Women Create (love Stampington publications), and Marie Claire Idées to read at my leisure.

So, adieu Borders, I'm sorry to see you go, too.  The new normal in the book world is constant change and learning to adapt, I see. 

The Floating Forest

Natsuo Kirino's "The Floating Forest" from Digital Geishas and Talking Frogs is the first short story I've read all year.  Although I'm not entirely sure what I think of it, I enjoyed dipping my feet back into this literary form and am looking forward to working my way through the rest of the stories in the collections I recently received.

Natsuo Kirino is a highly regarded author in Japan best known in the English-speaking world for her boundary-pushing crime novels (Out, Grotesque and Real World), which have been nominated for and have won various awards.  Her crime novels go beyond the traditional as she scrutinizes society's ills and contemporary social issues weaving everything together into an often disturbing portrait of modern Japan.  In comparison with my experience reading Out (this was in my early blogging days so I never wrote a proper post about it), "The Floating Forest" is quite tame.

Aiko Ito is the daughter of a famous writer who years later is still trying to come to terms with his rejection of her when she was just a schoolgirl.  Shortly after her father's death she's asked to write her memoirs, as there is no one else who can write about the world of such an important and great writer.  The request comes from a former journalist who had met Aiko when she was just a girl and is now a publisher.  He calls her a woman "who has lived her life walking along a checkered destiny"--having been handed such a fate as hers.  She turns him down but realizes she's just been given a new perspective on her life and begins ruminating on his words.   

Then she tells us the story of the famous Keiichiro Kitamura and how when Aiko was fifteen he divorced her mother and essentially handed her off to another man, another lesser writer.  Aiko was expelled from the Catholic school she had been attending (the story being set sometime in the years after the war), since her mother was branded a loose woman.  Aiko only wanted to be able to live with her father but his poor finances don't allow it.  Instead he marries not once but twice more.  When her stepfather writes a story about Aiko's mother, Kitamura and himself it is so realistic it crushes Aiko with its truths.  He promises never to write such realistic fiction again but also never finds the same success in the other stories he tells either.

Aiko's memories and the wish that she will write them down for posterity, something she cannot do, is just the impetus she needs to break with her own painful past and move on.  "The Floating Forest", which refers to a floating island of peat with mixed warm and cold weather vegetation that moves with the wind and changes it's height depending on the amount of water is likened to both Kitamura and Aiko's stepfather, and she sees it in herself, too--these extreme emotions which fluctuate, coming and going.   "The Floating Forest" is an introspective story of one woman's inner world and how it was formed by her relationships.  I'm curious to see how or if these themes are expanded and explored in other stories in the collection. 

"The Floating Forest" was translated by Jonathan Lawless.

Losing Nicola by Susan Moody

Susan Moody's Losing Nicola is one of those lucky finds that I happened to come across on my library's virtual 'new books list'.  Often the most entertaining books are found purely by chance, have you noticed that?  This one has summer read written all over it with the girl on the cover standing on a sandy path with the striking cloud-filled sky behind her.  It's a combination mystery/coming of age story set in Post-WWII Austerity Britain, in particular on the Kentish coastline.  The story is divided into two sections--the run up to the murder of a young girl and then twenty years later when her best friend looks back and tries to unravel what happened that fateful summer.  Lots of secrets and misunderstood occurrences as the murder is viewed and the story told through the eyes of an adolescent girl.

Life may be difficult after the war, but Alice and her siblings seem to enjoy an idyllic existence with their mother in Shale, a bleak town but one where Alice and her brother Orlando are never at a loss to find something to do.  Their father has been largely absent from their lives; first, fighting in the war and now teaching in Oxford where housing is short and expensive, so the family is temporarily split.  Fiona and the children live with her aunt in a boarding house in somewhat bohemian circumstances.  It's easier to imagine Fiona as a bluestocking living on her own rather than caring for a family as she's somewhat haphazard in her methods, but it's clear she loves her children.  While she may well have made a success at being a professor herself, she instead teaches at a local school and publishes stories  on the side to help the family financially.

Of the children, Alice and Orlando are closest in age and are inseparable growing up.  With so many different people living under one roof, mischief is often easy to get into but also it's a place filled with hidden tensions.  Alice and Orlando are just on the cusp of becoming young adults so they understand some of what they hear but not all.  Their happy existence is rattled when Nicola, a young Londoner just a few years older than Alice, enters their lives.  She is pretty and precocious and a little too knowledgeable about adult things.  She sweeps everyone, children anyway, off their feet.  All but Orlando are taken with her, and want to be in her glowing circle and crave her attention.  She knows how to charm, but she also knows how to be cruel and the spell she casts soon wears thin on Alice.

On Alice's twelfth birthday the inexplicable happens.  Nicola shows up at her party and all but ruins it by her behavior.  She runs off and later the next day her mangled body is found in a grove where Alice and Orlando go to pick berries.  The culprit is never found.  Summer turns to fall, Alice and her family move to Oxford and the murder is all but forgotten. 

However, the shocking discovery haunts Alice.  Twenty years later, after her marriage fails Alice returns to Shale and begins asking questions about that fateful summer where innocence was lost and her friend was murdered.  Who could have murdered Nicola?  Sexually mature, she had been messing about with one of the paying guests for money.  Did her teasing push him over the edge and anger him into hurting her.  Both Nicola and Alice had been taking private piano lessons from a German-Jewish refugee who lost his family in war.  While Alice finds herself confused over feelings she has for him, Nicola accuses him of misbehavior giving him all too good a motive for wishing her dead.  Or the worst scenario, did her beloved Orlando hate her so much he might have caused her harm?

This isn't a typical mystery really, although there is a crime and the truth will be revealed, it's more a quest for understanding--coming to terms with her feelings from that summer so long ago and putting old demons to rest.  I thought the solution cleverly accomplished by way of a diary kept by Alice's great aunt and the clues she garners through talking to those few who remain who were present that fateful summer.  It was all quite satisfying.  I was only thrown for a little loop by something that occurred at the end, which I didn't see coming--not in a bad way, only very surprising.  I really enjoyed Losing Nicola and will be on the lookout for other books by Susan Moody.

July 24: Reading Notes

I had planned to write my first short story Sunday post today, but here it is midway through the afternoon and I've not finished reading the short story I selected, as a matter of fact I've not done much this weekend I had hoped to do.  How about I read on Sunday and tell you about it Monday (or maybe Tuesday)?  By the way I am reading a story called "The Floating Forest" by Natsuo Kirino from the collection Digital Geishas and Talking Frogs.  The blurb for the story in the table of contents gives this description of the story: "struggling with her famous father's legacy as a writer, a daughter learns to put the past behind her".  So, more about this in a day or so. 

I'm afraid I've been suffering from severe inertia lately.  The hot weather zaps every ounce of energy I have.  That combined with needing to go to the library has thrown me off today.  I've been reading a lot of library books this year (good thing, right?), but I've not been very good about returning my books on time.  I just finished Grace Brophy's The Last Enemy, which was due on Friday.  I'm sorry to whoever was in line next for it, as I just returned it a while ago (two days late means a fine on top of the fine for the book I returned late last weekend...oops).  I enjoyed it and hope to write about it sometime this week.  Next up on my tour of Italy is Carlo Lucarelli's Almost Blue.  I started in Sicily, moved on to Florence, then to Assisi and now I'll be in Bologna.   And finally a female detective--rookie detective Grazia Negro.  It also sounds a bit darker than the other stories I've read so far.

Since I'm on a roll with crime novels, I'll mention that the Crime Writer's Association announced a few Dagger winners and a few more longlists.  They give out about ten awards each year.  The International Dagger winner is Three Seconds by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellström.  I had checked this one out from the library but it was one I wasn't quite in the mood for so it went back unread.  I still am reading a few titles from their longlist and expect I'll get to this one at some point as well.  I was also interested to see which books made their Gold Dagger (best crime novel of the year) and Steel Dagger (spy novel/adventure/or action story) lists.  By chance I had just ordered Villa Triste by Lucretia Grindle (Italian setting!) and have The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton (Edgar winner) on my reading pile--both made the Gold Dagger list.  I'm looking forward to reading them sooner rather than later.

And tonight I'll be watching the next episode of Zen on PBS.  I've yet to read any of the Aurelio Zen novels by Michael Dibdin, but I will definitely be doing so now after getting a sense of what Zen is like.  Of course it doesn't hurt that Rufus Sewell happens to be playing the character or that the setting is Rome!  It's only a pity that a mere three episodes were filmed and no more are planned. 

And now I'm off to shower (my walk to the library was in 91F, but feels like 107F with humidity, sunshine) and finish reading my short story.  And if anyone has an in with Mother Nature, tell her please to send cooler weather.  75F would be nice, but that might be asking too much.  I'm contemplating finding a book to read set in somewhere snowy and exceedingly cold.  Somehow that sounds sort of refreshing at the moment.

Lost in the Stacks: A Girl Like I

This week's lost in the stacks book is a haphazard choice.  I haven't had a chance to do much browsing so I had to just choose an author more or less.  I've long wanted to read Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as it somehow seems like a representative work of the 1920s Flapper lifestyle, and this is a period that is always of interest to me.  My library has a number of her works, but A Girl Like I caught my attention, so it came home with me.

Anita Loos was born in California in 1888.  Her father owned a newspaper, but it sounds like he wasn't the best provider so Anita helped the family financially by becoming a stage actress.  It was writing that she preferred to do and began with short pieces submitted to newspapers in California, but she soon turned her talents to writing screenplays and later Broadway musicals.  It blossomed into full time work, and she was a very prolific writer.   Her film and Broadway credits run from 1912 through the mid-1950s.  She was a contributor to Vanity Fair for a number of years and her sketches for Harpers Bazaar about the escapades of a Flapper named Lorelei Lee became Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.  It wasn't a huge critical success but it was immensely popular with the reading public, risqué for the time, though rather tame by today's standards.

She was also a memoirist, and A Girl Like I is only one of several that she published.  It sounds like a breezy, chatty sort of read--very gossipy of Hollywood life and the glitterati of that era.  It garnered a favorable review in the New York Times. 

"Her one great ambition never to be bored is evident.  This is no tired senior citizen (she was 70s when she wrote it) writing her memoirs but a gifted wit who has seen the best of many worlds.  The sex in the first flapper era of the Twenties was pretty tame, she says, held up to the sixties.  'How could any epoch boast of passion with its hit love song bearing the title When You Wore a Tulip, A Bright Yellow Tulip and I Wore a Red, Red Rose?'  Although there were no four-letter words in the Loos opus, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, it was a shocker when it came out in 1926."

Anyway, this could be a fun read in the same way Gentlemen Prefer Blondes would be--to get a look into a vanished time from someone who lived it.

Reading . . . Italy! ( A Thursday Thirteen)

I was going to post on one of the books I recently finished--my post just needs a little editing, but I'm not really in the mood for that tonight.  Instead I'm in the mood for books about Italy or by Italian authors.  How's that for moving from topic to topic?  I'm still happily reading my Paris in July books, but I'm also still on a roll with Italian crime fiction, too (and still contemplating books by German authors, but as Caroline has hinted about a readalong this fall...will keep those on a back burner).  I've finished two books from my Summering in Italy list and am now deep into a third. 

I've been reading Grace Brophy's The Last Enemy and am really enjoying it.  I had read a tepid review so I wasn't sure what to expect, or perhaps went into the story with slightly lowered expectations, but I am finding that I like it very much.  The detective is a Commissario who lives in Perugia but is investigating the death of an American woman in Assisi during Holy Week.  Alessandro Cenni is from the State Police usually working on investigations dealing with international cases and acts of terrorism, but as the victim was American it gets dropped into his lap.  Anyway, more about that later, but it, along with PBS's Zen, which is now airing (and a very easy on the eyes Rufus Sewell in an Armani suit...), Italy is definitely going to be my new reading destination. 

So I need to make a reading list (of course).  I'll start since I have a growing pile of books, but you have to help me with ideas.  Books set in Italy or books by Italian authors--novels, classics, mysteries, nonfiction, travel narratives.  I'm open to all suggestions!

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Giorgio Bassani - story of a rich, insular Jewish family in Northern Italy right before WWII

From the Land of the Moon, Milena Agus - set in Sardinia this is a family tale of "love, lust and country"

When We Were Strangers, Pamela Schoenewaldt - an Italian immigrant's tale set in Chicago

All Our Yesterdays, Natalia Ginzburg - story of two families during and after WWII

History: A Novel, Elsa Morante - another war story told from the point of view of an ordinary woman (I'm starting this rather hefty novel now!)

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino - experimental novel that to be honest I'm not entirely sure what is about but one I have long wanted to read

Metamorphoses, Ovid - epic poem, which I think is translated from Latin, but he was Roman so he counts, right

Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante, Lily Tuck - biography of the author of History

Carnevale, M.R. Lovric - from the sound of it a very lush historical novel set in 18th-century Venice

Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim - love this one, a novel of four Englishwomen who spend a transformative spring in the Italian countryside

A Room with a View, E.M. Forster - another favorite, a coming of age story of sorts about Lucy Honeychurch who comes into her own after a tour of Italy with her spinster aunt

On Persephone's Island, Mary Taylor Simeti - a sort of travel narrative/memoir about an American woman living with her husband/family in Sicily

Vita: A Novel, Melania G. Mazzucco - another Italian immigrant story set in New York City by an award winning Italian author

This is a brief baker's dozen of books to start with--the ones that came off the top of my head.  I think I'll keep adding to the list, and feel free to add your suggestions, too.

Book Lust, or Books I'm Looking Forward to

It's a bit unfair to keep complaining about the weather when I'm not the only one broiling.  Is it hot where you live, too?  So, you will probably understand when I decide to opt for a nice easy post today where I don't have to think too hard.  It's too warm to think hard right now.  But it's never too warm to think about books.  As I've been adding to my ever-growing wishlist, I thought I might share a few recent additions.  It's not too early to think about fall is it?  (Not that I'm wishing the summer away...).  This is a mishmash of titles I've noted down, but mostly heavy on mysteries.

All Yours, Claudia Pineiro - "Ines is convinced that every wife is bound to be betrayed one day, so she is not surprised to find a note in her husband Ernesto’s briefcase with a heart smeared in lipstick crossed by the words 'All Yours' and signed, 'Your true love'.  She follows him to a park on a rainy winter evening and witnesses a violent quarrel he has with another woman. The woman collapses; Ernesto sinks her body in a nearby lake. When Ernesto becomes a suspect in the case she provides him with an alibi. After all, hatred can bring people together as urgently as love. But Ernesto cannot bring his sexual adventures to an end, so Ines concocts a plan for revenge from which there is no return."  I loved her previous novel.

Tides of War, S.K. Tillyard - "An epic novel about love and war, set in Regency England and Spain during the Peninsular War (1812-15), by the acclaimed historian and bestselling author of Aristocrats."  Aristocrats, the film is wonderful by the way!

The Secret in Their Eyes, Eduardo Sacheri - "Benjamín Chaparro is a retired detective still obsessed by the brutal, decades-old rape and murder of a young married woman in her own bedroom. While attempting to write a book about the case, he revisits the details of the investigation. As he reaches into the past, Chaparro also recalls the beginning of his long, unrequited love for Irene Hornos, then just an intern, now a respected judge. Set in the Buenos Aires of the 1970s, Sacheri’s tale reveals the underpinnings of Argentina’s Dirty War and takes on the question of justice—what it really means and in whose hands it belongs."  I first came across this one via Caroline.

Me, You, Erri de Luca - "The unnamed narrator of this slim, alluring novel recalls a summer spent at age sixteen on an idyllic Italian island off the coast of Naples in the 1950s, where he spends his days with Nicola, a local fisherman. The narrator falls in love with Caia, who shares with him that she’s Jewish, saved by Italian soldiers from the Nazis, who killed the rest of her Yugoslav family. The boy demands answers about the war from the adults around him, but is rebuffed by everyone but Nicola, who tells him of Italy’s complicity with the Nazis. His passion for Caia and his ardent patriotism lead him to a flamboyant, cataclysmic act of destruction that brings his tale to an end."

The Sixes, Kate White - "From the New York Times bestselling author of Hush and the Bailey Weggins mystery series comes a thriller set in a college town where a student’s death sends one woman on a search for the truth and into the clutches of a frightening secret society."

Night Strangers, Chris Bohjalian - "In a dusty corner of a basement in a rambling Victorian house in northern New Hampshire, a door has long been sealed shut with 39 six-inch-long carriage bolts.      The home's new owners are Chip and Emily Linton and their twin ten-year-old daughters. Together they hope to rebuild their lives there after Chip, an airline pilot, has to ditch his 70-seat regional jet in Lake Champlain due to double engine failure. The body count? Thirty-nine."

Crimson Warning, Tasha Alexander - "Newly returned to her home in Mayfair, Lady Emily Hargreaves is looking forward to enjoying the delights of the season. The delights, that is, as defined by her own eccentricities—reading The Aeneid, waltzing with her dashing husband, and joining the Women’s Liberal Federation in the early stages of its campaign to win the vote for women. But an audacious vandal disturbs the peace in the capital city, splashing red paint on the neat edifices of the homes of London’s elite. This mark, impossible to hide, presages the revelation of scandalous secrets, driving the hapless victims into disgrace, despair and even death. Soon, all of London high society is living in fear of learning who will be the next target, and Lady Emily and her husband, Colin, favorite agent of the crown, must uncover the identity and reveal the motives of the twisted mind behind it all before another innocent life is lost."  I'm behind reading these mysteries--really enjoyed the first few but have heard mixed reactions to last couple of books.

Or the Bull Kills You, Jason Webster - "Either you kill the bull, or the bull kills you." Chief Inspector Max Cámara thinks in proverbs,and he hates one thing above all: bullfighting. One hot afternoon in Valencia, however, he has to stand in for his boss, judging a festival corrida starring Spain’s most famous young matador. That night, he is back in the bullring, and what he finds on the blood-stained sand shocks the city of Valencia to its core. Cámara is roped into investigating a grisly murder while dealing with violent shadows from his own past, as well as confronting the suspiciousness of the bullfighting community and the stonewalling of local politicians in full electoral campaign. To top it all, Fallas, the loudest fiesta in the country, has just got underway. For Cámara, it seems his problems have only just begun..."  More Spanish crime--yay.

Broken Music, Marjorie Eccles - "The year is 1919 and Great Britain is still struggling to its feet after being hit by the atrocities of the First World War. Former police sergeant Herbert Reardon returns home, determined to finally find out what happened the night that his daughter, Marianne, was found drowned in the lake. When a maid is found murdered in exactly the same spot, Reardon is convinced that the two cases are linked."  Really enjoyed one of her previous mysteries.

Faces of Angels, Lucretia Grindle - "On a sweltering day in Florence, art student and newlywed Mary Warren wandered into a shady tunnel of trees. Within minutes, she was brutally attacked and her husband murdered. And within months the killer was identified, caught, and dead. It’s now two years later, and Mary has returned to Florence at the invitation of her lover – a relationship that predates what she insists on calling the “accident.” Crumbling and beautiful, Florence is eternally compelling. But more and more, what Mary sees is not the glories of the city, but its dark underside – specifically, one dead young woman after another. She also can’t help seeing a terrifying pattern: Either this is a copycat killer, or her husband’s murderer is still on the loose."

The Dark Backward, Gregory Hall - "American editor Mary Reynolds was in love and now she’s in trouble. She’s also in Norfolk, where she and her very English husband Geoffrey had impulsively bought a house. The ink was hardly dry on the contract, however, when Geoffrey was found dead, and the questions began to mount. It seems that Mary knew her husband not nearly as well as she had imagined. And the secrets he kept, the odd bits that he’d left out? Those are the ones that could kill her."

The Lover, Laura Wilson - "It’s the fall of 1940, and London is being destroyed by the Blitz. Every night, its citizens cram into shelters, basements, subway stations – anything to avoid the bombs. And every morning, they awake to scenes of fresh devastation. But some of those citizens don’t wake up. In many cases, it’s the bombs that are to blame. But for a handful of the dead, there seems to have been a more immediate cause. The victims were all prostitutes, like the victims of another, notorious serial killer. Jack the Ripper may be long gone, but it’s clear that someone is following in his footsteps. Based on the true story of the 'Blackout Ripper'."

Gone West, Carola Dunn - This is the newest Daisy Dalrymple mystery which will be out in cold, snowy January!  I am still slowly reading my way through the series, but I always pick up new instalments when they come out in paper.  It's about time for a cozy mystery as a matter of fact.

The Lantern, Deborah Lawrenson - "A modern gothic novel of love, secrets, and murder—set against the lush backdrop of Provence."

You'll have to excuse me for just nabbing the book descriptions--it was the easiest (and quickest) way.  Just as an aside, I owe a number of people emails and have gotten behind in my blog reading (though maybe nothing new in that), which I hope to get to soon.  It's uncomfortably warm in my house and particularly where my computer lives, and I have not been spending much time there, so I've been offline more than I had planned.  I hope to get caught up soon.  Until then, stay cool everyone.