Robin's Random Rambles

Friday, July 27, 2022: The day I marked on the Storygraph my first ever Dean Street Press book as "read". That book was The Crime at the Noah's Ark by Molly Thynne. It was not love at first sight, as my reaction at The Storygraph indicates. Sunday, December 29, 2024: The day I marked on the Storygraph my 100th Dean Street Press book as "read." That book was Harlequin House by Margery Sharp and my Storygraph reaction shows how the times (and tones) have changed. They have me well and truly hooked! The image below shows all 100 of the DSP books I've completed up to the time of writing this post. This post is a paean, so what follows are reasons I think Dean Street Press deserve one. 1. Passionate People: it is very clear that Dean Street Press care very much about what they do. They don't just sell books, they sell readers on books, and they sell authors. I bought an entire series of novels by one author solely on the strength of a guest ...

 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-ri...

 After a sad start to 2023 for Dean Street Press with the loss of its founder, I hope that Liz Dexter's   hosting a second Dean Street December will end the year on a brighter note for all involved. 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've opted for a much saner 15, shown in the image below. As with last year's challenge, several of the non-mystery middlebrow books are new to my library, another seasonally appropriate donation to DSP and Furrowed Middlebrow ! 😁  I plan to read the books in the left-to-right order of that screenshot, mixing up mysteries from Brian Flynn and Christopher Bush with middlebrow works from Molly Clavering and her next-door neighbour, D. E. Stevenson. Once again, many thanks to Steve Barge for Brian Flynn and to  Curtis Evans for Christopher Bush.   As an avid user and endorser of The StoryGraph , I'll again be posting all my...

 After an up and down (or rather, a down and up ) year of mystery reading, in early November  I was introduced to a new word and a new concept and a new challenge. The new word and new concept were new only to me, of course - middlebrow. I'd never heard the word before noticing it crop up a lot on Dean Street Press's Twitter feed, mostly courtesy of Scott, aka Furrowed Middlebrow    His vigorous advocacy of female middlebrow authors was beginning to intrigue me when Liz Dexter    shared an inspired idea for a December reading challenge. She suggested a Dean Street December , a month devoted to reading books published by Dean Street Press .  Since I've enjoyed so many DSP books this year, the idea of reading more while broadening the range of authors and genres was too good to pass up, so here I am.   One of the things I've learned from starting Christopher Bush's Ludovic Travers series in particular, and also Alice Campbell's works (another ...