Howling Frog Books

 Beau Geste, by P. C. Wren Whoof, this was an exciting one!  If you're not familiar, as I was not, Beau Geste*  was a smash hit back in the 1920s, was promptly made into a big-budget film (and a lot of radio plays, more films, and a TV show), and is just the sort of book everybody read back in the day, like Ben-Hur  or Lorna Doone.  If you grew up (as I did) reading old Peanuts collections from the library, you'll remember Snoopy being a Legionnaire at Fort Zinderneuf.   Three brothers, orphans, grow up at Brandon Abbas under the care of their lovely aunt, Lady Brandon.  Michael, the oldest, is the leader and known as Beau.  His younger twin, Digby, follows, and John, the youngest, is the narrator.  Along with playmates and cousins, they love to look at Aunt Patricia's prize jewel, the huge sapphire known as the Blue Water; and one evening it's stolen.  No one could have done it but the seven people in the room, and Michael decide...

I sure wish I had this cover Wordhoard: Anglo-Saxon Stories , by Jill Paton Walsh and Kevin Crossley-Holland This must have come across the donation table; it's a library discard, but from a Delta High School.  There's no location and it can't be from the Delta I know, so it's probably from the one near Sacramento; there are several.  I would not have been attracted to it in high school.  The cover is pretty 60s and hideous.  This one, from a Puffin paperback, is much more interesting-looking, and the lettering makes me think Trina Schart Hyman may have done it, though it's not her usual style at all.  She did a whole lot of book covers though! I didn't really know what this book was, so I was actually pretty surprised to open it and find short stories based on famous Anglo-Saxon events or poems.  They're very well-written too, as you'd expect, and they go in chronological order.  Here we see a woodwose captured and find that he's a former British ch...

 Early Riser , by Jasper Fforde Here's another donation table title that's been sitting around too long.  (I'm going to go put all of these in the local Little Free Library, since the booksale is on hiatus at the moment.)  I love Fforde's Thursday Next series -- did you see a new and final one is coming out? -- but I wasn't sure what to make of this one and had a vague feeling that it was one of the Nursery Crimes series, which it is not.  It's a stand-alone. On an alternate Earth where ice ages have never ended, humanity has evolved to deal with the bone-chilling winter months by hibernating.  Pretty much everyone bunks down in dormitoria of ancient design, watched over by the few willing (or necessitated) to stay awake through the dangerous winter.  These porters, consuls, and others are supposed to protect the sleepers from the cold, the Villains who wish to plunder, and the legendary (?) Wintervolk who may plan to suck the marrow from your bones.  ...

 Castle Dor , by Arthur Quiller-Couch and Daphne du Maurier Yep, this is my copy You've almost certainly heard of the novelist Daphne du Maurier, writer of Rebecca and many other tales, often set in Cornwall.  As a young woman, she became friendly with Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who lived in Cornwall when he wasn't being an eminent Cambridge professor of literature.  He was working on a novel, but had little time for writing, and then the war came, and he died in 1944.  The manuscript was unfinished and had no notes about where it was going to go, but in 1960, du Maurier completed the novel at the request of Q's daughter.  The result is Castle Dor , set in a factual Cornish landscape (you can look up most of these spots on the map, though Dor is Dore now), but playing with legend. In the early 1860s, a young and beautiful Mrs. Linnet Lewarne meets Amyot Trestane, a Breton sailor.  Somehow, their immediate attraction to each other sets in motion a long-past ...

 Kraken , by China Mieville Billy Harrow, inoffensive curator of molluscs, is leading a tour around the Natural History Museum in London.  His prize showpiece is the preserved giant squid in the Darwin Room -- but it is vanished, tank, preservative, and all.  How could a gigantic specimen, larger than the door itself, simply disappear?  And then Billy is thrown out of his quiet, rational life into the world of London's underground cults, and all the  knackers, criminals, and strange creatures that go with them.  The end of the world is on its way, and nobody knows how to stop it.  ,  The Church of God Kraken is convinced Billy is the prophet to solve their problems.  A terrifying murderous duo is on his track, and so is the police department that works on cultic crimes.  A dead sorcerer is perhaps back in the game? and his rival, a living Tattoo on a poor schlub's back, is determined to get there first.  Everyone wants the kraken bu...

Wow, I hate this cover.   Look at them simpering! Det Går An/It is Acceptable , by  C. J. L. Almqvist Long ago in college, I read a lot of Scandinavian literature, and one of my favorites was the Romantic novel The Queen's Diadem (Drottnigens juvelsmycker) .  The only other work of Almqvist I've been able to track down in English is Det Går An/It is Acceptable , also published as Sara Videbeck .  This was a scandalous story in 1838 and led to Almqvist's removal from his position in the church. It all starts on a ferry; sergeant Albert notices a self-possessed young woman, clearly out on business.  They get to talking, and Sara tells him about her life running the family glassworks.  Soon they are good friends, and decide to travel together.  Nothing much happens except that they build a mutually respectful friendship, and when Albert wants to marry Sara, she argues that marriage is a trap, and they'd be much better off keeping their respective jo...

 I've been pretty lax about posting, but I do have books!  It's been a busy summer so far, even if much of the activity has been sewing.  I also spent a week in Seattle, visiting my sister with my mom.  My sister has exciting plans to move back down here and start a small business of her own, as she is desperate to escape the tech world.  While we were there, an awful tragedy hit our own branch library; you may have heard about the young guy who decided to stage a mass shooting at the Chico public library.  He killed two men, and I'm grateful for the quick response from my friends the library staff who herded families to safety, and for the fact that the kid wasn't very good at what he wanted to do, and the fast police response.  The perpetrator probably didn't imagine an aftermath, but now he faces a lifetime in prison.  Our town has rallied around the families and the library.  It was horrifying, and now our library is closed; they were goi...