Sorry, forgot to mention what I am reading at the moment.
I am re-reading the Michael Robotham thriller/mystery books which are just plain excellent and gripping stuff. Lost, Suspect and The Night Ferry. Can't remember the title of the fourth one, even though it's on hold at the library for me!
Recently finished the latest Deborah Crombie, Necesssary as Blood, set in the East End of London and I learned things I had not even known about the current racial realities and politics in my home city. I am always astonished that Crombie, a Texan, can write so eloquently and accurately about London that she makes me feel homesick even while I read about Kincaid and James solving difficult cases, for which they have to delve through cultural and social history of the past to be able to understand what is at stake in the present. If you start with the latest Crombie book, you will be somewhat at sea as far as the personal lives of her two detectives are concerned so I do recommend starting at their beginning and enjoying watching their lives change, grow and become very compelling, even if they are fictional characters! Kissed a Sad Goodbye is an early title in the series but I think the very first is Dreaming of the Bones, which is set in Cambridge, where I went to college and so it holds a particularly special appeal for me. It's a fabulous novel.
I am also reading The Liars' Club by Mary Karr, a memoir about growing up in a dysfunctional family, aren't they all?, in Texas. Her latest is Lit, and I am off to that one next. She's a very good writer, although at the moment, I am wondering, as I always do, what the motivation is for me to read about other, ordinary people's lives? The best memoir I ever read was "Making Toast" about a lit professor coming to grips with the sudden death of his beloved daughter and moving in with his wife to the daughter's home to help the son-in-law raise the three grand-kids and help them all to heal. Very moving stuff, often hilarious, well observed ruminations of family life and also so touching as the author and his wife realize that what has happened with the daughter's death is that the grandmother has taken over her role as mother to the three kids, and that wasn't ever supposed to happen.
Hope some of these titles work for you!
Clare
