A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer – #1961Club

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This week, Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon of Stuck in a Book are hosting another of their clubs where we all read and write about books published in the same year – and this time it’s 1961! There are some authors who were so prolific you can usually rely on them to have had a book published in any given year and one of those authors is Georgette Heyer. Her novel from 1961 is A Civil Contract and it’s one I hadn’t read before, so I decided to read it for the club.

A Civil Contract is set, like most of her novels, in the Regency period and begins with Adam Deveril, the new Viscount Lynton, returning from the Peninsular War to find his family facing financial ruin. It seems that his father, who recently died, has left so much debt that the Deverils could have to sell Fontley, their beloved country estate. Adam is also forced to end his relationship with the woman he loves, Julia Oversley, knowing that a marriage between the two of them will no longer be considered appropriate. Julia’s father, Lord Oversley, however, has a possible solution to Adam’s money problems – his friend, Jonathan Chawleigh, is a very wealthy merchant and has a daughter whom he is determined to marry into the aristocracy.

Compared to the beautiful Julia, Adam finds Jenny Chawleigh plain and ordinary, but as he gets to know her better he quickly discovers that she’s intelligent, funny, sensible and kind-hearted. To Mr Chawleigh’s delight, the marriage goes ahead, with his daughter gaining the title of Lady Lynton, and in return Adam receives the money he needs to keep Fontley in the family and provide for his mother and sisters. It’s a practical marriage rather than one made for love and Jenny understands that Adam’s heart still lies with Julia, but the two are quite happy together – except on the many occasions when Mr Chawleigh interferes and becomes irritatingly over-generous with his money!

I enjoyed this book. It’s not as much fun as some of Heyer’s others – it’s a quieter, more mature novel, similar to Black Sheep, for example – but I liked the characters and the realistic portrayal of a marriage of convenience in that era. There’s no passionate romance here, just two people learning to get along together. I did feel sorry for Jenny, though, because she clearly loves Adam from the beginning and has to accept that he doesn’t feel the same way about her, at least not while Julia is still around. He does eventually start to see Julia in a slightly different light, but there’s still a sense that part of him will always love her and not Jenny. As a romance, then, the book is not entirely satisfying, but it’s believable.

We don’t really get the sparkling, witty dialogue between hero and heroine that we get in other Heyer novels, but there’s still some humour, mainly provided by Jenny’s father, Mr Chawleigh. He’s a wonderful character – he’s loud and overbearing, considered ‘vulgar’ by upper class society, but he’s also well-meaning and genuinely wants to use his money to make Adam and Jenny happy. I enjoyed watching his relationship with Adam develop as they come to understand and respect each other, despite some serious differences of opinion along the way.

So, I don’t think I would name A Civil Contract one of my absolute favourite Heyer novels, but it’s still one that I liked very much and a perfect choice to start my 1961 Club reading.

#1961Club – Some previous reads

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1961 Club, hosted by Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, starts on Monday, which means we’ll all be reading and writing about books published in that year. 1961 was a great year for publishing – I have previously read and reviewed six books on my blog and thought I would list them before the week begins. If you haven’t decided what to read yet, maybe you can find some inspiration here.

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The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett – The first book in one of my favourite series, the Lymond Chronicles, and one I would love to see someone read for 1961 Club! I know this book doesn’t appeal to everyone due to the frequent literary references, foreign language quotes, the complex plot and Lymond himself, an enigmatic character seen only through the eyes of other people, always in as bad a light as possible. For those of us who connect with it, though, it’s a wonderful reading experience, so I do highly recommend giving this book a try.

The Way to the Lantern by Audrey Erskine Lindop – Lindop seems to be a truly forgotten author, with all of her work now out of print, but she was very successful in the 1960s, with some of her books made into films. I found a copy of her French Revolution novel, The Way to the Lantern, a few years ago and absolutely loved it. I live in hope of a publisher bringing her back into print so more people can discover her work.

Death of a Tin God by George Bellairs – This is part of Bellair’s Inspector Littlejohn mystery series, although the books work as standalones and don’t need to be read in order. I’ve read four of them and this isn’t one of my favourites, but the Isle of Man setting makes it interesting.

The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart – I love Mary Stewart’s books, including this one, in which Mary Grey is approached by a man who has mistaken her for his cousin, Annabel, and persuades her to impersonate Annabel as part of a scheme to inherit his great-uncle’s fortune. This book has a particularly clever plot and, like all Stewart’s novels, a great sense of place.

The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie – A standalone Christie with neither Poirot nor Miss Marple – although another of her recurring characters, the crime writer Ariadne Oliver, does make an appearance, which is always nice to see! With a plot involving three women believed to be witches, this is an atmospheric and unsettling novel with a real sense of evil and a hint of the supernatural. It’s not one of my top few Christies but I did enjoy it.

Castle Dor by Daphne du Maurier – Du Maurier is another author I usually love, but Castle Dor, based on the legend of Tristan and Iseult, is my least favourite of her books by far. That’s probably because it’s not all her own work – the book was begun by Arthur Quiller-Couch and completed after his death by du Maurier. A lot of online sources say it was published in 1962, but the copyright in the edition I read says 1961 so I’ve included it here.

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Have you read any of these? Will you be taking part in 1961 Club next week?

Circle of Shadows by Marisa Linton

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Mystery, fantasy, historical fiction, dark academia…this is a difficult book to classify as it’s all of those things and more. Most importantly, it’s also a fascinating, entertaining read and after finishing it I was pleased to learn that it’s the first in a series, with the second book, Domain of Darkness, coming later this year.

The novel is set in 1904 and follows Evie Winstanley, the daughter of a scholar who collects occult books. When her father is found dead in his study, with his clothes dripping with water and a circular symbol chalked on the floor beside him, Evie is determined to find out what has happened to him. Convinced that he was working on some kind of occult ritual before his death, she manages to identify the symbol as the Kuroskato, or circle of shadows.

Evie’s investigations take her first to a country house on the Yorkshire moors and then to Oxford, where she learns more about the Kuroskato and how it could be dangerous in the hands of the wrong people. She also meets two very different men: Marcus Ellingham, a reporter for The Ghost Hunter, who has written a series of articles on fraudulent mediums, and Aubrey Penhallow, a country gentleman who is an expert on horse racing. One of them is a friend from the beginning, whereas the other is much more difficult to interpret. As Evie’s path crosses with both men again and again throughout the book, she must decide which, if either, can be trusted.

I enjoyed this book and liked the way the supernatural elements were always there in the background but never really dominated the story too much. Yes, this is a world where the dark arts really exist, where people can be possessed and spirits can be summoned, but Linton manages to weave these things into the plot in a way that feels convincing and believable. The mixture of a scholarly historical setting with a real, practical system of magic kept reminding me of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, although the plots of the two books are very different.

I also found Evie a very engaging character. She shares her father’s love of history, books and archaeology, but as a woman in Edwardian England her opportunities to pursue an academic career of her own are very limited. When she finds her way to Oxford University in search of answers to the mystery, she has to navigate the halls of all-male colleges, gain access to the Bodleian Library and infiltrate a secret society, the Sons of Dionysus, made up of rich and privileged young men. The sections of the book set in Oxford are wonderfully atmospheric, whether Linton is describing the world of academia, the bustling streets of the tourist areas or the banks of the River Cherwell at night. The earlier parts of the book, where Evie and her sister visit Yorkshire are just as vividly described and the country estate with its dark and sinister lake provides a contrast to the urban setting we see later on.

Although I guessed who the villain was in advance, I was still satisfied with the ending, particularly as it sets things up perfectly for the second book. I can’t wait to see what Evie does next and wish we didn’t have to wait until December to find out!

Thanks to Hodderscape for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams

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Watership Down has been one of my favourite books since I first read it as a ten-year-old and when I re-read it in 2010 I was pleased to find I still loved it as much as I ever did (it’s a book that can be equally appreciated by both adults and children, I think). Despite that, the thought of reading the sequel, Tales from Watership Down, has never really appealed to me – it’s a collection of short stories rather than a novel like the first book and I’ve heard a lot of people say they were disappointed by it. Anyway, I decided to give it a try this Easter (I’ve always associated Watership Down with this time of year as the film often used to be shown on Easter Sunday until parents complained that it was too violent and not the nice cartoon about cute bunnies they’d assumed it was!).

The book is divided into three sections, beginning with a selection of stories featuring El-ahrairah, also known as ‘the Prince with a Thousand Enemies’, the legendary folk hero of the rabbit world. If you’ve read Watership Down, you’ll remember that the rabbits often entertain or comfort themselves by telling stories about El-ahrairah (whom Richard Adams himself described as a rabbit version of Robin Hood). These stories were always my least favourite parts of the novel as I felt they were just a distraction from the main narrative, so I wasn’t exactly thrilled about there being so many of them here. However, I really enjoyed the first one, The Sense of Smell, in which El-ahrairah goes on a journey to several faraway lands in search of someone who can give him the ability to smell, a sense which rabbits don’t yet have, making them vulnerable to predators. He is told that the sinister Ilips, who live in a cave in a land of perpetual darkness, will be able to give him this sense for himself and his rabbits, but things don’t go to plan and El-ahrairah is forced to travel on to the Land of Yesterday, a fascinating fictional world!

At the end of this section there are two stories which don’t involve El-ahrairah. One, Speedwell’s Story, is an intentionally silly story which Adams says in the introduction is ‘representative of the kind of nonsense tales which rabbits enjoy’. As I’m not a rabbit, I didn’t enjoy that one, but I did like The Rabbit’s Ghost Story, which is told by a rabbit called Coltsfoot. As he tells of his encounter with a ghostly rabbit, it’s very atmospheric and while Adams’ writing is often quite dark, this particular story comes close to the horror genre.

The second section of the book consists of four more El-ahrairah stories, but this time they are connected and describe what happened when El-ahrairah and his friend Rabscuttle return from visiting the Black Rabbit of Inlé (this journey was referred to in the original novel). I was intrigued by the first one, The Story of the Comical Field, in which the two rabbits are tricked into entering a man-made maze where they encounter an unspecified ‘evil’, but I found the other stories less interesting.

Finally, we come to the third section and the one I think most of us will have been waiting for: a continuation of the events of Watership Down, describing some of the things that happen to Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig and the others after they establish their new warren on the Down. They don’t have such dramatic adventures as in the first book, but do have to deal with various newcomers who disturb the stability of the warren, including Stonecrop, an escaped hutch rabbit who smells of man, and Flyairth, a doe who is convinced they are all going to die of the White Blindness (myxomatosis). Maybe in response to criticism of the first book being sexist, Adams gives a lot of attention to Hyzenthlay, Vilthuril and the other doe characters and explores the idea of warrens being run by female Chief Rabbits. I enjoyed this final part of the book, but was left feeling a bit sad because it gave us a glimpse of what a true sequel could have looked like.

So, do I think this book is worth reading? I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to Richard Adams, but if you enjoyed Watership Down and want to spend more time in that world, then you’ll probably like the third part of the book at least – but don’t set your expectations too high and be prepared for lots of El-ahrairah.

Six Degrees of Separation: From The Correspondent to The Queen’s Rival

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It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we’re starting with The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, an epistolary novel which has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. I haven’t read it, but here’s what it’s about:

Every morning, Sybil Van Antwerp sits down to write letters – to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to attend a class she desperately wants to take, to her favourite authors to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Because at seventy-three, Sybil has used her correspondence – witty and wise – to make sense of the world. But beyond the page, she has spent the last thirty years keeping the people who love her at arms’ length… Until letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life.

Now, Sybil must send the letter she has been writing for all these years – and find forgiveness within herself in order to move on.

Mollie Panter-Downes was the London correspondent for The New Yorker magazine for almost 50 years, beginning in 1939. I’ve read and enjoyed her collection of short stories, Good Evening Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes (1). The twenty-one stories in the book originally appeared in The New Yorker and focus on the lives of British people during the war.

A book which shares a word in the title is An Evening with Claire by Gaito Gazdanov (2). Our narrator, Kolya, spends an evening in Paris with Claire, the woman he loves, while her husband is away. Later, when Claire is asleep, he reflects on his life and the events that led to their first meeting. Gazdanov was a Russian émigré living in Paris and the novel feels very autobiographical. I read it in an English translation by Bryan Karetnyk.

The name Claire leads me to Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These (3). This beautifully written novella is set in a small Irish community and touches on the scandal of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries – institutions for unmarried mothers and other ‘fallen women’ which became the focus of allegations of abuse and neglect. The story takes place in the winter of 1985, which was a particularly cold one.

Another novel set during a very cold winter is The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller (4). The book follows the stories of two married couples whose relationships become strained as they try to adjust to life in rural England during the winter of 1962-63, one of the coldest on record in the UK.

We’ve just entered spring here and are looking forward to summer, so I don’t really want to spend any more time thinking about winter. Let’s move on to a book with a summery title instead: The Summer Queen by Elizabeth Chadwick (5). This is the first in a trilogy of novels about Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was queen of France as the wife of King Louis VII, and then queen of England as the wife of King Henry II.

Another historical novel with the word ‘Queen’ in the title is The Queen’s Rival by Anne O’Brien (6). It tells the story of Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, who was the mother of two English kings – Edward IV and Richard III – and played an important role during the Wars of the Roses. Written in the form of letters and diary entries, it’s an epistolary novel, so brings the chain full circle!

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And that’s my chain for April. My links have included: correspondents, the word ‘evening’, the name Claire, cold winters, seasons of the year and queens.

In May we’ll be starting with Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy.

The Mill House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

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Translated by Ho-Ling Wong

This is the third of Japanese author Yukito Ayatsuji’s books I’ve read – I loved The Labyrinth House Murders but found The Decagon House Murders disappointing, so I was curious to see what I would think of this one. All three books are part of Ayatsuji’s Bizarre House series and all of them feature the detective Shimada Kiyoshi and an unusual, sinister house designed by the architect Nakamura Seiji. The Mill House Murders was originally published in Japanese in 1988 and is available from Pushkin Press in an English translation.

This book is set entirely within the walls of the Mill House which, like the Decagon House and Labyrinth House, is one of Nakamura’s creations. It’s home to Fujinuma Kiichi, who sustained terrible injuries in a car accident several years earlier and is now confined to a wheelchair, with a mask and gloves covering the damage to his face and hands. Kiichi is the son of the late artist Fujinuma Issei, and although he normally lives a reclusive life with his wife, Yurie, and their servants, once a year he invites a group of acquaintances to the house to look at his father’s paintings.

In September 1985, the group are making their annual visit when several shocking events occur, all in the space of one night: a woman falls to her death from the tower, one of Issei’s paintings vanishes, one of the guests disappears without explanation and a gruesome discovery is made in the furnace room. A solution is suggested by the police, but it’s not very satisfactory and lots of questions remain unanswered. A year later, in September 1986, the same people have gathered at the Mill House again and this time they are joined by Shimada Kiyoshi, a friend of the man who disappeared (and was largely blamed for everything that happened). Shimada believes he can find out the truth about the events of 1985, but he’ll have to hurry before history begins to repeat itself.

The Mill House Murders is another Ayatsuji novel that I thoroughly enjoyed, so it does seem that it’s only The Decagon House that, for whatever reason, didn’t work for me and I’m glad I decided to give him another chance! Although I often find that Japanese mysteries focus very heavily on complex puzzle solving, often involving alibis, timetables and maps, with characters, relationships and motives pushed into the background, this particular book is more balanced. It does have some floor plans, but I was pleased to find that I could follow the plot quite easily without having to study them too carefully, and the characterisation is stronger than in the Decagon and Labyrinth books.

The timeline switches backwards and forwards throughout the book, with one chapter describing the events of 1985 and the next set in the present day of 1986. This could have become confusing, but as long as I paid attention to the chapter headings, I had no problem keeping them straight in my mind. The mystery itself is a clever one; I partly managed to solve it (mainly because some of Seishi Yokomizo’s novels have similar tropes), but I didn’t get it completely right and was content to let Shimada Kiyoshi, the series detective, explain the full solution for me.

The translator, Ho-Ling Wong, also translated the other books I’ve read in this series and does a great job of making everything very clear and readable. I see there’s a fourth book in the series already in print – The Clock House Murders – and another, The Black Cat House Murders, on its way. I’ll look forward to reading both!

My Commonplace Book: March 2026

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A selection of quotes and pictures to represent March’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

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“One of the difficulties of mankind is that they have the vice of inventiveness. It would be an easier world for dragons if this were not so, or if it could be kept within bounds, used for the better working of gold, setting of jewels, or such trading activities as bringing treasure from far countries within reach of dragons.”

Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison (1952)

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For a moment, standing beneath the wide skies and the vista of fields and ancient hedgerows exactly the same as they had been centuries before, she had no longer been in the present day, instead caught up in the turmoil her ancestors had lived through. Love longed for, and love lost. With her feet placed firmly in both times, Paige was able to feel the heartache and anger in both.

The Alchemist’s Secret by Clare Marchant (2026)

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“Strawberry Thief”, 1883, William Morris

‘Everyone is an artist deep down inside; people are creative by their very nature. That’s something Lionel hates to admit because he likes to think he’s special, but I think if we can open up art to everyone that can only be a good thing.’

The Strawberry House by Rachel Burton (2026)

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You had so many ways of deciding which way to live your life. It made his head spin to think of them. It hurt his heart to think that he had decided on the wrong way.

A thing seemed important until there was something more important.

West by Carys Davies (2018)

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‘To be able to love is a luxury,’ he said. ‘That’s why it is always balanced exactly with loss. It is another of life’s great justices.’

The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomaski (2026)

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‘You know as well as I do that the world is in a mess and floundering deeper every day. We have only a precarious hold on the forces we do liberate – and problems that we ought to be trying to solve, we neglect.’

Trouble with Lichen by John Wyndham (1960)

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Etching of Cromarty by James Fittler, 1804

‘I think Miss Juniper would acknowledge we do these young women a better service by forewarning them of what awaits them in the world they will soon set out in than by leaving them ignorant of it and allowing them to be guided only by novels. There is a class of people amongst whom they will move that do not always face the justice they should, and it is important they understand that.’

The Cromarty Library Circle by Shona MacLean (2026)

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Yes, she thought, going to war had solved so much, it had left things in abeyance, it had meant that all discussion had been postponed, it had made compromise impossible, but in solving what it did, it had solved too much. It had solved everything so there was nothing left.

The News from Dublin by Colm Tóibín (2026)

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‘There is no one right way to do things,’ she said seriously. ‘Life looks different for everybody and just because something you want hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it won’t. There are a thousand different stories waiting in your life, Thea, and you still have time to tell whichever one you want. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.’

A Remedy for Fate by MA Kuzniar (2026)

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My favourite books read in March:

The Strawberry House and West

Authors read for the first time in March:

Rachel Burton, Naomi Mitchison, Clare Marchant, Angela Tomaski

Places visited in my March reading:

England, France, US, Ireland, Spain, Argentina, Czech Republic, Scotland

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Reading notes: In March I managed to take part in both Reading Ireland and Reading Wales, with books by Colm Tóibín and Carys Davies respectively. I also completed my Classics Club Spin book, Trouble with Lichen, ahead of the deadline. More importantly, I enjoyed most of the books I read in March, although the Angela Tomaski took me a while to get into, and I had mixed feelings about the Shona MacLean as well.

In April I’m looking forward to 1961 Club which will be hosted by Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon of Stuck in a Book. I also have some NetGalley books to catch up with, so it will be another busy month.

How was March for you? Do you have any plans for your April reading?