Top Ten Tuesday: Books with handwriting on the cover

June 9, 2026June 7, 20265 Comments

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Books with Handwriting on the Cover (Or fonts that look like handwriting. Titles, subtitles, covers with letters on them, etc.)”

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

1. A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie – Many editions of Agatha Christie’s novels have her signature on the cover, so this was an easy choice to start my list. In this one, Miss Marple investigates the poisoning of a businessman who is found dead with a handful of rye in his pocket.

2. The Valley of Adventure by Enid Blyton – Enid Blyton was a big part of my childhood and her Adventure series was one of my favourites. I particularly loved this one and Castle of Adventure. As with Christie’s books, her signature usually appeared on the cover.

3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows – This novel about life in German-occupied Guernsey during the Second World War is written in the form of letters, which makes the writing on the cover very appropriate.

4. Myself When Young by Daphne du Maurier – As the title suggests, this is du Maurier’s autobiography and focuses on her childhood and early adulthood. The book ends just after her marriage so we don’t get any thoughts on her later life.

5. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini – I loved this classic novel set during the French Revolution! The flamboyant calligraphy on the cover suits the theatricality of the main character, Andre-Louis Moreau, who joins a Commedia dell’Arte acting troupe as part of a larger plan to avenge the death of his friend in a duel.

6. Nelly Dean by Alison Case – A retelling of Wuthering Heights written from the perspective of the servant, Nelly Dean. An interesting idea, but I’m glad Emily Brontë chose to tell Catherine and Heathcliff’s story instead of Nelly’s! The title font looks like it could be handwritten, doesn’t it?

7. Written in My Own Heart’s Blood by Diana Gabaldon – This is the eighth book in Gabaldon’s Outlander series and is set mainly in 1770s America during the Revolution. I loved the first three books in this series, but the later ones not so much. I assume the font here is intended to look like writing in blood.

8. The Lost Book of Salem by Katherine Howe – We follow a 20th century history student as she attempts to track down a spell book belonging to Deliverance Dane, one of the women accused of witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The cover itself looks like a book with a pretty handwritten font.

9. Miss Granby’s Secret: or The Bastard of Pinsk by Eleanor Farjeon – The subtitle is written in handwriting on the cover, which is quite apt because The Bastard of Pinsk is an unpublished manuscript written by Adelaide Granby, who has recently died. Her niece inherits the manuscript and reads it, hoping to learn more about Aunt Adelaide and a possible secret love.

10. The Silk Merchant’s Daughter by Dinah Jefferies – This novel follows the story of the daughter of a silk merchant living through a turbulent time in the history of French Indochina, the group of former French colonial territories which included Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Several of Jefferies’ other book covers also use a similar elegant font.

What do you think of these covers? Can you think of any others that have handwriting on them? And have you read any of the books I’ve listed here? I’m away in the Lake District this week with limited internet access but will reply to comments when I can.

Six Degrees of Separation: From The Post Office Girl to The Tiger’s Wife

June 6, 202621 Comments

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 Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig. I haven’t read it, but here’s what it’s about:

It’s the 1930s. Christine, A young Austrian woman whose family has been impoverished by the war, toils away in a provincial post office. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives from an American aunt she’s never known, inviting her to spend two weeks in a Grand Hotel in a fashionable Swiss resort. She accepts and is swept up into a world of almost inconceivable wealth and unleashed desire, where she allows herself to be utterly transformed. Then, just as abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose and she has to return to the post office, where – yes – nothing will ever be the same.

My first link is a very obvious one, inspired by the mention of post offices – I’ve chosen The Postmistress by Sarah Blake (1). It tells the story of a postmistress (or postmaster as she prefers to call herself) in a small town in Massachusetts during World War II. Although I found this book a bit disappointing and couldn’t connect with the characters, I did enjoy the insights into how the war was affecting the lives of American people in the period just before the US officially joined the conflict.

Another book that explores life in America during the war is Elisabeth Sanxay Holding’s 1947 novel, The Blank Wall (2). I really enjoyed this one! It follows Lucia Holley, who is left at home with her teenage children while her husband is serving in the Navy and finds herself covering up a series of crimes in an attempt to avoid a family scandal. I loved the way Holding blends the details of Lucia’s domestic life with elements of suspense and danger.

The name Lucia appears in the title of the first book in EF Benson’s Mapp and Lucia series, Queen Lucia (3). First published in 1920, this is a humorous novel about a small community presided over by Emmeline Lucas, who really does regard herself as queen of the village! This book wasn’t entirely to my taste and I haven’t continued with the next one yet, but I read it at the start of the Covid pandemic and it was just the sort of light read I needed to take my mind off things.

The word Mapp made me think of maps and mapmakers. In The Bird King by G Willow Wilson (4), a mapmaker in Granada’s Alhambra palace is accused of sorcery when it’s discovered that he has the ability to draw magical maps of places he has never visited. He and his friend, Fatima, flee across 15th century Spain in search of the legendary island of Qaf, said to be the home of the King of the Birds. This is an unusual novel, combining history, myth and fantasy.

Court of Lions by Jane Johnson (5) is also set, at least partly, in the Alhambra. This is a dual timeline novel. Although I found the modern day storyline too melodramatic and some of the threads linking the two periods were unconvincing, the historical storyline is fascinating, covering the life of Sultan Abu Abdullah Muhammad (known as Boabdil) and the fall of Granada in 1492.

From lions to tigers for my final link! The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht (6), which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction (then known as the Orange Prize) in 2011, is set in an unnamed Balkan country and follows a young woman who decides to investigate the circumstances surrounding her grandfather’s death and discovers a link with an old folk tale involving an escaped tiger. I remember finding it interesting but I still haven’t read any of her other books.

And that’s my chain for June. My links have included: post offices, America in WWII, the name Lucia, maps (or Mapps), the Alhambra and big cats!

In July we’ll be starting with Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke.

Top Ten Tuesday: Characters named after flowers

May 12, 202615 Comments

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “May Flowers (This is a companion to the April Showers topic from last month. Interpret however you’d like: books with flowers on the cover, colorful covers, books set in springtime, books where flowers/plants are a common theme, titles with flower names in them, characters named after flowers, covers that are as pretty as flowers, books featuring gardens, etc.)”

There were lots of possible options this week! I’ve previously listed books with flowers in the titles, so this time I decided to go with characters named after flowers.

1. Lily by Rose Tremain is a dark novel about a young woman, Lily Mortimer, accused of murder in Victorian London.

2. Daisy Muir in A Pink Front Door by Stella Gibbons is one of those people who always finds herself trying to solve other people’s problems!

3. A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier tells the story of Violet Speedwell, a single woman whose fiancé was killed in the First World War.

4. Heather Badcock is poisoned during a party in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and it’s up to Miss Marple to find the murderer!

5. Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd is a 1950s seaside mystery and features a puppeteer, Professor Poppy, who runs a Punch and Judy show.

6. Not the name of a specific flower, but flowers in general – Flora is one of the two children (the other being her brother Miles) who appear in Henry James’ classic Gothic novella The Turn of the Screw.

7. The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal has two characters with flowery names – Iris Whittle and her sister Rose, who both work at Mrs Salter’s Doll Emporium, painting faces on china dolls.

8. In The Key in the Lock by Beth Underdown, Ivy Boscawen is trying to come to terms with the death of her son in the trenches of the Western Front, bringing back memories of another boy who died under suspicious circumstances thirty years earlier.

9. I loved The Ghost Writer by John Harwood, about a man who discovers a collection of ghost stories written by his great-grandmother, Viola Hatherley. It seems to be out of print now, which is a shame.

10. One of my favourite books as a child, Watership Down by Richard Adams, features several rabbits named after flowers, including Dandelion and Bluebell.

Have you read any of these books? Which other characters with flowery names can you think of?

Six Degrees of Separation: From Wild Dark Shore to This Sweet Sickness

May 2, 202629 Comments

This month we’re starting with Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, which was longlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction.

I haven’t read it but here’s what it’s about:

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny weather-lashed island that is home to the world’s largest seed bank. As Shearwater risks being lost to rising sea levels, the island’s researchers have fled, and only the Salts remain.

Until, during the worst storm in living memory, a stranger washes ashore. The family nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, but it seems she isn’t telling the whole truth about why she’s there. And when Rowan stumbles upon sabotaged radios and a recently dug grave, she realises that she’s not the only one on the island with a secret.

A novel of breathtaking twists and dizzying beauty, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love.

My first thought was to link to a book set on an island, but I’m sure I’ve done that a few times before, so I went with a simple link to a book with Dark in the title instead. The Dark (1) is the fifth book in Sharon Bolton’s Lacey Flint series and begins with Lacey, who works for the Metropolitan Police Marine Unit, becoming caught up in a terrorist attack planned by a new group calling themselves MenMatter.

Another book that’s the fifth in a series is The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope (2). It’s part of the Palliser series and in this book we see our old friend Plantagenet Palliser become Prime Minister at last while in another subplot, we follow lawyer’s daughter Emily Wharton who has fallen in love with the book’s villain, Ferdinand Lopez. I really need to pick up the final book in the series soon.

The next link is quite an obvious one – another novel about a Prime Minister – this time a real one! Precipice by Robert Harris (3) tells the story of Herbert Henry Asquith who was in power from 1908 to 1916. The book focuses on his relationship with the socialite Venetia Stanley and the way he handled the early stages of the First World War. It’s a fascinating novel from a political history point of view, although I didn’t find it as gripping as some of his other books.

Penitence by Kristin Koval (4) also has a one-word, nine-letter title beginning with P and ending with E. Set in a Colorado ski resort, it takes as its starting point the murder of a teenage boy by his own sister and goes on to explore the laws surrounding juvenile crimes, as well as raising questions about blame and forgiveness.

Another crime novel set in a ski resort is Dead Men Don’t Ski by Patricia Moyes (5). I’ve just finished reading this one so haven’t written a review yet. It was published in 1959 and is the first of many novels Moyes wrote featuring Inspector Henry Tibbett. In this one, Tibbett goes on a skiing trip to Italy with his wife and is drawn into solving the murder of a man who appears to have been shot dead on the ski lift. I enjoyed this book and will be reading more of them!

An author who shares a name with Patricia Moyes is Patricia Highsmith. I’ve only read two of her books and have used Strangers on a Train in a previous chain, so my link here is to This Sweet Sickness (6). This unsettling novel follows the double life of a man who refuses to accept that his relationship with the woman he loves is over.

And that’s my chain for May! My links have included: the word Dark, fifth books in a series, Prime Ministers, one word titles beginning with P, ski resorts and authors called Patricia.

Next month we’ll be starting with a book by Austrian author Stefan Zweig – The Post-Office Girl

Top Ten Tuesday: Things to do on a rainy day

April 21, 202639 Comments

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “April Showers (Interpret this however you’d like: rainy day reads, books that make you cry, books that give you happy tears, books to wash away a bad reading experience, books set in rainy places, books with rain/raindrops/umbrellas on the cover, blue book covers, etc.)”

There are so many ways to approach this week’s topic, but I’ve decided to make a list of things you could do on a rainy day and choose a book title to fit each one.

1. Go to a museum

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

2. Play cards

Cards on the table by Agatha Christie

3. Have tea

Tea on Sunday by Lettice Cooper

4. Go to the library

The Astral Library by Kate Quinn

5. Play hide and seek

A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor

6. Sit by the fire

Fireside Gothic by Andrew Taylor

7. Write in your diary

Diary of a Provincial Lady by EM Delafield

8. Decorate your house

The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen

9. Tend your indoor plants

Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell

10. Wait for the sun

The Sunrise by Victoria Hislop

What do you like to do when it’s raining outside? Can you think of any other books I could add to this list?

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

April 4, 202636 Comments

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!

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.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books on my Spring TBR

March 24, 202617 Comments

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Books on my Spring TBR”.

There are more than 10 books I would like to read this spring, but here are some that are definitely on my list.

1. A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer – I’ve just started reading this one in preparation for 1961 Club in April. There are at least two other 1961 books I would like to read as well, but not sure how many I’ll have time for.

2. The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch – I was intending to read this in March for Cathy’s Reading Ireland Month and Iris Murdoch readalong, but got distracted by other books. It will be an April read instead, I think.

3. Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie – I’m planning to read this in May for the Read Christie challenge as the theme that month is Christie’s short story collections.

4. Love Lane by Patrick Gale – A sequel to Gale’s A Place Called Winter, which I read a few years ago and enjoyed.

5. This Dark Night by Deborah Lutz – I’m trying to read more non-fiction this year, so I’m looking forward to this new biography of Emily Brontë.

6. Troubled Waters by Ichiyo Higuchi – Most of the Japanese fiction I read tends to be crime, so I’m curious about this short story collection, which will be something slightly different for me.

7. A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz – I’ve enjoyed all of the other books in Horowitz’s Daniel Hawthorne series, so I’m expecting to enjoy this one as well.

8. Benbecula by Graeme Burnet Macrae – I’ve been meaning to read this since it was published last year and was reminded about it when it was recently longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

9. The Artist by Lucy Steeds – This is also on the Walter Scott Prize longlist and has excellent reviews, so I’m looking forward to reading it.

10. Strange Buildings by Uketsu – I thought Uketsu’s previous two books, Strange Pictures and Strange Houses, were fascinating, so I can’t wait to read this one.

Have you read any of these or would you like to? What are you hoping to read this spring?