Dean Street Press December

One of my favorite book bloggers – Liz at Adventures in Reading, Running & Working from Home – has proposed a Dean Street in December book festival – her main organizing post is here.

I have several of their titles waiting for me to read, and in order to get ready, I thought I’d make a list of possibilities!

I previously read the DSP reissue of The Swiss Summer by Stella Gibbons, so I plan to start with the seasonally appropriate The Woods in Winter. I’ve also managed to read more than half of their D.E. Stevenson titles – I only have Green Money, The English Air, The Musgraves and their Mrs. Tim books left. I previously read the first Mrs. Tim book, and I was underwhelmed by the diary/epistolary element. I think that the later books are more of a standard narrative, which I might prefer. I haven’t read a Stevenson yet that I didn’t enjoy, though, and Miss Buncle’s Book is one of my favorite books of all time.

Moving on, I’ve read one or two books by Margery Sharp previously, but I’ve not read any of the DSP titles although I bought several when they were published in January, 2021. I’m planning on The Four Gardens, but it could end up being any of them, honestly. With respect to Molly Clavering, again, I’ve only read Mrs. Lorrimer’s Quiet Summer, but I enjoyed it a lot, so I’m looking forward to continuing to explore her books. I’ve not read a single Susan Scarlett book, although I did read The Winter is Past which was published under the name Noel Streatfeild by the same author. The covers of the Susan Scarlett books are so appealing, and I couldn’t resist Babbacombe’s when it came out.

So, that’s the beginning of a plan – at least one book by each author, with an extra Stevenson thrown in, if I have time.

So far, I haven’t even mentioned the DSP mystery titles, though! I’m a tremendous fan of vintage mystery, and DSP has reissued a lot of books that I’ve had on my radar for a long time. I’ve picked four books to try to read next month:

All of these have been in my TBR for a while. I first purchased One By One They Disappeared by Moray Dalton all the way back in 2019; I did read Night of Fear, which is the second in the series, last year as part of my Christmas mystery binge. I bought The Invisible Host on December 5, 2020, when I saw a number of rave reviews from bloggers I admire and had plans to get to immediately. Nearly two years later, those plans are (hopefully) finally going to be executed. I saw Water Weed much more recently, and added it to my TBR with an official purchase in October, but the first of the Tessa Crichton mysteries by Anne Morice has been hanging around since May. Again, this doesn’t include a single Brian Flynn book, although I’ve read several of his Anthony Bathurst series, and would love to read some more, but I suspect that I am out of time here.

Those are big plans, and there is obviously no real likelihood I will read all 9 of these possible books. But I look forward to trying…

7 comments

  1. I have 5 of the 6 that you pictured and I’m happily working my way through those authors. I’m also reading the golden age mysteries, but those authors are new to me, so thanks for giving me some new authors to check out. I just started reading DSP books in the past year and haven’t been disappointed yet. In fact, I much prefer these books to most current “new” releases. I love reading them and look forward to each new one eagerly. Happy reading!

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