A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night is the second novel in the Grantchester Mysteries written by James Runcie.  It's also a British TV series that airs on PBS, the second season of which aired earlier this year.  Although I haven't yet seen the second series, I can say that as far as the characters' lives and timeline that the two have diverged. The second novel's timeline is hard to follow because it picks up in 1955, the year after the close of the first novel.  However, Perils of the Night covers over five years (!) concluding literally on the eve of the construction of the Berlin Wall.  The first novel was reviewed here on the blog.  In this installation Sidney is caught up in many mysteries and adventures, two of which are connected to his alma mater University of Cambridge. In 1955 when a research fellow falls to his death in the middle of a forbidden midnight climb on King's College Chapel towers, Sidney is enlisted to ascertain that it w...

I mentioned this short story collection in my previous review of Fall of Poppies .   Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre  is edited by Tracy Chevalier and features stories written by many of today's popular authors, such as Audrey Niffenegger, Francine Prose, Emma Donoghue, and others.  All of the stories are inspired by the British classic Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, specifically by one of the most famous lines in English literature: "reader, I married him."  While most of the authors have read Jane Eyre , at least one or two had never read the novel before penning the short story for this collection, which I thought was interesting. I have also never read Jane Eyre ; however, I have seen the 2011 adaptation that starred Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender (you know, because British period drama).  I'm not as familiar with the story as I am with Jane Austen's novels (via the film adaptations; we all know I'm a Jane Austen fan), but ...

Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War is a short story collection to which multiple popular authors, such as Jessica Brockmole, Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and others, have contributed stories.  It is an engrossing read that I think anyone who enjoys historical fiction and/or love stories will enjoy.  The title itself is pretty much self explanatory regarding the common threads connecting all the stories: they are all love stories set against the backdrop of World War I.  Many of them are tied to the end of the war and/or Armistice Day. I enjoyed this short story collection more than the previous one I read (and will review next); however, I was reminded why I'm usually not a short story reader while I was reading Fall of Poppies .  Generally short story collections do not keep my interest because of the brevity of the stories and, for me, reading story after story gets tedious after a while.  At one point in the middle of this collection, I...

You Know When The Men Are Gone is the debut short story collection by Siobhan Fallon.  Fallon writes from experience as she is the wife of a military serviceman, and the family was once stationed at Fort Hood where these stories are set.  This collection was also among the five finalists for the One Book One Community 2015 title selection; local readers were voting on their choice for the selection throughout the month of August, and the winner will be announced in October, while the reading (of the selection) will take place in February.  I don't normally read the OBOC selection (sorry not sorry); in the past there have been a couple titles that I had already read (years) prior to their selection as the campaign book. This is a collection of loosely interconnected short stories populated by the soldiers and their spouses stationed at Fort Hood.  Each story focuses on the lives and perspectives of different characters, such as the deployed soldiers in country, t...

I must confess there was a period of time a couple years ago where I was watching a lot of British period dramas that included film and/or mini series adaptations of every one of Jane Austen's novels (for some novels, I've seen two different adaptations; it was an obsession at the time, what can I say) and adaptations of some of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels (hello, North & South ), and I still like a good British drama, period or otherwise.  I've never read any of the novels for which I've seen adaptations.  I know, I'm bad.  Don't judge.  In the introduction to this anthology the editor, Marsha Altman, calls the collection Pride & Prejudice fanfiction.  I must confess (again) that I literally couldn't put this book down.  I said, DON'T JUDGE, didn't I? At some point there was mention of a theme for the collection that was since abandoned, and I don't think there was a particular theme for the stories, although a few took the idea ...