Saturday Six

As I was scrolling through my blog updates, I found a post about the Saturday Six on My Neurotic Book Affair. She has posted about six books that she has around the house that she really wants to read but hasn't gotten around to for whatever reason. That sounded like a great idea... and, giving full credit to Shari at My Neurotic Book Affair, without further ado here are the books in my TBR stacks that I'd like to get to, but just haven't:

The Silk Stocking Murders by Anthony Berkeley. An early vintage mystery, first published in 1928. Roger Sheringham would not have ordinarily been curious about the suicide of chorus girl Miss Unity Ransome. However when he receives a cry for help from a country parson attempting to trace his missing daughter he finds himself involved.

Scarlet Women by J. D. Christilian. Historical mystery set in New York, 1871. A prostitute named Alice Curry is found murdered near the East Street docks. Not unusual, except that the clothes the victim is wearing belong to the missing wife of an aristocrat. Street-smart private investigator Harp takes on the case. When a restaurateur who was the closest thing Harp had to a father is also murdered, the two cases prove to be related.

City of Light by Lauren Belfer. Historical mystery set in Buffalo, NY 1901. Louisa Barrett, headmistress of Buffalo's most prestigious school, is at eas in a world of men, protected by the titans of her city. But nothing prepares her for a startling discovery: evidence of a murder tied to the city's cthedral-like power plant at nearby Niagara Falls.

The Praise Singer by Mary Renault. Historical. In the story of the great lyric poet Simonides. Mary Renault brings alive a time in Greece when tyrants kept an unsteady rule and poetry, music, and royal patronage combined to produce a flowering of the arts. (I won this in a library-sponsored reading challenge several years ago and just cannot seem to get to it.)

Our Lady of the Lost and Found by Diane Schoemperlen. Fiction with irreverent humor. On an apparently typical Monday morning, a middle-aged writer enters her living room and finds a woman standing by her fig tree. The woman is wearing a blue trench coat, white Nikes, and a white shawl over her hair. She is holding a purse and a suitcase. She is the Virgin Mary--and after 2000 years of petition, adoration, and traveling, she's in need of a little R&R.

A Flaw in the Blood by Stephanie Barron. Historical mystery. Windsor Castle, 1861. Prince Albert, the Queen's Consort lies dying and Victoria summons Patrick Fitzgerald, the clever, embittered Irish barrister who helped defend Her Majesty from a would-be assassin twenty years earlier. Within hours, Fitzgerald's beautiful ward is nearly murderd, his chambers are ransacked, and another girl lies dead. Could an unknown force want Fitzgerald silenced? And why? The answers are entangled in an electrifying tale of intrigue, seduction, and betrayal, partially narrated by Europe's most powerful monarch.

If you haven't discovered her blog already, click on the link above and check out My Neurotic Book Affair. A great blog!