october-purchases.jpgA bit late this month in sharing book purchases from October, and what a lot of them there were! This is partly due to the annual holiday – last minute buying of books before we go, more buying while we are away, and then time to spare at the end of the month to pick up anything that we might have missed. It looks like a fairly varied selection, but all the usual themes are there – it’s depressing to be so transparent!

Crime first of all – Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay is the second in the series about a man who is a forensic specialist by day and a serial killer by night. I’m looking forward to reading this one as I really enjoyed the TV series based on the first book, which made Dexter a likeable figure despite his homicidal tendencies, and there was a lot of dark humour mixed in with an interesting murder mystery. Then we have Goodnight Sweet Prince by David Dickinson – I’m pretty sure that I have another of his crime works somewhere in the house but can’t put my hands on it at the moment. This is about a murder involving Queen Victoria’s grandson Prince Eddy, and will either be excellent or awful, but I’m very much willing to give it a try. And a new Scottish-based series (well, new to me anyway) which looked like it might be good fun, After the Armistice Ball by Catriona McPherson.

History & biography next – Consuming Passions by Judith Flanders has been recommended on a number of other blogs, and I had already enjoyed her book on the Victorian House , and I also have (but haven’t yet read) her book about the MacDonald sisters,  so this was a no-brainer for me, and after buying it I sat in a teashop with the Book God reading sections of it out to him; he was very forbearing as always, and I think this will be one to savour. I also picked up out of curiosity a biography of Peggy Guggenheim by Mary Dearborn; I don’t really know anything about her at all but a first dip suggested it would be interesting; and yet another addition to the sixteenth century pile, The Last Days of Henry VIII by Robert Hutchinson, which speaks for itself I suppose.

New things by old favourites – The Female of the Species by Joyce Carol Oates and Margaret Atwood’s Curious Pursuits.

Oddments – Susan Hill’s Man in the Picture (one for dark night reading over Christmas, I think); Pat Barker’s Life Class (I really, really loved the Regeneration trilogy); Joe Hill’s 20th Century Ghosts – even though I haven’t yet read his novel everything I have heard makes me think I will love this author; and Walking with the Green Man, and odd little book I picked up at the Tullie House Museum in Carlisle – it’s a subject I am very interested in, so will see what new insights if any I get out of this volume.