This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Halloween Freebie”.

I’ve joined in with the Halloween Freebie topic every year for the last few years and have already posted lists of books with Halloween related words in the title, horror novels I read before blogging, books with monstrous animals and creatures, and books about witches. This year, I’ve chosen books with vampires in them. I decided to only include books I’ve actually reviewed on my blog – as you can see, I struggled to find ten, but managed it in the end!

1. Dracula by Bram Stoker – The obvious first choice for any list of vampire books! I enjoyed this one, but as with any classic story that has become such a big part of popular culture, it’s difficult to fully appreciate it the way readers at the time would have done.

2. The Vampyre by John Polidori – One of the earliest vampire stories and an influence on many that would follow. I read this along with Byron’s unfinished Fragment of a Novel and both are fascinating to read from the perspective of understanding the origins of vampire fiction.

3. White Teeth, Red Blood: Selected Vampiric Verses – A poetry anthology with a vampire theme. It includes classic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christina Rossetti, Rudyard Kipling and Emily Dickinson as well as some contemporary ones.

4. The Nightingale’s Castle by Sonia Velton – The story of Countess Erzsébet Báthory, a Hungarian noblewoman accused of murdering hundreds of peasant girls (and sometimes considered to be an inspiration for Dracula).

5. Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu – Le Fanu’s classic novella about a lesbian vampire is thought to have influenced Dracula, which was published more than twenty years later, but it’s also an entertaining story in its own right.

6. Vlad: The Last Confession by C.C. Humphreys – This is not technically a vampire novel, but historical fiction about Vlad Dracula (also known as Vlad Tepes or Vlad the Impaler), the real life Prince of Wallachia whose name inspired Bram Stoker’s character.

7. A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness – Matthew Clairmont is one of several vampires who arrives at Oxford University in search of a magical manuscript discovered by Diana Bishop, a witch. Matthew and Diana’s story continues in Shadow of Night, but I never read the other books in the series.

8. He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr – There’s no actual vampire in this book, but it deals with a murder in which the prime suspect is a woman believed to be a vampire!

9. A Remedy for Fate by MA Kuzniar – Although he’s just a minor character, Wojslav the vampire runs an antique shop in the Magic Quarter, a magical land hidden beneath the streets of 18th century Prague.

10. The Lady of the House of Love by Angela Carter – This is a short story which appears in The Bloody Chamber and features a beautiful vampire countess who lives in an abandoned chateau in Transylvania.

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And that’s my Top Ten for this week. These books don’t all contain vampires, but they do at least have vampiric connections! I wanted to include Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, but I read that one just before I started blogging. I’m also currently reading The Last Handmaid by Clare Whitfield, another novel about Countess Erzsébet Báthory.

Have you read any of these or any other books with vampires in them?

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Book Covers Featuring Autumnal Colors (submitted by Wordy Witterings).”

This was more difficult than I expected, but I’ve managed to find ten covers featuring shades of orange, gold, brown or dark red. These are all books I’ve read and I’ve provided links to my reviews.

1. The Autumn Throne by Elizabeth Chadwick

2. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

3. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

4. Towers in the Mist by Elizabeth Goudge

5. Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie

6. Sugar Money by Jane Harris

7. Excellent Intentions by Richard Hull

8. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

9. Answer in the Negative by Henrietta Hamilton

10. The Invention of Fire by Bruce Holsinger

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Have you read any of these? Which other books with autumnal covers can you think of?

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Indie Freebie (This topic encompasses a lot: your favorite indie bookstores, indie books, indie authors, indie publishers/presses, indie books on your to-read list, indie authors I read before they became traditionally published, etc.)”

Here are ten books I’ve read that have all been published by different independent publishers. I enjoyed and can recommend all of these! I’ve linked to both my review and the publisher’s website.

1. Canongate Books – Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville

2. Fitzcarraldo Editions – The Tower by Thea Lenarduzzi

3. Fairlight Books – Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton

4. Moonstone Press – The Undetective by Bruce Graeme

5. Dean Street Press – The Black Cabinet by Patricia Wentworth

6. Espresso Publishing – The Blind Woman of Sorrento by Francesco Mastriani

7. Boldwood Books – The Inn at Penglas Cove by Lauren Westwood

8. Pushkin Press – She Walks at Night by Seishi Yokomizo

9. British Library – Deadly Dolls: Midnight Tales of Uncanny Playthings

10. Faber & Faber – Uncle Paul by Celia Fremlin

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Have you read any of these books or anything else from these indie publishers?

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Books With Nationalities In The Title” (submitted by Cathy @What Cathy Read Next)

I’ve managed to find ten different nationalities and also had English, Persian and French as options which I didn’t use. These are all books I’ve read and written about on my blog – I’ve linked to my reviews if you’d like to read my thoughts.

1. The Spanish Bride by Georgette Heyer

2. The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende

3. The Italian Girl by Lucinda Riley

4. The Greek House by Dinah Jefferies

5. Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim

6. The Irish Princess by Elizabeth Chadwick

7. Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay

8. The American Boy by Andrew Taylor

9. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

10. The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter

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Have you read any of these? Which other books with nationalities in the title can you think of?

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Books I Was Reading On This Day Over the Last Ten Years”.

I’m not sure if my list is entirely accurate – I track my reading through Goodreads and found it easy enough to find the books I’d marked as finished on or just after 11th August each year, but that doesn’t mean I was necessarily actually reading them on that date. Anyway, I’m sure it’s close enough!

Here are my ten books, beginning with 2025 and going back through time to 2016.

2025 – One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie – I’ve been taking part in the Read Christie challenge every year for the last few years, so it’s not surprising that there are two Agatha Christie novels on this list! The one I read last August is a Poirot mystery in which he investigates the murder of a dentist.

2024 – Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives by Alice Loxton – An entertaining nonfiction book containing biographies of eighteen historical figures, with a focus on how their first eighteen years shaped the rest of their lives.

2023 – Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith – Only a small part of this psychological thriller is actually set on a train, but it’s the scene of a very significant meeting between a pair of strangers who find themselves discussing a plan to commit two perfect murders!

2022 – The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper – Ancient Rome is not usually a favourite setting of mine, but I found this novel about a group of prostitutes working in a Pompeii brothel completely absorbing.

2021 – The Sussex Downs Murder by John Bude – A British Library Crime Classic first published in 1936 and one of many John Bude novels to feature Superintendent William Meredith. I enjoyed it, but found the solution to the mystery too easy to guess – something I don’t say very often!

2020 – Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie – The second Christie novel on my list and my favourite of the two. This time it’s a Miss Marple mystery – the final Miss Marple novel to be published, in fact – and I found it a particularly atmospheric one.

2019 – The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware – our narrator Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House in Scotland to find that she is just the latest in a long string of nannies in a very short time period. Could the ghostly occurrences taking place in the house be the reason?

2018 – Post of Honour by RF Delderfield – The second book in Delderfield’s A Horseman Riding By trilogy is set during the First World War and explores the impact on the lives of the inhabitants of Devon’s Sorrel Valley.

2017 – Shadow of the Moon by M.M. Kaye – I read this as part of a readalong and loved it, which was no surprise as Kaye’s The Far Pavilions is one of my all-time favourite books. Both books are set in India but are completely separate novels and this one takes place before and during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.

2016 – Exposure by Helen Dunmore – I loved this book which on the surface is a Cold War spy novel but has so many extra layers it becomes something quite different, exploring the consequences of one decision on the lives of a man and his family.

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Have you read any of these?

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: Cover Freebie (Pick any topic related to book covers. You can make up your own topic or pick one from the list of previous ones!)

I decided to find ten books with bodies of water on the cover – rivers, lakes, seas etc. It was more difficult than I expected but I got there eventually! I have written about all of these books on my blog and have linked to my reviews if you’d like to see my thoughts.

1. The Butterfly Picnic by Joan Aiken

2. Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge

3. The Doctor of Thessaly by Anne Zouroudi

4. The Morning Gift by Eva Ibbotson

5. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

6. The Murder of My Aunt by Richard Hull

7. Zennor in Darkness by Helen Dunmore

8. The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

9. The Woman in the Lake by Nicola Cornick

10. Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian

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Have you read any of these? Can you think of any more books with water on the cover?

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: Book Titles That Include the Word “[insert word of your choice here]” (Pick a word and share ten book titles that include that word!)

Lots of possible choices here, but I’ve chosen the word ‘Summer’. These are all books that I’ve read and reviewed on my blog.

1. The Summer Queen by Elizabeth Chadwick – The first in a trilogy of historical novels telling the story of Eleanor of Aquitaine. I enjoyed all three books.

2. A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson – Not my favourite by Ibbotson but I still liked it. It follows the daughter of a suffragette who decides to become a housekeeper at a boarding school in Austria.

3. St Martin’s Summer by Rafael Sabatini – Sabatini’s novels are almost always a lot of fun and this one, set in early 17th century France, is no exception.

4. Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut – This is the only book I’ve read by Galgut and sadly I didn’t like it much at all. It’s a novel based on the life of the author E.M. Forster and focuses on his love affairs during his time in India and Egypt.

5. The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay – The first book in The Fionavar Tapestry, a fantasy trilogy published between 1984 and 1986. It’s very different from his later books, which feel much more like historical fiction.

6. Long Summer Day by RF Delderfield – The first in Delderfield’s A Horseman Riding By trilogy, a wonderful family saga set in a farming community in rural Devon during the first half of the 20th century.

7. Dark Summer in Bordeaux by Allan Massie – One of a quartet of dark, atmospheric crime novels set in Occupied France. I still haven’t read the final two.

8. The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson – The war referred to in the title is the First World War and this moving novel follows the story of a young woman who starts a new job as a school Latin teacher in the summer of 1914.

9. The Last Summer by Judith Kinghorn – Also beginning with that same innocent summer of 1914, the novel shows us the effects the outbreak of war will have on society, class structure and the life of one seventeen-year-old girl.

10. The Year Without Summer by Guinevere Glasfurd – The stories of six people, some real and some fictional, whose lives were affected by the extreme weather that followed the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1816.

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Have you read any of these? Can you think of any other books with Summer in the title?