In My Mailbox #2

I've done quite well this week, most of the books I've got have been either swaps or second-hand purchases. The only one that I've bought new is The Complete Father Brown Stories.

Father Brown, one of the most quirkily genial and lovable characters to emerge from English detective fiction, first made his appearance in The Innocence of Father Brown in 1911. That first collection of stories established G.K. Chesterton's kindly cleric in the front rank of eccentric sleuths.

This complete collection contains all the favourite Father Brown stories, showing a quiet wit and compassion that has endeared him to many, whilst solving his mysteries by a mixture of imagination and a sympathetic worldliness in a totally believable manner.

In the Gloucestershire village of Honeycote, country life is anything but quiet. Maybe it's something to do with all that fresh air, but it's the kind of place where passions run high...The Liddiard family are well known in Honeycote - and now there is to be a big wedding. But will everything go according to plan? Lucy Liddiard knows her husband is no saint, but isn't prepared for his latest confession. Bride-to-be Mandy has no idea what joining the Liddiards really means. And local girl Mayday, wild child, rebel and free spirit, is thinking the unthinkable - with unimaginable consequences ...JUST A FAMILY AFFAIR is a glorious, all-consuming story about finding out the truth, finding a husband, or perhaps just finding yourself.

Sally Jupp seemed the ideal girl to help Mrs Maxie run a large house and look after her invalid husband. She was pretty, docile and grateful; or so it seemed, until murder shattered the tranquility of her new home. A puzzling, disturbing killing that brought Detective-Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh to the quiet village in search of the murderer.

"Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood," writes Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes. "Worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." Welcome, then, to the pinnacle of the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. Born in Brooklyn in 1930 to recent Irish immigrants Malachy and Angela McCourt, Frank grew up in Limerick after his parents returned to Ireland because of poor prospects in America. It turns out that prospects weren't so great back in the old country either--not with Malachy for a father. A chronically unemployed and nearly unemployable alcoholic, he appears to be the model on which many of our more insulting cliches about drunken Irish manhood are based. Mix in abject poverty and frequent death and illness and you have all the makings of a truly difficult early life. Fortunately, in McCourt's able hands it also has all the makings for a compelling memoir.

One of Willard Price's adventure books featuring Hal and Roger Hunt. On safari in Africa, the pair find that the bogus Colonel Bigg is hindering their attempts to capture a man-eating tiger. Worse is to come in the shape of an evil witch-doctor, who is determined to kill the boys.

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren.