Merry Christmas and a few books

So, I've been a bit absent for several weeks, mainly due to it being the run-up to Christmas but a week long bout of sciatica stopped me in my tracks rather. I do my blog posts on an old fashioned desktop pc and sitting at it for any length of time proved painful. Thankfully, the sciatica is now in retreat and also family have now arrived to help out so all is now well.

I have managed to read a bit this month, just not review. So, a quick rundown of what I've read:

The Tesla Legacy by Rebecca Cantrell is  book 2 of her 'Joe Tesla' series and concerns a machine his grandfather invented which vibrates and can destroy buildings, bridges etc. Where are the plans? 

Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities by James Lovegrove is book 2 of his Cthulhu series. It's bonkers but fun and I loved the setting of the North Kent marshes. 

Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie sees Poirot investigating the death of wealthy Simeon Lee in a country house mystery. Which of his relatives did him in? Great fun.

Tha Harbour Lights Mystery by Emylia Hall is book 2 of her Shell House Detective series.  This is set around the Mousehole Christmas lights which I've seen many a time so it was a nice nostalgic read. Good mystery but maybe a bit too much relationship stuff. 

My current read is a Christmas romance set in Cornwall.

 

It's frothy and fun and the setting of a hotel on the north Cornwall coast is well done.

As I said, I have family staying now and consequently will not be back until the new year. 

I want to wish everyone who visits my blog, whether you comment or not, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New year. See you in 2026. 

November reading

November was a quietish reading month for me. Not sure why but that's the way it goes sometimes.  

I started the month by finishing Inheritance by Nora Roberts. My review of that is HERE. Thoroughly enjoyed that and then went on to read book 2 of the trilogy, The Mirror. That was basically more of the same, more hauntings, more stories of dead wives, more of Sonya's new business, her friends, and all of their new romances. Good fun, I enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading book 3 soon. 

I then went back to a series I haven't read anything from since 2018, apparently, and that's the Kate Shugak books by Dana Stabenow. 

Midnight Come Again is book 10 in the series. It sees Kate burying her grief from a terrible incident in the last book by working all hours for a flying freight company in Bering, Alaska. No one knows she's there but state trooper, Jim Chopin, comes across her when he's sent to work for the company, undercover. Kate naturally gets embroiled in Jim's case, involving Russian smuggling and more danger than either of them bargained for. So this was 'ok'. I felt it got bogged down in too much superfluous detail and Kate's selfishness annoyed me. She left all her friends worrying about her and didn't bother to let them know she was ok. But then I have always thought that one of Kate's faults is that she is rather self-absorbed. It might be why I've not read anything from this series for 7 years. Will I read on? I'm not sure. 

Next up, I read a delightful fanfiction novella for the Book Bingo challenge I'm doing. Only three categories to fill now, Thriller, Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. I've just started the thriller, will probably reread The Hound of the Baskervilles, and am not sure about Agatha yet... plenty to choose from.

All month I've been reading a non-fiction book by Guy Shrubsole, The Lost Rainforests of Britain.  

 

The Amazon is not the only place in the world that has rainforests. There are plenty of places in the world where there are 'temperate' rainforests as opposed to 'tropical' ones. I suppose the most famous would be The Pacific Northwest but at one time Britain had a huge stretch running the length of its west coast from Cornwall to Scotland. There are still remnants but they're rapidly disappearing for many reasons. Yes, climate change, but a bigger culprit is the grazing of sheep that eat the saplings in these small woodlands, so they can't regenerate. Can anything be done? Anyway, this was a bit dry in places, info dumps etc. but all in all I enjoyed this trip around the small rainforests of the UK and learnt quite a lot. Dartmoor, one of our Devon moors, featured quite a bit which is probably why I fancy rereading The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Lastly, I've just finished a collection of weird Winter/Christmas short stories, Sunless Solstice edited by Lucy Evans and Tanya Kirk.

 

This collection was so good I almost gave it 5 stars. Then towards the end two really very average stories cropped up that I was not enthused by, so it ended up a 4 star read. (It's a 4.5 really.) It starts with an Irish yarn, the author of which is anonymous, that one was good. I liked On the Northern Ice by Elia Wilkinson Peattie, a story about a man skating to a village on Lake Superior... very full of atmosphere. The Black Cat by W.J. Wintle is about someone who hates cats being haunted by one. Mr Huffam by Hugh Walpole is one of those tales where someone picks a stranger up, takes him home and said stranger changes the household - in a good way. The Third Shadow by H. Russell Wakefield was an excellent mountaineering story, bit of a murder mystery. Daphne du Maurier's The Apple Tree was quite depressing, about a marriage gone sour, but so beautifully written that I enjoyed it. The last story in the collection, A Fall of Snow by James Turner concerns a 15 year old lad who goes to spend Christmas with an uncle and his family in Norfolk. While out tobogganing with his cousin he sees the dead body of one of the maids. Only it's not, she's in the house and is fine... good twist at the end. I think if you're looking for some spooky or weird stories to read over the Christmas you could do a lot worse than this anthology. The writing is superb throughout and with only two stories I didn't like (your mileage may well vary on those), I was very happy with this collection. 

So that's my reading up to date. I hope yours is going well and that you're managing to escape all the marauding lurgies.