Today, for Short Story Wednesday, I am sharing a few short story anthologies or collections that I purchased at a book sale this weekend. This year Planned Parenthood is having their annual book sale, after having to call it off in 2020. The sale started on Friday, September 17 and will continue through Sunday, September 26. We went to the book sale on both Friday and Saturday, and on the first day I picked up several short story books. I have not sampled any of them yet. So, here they are.
Montalbano’s First Case and Other Stories by Andrea Camilleri, Stephen Sartorelli, translator
The late Andrea Camilleri is the author of a long-running police procedural series featuring Inspector Montalbano. The series is set in Italy. For this volume, Camilleri selected twenty-one short stories that follow Italy’s famous detective through cases throughout his career. The introduction by the author is interesting.
Maigret's Christmas by Georges Simenon, Jean Stewart (translator)
From the back of the book:
It's Christmastime in Paris, and the great detective Maigret is investigating holiday mayhem in nine delightful short stories. The mysteries abound: an otherwise sensible little girl insists that she has seen Father Christmas, a statement alarming to her neighbors, Monsieur and Madame Maigret. Then, a choirboy helps the inspector solve a crime while he lies in bed with a cold; and another boy, pursued by a criminal, ingeniously leaves a trail to help Maigret track him.
Alabama Noir, edited by Don Noble
I was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. I did not even know that this book existed; it was published fairly recently, in 2020. I don't believe that the cover photo is identified, but it is the perfect representation of what I remember about Alabama. Lush green landscapes, trees reflected in a body of water. I am very excited to read the stories in this book.
Hard-Boiled, edited by Bill Pronzini and Jack Adrian
I was also very excited to find a copy of this book. It had been on my want list for a couple of years, and when I looked for it initially, it was hard to find a copy at a price I was willing to pay. The subtitle of this book is "An Anthology of American Crime Stories." It contains over 500 pages of stories published from the 1920s through the 1990s.
See a very good review by Bill Crider at his Pop Culture Magazine blog. The review also lists the Table of Contents.
Dublin Noir edited by Ken Bruen
The subtitle of this book is "The Celtic Tiger vs. the Ugly American." I don't know exactly what that means, but there is this explanation in the introduction by Ken Bruen:
At first it was straightforward -- Dublin authors to write on their city... Then we turned the concept on its head, as you do in noir. The Irish are fascinated by how we appear to the world, so let's have a look, we thought, at how this city appears from the outside. In addition to a couple of us locals, let's take a cross section of the very best of today's crime writers from America, as well as Britain, Europe, and Canada.
28 comments:
I'd happily read all of these! Especially the Montalbano. I've read quite a few of the novels and pretty much all of the two TV series. I think I have The Maigret book too, I must check as that would be a good Christmas read.
What a good haul. I have HARDBOILED and it is very good.
I have the Montabano and HARDBOILED, but the rest of your haul looks very good, too! I hope I can do as well as you did next week when I attend the Kenmore Library Book Sale!
I've got that edition of Maigret's Christmas - so enjoyable.
These all look great, Tracy! I'd be glad to read any of them, and I hope you'll enjoy them all. You got a nice haul.
I agree with Cath, I’d read all of these! I love, love, love the cover on the Montalbano book! I’ve never read one in this series but loved the Tv series.
Isn't it fun to get to go to a book sale again? Glad you got some books that will please you and I hope you love them all!
Score! I really love that Maltabano collection, and the others look good too. Happy reading!
Cath, I have only read two books in the Montalbano series, but I found several more to read at the book sale. And I think I will enjoy the stories. The Maigret short story book was a surprise to me, I had not seen it before and it seems so perfect, especially for Christmas time.
Patti, I was very happy with all of the short story collections I found. And it was great to find HARD-BOILED that I had been looking for.
George, I wish you luck at your book sale next week. We have been going to this one for at least thirty years and each year the books available are different, so it is full of surprises. Most years there are no books by Rex Stout but this year there was a big box of them. I already have them all but sometimes I find different paperback editions I want.
Christine, I am glad to hear that you enjoyed the short stories in Maigret's Christmas. I haven't read any of his short stories (that I remember) but I am pretty sure I will like them also.
Margot, I was glad that I found a mix of vintage stories and contemporary stories. There will be a lot of variety in my future short story reading.
Peggy, I have not seen the Montalbano TV series but I would like to. I can't remember if it is available on any of the streaming services we get.
Kay, I was thrilled to go to the book sale again. At first, I was anxious about how they would handle it, although I knew masks were required. Everyone wore masks and it was not too crowded at all. And great books too.
Rick, There were some great books at the book sale on the weekend, and we went again this morning too.
I didn't even know that Camilleri had written any short stories. Apparently, according to the introduction, he wrote a lots more that are not in this collection, and I don't know whether they have been translated or not.
That's a good haul. I'm very fond of short stories.
I agree, Dfordoom. I was lucky to find those collections at the sale. I have only really started enjoying short stories in the last two years. The more of them I read, the more I appreciate them.
I read Dublin Noir years ago, I can't remember anything about it. I've read a couple more in the series, but I kind of thought the concept was a bit artificial, a bit contrived TBH so Ihaven't rushed to read more. I think I'd plump for the Maigret's out of all of your finds.
Another happy owner of the Pronzini/"Adrian" HARDBOILED. Did you ever see the Italian tv adaptations of the Montalbano stories? The primary importer at first was at MHz Worldview, a small public tv network headquartered in the DC suburbs that at its height had about 35 affiliates across the country and in the best days, also streamed their feed on the web, so I was able to see some of the MONTALBANO series. Their primary subtitle/translator guy couldn't fathom anyone in the States understanding Commissario or Inspector Montalbano as a title (nor Commissario/Inspector Brunetti, in the Donna Leon adaptations), so he relentlessly turned their titles into Detective Montalbano/Brunetti...which I would cheerfully turn back into Inspector for TV GUIDE records, including those fed out to PBS stations for their web-guides (in the early multiplexing days, as most MHz Worldview affiliates were feeds of PBS affiliates)(though some indy public stations also were Worldview affiliates, and didn't have the benefit of my revision of translation). I have yet to read the source fiction...I should!
Col, I sometimes have problems with short story books that are put together based on one theme. But I have sampled stories from several of the Akashic Noir series (Mississippi, Manhattan, and New Orleans) and mostly I liked those. So I am hoping I like these, or at least a majority of the stories, also.
I am looking forward to the Maigret stories also.
Todd, I have not seen the Italian MONTALBANO series at all and as far as I can tell I don't have access to it unless I pay for it. I would love to see some episodes, but my husband cannot read subtitles right now so we aren't watching shows with subtitles. We are hoping that will be fixed when he has cataract surgery.
What great finds. I would love having everyone of those. There haven't been any library sales around me since COVID reared its ugly head, but I fondly remember those days.
It's always fun for me to read your Wednesday Short Story posts because you're one of the few that I run into who seem to enjoy that genre as much as me.
Sam, I was surprised when the Planned Parenthood group decided to do the sale this year, but it has been handled well and safely, so I am very glad that they did it.
It has only been in the last 2-3 years that I have really enjoyed reading short stories, and I already had a pretty good backlog of short story books before then. I have been surprised to find that I like many different types of short stories, from science fiction to general fiction to mysteries, of all vintages.
If there are more Montalbano short stories translated and collected, I sure like to know of them!
Rick, I found another short story book listed on Fantastic Fiction called Death at Sea, described as eight short stories set in Montalbano's early years as a policeman, but I could find no indication of whether any of the stories in the two books are the same.
I’ve ordered it.
Oh, that is good, Rick. You can tell me what you think of it.
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