I’ve recently finished another wonderful historical mystery by Maureen Jennings, Poor Tom is Cold. In this third installment, Detective Murdoch is back to solve the murder of a fellow officer. You can read more of my thoughts here.

You know I’m a big fan of historical mysteries and in particular those set in Victorian times, and lately it seems like there are so many new ones being published. I don’t mind of course, just more for my list.

Two I’ve recently added are The Anatomy of Deception by Lawrence Goldtone and The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte by Laura Joh Rowland. Isabel just sent me some pretty postcards announcing the Rowland book (thank you girl!). I’ve enjoyed Rowland’s Ichiro mysteries so I have high hopes for this one.

In the meantime I have started a new historical, The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes. A novel which begins with this:

“Be warned. This book has no literary merit whatsoever. It is a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, written in drearily pedestrian prose, frequently ridiculous and wilfully bizarre. Needless to say, I doubt you’ll believe a word of it.”

I’m not very far into the story yet but it does have a good dose of creepiness to it.

And, if you are like me and can’t get enough of these books check out The Historical Mystery site. It has a section specifically for Victorian mysteries. And, of course there’s the Lincoln City Libraries Murder by Gaslight site. I’m going to be having a lot of fun checking those out.

You won’t believe this but I finished three of the books I mentioned in my last post. Yep, this weekend was mainly devoted to hanging out with books. I promise to tell you about those in the next few days. Actually, I’m falling a bit behind on my reviews (as usual) as I still have some other books to tell you about. There have been some great stories involved.

This weekend I’ve also been thinking about participating in two new challenges I’ve heard about. I’ve been doing pretty well with most of my challenges so what’s the harm in joining more right.

First, there’s the Orbis Terrarum Challenge hosted by Bethany & Brad. The goal is to read 9 books by 9 different authors from 9 countries. Ooh I’m so tempted by this. I would say that 40% of the books I read each year are by non-American authors and I belong to a foreign authors book group so this should be a snap right? Plus, you can even overlap books with those from other challenges.

I can already think of some books I’d include in my reading list for example Madame by Antoni Libera (Polish). I plan to start this book in the next couple of days anyway. Other authors who’d I’d love to read include Chinua Achebe, Chitra Divakaruni, Junot Diaz, Italo Calvino, Yukio Mishima and many others.

The other challenge that I’m considering is Joy’s Non-Fiction Five Challenge. I missed it last year and would hate to miss it again. I always try to get in some non-fiction every year and most of the time I can barely get in a couple of books but last year was a good year, I read eight non-fiction books. Most of what I have on my shelves are memoirs and travelogues but I’ve got some good stuff for example: Eat, Pray, Love, The Glass Castle, The Year of Magical Thinking, etc.

Well, I think I’ve just talked myself into joining these challenges. Who else is jumping in or are you still thinking?