Top Ten Tuesday: Unread Books of 1937

Recently, I participated in the #1937 Club and though I read eight books for it, I had a number of others in the pile that I could not get to. So for this week’s TTT, I thought I’d make a list of ten from all those books left unread. In alphabetical order (the descriptions are from Goodreads):

Background to Danger by Eric Ambler

Kenton’s career as a journalist depended on his facility with languages, his knowledge of European politics, and his quick judgment. Where his judgment sometimes failed him was in his personal life. When he finds himself on a train bound for Austria with insufficient funds after a bad night of gambling, he jumps at the chance to earn a fee to help a refugee smuggle securities across the border. He soon discovers that the documents he holds have a more than monetary value, and that European politics has more twists and turns than the most convoluted newspaper account.

Beginning With A Bash by Alice Tilton

It’s a cold winter in Boston, and Peters’s secondhand bookstore has a sign that says “Come in and browse–it’s warm inside”. The sign attracts the attention of Martin Jones, who’s not only chilly but being chased by the police because his former boss, Professor North, has accused him of stealing $50,000 from the Anthropology Society. Inside the bookstore, he meets a former teacher from his days at Meredith Academy; Leonidas Witherall, “the man who looks like Shakespeare”, who has lost all his money and become the bookstore’s janitor. The bookstore’s new owner is a pretty young redhead of Jones’s acquaintance. After the departure of a book thief and a car accident outside, Professor North’s body is discovered in the religion section. Witherall and company–which soon includes a wealthy Boston dowager, North’s sassy maid Gert, and Gert’s mobster boyfriend Freddy–spend the evening tracking down clues to the murderer’s identity and trying to stay out of the clutches of Freddy’s rival gang. Under Witherall’s supervision, the group solves the murder and forces a confession from the murderer just in time to save Jones from the police.

Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery

For as long as she could remember, Jane Stuart and her mother lived with her grandmother in a dreary mansion in Toronto. Jane always believed her father was dead until she accidentally learned he was alive and well and living on Prince Edward Island. When Jane spends the summer at his cottage on Lantern Hill, doing all the wonderful things Grandmother deems unladylike, she dares to dream that there could be such a house back in Toronto… a house where she, Mother, and Father could live together without Grandmother directing their lives — a house that could be called home.

The King’s Favourite by Marjorie Bowen

England, 1604.

Fourteen-year-old Frances Howard is tricked into falling in love with the handsome Robin Carr, ‘The King’s Favorite’, so a certain member of court can control the Throne.

There is one problem though – Frances is already married.

Frances and Robin, however, fall madly and deeply in love, shocking everyone and throwing the plot into chaos.

Caught up in a storm of lies, betrayal, witchcraft, and murder, Frances and Robin remain oblivious to the dangers around them and are willing to do anything to be together, including kill anyone who tries to get in their way.

Set during the turbulent reign of King James I, ‘The King’s Favourite’ by Marjorie Bowen takes readers behind the scenes of court intrigue more deadly than the Tudor Court.

‘The King’s Favourite’ is based on the true and shocking story of Frances Howard, an English noblewoman who was the central figure in a famous scandal and murder during the reign of King James I.

Murder in Blue by Clifford Witting

The author’s first novel.

The story concerns John Rutherford, proprietor of an English country bookshop and his assitant, George Stubbings, a mystery story buff, as they encounter a murder in their own village.

Rutherford, bookseller and sometime fiction writer, discovers the bludgeoned corpse of a policeman one evening while taking a stroll in a rainstorm. The policeman’s overturned bicycle is what first catches Rutherford’s eye. Then he sees Officer Johnson’s body sprawled on the sodden ground of Phantom Coppice. Rutherford takes Johnson’s bike and pedals to rural Paulsfield police station, two miles away, to report the crime. There he finds Sgt. Martin who initiates calls to a doctor, a photographer and Inspector Charlton.

The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

In the 1930s, commissioned by a left-wing book club, Orwell went to the industrial areas of northern England to investigate and record the real situation of the working class. Orwell did more than just investigate; he went down to the deepest part of the mine, lived in dilapidated and filthy workers’ houses, and used the tip of his pen to vividly reveal every aspect of the coal miners’ lives. Reading today, 80 years later, Still shockingly true. The despair and poverty conveyed by this picture have a terrifying power that transcends time and national boundaries. At the same time, the Road to Wigan Pier is also Orwell’s road to socialism as he examines his own inner self. Born in the British middle class, he recalled how he gradually began to doubt and then hate the strict class barriers that divided British society at that time. Because in his mind, socialism ultimately means only one concept: “justice and freedom.”

Tenant For Death by Cyril Hare

Two young estate agent’s clerks are sent to check an inventory on a house in Daylesford Gardens, South Kensington. Upon arrival, they find an unlisted item – a corpse. Furthermore, the mysterious tenant, Colin James, has disappeared.

In a tale which uncovers many of the seedier aspects of the world of high finance, Hare also introduces his readers to the formidable Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard.

They Found Him Dead by Georgette Heyer

It is the morning after wealthy Silas Kane’s sixtieth birthday party – a celebration that brings to light a number of familial controversies. When Kane is found dead at the foot of a cliff, the assumption is that he simply lost his way in the fog and fell by accident. But the subsequent death of his nephew and heir and threats on the life of the third Kane, the newest heir, raises obvious suspicion, and the redoubtable investigative skills of Superintendent Hannasyde prove critical once again.

Two Leaves and a Bud by Mulk Raj Anand

Mulk Raj Anand’s third novel Two Leaves and a Bud is the story of a coolie, named Ganju, and his family who were forced to leave their house and premises in Hoshiarpur district of Amritsar. Buta, an agent of tea planters, appeared in front of them as a savior and promised them money, land and security in the distant Macpherson Tea estate in Assam. Anand portrays the miserable condition of coolies in the tea plantation and how are they trapped by the planters.

The Years by Virginia Woolf

The most popular of Virginia Woolf’s novels during her lifetime, The Years is a savage indictment of British society at the turn of the century.

The Years is the story of three generations of the Pargiter family – their intimacies and estrangements, anxieties and triumphs – mapped out against the bustling rhythms of London’s streets during the first decades of the twentieth century. Growing up in a typically Victorian household, the Pargiter children must learn to find their footing in an alternative world, where the rules of etiquette have shifted from the drawing-room to the air-raid shelter. A work of fluid and dazzling lucidity, The Years eschews a simple line of development in favour of a varied and constantly changing style, emphasises the radical discontinuity of personal experiences and historical events. Virginia Woolf’s penultimate novel celebrates the resilience of the individual self and, in her dazzlingly fluid and distinctive voice, she confidently paints a broad canvas across time, generation and class.

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Did you read any of these for the club (or otherwise)? Which one should I pick up first?