Sleuthing Out Books with My Private Eye -- MAILBOX MONDAY

MAILBOX MONDAY

I was having lunch with my private eye the other day . . .

That really has nothing to do with anything, but saying it always makes me laugh. And I really do have a private eye. She's amazing! She helps me and my law partner with our sex abuse cases because they usually involve child abuse that happened decades ago. Most often, our clients were molested in the 1980s or 1990s, but we have cases involving abuse as far back as the 1960s. Our private eye finds witnesses and documents to help us prove our cases. 

But what does that have to do with this stack of books? That is a mystery! The solution is that we met for lunch in a suburb of Portland that has a Friends of the Library store I had never explored. It was a really good one. I came home with an overflowing tote bag of books.

See anything here you’d like to investigate?

• Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. I read this as an audiobook years ago, loved it, and wanted a book book on my shelves.

• Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather, which I want to read because I love Cather.

• The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro are two plays by Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais, on which the operas by Rossini and Mozart are based. 

• The Spoils of Poynton is a Henry James book I've never heard of.

• The Major Plays of Chekhov is a Signet Classic edition of a book I already have but haven't read. I'm enchanted by Signet Classic covers these days. 

• The Heart of Darkness & The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad is another Signet Classics edition. I got this one because I haven't read The Secret Sharer.

• The Egoist is a tragicomical novel by George Meredith published in 1879. I've never heard of it, but might read it for Victober.

• The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. This is another one I read years ago but wanted to add a Modern Library edition to my collection.

• Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson is a book I know nothing about, But I've never found a Persephone edition at library store so nabbed it. 

• Jane Austen's "juvenilia," because I haven't read any of these and liked the Penguin Classics edition. 

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Again, I read it a long time ago and have a fancy edition. But I wanted a paperback if I want to reread it. 

• The Long Day Waned is Anthony Burgess's "Malayan Trilogy" and all three novels sound really good. 

• Tales of Old Inns by Richard Keverne is a vintage travel guide to England's historic inns and hotels. Pure charm!

• Faith Fox by Jane Gardam I got because I read her Old Filth trilogy last year and now want to read everything she wrote. 

The last books are five Soho Crime books. I realized about a month ago that I had a nice little collection started of Soho Crime mystery books published by Soho Press. Since then, I've looked for more at library stores and found another dozen or so. I like the collection because the color block spines look so cool together. But I like the books because Soho Crime's theme is publishing mystery series set all around the world. For example, Qiu Xiaolong's series is set in China and Eliot Pattison's is set in Tibet.

YOUR MAILBOX MONDAY BOOKS

What books came into your house recently?

Join other book lovers on Mailbox Monday to share the books that came into your house lately. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf, and Velvet of vvb32reads graciously host Mailbox Monday.