I have been unsure whether to try Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett, but a friend recommended it to me and I decided to give it a go. I am pleased I did! It is set in an alternate world which is very similar to our own,  but where the supernatural exists. In 1909 Emily, a Cambridge academic, goes to Ljosland to investigate the faeries in that part of the world. I liked her dry narration of events in her diary, and the good mixture of romance, humour, and adventure. It was also lovely to watch her slowly improving her relations with the local community.

Christopher Bush’s The Perfect Murder Case (1929) is the second in his Ludovic Travers series, and the first which was really popular. I was hooked from the start by someone writing to the papers to announce that they would commit a perfect murder at a certain time in London. Generally this is a very readable book, and I greatly enjoyed it. Bush went on to write many others in this series, and did not stop until the sixties. Apart from being good crime stories, these are thus interesting for showing how attitudes and society changed over the decades.

Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male is often mentioned when people recommend early influential thrillers, but I agree with Mike Ripley who argues that ‘Watcher in the Shadows is quite as good as Rogue Male and demands not to be forgotten’.  This 1960 thriller is narrated by Charles Dennim who worked as a double-agent for the British in the Second World War. He is now living a quiet life though haunted by what he had to do in the war. His life is disrupted when he finds himself being pursued by an unknown person who clearly, and wrongly, sees him as having been on the side of the Gestapo and having committed atrocities in the war. The tension builds up as a manhunt ensues across the Cotswolds. I found it riveting.

I thoroughly enjoyed Peter Burns’ Shadow Thieves (9+) in which thirteen-year-old Tom goes from the streets of an alternate London to a mysterious elite boarding school in Europe. There he is taught how to be an expert thief –  let’s ignore the morality of this! I loved the descriptions of his school experiences, and there is also a good amount of adventure. Generally this is very exciting with lots of good characters. A gripping read, and I can understand why it has been praised by a number of critics.

Do ask if you want any more recommendations.

Happy Reading!

Frances

Please note that I have taken the idea of ‘superlatives’ from the excellent book blog Elle Thinks (https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/).