Yes I know it is a Christmas picture of the Chatsworth Library but I just love it too much not to have it on the blog!!!!!

I showed you this collection of Christmas books which I am reading at this time of the year.  I am currently reading “A Christmas Party” by Georgette Heyer and it is in the style of Agatha Christie.

Joseph Herriard and his wife Maud live in his brother’s, Nathaniel, mansion house Lexham Manor with him.  Joseph is keen to have an old fashioned family Christmas and invites Paula & Stephen, their niece and nephew to come and stay as well as Nathaniel’s business partner Edgar Mottifsont.  Also invited for the festive season is Mathilda Clare a distant cousin of Joseph and Nathaniel, Paula’s friend Willoughby Royden a playwright and the final guest is Stephen’s Fiance Valerie Dean, who Nethaniel hates with a passion.

After a few days of getting the Manor decoarated for Christmas with various help from the guests, Jospeh suggests that Royden reads his play he has written to them and for which he wants Nathaniel to back him with Paula in the leading part!  After the reading everyone goes up to change for drinks in the library before dinner.  They assemble but their host, Nathaniel does not appear.  When they eventually go to find him in his room, they find he has died but how?  The door was locked from the inside?

The Doctor and local Police Inspector are  called who keeps things as they were found for Inspector Heminway of Scotland Yard to take over when he arrives.  He then proceeds to interview the house party and try and work out who did the evil deed, one thing he knows is that the killer is amongst them!

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Georgette Hayer was a contemporary of Agatha Christie and wrote quite a few mystery novels, thirteen in total.  She wrote a lot more Historical novels, 40 in fact.  I have not read any of those but will give one of them a go. 

I am half way through A Christmas Party and really enjoying it.  I just love the whole family gather at Christmas and then there is a murder!!!!!!!  You can get it from Amazon in paperback and Kindle. 

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Well we have made it through the first week of January virtually unscathed!  I have managed to catch up on work and home stuff so that is one good thing.  Tomorrow I am hoping to do some quilting, sticking to my Aims so far!  We won’t be doing any gardening or anything like that as it is absolutely freezing here today and over the weekend!  I will be hibernating I think, I know Treacle is!!!!

Have a wonderful Winter’s Weekend you lovely lot!

Hugs & Love, Susie xx

I am too comfy to move Mom!

Yes a full lockdown again but we can all still go to work!  Good news for DH and the Boys and me.  Of course I only have to move from our kitchen into our den where my desk is, so going to work is easy for me!!!   However I do start to go a bit stir crazy if I am in all week and don’t get out somehow so I have made DH promise that he will take me out in the truck for a drive, if nothing else!!! 

I saw this the other day on Instagram where I follow The Biltmore Estate.  You know me and libraries especially decorated for Christmas, well here is their library all decked out.  Don’t you just love it?  I know we have until tomorrow to discuss Christmas and for me to show you Christmas things.  I have left my “tree” up on the Blog until tomorrow as well when I will have to replace it with something else wintery. 

Speaking of Libraries here is the library we went to as a family near to where I used to live with my parents.  As you can see it is quite big and not only were there lots and lots of books there were rooms which could be used for meetings and study areas where you could go and revise and look up information.  Of course in this day and age students don’t need that as they just look everything up on line!  I like that you can still go to libraries and they are quiet places, something else we don’t get much of these days!

I also forgot to tell you about a wonderful present I got from DH and The Boys for Christmas!  This is Heywood Hill Ltd, Bookshop in Curzon Street, London.  They were established in 1936 by Heywood Hill and his soon to be wife Anne Gathorne-Hardy.  During the second half of WWII Nancy Mitford, eldest of the Mitford Sisters and related to the late Deborah Devonshire of Chatsworth House, worked at the store.  The shop is now owned by the 12th Duke of Devonshire, Peregrine Cavendish, following on from his father who became the majority shareholder. 

Anyway I read an article in The Telegraph about the shop and in particular their subscription service which they run where they will supply you with a year of books, hard back or paperback.  They talk to you about your likes and dislikes and the sort of things you like to read and each month they will send you a book.  There are fourteen options for you to choose from and DH and the Boys bought me the twelve paperback books.  If you read quickly there is an option for forty books in a year!!!!  If only I had that sort of time. 

The subscription service has been a life line for the shop since all the chaos of last year and also for their customers with more time on their hands to read!!!  I will let you know when I get my first book! 

I have often been asked why I do not belong to a local Book Club and my answer is always the same, the Book Clubs I know about they always want to read meaningful books or books with messages or books which have won literary prizes.  I hate to tell you but that is definitely not the sort of books I want to read.  I read for pleasure and to escape into another world not to be depressed at the end of it!!!!  Perhaps that is shallow of me but…. hey ho!

I have finally caught up with my work and the house is now back to normal and I just need to finish the ironing.  As we are now at home all the time again I may sneak a few hours with my new book!  I hope you all have time to do some leisure reading.

Happy Tuesday everyone.

Hugs & Love, Susie xx