Showing posts with label Foley - Lucy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foley - Lucy. Show all posts

Friday, September 16, 2022

Feature: Marple by Agatha Christie

 

"I wonder, sometimes, if there isn't a concentration of evil in small places."

Do you have a favorite literary character you would like to see have new adventures?

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @williammorrowbooks for the gifted copy of Marple: Twelve New Mysteries and for allowing me to be on this tour.

I've started reading this collection and I was pulled in by the very first line. I loved the first story, Evil in Small Places by Lucy Foley. There are great stories by so many of my favorite authors!

Book Description from Goodreads: A brand-new collection of short stories featuring the Queen of Mystery’s legendary detective Jane Marple, penned by twelve remarkable bestselling and acclaimed authors.

This collection of a dozen original short stories, all featuring Jane Marple, will introduce the character to a whole new generation. Each author reimagines Agatha Christie’s Marple through their own unique perspective while staying true to the hallmarks of a traditional mystery.

Naomi Alderman
Leigh Bardugo
Alyssa Cole
Lucy Foley
Elly Griffiths
Natalie Haynes
Jean Kwok
Val McDermid
Karen M. McManus
Dreda Say Mitchell
Kate Mosse
Ruth Ware

Miss Marple was first introduced to readers in a story Agatha Christie wrote for The Royal Magazine in 1927 and made her first appearance in a full-length novel in 1930’s The Murder at the Vicarage. It has been 45 years since Agatha Christie’s last Marple novel, Sleeping Murder, was published posthumously in 1976, and this collection of ingenious new stories by twelve Christie devotees will be a timely reminder why Jane Marple remains the most famous fictional female detective of all time.

#marple #marpletwelvenewmysteries
#missmarplemysteries #agathachristie

Sunday, August 21, 2022

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

 


If you had an apartment, you could stay in for free anywhere, where would you visit?   I want to go so many places; this is a hard question for me.  I think right now, I would love to stay in an apartment in Vienna.  Paris would definitely be a great place to visit.

In the last two years, I have read and enjoyed The Hunting Party and The Guest List by Lucy Foley, so my expectations were quite high for this new book.  Sadly, this new novel didn’t quite meet my expectations.

On the positive, The Paris Apartment had super short chapters that told alternating viewpoints as down on her luck Jess travels to Paris to stay with her half-brother Ben and discovers he is missing.  What happened to Ben?  His last voicemail makes Jess believe he may have been hurt or killed.  All of his neighbors in the building seem to have secrets and Jess works on trying to figure out what they had to do with Ben.  The book was supposed to be a page turner, but it was really slow for me until the very end.  The characters were all unlikeable and hard to relate to.  I found myself not caring about the missing Ben like I should have.  On the positive, I did like that the characters definitely were painted with shades of grey.  The book did pick up at the end and I found myself intrigued again.  The book did tie up all of the loose ends and had a good conclusion.

I listened to an interview with Lucy Foley on the Book Club Girls Podcast right after I finished the book.  It was a great interview.  It discussed the class and power issues in this novel with the upstairs / downstairs type setting.  Foley had stayed in a building in Paris, and it gave her the inspiration to write this novel.  I also thought it was interesting that she wanted to be Agatha Christie’s Miss Maple if she had to pick any fictional character. 

Overall, The Paris Apartment was a mediocre thriller.  If you are new to Lucy Foley, I recommend The Hunting Party and The Guest List. 

Book Source:  The Kewaunee Public Library

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Laura's Top 14 Books of 2020


I read a lot of great books in 2020.  What can I say about 2020?  Although it has been one heck of a year and my socializing is definitely down, it has caused an uptick in my reading.  I noticed I read a lot more romance this year as I focused on comfort reads.  Did your reading habits change in 2020?

 I had so many books that I loved this year that it took me awhile to trim it down to a top 14 list.  I couldn't quite get it down to top 10.  These books are books I read and that stuck with me long after the last page was turned. 

These books were not necessarily books published in 2020, but they were books I read in 2020.  I did not include books that I was rereading, but only books that I’ve read for the first time. They are only in the order of when I read them through the year of 2020.  And now without further ado, my top fourteen books of 2020.  I’ve linked them all to my review of them if you’d like to learn more about them.

  1. Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
  2. The Hunting Party and The Guest List by Lucy Foley
  3. The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
  4. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
  5. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
  6. Becoming by Michelle Obama
  7. The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare
  8. The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
  9. The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
  10. When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole
  11. The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
  12. Clouds by Laura Sobiech
  13. Anxious People by Fredrik Bachman

Other books I loved this year, but didn’t quite make my top 14 included:

  1. To Tell You the Truth by Gilly MacMillian
  2. The Rescuer: One Firefighter’s Story of Courage, Darkness, and the Relentless Love that SavedHim by Jason Sautel with D.R. Jacobsen
  3. Olympic Pride, American Prejudice:  The Untold Story of 18 African Americans Who Defied Jim Crow and Adolph Hitler to Compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Deborah Riley Draper and Travis Thrasher
  4. When Life Gives You Pears:  The Healing Power of Family, Faith, and Funny People by Jeannie Gaffigan
  5. Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson
  6. Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert
  7. Loathe at First Sight by Suzanne Park
  8. Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner
  9. No Judgements by Meg Cabot
  10. The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan
  11. If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlene

For more top books from the past, check out my lists from 2019, 2018, 2017 & 2016, 2015, 2014, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.

What were your favorite books of 2020?

Thursday, August 13, 2020

The Guest List by Lucy Foley


What is the last book you decided you were going to read as you keep seeing it everywhere on social media?  I keep seeing The Guest List all over Instagram.  I read and loved Lucy Foley’s previous novel, The Hunting Party, earlier this year, so I was ready to read this new suspense story. 

Jules Keegan and Will Slater are getting married in an exclusive wedding on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. Jules runs a popular online magazine and Will is a reality TV star on an adventure program.  As the guests arrive, secrets start to come out about the couple.  Someone will not be leaving the wedding alive.  Who will it be and who is the murderer when seemingly everyone has a motive?

The Guest List was written in the same format as The Hunting Party and I enjoyed it.  Alternating chapters are told through the point of view of various characters including Jules, Will, best man Johnno, wedding planner Aoife, sister of the bride, Olivia, and plus one of an usher, Hannah.  The loved how the various characters and pieces of the story slowly came together to a stunning conclusion.  I was able to guess many of the secrets from the clues in the text, but the final conclusion was a surprise.  I love a good suspense story and I think having it at a wedding is perfect. There is a lot going on during a wedding with different personalities and emotions.  The setting on a stormy island off the coast of Ireland was perfect as well.

Overall, The Guest List is an intriguing suspenseful mystery novel set during a perfect storm of emotions at a high-end wedding.

Book Source:  Checked out from the Kewaunee Public Library.  Thank-you!

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley (TLC Book Tours)


Are you looking for a good mystery or suspense story to keep you on the edge of your seat?  The Hunting Party is a riveting “house party” type mystery.  It is an Agatha Christie novel mixed with You by Caroline Kepnes.

Four couples and their one single friend get together each New Year’s for a party.  They are old Oxford college friends and have stayed together as friends through the years.  This year the party has been planned at a remote lodge in Scotland.  The Lodge is owned by someone in London and run by Heather and Doug, two lonely souls with mysterious pasts.  Doug and Heather narrate alternate chapters in the future after a dead body has been found as they try to put together what happened.  The past is narrated by three women from the group, Miranda, Emma, and Katie.  All are trapped at the Lodge by a snowstorm when the murder happens. Who has been murdered and why?

I love the short chapters that kept the action moving.  The characters were interesting and one was very vividly drawn in particular.  I did not see where this book was going.  I love when a novel can capture my interest and still surprise me at the end.  This was one of the best mysteries I have read in the past few years.

Favorite Quotes:

“I suppose we all carry around different versions of ourselves.”

“Wounds inflicted at that sort of raw, unformed time in our lives tend to cut the deepest – and leave the worst scars.”
Overall, The Hunting Party was a great suspense novel.  Do we really know our friends?

Book Source:  Review Copy as part of the TLC Book Tour.  For more stops on this tour, check out this link.

About The Hunting Party

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (March 3, 2020)  

“My favorite kind of whodunit, kept me guessing all the way through, and reminiscent of Agatha Christie at her best -- with an extra dose of acid.” -- Alex Michaelides, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Silent Patient  

Everyone's invited...everyone's a suspect...

For fans of Ruth Ware and Tana French, a shivery, atmospheric, page-turning novel of psychological suspense in the tradition of Agatha Christie, in which a group of old college friends are snowed in at a hunting lodge . . . and murder and mayhem ensue.  

All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.

 During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands—the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.

They arrive on December 30th, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.

 Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead.

The trip began innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps.

Now one of them is dead . . . and another of them did it.

 Keep your friends close, the old adage goes. But just how close is too close?
 

Purchase Links

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About Lucy Foley

Lucy Foley studied English literature at Durham University and University College London and worked for several years as a fiction editor in the publishing industry. She is the author of The Book of Lost and Found and The Invitation. She lives in London. Follow Lucy on Twitter and Facebook.