Mr Darwin’s Gardener by Kristina Carlson

September 11, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Finnish by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah. Peirene Press, 2013. Originally published 2009. 112 pgs. Library copy. In the late 1870s, Thomas Davies works in the village of Downe in Kent, England as a gardener for the famous naturalist, Charles Darwin. Davies does not believe in any given religion and refuses to attend church with the rest of the villagers at the start of the novella. Having recently lost his wife Gwyneth, Davies is […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Finnish, Peirene Press, Translated, United Kingdom • Tags: Kristina Carlson

The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina

August 9, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Reagan Arthur, 2013. Originally published 2011. 432 pgs. Purchased.  Outside of Glasgow, a young woman is murdered in the home she inherited from her mother after a trip to New York. Inside the home, Detective Inspector Alex Morrow is shown thousands of Euro notes tapped to the underside of the dining room table. The murder doesn’t appear to be a batched burglary that the responding officers originally believed it to be. On the eastern coast of Scotland, a fifteen-year-old […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Crime, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Denise Mina

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

July 31, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Roc, 2016. Originally published 2015. 341 pgs. Library copy. Irene is a librarian; she retrieves books from alternate worlds that are unique versions or hold prominence in another culture. After successfully completing a mission, she returns to the Library — a mysterious, shadow organization that straddles worlds — planning to enjoy a cup of tea and a good book. Her plans at shot immediately, though, when her supervisor informs Irene that she must leave immediately to retrieve […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Book Club, Europe, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Genevieve Cogman

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

July 29, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Riverhead Books, 2010. 512 pgs. Purchased. Longlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize (now known as the Women’s Prize for Fiction), Waters novel is set in the summer of 29147 when Dr. Faraday is called to attend to a patient at Hundreds Hall, a grand English estate he recollects with fond memories. His mother once worked there as a maid and, as a young boy, he was once allowed to step inside the home during a picnic for children from […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom, Women's Prize • Tags: Sarah Waters

William — an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton

July 10, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Persephone Books, 2014. Originally published 1919. 226 pgs. Purchased. In 1914, twenty-six year old William Tully, a Social Reformist living in England, marries Griselda the suffragette, and the two sojourn to Belgium for a month long honeymoon. Hoping to take a break from their political activism and enjoy their time together, William and Griselda instruct their friends and family not to write to them or send them English-language newspapers. Neither of them ever considered Europe would end […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: Cicely Hamilton

The Silver Lady by James Facos

July 3, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Pocket Books, 1973. Originally published 1972. 254 pgs. Borrowed from my dad. In March 1944, ten American men are assembled together at a military base in England to serve as the crew piloting The Silver Lady during aerial bombing runs over France and Germany. The men are led by Lieutenant William Starrett, whose belief in comradely and cohesion is tested by the presence of two gunners, Sgt. Mitch Hagen and Sgt. Tom Wyatt.  Neither man is willing to […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: James Facos

Breach by Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes

June 24, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Peirene Press, 2016. 160 pgs. Purchased. The English Channel may separate the two countries, but the city of Calais has become a border town between France and Great Britain. Migrants and refugees hoping to settle in Britain have flocked to the French side of the Chunnel, building a community known as “The Jungle”. The eight short stories included in this collection by Popoola and Holmes are largely set in “The Jungle” and feature the voices of refugees […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, Peirene Press, Short Stories, United Kingdom • Tags: Annie Holmes, Olumide Popoola

The Cut by Anthony Cartwright

June 10, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Peirene Press, 2017. 129 pgs. Purchased. Meike Ziervogel, the publisher of Periene Press, writes in her short introduction that she “commissioned Anthony Cartwright to build a fictional bridge between the two Britains that opposed each other on referendum day”. To achieve that aim, Cartwright gives us two characters — Grace, a documentary film maker from London, and Cairo Jukes, a day laborer in Dudley — and alternates their story in the “before” and the “after”. “You people, is […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Peirene Press, United Kingdom • Tags: Anthony Cartwright

Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris

March 7, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Georgia Maguire. Macmillian Audio, 2016. 8 hours, 23 minutes. Library copy. To outsiders, Grace Angel has the perfect marriage. Her husband, Jack, is a lawyer representing victims of domestic violence, and he absolutely dotes on his wife. He takes her on spur of the moment holidays to Thailand, provides a comfortable home so that Grace does not have to work, and is committed to Grace’s promise to bring her sister Millie, who has Downs Syndrome, […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Asia, Audiobook, Book Club, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Thailand, United Kingdom • Tags: B.A. Paris, Georgia Maguire

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave

February 21, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Simon Schuster, 2016. 418 pgs. Purchased. When war is declared in September 1931, Mary North leaves her Swiss finishing school without informing her teachers or her parents and returns to England to sign up for any duty available at the War Office in London. After her first class is dispatched to the English countryside to remain safe from the threat of German bombing campaigns, Mary sets out to locate the principal of London’s closed school system to […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Chris Cleave

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

March 5, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition.  Riverhead, 2014. 568 pgs. Purchased. In the aftermath of World War I, twenty-six year old Frances Wray and her mother are obliged to take in paying guests — a more polite term for lodgers that allows Mrs. Wray and the neighbors to ignore the family’s rather spectacular tumble in social standing. Their room for rent notice is answered by a young, married couple from the “clerk class” named Lilian and Leonard Barber, and the Wrays and Barber have […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Book Club, Chunkster, Crime, Europe, Fiction, LGBTQA+, United Kingdom, Walter Scott Prize, Women's Prize • Tags: Sarah Waters

The Exile by Diana Gabaldon and Hoang Nguyen

February 24, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Del Ray, 2010. 224 pgs. Library copy. This graphic novel covers the first third of Gabaldon’s Outlander novel from the point of view of her male protagonist, Jamie Fraser. Jamie returns from France with a bounty hanging over his head, and he plans to hide out from both the British Redcoats and his uncles from the Clan Mackenzie, particularly his Uncle Dougal who worries Jamie will be named his brother and laird’s heir. Meeting Claire Beauchump usurps these plans, and Jamie […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Comics, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom