A good feeling for a Fall Library Haul

 

Despite the calendar dates, that beautiful bone chilling feeling of autumn has been hard to come by these days.

However, yesterday was much more in sync with the season, so much so that I was willing to face strong cold winds and a brief bout of rain to make a library visit.

Since we’re in the midst of “spooky season “, my first pick was Stephen King’s If It Bleeds, his most recent collection of stories. I’m not a big short story/novella person but his well told tales are always worth sitting around the collective campfire for.

While stories such as “Rat”, where a writer makes a pact with an unusual rodent and “Mr.Harriman’s Phone” which has a young man finding out that there’s more than he bargained for with his IPhone calling plan, the title feature is the main attraction for me.

The lead story focuses on Holly Gibney, the breakout star from the Mr. Mercedes trilogy and The Outsider. She is investigating a school bombing with her true target being the first reporter on the scene. As it turns out, there is more to that guy than just finding a good news story and he’s not alone in feasting on real life horrors.

Holly gets a bit of backstory here as well and she’s definitely a fictional person of interest that I’d like to know better:

In keeping with the October spirit, my next selection was My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier. I must admit that finding the recent movie tie in edition was a big incentive towards this(Rachel Weisz is quite eerily captivating on this cover!).

Also, I had just finished Kate Carlisle’s Little Black Book(her latest Bibliophile mystery) the day before and a good portion of the plot was hinged on secret messages place in a copy of Rebecca. That certainly put me in the right frame of mind here.

This Gothic themed love story in which young Phillip is possibly bewitched and definitely bothered by his attraction to his cousin’s widow is suitably sinister for this time of year and I might check out the movie if this read goes well:

With November not that far off, I do like to have a bit of historical fiction on hand and The Poppy Wife felt like the perfect find on the library shelf in that regard.

This debut novel by Caroline Scott takes place in the aftermath of WWI as Edie, a young British woman who is not sure if her husband Francis survived or not, decides to go to France in 1921 to settle the question once and for all.

She’s accompanied by Henry, her young brother in law who is still haunted by the death of his younger brother Will during the heat of battle. As the two of them get closer to learning the truth about Francis, they also must face the reality of their feelings about each other.

Scott is a historian who drew from her own family’s past as inspiration for this book, which should make for compelling reading. The true lure for taking up this storytelling journey for me, however, is seeing the depths of true love up against such an epic background like this:

With the way things are going these days, settling in with a good book is becoming more appealing and having my local library open again is a great comfort there.

Combined with the onset of wonderfully cold weather and the arrival of seasonal baking shows, this constant reader is planning on being as content as can be as the days go by: