Decades: Compiling The Ultimate Library with Carol Wyer

It’s my absolute delight to welcome Carol Wyer to my Decades Library and to pass custody of the Decades Curator Hat into her capable hands.

Carol faces the same challenge which I set all my guests. I asked her to nominate five books which she would want to see added to my Ultimate Library – the definitive collection of wonderful reading matter. Every week I ask booklovers (authors, publishers, journalists, bloggers) to help me build up a new library of amazing books. I started this challenge back in January with zero books and now here we are in December with almost 200 books added to the shelves of my Decades Library.

THE RULES: Each guest is asked to nominate any five books but they can only select one book per decade from five consecutive decades.

Carol has elected to begin her selections in the 1960s with her final nomination being published in 2003, five decades later. I am also delighted to report Carol has not cheated or “flexed the rules” in making her choices – regular visitors will know this is rare!

Enough from me, the rest of this week’s Decades Challenge is all about Carol Wyer…

USA Today bestselling author and winner of The People’s Book Prize Award, Carol Wyer’s crime novels have sold over one million copies and been translated into nine languages.

A move from humour to the ‘dark side’ in 2017, saw the introduction of popular DI Robyn Carter in Little Girl Lost and proved that Carol had found her true niche.

In 2021, An Eye For An Eye, the first in the DI Kate Young series, was chosen as a Kindle First Reads. It became the #1 bestselling book on Amazon UK and Australia. The third, A Life For A Life, is due out March 15th, 2022, but is available to preorder.

Carol has had articles published in national magazines ‘Woman’s Weekly’, featured in ‘Take A Break’, ‘Choice’, ‘Yours’ and ‘Woman’s Own’ magazines and written for the Huffington Post. She’s also been interviewed on numerous radio shows and on BBC Breakfast television.

She currently lives on a windy hill in rural Staffordshire with her husband Mr. Grumpy who is very, very grumpy.

When not plotting devious murders, she can be found performing her comedy routine, Smile While You Still Have Teeth.

To learn more, go to www.carolwyer.co.uk, subscribe to her YouTube channel, or follow her on Twitter @carolewyer

LINKS
FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/pages/Carol-E-Wyer/221149241263847

TWITTER https://twitter.com/carolewyer

BLOG https://carolwyer.com

WEBSITE https://www.carolwyer.co.uk

PINTEREST http://www.pinterest.com/carolewyer/

LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-wyer-407b1032/

GOODREADS https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14925467.Carol_Wyer

DECADES

I have enjoyed writing about my choices and it made me realise how many great books I have read over the last few decades. It was a tough choice to whittle them down, but I went with an eclectic choice and nothing heavy.

1960-1970 (1961) The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone

My mother, who was an avid reader, loaned me her copy of this book to read when I was bedbound (thanks to major spinal surgery), and had run out of library books to keep me entertained. She was very interested in Italy and art and assured me I would love the book. Being a grumpy teenager at the time, and determined that anything she liked, especially a book from the 1960s, I would hate, I begrudgingly took it. I was wrong. The book spoke to me, piqued my own interest in art and went some way to cultivate my love for foreign languages and different cultures. My mother always wanted to travel to Florence to take in Michelangelo’s sculptures and artwork but never went. When I finally made the pilgrimage to Florence and saw the statue of David, a year after my mother’s death, I shed a tear she couldn’t share the moment with me and silently thanked her for encouraging me to read this wonderful biography of Michelangelo’s life.

1970-1980 (1979) Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

I was studying English and French at university at the time the television series came out. It was hugely popular among those living at my hall of residence and most of the students would crowd into the television room each week to watch it. I however, had missed that boat and, wondering what all the hype was about, read the book instead of the Shakespeare play I was meant to be studying that week, in order to catch up on the Hitchhiker craze. I’ve always loved comedy and Douglas Adam’s wit appealed instantly to me. I went on to read the entire collection and motivated by Adams and other writers like him, began my own journey as an author by writing comedy.

1980-1990 (1987) Misery by Stephen King

Every writer should read this book! Ill health struck me down again in my twenties when, following another spinal procedure, I found myself paralysed for a few months. Stephen King became my ‘go to’ author. I’ve since read every book Stephen King has written, but this and The Shining are the two that scare me the most. You’d think, after reading them, I wouldn’t have chosen this career path!

1990-2000 (1991) John Grisham The Firm.

The second in a long line of best-selling legal thrillers by John Grisham and to my mind, still the best. I was lucky enough to stay at the White House on Grand Cayman where some of the filming for the film took place but alas, Tom Cruise wasn’t there at the time. The strength in Grisham’s books lies in his excellent knowledge of the justice system along with a gripping plot that had me hooked from the off.

2000-2010 (2003) Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

My husband bought me this book at the airport while we waited to board a plane to France. I was so gripped, I spent most of the holiday inside reading rather than sightseeing. I still haven’t watched the film version! I loved the intrigue, the fast pace, the breathless scenes where the characters hunt for clues, and Dan Brown clearly did substantial background research, something I didn’t fully appreciate until I actually wrote my first crime thriller and found out how little I knew about my subject. Since then, I have studied hard and have a network of experts to guide me. It certainly makes me appreciate how much effort goes into every author’s book.

I know the versions of the books Carol picked would have had different covers than those shown above but…there’s a lot of red going on there! I am delighted to see The Firm make its debut in my Library, it was my first Grisham which I remember picking up at launch – how I wish I still had my original copy.

DECADES WILL RETURN

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December 1

Fancy A Quickie (twice)? It’s My Bedtime Reading

This latest round of reviews is brought to you under the heading “Fancy A Quickie.” I am not reviewing erotica I am grabbing an opportune moment to get down and dirty and rip back the covers to expose two books and tell you about the time we spent together in bed.

Yup, these are books I read in bed during nights I struggled to find sleep. Part of the reason I struggled to sleep was down to the fact I was enjoying these stories. But when I finish a book in bed I don’t review it there and then and all too often the review remains unwritten. Until now. Two quick reviews follow.

First up the second book in M.W. Craven’s excellent Washington Poe series: Black Summer.

After The Puppet Show, a new storm is coming …

Jared Keaton, chef to the stars. Charming. Charismatic. Psychopath … He’s currently serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of his daughter, Elizabeth. Her body was never found and Keaton was convicted largely on the testimony of Detective Sergeant Washington Poe.

So when a young woman staggers into a remote police station with irrefutable evidence that she is Elizabeth Keaton, Poe finds himself on the wrong end of an investigation, one that could cost him much more than his career.

Helped by the only person he trusts, the brilliant but socially awkward Tilly Bradshaw, Poe races to answer the only question that matters: how can someone be both dead and alive at the same time? And then Elizabeth goes missing again – and all paths of investigation lead back to Poe.

Black Summer brings back the most readable duo in crime fiction: Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw. The pair met in The Puppet Show and I was very keen to see what may lie in store for them next – particularly as The Puppet Show was a dark, gritty page turner.

The good news is that Black Summer is another absolute gem. Poe finds himself not just facing a perplexing mystery which links to a former case he was involved in but also a mystery which drags him very much into the firing line in the present day. But when Poe is in trouble he has an advantage over his opponents which will always give him the edge to endure…Tilly Bradshaw.

Jared Keaton is the villain of the piece and he very much enjoys the limelight which he gets within the story and is a dominating figure that Craven uses to great effect. There is a palpable power-struggle in Black Summer which has Poe and Bradshaw on one side with Keaton using all the resources of the law to undermine the postition of the police officer he is trying to bring down.

Although this is the second book in the series it was the third I had read. After each book I have the same mantra – you need to be reading this series. Terrific fun.

Get your copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/black-summer/m-w-craven/9781472127495

Next up is Neil Spring’s The Haunted Shore

When Lizzy moves to a desolate shore to escape her past, she hopes to find sanctuary. But a mysterious stranger is waiting for her, her father’s carer, and when darkness falls, something roams this wild stretch of beach, urging Lizzy to investigate its past. The longer she stays, the more the shore’s secrets begin to stir. Secrets of a sea that burned, of bodies washed ashore — and a family’s buried past reaching into the present.

And when Lizzy begins to suspect that her father’s carer is a dangerous imposter with sinister motives, a new darkness rises. What happens next is everyone’s living nightmare . . .

Neil Spring always tells unsettling stories and The Haunted Shore was no exception. Though one element I found particularly unsettling was not from a supernatural thread (which is what I had anticipated) but from Lizzy’s self-destruction at the start of the story.

I won’t share what forces Lizzy to leave the city and move out to the wilds where she will be with her father but suffice to say it was a dilemma which the author depicted well and made me anxious and frustrated for Lizzy. I was annoyed with her character, then I was sympathetic and then I was rooting for her to overcome the situation. So before things really begin to kick-off I was already invested in this story.

Lizzy is alarmed to discover her father is in ailing health. He relies heavily upon a carer and the pair have a relationship which Lizzy is struggling to accept and to fit around. The more time Lizzy spends in the company of this stranger who is keeping her family functioning the greater her suspicion and distrust grows. The tension grows chapter by chapter.

As Lizzy adjusts to life in the remote countryside and to get away from the toxic atmosphere in the house she spends time walking the deserted shorelines. It is there she meets a neighbour who has warnings for her, caution is advised but clearly all is not as it may seem. The first inklings of troubles to come are seeded.

Neil Spring always delivers the chills and The Haunted Shore builds up nicely to the point things start to become disconcerting. It kept me guessing where the story was heading and with a chiller that’s always a totally open ended range of possibilites. I’ve read all of Neil Spring’s books and they never fail to deliver.

You can get a copy of The Haunted Shore here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-haunted-shore/neil-spring/9781787470101

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