Near the top of the wait list for Cornwall's A Crowning Mercy and Backman's Beartown.

Backman wrote A Man Called Ove which I really liked so I got on the list for Beartown. Yikes! I'm #22. That one must really be good.

It was a wonderful movie

👍

I loved both, although I thought the plot twists were fairly obvious in both.

1940, Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine. Won Best Picture. The title character is recently deceased when the movie begins but she hovers as a sort-of spectral presence over the household and characters populating the film. Very gothic. Some time in the last year or two I read through an online list of Best Picture winners, ranking them from best to worst. That list awarded its Number One ranking to Rebecca. Of course, that ranking is subjective, merely somebody's opinion, but I will agree with that film at least being a candidate for that honor. And yet, nobody in this thread or on Ali Velshi's show the other day even mentioned that wonderful movie.

— Ron

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032976/?ref_=ttawd_ov_bk

"Twin mysteries, years apart, connect two mothers and their daughters in a gripping novel of psychological suspense..." To be published.....Tomorrow. Evidently hundreds of people have been able to read it already though. Sounds pretty good.

That's how I got it. Probably how others did too.

Nora is an archeologist who gets involved in mysteries along with FBI Special Agent Corrie Swanson.

Almost Crichton-esque, very complicated plot lines that go in unexpected directions.

Lots of fun.

Those are fun.

Pendergast series is great!

of books. Then wandered down the street to eat at outside cafe beneath a beautiful moon and view of Notre Dame. Epic night.

Reading Take Your Breath Away by Linwood Barclay. "One weekend, while Andrew Mason was on a fishing trip, his wife, Brie, vanished without a trace. Most everyone assumed Andy had got away with murder—it’s always the husband, isn’t it?—but the police could never build a strong case against him. For a while, Andy hit rock bottom—he drank too much to numb the pain, was abandoned by all his friends save one, nearly lost his business, and became a pariah in the place he once called home." Surprise, a women resembling the wife is seen 6 years later! Page turning good read, keeps me guessing.

I visited Paris back in the 80s but didn't get to the Left Bank, sadly. Did spend the better part of one day at Notre Dame, though.

This is a novel about the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair, told from the viewpoint of Colonel Georges Picquart, who discovered not only that Dreyfus was innocent, but that another French officer was guilty of the crimes for which Dreyfus was sent to Devil’s Island.

Most books have a disclaimer that any similarity between the characters in the book and real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This novel has a reverse disclaimer; that all of the characters in the book were real people, and actually did what they are depicted doing in the book.

A 2013 historical fiction thriller.

Park ranger investigator stumbles on end of life as we know it threat.

Everglades to Alaska and back. Warming permafrost. Glacier collapse. Collapse of Gulf Stream. Plus nasty billionaire in cahoots with Russian war criminal.

Found it in a sealed box of books in a room in my house that nobody lives in any more so I use that room as a storage room. It's about hypnotic regressions to past lives. The title character is a past-life regression. I'm about two-thirds of the way through it and it's okay, but I can't say yet that I recommend it.

— Ron

William Bradford Huie. It is slow going for me, although it is an interesting book and I asked for recommendations on the TVA.

"A detailed account of rural life and race relations in the Tennessee Valley in the early years (of the 1900s), including a vivid picture of college life at The University of Alabama during the Great Depression."

Its the first time we see Detective Isaac Bell on the job of stopping bad guys, and rescuing damsels in the early 1900's. Enjoyable.

I plan to go through my stacks later, and see what I haven't read yet from my last order of good used books. I'm expecting a new batch soon.

Several good recommendations here today. I like Lincoln and Child. Thanks, Hermetic!

Even though the hero is stereotyped being tall, handsome, rich, and nearly indestructible.
I like all the series of books by him especially the Oregon Files with Juan Cabrillo.

I recommend this 2003 documentary about George Whitman and his famous bookstore, now run by his daughter.

I met George Whitman while I living in Paris during the summers of 1975 and 1978. Have continued to drop by when I visit Paris. So glad that Sylvia Whitman has continued the traditions.

Thanks for the thread, hermetic.


If you like the Steve Berry, Cotton Malone books, you'll like this new one. It's an action, page-turner involving Cotton Malone, the Vatican, and a distant Medici relative. Interesting plot.

I’m reading Westering Women by Sandra Dallas, about a wagon train taking women to CA in the 1850s to find husbands and better lives than they did in Chicago.

Have a good holiday!

Paul Traceu is the son of an ex-Mets pitcher Warren Tracey from the 1970s. Paul receives news his father is dying of pancreatic and only has a few months left to live. Paul's parents divorces when he was 12 because Warren was abusive to his wife and kids. Since then, Paul, his mother, and his sister have had little contact with Warren.

Calico Joe was a young man brought up from the Cubs minor league team and in his first game hit three home runs and safely bunted on base scoring a run. He had a meteoric rise quickly become the hardest man in baseball to strike out. That is, until he met Warren Tracey. After homering off Warren, at Joe's next at bat Warren intentionally beaned Joe causing Joe's career to to come to an end. Warren denies he intentionally beaned Joe but Paul and just about everyone else who follows baseball knows differently.
Joe now walks with a limp and he takes care of his home town's high school baseball field.

Pail Tracey goes to Warren's home in Florida in the hopes he can get his father meet Joe after 30 years to apologize and admit to Joe that he beaned him intentionally.

In 1972 a disgraced college professor and a retired FBI agent set out to discover, once and for all, the final resting place of the legendary Treasure of the Knights Templar. Days later, both men disappear without a trace.

Forty years later, spurred on by the discovery of a long lost manuscript, the Professor’s son hires historians Paul Davenport and Sara Walsh to pick up where his father left off. Their adventure leads them from Benjamin Franklin’s Freemasons to the early days of the Civil War, from World War II Paris to the corrupt world of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. But Davenport and Walsh aren’t alone in their search. A fanatical group of Neo-Knights have infiltrated the Freemasons in an attempt to reignite the Crusades. And watching them all from the shadows is a mysterious figure known as The Bookkeeper.

From the Capitols of old world Europe to a remote estate on the coast of Canada, to a small town in Pennsylvania, Davenport and Walsh discover kidnapping and murder, and go from hunters to prey as they get closer and closer to the secrets of The Templar Succession.

This is the first in a series called "The History Hunters"

Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb. I read his The Violin Conspiracy--it was wonderful!

The story of two sisters in occupied France WWII

It’s horrifying and compelling. I’m waking up in the night thinking about it 😔

eta, one of the first things they did was take away their radios

by Robert Galbraith dropped today. Been waiting for it forever; I'll be reading it this week.

"A gripping, wonderfully complex novel..." A dismembered corpse is discovered in the vault of a silver shop which is located beside a Freemasons' Hall that specializes in Masonic silverware.