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