Reading & Listening in March

📚 The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye (1978) 📚- this book is set in India during the last decades of the 19th Century while the British ruled. It's an epic 960-page saga of a young man caught between two cultures. Born to British parents, he was left orphaned and brought up by a low caste … Continue reading Reading & Listening in March

The Face of a Stranger by Anne Perry (1990) – The William Monk Series #1

I’ve finished reading the first three books in Anne Perry’s William Monk series which are set in Victorian London. The first book is The Face of a Stranger. William Monk is a police detective and the story begins with him waking up in a hospital. He’d been unconscious after a severe accident where he was … Continue reading The Face of a Stranger by Anne Perry (1990) – The William Monk Series #1

A Daughter of the Land by Gene Stratton Porter

A Daughter of the Land was published in 1918. It’s a little different - you might say darker - than some of her other novels and doesn’t seem to be as well-loved as some of her other books. It is less sentimental than Freckles or Girl of the Limberlost, and its protagonist, Kate Bates, isn’t … Continue reading A Daughter of the Land by Gene Stratton Porter

Reading & Listening in January

The Pensive Reader by Mary Cassatt, c. 1894 Reading The Salzburg Connection by Helen MacInness (1968) I read this years ago and enjoyed it & it's just as good second time around. Bill Matheson, a lawyer working for a publishing company in the USA, is sent to Austria about a supposed contract for a photography … Continue reading Reading & Listening in January

Simon the Coldheart by Georgette Heyer (1925)

Georgette Heyer was in her early twenties when Simon the Coldheart was published. She was a severe critic of her own work and this title was one of about five or six that she said she didn’t want to be republished. After Heyer’s death in 1974, her son decided that his mother had judged her … Continue reading Simon the Coldheart by Georgette Heyer (1925)

The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman (1962)

The Guns of August was an immediate and overwhelming success when it was published in 1962 and won the Pulitzer Prize for General Fiction in 1963. It opens with the funeral of Edward VII of England in 1910 and gives some background and an entertaining character sketch of the German Emperor (Kaiser) William II, who … Continue reading The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman (1962)

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)

I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.   The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton   Brideshead Revisited was written during 1943 and 1944 while … Continue reading Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)