Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Short Story Wednesday: Two Hercule Poirot Short Stories


Recently I read two short stories from Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie. The collection has 867 pages and was published in 1999; it consists of 51 short stories.



 

"The Adventures of the Clapham Cook"

First published in The Sketch in November 1923. Later published in the US collection The Under Dog and Other Stories in 1951, and then in a UK collection in 1974, Poirot’s Early Cases.


One thing I like in the Hercule Poirot short stories is that they are often told in first person by Captain Hastings; I also find the conversations between Hastings and Poirot very entertaining. This story fit that model, and I enjoyed it. 

These are the opening lines of the story:

At the time that I was sharing rooms with my friend Hercule Poirot, it was my custom to read aloud to him the headlines in the morning newspaper, the Daily Blare.

The Daily Blare was a paper that made the most of any opportunity for sensationalism. Robberies and murders did not lurk obscurely in its back pages. Instead they hit you in the eye in large type on the front page.

ABSCONDING BANK CLERK DISAPPEARS WITH FIFTY THOUSAND POUNDS’ WORTH OF NECOTIABLE SECURITIES, I read.

HUSBAND PUTS HIS HEAD IN GAS OVEN. UNHAPPY HOME LIFE. MISSING TYPIST. PRETTY GIRL OF TWENTY-ONE. WHERE IS EDNA FIELD?

"There you are Poirot, plenty to choose from an absconding bank clerk, a mysterious suicide, a missing typist--which will you have?"

None of these headlines interest Poirot. He prefers to spend his day at home, taking care of personal issues, such as trimming his mustache.

But shortly after this discussion, they have a visitor, a woman who wants Poirot to find her cook. He does not take her seriously, and she accuses him of being a snob. Poirot gives in and investigates the case, uncovering a diabolical plot related to another crime at the same time.


"Murder in the Mews" 

This story is novella length. First published in the US in Redbook Magazine, September/October 1936. It was published in the short story collection, Murder in the Mews and Other Stories, in 1937.


In this story, Captain Hastings does not show up at all and the story is told in third person viewpoint. However, Poirot is working with another favorite character, Inspector Japp. 

One morning, Inspector Japp calls Hercule Poirot to tell him that a death had occurred in Bardsley Gardens Mews the night before. That night, Japp and Poirot had been walking through the Mews after leaving a bonfire on Guy Fawkes night, and they are discussed how all the fireworks could cover the sounds of gunfire. 

Poirot joins Inspector Japp at the woman's residence where the death occurred. At first the assumption is suicide; very soon after the police arrive, they determine that it was a murder set up to look like suicide. And thus begins an investigation into the friends of the dead woman. She was living with another woman, a friend, and was engaged to Charles Laverton-West, an "M.P. for some place in Hampshire.” The resolution is unusual and Poirot is clever as expected.


"Murder in the Mews" was the best mystery of these two stories. I think the novella length provides more time for development and depth in the story. The characters in "The Adventures of the Clapham Cook" were more interesting, but the story felt more rushed, and some parts of the ending were not resolved for me. Both stories had their high points, and the character of Hercule Poirot is always entertaining to read about.


Both of these stories were adapted for Agatha Christie's Poirot, starring David Suchet, and the adaptations were very well done.


Sunday, October 19, 2025

Annual Book Sale 2025: My Husband's Books

 

Every year in September we attend the Planned Parenthood book sale, which lasts ten days. This time we visited five times, as usual. My husband's special interests at the sale are photography, architecture, and performing arts; books about history; and fiction, including mysteries and science fiction.

These are seven of the books my husband found at the book sale this year.



Dr. Johnson's Apple Orchard: The Story of America's First Pet Cemetery by Edward C. Martin, Jr.

Published in 1997, this 120-page, coffee-table size book features over 200 photographs of the historic Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, established in 1896 by a New York veterinarian.

Description from the dust jacket: 

What was once the summer retreat of a famous Manhattan veterinarian has been the home of America's first pet cemetery for over one hundred years. The Hartsdale Canine Cemetery is now the resting place for pets of every description, from parakeets to a lion cub, from the loyal dog of a blind newsman to the pampered pets of famous celebrities and a former vice president of the United States. Its carefully tended trees and crystal-clear stream have made it a community treasure in the small hamlet of Hartsdale, just north of New York City. Over the years it has grown like a stream around a boulder. In this 100-year Centennial tribute, Co-Director Ed Martin captures the dignity and compassion that has marked the cemetery's famous history. Through magnificent photography and personal reflection, he has created a feast for the eyes as well as the heart. Within its pages, you will discover stories of simple devotion, outrageous eccentricity and remarkable heroism. 



Ghost of a Smile: Stories by Deborah Boliver Boehm

From the description at Goodreads:

Ghost of a Smile is a funny, erotic, scary collection of stories set in modern-day Tokyo and incorporating elements from Japanese ghost stories. Author Deborah Boehm turns modern Tokyo into a shadow world where life and death are simply matters of perspective, and where love, longing and sexual desire last beyond the grave. In this supernaturally enhanced city, the ordinary boundaries of identity—country, gender, even whether one is human or a spirit—are blurred. Ghosts can seduce, trick and even love mortals, and so the familiar problems related to dating and falling in love may be compounded by the discovery that a partner isn't human at all.



The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to Hidden World of Everyday Design by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt

This book is based on the podcast titled 99% Invisible. Based on reviews I have read, a lot of the content is from the podcast, but for those who have never listened to it, this sounds like a very interesting book.

From the description at Goodreads:

A beautifully designed guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities, from the creators of the wildly popular 99% Invisible podcast

Have you ever wondered what those bright, squiggly graffiti marks on the sidewalk mean?

Or stopped to consider why you don't see metal fire escapes on new buildings?

Or pondered the story behind those dancing inflatable figures in car dealerships?

99% Invisible is a big-ideas podcast about small-seeming things, revealing stories baked into the buildings we inhabit, the streets we drive, and the sidewalks we traverse. The show celebrates design and architecture in all of its functional glory and accidental absurdity, with intriguing tales of both designers and the people impacted by their designs.

Now, in The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to Hidden World of Everyday Design, host Roman Mars and coauthor Kurt Kohlstedt zoom in on the various elements that make our cities work, exploring the origins and other fascinating stories behind everything from power grids and fire escapes to drinking fountains and street signs. With deeply researched entries and beautiful line drawings throughout,

The 99% Invisible City will captivate devoted fans of the show and anyone curious about design, urban environments, and the unsung marvels of the world around them.



The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World by Shelley Puhak

From the description at Goodreads:

The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule.

Brunhild was a Spanish princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet—in the 6th-century Merovingian Empire, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport—these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms for decades, changing the face of Europe.

The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. They fought a years-long civil war—against each other. With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne’s empire. Yet after Brunhild and Fredegund’s deaths—one gentle, the other horrific—their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend.

In The Dark Queens, award-winning writer Shelley Puhak sets the record straight. She resurrects two very real women in all their complexity, painting a richly detailed portrait of an unfamiliar time and striking at the roots of some of our culture’s stubbornest myths about female power. The Dark Queens offers proof that the relationships between women can transform the world.



Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison by Ben Macintyre

My husband read this book soon after he purchased it at the book sale in mid-September. As with all the books he has read by Macintyre, he enjoyed the book and gave it a high rating.

From the description at Goodreads:

In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.

But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre’s telling, Colditz’s most famous names—like the indomitable Pat Reid—share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America’s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs.

 


A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz

My husband is currently reading this book. He discovered that he previously had a copy and never read it, and then bought another copy at the book sale. The only other book he has read by Tony Horwitz is Confederates in the Attic.

From the description at Goodreads:

On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz realizes he's mislaid more than a century of American history, from Columbus’s sail in 1492 to Jamestown's founding in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between? Determined to find out, he embarks on a journey of rediscovery, following in the footsteps of the many Europeans who preceded the Pilgrims to America.

An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange captures the wonder and drama of first contact. Vikings, conquistadors, French voyageurs — these and many others roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis. Though most failed, their remarkable exploits left an enduring mark on the land and people encountered by late-arriving English settlers.

Tracing this legacy with his own epic trek — from Florida's Fountain of Youth to Plymouth's sacred Rock, from desert pueblos to subarctic sweat lodges, Tony Horwitz explores the revealing gap between what we enshrine and what we forget. Displaying his trademark talent for humor, narrative, and historical insight, A Voyage Long and Strange allows us to rediscover the New World for ourselves.



You Can Never Die: A Graphic Memoir by Harry Bliss

This is another book that Glen has read since he got it at the book sale. It is actually a book that we co-own since we both like the author's writing and the drawings. He liked this one very much.

From the description at Goodreads:

A poignant and witty graphic memoir from New Yorker cover artist, internationally syndicated cartoonist, and New York Times bestselling author Harry Bliss capturing his reflections on life and his relationship with Penny, his beloved dog.

... As Harry grieves Penny’s loss, he reflects on his parents in their later years, his love for his wife and home, and the colorful artists, friends, and mentors who have shaped him.

With humor and gut-wrenching honesty, You Can Never Die is an intimate portrayal of a man making sense of the beautiful and painful world around him. This singular memoir integrates sharply crafted, witty stories with hundreds of gorgeous cartoons and never-seen-before sketches from Bliss’s career.



Friday, October 17, 2025

Spin #42 for the Classics Club, October 2025

 


The latest Classics Club Spin has been announced. To join in, I choose twenty books from my classics list. On Sunday, October 19th, the Classics Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The goal is to read whatever book falls under that number on my Spin List by December 21st, 2025.

I created a list for Spin #41, but I have not yet read the book that was picked (which was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark). I debated whether to join in on this one, but I decided I would take the optimistic approach and hope that I have time to read both books before the end of the year.

So, here is my list of 20 books for the spin...

  1. Patricia Highsmith – The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
  2. Madeleine L'Engle – A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
  3. Graham Greene – Our Man in Havana (1958)   
  4. Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
  5. Ray Bradbury – The Martian Chronicles (1950)
  6. Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
  7. Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre (1847)
  8. Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse-Five  (1955)
  9. John Steinbeck – Cannery Row (1945)
  10. Mary Shelley – Frankenstein (1818)
  11. Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
  12. Virginia Woolf – Flush (1933)
  13. J. D. Salinger – Catcher in the Rye (1951)
  14. Anne Brontë – Agnes Grey (1847) 
  15. Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (1958) 
  16. Dashiell Hammett – Red Harvest (1929)   
  17. Christopher Isherwood – Goodbye to Berlin (1939)   
  18. Albert Camus – The Stranger (1942)
  19. Robert Louis Stevenson – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
  20. Lewis Carroll – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) 


The three books I would most like to read for this spin are A Wrinkle in Time by L'Engle, The Talented Mr. Ripley by Highsmith, or Our Man in Havana by Greene. However, any of the books on my list would be fine. 


Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea: Rebecca Thorne

 

I first saw this book when my son purchased it at the book sale. The copy he got was especially nice, with sprayed edges (in a nice turquoise color), and a lovely map. I was interested in the book shop theme and the description: "a cozy fantasy steeped with love." And since I love tea, "tea" in the title of the book pulled me in too. I wanted to read it immediately and my son let me read it first.

The story is about a lesbian couple who want to leave their current lives behind and open a bookstore in a remote location where no one can find them. The problem is that Reyna is a private guard to a powerful and cruel queen, and Kianthe is a powerful mage. Somehow they both manage to leave their responsibilities behind and move to a small town far from their previous lives to set up a book shop. 

Reyna and Kianthe have never had any extended time together before, and they use this time to adjust to their differences and see if they can make a life together. 



My Thoughts on the Book:

What is a cozy fantasy? I had not been aware previously that there was a subgenre of fantasy that is described as cozy fantasy.  I don't often read cozy mysteries, but like any other genre or subgenre, there is a wide range of books within the mystery genre categorized as cozy. Online there are many different descriptions of cozy fantasies, emphasizing community or familial relationships, and focusing on comfort and a sense of belonging.

This book had griffons and dragons. Griffons are new to me. Dragons are not, but I did begin to notice how differently dragons are described and used in various fantasy series. In the last ten years, I think the only dragons I have encountered in fiction were in the Dragonriders of Pern series. In the Tomes & Tea series dragons are monsters, the enemy that can burn down towns (at least at this point). I am currently reading Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett, a Discworld book, and dragons are summoned by evil forces and are attacking the city of Ankh-Morpork. The approach to dragons in the Discworld series seems entirely different.

The story was good and held my interest; it is a light-hearted tale, not too demanding, focused on community, sharing, being open to ideas. It has enough conflict to make it interesting.

I enjoyed the depiction of all the characters in the story, even the evil ones. The evil queen doesn't really get much time in the book until close to the end, but even in that case, her character is very well defined.

This book is not perfect. It was the author's first novel and in some ways it shows. Some behaviors and scenarios are used over and over. That may be realistic but in fiction it can get annoying. But I liked the story and the characters a lot and I am willing to try more books in the series to see how it develops.



Tuesday, October 14, 2025

Short Story Wednesday: The Literary Ghost, ed. Larry Dark

 

Last week for Short Story Wednesday, I wrote about the first three stories in one of my husband's  ghost story anthologies, The Literary Ghost: Great Contemporary Ghost Stories, edited by Larry Dark. 

This is the description of this book at Goodreads:

"It takes a certain amount of daring for a literary writer to employ a device as powerful and obvious as a ghost, and a great deal of talent and self-assurance to pull it off. The fact that these stories are so different from one another and that no two ghosts in them are alike is a testament to the power of the individual imagination to appropriate established myths without assuming the associated clichés."

So writes Larry Dark in the introduction to this anthology of expertly crafted ghost stories by such luminaries as Donald Barthelme, Paul Bowles, A. S. Byatt, Robertson Davies, M. F. K. Fisher, John Gardner, Nadine Gordimer, Graham Greene, Patrick McGrath, R. K. Narayan, Tim O'Brien, V. S. Pritchett, Anne Sexton, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Fay Weldon.


Today I read a few more stories in that book. Several of these were very short so I don't want to say too much about them.


"The Others" by Joyce Carol Oates

A man begins to see people on the street that he recognizes from his past. He knows that some of them are dead. His wife makes light of it. He begins to see more and more people like that. 

This story was five or six pages long, and I thought it was pretty good, although what was going on was not explicit and not very scary. It was atmospheric.


"A Story of Don Juan" by V.S. Pritchett

First sentence: "One night of his life Don Juan slept alone."

Don Juan must stay at the house of a man whose wife died one year earlier, on their wedding night. He is still mourning her. He allows Don Juan to sleep in the room that he shared with his wife when she was alive.

I am not sure how this story fits into the description "contemporary ghost stories" since it was first published in 1941. However I enjoyed it anyway. It definitely had a ghost, although maybe an unusual one.


"Up North" by Mavis Gallant

This one was also 6 pages and I really liked it. I now want to find out more about Gallant and her writing. 

The story is set on a train. A woman and her young son are traveling from Montreal to a more northern part of Canada. She is from England and has come to join her Canadian husband, whom she met during World War II. Ghosts are discussed and the boy thinks he sees ghosts outside of the train. 


"The Warden" by John Gardner

This was a longer story, about 30 pages long, with chapters. I found it very confusing and did not understand what was going on at all. 

A man is running a prison, but he has no real authority. The warden is useless and will give him no instructions so he is left to make his own decisions. At the point the story begins, he never sees the warden, he just hears him pacing in his office and never comes out at all. 

I tried to find more information about the story, but was not successful. If anyone reading this post knows more about this story, I would love to know more about it. 



Below is a list of all stories in the book. The book is about 360 pages long and has 28 short stories.

  • "The Lost, Strayed, Stolen," M.F.K. Fisher
  • "The Portobello Road," Muriel Spark
  • "The Ghost Who Vanished by Degrees," Robertson Davies
  • "The Others," Joyce Carol Oates
  • "A Story of Don Juan," V.S. Pritchett
  • "Up North," Mavis Gallant
  • "The Warden," John Gardner
  • "The Death of Edward Lear," Donald Barthelme
  • "The Circular Valley," Paul Bowles
  • "The Third Voice," William Ferguson
  • "Marmilion," Patrick McGrath
  • "Spirit Seizures," Melissa Pritchard
  • "Revenant as Typewriter," Penelope Lively
  • "Ghostly Populations," Jack Matthews
  • "The Ghost Soldiers," Tim O'Brien
  • "Family," Lance Olsen
  • "Letter from a Dogfighter's Aunt, Deceased," Padgett Powell
  • "The Ghost," Anne Sexton
  • "Angel, All Innocence," Fay Weldon
  • "Jack's Girl," Cynthia Kadohata
  • "The Next Room," A.S. Byatt
  • "Grass," Barry Yourgrau
  • "Eisenheim the Illusionist," Steven Millhauser
  • "Ghost and Flesh, Water and Dirt," William Goyen
  • "Letter from His Father," Nadine Gordimer
  • "Old Man of the Temple," R.K. Narayan
  • "A Little Place Off the Edgware Road," Graham Greene
  • "A Crown of Feathers," Isaac Bashevis Singer


Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Short Story Wednesday: "The Portobello Road" by Muriel Spark

 

Last week,  at her Short Story Wednesday post, Patricia Abbott featured a short story collection by Muriel Spark, The Stories of Muriel Spark. Later my husband found this ghost story by Muriel Spark in one of his ghost story anthologies, The Literary Ghost: Great Contemporary Ghost Stories, edited by Larry Dark. Last night I read the first three stories in The Literary Ghost, including "The Portobello Road" by Muriel Spark.


Of the three stories, "The Portobello Road" was easily  my favorite. In this story, the ghost is the narrator. For some reason, not described in detail, this ghost had more business to finish and had not left the earth. She often strolled down Portobello Road, checking out the marketers and their stalls on the pavement. On one of her strolls she sees two people she knows, Kathleen and George. She speaks to the man and he can see her, although the woman cannot. From this point the ghost tells the story of herself (nicknamed "Needle"), and three of her childhood friends, Kathleen, George and a boy named "Skinny." They are very close friends while in school, but after they graduate, they go off to other areas, even other continents. George goes to manage his uncle's farm in Africa, and Skinny and Needle end up visiting him there. Kathleen stays in London with her rich connections. George eventually ends up returning to Great Britain because he wants to marry Kathleen, which leads to Needle's eventual death. This is my kind of ghost story.

Per EBSCO Knowledge Advantage this story was first published in 1958.


The first story in the book, "The Lost, Strayed, Stolen," by M.F.K. Fisher did not appeal to me at all. I think that the ghost story may be a fine one, and it is spooky, but for my tastes there was not enough background to flesh it out.

The third story was "The Ghost Who Vanished by Degrees" by Robertson Davies. I thought it was pretty good. It was about a professor at a college who ends up trapped in a room with a ghost who wants to defend his Ph.D. thesis because he never got the chance to do that while alive. It was shorter than the others and on the humorous side. A light read but not silly.


I will be revisiting this anthology more this month, and in another post I will list all the stories and authors in the book.