sweasel.com

Read them! Read them all! These books turn into comfortable old friends, and they don’t take very long to read. As you noted, they are set in the fifties but they reflect an entirely different world. (One little kid gets in trouble because he won’t eat the healthy fat on his meat.) I love these books.

Didn’t they continue wartime rationing for some food items into the 1950’s as well? The difference between the UK winning WWII and losing it was nowhere near like it was in the US. Old Blighty didn’t get the massive economic and industrial boom we did. Most of their veterans didn’t come home to college on the GI bill and VA home loans, or even jobs.

Oh, yes, Steve. Things were rough here for quite a long time after the war.

Miss Read? I’m stunned it hasn’t been deliberately misread as a condemnation of her teaching abilities.

Hm, wonder if my mom would like them. She love this kind of thing

The author looks so definitively British to me. I am absolutely certain that she had to move her cup of tea out of view for that picture. I am sure that her books are full of quietly polite people muddling through in the best sense of the word. In short she makes me pine for the Albion of old books.

I read one of hers when I was in my snooty thirties, and despised it, but possibly I’d see it differently from the perspective of my more tolerant sixties. Hm.

My dad used to say his mark of a good book was reading the last page, closing the book, and wondering what the characters did the next day. (Okay, we don’t wonder what Sidney Carton did the next day, but the _other_ characters….)

Oh! I love authors like this, so I will look for “Miss Read.” Dora Saint sounds like a soul sister to Elswyth Thane, who are no doubt cousins to Neville Shute Norway and Paul Gallico.

Re: 99p for Kindle. I rarely pay more than $1.99 for Kindle books. I go for weeks without buying one (though I review the daily offerings), and then I’ll buy one every day for a month. Last month, I bought all of Sue Grafton’s alphabet series—“A” through “K” for $1.99 each. I’ve paid the full Kindle price for writers Robert Crais and James Church—but they are the rare exceptions in my book budget.

But a promo like yours is worth a bundle in advertising. Maybe Dora Saint’s publishers will put her books on the economy list if they see a flurry of sales.

Apparently my mom has read one and didn’t care for it, apparently the characters annoyed her or something. Oh well.

Crais is almost always worth twice the price of admission. Except for that Pike story with the Paris Hilton clone. That sucked.

In fact, I was in Jacksonville, FL the day his last Elvis book came out, and I rented a car from the hotel and drove to the nearest Barnes & Noble (about 10 miles) to pick it up. That’s how much I can get taken for when it comes to Crais.

I think in the dim past I read some of her books. I’ll have to go back and try them again. Loved the real old cozies, not the newer to cute to stand ones. And if you like Crais, try Andrew Vachss – dark, but oh so good. The address below is a great site for keeping up with mystery authors and their works.

http://stopyourekillingme.com/V_Authors/Vachss_Andrew-H.html

I’m sorry, but I don’t know this Author. I would like to read her, but I accepted a loan from a friend–it’s a bodice-ripper written by a Norwegian–it borders on WWII Nazi-Porn. The first chapter, so far, is extended dialogue aboard a war criminal train headed for the ever-so-clean German Frontlines Hospital. “What kind of genteel, fishnet stockinged, perfumed madamoiselle do you fancy, then, when you are sweaty and returning from Algeria to Paris?” “I don’t know, Amigo, my thigh has been cut off.” Enter: Spitzfire strafing. Good Stuff.

This woman? I SEE her, and I instantly stand up, smooth my shirt and jeans, and go to the kitchen to make myself a nice cup of tea and treat myself to three parakeet beak-sharpening biscuits. I have a quick wee, spray some Airwick Citrus, and then rush back to read another chapter. PeeYew.

Tibby—thank you for the splendid link!

My pleasure Deborah!

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