What’s on the table….

The table beside your chair that is.  The one with the books on😊

Three newish releases picked in the frantic rush at the library the day before lockdown2…….plus one that’s been on a shelf here at home for quite a few years.

Two I’ve just finished:-
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier.
Rebecca was delightful, a real surprise. A love story with a mystery attached. Old fashioned writing when compared to modern day styles……maybe that’s why I enjoyed it. Wordy, so it had to be read slowly…..to be absorbed chapter by chapter.

Book blurb:- …….our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady’s maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives
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Transcription – Kate Atkinson
This was another surprise…..set during WW2, described as an espionage thriller I expected something a bit deep and maybe gruesome at times. It was light and easy to read yet if you are of a certain age filled with recognisable truths of how things were. It takes a young ‘naive’ girl, gives her a position as a typist eventually turning her a spy. Filled with humour (droll witty asides) almost farcical at times (I know the author didn’t intend it that way but I could see it set on the stage) follows the main character’s life through the ‘40s & ‘50s …..then to the twist that comes at the end. This I would definitely recommend.

Book blurb:- …….Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever.

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There’s the one I’m reading at the moment:-
Good Girl Bad Girl – Michael Robotham
I’ve only just started this – so far so good. Easy to read, lots of dialogue, it does jump from ‘case to case’ but not annoyingly so. Which is to be expected because they are running side by side not now and in the distant past. Chapters devoted to one of the characters giving her side of the story are written in italics.

Book blurb:- ……forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven must determine if Evie is ready to go free. But she is unlike anyone he’s ever met—fascinating and dangerous in equal measure…….Cyrus is called in to investigate the shocking murder of a high school figure-skating champion, Jodie Sheehan, who dies on a lonely footpath close to her home……Cyrus is caught between the two cases—one girl who needs saving and another who needs justice. 

And the one I’ll follow up with:- Which I should just be able to finish by the end of the month.
Nine Elms – Robert Bryndza

Book blurb:- Kate Marshall was a promising young police detective when she caught the notorious Nine Elms serial killer. But her greatest victory suddenly turned into a nightmare. Traumatized, betrayed, and publicly vilified for the shocking circumstances surrounding the cannibal murder case, Kate could only watch as her career ended in scandal.

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So there we have my sum total of reading for August……down from the usual amount read any other August spent in the winter sunshine. Two I can tick off my yearly challenge…….one word titles – two were ‘grab & go’ picks off the shelf…..but fairly new releases, as luck would have it first books in new serIes.

What have you been reading during August
I’d be interested to hear if you’ve read any of these and what your thoughts were.