November 2023 - What are you reading?

Since it's November I hope it's ok that I start a new thread here. :)

Reading a classic, Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier and Haunted Hotels (which also tells about the crimes behind the demise of some of the ghostly entities) by Tom Ogden.

What are you reading?

Back in Shady Palms, Illinois (USA) with Lila Macapagal, and her friends and extended family, in Murder and mamon. Food still figures in the cultures and lives of the characters, but this time the murder takes place in a laundromat and not in a restaurant.

>1 Yuki-Onna: Thank you for starting the new thread! I've pinned it to the top of the group.

Doing a reread of Anne Perry's World War I Series; currently on Shoulder the Sky. It's the second one in the sequence, but was the one that hooked me when I stumbled across it several years ago.

I finished on of my October reads at the beginning of November - Cackle by Rachel Harrison, then read The Spell Book of Katrina Van Tassel a Story of Sleepy Hollow by Alyssa Palombo and have just started Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber. I am looking forward to reading some Thanksgiving cozy mysteries this month after finishing my October reads.

I think I can sneak my latest read into this category as there is a fictionized mystery within a real historical mystery. I really enjoyed The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont-clever and entertaining, if sometimes implausible.

I also read The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James and I don't know why I persisted in finishing it-I started it nearly 2 months ago. Anyway, it definitely wasn't to my liking, not sure exactly why.

>1 Yuki-Onna: I loved Jamaica Inn.

I’m reading my first holiday mystery of the season, The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallet. It is very fun.

I have just finished reading Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor and found this debut novel absolutely riveting. I think that anyone who enjoys the novels of Jane Harper would also enjoy this story set in a small Australian town.

The second DCI Grimm novel Best Served Cold by David Gatward. As with the first, this book has an appealing mix of detective work, humor (dark though it often is), and a main character with a fraught background. A very different Yorkshire than that in All Creatures Great and Small.

I just finished the enjoyable pulp thriller Intrigue in Paris by Sterling Noel. A couple of years after World War 2, American merchant marine Wright Hughey is sitting in an outdoor cafe in Marseilles, waiting out a tugboat strike, when he is mistaken for a local criminal by some other criminals. intrigue ensues! Although the plot of this romp becomes steadily less plausible as it goes along, nevertheless it is a good time for readers who go in for this sort of thing. Noel was a pretty writer, the action scenes themselves are believable and never get out of hand, and overall the action is understated rather than lurid. I looked up Noel, and it turns out he wrote several of these thrillers and a couple of science fiction works as well.

Book notes: My Avon mass market paperback edition was published in 1955, meaning that it was printed the year I was born. I entered it into my LT library way back in April 2008, my Librarything "big bang." The book was originally published with the title "Storm over Paris." There is even a 1956 English movie based on the book, called "House of Secrets:" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Secrets_(1956_film) (Warning: if you look at this web page, don't read the plot synopsis, as it contains spoilers for the book. That's if you think you will ever read the book, of course.)

I've picked up another in the Cat Who series by Lilian Jackson Braun, The Cat Who Moved a Mountain... I'm just beginning but it's fun finding Qwill, Koko and Yum Yum again.

I've decided to stop playing around the series I like and instead to actually read them and stay on top of them -- so catching up with Joe Pickett's adventures at the moment with the 20th Long Range, then continuing with the remaining 3 (and then waiting for the next one).

My usual practice had been to keep series I like in reserve - and slowly work through the longer ones to catch up - some of them by reading from both ends, some of them just going in order. This summer I finished the middle books of Commissario Brunetti, now it is Pickett's turn.

Finished A Private Cathedral - Burke (4.5/10) and The Panther (reread) - DeMille (3.5/10).

I'm finishing When Will There be Good News by Kate Atkinson, more a thriller than a mystery although there are plenty dead people. It would be positively glum if it weren't for Atkinson's wry wit. I'm enjoying how all the bits of plot are coming together.

>14 Cecilturtle: I enjoyed all the Jackson Brodie books but I think that one is one of my favorites.

Just started The Ghostlights which is available as part of the Audible Plus catalog. At least I think so, it might be part of Prime Reading. Either way it's a freebie and features three narrators with lovely Irish accents.

>15 rosalita: I'm glad I lucked out!

Reading I remember you by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (Icelandic thriller) atm.

>18 Yuki-Onna: Oh I really wanted to like that one, but everyone in it was so monumentally dumb that I gave up and it was a DNF. Oh well.

I'm reading a book in Robert Goddard's back catalog that I missed - Set in Stone. If you like what he does, this one won't disappoint. Present day man gets involved in a dramatic event/crime that has ties to the past, not always his, and in this one the past revolves around a house where a murder was committed. It's an audio read by Michael Kitchen who reads quite a few of Goddard's books. So far it's good.

Die Trying Lee Child Getting geared up for the new season of "Reacher" on Prime.

Oh! Is that the next Reacher adaptation? Husband and I liked the first one on Amazon so we've been waiting for the second.

>21 Bookmarque: Looks like Season 2 (December 15) is going to be based on Bad Luck and Trouble. Better still, Season 3 has also been confirmed.