feather_ghyll

Princess Candida: Katharine Oldmeadow, Collins

I wonder if the publishers or someone suggested that Oldmeadow ought to write her own version of ‘A Little Princess’, for there’s a flavour of that to ‘Princess Candida’, although it’s more in the girls own vein, and written with Oldmeadow’s style. ( Read more... )

Pixie O’Shaughnessy: Mrs George de Horne Vaizey. The Religious Tract Society, Thirteenth Edition

It’s nearly 20 years since I bought and, presumably, first read this book. I decided to reacquaint myself with the character having purchased ‘More about Pixie’ in 2016 and got my opportunity over the Christmas holidays - the book features a striking New Year's Eve party. Before I reread it, ( Read more... )

Assignment in Brittany is an early book by Helen MacInnes, set in occupied France during world war two, with one of her very competent heroes, although the challenges he has to face keep mounting. It’s a different setting to her usual Cold War stories, but certainly suspenseful.

Rules by Jane Beaton is the second in the Dorney House series, (I reviewed the first book Class here). It ends with a cliffhanger for the main character, which left me wondering where all the other books in the series the writer claims to have planned in the afterword are. This was published in 2009.

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A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley is the latest Flavie de Luce book that I read. Looking back, I see that I haven’t posted anything about the previous books that I read. Flavia’s a rummy girl, isn’t she!? I kept putting this book down, which isn’t like me and I don’t remember finding the other books in the series such a slog. Apart from stumbling across crime scenes and ruining dresses with her intrepid investigating, Flavia has to deal with a lot of family drama - her relationship with her older sisters is particularly twisted - and her dead mother Harriet seems to be much more of a presence, and naturally (or supernaturally), a mysterious one, than in the previous books.

I see that I read much more traditional girls own books over last Easter. Hmm.

I am so behind, I finished reading this last weekend and meant to post this then!

The New Girl at St Chad’s: Angela Brazil Blackie.

Three ‘bookmarks’ were found in this book – a pressed flower, which will stay, a picture of E.R.T. Holmes, a cricket player, cut out from a newspaper, and a sentimental verse, cut out of a girls’ magazine based on what is on the back.

( ”Then, with a look of utterly crushing scorn, she burst out:'You needn't think that what you have done is at all clever. It's not the place of a new girl to show off in this way, and you'll gain nothing by it. I am responsible for St. Chad's, and I don't mean to have this kind of nonsense going on there; so please understand Honor Fitzgerald, that if you give any more trouble, you may expect to find yourself thoroughly well sat upon.' p.56 )