Minnie’s Room by Mollie Panter-Downes

March 22, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 2002. 125 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes”, this collection of ten short stories presents the realities and dreams of the British people following the end of the World War II. Each story was originally published for the American publication The New Yorker between the years 1947 and 1965, a follow-up of sorts to her short stories from 1938 to 1944. Those wartime stories were published by Persephone Books in 1999 as Good Evening, […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, Short Stories, United Kingdom • Tags: Mollie Panter-Downes

Lord John and the Hand of Devils by Diana Gabaldon

March 8, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Jeff Woodman. Recorded Books, 2007. 9 hours, 41 minutes. Library copy. Lord John Grey was first introduced in Dragonfly in Amber, the second book in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, as a young English soldier who attempts to save Claire from the wanted rebel Jamie Fraser. Jamie spares Grey’s life after he tricks the young boy into sharing information about the location of the English forces in the area. Grey and Jamie would cross paths again […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Crime, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Diana Gabaldon, Jeff Woodman

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

February 1, 2019 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Simon Vance. Blackstone Audio, 2005. Originally published 1855. 7 hours, 12 minutes. Library copy. In the fictional English county of Barsetshire, Septimus Harding serves as the warden of Hiram’s Hospital and Precentor of Barchester Cathedral. The hospital is supported by a charitable bequest from the Diocese of Barchester, and Harding draws a hefty salary for performing his duties as the warden. This hefty salary, though, attracts the attention of John Bold, a man who is […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, AP Literature, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Anthony Trollope, Simon Vance

Maria Fitzherbert by James Munson

November 20, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Da Capo Press, 2001. 320 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. One of the books I remember reading as a teenager with great fondness is The Secret Wife of King George IV by Diane Haeger, a fictionalized account of the love affair and marriage between a Catholic Marie Fitzherbert and the protestant heir to the British throne. After rereading that novel in 2009, I decided I wanted to read a nonfictional account of this scandalous event in British history. It took […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Nonfiction, United Kingdom • Tags: James Munson

Voyager by Diana Gabaldon

November 11, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Davina Porter. Recorded Books, 2007. Originally published 1993. 43 hours, 46 minutes. Purchased. The third installment in Gabaldon’s Outlander series picks up with the aftermath of the events of Culloden, where Jamie planned to stand in battle with the Mackenzie and Fraser lcans, and Claire stepping back through the stones to her life in post-World War II. In the twenty years since that moment, Claire has reunited with her first husband, Frank Randall, and traveled to […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Caribbean, Chunkster, Europe, Fantasy, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Davina Porter, Diana Gabaldon

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