There is nothing more satisfying than reading a book while sipping a hot cup of tea.
The unnamed narrator is staying at a small guest-house in the French Riviera and gets on well with the other guests of various nationalities. However, one day, a French lady, Madame Henriette, staying there, elopes with a man she had (presumably) known only for a couple of days. She leaves behind a distraught husband and … Continue reading #ClassicsClub: Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman by Stefan Zweig (1927)
Stephen Munro, a demobbed army officer, runs through his inheritance in the years following the war and then takes up the job of a footman in the country-house of Lady Susan. Though he learns the ropes quickly from the butler Martin, he is non-plussed when Lady Susan throws a party and among the guests are … Continue reading Three Mysteries by Anthony Berkeley
Grennel and Crammond (I think they have first names too but they never registered and I am too bored to look them up) are two collectors but while Crammond is someone who is generally interested in the antique artifacts that come his way as a way of increasing his knowledge, Grennel is a fence who … Continue reading Black Magic: The Hand of Doom by J.M. Walsh (1927)
Does it surprise you to hear that Big corporate houses fund an election or that industrialists pay bribes on their way to setting up Big empires? If my guess is correct, your answer is also No. These things are so commonplace that one doesn't even bat an eyelid when hearing about them let alone question … Continue reading Forgotten Book: Oil! by Upton Sinclair (1927)
My entry into the bewildering world of Franz Kafka was through The Trial. The book with its story of a man persecuted for a crime he has no inkling of whatsoever was terrifying and apt as an analogy for life. For years, I dreaded picking up a Kafka again lest another facet of this impersonal universe where … Continue reading The Man who Disappeared: Franz Kafka’s America
All at once she heard sounds just behind her - the sounds made by slippered, shuffling feet.Filled with a sudden shock of sick terror, she turned slowly round to see Roger Gretorex's old charwoman, Mrs. Huntley, standing uncertainly in the middle of the room.The woman had evidently let herself in from the back alley with … Continue reading Passion and Poison: The Story of Ivy
a hot cup of pleasure 