Friday Finds (December 12)

Hosted by Should be Reading

FRIDAY FINDS showcases the books you ‘found’ and added to your To Be Read (TBR) list… whether you found them online, or in a bookstore, or in the library — wherever! (they aren’t necessarily books you purchased).

Well another successful week for book acquisitions! First up I finally have a copy of The Defence by Steve Cavanagh. I saw Rebecca Bradley’s blog where it was featured on ‘What’s Your First Draft Like?

Blurb

The truth has no place in a courtroom. The truth doesn’t matter in a trial.
The only thing that matters is what the prosecution can prove.
Eddie Flynn used to be a con artist. Then he became a lawyer. Turned out the two weren’t that different.
It’s been over a year since Eddie vowed never to set foot in a courtroom again. But now he doesn’t have a choice. Olek Volchek, the infamous head of the Russian mafia in New York, has strapped a bomb to Eddie’s back and kidnapped his ten-year-old daughter Amy.
Eddie only has 48 hours to defend Volchek in an impossible murder trial – and win – if wants to save his daughter.
Under the scrutiny of the media and the FBI, Eddie must use his razor-sharp wit and every con-artist trick in the book to defend his ‘client’ and ensure Amy’s safety. With the timer on his back ticking away, can Eddie convince the jury of the impossible?
Lose this case and he loses everything. Amazon

I also have a copy of Shallow Waters by Rebecca Bradley whose blog I avidly follow, see item above, so I can’t wait to see what horrors await in this book!

Blurb

When the naked, battered body of an unidentified teenager is found dumped in an alleyway, post-mortem finds evidence of a harrowing series of events.
Another teenage death with the same MO pushes DI Hannah Robbins and her team on the Nottingham City division Major Crimes Unit, to their limits, and across county borders. In a race against the clock they attempt to unpick a thick web of lies and deceit to uncover the truth behind the deaths.
But it doesn’t stop there. When catching a killer isn’t enough, just how far are the team willing to push themselves to save the next girl?

And from the modern to some historical true crime, starting with The Magnificent Spilsbury and the case of the Brides In The Bath by Jane Robins

Blurb

Bessie Mundy, Alice Burnham and Margaret Lofty are three women with one thing in common. They are spinsters and are desperate to marry. Each woman meets a smooth-talking stranger who promises her a better life. She falls under his spell, and becomes his wife. But marriage soon turns into a terrifying experience. In the dark opening months of the First World War, Britain became engrossed by ‘The Brides in the Bath’ trial. The horror of the killing fields of the Western Front was the backdrop to a murder story whose elements were of a different sort. This was evil of an everyday, insidious kind, played out in lodging houses in seaside towns, in the confines of married life, and brought to a horrendous climax in that most intimate of settings — the bathroom. The nation turned to a young forensic pathologist, Bernard Spilsbury, to explain how it was that young women were suddenly expiring in their baths. This was the age of science. In fiction, Sherlock Holmes applied a scientific mind to solving crimes. In real-life, would Spilsbury be as infallible as the ‘great detective’

The Maul and The Pear Tree the Radcliffe Highway Murders. 1811 by P.D. James and T.A. Critchley has also arrived this week which has the appeal of a terrific author and a historical murder mystery.

Blurb

In 1811 John Williams was buried with a stake through his heart. Was he the notorious East End killer or the eighth victim in the Ratcliffe Highway Murders? Drawing on contemporary records and newspaper cuttings, the authors reconstruct the events. Goodreads

And to finish off my collection I have bought a copy of a book I had ma but appear to have lost it before I’d read it; The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders which is ‘filled to the brim with swindlers, forgers and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the utterly dangerous. The Invention of Murder is both a tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.’

Blurb

Murder in the 19th century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous – transformed into novels, into broadsides and ballads, into theatre and melodrama and opera – even into puppet shows and performing dog-acts.
In this meticulously researched and compelling book, Judith Flanders – author of ‘The Victorian House’ – retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder – both famous and obscure. From the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, to the tragedies of the murdered Marr family in London’s East End, Burke and Hare and their bodysnatching business in Edinburgh, and Greenacre who transported his dismembered fiancée around town by omnibus. Amazon

What have you found to read this week? Do share!