So Far in October: Books

 As always, October is racing by and I wish it would slow down a little bit. Finn went home the other day, so my lap is my own again and I don't have to plan my reading around what kind of book I can comfortably hold up without disturbing Himself. 😉😏 Here's what I read during the first half of the month. I enjoyed some short stories, an excellent cozy mystery that'll be published in less than two weeks, and a couple works of nonfiction.

I started the month with short stories. I love, love, love short fiction (and quite long fiction--LOL). I am eagerly awaiting another collection of spooky stories written by women, so hopefully that'll be here soon and I'll be able to tell you about that at the end of the month. I really loved the two collections I did read.

The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales by Kate Mosse (personal copy)

I picked this up in a charity shop a few months ago. I'm a huge short story fan and I was interested in reading something by this author. I found the first in her Languedoc trilogy a few years ago in a charity shop and the second early this year. I'm on the lookout for the third. When I found the first one, Labyrinth, it looked like something I wouldn't normally pick up, but if I remember correctly, it involves a book or books and for 20 cents, I figured why not give it a try. I still haven't done that as it's a chunky book and other reading always seemed to beckon, so I don't even know if I'll like the books. When I saw this book of short stories, I snapped it up because it seemed like a good way to try out the author's work. And now, having read it, I can say that I'm eager to get to Labyrinth and whatever else of hers I can get my hands on. I loved this book. The stories all have some kind of otherworldly aspect to them. Most, if not all, are set in either Sussex or the Languedoc region of France. Some are historical fiction. Some are more contemporary. The title story leads off the book and a story set at a different time in the same place ends the story section of the book. After that, there is a play that the author wrote. There was not a story in here that I didn't like. An added bonus was the author's note that accompanied each story, which explained things like what the story was based on (folklore, for example), what inspired Mosse when she was writing it, and what was going on in her life at the time. These notes are an excellent addition to the book and I enjoyed reading them. So I'm very pleased indeed that I came across this book and picked it up. I was going to start it in September, but when I noticed the subtitle, I decided to save it for spooky season in October. It was worth the wait.

A Moment on the Edge: 100 Years of Crime Stories Written by Women edited by Elizabeth George (personal copy)

Several months ago, Bill was starting the latest Elizabeth George novel that he'd borrowed from the library. On the page where they list the author's previous work, this book was listed. He thought I'd like it so he found it and bought it. He was right. I love this book! It's an excellent collection of stories, all but two of them new to me. There are many different kinds of crime stories and many different subgenres included in the book, from classics like A Jury of Her Peers to more modern stories by women still writing today. A few were by authors not usually associated with crime fiction and others by authors known for their work writing mysteries. Some of the more hard-boiled detectives are here, while others are of a different sort. I also found the short introduction to be excellent. The book is well worth a read. It's a keeper.

Sticking with fiction and mysteries, the next book is going to be published at the end of the month.

An Inkling of Death by Anna Beer

to be published on October 28, 2026 by The Book Guild

ISBN 9781835746486

Dr Eve Brook is extremely smart, proud of her PhD, her daughter, and her professional accomplishments, a fan of classic crime novels, and endlessly curious about things. Nothing excites her more than digging deep into a particular topic and following the clues to get answers to her questions. She's very good at this. What she's not great at is interpersonal interactions. She can come across as aloof, but that's residue from her painful childhood with an addicted mother. Eve has a carefully constructed protective shell around herself. So it's with some surprise that she finds herself at a New Year's Eve party in a swanky home, with a guy she had a weekend hook-up with a few months before. She's uncomfortable when she arrives and the feeling only deepens as the visit goes on. After a disturbing night, she decided to leave early and prepares to head home, but she's stopped by news of a car accident that killed one of the people in the house and seriously injured another. Or was it an accident? Eve is involved in the investigation, whether she wants to be or not, but what she really wants to spend her time on is researching the life story of a Jewish women whose name she came across when doing research for a client who unexpectedly inherited a house where he thinks some lucrative information about a former owner's relationship with CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien may be found.

I love Eve. I can relate to her--in various ways, she reminds me of myself. I love the way she dives into something that might be seen as peripheral to others and keeps digging. I love the way she makes connections between seemingly trivial historical moments and bigger events. She wants to know why things happen. So I was immersed in this book from the start. I was interested in the mystery, but also in what Eve was finding out about Esther and her experiences in the UK in the 1940s. Anna Beer is extremely skilled at seamlessly weaving the history into the story. She's an excellent writer overall and she includes a section at the end telling readers places and events in the story are real (and providing links to find out more) and which are fictitious. . The mystery aspect was well-constructed, as were the settings. When Eve has a rough day and just wants to go sit in her bed in her cozy little house to read a mystery novel, I'm right there with her. Where I do feel some distance and resistance to Eve as a character is in her 'romantic' relationships. For someone with a grown daughter, she can sometimes come across as immature and clueless. However, in thinking about this, I realized that I have known people exactly like this, especially lonely people who find it hard to trust others and who just want someone to love them. It made me uncomfortable, but I do think it's realistic.

This is an excellent and highly enjoyable read that I loved spending time with. I've read both books in the series, although one doesn't have to have read the first one to enjoy this one. I hope Eve will reappear one day--I'd love to read more!

I thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for a digital review copy.

Now for the nonfiction:

In My Grandfather's Shadow: A Story of War, Trauma, and the Legacy of Silence by Angela Findlay (borrowed from the library)

I don't remember exactly how I learned of this book. I think I came across it while looking up something else at the library site. In any case, I was extremely interested when I read what it was about. Angela Findlay was born one week before her maternal grandfather died. She's the daughter of a British father and a German mother and the granddaughter of the Wehrmacht general in charge of the Eastern Front during WWII. She has always felt as if this grandfather passed her a baton as she was entering this world and he was leaving it. But there was silence around his role in the war--how much did he support the regime, how much did he know, and what kind of soldier was he? After years of struggle, feelings of 'badness,' eating disorders, and other issues, she started to investigate. It was sometimes slow going, but she did start to learn more as time passed. Findlay grew up in Britain, but spent much time in Germany as well, both growing up and as an adult. She became an artist and did a lot of work with people in prisons, partly as a way to feel like she was doing something good, even though she felt like a bad person. She pursued many strands of inquiry to learn all she could about who her grandfather was and what he'd done. She desperately wanted to believe that he was a good German being a good soldier and not someone who committed atrocities. She also became very interested in the idea of transgenerational transmission of trauma and found out more about that. Being the granddaughter of a Nazi myself, I was eager to read this book, particularly the transmission of trauma from one generation to the next. I first read about this around a dozen years ago when I read a very brief story somewhere about research being done in Ireland around trauma from the famine and whether or not there is some genetic residue from traumatic experiences like that which get passed down through the generations. I've understood for decades that I was affected by my father's childhood experiences of war, simply by his own inability to process his own trauma, but it wasn't until about 20 years ago that I started wondering about some kind of transmission of trauma that I couldn't see. We'd moved to a location with an air force base nearby and at times, the fighter jets would suddenly scream overhead. I would get very agitated--my heart would pound, I could feel myself shaking, etc. Usually I could hide my distress, but one day I just burst into tears. I had no idea where this was coming from. I did think of my father being shot through the leg by a British (I think) plane when he was a kid. So I was interested to read about similar experiences the author had (her mother remembers hiding from a plane on her way to school and she did not get shot). Although I found this to be a fascinating read which contained much food for thought, I would have liked to read more about transgenerational transmission of trauma. What was included was quite informative though, and maybe at this stage of research there isn't much more to say about it--it's apparently a very controversial topic. Beyond all that, I am really glad I discovered this book. One of the things I found particularly interesting was how shame played a part in not just the lives of the Nazis themselves after the war, but in the lives of their children. This was sometimes exacerbated by moving to a place like the UK or US because animosity towards the former enemy lingered. Children were taunted and bullied at school, for example. The shame often influenced behavior well into adulthood and in some cases, for the rest of their lives. So for me, this book gave me new things to consider when evaluating my own family of origin, but aside from that, it's just a fascinating memoir, oral history, historical exploration, and psychological examination of a particular episode, the effects of which continue to ripple through the generations and the years.

Burning Snowflake: Nature, Writing, Rebellion by Sarah Hall (BorrowBox e-book)

I saw this title when I was scrolling through the new e-books added to the BorrowBox library. This short book is the text of a talk that the author gave on the topic of climate change and fiction writing. She opens with a description of her childhood home and the nature she was immersed in there. She then moves on to how those experiences show up in her fiction writing, peppering this with mentions of other climate fiction and how other authors handle the construction of a future world in their work--completely dystopian, hopeful, something else. She argues that fiction can serve to wake people up and encourage them to act and points out that her latest book is the first one in which an element of the natural world is the narrator. She's talking about Helm, which she says is the only wind that's been given a name and 'who' is the narrator of her novel. I've not read Helm, although I've seen reviews of it and I am interested in reading it, so I'll be placing my request for it at the library soon. This is a short book, but a very interesting read--Faber and Faber publish some really great work. I'm glad I came across it!

So there you have it--my book report for the first half of October. It's been an excellent reading month so far and I hope the same is true for you!

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