My first Library Haul of the fall

While I know that autumn doesn’t officially start until this Wednesday, chances are that I’m not the only one who considers fall to have started by now.

So with that in mind, my latest library haul seems to have a bit of a fall feeling there.  My first instant pluck off the shelf selection was Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian, which mixes divorce court with witchcraft accusations.

Mary Deerfield is determined to leave her abusive husband Thomas, a legal action that is allowed in the Puritan society of Boston in 1662 in which they live. However, that is easier said than done, since Thomas is crafty enough to hide his drunken behavior and personal violence from others.

In addition, Mary finds strange objects buried in her backyard that are trying to make her appear to be a witch, making matters all the worse. Despite coming from a rather well-off family, Mary finds that her options of escaping her husband’s abuse or a witch trial are severely limited at best.

I’ve read Bohjalian’s novels on and off for years, with each book being very different yet sharing the same well honed sense of storytelling and character depth. This particular story is so far quite riveting and might even get me to check out some of the Anne Bradstreet poems that the author has mentioned in interviews inspiring this dark tale of female troubles:

 

Next up is another Kate Carlisle book from her Bibliophile Mystery series, interestingly titled  Little Black Book.

Newly wed bookbinder Brooklyn Wainwright finds herself involved in an international intrigue as her husband Derek receives an odd package from Scotland . The main content of the package is a signed first edition of the modern classic Rebecca, which is followed by a visit from Claire, a friend from Brooklyn’s past.

Claire is searching for her Aunt Gwyneth , who went missing and the only clue that she could  uncover is the receipt for that package. Since it turns out that Gwyneth , like Derek, once worked for MI6, this disappearance is not a random occurrence.

With the discovery of a suspicious delivery man dead from a knife to the neck and a necessary trip to Scotland, Brooklyn becomes tangled up in a case perhaps more suspenseful than the Du Maurier novel that set this whole caper off.

I have been reading this series out of order(hope to remedy that soon!) but Carlisle creates such an inviting world that makes even a newcomer feel most welcome here. With any luck, diving into the backstory of Brooklyn Wainwright will be far less treacherous than Rebecca de Winter’s certainly was:

To round things off, I went with A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier. Our leading lady is Violet Speedwell, a woman barely making ends meet in England of 1932.

Due to the deaths of her brother and her fiancé during WWI, Violet is considered a “surplus woman”, destined to a lonely life with little means of support. Her secretarial job in the town of Winchester barely gives her enough to pay her boarding house rent and not much more than that.

Yet, while visiting the well known cathedral that puts Winchester on the proverbial map, Violet runs into the broilers, a group of women who spend their spare time making kneelers for those attending church services.

The time and effort put into making such beautiful and essential items inspires Violet to join their ranks. In doing so, she begins to find more of a purpose to her life than just merely existing.

Chevalier is quite the word weaver, spinning elegantly engaging stories of women dealing with what the world around wants and expects from them. It seems that much like her other work, this book showcases what one woman can do with what is available to find her own way to happiness:

All in all, this library trip was a good way to start my fall reading season. While the news of the day makes every day appear to be bleak and dire, a good book can be a vital part of your emotional survival kit indeed: