Top Ten Tuesday Most Recent Additions to My Book Collection

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. A topic is assigned to each Tuesday. For that topic you are encouraged to make a top ten list, putting your own spin on it, if needed. Upcoming topics and more information can be found here.

For this week's Top Ten Tuesday we are asked to list the most recent additions to our bookshelves.

My library provides an excellent service, but sometimes they are unable to obtain the new items I have requested. On these occasions, I'll purchase a print copy to add to my shelves. The first six books on my list fall into this category. Synopses from Goodreads.

01. Gallimore by Dorothea Cobb I'm always interested in historical fiction set in Australia.

In eighteenth century London, after escaping from the Workhouse, young Gemma Gallimore is forced to eke out an existence as a pickpocket. One night, she is brutally assaulted and, as a result, gives birth to a son, Sebastian. Gemma is left with no choice but to introduce her young son to the same life of crime she has been living - a way of life which ultimately leads to both of them being arrested and transported to Sydney as convicts. A sweeping family saga, traversing a full century and several generations, GALLIMORE paints a vivid picture of life in the 1800s on both sides of the world - from a rebuilt London following the Great Fire to the early Australian settlement of New South Wales and the Victorian gold rush. Painstakingly researched, and told through the eyes of many an interesting and colourful character, GALLIMORE is an engrossing story of great love and tragedy, poverty and prosperity, scandal and intrigue and, above all, the family ties that bind.

02. The Fall of the House of Thomas Weir by Andrew Neil MacLeod I was enticed to add this one to my TBR after reading Catherine Meyrick's review. This is the first of a new series entitled The Casebook of Johnson and Boswell.

Edinburgh, 1773. A storm is coming. A storm that will shake the Age of Reason to its very foundations. When rumours spread of ghouls haunting Edinburgh's old town, there is only one person who can help. Dr Samuel Johnson: author, lexicographer... and a genius in the occult and supernatural. With his good friend and companion, James Boswell, Dr Johnson embarks on a quest to unravel the hellish mysteries plaguing the city. But what they uncover is darker and more deadly than they could have ever suspected, an evil conspiracy which threatens not just the people of Edinburgh, but the whole of mankind. For the tunnels under Edinburgh's Old Town hide a terrible secret... Before Holmes & Watson, before Abraham van Helsing, there was Doctor Johnson & James Boswell: scourge of the hidden, supernatural world of the 18th century.

03. The Tsar's Locket by Ken Czech I enjoyed Ken Czech's Last Dance in Kabul (my review) and looked for more to read from this author.

Julian Blunt, a former sea captain and a despised Catholic, is stunned when Queen Elizabeth proposes that he help carry a betrothal locket to Tsar Ivan the Terrible in Moscow. It means an alliance between England and Russia is brewing, and the queen warns that should the locket fall into the hands of the Pope or his minions, it could mean war. Julian joins the queen’s messenger, the lofty and spirited Jessandra Calcross, in a perilous voyage across the Baltic Sea and into the very heart of Russia. When a papal assassin determined to prevent the royal marriage strikes, Jess turns to Julian as the only man she can trust. Although at odds over religion and station, a slender emotional bond grows. Stalked by the relentless murderer, Julian is soon torn between abandoning his mission so he can better safeguard Jess, and fulfilling his vow to the queen. If he fails the queen he’ll never captain a ship again. But if he and Jess continue on to Moscow, they face a darker peril in the mercurial and sinister Tsar Ivan—a peril that will drive courage and dawning love to the breaking point.

04. Silent Water by P.K. Adams My heritage is Polish but I know virtually nothing of that country's history before World War II, nor have I read many books set in Poland. I enjoy historical mysteries so added this one to my TBR.

It is Christmas 1519 and the royal court in Kraków is in the midst of celebrating the joyous season. Less than two years earlier, Italian noblewoman Bona Sforza arrived in Poland’s capital from Bari as King Zygmunt’s new bride. She came from Italy accompanied by a splendid entourage, including Contessa Caterina Sanseverino who oversees the ladies of the Queen’s Chamber. Caterina is still adjusting to the life in this northern kingdom of cold winters, unfamiliar customs, and an incomprehensible language when a shocking murder rocks the court on Christmas night. It is followed by another a few days later. The victims have seemingly nothing in common. Gossip, speculation, and suspicion are rife, but the perpetrator remains elusive as the court heads into the New Year. As the official investigation stalls, Caterina—aided by Sebastian Konarski, a junior secretary in the king’s household—sets out to find the killer. With clues beginning to point to the queen’s innermost circle, the pair are soon racing against time to stop another murder. Silent Water is a story of power and its abuse, and the extremes to which a person may go to find redress for justice denied. Although set at the dawn of the Renaissance era, its themes carry uncanny parallels to some of the most topical social issues of the 21st century.

05. Honour the Dead by John Anthony Miller I'm a fan of historical mysteries, especially those set post-World War I.

Six English survivors of the Great War – four men and two women – converge on Lake Como, Italy in 1921. The result: one corpse and one killer... Psychiatrist Joseph Barnett is treating wealthy socialite Penelope Jones for schizophrenia at a sanitarium in Como. She is convinced someone is trying to kill her. Penelope is married to war veteran Alexander Cavendish, hero of the Battle of the Somme. Barnett knows – and hates – Cavendish from the trenches where both were officers during the battle: one was trying to save lives, the other take them. Both men had been wounded and treated at a hospital in Amiens where Bartlett met and later married Rose who worked there as a nurse. But why does Rose also harbour an intense animosity towards Cavendish?

06. The Servant by Maggie Richell-Davies This is another for my historical mystery pile.

1765. London. Young Hannah Hubert may be the granddaughter of a French merchant and the daughter of a Spitalfields silk weaver, but she has come down in the world. Sent one spring day as maidservant to a disgraced aristocrat, she finds herself in a house full of mysteries - with a locked room and strange auctions being held behind closed doors. As a servant, she has little power but - unknown to her employers - she can read. And it is only when she uses her education to uncover the secrets of the house, that she realises the peril she is in. Hannah is unable to turn to the other servant, Peg, who is clearly terrified of their employers and keeps warning her to find alternative work. But help might come from Thomas, the taciturn farmer delivering milk to the neighbourhood, or from Jack Twyford, a friendly young man apprenticed to his uncle’s bookselling business. Yet Thomas is still grieving for his late wife – and can she trust Jack, since his uncle is one of her master’s associates? Hannah soon discovers damning evidence she cannot ignore. She must act alone, but at what price?

07. When We Fall by Carolyn Kirby I initially borrowed this book from the library and was disappointed that the protective covering prevented me from opening the front and back cover fold-outs without causing damage. These turned out to be World War II identification charts for the warplanes of Great Britain and Germany. I know, it's a strange reason to buy a book.

England, 1943 Lost in fog, pilot Vee Katchatourian is forced to make an emergency landing where she meets enigmatic RAF airman Stefan Bergel, and then can’t get him out of her mind. In occupied Poland, Ewa Hartman hosts German officers in her father’s guest house, while secretly gathering intelligence for the Polish resistance. Mourning her lover, Stefan, who was captured by the Soviets at the start of the war, Ewa is shocked to see him on the street one day. Haunted by a terrible choice he made in captivity, Stefan asks Vee and Ewa to help him expose one of the darkest secrets of the war. But it is not clear where everyone’s loyalties lie until they are tested. Published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of VE Day and based on WWII atrocity the Katyn Massacre, When We Fall is a moving story of three lives forever altered by one fatal choice.

08. The Black Moth by Georgetter Heyer This was my first ever Georgette Heyer novel, purchased and read over fifty years ago. I bought this 100th Anniversary Edition to replace my well-read and very tatty paperback.

Diana Beauleigh is caught between two men. Seven long years ago, Jack Carstares, the Earl of Wyncham, sacrificed his honour for his brother and has been in exile ever since. Returning to England, Jack pretends to be a gentleman named Sir Anthony Ferndale but makes his living in a most ungentlemanly fashion, as a highwayman and a gambler. When Jack encounters his nemesis, the Duke of Andover, in the midst of kidnapping Diana Beauleigh, the two old enemies come to blows. Can Jack save the beautiful Diana from rakes, kidnap and ruin...?

09. Goshawk Squadron by Derek Robinson I purchased this 50th Anniversary Edition to replace the book lost in a recent house move when it was inadvertently donated to the charity shop.

World War One pilots were the knights of the sky, and the press and public idolised them as gallant young heroes. At just twenty-three, Major Stanley Woolley is the old man and commanding officer of Goshawk Squadron. He abhors any notion of chivalry in the clouds and is determined to obliterate the decent, gentlemanly outlook of his young, public school-educated pilots - for their own good. But as the war goes on he is forced to throw greener and greener pilots into the meat grinder. Goshawk Squadron finds its gallows humour and black camaraderie no defence against a Spandau bullet to the back of the head.

10. The Jacobite Trilogy: Flight of the Heron/The Gleam in the North/The Dark Mile by D.K. Broster This was a second-hand bookshop purchase. I'd read the first book in the trilogy years ago, but never got around to the sequels. Having the complete trilogy means that I can read them whenever the mood takes me and even re-read the first.

Set during the 1745 Jacobite uprising under Bonnie Prince Charlie ... At the centre of the story are the intersecting fortunes of two men, who at first glance seem almost complete opposites: Ewen Cameron, a young Highland laird in the service of the Prince, is dashing, sincere, and idealistic, while Major Keith Windham, a professional soldier in the opposing English army, is cynical, world-weary, and profoundly lonely. When a second-sighted Highlander tells Ewen that the flight of a heron will lead to five meetings with an Englishman who is fated both to do him a great service and to cause him great grief, Ewen refuses to believe it. But as Bonnie Prince Charlie’s ill-fated campaign winds to its bitter end, the prophecy is proven true—and through many dangers and trials, Ewen and Keith find that they have one thing indisputably in common: both of them are willing to sacrifice everything for honour’s sake…