This week’s Top Ten Tuesday encouraged people to share the latest additions to the ever-growing to-be-read list. It’s amusing to look at my list and see how varied it is: a Western, a copyediting book, French history, gothic fiction and more. 


Proust’s Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-De-Siecle Paris by Caroline Weber

from the publisher: Against a rich historical backdrop, Weber takes the reader into these women’s daily lives of masked balls, hunts, dinners, court visits, nights at the opera or theater. But we see as well the loneliness, rigid social rules, and loveless, arranged marriages that constricted these women’s lives. Proust, as a twenty-year-old law student in 1892, would worship them from afar, and later meet them and create his celebrated composite character for The Remembrance of Things Past.

Hardcover, 736 pages
Published May 22nd 2018 by Knopf Publishing Group
ISBN 0307961788


The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Sansom

from the publisher: Israel Armstrong is a passionate soul, lured to Ireland by the promise of an exciting new career. Alas, the job that awaits him is not quite what he has in mind. Still, Israel is not one to dwell on disappointment, as he prepares to drive a mobile library around a small, damp Irish town. After all, the scenery is lovely, the people are charming–but where are the books? The rolling library’s 15,000 volumes have mysteriously gone missing, and it’s up to Israel to discover who would steal them…and why.

Paperback, 326 pages
Published January 2nd 2006 by Harper Collins Publishers
ISBN 0060822503


Doc by Mary Doria Russell

from the publisher: Born to the life of a Southern gentleman, Dr. John Henry Holliday arrives on the Texas frontier hoping that the dry air and sunshine of the West will restore him to health. Soon, with few job prospects, Doc Holliday is gambling professionally with his partner, Mária Katarina Harony, a high-strung, classically educated Hungarian whore. In search of high-stakes poker, the couple hits the saloons of Dodge City. And that is where the unlikely friendship of Doc Holliday and a fearless lawman named Wyatt Earp begins–before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral links their names forever in American frontier mythology when neither man wanted fame or deserved notoriety.

Hardcover, 394 pages
Published May 3rd 2011 by Random House
ISBN 1400068045


An Unexplained Death: The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere By Mikita Brottman

from the publisher: Mikita Brottman spent ten years sifting through the details of the missing man’s life and disappearance, and his purported suicide by jumping from the roof of her own apartment building, the Belvedere. As Brottman delves into the murky circumstances surrounding Rey Rivera’s death–which begins to look more and more like a murder–she contemplates the nature of and motives behind suicide, and uncovers a haunting pattern of guests at the Belvedere, when it was still a historic hotel, taking their own lives on the premises.

Hardcover, 269 pages
Published November 6th 2018 by Henry Holt & Company
ISBN 1250169143 


The Art of Instruction: Vintage Educational Charts from the 19th and 20th Centuries by Katrien Van der Schueren

from the publisher: Large-scale wall charts were fundamental tools of classroom instruction throughout Europe in the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the anatomy of a tulip or an apple tree to that of a hedgehog or starfish, the botanical and zoological images in this collection are captivating with their curious visuals and intricate details.

Hardcover, 168 pages
Published October 12th 2011 by Chronicle Books
ISBN 1452101116


Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style from the Copy Chief of Random House by Benjamin Dreyer

from the publisher: As authoritative as it is amusing, this book distills everything Dreyer has learned from the hundreds of books he has copyedited into a useful guide not just for writers but for everyone who wants to put their best foot forward in writing prose. Dreyer offers lessons on the ins and outs of punctuation and grammar, including how to navigate the words he calls “the confusables,” like tricky homophones; the myriad ways to use (and misuse) a comma; and how to recognize–though not necessarily do away with–the passive voice.

Hardcover, 400 pages
Expected publication: January 29th 2019 by Random House
ISBN 0812995708 


The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths

from the publisher: Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. As a literature teacher specialising in the Gothic writer RM Holland, she teaches a short course on it every year. Then Clare’s life and work collide tragically when one of her colleagues is found dead, a line from an RM Holland story by her body. The investigating police detective is convinced the writer’s works somehow hold the key to the case.

Hardcover, 352 pages
Published March 5th 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 1328577856


The Invited by Jennifer McMahon

from the publisher: In a quest for a simpler life, Helen and Nate abandon the comforts of suburbia and teaching jobs to take up residence on forty-four acres of rural land and build the house of their dreams. When they discover that this charming property has a dark and violent past, Helen, a former history teacher, becomes consumed by the legend of Hattie Breckenridge, a woman who lived and died there a century ago. As Helen starts carefully sourcing decorative building materials for her home she starts to unearth the tragic lives of Hattie’s descendants, each of whom died amidst suspicion.

Hardcover, 384 pages
Expected publication: April 30th 2019 by Doubleday
ISBN 0385541384


Riddance: Or the Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers & Hearing-Mouth Children by Shelley Jackson

from the publisher: Eleven-year-old Jane Grandison, tormented by her stutter, sits in the back seat of a car, letter in hand inviting her to live and study at the Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers & Hearing-Mouth Children. Founded in 1890 by Headmistress Sybil Joines, the school—at first glance—is a sanctuary for children seeking to cure their speech impediments. Inspired by her haunted and tragic childhood, the Headmistress has other ideas.

Hardcover, 497 pages
Published October 16th 2018 by Black Balloon
ISBN 1936787997


A Monster’s Notes by Laurie Sheck

from the publisher: What if Mary Shelley had not invented Frankenstein’s monster but had met him when she was a girl of eight, sitting by her mother’s grave, and he came to her unbidden? What if their secret bond left her forever changed, obsessed with the strange being whom she had discovered at a time of need? What if he were still alive in the twenty-first century? This bold, genre-defying book brings us the “monster” in his own words. He recalls how he was “made” and how Victor Frankenstein abandoned him.

Hardcover, 530 pages
Published June 23rd 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN 0307271056


Have you read any of these books?


 

4 thoughts on “Latest additions to my reading list”

  1. I haven’t read any of these so I can’t recommend prioritizing anything. 🙂 I haven’t seen anything but positive reviews for Riddance though, I think I need to put it on my TBR as well!

  2. I want to see The Art of Instruction. Does it include writing sheets, like my two of Mungo Park? There were hundreds of different one produced. Yrs truly, Kate

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