Episode 40
I’m thrilled to say the TBR has dropped to an almost bearable 106 – due in part to some brutal weeding out of books that have been languishing there for so long I can no longer remember why I wanted to read them in the first place. So with a song in my heart and a merry tra-la, here’s a bumper bunch of some of the upcoming delights…
Crime
Courtesy of NetGalley, a nice little cosy to start the ball rolling…
The Blurb says “The village of Frog End may be peaceful, but that doesn’t mean that the Colonel’s life there is quiet – not with his friendly but nosy neighbour Naomi, desperate to know what he’s keeping in his new shed; the curious Miss Butler, who tracks his every move with her German U-boat captain’s binoculars; and the attentions of the local vicar, who’s keen to involve him in church affairs. That’s not forgetting the demands of the aloof, imperious cat Thursday, who seems to have adopted the Colonel.”
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Coming out on 23rd October, at last, at last! The new Shardlake!
The Blurb says “Autumn, 1546. King Henry VIII is slowly, painfully dying. His Protestant and Catholic councillors prepare for a final and decisive power struggle; whoever wins will control the government. The Catholics decide to focus their attack on Henry’s sixth wife, the Protestant Queen Catherine Parr. As Catherine begins to lose the King’s favor, she turns to the shrewd, hunchbacked lawyer, Matthew Shardlake, to contain a potentially fatal secret. The Queen has written a confessional book, Lamentation of a Sinner, a memoir so radical that if it came to the King’s attention, it could bring her and her courtly sympathizers to ruination. The London printer into whose hands she entrusted the manuscript has been murdered, the book nowhere to be found.
Shardlake’s investigations take him down a trail that begins among printshops in the filthy backstreets of London, but leads him once more to the labyrinthine world of court politics, where Protestant friends can be as dangerous as Catholic enemies, and those who will support either side to further their ambition are the most dangerous of all.“
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Factual
NetGalley, what would I do without you? Napoleon was one of my early heroes based, I think, on a Ladybird book when I was about 8. Time to discover if he was worthy of my worship…
The Blurb says “Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century.
An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.”
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Fiction
Have I mentioned that I love NetGalley? Andrew Motion’s second follow-up to Treasure Island – despite some reservations over the first, his writing impressed me so much this is a must-read…and isn’t the cover the most gorgeoous thing you’ve seen in years?
The Blurb says “Jim and Natty are shipwrecked on the coast of Texas, blown off course on their way home from Treasure Island. But they have stolen something they should have left well alone, something that will haunt them until what was taken has been returned…
On their journey they encounter Native American tribes, a wandering group of European Circus performers, deracinated warriors, eccentric pioneers, some landscapes of great serenity and others of terrible savagery, until, at last, they reach the mighty Mississippi.
The New World is an adventure story, a race across America, a Western, a travelogue, a love story and a lament for an indigenous culture in the years before its destruction. Andrew Motion has achieved that singular thing – a story that is both very moving and very exciting, and always written with a remarkable clear beauty.”
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Probably my least favourite of Austen’s books, though I know it has its own legion of ardent admirers. I admire rather than love it. But time for a preparatory re-read…
The Blurb says “Beautiful, clever, rich – and single – Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protegee Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen’s most flawless work.“
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…because, on 6th November, the Austen Project rolls back into town with Alexander McCall Smith’s version! Will it be a another Trollope-esque turkey? Or will it match McDermid for amazeballsness…?
The Blurb (which makes me shudder a bit) says “Fresh from university, Emma Woodhouse arrives home in Norfolk ready to embark on adult life with a splash. Not only has her sister, Isabella, been whisked away on a motorbike to London, but her astute governess, Miss Taylor is at a loose end watching as Mr. Woodhouse worries about his girls. Someone is needed to rule the roost and young Emma is more than happy to oblige.
At the helm of her own dinner parties, and often found either rearranging the furniture at the family home of Hartfield, or instructing her new protégée, Harriet Smith, Emma is in charge. You don’t have to be in London to go to parties, find amusement or make trouble. Not if you’re Emma, the very big fish in the rather small pond.
But for someone who knows everything, Emma doesn’t know her own heart. And there is only one person who can play with Emma’s indestructible confidence, her friend and inscrutable neighbour George Knightly – this time has Emma finally met her match?“
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NB All blurbs taken from NetGalley or Goodreads.
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So…what do you think? Do any of these tempt you?
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