Finished DEATH BEFORE WICKET

I think this was the 10th in the Phryne Fisher Mystery series.  Not knowing or understanding a thing about Cricket, there were parts of this that left me pretty lost.  But the mysteries--two sort of but eventually the first became at least three--were involving.  The book as a whole, like the other mysteries in this series that I have read was busy in a leisurely way, delightful, and compact.  One is left surprised that so much is contained in such a short book.

I have now started Dead to Me by Anton Strout, the first of a series of Urban Fantasies about a psychically gifted young man named Simon Canderous.  I had been dreading this book because I bought it on a whim after reading a short story by the author in an anthology called Shadowed Souls.  I had been intrigued at the time, but by now I'd forgotten the story entirely.  Well, I am two chapters in and I am hooked.  Some abilities, it turns out, can be as much curse as gift.

Finished ANGEL TIME

A story of redemption (or at least the beginning of redemption) which bears Anne Rice's mark of lush environments and interesting characters.  There was shades of Violin in the descriptions of music (as well as Cry to Heaven) while the journey into the past with its detailed descriptions reminded me of Servant of the Bones.  This new series should give Anne Rice a great showcase for the latter.  The reader feels like she really is walking down a street in the past with all senses in play.  And the stories (two of them really) are wonderful as well.

And now I have started another Phryne Fisher Mystery.  This promises to be as busy and charming as the rest as Phryne and Dot have traveled to Sidney, met some fun new characters, and have to figure out who robbed the safe at the college as well as to find Dot's sister who seems to have been missing for a week.

Finished A PLACE CALLED FREEDOM

Two people are trapped by their social class in Scotland in the era leading up to the American Revolution:  Mack is a serf trapped to work in a coal mine for his lifetime enslaved to the land and mineowner; Lizzie, born into the owner class, but to a man who mismanaged his estate and then died.  Her mother has no idea how to manage it and is about to lose it.  Lizzie is expected to marry the son of a nearby landowner who she detests.  The story follows the action to London and then to Virginia.

The thing I found really frustrating about The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End exists here also, albeit in shorter form:  a villain so evil as to make me start wondering how to go back in time and assascinate him.  This is a page-turner.

I have now started Angel Time by Anne Rice.  Told in the first person, our narrator confides in us his love of missions and peace, somewhat ironic for a hit man.

Finished ISAAC'S STORM

This may be my favorite of the books Larson has written.  By gathering everything written by or about the main principles in this disaster and putting them together in close to chronological order, he has again written an extremely compelling story.  And it is case in point of the disaster that can be, if not caused by, certainly exacerbated by a combination of arrogance and ignorance.

I have now begun A Place Called Freedom, by Ken Follett.  Mack McAshe, a Scottish serf working in the coal mine belonging to the lord of the land her lives on, longs for freedom.  Which is about as far as I have gotten...😊😂.