I know that I’m a little bit out of order here, having published my first DSP-D review, even before I put together the main post. But this is what happens when I’m excited about something . . . read first, plan later. As a reminder, Dean Street December is the brainchild of Liz at Adventures in Reading . . . and you can find her main post here.
So, I dug around in my kindle library to see what I had all ready purchased that I can read this month. DSP publishes two distinct genres of books that I enjoy – their Furrowed Middlebrow line & their vintage mysteries. I have some of each on my account!
Vintage mysteries:
- In addition to The Invisible Host, which I already finished, I have several of the Anthony Bathurst mysteries by Brian Flynn, including Such Bright Disguises and Exit Sir John. I have no idea how I ended up with #27 and #34, in addition to 1-7 (minus #6, which seems to have gone missing) which I had previously bought and read. If I had to guess, they probably went on sale, or were offered for free. Anyway, I’ll likely read at least one of them.
- Who Killed Dick Whittington by E & MA Radford – this is a Christmas mystery!
- Death Has No Tongue: A Mr. Moh Mystery by Joan Cowdroy has been in my library since 2019.
- Death in the Grand Manor by Anne Morice. This is a later series – launching in 1970. There are a bunch of them, so if I like it, it will open up a whole new bunch of books for me to dig into.
Furrowed Middlebrow:
- I have a lot of these waiting for me, because I am constantly buying them! To start with Babbacombe’s by Susan Scarlett (pictured in Liz’s graphic) is at the top of the list because I love the cover.
- The Weather at Tregulla is the only Stella Gibbons that I have bought that I haven’t already read. It looks like the only one I am missing is A Pink Front Door, which I intend to snag before the end of the month.
- I also bought 4 by Margery Sharp when they were released, and haven’t read any of them. My vague plans are for Harlequin House, again, mostly because of the cover. DSP published a total of 6 of Sharp’s books, so I will also be purchasing the remaining 2 before the end of the month.
- Finally, I absolutely cannot resist D.E. Stevenson – I’m choosing between Green Money, The Tall Stranger and The Fair Miss Fortune. But I will eventually buy them all.
I am very sad about the future of DSP. It was (and is) one of my favorite small presses, and the fact that it has closed down as a result of some personal tragedy is such a bummer.* (See the comment on my post for a bit of additional news – and thank you to DSP for popping in to post!) There is no way for me to buy all of the vintage mysteries that they have published, but it’s likely that if it sticks around for a few years I may be able to buy up the Furrowed Middlebrow collection. And, as long as they continue to hold the copyright and make what they’ve previously published available, I will be buying & reading their books.