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reminded of another ski resort mystery death in kashmir by m m kaye although i thought that book was darker than this one i liked henry tibbett and it was also good to see so much of emmy often the detective s wife is kept very much in the background maybe popping up now and then to make a cup of tea or answer the phone but in this book emmy is present from beginning to end it would have been nice to see her play a bigger role in helping to actually solve the mystery but maybe she will in one of the later books in the series the other characters are also interesting with such a mix of different nationalities you do need to be prepared for some slightly dated attitudes but no worse than in most other books of this period i was particularly drawn to maria pia the baroness and her cold controlling husband hermann who turns out to have hidden depths as for the mystery itself it s a good one with plenty of suspects although my heart sank when spezzi the italian policeman working with henry draws up a detailed timetable of events which is reproduced in the book i find mysteries that focus on timings and alibis to be tedious and difficult to follow so i was pleased that this book didn t dwell too much on that after all it was just part of spezzi s approach to crime solving and although his timetable did prove very useful the interviews he and henry conduct with the witnesses and suspects were just as important the first two books in this series are available now in attractive new editions from farrago books and with the next two advertised for publication later this year i hope that means they ll be reissuing the whole series i suspect it s probably not essential to read them in order but i m planning to try the second one the sunken sailor soon thanks to farrago books for providing a copy of this book for review via netgalley the shapeshifter s daughter by sally magnusson may 4 2026 18 comments i ve read a lot of greek mythology retellings but only one or two norse ones so i was curious about sally magnusson s most recent novel the shapeshifter s daughter described as a reimagining of the story of hel of the underworld i ve read all of magnusson s previous books and mostly enjoyed them i hoped this would be another good one hel is one of the three children of the norse god loki the shapeshifter of the title and angrboda a frost giant she grows up in utgard a world on the peripheries of asgard home of the gods and mitgard land of the humans where she lives happily with her brother and sister a wolf and a serpent until odin sends his gods to hunt them down and bring them to him hel finds herself sent by odin to rule over the icy realm of niflheim where she welcomes the souls of the dead into the underworld until one day she is drawn back to the surface by the memory of one of the dead she has guided meanwhile in the modern day we meet helen firth a woman in her fifties who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer helen has led a lonely troubled life since the death of her father when she was a teenager believing that nobody cares about her she decides to return to orkney her childhood home so she can die on her own terms however she hadn t expected to be reacquainted with an old friend thorfinn coffin who reminds her that maybe she s not completely alone in the world after all not only do our two main characters have similar names their stories also mirror each other in several other ways and eventually begin to intersect i couldn t help thinking though that helen s story on its own would have been enough to form a compelling novel her life has clearly been a sad and isolated one so i found her relationship with thorfinn very moving as well as bittersweet coming when she knows she only has a short time left to live magnusson writes quite sensitively on the topics of loneliness bereavement and healing and i was completely drawn into helen s sections of the novel the norse myth parts of the book were much harder for me to connect with hel loki and the others didn t seem real and i felt that i just watching their story unfold from a distance i had similar feelings about a s byatt s ragnarok based on the same myths and i remember in her author s note byatt said that characters in myths don t have personalities the way characters in novels do they only have attributes maybe that s what magnusson was trying to show here as well but if so it didn t really work for me and i would have been happy just to read a whole book about helen and thorfinn i ll be interested to see what sally magnusson writes next as her books so far have covered such a range of different subjects although always with a scottish or nordic connection and if you can recommend any good norse myth retellings i d love to hear about them six degrees of separation from wild dark shore to this sweet sickness may 2 2026 29 comments it s the first saturday of the month which means it s time for another six degrees of separation hosted by kate of books are my favourite and best the idea is that kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain a book doesn t have to be connected to all of the others on the list only to the one next to it in the chain this month we re starting with wild dark shore by charlotte mcconaghy which was longlisted for this year s women s prize for fiction i haven t read it but here s what it s about dominic salt and his three children are caretakers of shearwater a tiny weather lashed island that is home to the world s largest seed bank as shearwater risks being lost to rising sea levels the island s researchers have fled and only the salts remain until during the worst storm in living memory a stranger washes ashore the family nurse the woman rowan back to strength but it seems she isn t telling the whole truth about why she s there and when rowan stumbles upon sabotaged radios and a recently dug grave she realises that she s not the only one on the island with a secret a novel of breathtaking twists and dizzying beauty wild dark shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love my first thought was to link to a book set on an island but i m sure i ve done that a few times before so i went with a simple link to a book with dark in the title instead the dark 1 is the fifth book in sharon bolton s lacey flint series and begins with lacey who works for the metropolitan police marine unit becoming caught up in a terrorist attack planned by a new group calling themselves menmatter another book that s the fifth in a series is the prime minister by anthony trollope 2 it s part of the palliser series and in this book we see our old friend plantagenet palliser become prime minister at last while in another subplot we follow lawyer s daughter emily wharton who has fallen in love with the book s villain ferdinand lopez i really need to pick up the final book in the series soon the next link is quite an obvious one another novel about a prime minister this time a real one precipice by robert harris 3 tells the story of herbert henry asquith who was in power from 1908 to 1916 the book focuses on his relationship with the socialite venetia stanley and the way he handled the early stages of the first world war it s a fascinating novel from a political history point of view although i didn t find it as gripping as some of his other books penitence by kristin koval 4 also has a one word nine letter title beginning with p and ending with e set in a colorado ski resort it takes as its starting point the murder of a teenage boy by his own sister and goes on to explore the laws surrounding juvenile crimes as well as raising questions about blame and forgiveness another crime novel set in a ski resort is dead men don t ski by patricia moyes 5 i ve just finished reading this one so haven t written a review yet it was published in 1959 and is the first of many novels moyes wrote featuring inspector henry tibbett in this one tibbett goes on a skiing trip to italy with his wife and is drawn into solving the murder of a man who appears to have been shot dead on the ski lift i enjoyed this book and will be reading more of them an author who shares a name with patricia moyes is patricia highsmith i ve only read two of her books and have used strangers on a train in a previous chain so my link here is to this sweet sickness 6 this unsettling novel follows the double life of a man who refuses to accept that his relationship with the woman he loves is over and that s my chain for may my links have included the word dark fifth books in a series prime ministers one word titles beginning with p ski resorts and authors called patricia next month we ll be starting with a book by austrian author stefan zweig the post office girl my commonplace book april 2026 april 30 2026 15 comments a selection of quotes and pictures to represent april s reading commonplace book noun a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use but it was only in epic tragedies that gloom was unrelieved in real life tragedy and comedy were so intermingled that when one was most wretched ridiculous things happened to make one laugh in spite of oneself a civil contract by georgette heyer 1961 for that matter why would anyone bother to read a mystery novel if they had any doubts about the man who was leading them to a solution it s a simple rule detectives have to be infallible if not readers will never trust them again a deadly episode by anthony horowitz 2026 clytemnestra by john collier 1882 danger yes always the goddess says danger and doom and death but also victory it might be hard to tell the four apart from where you stand an ant caught on a thread cannot discern the loom s grander design yet it can change the pattern with its presence vile lady villains by danai christopoulou 2026 one s prime is elusive you little girls when you grow up must be on the alert to recognise your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur you must then live it to the full the prime of miss jean brodie by muriel spark 1961 the idea of the inexplicable meant nothing to them they did not need it so much that was inexplicable for example the phases of the moon lay around them that they simply accepted it as part of their lives tales from watership down by richard adams 1996 pamela pixie colman smith from the october 1912 issue of the craftsman magazine a surge of joy flows through me i realise how much i ve wanted someone else to know love feels real with a witness pixie by jill dawson 2026 only the tone of his voice had remained distinct and clear within her and a voice is to the blind what artificial light is to other people it is sufficient to detach in a certain manner the shadows and the reliefs of an individual s soul the blind woman of sorrento by francesco mastriani 1852 i asked you to solve my problem for me said maria pia slowly that was a foolish thing to do nobody can solve problems for other people dead men don t ski by patricia moyes 1959 human happiness is rarely in the best of circumstances without shadows and an almost pure happiness can be a terror to itself the black prince by iris murdoch 1973 favourite books read in april a deadly episode the blind woman of sorrento and pixie authors read for the first time in april muriel spark danai christopoulou francesco mastriani patricia moyes places visited in my april reading england scotland us jamaica italy reading notes i started the month with two books for 1961 club i enjoyed the heyer and although i didn t love my first experience with muriel spark i do intend to try more of her books the rest of my april reading consisted of some netgalley review copies a lost italian classic a sequel to a childhood favourite and the iris murdoch novel i had started to read in march in may can you believe it s may already i ll be joining in with the read christie challenge which i ve neglected for the last few months but otherwise i don t have many plans how was your april what will you be reading in may the black prince by iris murdoch april 28 2026 15 comments i ve read very little of iris murdoch s work her booker prize winner the sea the sea many years ago which i can barely remember but know i struggled with and a lesser known novel a word child which i really enjoyed when picking another book by murdoch for my new classics club list then i had plenty to choose from and decided on the black prince almost at random i started to read it in march for reading ireland month although the book is set in england murdoch is an irish author but i had too many other books needing to be read at that time so i put it aside and came back to it last week published in 1973 the black prince is presented as a manuscript written by bradley pearson who has recently retired from his job as inspector of taxes to concentrate on his writing bradley s book an account of some life changing events which occurred when he was fifty eight years old is framed by a foreword from his editor p loxias and a series of postscripts written by the other characters in the story although it s easy to become absorbed in bradley s narrative and forget that it s a book within a book the different perspectives we see at the end are a reminder that bradley isn t necessarily the most reliable of narrators and may not have been entirely honest with us of course there s no guarantee that the other characters are telling the truth either so be prepared for a novel that s ambiguous thought provoking and doesn t tie everything up neatly at the end bradley s story begins as he decides to leave london for the summer and rent a cottage by the sea where he can work on his book in peace before he manages to depart however he is repeatedly delayed by a sequence of frustrating and unwelcome incidents first there s an urgent telephone call from his friend and rival arnold baffin a much more successful and popular author than bradley himself arnold is convinced he has killed his wife rachel so bradley rushes to their house only to find that it s a false alarm and rachel is not dead after all bradley s involvement in the baffins domestic disputes though leads to rachel believing she s in love with him then bradley s sister priscilla arrives at his flat tearful and distraught her marriage has broken up and she s depressed and homeless and a third woman has also reappeared in bradley s life his ex wife christian who has just returned from america along with her annoying brother francis the first half of the novel deals with bradley s relationships with these people as he tries to disentangle himself from the various situations he s become caught up in and i have to admit at this point i was finding the book a bit tedious and didn t think i was going to enjoy it that changed halfway through when bradley falls in love with the baffins twenty year old daughter julian who has been pleading with him ...