Books & Cats miscellany - Part 2

Part 2 of the miscellany has to begin with the latest photos of Phoebe, taken last weekend as she lolled on the back steps, one of her favourite spots on warm days. She moves from step to step as the shade moves & then, eventually gives up altogether & comes inside if I'm home & the air conditioner is on.

I've been reading short stories, including these two collections released as ebooks. Trisha Ashley's Footsteps in the Snow and other teatime treats is a collection of 11 stories previously published in magazines as well as the opening chapters of Trisha's new book, Creature Comforts, which will be published next year. These are lovely, romantic stories, just long enough to read in a coffee break or at teatime as the subtitle says. Most of the stories are set around Christmas so they're seasonally appropriate too, even if my Christmas isn't going to involve snow, frost & open fires.

Martin Edwards was the winner of the inaugural CWA Margery Allingham short story competition, sponsored by the Margery Allingham Society. His winning story, Acknowledgments, has been published by Bloomsbury in this ebook which also contains two more stories by Edwards & an appreciation of Margery Allingham as a short story writer. Martin Edwards is an expert on the Golden Age of detective fiction so it's appropriate that he was the winner of the competition with a wicked story about an author of travel guides thanking his friends & family for their help with his career. As the narrator thanks his second wife, his agent & his publicist for their help with By-Ways Around Britain, the tone moves from comic self-satisfaction to something much darker.

Martin Edwards also announced some exciting news on his blog last week. He's been appointed as the Series Consultant for the British Library Crime Classics series I've been enjoying so much this year. The series has been incredibly successful & there are more treats in store next year, including two anthologies of short stories compiled by Martin. All the details are here.

I was very pleased to discover that The English Air by D E Stevenson has been reprinted by Greyladies. If this book & the other DES titles available from Greyladies sell well, hopefully other reprints will follow.

It's also available in the US from Anglophile Books as are lots of books by Georgette Heyer.

Finally, for Georgette Heyer fans, Vulpes Libris featured posts on Heyer's novels all last week. Here's the link. With the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo coming up next year, I feel that I should definitely read An Infamous Army, even if I read nothing else about Waterloo. Or, I may listen to it. I see that Audible has the audio book read by Clare Higgins.

I can't finish this post without a couple more photos of togetherness. On Monday night, I was watching the news on TV & Phoebe was asleep on my lap. Lucky was not impressed & sat on the arm of the chair looking plaintively at me for the whole half hour.

A couple of hours later, all change. Next time I sat down, Lucky was right there. She wasn't going to be usurped again. So, Phoebe sat on the arm of the chair staring alternately at Lucky & me. Every so often she would put her paw on my arm & made me feel as guilty as possible that there wasn't room for her on my lap as well.
Sorry about the terrible angles of these photos. I used the iPad & I could not work out how to fix the angle on the second photo. Actually I'm amazed I managed to get the girls in the frame at all when I was holding the iPad out to my right & hoping for the best!

PS I just noticed that this is my 900th post, not that I'm counting. Almost five years of blogging & 900 posts - I feel exhausted. I think I need to sit down with a cup of tea & a book or maybe listen to a podcast or watch another episode of An Age of Kings...