Dean Street December Drei

 It's December 2024 and Dean Street Press have once again given me something to celebrate. The wonderful Liz Dexter's  hosting a third Dean Street December, and this year, my entries feature four new-to-me authors, between them accounting for all but four of my set.

For the inaugural Dean Street December, I managed to read and review 27 books published by Dean Street Press. For Dean Street December Deux, I opted for a much saner 15, and that's where I've ended up this year too. shown in the image below. In last year's challenge, several of the non-mystery middlebrow books were new to my library, but this year the major new entries are two mystery series I'd not even heard of before and my first two non-fiction works from Dean Street Press, biographies by Sheridan Morley. One of the three middlebrow entries from is a second chance for an author who left me tepid on my first encounter, Susan Scarlett.

 Once again, I plan to read the books in the left-to-right order of the screenshot, mixing up mysteries from E. R. Punshon and Sara Woods - the latter only released by DSP in December 2024 - with Brian Flynn, Christopher Bush and Moray Dalton. Molly Clavering, Susan Scarlett and Margery Sharp are representing team Furrowed Middlebrow.

 As an avid user and endorser of The StoryGraph, I'll again be posting all my reviews there, but will also update this page with a link to the reviews as I finish each book. Once again, my reviews will include "Did Not Finish" reviews if needed. Life really IS too short to waste on books that don't gel, and so if any of these books trigger my drop reflex, I will outline why I dropped them rather than force myself to finish them.

This year, the first entry for my Dean Street December is Information Received  by E. R. Punshon, the first of his Bobby Owen Mysteries. As always, the introduction by Curtis Evans is a great start to the reading experience.  Since the first book starts with death by firearm and makes extensive use of Shakespeare, I will start my Dean Street December 2024 with "Once more unto the breech!"  

 

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