TBR Thursday 361…

Episode 361

I’m stuck in the middle of four chunky books this week, so no movement in the TBR – still on 162! I have a horrible feeling more books will be arriving soon though…

It’s getting close to Santa time, so I’m sorting out some festive reading this week…

Vintage Crime

The White Priory Murders by Carter Dickson

Courtesy of the British Library.  This sounds perfect for Yuletide reading! Carter Dickson is a pseudonym of John Dickson Carr, who’s become one of the authors I look forward to in the BL’s Crime Classics series. I haven’t read him in this incarnation though, so I’m intrigued to see if he uses a different style. 

The Blurb says: James Bennett has been invited to stay at White Priory for Christmas among the retinue of the glamorous Hollywood actress Marcia Tait. Her producer, her lover, the playwright for her next hit and her agent are all here, soon to become so many suspects when Tait is found murdered on a cold December morning in the lakeside pavilion. Only the footprints of her discoverer disturb the snow which fell overnight – and which stopped just shortly after Marcia was last seen alive. How did the murderer get in and out of the pavilion without leaving a trace?

When Bennett’s uncle, the cantankerous amateur sleuth Sir Henry Merrivale arrives from London to make sense of this impossible crime, the reader is treated to a feast of the author’s trademark twists, beguiling false answers and one of the most ingenious solutions in the history of the mystery genre.

* * * * *

Short Stories

The End of the Tether and Other Stories by Joseph Conrad

Courtesy of Oxford World’s Classic. Not obviously festive, I admit, but I can’t imagine much better than curling up with hot chocolate, mince pies and a new collection of Conrad’s stories! The blurb suggests I might need the porpy’s support for these…

The Blurb says: ‘(Conrad) thought of civilised and morally tolerable human life as a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled lava which at any moment might break and let the unwary sink into fiery depths’
~ Bertrand Russell

This selection of four tales by Conrad is about radical insecurity: lone human beings involuntarily forced into confrontation with a terrifying universe in which they can never be wholly at home. It leads with ‘The End of the Tether’ and includes also ‘ The Duel’, ‘ The Return’, and ‘Amy Foster’ – Sailor, Soldier, Rich Man, Immigrant. These powerful shorter works remind readers that Conrad is not just the teller of sea stories and tales of imperialist action, and not only the author of the ubiquitous ‘Heart of Darkness’. This is the Conrad who is master of the terror element – global crisis, individual test, and personal trauma – in modern literature.

* * * * *

Crime

The Craftsman by Sharon Bolton

I usually read Bolton’s new releases more or less as soon as they come out, but for some reason this one slipped past me and has been lingering on my TBR for so long that the sequel is now out! I can’t pretend this one is Christmassy, but I’m looking forward to it as much as to Christmas cake!

The Blurb says: Old enemies… New crimes

Thirty years ago, WPC Florence Lovelady’s career was made when she arrested coffin-maker Larry Glassbrook for three shocking murders.

Larry confessed; it was an open and shut case. But now he’s dead, and events from the past are repeating themselves.

The town Florence left behind still has many secrets. Will she finally uncover the truth? Or will time run out for her first?

* * * * *

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

No Christmas would be complete without Dickens! This year’s re-read is one of his shorter books so I’ll have to read it slowly to savour it for longer. I chose it because I read Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South this year, and they share the “industrial” theme, so I thought it would be interesting to compare and contrast, as the old exam questions used to say. I’ve still to review North and South though. (Note to self: stop procrastinating!)  

The Blurb says: Thomas Gradgrind is the guiding luminary of the Coketown school, stern proponent of the Philosophy of Fact, whose ill-conceived idealism blinds him to the essential humanity of those around him, with calamitous results. His daughter Louisa becomes trapped in a loveless marriage and falls prey to an idle seducer, and her brother Tom is ruined thanks to their father’s pet theories. Meanwhile Sleary’s circus offers a vision of escape and entertainment, a joyful contrast to the dreariness of life in Coketown. The hardship of the workers and the victimization of Stephen Blackpool are set against the exuberance of the circus people in Dickens’s much-loved moral tale. Gradgrind is forced to reconsider his cherished system when he realizes that ‘Facts alone’ are not, after all, enough.

* * * * *

Gothic Horror on Audio

The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker read by Simon Vance 

How could I possibly celebrate Christmas without some spine-chilling Gothic horror? The porpy would never forgive me! Bram Stoker is sometimes too dark for me, often concentrating on real horrors like rats and humans, which I find far scarier than the supernatural! But this sounds delightfully creepy – who doesn’t love ancient Egyptian curses?

The Blurb says: “Hither the Gods come not at any summons. The Nameless One has insulted them and is forever alone. Go not nigh, lest their vengeance wither you away!”

The warning was inscribed on the entrance of the hidden tomb, forgotten for millennia in the sands of mystic Egypt. Then the archaeologists and grave robbers came in search of the fabled Jewel of Seven Stars, which they found clutched in the hand of the mummy. Few heeded the ancient warning, until all who came in contact with the Jewel began to die in a mysterious and violent way, with the marks of a strangler around their neck.

Now, in a bedroom filled with ancient relics, a distinguished Egyptologist lies senseless, stricken by a force that challenges human understanding. From beyond the grave Queen Tera is reaching out for the mysterious jewel that will bring her 5,000-year-old plan to fulfilment.

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

So…what do you think? Are you tempted?
What’s on your Christmas TBR?