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The Bear and the Nightingale

Katherine Arden

9.4 (17 Ratings) Rate It

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"Frost-demons have no interest in mortal girls wed to mortal men. In the stories, they only come for...

fairy tales russia myths

The Nose

Nikolay Gogol

(0 Ratings) Rate It

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'Strangely enough, I mistook it for a gentleman at first. Fortunately I had my spectacles with me so...

The Steel Flea

Nikolay Leskov

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'He gave orders that they were not to get any hot glum pudding in flames, for fear the spirits in...

David McK (3623 KP) rated Biggles: The Camels Are Coming in Books

Jan 3, 2021

Technically, I'm too old for these books.

Thankfully, Amazon doesn't know (or care).

I've just re-read this for the first time in something like 30 odd years, and it's amazing how well it actually holds together all those years later.

Like 'Biggles Learns To Fly' (which I also re-read recently), this is more a collection of short stories with little in the real way of any over-arching plot: vignettes which, if the author is to be believed (and I've no reason not to) are all based on true stories that either happened to him or that he heard about during his earliest flying days in the latter stages of World War One.

While the character of Biggles may not be as popular or as well-known today as during the years in which the stories were written (the 1930 through to the 1990s), there's a reason why they have endured as long as they have ...

Kudos

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2434 KP) rated Nowhere to Go and All Day to Get There in Books

Jun 21, 2021

Short Trips with the Loudermilks

This is a collection of two short stories featuring retirees and full time RVers Joe and Dottie Loudermilk. In “A Mother Always Knows,” a quick trip into a convenience store results in the couple being on the scene of an armed robbery. “Better Dead Than Wed” find them getting involved in an abusive relationship during a late-night rest stop.

Both of these stories are fast reads – I finished the collection in about half an hour. But both stories are fun and held my interest the entire way through. I was caught off guard by some of the twists along the way. I laughed along the way, sometimes at Joe and Dottie’s reactions to each other and sometimes at the situations they found themselves in. The characters also appeared in two full length novels. Whether you already know them or are just meeting them here for the first time, you’ll enjoy these two quick road trips.

Kudos

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2434 KP) rated Chesapeake Crimes: Invitation to Murder in Books

Oct 7, 2020

Accept this Invitation to Seventeen Murders

In the seventh short story anthology from the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime, each story revolves around an invitation. Some are the obvious invitations for events, but others are a more casual invitation. Either way, they lead to danger of some kind. There’s a mother whose young son is writing a hard-boiled mystery, an escape room that ends in death, a guest who overstays her welcome, bedbugs and murder in London, and a debutant ball in early 1900’s South Carolina. The stories are as varied as their locations, and many are fun. As with every short story collection, not every story will be for every taste. Personally, I found a couple of them too dark to be enjoyable. But the majority of the seventeen stories were a delight. If you are searching for bite sized stories, you’ll be glad you picked up this collection.

Kudos

Eleanor Luhar (47 KP) rated Murder Under the Christmas Tree: Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season in Books

Jun 24, 2019

This is the third and final book I was given for Christmas, another collection of classic crime stories. It's similar to Murder On Christmas Eve, so I'm not going to write too much in this review. Out of the two, though, this is my favourite collection.

The stories in this collection are, for the most part, very good. The last couple weren't as engaging, but there's always going to be one or two you don't like. This collection even includes a tale about Sherlock Holmes (and Watson, of course) bt Arthur Conan Doyle himself. It was actually the first I've read of his work, and it was definitely as fantastic as I'd hoped.

Like the other book, the ten stories very from missing jewels hidden inside geese, to missing candle sticks, to death-by-radio. They're all very interesting mysteries, again seemingly simple on the surface but always a lot more incricate than they seem.

A nice collection of classic "festive" crimes. 3.5 stars.