Even though I follow a lot of reading blogs and enjoy marking posts with great book suggestions, I seldom remember to pick these up when I go to a library or a bookstore. For the last year or so, I have noticed that the Persephone Books come highly recommended. These are mostly wartime novels written by woman authors that for some reason or the other had gone out of print. I was a little hesitant…
Women writers
In The Lost Queen, Signe Pike dives deep in Welsh and Scottish myth to bring a fresh look at the legend of Arthur & Merlin. Pike takes us back to 550 A.D to Goddeu, a small kingdom in Scotland, where Languoreth, a ten-year-old princess and her twin brother, Lailoken, are mourning the death of their mother. Bereft and grieving, both the young kids are fearful of what the future holds for them. Plot Summary In…
The Corner Shop has a lovely cover and that is probably the nicest thing to say about it. Elizabeth Cadell wrote light romantic comedies in the Britain and her books were fairly popular, so I feel bad about dissing it. When I picked it up I was looking for something similar to the likes of E.F. Benson or Monica Dashwood – light, sharp and witty notes on the quiet country life. Which is why I…
The plot is based a decade or more after the French revolution and the Age of Terror, just after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. The story follows a young medical student, Daniel Connor into the bedlam of Paris. Paris then, is the beating heart of Europe – the scientific, cultural and political center. As the city is coming to terms with the new regime, students from all over Europe are travelling to Paris to make their…
It takes a truly talented mind to take the day to day life of a country house wife and convert it into a journal of light satire and human observation. It is a little wonder why The Diary of a Provincial Lady was a bestseller when it was published in 1933 and why the reprints are still so popular. To be honest, when I got through the first fifty pages or so, I wasn’t entirely…
For the unfamiliar, Anna Katherine Green is considered the ‘mother’ of mystery novel writing in the US. I stumbled upon A Strange Disappearance when an extensive collection of free ebooks was made available on Book Depository a few years ago. It’s also now free on Kindle. The plot of the mystery novel is relatively straightforward. A young maid has disappeared in odd circumstances from the house of a famous diplomat, Mr. Blake. The only who…
