I tend to avoid, at least at first, books on best selling lists, not sure why, but I've always done this. However, The Briar Club, by Kate Quinn, was recommended by Canadian Reader, and the entire book club! So, I gave it a try ... and read it in less than two days! It's 1950, in Washington D.C., in a rather run down (and therefore cheap) boarding house. Folks pretty much keep to themselves until one boarder, Grace, changes all that. She has a weekly dinner party (if it can be called that when it's all done on a hot plate and folks sit on the floor), where the residents get to know each other. There are lots of secrets, of course, and histories good and bad. It's the McCarthy era and one resident is on the look out for Commies; one has a (maybe) gangster boyfriend; a young mother, trying to be 'perfect' while waiting for her husband (a doctor in Korea) to come home; a elderly woman who escaped from eastern Europe ... and Grace, she has a secret, too. Things are going well, too well, perhaps, until they aren't. I'm not doing this justice here, but I don't want to give anything away! Do what the author asks and don't read the historic notes at the end first (I often start there).

This book is a Lord Peter Wimsey story, written, not by Dorothy L. Sayers, but by Jill Paton Walsh, who knew, worked with, and had Sayers permission! The Attenbury Emeralds takes the reader back to his first case ... finding a large (and rather gaudy) heirloom. The setting is the 1950's, some thirty years after this case and Lord Peter is explaining it to his wife. The emeralds have made the news once again as there is a dispute as to who actually owns them. There are plot twists, of course, and copies of the jewels (some good, some paste) that needed tracking down when they first went missing, discussions of where they were from originally, and so on. I rather enjoyed the read, but reviews have suggested that if you are a die hard Sayers fan, you might not like it as much. :-)

Reading Hermit With Dog