TBR Thursday 328…

Episode 328

A few books have arrived courtesy of various well-meaning publishers, plus I had a little spree to celebrate… er… Spree Day! As a result, despite some serious reading, the TBR has leapt back up by 3 to 176! I blame booksellers!

Here are a few more I’ll be browsing soon… 

Winner of the People’s Choice

Death in the Tunnel by Miles Burton

Well, People, a shock result this time! Calamity Town romped into a lead early on, but soon both White Nights and Death in the Tunnel started to fight back. The voting continued right through to yesterday afternoon with the lead changing several times. And the result? All three won! They all ended up with exactly the same number of votes, and even The Glass Key put in a good race though it never got into serious contention! So, the casting vote is mine. A difficult choice! I’ll probably be reading Calamity Town at some point this year anyway since it’s on my Murder, Mystery, Mayhem challenge. And since You’ve given me some fairly hefty ones this year so far, I’m going for the shorter of the other two.  It’ll be a July read, Great choice, People, even if You did leave me to do the hard bit… 😉 

The Blurb says: On a dark November evening, Sir Wilfred Saxonby is travelling alone in the 5 o’clock train from Cannon Street, in a locked compartment. The train slows and stops inside a tunnel; and by the time it emerges again minutes later, Sir Wilfred has been shot dead, his heart pierced by a single bullet.

Suicide seems to be the answer, even though no motive can be found. Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard thinks again when learns that a mysterious red light in the tunnel caused the train to slow down.

Finding himself stumped by the puzzle, Arnold consults his friend Desmond Merrion, a wealthy amateur expert in criminology. Merrion quickly comes up with an ‘essential brainwave’ and helps to establish how Sir Wilfred met his end, but although it seems that the dead man fell victim to a complex conspiracy, the investigators are puzzled about the conspirators’ motives as well as their identities. Can there be a connection with Sir Wilfred’s seemingly troubled family life, his highly successful business, or his high-handed and unforgiving personality? And what is the significance of the wallet found on the corpse, and the bank notes that it contained?

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Factual

The Ship Asunder by Tom Nancollas

Courtesy of Particular Books. I loved Nancollas’ first book, Seashaken Houses, the story of some of the rock lighthouses around Britain’s shores. This one sounds just as fascinating, and I’m hoping it inspires my imagination just as much… 

The Blurb says: If Britain’s maritime history were embodied in a single ship, she would have a prehistoric prow, a mast plucked from a Victorian steamship, the hull of a modest fishing vessel, the propeller of an ocean liner and an anchor made of stone. We might call her Asunder, and, fantastical though she is, we could in fact find her today, scattered in fragments across the country’s creeks and coastlines.

In his moving and original new history, Tom Nancollas goes in search of eleven relics that together tell the story of Britain at sea. From the swallowtail prow of a Bronze Age vessel to a stone ship moored at a Baroque quayside, each one illuminates a distinct phase of our adventures upon the waves; each brings us close to the people, places and vessels that made a maritime nation. Weaving together stories of great naval architects and unsung shipwrights, fishermen and merchants, shipwrecks and superstition, pilgrimage, trade and war, The Ship Asunder celebrates the richness of Britain’s seafaring tradition in all its glory and tragedy, triumph and disaster, and asks how we might best memorialize it as it vanishes from our shores.

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Fiction

Edgware Road by Yasmin Cordery Khan

Courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley. No particular reason for this one – I picked it simply on the grounds that the blurb sounds quite appealing…

The Blurb says: 1981. Khalid Quraishi is one of the lucky ones. He works nights in the glitzy West End, and comes home every morning to his beautiful wife and daughter. He’s a world away from Karachi and the family he left behind.

But Khalid likes to gamble, and he likes to win. Twenty pounds on the fruit machine, fifty on a sure-thing horse, a thousand on an investment that seems certain to pay out. Now he’s been offered a huge opportunity, a chance to get in early with a new bank, and it looks like he’ll finally have his big win.

2003. Alia Quraishi doesn’t really remember her dad. After her parents’ divorce she hardly saw him, and her mum refuses to talk about her charming ex-husband. So, when he died in what the police wrote off as a sad accident, Alia had no reason to believe there was more going on.

Now almost twenty years have passed and she’s tired of only understanding half of who she is. Her dad’s death alone and miles from his west London stomping ground doesn’t add up with the man she knew. If she’s going to find out the truth about her father – and learn about the other half of herself – Alia is going to have to visit his home, a place she’s never been, and connect with a family that feel more like strangers.

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Crime

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

Courtesy of HarperCollins. An unsolicited one. I had a fairly lukewarm reaction to Foley’s The Guest List, but with enough enthusiasm to be interested to try her again, and the Paris setting appeals…

The Blurb says: Welcome to No.12 rue des Amants

A beautiful old apartment block, far from the glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower and the bustling banks of the Seine.

Where nothing goes unseen, and everyone has a story to unlock.

The watchful concierge
The scorned lover
The prying journalist
The naïve student
The unwanted guest

There was a murder here last night.
A mystery lies behind the door of apartment three.

Who holds the key?

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Crime

The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney

One from the TBR backlog. This is currently the book that has lingered longest – I bought it in January 2013. I loved her earlier The Tenderness of Wolves, so don’t know why it’s taken me so long to finally get around to this one, though the fact that it’s 533 pages might have something to do with it…

The Blurb says: Rose Janko is missing. It has been seven years since she disappeared, and nobody said a word.

Now, following the death of his wife, her father Leon feels compelled to find her. Rumour had it she ran off when her baby boy was born with the family’s genetic disorder. Leon is not so sure. He wants to know the truth and he hires a private investigator to discover it – Ray Lovell.

Ray starts to delve deeper, but his investigation is hampered by the very people who ought to be helping him – the Jankos. He cannot understand their reluctance to help.

Why don’t they want to find Rose Janko?

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NB All blurbs and covers taken from Goodreads or Amazon UK.

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So…what do you think? Are you tempted?